spotlight on honors

  A DAY IN THE LIFE... STUDY ABROAD EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING HONORS FACULTY NEWS PHOTOS

honors faculty                  

Dr. Arthur Feinsod

2011 Honors Faculty of the Year

  Dr. Arthur Feinsod, Honors Faculty

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Dr. Arthur Feinsod, Professor of Theater at ISU since August 2001, received his Bachelors at Harvard, his Masters at UC Berkeley, and his Ph.D. at New York University.  Before arriving at Indiana State, he taught directing, playwriting, theater history, and theater theory at Trinity College in Connecticut for sixteen years and was a visiting professor in theater and the humanities at the University of North Carolina, Asheville for a semester.

 RESEARCH INTERESTS

At present, Dr. Feinsod has a contract with Oxford University Press to co-write HUMANITIES AND THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES, a two-volume book on the humanities and the great works through the ages.  He also wrote a book entitled THE SIMPLE STAGE, which traces the origins of the simplified stage in the American theater from the beginning of the twentieth century to the bare-stage production of OUR TOWN in 1938.  This book has been in print since 1992 and is published with Greenwood Press.  His research interests are in the interdisciplinary connections between theater and the other arts, philosophy, and history.

   Dr. Arthur Feinsod, Honors Faculty  

HONORS BEGINNINGS

Dr. Feinsod has been involved in the Honors Program for the last five years.  During that time he has been an active member of the University Honors Advisory Committee.  He also initiated the idea of a great works presence in the Honors curriculum and is presently the coordinator of the Introduction to Great Works course required of all ISU honors students.

TYPICAL CLASSES TAUGHT

Dr. Feinsod taught the Introduction of Great Works course in Spring 2009 and Fall 2010, was a guest lecture in Linda Maule's Great Works course in spring 2010, and will teach the Introduction to the Modern Great Works in Spring 2011.

ADVICE TO HONORS STUDENTS

"ISU Honors seeks to create in students an appetite for learning that will last long after they graduate.  While concern for GPA is important, honors students should put greater weight and priority on building within themselves a willingness to take intellectual risks, to challenge themselves intellectually, and, in every other way, to expand their intellectual horizons, whether it raises the GPA or not."