Are there any art appreciation or history majors here?

My husband has a literature, arts, humanities class that he has to take for his Bachelor's degree b/c it's a state requirement to have english, math, lit, science etc. along with whatever you're focus is on. Anyway, in his class he has to write a paper on two periods of time (Renaissance, Classical, Dark Ages, Impressionistic etc.) and compare the works of art that were during this time. Neither one of us enjoy it, but I was wondering if there were others that did enjoy subjects like this.