Humanities Courses

This interdisciplinary study of the ancient world emphasizes the central aesthetic and philosophical achievements of Greece and Rome, as well as the religious traditions of the Near East, and is designed as an introduction to the cultural roots and ideological tensions of Western civilization. Sophocles’ Antigone, Plato’s dialogues, Homer's Odyssey, Vergil’s Aeneid, Greek architecture, the writings of Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War, and creation accounts in Genesis are representative subjects for study. (Credit, full course.) Brennecke, Holmes, Huber, Irvin

This interdisciplinary study of the medieval world emphasizes the evolution and complexity of medieval society, institutions, and thought. Central monuments and texts include The New Testament, St. Augustine's Confessions, Dante's Divine Comedy,   Beowulf, and Chartres Cathedral. The practice and ideals of pilgrimage, and the motives for and consequences of the Crusades receive attention. (Credit, full course.) Conn, Engel, Huber, Kumhera, Raulston

An interdisciplinary study of the period spanning 1486-1787, which emphasizes the diverse and sometimes contradictory legacies of Renaissance humanism, the Protestant Reformation, and the Enlightenment. Central texts include the writings of Petrarch, Machiavelli and Descartes, Shakespeare’s Tempest, Milton's Paradise Lost, the artwork of the Sistine Chapel, and Purcell's Dido and Aeneas. (Credit, full course.) Kumhera, Malone, Moser, Musto

This interdisciplinary study of the period reaching from the late eighteenth century to the present day emphasizes the philosophical and aesthetic responses to the political, industrial, economic, and scientific revolutions of modernity. Designed as an introduction to the radical critiques of the humanities in the contemporary university, the course features such texts as Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, Dickens' Hard Times, Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto, Darwin's Origin of Species, Nietzsche's Gay Science, Freud's Civilization and its Discontents, and Eliot's Waste Land. (Credit, full course.) Levine, Moser, Parker, Skomp