2023-2024 Course Catalog
Welcome to Virginia Tech! We are excited that you are here planning your time as a Hokie.
Welcome to Virginia Tech! We are excited that you are here planning your time as a Hokie.
The shifts in thought and values during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the global imagination, including issues of commerce, scientific inquiry, industrialization, nationalism, war, labor, gender, class differences, race, and the beginnings of postmodernity. Emphasis on interpretive and analytic skills in terms of reading, discussing, and writing about the interrelationships among the arts, literature, philosophy, history, religion, and science, and their contributions toward shaping the values and aspirations of the age, including global contexts and Asian cultures.
The development and formation of the category of popular culture. Competing theories and methods for analyzing popular culture. Activities, objects, and ideas included under the rubric of popular culture. Critical thinking about the production of popular culture in relation to race, gender, class, and other forms of human difference.
Explores the written, visual, and performing arts of selected periods and cultures, setting them in the context of their times. Study of these periods linked with overarching questions of cultural encounters, interactions, and negotiations. Introduces principles of each art form as well as the means of appreciation. Students taught methods in researching, writing, and presenting on these art forms.
Introduces students to the history of the Appalachian region from European contact to the present. Traces the idea of Appalachia by tracing ways in which Americans have imagined the region over time. Explores humanistic problems of cultural identity, race and ethnicity, place and globalization, and impacts of natural resource extraction.
Examination of the worlds great oral traditions, both ancient and contemporary. Emphasis on performance contexts, relationships among multicultural traditions, including American Indian oral traditions, and the relationships among orality, literacy, technology, media, and culture.
Explores ways in which creativity and design can be understood historically as well as understood and practiced in a classroom setting. Subjects include any or all of the following: theories of creativity; traditions associated with understanding and making several kinds of art; studying artworks from different cultural backgrounds, working with the limitations and possibilities inherent in design projects, and examining how and why they were created; and preparing final creative projects for classroom presentation.
Examination of the expressive genres and cultural processes of communities in Appalachia. Documentation of art and skill in everyday life, including material culture (e.g., foodways, architecture), customary behavior (e.g., music, ritual, occupational practice), and verbal art (e.g., narrative, speechplay), and analysis of how people have used these forms to shape social identities, physical spaces, and power relations.
Methodology and tools of American studies, with a focus on developing analytic skills to assess discourse across varied media. Interdisciplinary investigation of histories, politics, cultures, and beliefs in the Americas, including the impacts of encounter and exchange. Intensive study of a specific topic or period.
Examination of theories for understanding the ways in which popular objects and practices (such as television programs, films, or attending sporting events) represent, maintain, and contest societal norms, including norms regarding gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, and class and place, with an emphasis on the United States.
Examination of theories for understanding the ways in which popular objects and practices (such as television programs, films, or attending sporting events) represent, maintain, and contest societal norms, including norms regarding gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, and class and place, with an emphasis on the United States.
Focuses on interdisciplinary topics involving interrelationships among various arts and/or artists. Explores the religious and/or cultural impacts of arts and/or artists on societies and of societies on artistic expression. Investigates humanistic debates about the nature of art. May be taken a maximum of 3 times for credit with different topics.
Exploration of communication in and among various cultural groups through an examination of communicative practices, registers, discourse, and performance. Emphasis on understanding cultural differences and similarities in the different styles and stances in communication and their meanings to participants.
Exploration of communication in and among various cultural groups through an examination of communicative practices, registers, discourse, and performance. Emphasis on understanding cultural differences and similarities in the different styles and stances in communication and their meanings to participants.
The concept of community in Appalachia using an interdisciplinary approach and experiential learning. Interrelationships among geographically, culturally, and socially constituted communities, public policy, and human development. Pre: Junior standing.
In-depth study of special interdisciplinary topic. Topics vary but involve a close and extensive study of the interrelationship between cultural ideas and their expressions in several of the following forms: literature, philosophy, religion, art, music, drama, material culture, and popular culture. May be repeated with different topics, for a maximum of 9 credits.
Uses sociological, anthropological, as well as artistic and humanist paradigms to analyze culture. Discusses 20th and 21st century cultural trends. Analyzes the implications of social context for cultural artifacts such as art. Topics are variable. Example topics include the cultural construction of race and the cultural of the nineteen sixties. Course may be repeated with different course content for up to 6 credits. Pre: Junior or Senior standing.
Research conducted by students on issues relevant to local or regional sustainability in contemporary Appalachia on contemporary environmental and community issues. Focus on environmental justice ethical issues expressed in or created by various forms of discourse.
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