Lit and Arts B

In the introductory meeting of Lit and Arts B-51, “First Nights: Five Performance Premieres,” Professor Thomas Kelly makes a point of telling students that if they can count to 12 in time with a dance from Le Sacre du Printemps, they’ll be able to succeed in the course. This summarizes a lot of classes in Lit and Arts B. A musical or artistic background might come in handy, but a specialized knowledge of visual art or music is not needed to succeed. Lit and Arts B allows students to explore fields like music or art without braving difficult departmental courses. These Cores, when taught well, provide information about paintings or compositions as well as elementary training in the methods used to analyze those works.

Like many Core areas, Lit and Arts B provides some very specific offerings which might appeal to individuals with equally specific (obscure?) tastes (B-48, “Chinese Imaginary Space,” anyone?). But many Lit and Arts B classes are surprisingly general for Core classes, including B-51, “First Nights” and B-68, “Opera.”

A discussion of Lit and Arts B must include mention of “First Nights: Five Performance Premiers.” Don’t mind the fact that Kelly will at times dance across the Sanders Theatre stage during lecture—we swear that the rest of the course is actually quite good. First Nights presents musical history in a digestible, popular style, and the course text, written by Kelly, is actually readable (i.e. if you stay awake in lecture, you don’t need to do the reading). Kelly’s enthusiasm is as enjoyable to watch as it is infectious, no prior knowledge of music or musical notation is required, and “First Nights” provides a thorough introduction to classical music.

Another gem of a Core is Lit and Arts B-34, “Frank Lloyd Wright and the Modern City and Suburb.” The class features some hard grading, but Professor Neil Levine is interesting and knowledgeable. There’s a lot of reading, but you don’t need to do all of it to follow along. B-51 and B-34 are both good choices if you’re willing to make a bit of an effort to get something interesting out of your Core.

On the other side of the scale, there’s Lit and Arts B-35, “The Age of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent: Art, Architecture, and Ceremonial at the Ottoman Court.” The course name might be formidable, but the work isn’t; tests aren’t graded harshly and the workload is minor. Professor Gülru Necipoglu-Kafadar’s lectures tend toward disorganization, with lots of confusing slides, which makes the class boring but pretty easy.

Speaking of slides, there’s B-21, “The Images of Alexander the Great.” The course is a legendary gut, and requires little actual work except for some slide memorization exam time. If you’re not one for actually “studying,” do yourself a favor and take this course.

Make sure with any course, but especially with Lit B, to shop the courses and really think about whether the very narrow topics offered can hold your attention for an entire semester. Otherwise you may find yourself snoozing through an entire semester of some seriously dull material (“Chinese Imaginary Space,” anyone?).