Understanding and Appreciating Humanities Assignment | Top Universities
How would one reply to this discussion in 3-4 sentences:
One thing that I have learned from the course is that understanding and appreciating the humanities, at least for me, takes practice. I have not really delved deep into the humanities subjects, and I have only really ever had a superficial knowledge of them. Part of this, I think, is because in high school, when we would read literature or poems, I would not fully understand them. This made me feel like I was stupid, and I have since then avoided them. The tutorial on understanding poetry in week 4 learning resources really helped me realize that understanding things like poetry takes a lot of practice, and it is standard to read poems multiple times, take notes, and re-write lines in the poem to understanding.
This made me feel better about not fully understanding things like poems the first time I read them. I think that with this new realization, I was much more comfortable exploring poetry. In the Kahn Academy video “Why We Look at Art” one of the speakers says that heightened visual acumen comes from spending looking at things, anything, really (Harris and Sucker). I don’t know how I went most of my life not understanding that understanding takes practice. I guess I assumed that being able to understand and appreciate the humanities was something someone either had or didn’t. I do not doubt that I will continue to explore the humanities and work toward a greater understanding and appreciation of them.
I just finished a humanities course, which I was originally dreading, because the humanities have never been my favorite subjects. However, it was a lot better than I thought it would be! A lot of the things that we learned about and discussed made me think of you. When I first found out that you chose to get a degree in music as well as a degree in psychology, I did not understand the connection.
I understand that not all degrees have to be related, but you are so interested in psychology, that I figured you must have seen some relationship between the two. I realize now that there is so much more to music than simply listening. I learned that there is a field called “ethnomusicology”, which is looking at music from a cultural standpoint. I thought it was interesting to think about how much insight music can give to the culture of an area. Of course, you already seemed to have made that connection a long time ago. If you were to take this course, I doubt that much of the material would be new to you. However, I think that participation in the discussions and thinking about the questions the professor poses would be interesting for you. There were many times where I thought I understood something from the course, and the questions the professor asked made me consider things differently. Now that I am more familiar with the humanities, we can discuss works of art, music, religion, and I can provide some valid input!
PERSONAL GROWTH
As I mentioned before, I was discouraged in the past with not being able to understand certain works of art immediately. I thought that understanding poetry, literature, music, etc., was something that I was just never going to be able to do. Maybe I didn’t have the right brain for that, maybe I wasn’t creative enough. However, I have learned that this can be done through practice. There are so many things to learn from the humanities, if I just look deeper into them, rather than always looking at the superficial meaning of things. One thing that I will start to do more is go to the Detroit Institute of Arts, as I am in Detroit all the time, and it is free. I want to go and look at the art that I had never really appreciated, because they were all just paintings and sculptures. I want to grow to be able to truly appreciate art, and I feel like this class laid a good foundation for me to build upon. Get English homework help today
