PSYC 3770W-001: (Current Topics in Social Psychology) Psychology of the Arts

[UConn Storrs]

Prerequisites: ENGL 1007, 1010, 1011, or 2011 and instructor consent. The catalog-level prerequisite of PSYC 2700 is recommended but will not be required.

Psychology of the arts is far more vast than any individual course can possibly cover, ranging from the written word, to song, to music, to visual arts, performance art, and more. Thus, this course is an introduction to the subject. As a psychological topic, a strong focus of the course is emotions and judgments and their underlying experiential and functional bases; a related focus revolves around the functional purposes of consuming and making art (e.g., self-expression, social justice activity, therapy), along with understanding the motives of people who make art and what might make their art more powerful—or even fail. As a writing seminar, this course will focus on contemporary and classic scholarship as well as the students’ own essays on these subjects.