: Areas of Study :
Arts
Studio Arts, Media Arts and Performance
Overview
The arts curriculum at Antioch College provides students with a dynamic multi-disciplinary collaborative grounding in two-and three dimensional studio and media arts, and performance. The program seeks to provide all of its students with the knowledge, technical skill and creative capacity to facilitate exploration of their own imaginative and expressive capabilities through both individual and collaborative projects. The arts curriculum will also offer insight into diverse historical and contemporary cultural, social, political, and economic contexts and networks of art making.
Program Goals & Knowledge Development
At Antioch College, students will become familiar with the representation and analysis of human experience through both arts investigations and practices. They will be introduced to multiple perspectives and strategies of art-making including interdisciplinary, community based and global contexts both in the classroom and through their on and off-campus work experiences. Students will develop a critical vocabulary for understanding and analyzing contemporary art culture as well as an evolving practice that investigates particular aesthetic, ethical and representational dilemmas in arts making. They will develop an awareness of the use of the self as source and resource, and will develop an understanding of how the arts have evolved historically and theoretically and in the present moment.
Skill Building
Our students will develop their creative voice so they can create, communicate and connect their individual sensibilities and interpretations to the world. They will develop both the individual skills and techniques needed to work in a variety of arts media, and also develop the ability to collaborate meaningfully with their colleagues, faculty and staff in the arts community. Through the on and off-campus work program students will also learn to engage with artists in a variety of communities from the local to the global. They will develop their own creative intelligence and hone their analytical and conceptual skills through disciplined ongoing and evolving practice. Students will learn to appreciate, discuss, review, research, think critically and write about their own work and that of their peers and the work of established artists, genres or movements with clarity and confidence. They will become adept at both thoughtfully listening to critical feedback and providing conscientious feedback to their peers, faculty and visiting artists.
Artist residencies each study quarter will be a critical element of both the cultural life of the community and an integral part of the curriculum. A variety of contemporary artists working in the fields of performance, dance, music, photography, film, video, installation, sculpture, painting, printmaking, sound, creative writing, and more will be invited to live and work within the community leading workshops, giving lectures, creating projects, developing and presenting their own work, critiquing student work and occasionally collaborating with faculty within a class project.
Humanities
History, Literature and Philosophy
Description of History Concentration
The study of History helps us to make sense of the world by offering an understanding of how societies and cultures change over time. In exploring the past, historians also explore the complex ways in which the past influences the present, as well as how the past persists into the future. At Antioch College history centers not only on learning about what people have done in the past but also on how we in the present can uncover, make, and interpret sources in order to engage diverse audiences with interests in history. Our watchwords are rigorous reading of sources and documents, but also engaging publics with our explorations and interpretations of the past. And so a distinctive feature of Antioch College's preparation of future historians is that class work is supplemented with a variety of job and internship experiences where students can experience for themselves where and how history can engage wider publics.
The History Concentration at Antioch College approaches the systematic study of the past with a particular attention to local contexts—to the historical record of the Miami Valley, of Ohio, of North America—but also seeks to situate local events in relation to larger and more global movements. This concentration balances more traditional historical studies with a strong commitment to interdisciplinary work involving contemporary fields such as Feminist and Gender Studies, American Studies, African American Studies, and Post-colonial Studies. Antioch history majors will take broad survey courses in aspects of U.S. History and the History of the Americas in addition to methods courses and courses on specific topics and themes in the human record of the American continents. Antioch College history majors become active producers of history; at least two quarter-length work experiences involve hands-on work in the field; the upper-level Humanities Colloquy requires the production of a collaborative public history project. This concentration is supported by the other Humanities concentrations of Literature and Philosophy.
History students develop a deeper understanding of the world around them and the forces that shape it. They cultivate the vital skills of writing, research, data collection and analysis, critical thinking, questioning, engaging with multiple audiences, and the organization and presentation of complex materials. History majors become experts in making well-supported, meaningful written claims and arguments and in communicating with audiences.
Description of Literature Concentration
Literature as an art form involves an imaginative encounter with Otherness–other historical moments, other ways of being, and other values. Students are encouraged to compare these other ways of being with their own time and place, but primarily to begin to understand lives outside of their own. The Literature Concentration at Antioch makes available the study of literature in English from the late 18th century to the present. This concentration balances the study of major writers from Britain and its former colonies with a strong commitment to interdisciplinary work in contemporary fields such as Cultural Studies, Feminist and Gender Studies, Film Studies, and Post-colonial Studies. Antioch College Literature courses generally include both time-honored texts and those that lie outside of the boundaries of what has been considered traditional literature. While some courses focus on a particular genre of literature, others combine fiction, drama, essays, poetry, autobiography, and narrative film. Nearly every course prioritizes historical context and the situating of a text in its exact geographic and social milieu. This concentration is supported by the other Humanities concentrations of History and Philosophy.
Literature students become good close readers of texts and intelligent and informed critics of a range of textual and cultural phenomena. Students acquire the skills to analyze cultural texts of the past as well as of the contemporary moment. Literary-oriented students will learn and practice 1) reading different kinds of literary texts, 2) understanding and applying different approaches to the interpretation and evaluation of texts, 3) doing historical research to place texts in the context of literary and social history, and 4) making well-supported, meaningful written claims and arguments. Literature majors will also receive the necessary pre-graduate work in the canon of contemporary literary and cultural theory.
