As an Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities (ISH) major, my ePortfolio takes a look at the wide range of courses I’ve completed during my four years at the University of New England. It also demonstrates how I have accomplished the learning goals and outcomes of my major. Below, I will not only outline the description and learning outcomes of the ISH major, but I will also briefly describe how I have met each goal .
Description of Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities (ISH) Major:
If you want the freedom to explore a broad array of humanities disciplines as well as the ability to focus deeply in an area of particular interest, this major combines the best of both worlds. You gain a multidimensional perspective through the study of history, literature, philosophy, religion, and languages, and a senior thesis allows you to develop expertise in and passion around a specific topic of your choosing. By developing critical thinking and communication skills, self-direction, and the ability to analyze information, you will acquire a suite of highly transferable skills that will be prized by employers in numerous fields.
There are FOUR main learning outcomes for the ISH major:
Recognize, describe, and apply methods, materials, and/or insights from at least two humanities disciplines to the analysis of issues, problems, or questions introduced in coursework and/or independent reading and research.
My final capstone revision project for LIL420 is a great example of applying methods and insights from two humanities disciplines. While I go into more detail about the project at the bottom of this page, I used skills from different disciplines such as writing, English, history, and philosophy while working on my project. This project forced me to go through dozens of pages to edit and think about craft methodology within my own writing, skills that were covered primarily in my writing courses. My English courses prepared me to look critically at other novellas, such as Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane, and T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead. There are also portions of my novella that required me to use skills developed in my history courses, like finding primary sources and thinking about ideas and beliefs within a different societal/cultural context. Finally, while I was never quite good at philosophy courses, a lot of the themes in my novella center around defining good and evil and force characters to think about what death truly is. Again, more details and a link to my revision page can be found at the very end of this post.
Find, evaluate, and integrate a variety of primary and secondary sources of information in order to reach informed conclusions about problems and issues.
A great example of this goal can be found within the QCQ (quotation, comment, question) sections of either ENG216 or ENG420. Both of these courses required me to delve into primary sources (in the form of primarily Victorian literature) as well as secondary sources that discussed topics ranging from sexuality to property laws. The QCQs that I have written and published on ePortfolio have incorporated quotations from primary/secondary sources, evaluations in the form of comments, and then questions that I may have had about the work or the topic as a whole. As these QCQs were done on a weekly basis, the growing knowledge and understanding of a certain topic can be seen through my responses. Links to the QCQs for both classes can be found below:
ENG216: Criminals, Idiots, and Minors
ENG420: Victorian Monsters
https://akiehnau.uneportfolio.org/category/victorian-monsters/qcq/
Communicate ideas orally and in writing.
Unfortunately, I do not have an example of communicating ideas orally, but I can discuss some experiences in relation to particular works on my ePortfolio. I’ve had multiple courses in which communicating ideas through written and oral presentation were crucial. The fiction writing courses I’ve taken (WRT212 & WRT312) relied heavily on communicating ideas and feedback orally as well as in writing. Prior to each class meeting, I would be required to read the works of 2-3 of my peers within the course. After reading these works, I would have to prepare written feedback. During class, it was expected that students would present their feedback in a conversation surrounding each work that was read. Communicating these ideas within the classroom was crucial to the revision process that each student would have to go through later in the semester. Having these thoughts and ideas written out was also crucial, as it allowed students to go back and remind themselves of specific points of feedback. Examples of peer feedback for specific works can be found via the links below:
WRT212: Fiction Writing
WRT312: Advanced Fiction Writing
https://akiehnau.uneportfolio.org/category/short-story/short-story-end-comments/
Assess their own learning through the development and presentation of a capstone revision project.
At the time of writing, I am currently in my last semester at the University of New England. During the Liberal Learning Seminar course (LIL420) I developed and presented a capstone revision project. The revision project was based on a project I had completed during my independent study called Writing the Novella (ENG379). During ENG379, Professor Jesse Miller guided me on writing and crafting a novella over the course of a semester. While it was never completely finished during that semester, I’m proud to say that I got very close. The project for LIL420 focused on revising and editing this novella, which included reading a published novella as source material. My goal for this revision project was to “finish” the novella, however writing an entire novella during my last semester seemed to be a little more than I could handle. Regardless, I made a lot of progress in revision a portion of chapters from my novella, Caim and Abel. The revision page is linked below, where each stage of the process can be found as well as the final revised pages and the CAS symposium presentation.
