Arts courses at UTM
A look at some interesting art courses offered at UTM this year.
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It’s back-to-school time, which means finalizing your course selections. Whether you’re looking for a course to fulfill a distribution requirement or an elective course, you have the opportunity to explore subjects outside of your routine coursework. Why not take this opportunity to explore the arts?
Taking a course in the arts might seem daunting, or not very appealing, especially if you don’t feel a strong connection to the traditional arts like painting, design and sculpture. But the arts go beyond what most people see as traditional art forms.
The arts also includes writing, and UTM offers a plethora of literature and writing courses that might catch your interest. For example, WRI173: Creative Non-Fiction, is a course that introduces non-fiction writing where students experiment with different writing techniques. Students in this course write four original narrative pieces about a variety of themes. I personally took this course during a summer semester and really enjoyed it. I liked being able to expand my writing style through memories that make up core aspects of me today. It was more than just a writing course; WRI173 is a course that invites you to explore what makes you who you are and reflect on important moments of your life that you want to preserve.
Perhaps you are not concerned with writing and literature, because you think generative AI has you covered. Or maybe you’re up at odd hours of the night spiraling over artificial intelligence creeping into every aspect of life, including the content you’re consuming, including the captions of social media posts. In that case, ENG107: Literature and AI would be the course for you. The premise of the course is to introduce and dissect AI’s effect on literature. How is AI influencing the future of writing? What are the ethics of using AI in literature? How have literature and human notions of AI fed into what AI is becoming? Generative AI might make a lot, but it is human imagination that made AI.
Or, did you discount your reading experience because you preferred comics to traditional novels? If English class in high school would have been more interesting to you had the passages being analysed were from comics, ENG235: Comics and the Graphic Novel might be the course for you! ENG235 rejects the idea that comics aren’t considered “real” reading. Over the semester, you will read fictional and non-fictional comics written by a curated list of authors, learn about the techniques used in writing comics, and interpret the comics. The course has also included the option for students to create their own short comic.
If these courses sound interesting, but none of them truly connect with you, you can find a full list of courses offered by the Department of English & Drama, along with course descriptions, here.
Welcome, or welcome back to UTM, and good luck in the new academic year!
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