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FALL 2000 Category I : Cultures and Civilizations These courses are based on the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions from their origins through modern European and American culture.
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ART HISTORY 120g
Foundations of Western Art
Howe
TTh, 11:00 - 12:20
This course serves as an introductory survey of painting, sculpture and architecture beginning in the ancient Near East and ending in the Italian Renaissance. It stresses the relationship between the visual arts and history, geography, politics and religion as well as other aspects of western European culture. The work of art will be interrogated as a document of its own time and place, and reading from primary sources will contribute to our interpretation of its form and meaning. This course is divided into three sections: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. There are two lectures and one discussion section each week. Emphasis falls on the cultural values established in classical antiquity, re-interpreted in the middle ages to express biblical ideas, and then revived and re-shaped by humanists during the renaissance of the fifteenth century. We will also consider how classical forms and meanings intersect with our own contemporary world.
Readings and Assignments:
Readings come from a survey text, and from an anthology of primary sources. There are two mid-terms and a final exam, as well as three paper assignments.
AMERICAN STUDIES 301g
America, the Frontier and The New West
Gustafson
MW, 10:00 - 11:50
Please contact the department for course description.
CLASSICS 150g
The Greeks and The West
Dewald
TTh, 12:30 - 1:50
The goals of this course are:
(1) To survey the Greeks' cultural achievements in government, warfare, science and philosophy, literature and drama, art and architecture;
(2) To understand how their achievements serve as positive and negative models for realizing the goals of modern and postmodern western societies (e.g., democratic community; social justice; gender and racial equality; multiculturalism);
(3) To learn to read and write about complex texts (epic, lyric,philosophy, tragedy, history) as explorations of the problems both the Greeks and we face in realizing these goals in communal and personal life.
Structure: Class lecture, discussion and readings are based on
(1) a chronological survey of types of state and non-state community in Greece 1400 - 200 BC;
(2) analysis of material (archaeological, artistic) and documentary (written) evidence from Bronze & Dark Ages; archaic, classical, hellenistic periods.
This course addresses:
(1) The changing nature of community, authority and justice;
(2) The changing nature of membership and participation in community
(relations between citizens and non-citizens, including women, foreigners and slaves);and
(3) The changing conceptions of individuality (self).
Readings and Assignments:
Homer. Iliad [selections];
early lyric poets and philosophers [selections]
Aeschylus. Oresteia.
Sophocles. Antigone.
Herodotus. History of the Persian Invasion [selections]
Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War [selections]
Plato. Republic [selections]
Apollonius. Argonautika (Jason and the Golden Fleece) [selections]
N. Demand. A History of Ancient Greece (textbook)
Assignments: 2 essays, 7pp. each (non-research); midterm and final exam
(short answers and essay questions); quiz (short answers)
Grading: 2 essays (30%); midterm (25%); final (30%); quiz (15%).
Note: The readings and assignments list may be subject to change. Please contact the department for verification.
CLASSICS 280g
Classical Mythology
Vasunia
MWF, 1:00 -1:50
Classical Mythology is an investigation of the mythic traditions, heroes, and deities of ancient Rome and Greece. An emphasis is placed upon comparing Roman and Greek myths with those of other Indo-European peoples -- the Hittites, the Indo-Europeans of India and Iran, the Irish, and the Norse.
Required Texts:
Early Irish Myths and Sagas. Translated by J.Gantz. London: Penguin. 1981
Hesiod's Tragedy. Translated by R. Caldwell. Newburyport, Mass.: Focus 1987
Ovid: Metamorphoses. Translated by R. Humphries. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1955.
Ovid's Fasti. Translated by A. Boyle and R. Woodard. London: Penguin. 1998.
Snorri Sturluson: The Prose Edda. Translated by J. Young. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. 1954.
The Rig Veda. Translated by W. Doniger O'Flaherty. London: Penguin. 1981.
Grading and Course Requirements:
Midterm Examination 40%
Final Examination 40%
Weekly Quizzes 10%
Journal 10%
Note: The readings and assignments list may be subject to change. Please contact the department for verification.
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 374gm
Women Writers in Europe and America
Rosenthal
WF, 12:00 - 2:00
Please contact the department for course description.
HISTORY 101g
The Ancient World
Nagle
TTh, 11:00 - 12:20
History 101 aims to provide a broad survey of the social, political, cultural and intellectual history of the ancient Middle East, Mediterranean and Europe, from the Agricultural Revolution to the rise of Islam. It emphasizes themes of class; ethnicity; gender; religion; war and warfare and the development of ideas and institutions that have had an impact in the modern world. This course aims to develop an understanding of how modern western concepts of ethics, gender, religion, politics, philosophy and science developed. It discusses the origin of institutionalized Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
Readings:
Primarily original documents from the ancient world supplemented by a textbook.
Assignments:
Weekly reaction papers (to the original sources); two midterms, a term paper and a final exam.
Note: The readings and assignments list may be subject to change. Please contact the department for verification.
