Digital library
Textbooks, references and open learning resources.
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Guide to Ancient Roman art
Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steven Zucker · Smarthistory · 2019
This book contains all of Smarthistory’s content for the Ancient Roman art.
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Guide to Ancient Greek Art
Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steven Zucker · Smarthistory · 2019
This book contains all of Smarthistory’s content for Ancient Greek art.
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Guide to Ancient Etruscan Art
Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steven Zucker · Smarthistory · 2019
This book contains all of Smarthistory’s content for the Ancient Etruscan art.
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Guide to Ancient Aegean Art
Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steven Zucker · Smarthistory · 2019
This book contains all of Smarthistory’s content for the Ancient Aegean, including Cycladic, Minoan, and Mycenaean art.
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Guide to Ancient Egyptian Art
Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steven Zucker · Smarthistory · 2019
This book contains all of Smarthistory’s content for Ancient Egyptian art.
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Guide to Ancient Near Eastern Art
Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steven Zucker · Smarthistory · 2019
This book contains all of Smarthistory’s content for Sumerian, Akkadian, Neo-Sumerian / Ur III, Babylonian, Assyrian and Persian art.
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American Encounters: Art, History, and Cultural Identity
Angela Miller; Janet Berlo; Bryan Wolf; Jennifer Roberts · Washington University Libraries · 2018
American Encounters provides a narrative of the history of American art that focuses on historical encounters among diverse cultures, upon broad structural transformations such as the rise of the middle classes and the emergence of consumer and mass culture, and on the fluid conversations between "high" art and vernacular expressions. The text emphasizes the intersections among cultures and populations, as well as the exchanges, borrowings, and appropriations that have enriched and vitalized our collective cultural heritage.
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The Art of Music: Music Appreciation with an Equity Lens
Amy McGlothlin; Jennifer Bill · ROTEL · 2024
The Art of Music: Music Appreciation with an Equity Lens is a music appreciation textbook that features musical examples and photographs that represent the demographics of our students today. Special attention has been paid in choosing to represent women and minorities. World Music photographs and videos represent the music's areas of origin.
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Navigating the Arts
Lucia Colombari; Catherine Juliano-Lykins · SHAREOK · 2024
Navigating the Arts delves into the visual elements and principles of design throughout art history and is tailored for classroom use. It aims to deepen students’ understanding of these concepts and their application across different artistic forms, fostering critical thinking and visual literacy. The accessible language, logical structure, clear objectives, and wealth of examples and images make this journal an ideal tool for everyone interested in developing class discussions on how to understand and interpret images.
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Huma 207: Exploring the Arts and Culture of the World
Karen Brown; Michal Yadlin · College of Western Idaho · 2024
Welcome to Humanities 207. This course is designed to introduce you to a broad range of the Humanities (encompassing History and Geography, Art and Architecture, Religion, Literature and the Performing Arts. This course meets CWI’s requirements for General Education’s GEM 5 (Humanistic and Artistic Ways of Knowing) and it meets the Research and Writing requirement for the General Studies Program. Additionally it can transfer to Boise State University’s degree program in Humanities and Cultural Studies as part of the University Foundations prerequisites.
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Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies in Western Literature, Philosophy and Art: Towards Theory and Practice
Peggy Karpouzou; Nikoleta Zampaki · Peter Lang · 2023
Through the burgeoning fields of Posthumanities and Environmental Humanities, this edition examines the changing conception of human subjectivity, agency, and citizenship as shaped by the dynamic interplays between nature, technology, science, and culture. The proposed ‘symbiotic turn’, (the awareness of the multitude of interactions and mutual interdependencies among humans, non-humans and their environment) aspires to explore the complex recompositions of the “human” in the 21st century. By organizing and promoting interdisciplinary dialogue at multiple levels, both in theory and practice, Symbiotic Posthumanist Ecologies is suggested as a new narrative about the biosphere and technosphere, which is embodied literarily, philosophically, and artistically.
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Exploring the Arts: A Brief Introduction to Art, Theatre, Music, and Dance
Doris Hall; Kimberly Berkeley; Nubia Khan · LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network
This textbook was created as part of the Interactive OER for Dual Enrollment project, facilitated by LOUIS: The Louisiana Library Network and funded by a $2 million Open Textbooks Pilot Program grant from the Department of Education. This project supports the extension of access to high-quality post-secondary opportunities to high school students across Louisiana and beyond. This project features a collaboration between educational systems in Louisiana, the library community, Pressbooks technology partner, and workforce representatives. It will enable and enhance the delivery of open educational resources (OER) and interactive quiz and assessment elements for priority dual enrollment courses in Louisiana and nationally. Developed OER course materials will be released under a license that permits their free use, reuse, modification and sharing with others. The target audience for this project and this textbook are dual enrollment students. Dual enrollment is the opportunity for a student to be enrolled in high school and college at the same time. A dual enrollment student receives credit on both their high school and college transcripts for the same course.
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Where Does Art Come From?
Leah McCurdy · Mavs Open Press · 2022
Who am I? What is beautiful? Where do babies come from? These questions populate our lives and inform our perceptions of the world. Explore these questions according to the expressions of artists from all over the world. Go beyond Western art to consider where art comes from and how it impacts all of us.
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The Bright Continent: African Art History
Kathy Curnow · MSL Academic Endeavors · 2018
This book aims to act as your map through the world of African art. As such, it will help you define the competencies you need to develop–visual analysis, research, noting what information is critical, asking questions, and writing down your observations–and provide opportunities for you to practice these skills until you are proficient. It will also expose you to new art forms and the worlds that produced them, enriching your understanding and appreciation. This is an ongoing project. Your text will not be complete the day you first click on it, but will be written as we proceed through the course. Because it will be used for other courses beyond your own, you may find that it includes materials beyond those your class demands. Encourage your curiosity–chase after it.
