Weinberg College
of Arts & Sciences

FD-LA: Literature and Arts

NOTE: Students who started taking classes at Northwestern in Spring 2023 or earlier should refer to the Area VI: Literature and Fine Arts page. The information below pertains to students who start at Northwestern after Spring 2023.

ABOUT LITERATURE AND ARTS

By taking courses in literature and art, students come to understand and appreciate the achievements of the creative imagination in a range of artistic forms and media. These include printed and oral literature, theater, music, the visual arts, and film and digital media. Students learn to describe, value, and critique such works; to identify and query the ideas and perspectives they represent; and to consider them as an array of aesthetic practices through which human beings have attempted to explore and transform their worlds. As students encounter the power of literature and art to imagine the breadth of human experience, they come to grasp the role of the arts in the evolution of human ways of knowing, being, feeling and expressing. At the same time, students examine the historical, cultural, and social contexts in which creative works are produced, which they at once reflect and contest. In recognizing the many ways in which texts and artistic works create meaning, and by paying attention to the factors that influence such processes, students gain exposure to the descriptive vocabularies, theoretical approaches, and reading practices common to criticism on literature and the arts. What is more, they develop essential skills in critical thinking and cultural analysis that will make them more conscientious readers of texts, images, and objects of all kinds.

Choosing courses

Students may complete the literature and arts foundational discipline by completing two approved courses with a grade of D or higher. Courses are approved by the Weinberg College faculty committees and can be identified in the Undergraduate Catalog and the quarterly CAESAR class listings. Each year some courses are added to the list and others are deleted; a course must be on the approved list for the year you take it to be applicable to the requirement.

A course that is applied to the literature and arts foundational discipline may at the same time be applied towards a different requirement (such as a major requirement, minor requirement, advanced expression, or perspectives on power, justice and equity) but may not double-count in a second foundational discipline area.

2024-2025 FD-LA Courses

See Literature and Arts in the Undergraduate Catalog for learning objectives and a list of courses. Some courses on the list will not be offered in 2024-25, but in a future year. Some courses on the list have prerequisites.

Mid-year updates will appear below as they become available.

¹ Also Overlay 1: U.S. Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity

² Also Overlay 2: Global Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity