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Creative Work Minor Approved

The Center For Creative Work unveils the third minor offered at The Honors College. Along with the other Honors minors, Medicine and Society and Phronesis: A Program in Politics and Ethics, the Creative Work Minor offers students a multidisciplinary arts program that integrates creative projects, critical study, and cultural research.

Students begin the minor with the foundation course Poetics and Performance (HON 3310) and end with a capstone course, such as Artists and Their Regions (HON 4397), The City Dionysia (HON 4320), Collaboration Among the Arts (IART 4200), or another 4000 level class approved by the minor program director. In their courses, students explore the making and understanding of art, creative writing, dance, film, and theater. The Creative Work minor emphasizes the crucial meeting of the fine and liberal arts through an artistic, critical, and scholarly curriculum. 

Poetics and Performance provides a critical and historical view of the theory and practice of the fine arts from antiquity to the present. Students read key works in aesthetics, creativity, literary theory, and performance studies, while also analyzing exhibits, screenings, and theatrical productions throughout Houston. The course seeks to emphasize the important connection of university and city through the arts.

Artists and Their Regions brings together students pursing a range of creative arts majors to study Texas, Southern, and Latin-American arts. They may read the short stories of Donald Barthelme, poetry of Yusef Komunyakaa, or view the films of Guillermo del Toro—there’s always an eclectic mix. This course also features an annual artists’ retreat in a different region of Texas. For a week, students work side-by-side on their creative projects, with faculty leading nightly workshops. At the end of the semester, students exhibit and perform their art in the Commons of The Honors College.

Besides the above courses, students pursue studies in the fine and liberal arts, and sciences. Even if majoring in Art or Business or Engineering, the student also takes classes in additional fields such as Classical Studies, History, or Religious Studies. This synthesis between the studio and the classroom, between the creative and the critical, is essential for art to flourish.

The Center for Creative Work is proud to offer the Creative Work Minor and to encourage the dynamic artistic talents of students at the University of Houston. For more information, contact Dr. John Harvey at jrharvey@mail.uh.edu or 713.743.3922.