Director: John M. Kopper
The following courses are offered by the Division of the Humanities. Humanities 1 and 2 are intended for election by first-year students. Humanities 2 may be elected to satisfy the First-Year Seminar requirement, after completion of Humanities 1.
1. The Classical Tradition
07F, 08F: 12
Transformations of the Self. Where has the West positioned the self in relation to family, society, nation, and race? What power does the individual have to enact change? Readings may include: Homer’s Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, Molière’s Tartuffe, Austen’s Persuasion, Mann’s “Death in Venice,” Kafka’s “Metamorphosis” and other stories, and Woolf’s Orlando. The course alternates between lectures and small group discussions, with emphasis on student participation and essay writing.
Enrollment restricted to 60 first-year students. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Kopper, Rainer, Syson.
2. The Classical Tradition
08W, 09W: 12
A continuation of Humanities 1. Transformations of Society. How has Western literature depicted societies in crisis? What approaches has it developed for describing shifts in religious belief, the growth of nationalism, and the calamities of racism, sexism, and totalitarian rule? How has literature imagined societies of the future? Readings may include: Dante’s Inferno, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Christiansë’s Castaway.
Prerequisite: Humanities 1, or the permission of the course director. Students using Humanities 2 to satisfy the First-Year Seminar requirement must have passed Humanities 1. Dist: LIT; WCult: W. Boggs, Kopper, Stamelman.