This summer, Ph.D. Candidate Mateusz Ferens will be teaching ART HIST 303: Heroes and Villains, asynchronous online, during June 5th–July 28th, 2023. Sophomore Standing | Humanities Breadth | L&S Credit. Enroll here.
In this course, we will dive into an exploration of human values as they are represented in our heroes and villains. This course will take a thematic approach in which we explore such concepts as virtue, morality, struggle, and self-knowledge. What might the statue of Prometheus at the Rockefeller Center represent? Why has Disney turned to villain-identified narratives? In what ways are we still repeating the core narratives of ancient times? To answer these and similar questions we will embark on a journey that will analyze our contemporary visual culture. As part of our journey, we will wander into the minds of the ancients and the pre-moderns to explore the roots of our deepest value systems.