9 courses with the subject SQR, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
SQR 3233Ecological Issues3
Human populations and cultures have always had an impact on land, climate, and plant and animal species, and in turn, the environment reciprocally has impacted humans and their cultures. In this course, students explore ecological anthropology, which focuses on these complex relationships. Class sessions consist of a mix of lecture and discussion. Students may also go on site visits.
This course explores the ways in which humans imagine and represent themselves as both distinct from and connected to the concept of “animal.” The first part of this course covers anthropomorphism, the human-based perspective that projects “the human image” onto the “animal” world. The second part of this course examines representations of human and animal relationships. In the third part of this course, students read works by writers who explore the process of human-into-animal transformation and the animal-human hybrid. The exploration of the relationship between the animal and the human is both literary and philosophical. Class sessions are primarily discussion-oriented with some lectures.
The five senses are the filters through which the physical world enters the artist, but many artists have no idea how they work. This course explores the anatomy, physiology, evolution, and cultural shaping of the sense with history, science, folklore, and art as guides. Through readings, experience-oriented activities, projects, and guest experts, students develop a heightened sense of how they perceive. This class primarily consists of in-class discussion with some lecture. Students complete examinations as well as write some short and long essays.
This course concerns itself with the great variety and the interdependence of species that live on this planet. Students discuss just how species evolve and grow and how they die and become extinct. Change over time in living organisms is a major theme of this course. Class sessions are primarily lecture-based with some discussion. Assignments include examinations and short essays. In addition, a biodiversity field trip gives students practical experience in observing the living and the interactive cycle of one species.
This course introduces students to key concepts in contemporary science, with emphasis on the relationship between science, art, and popular culture. This course examines a variety of media sources and art practices and encourages a critical approach to scientific methodologies and cultural contexts. Subjects covered in this class range from issues in art and ecology to bioethics to policy analysis. Class sessions consist of lectures, discussions, and other activities.
Can a particular form or set of stimuli always or reliably bring about a particular result? While there is still divided opinion as to how far an understanding of neurological functions can go in explaining “how art works,” scientists and artists alike have turned to neuroaesthetics to develop a way to explain the aesthetic experience through a science of the mind. The new awareness of how cognition builds up, how synaptic leaps are created, and how viewers notice schematic elements in a given work are all evidence that neuroaesthetics provides an interdisciplinary nexus to bridge art and science, body and mind. Prerequisite: Introduction to Art and Design: History 2 (may be taken concurrently) or faculty permission.
SQR 3440Curation and Conservation: Science in the Gallery
This course allows students a close look at the materials and techniques used in both historical and contemporary art conservation. The class will work with conservators from the Midwest Art Conservation Center and items in local collections to gain an overview of the technical study of art history through hands-on experience studying and evaluating works of art, lab experiences, and readings and discussions of issues and debates in art conservation. Combining science, art history, and museum studies, this course seeks to explore the materiality of art-making from the perspective of both artist and audience. Prerequisite: Introduction to Art and Design: History 2 or faculty permission
Visual perspectives are systems for creating space and distance on a flat surface. Different cultures position the viewer in varied ways that condition what they see and the way they see it. Linear perspective is a seminal event in Western art history in which the position of the individual observer became an engine for the development of Modernity. This course focuses on the historical development of various visual perspective systems and their impact on conceptions of space and time. Class sessions are an equal mix of lecture and discussion. Prerequisite: Introduction to Art and Design History 2 (may be taken concurrently) or faculty permission.
This course explores the languages, structures, and principles of mathematical systems as they relate to the visual arts. It offers a view of geometry’s pivotal role in giving form to fundamental postulates underlying the study of visual art and design, such as linear perspective, composition, the Fibonacci sequence, and the golden section. Through hands-on study supplemented by drawing and paper-folding exercises, students learn to translate geometry’s spatial concepts into visual forms, while also gaining an appreciation for this mathematical tool’s enduring utility at the hands of artists, architects, and designers since ancient times. Prerequisite: Introduction to Art and Design History 2 (may be taken concurrently) or faculty permission.
