The Annual Humanities Essay

Specifications:

Due: Thursday, April 26 / Friday, April 27

Length:

7-10 pages typed (minimum 2000 words)

Purpose:

To provide a capstone to the interdisciplinary study of the humanities in the 10th grade. Students will do independent research on a topic that ties together their study of literature, history, art and music in a single project.

Topic:

An exploration of the thematic connections between four artifacts and the ways in which they reflect the zeitgeist of the era(s) in which they were created.  You will select your artifacts from the worlds of art, music, literature, and history (including politics, science, or philosophy).  Your artifacts may complement each other, or they may contradict each other; they may reflect the coherence of a given time and place, or they may reveal the connections and tensions within a single society or between different societies.  The time period spans the full scope of the course from ancient Greece to the present and while the paper should not repeat the topics of the earlier mini-artifact paper, an additional option is available, with advisor approval, to incorporate a suitable modern artifact into your exploration of the thematic connections to enhance and reinforce your analysis.

Advisor:

You will select one of your Humanities teachers (either history or English) to be your main advisor for this project. Your paper and presentation will receive a grade in both your English and history classes, and all of your teachers will help in their respective areas of expertise, but one teacher will help you to select and to develop your topic.

Form:

A formal essay, which argues from a thesis, and includes research, quotations, in-text citations, a list of works cited, and acknowledgments. Verb tense: Do not use the first person; use the past tense for sections about historical events; use the present tense to discuss a work of art, music, or literature. Students should be encouraged to include graphics and musical samples, which serve to support their theses in the actual texts of their essays. All papers should be written in Microsoft Word. Students should be able to submit both a paper and an electronic copy to both English and history teachers.

Research:

Areas of research must include the four primary works under consideration. Additional research must include secondary critical source material about at least one of the four works and general information about the particular period in history. Relevant biographical information about the creators may be included. These additional sources and/or sites must be printed out with date accessed and handed in with your final paper.
 

Sources:

For primary and secondary source material consult Gilman’s European Humanities website: http://faculty.gilman.edu/US/Humanities/Humanities_Project_2005-06/title_page.htm . This website should be your starting point for all research queries. In addition, use Gene Mittler’s Art in Focus for a good selection of artworks and a good overview of major themes in the Humanities, Perry’s Sources of the Western Tradition, and Merriman’s A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present (the current AP European history text) which has a very good selection of visual artifacts that accompanies its historical narrative.

Prizes:

The Annual Humanities Essay Awards. First, second, and third prizes will be awarded in assembly.

Grading:

Meeting the following deadlines is a component of your grade for the paper.

Time Line:

  • March 5-7 Paper introduced in English classes
  • March 5-9 Meet with advisor (first conference) to develop a topic proposal
  • March 9 General topics to all Humanities teachers and librarian
  • March 26-April 20 At least one conference (second conference) with your primary advisor
  • March 26-April 20 At least one Writing Center conference
  • March 20-April 3 1 research/writing day in the library (English class)
  • April 2-April 13 1 research/writing day in the library (history class)
  • April 19-20 Peer response to rough drafts in English class
  • April 26/27 Paper due (one copy to each teacher)



Sample Artifacts:

  • Canterbury Cathedral, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Gregorian chants, Sir John Froissart: The Peasant Revolt (See Middle Ages)
  • Shakespeare’s Othello or Macbeth, Holbein’s The Ambassadors, Thomas Weelkes’ madrigals, Mirandola: "Oration on the Dignity of Man" (See High Renaissance)
  • Selections from Dickens’ Hard Times, Marx’s Communist Manifesto, Zola’s Germinal (See 19th Century Isms)
  • David’s Oath of Horatii, Beethoven’s Third Symphony, Declaration of the Rights of Man (See French Revolution)
  • John Keats’ "Ode on a Grecian Urn", Greek amphorae, Aristotle, Mozart’s Piano Concerto in A (See Romanticism)
  • Blake’s "The Tyger", Darwin’s Natural Selection, Berlioz’ Symphonie Fantastique (See Romanticism)

  • Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, Lenin’s political theory, Chehov’s The Cherry Orchard, Schoenberg’s Six Orchestral Pieces

  • Orwell’s Animal Farm; Stalin’s collectivization program, socialist art or film (Eizenstein’s Ivan the Terrible) (See Russian Revolution)

  • World War I poetry, The Treaty of Versailles, British war propaganda posters, Britten’s War Requiem (See World War I)

  • Bauhaus architecture or Kandinsky, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Nietzsche, Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, (See Imperialism)

  • Munch’s The Scream, Freudian psychology, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (See Modern Thought)
  • Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Riefenstahl’s The Triumph of the Will, Nazi propaganda posters (See Between the Wars)

  • Voltaire’s Candide, Haydn’s Creation, Vermeer’s Woman Holding a Balance, Condorcet’s Progress of the Human Mind