IHUM 280

In this course, we will explore how the humanities can help us better understand our own current cultural environment. Our focus will be a unique one: games and play. We'll examine questions like these:

• Why do we play and what does play say about the human condition?
• How do we analyze a game (analog or digital)?
• In what respect can games be considered art (and do they change our traditional understanding of that term)?
• What do games have to contribute to ongoing social conversations about important topics like violence or mental health?
• How have games been represented in the other art forms?
• What is the morality of play?

From an economic, cultural, and social point of view, games are increasingly important, and this course gives us the chance—somewhat paradoxically—to think seriously about play.

This class takes generative and agentic AI as its subject and its method, with the particular perspective that the humanities can bring. We will examine AI in three different humanities activities: writing, editing, and critical thought. By the end of the semester, you will be able to articulate what AI can and cannot do well; you will have written and edited with AI; you will have participated in training an AI model; you will have read deeply in current debates about AI; and you will have a sense of what you can do that computers cannot.

Dr. Alen Christenson
IHUM 390R/ARTHC 490R

The French called it La Belle Époque, the Beautiful Age. Transport yourself to the time when the Eiffel Tower first pierced the clouds; Picasso and Matisse walked the streets of Paris as unknown visionaries; Kandinsky first heard the haunting piano concertos of Schoenberg in Munich; Klimt rejected the world and found one more beautiful in Vienna; Munch crossed a bridge in Oslo and heard the universe scream; T.S. Eliot heard the mermaids singing each to each; Mallarmé lost himself in the azure; Redon saw the face of God; and Van Gogh longed for the stars. Minds will be expanded, breath will be quickened, worlds will be created, forever “young and eager, we will stand upon this earth as upon a footstool and stretch out its realm among the heavens.”

Not a bad way to spend a Monday and Wednesday afternoon. Haste to register if you can for Art History 490R/IHum 390R and join Dr. Allen Christenson for a winter semester of enlightenment and time travel.

Dr Carl Sederholm

In this section of Film Theory, we will focus on a handful of major approaches to film including Genre, Narrative, Psychoanalysis, Ideology, Star Studies, and Adaptation. We will also discuss approximately six films in genres ranging from science fiction to nuclear disaster to documentaries.

- Modern Japanese Literature and Film

IHUM 490R/ARTHC 380

The purpose of this course is to introduce students to the art, literature, architecture, and culture of ancient Mexico from earliest beginnings to the period immediately after the Spanish Conquest. Cultures to be considered include the Aztecs, Mixtecs, ancient Veracruz, Teotihuacan, Toltecs, Zapotecs, Izapan Epi-Olmec, and Olmecs. The course will provide an awareness of these important cultural groups and touch on the influences they have exerted on contemporary society. The course will emphasize the underlying world view and theology of these groups that will help to elucidate their art, sacred spaces, and literature with an emphasis on Aztec poetry and wisdom literature.

Allen Christenson
Section 002

The art, literature, culture, and religion of the Maya people of Mesoamerica from earliest times to the present. The Maya are among the world’s oldest people, who have left a legacy of magnificent art and architecture as well as millennia old hieroglyphic texts that reflect deeply-held beliefs and ceremonial practices, many of which continue to be observed to this day among their living descendants.