One of the great things about having twelve people in a class is that everyone can get a chance to bounce their ideas off each other and get a fresh perspective when you\u2019re just too deeply involved to see clearly.\u00a0 Especially when trying to nail down a thesis, as we are now, an open environment to present your ideas and get critical feedback and new insights is truly invaluable.\u00a0 As a class, we are able to articulate questions and arguments that we are struggling with individually, and develop clear ways of addressing these questions or creating chains of evidence to support our claims.\u00a0 I now feel confident in the direction of my paper, and I am ready to attack my research and writing with a new focus.<\/p>\n
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Opening Avenues of Interpretation<\/span><\/p>\n Whilst studying Bernini\u2019s Apollo and Daphne<\/em>, our class began a discussion of the role of audience interpretation in a work.\u00a0 For today\u2019s viewer, there are limited ways of reading a work, mainly narrative, biographic, or personal, but the 17th<\/sup> century viewer could approach a piece from any one, or combination of, numerous readings\u2014theological, neo-platonic, poetic, theatrical, historic\u2014to uncover layers of meaning in a piece.\u00a0 To me, the ability to discover these kinds of dialogic understandings that interact with one another reflects the value of a liberal arts education, as studying a comprehensive assortment of subjects enables you to approach a problem through myriad perspectives and understandings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One of the great things about having twelve people in a class is that everyone can get a chance to bounce their ideas off each other and get a fresh perspective when you\u2019re just too deeply involved to see clearly.\u00a0 Especially when trying to nail down a thesis, as we are now, an open environment … <\/p>\n