Select from the list below to view a video for Essays #1, #2, and #3. Remember that each essay must be on a different Humanities topic. You may also view a classic film for one of your three essays. If you wish to view a classic film, select from the list of 100 Classic Films on the Rotten Tomatoes website, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/top/bestofrt/top_100_classics_movies/ or go in peson to see a screening at the Tower Theater. Students may request to view an alternative video, but must obtain permission in advance in order to do so.
*If you want to attend a live performance or go in person to a museum or one of the approved architectural sites, you must get it approved in advance (except for the architectural sites listed in the Guidelines for Written Papers), and provide proof that you went in person. Proof can be a ticket stub, receipt, program book, or a photo of you at the site. If you use a photo, the location must be clear. Turn in the photo with your essay. Do not send it by email.
Link to Medici TV
MDC has recently acquired access to Medici TV. Medici TV has extremely high quality performances of music and dance, mostly classical, but not entirely. There is some jazz music and modern dance, as well. You may write about any performance on Medici TV that is at least 40 minutes in length.
https://libraryguides.mdc.edu/MediciTV
Theater
Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman with Dustin Hoffman and John Malkovich
Thornton Wilder’s Our Town with Paul Newman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFboKO3TFaE
The Globe Theater’s production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinocerous with Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder
Sam Shepard’s True West with John Malkovich and Gary Sinise
Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler with Ingrid Bergman
Musical Theater
Cabaret with Alan Cummings
A Chorus Line 2006 Broadway cast
Lin Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights
Stomp (A multiethnic cast in incredible scenes of rhythm and dance using everything but the kitchen sink)
Opera
Ingmar Bergman’s production of Mozart’s The Magic Flute
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufQxByt7dNM
The Vienna State Opera in George Bizet’s Carmen with Anna Netrebko
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl10z41-A7s
Verdi’s Rigoletto with Luciano Pavarotti
Puccini’s Turandot in Bejing
Jules Massenet’s Werther at Covent Garden opera house
Dance
The Royal Danish Ballet in Giselle
Martha Graham’s Errand Into the Maze with music by Giancarlo Menotti and set by Isamu Noguchi
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieMO1Z0UhGQ
Alvin Ailey’s Revelations
Pina Bausch’s Cafe Muller (This is not going to appeal to everyone, it’s pretty wild.)
Museum Tours
*if you choose to write about a museum, do not attempt to write about the entire museum. Select one exhibit, or even one work of art that you are particularly interested in, and write about it in depth.
The Louvre Museum (Paris)
Guggenheim Museum (New York)
National Museum of Art (Washington D.C.)
The Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago)
Seattle Art Museum (Seattle)
Architecture
*Please note that the architecture is the building istelf, not its contents. Anything that can be removed from the building is not part of the architecture. You may give some brief historical background, but no more that three sentences.
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
Palace of Versailles
Taj Mahal of India
Lyon Station by Santiago Calatrava (in Spanish)
Sayamaike Museum by Tadao Ando
Jewish Museum Berlin by Daniel Liebskind
Vila Savoye by Le Corbusier
Frank Lloyd Wright Usonian House (designed to be affordable housing)
The Pantheon, Rome