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Guide to Byzantine Art
Evan Freeman; Anne McClanan · Smarthistory · 2021
The “Beginner’s guide” introduces foundational concepts, such as the chronology of Byzantine history, sacred imagery, and wearable objects. Subsequent sections are arranged chronologically, covering the Early Byzantine period (c. 330–700), the Iconoclastic Controversy (c. 700s–843), the Middle Byzantine period (843–1204), the Latin Empire (c. 1204–1261), and the Late Byzantine period (c. 1261–1453) and beyond. These sections include thematic essays on Byzantine art and architecture, essays that focus on key works (subtitled artworks in focus or architecture in focus), and essays that explore Byzantium’s relationships with other cultures (subtitled cross-cultural perspectives). Finally, we have included questions for study or discussion to encourage teachers, students, and other readers to engage with videos and other content on the Smarthistory website which could not be included in this book format but which we believe richly compliments what is presented here.
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Fundamentals, Function, and Form: Theory and Analysis of Tonal Western Art Music
Andre Mount · Milne Open Textbooks · 2020
Fundamentals, Function, and Form by Andre Mount—with editorial and pedagogical input from Lee Rothfarb—provides its readers with a comprehensive study of the theory and analysis of tonal Western art music. Mount begins by building a strong foundation in the understanding of rhythm, meter, and pitch as well as the notational conventions associated with each. From there, he guides the reader through an exploration of polyphony—the simultaneous sounding of multiple independent melodies—and an increasingly rich array of different sonorites that grow out of this practice. The book culminates with a discussion of musical form, engaging with artistic works in their entirety by considering the interaction of harmonic and thematic elements, but also such other musical dimensions as rhythm, meter, texture, and expression. Along the way, Mount supplements the text with over eight hundred musical examples which, in the online version of the text, include embedded audio files for immediate aural reinforcement of theoretical concepts. Most of these examples are drawn from the literature, including nearly 200 excerpts by women and other underrepresented groups. The reader is also given the opportunity to check their understanding of the text with interactive exercises at every step of the way. Fundamentals, Function, and Form was written with the undergraduate music student in mind, but self-guided readers would also be rewarded with a deep understanding of this musical tradition.
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Guide to Italian art in the 1400s
Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steven Zucker · Smarthistory · 2020
This book contains all of Smarthistory’s content for Italian art in the 1400s.
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Guide to Italian art in the 1300s
Ruth Ezra; Beth Harris; Steve Zucker · Smarthistory · 2020
This book contains all of Smarthistory’s content for Italian art in the 1300s.
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Greek and Latin Roots: Part II - Greek
Peter Smith · BCcampus · 2016
Greek and Latin Roots: Part II - Greek is part two of a two part series. This series examines the systematic principles by which a large portion of English vocabulary has evolved from Latin and (to a lesser degree) from Greek. This book focuses on Greek roots. A link to the first part focusing on the Latin roots can be found below. Part II will try to impart some skill in the recognition and proper use of words derived from Greek. There is a stress on principles: although students will be continually looking at interesting individual words, their constant aim will be to discover predictable general patterns of historical development, so that they may be able to cope with new and unfamiliar words of any type that they have studied. They will be shown how to approach the problem by a procedure known as “word analysis,” which is roughly comparable to the dissection of an interesting specimen in the biology laboratory. The text assumes no previous knowledge of Greek, and does not involve the grammatical study of this language—except for a few basic features of noun and verb formation that will help students to understand the Greek legacy in English. All students will be asked to learn the Greek alphabet. This skill is not absolutely essential for a general knowledge of Greek roots in English. However, it will help students understand a number of otherwise puzzling features of spelling and usage. Although there will be some attention paid to the historical interaction of Greek with English, this text is definitely not a systematic history of the English language. It focuses on only those elements within English that have been directly or indirectly affected by this classical language. In order to provide the broadest possible service to students, the text emphasizes standard English vocabulary in current use. The more exotic technical vocabulary of science and medicine can be extremely interesting, but is explored in only summary fashion. Nevertheless, this text should b
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Greek and Latin Roots: Part I - Latin
Peter Smith · BCcampus · 2016
Greek and Latin Roots: Part I - Latin is part one of a two part series. This series examines the systematic principles by which a large portion of English vocabulary has evolved from Latin and (to a lesser degree) from Greek. This book focuses on Latin roots. A link to the second part focusing on the Greek roots can be found below. Part I will try to impart some skill in the recognition and proper use of words derived from Latin. There is a stress on principles: although students will be continually looking at interesting individual words, their constant aim will be to discover predictable general patterns of historical development, so that they may be able to cope with new and unfamiliar words of any type that they have studied. They will be shown how to approach the problem by a procedure known as “word analysis,” which is roughly comparable to the dissection of an interesting specimen in the biology laboratory. The text assumes no previous knowledge of Latin, and does not involve the grammatical study of this language—except for a few basic features of noun and verb formation that will help students to understand the Latin legacy in English. Although there will be some attention paid to the historical interaction of Latin with English, this text is definitely not a systematic history of the English language. It focuses on only those elements within English that have been directly or indirectly affected by this classical language. In order to provide the broadest possible service to students, the text emphasizes standard English vocabulary in current use. The more exotic technical vocabulary of science and medicine can be extremely interesting, but is explored in only summary fashion. Nevertheless, this text should be of considerable value, say, to a would-be botanist or medical doctor, if only by providing the foundation for further specialized enquiry.