MONSTERS AND BARDS

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Lower-Level

Discussion course examines artistic representations of monsters and bards: cultural icons that have figured prominently in historic documents, film and television, opera, ballet, art, literature, and games. Tracing the development of these concepts from the Middle Ages to the modern day, the course explores ways in which music affects perceptions of monsters and bards, complicating their place in the worlds they inhabit, real and imagined. Topics include approaches to violence, crusading, barbarians, otherness, macabre and gothic aesthetics, orientalism, colonialism, romantic love, chivalry, and religious spirituality.