History 102g
Medieval Civilization
Glenn
MW, 10:00-11:50
Please contact the department for course description.
HISTORY 104g
Europe and Its Influence Since 1750
TBA
MW, 8:00-9:50
This course addresses the major political and cultural movements in modern European history.
Please contact the department for course description.
HISTORY 200g
The American Experience
Seip
MWF 8:00 - 8:50
HIST 2OOg explores American history and culture from pre-European contact native civilizations to the nation's present dimensions as a modem pluralistic society. The factual, interpretative, and analytic emphases given to key episodes, personalities, ideas, culture, and social forces in the life of the nation are designed as a foundation for further study. At base we hope to provide students with a useful perspective on the nation's complex and rich past--a central feature of any solid liberal arts education, and, with the family history project, a historical perspective on each student's personal past. The lecture section of the class meets from 8:00 to 8:50 MWF and students are required to enroll in a weekly discussion section led by a teaching assistant.
The class explores the ways in which the patterns of civilizations associated with the Greco--Roman and European traditions have been and are constantly reflected and reshaped in North America (and exported back to Europe and the world). We examine, for example, the Judaic and Christian religions, liberty and enslavement, republicanism and democracy, scientific thought, technological advance, industrialization and mass consumption, mass education and popular culture, secularization, and the like--as well as emergence of increasingly diverse immigration patterns and multiculturalism which continue to shape American society and culture in ways outside the European tradition.
Required Readings:
Divine, et al., America: Past and Present (Brief 4th edition, 1998);
Weisner & Hartford (eds.), American Portraits: Biographies in U.S. History (2 vol., 1998) America Through the Eyes of Its People: Primary Sources (2d edition, 1997)
Kyvig & Marty, Your Family History (I 978)
Requirements:
Three essay examinations (15%, 20%, and 25% of final grade); participation in weekly discussion sections (20%); and the family history project (20%). Extra credit for participation in the Joint Educational Project (JEP) is available.
Note: The readings and assignments list may be subject to change. Please contact the department for verification.
Judaic Studies 100
Jewish History
Rubin
MW, 2:00 - 3:20
This course is an introduction to the major trends and themes of Jewish history as well as literary and cultural creations of the Jewish people from their beginnings in the ancient Near East through the biblical, classical, and early rabbinic periods. Special emphasis will be placed on ideas and concepts that evolved among the Jews and that have impacted Western civilization, as well as the way in which Jews have interacted with the peoples and cultures among whom they have lived. The tension between "tradition" and "change" will be traced from the beginnings of Jewish civilization in the ancient Near East through the periods discussed. Through this course you will examine the origins of the religious experience as it has been realized in the West. You will study patterns of thinking that have impacted the meaning of what it is to be human, and you will learn how Judaism evolved out of its Near Eastern context and
established the patterns and paradigms of Western religion and religious thought.
Readings and Assignments:
Shanks, ed., Ancient Israel: A Short History from Abraham to the Roman Destruction of the Temple.
Jaffe, Martin, Early Judaism.
Shanks, ed., Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism: A parallel History of Their Origins and Early Development.
Schiffman, Lawrence, Texts and Traditions: A source Reader for the Study of Second Temple and Rabbinic Judaism.
Note: The readings and assignments list may be subject to change. Please contact the department for verification.
PHILOSOPHY 262g
Mind and Self: Modern Conceptions
Levin
MWF, 12:00 - 12:50
Please contact the department for course description.
RELIGION 111g
The World of the Hebrew Bible
Zuckerman
TTh, 11:00-12:20
Please contact the department for course description.
RELIGION 121g
The World of the New Testament
Hock
MWF, 11:00 -11:50
The aim of this course, which satisfies the general education requirements in Cultures and Civilizations I, is to explore the beginnings of the Christian religion in first century Palestine and to trace its ea5rly development as it spreads throughout the Roman Empire during that and the next three centuries. These centuries witnessed the events depicted in the writings that make up the New Testament as well as the formation of the New Testament itself. To give students a first-hand grasp of the world of the New Testament, a wide variety of primary sources is assigned so that the students can reconstruct for themselves the social, intellectual and religious contexts within which the early Christians lived and so allow the student to read the earliest Christian writings in terms of their original place and time. In discussing these early Christian writings, attention will be given to the way Christianity adopted, and adapted the conventions of thought and behavior of the Mediterranean cultures and civilizations they inhabited and, by the fourth century, came to dominate.
Required Texts:
Ehrman, Bart D., ed. The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings.
Reardon, Bryan P. Collected Ancient Greek Novels.
Miller, Norma, ed. Menander, Plays and Fragments.
REL 121 Course Reader
Grading and Course Requirements:
Weekly Quizzes 100 points
Midterm 100 points
Final (non-cumulative) 100 points
First paper 100 points
Second paper 100 points
Total 500 points
Note: The readings and assignments list may be subject to change. Please contact the department for verification.
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