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The Arts & Letters Program is dedicated to an intense study of art, aesthetics, and the humanities. We offer Competence and Breadth opportunities with specific advising documents in these curricular areas:
- Performing Arts
- Visual Arts
- Sam Hill Restoration
- Writing and Literature
- Interdisciplinary Arts & Letters
In addition, Arts & Letters is the home for Writing Workshops, which allow students to complete Prescott College's basic certification requirements. We also co-sponsor numerous cross-programmatic courses such as Nature's Voice: Reading and Writing about Natural History, Interpreting Nature Through Art and Photography, Form and Pattern in Nature, Painting From the Source, Expressive Arts Therapies, Nature and Dance, Opening the Creative Mind, Holy Books, Abstract Art and Nature, History Through Contemporary Arts, Family Systems in Film and Literature, Women's Literature, and Image and Power in Popular Culture.
Our Mission
Our mission is to enhance the ability of students to think critically and creatively, to understand divergent perspectives, and to communicate powerfully through a variety of artistic mediums. Through experiential learning and the study and practice of art, language, and literature, students are able to integrate individualized study programs, which emphasize personal creativity with an historical and theoretical appreciation of the rich tapestry of human experience. We not only want to help students become strong and flexible artists and writers, but also to nourish an aesthetic awareness and a creative response to the issues facing humanity.
What Makes Us Unique
Although Prescott College is a small school, the arts and literature flourish here. The College is tailor-made for the arts. Its commitment to a small student-faculty ratio, student-centered learning and self-direction, individualized plans of study, and alternative methods of teaching all reinforce an artistic approach to education. A typical academic year is characterized by 30-50 events, including art and photography exhibitions, literary readings, dance and theatre performances, slide show presentations, lectures, informal dialogues, panel discussions, and The Arts & Letters Faculty Showcase.
Student Opportunities
In Performing Arts, we have numerous student shows and class presentations in several locations around campus. Village Life, in connection with our African Inspired Dance and Drumming course, meets weekly. And our Dance Workshop and Theatre Production classes produce shows each year. In addition, we can help students arrange independent studies and internships with various other regional and national dance and theatre companies.
Students in the Visual
Arts continually produce both small and large-scale exhibitions
of their work done in the context of their photography and fine
arts courses. At the end of each quarter, in conjunction with graduation
weekend, we sponsor a campus Student Art Walk, with student work
exhibited all over campus. In Studio Arts, students can study the
history of art and hone their talents in painting, drawing, sculpture,
and printmaking, with some specialized classes in ceramics, book
making, and glass blowing. In Photography, students can build combine
basic skills technique in black and white, color, and digital imagining
with theoretical, historical, and aesthetic specialty work in alternative
processes, documentary photography, contemporary perspectives, and
photographer as social artist. We also offer a Visual Arts Exhibitions
Practicum, and students participate in the selection of visual art
for our national literary magazine, Alligator Juniper, and our newspaper,
The Raven Review.
Our Writing and Literature program co-sponsors The Southwest Writers' Series, which brings nationally-acclaimed and emerging writers to Prescott for informal dialogues and readings. Students may also work on the staffs of the college's student-run newspaper, The Raven Review, as well as Alligator Juniper, Prescott College's literary magazine, which publishes fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and photography from nationally-recognized authors and photographers along with PC student contest winners in each category.
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