Description of the Philosophy Concentration
The Philosophy Concentration offers students a program of study in the traditions of Philosophy and Social & Political Theory. In consultation with a faculty advisor, the student works out an Individualized Major that focuses on both the foundational and core courses in Philosophy along with courses that form the student’s special interests. Other possible interdisciplinary majors involving Philosophy are able to be worked out in close consultation with the academic advisor and other relevant members of the faculty. This Concentration is supported by the other Humanities concentrations of History and Literature.
The Philosophy Concentration takes seriously the Socratic dictum: An unexamined life is not worth living. By so doing, it challenges received assumptions, cultural givens, and conventional wisdom. The concentration serves students seriously interested in a variety of philosophical themes and questions in the humanities. Philosophy originated as the repertoire of all human knowledge, spinning off academic disciplines only as they developed their distinct methodologies. It still retains interest in a number of disciplines through fields such as philosophy of science, social philosophy, political philosophy, philosophy of art, philosophy of mind, and so on. Students who choose to pursue a Philosophy Concentration will address the classic philosophical topics of the nature of knowledge and reality, the good or ethical life, the good or just society, human nature, and the nature of history. Who am I? How do I know what I think I know? What is authentic happiness? What does it mean to be human? What is a good society? Indeed, what is reality itself? These are some of the kinds of questions addressed by those who pursue the study of Philosophy.
Sciences
Environmental Sciences and Health Sciences
Overview
The Science curriculum provides a rich environment for developing the powers of insight and creativity, as well as many transferrable skills. Students in the Sciences are offered a choice between two majors or pathways through that curriculum, both of which can lead to rich and rewarding post-graduate professional and academic opportunities: the Health Science major and the Environmental Science major.
Students in both majors begin their journey with a core set of foundational and introductory courses taken in common. By the second year, students will begin to focus more time on intermediate and advanced courses that are specifically designed to lead them to the culmination of the major they have chosen, even though some courses and the two colloquies will be taken in common. The majors in the Sciences are designed to lead students through courses that build on the knowledge gained in previous courses, and emphasize close interaction with faculty and other students. The culmination for both majors is the Senior Project, based on the students’ research and presented both orally and in writing.
Science fields are continually changing, as are career prospects for graduates in different fields, and students will be learning new ways of looking at things long after they graduate. The Health Science (or biomedical) major will prepare students for either medical school or veterinary school, and students interested in taking this path should consult an academic advisor immediately to begin planning for the major. It also provides excellent preparation for students interested in nursing, lab research, being a Physician’s Assistant, and other allied health professions. The program is designed to appeal to students who value serving society, who are excited about traveling to foreign countries, serving a rural population or one in the inner city. The ultimate goal of the program is to prepare students in this field who want to make a difference.
Students interested in the Environmental Science major will receive a rich education that can take them in many career directions: environmental scientific research; science education; environmental policy analysis from a scientific perspective; and careers in the areas of the biological and life sciences. As with the Health Science major, this program aims to prepare students interested in addressing in some fashion the major environmental crises of the planet today and tomorrow. The major is strongly supported by the Glen Helen Ecology Institute and the College’s 1,000-acre nature preserve and raptor center.
Social Sciences
Anthropology, Social Psychology and Political Economy
Overview
The Social Sciences at Antioch College focus on the institutions and functioning of human societies, with the individual, and with the interpersonal relationships of individuals as members of society. Social Science courses will include Anthropology, Political Economy and Social and Cognitive Psychology.
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of existing human groups and tries to describe and explain how cultural institutions such as religion, education, gender roles, economic and political systems are integrated and operate to support a particular group’s social structure. Because anthropologists are interested in culture in its entirety, the focus of research is often small, discrete groups. Cultural Anthropologists use participant observations as their primary research method—living and working with a group, melding into the group as much as possible, while observing and noting how the people live, work, relate to each other and their environment. The written work of these observations is called an ethnography which is a compilation of explanations and observations about a small extant group of people.
Political Economy
Political Economy examines the connections between a nation’s or group of nations’ political system and economic system. How does the political system influence or determine investment, spending, social programs—what is supported or looked upon favorably and what is not supported and looked upon as negative? Often, Political Economy researches the connections between internal and external trading partners and attempts to explain why certain nations partner with other nations. Political Economy also analyzes the linkage between political and economic structures within nations in order to say something about the types of trade, social programs that are supported, and what impact they have on the overall interior functioning of that nation.
Social Psychology
Psychology differs from Cultural Anthropology and Political Economy in that Psychology focuses on the individual as a member of a society or culture. Rather than focusing on elements that are society or culture-wide, Psychology focuses on the role of the individual as that individual acts and interacts with the rest of their society or culture. What happens when a society sets forth continuums of acceptable behavior and an individual violates that continuum? Psychologists investigate the consequences to the individual when the individual meets with difficulty in dealing appropriately (as established by the society) with maintaining the cultural/societal norm. Psychologists also complete research regarding how people think and learn and what stages are involved in the development of the brain, and social behaviors.
