ENGL 009H. First-Year Seminar: Portraits of the Artist

We’ll study works portraying artists using a variety of media, including literature, film, song-writing, and digital animation. We’ll learn how to study artistic form, as well as different approaches to understanding a work’s content and context.

Artists studied will include the following: Plato’s “Parable of the Cave” from The Republic, Tony Kushner’s 2-part play Angels in America; Carl Sagan’s novel Contact (about humankind’s first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization); short stories by Kafka, Borges, and Ted Chiang; songs from Barbie by Dua Lipa, Mark Ronson, and Billie Eilish; songs from Meshell Ndegeocello’s James Baldwin project; and 2 animated films, the first of which also features great songs: Maggie Kang’s and Chris Appelhans’ K-Pop Demon Hunters (Netflix 2025); plus ND Stevenson’s Nimona (Netflix 2023).

We’ll also explore answers to broader cultural study questions, including:

· What is cultural studies? How can we ask better questions about how a particular story-world or artwork creates meaning?

· In what ways are artists part of their place & time, yet also able to imagine worlds that may resonate with audiences in very different eras?

· How do literature and the other arts inspire critical thinking and imagining a different future?

This first-year seminar also counts as a Writing course towards graduation requirements
Humanities.
Writing course.
1 credit.
Fall 2025. Schmidt.
Spring 2026. Schmidt.
Fall 2026. Schmidt.
Catalog chapter: English Literature
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/english-literature

Access the class schedule to search for sections.