HUMN 103     Experience, Expression, and Exchange in Western Culture: Texts and Contexts of the Ancient World  (4)

This interdisciplinary course explores significant issues in Greco-Roman culture as well as the religious traditions of the Near East. It provides a critical introduction to cultural contexts and ideological tensions that have contributed to the construction of Western identities and civilizations. Through examination of selected textual and intellectual echoes over time, the course considers the changing reception and impact of controversies and debates that have not only shaped ideas of "the West" but continue to challenge and perplex human beings.

HUMN 104     Experience, Expression, and Exchange in Western Culture: Texts and Contexts of the Medieval World  (4)

As an interdisciplinary study, this course investigates how the medieval world made sense of itself. It explores material from across the Middle Ages, including literature, art, architecture, and theology, and considers how different literacies (or modes of interpretation and understanding), developed during this time period. Focusing on several different areas of the medieval experience will help participants to gain insights into larger questions that stretch out from the medieval period to today.

HUMN 105     Experience, Expression, and Exchange in Western Culture: Texts and Contexts of Early Modern World  (4)

As a critical introduction to cultural contexts and ideological tensions of the early modern world, this course examines significant focal points of the era from interdisciplinary perspectives that draw together and intersect literature, the arts, philosophy, and politics - and the discourses that have come to be associated with these areas of inquiry. Among the course's central topics are the recovery and dissemination of classical learning, the advent of printing, the roots of religious strife, encounters in and beyond the Americas, the emergence of experimental science, and the development of the secular state.

HUMN 106     Experience, Expression, and Exchange: Texts and Contexts of the Modern World  (4)

As a critical introduction to cultural contexts and ideological tensions in the modern world, this interdisciplinary course examines the intersections of literature, the arts, philosophy, and politics to investigate what it means to be modern and how the modern era has reshaped and redefined the human experience. The course will compare literary, visual, and aural texts from different global traditions to de-link the concept of the modern from “the West” in its investigation of how societies have negotiated, registered, and expressed the experience of modernity.

HUMN 203     Experience, Expression, and Exchange: Manifestos, Movements, and Terrorism  (4)

What prompts the composition of manifestos--and what consequences have ensued? What are the underlying purposes of terrorism, and how have acts of terror been defined and even justified? This interdisciplinary course explores intellectual and social movements in cultural context from the early modern period to the present day with attention to the writings (especially manifestos) and outcomes (including terror) they have produced. Using the French Revolution, humanism and technologism, imperialism, and the artistic movements of the early twentieth century as some central focal points, the course examines competing visions of progress and resistance to it.

HUMN 204     Experience, Expression, and Exchange: Utopias and Dystopias  (4)

This course explores how utopian, dystopian, and post-apocalyptic discourse imaginatively engages--and has engaged--cultural and historical challenges. Using approaches related to history, philosophy, literature, political theory, and the visual arts--especially film--this class seeks to ground utopian and dystopian speculation in the historical and cultural circumstances engendering it. Possible texts include works by Rousseau, More, Plato, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Marx, Leibniz, Voltaire, Huxley, Orwell, Zamyatin, McCarthy, Burgess, Atwood, Ishiguro, Lovecraft, Fritz Lang, and Ridley Scott.

HUMN 205     Reading the Labyrinth  (4)

The labyrinth is both a built environment and a conceptual space. Class lectures and assignments will interrogate the labyrinth as a pervasive structure and narrative device from antiquity to the present through its various manifestations and representations. Adopting a global perspective, this interdisciplinary class will address the labyrinth in different cultures through literature, architecture, the visual arts, film and contemporary media. A main thread for the course will be the work of Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, and the connections it proposes between the labyrinth and multiple philosophical and artistic traditions.

HUMN 207     Experience, Expression, and Exchange: The Great War and the Emergence of Modern Memory  (4)

This course explores how movements in art, music, politics, history, and literature reflect, negotiate, and contribute to a modernist conception of the human experience preceding, during, and immediately after World War I¬the "war to end all wars." Using critical approaches related to music, history, philosophy, literature, political theory, and the visual and plastic arts, this course seeks to make sense of the cultural circumstances associated with the expansion of imperialism and its implosion.

HUMN 210     Modern Intellectual Traditions  (4)

This course offers a focused survey of major figures and topics in the intellectual, political, or ideological trends of the modern period, from the 17th century to the modern day.

HUMN 214     Experience, Expression, and Exchange: Histories of Science, Vision, and Art: 1500-Present  (4)

This course focuses on the histories of relations between visual art and contemporary scientific method(s). It looks at why and how major socio-economic, cultural, and political changes associated with the history of "the West" (c. 1500 to the present), involved a preoccupation with vision and its effects. The course hones in on artists and "scientific observers", many of whom were directly involved in colonial and commercial projects. Topics of focus include: the uses of instruments (such as the microscope) for mediating sight and producing new knowledge about nature: the ordering, politics, and display of visual objects in collections, and more.

HUMN 217     Imitation, Quotation, Appropriation, and Genre  (4)

Imitation, quotation and appropriation are fundamental creative strategies—in the visual arts, writing, music, and filmmaking. Imitation is how you learn your craft, quotation how you demonstrate expertise, and appropriation a strategy, often with political and legal implications. Forms of expression generated in one context and culture are translated and appropriated for new audiences and purposes. This course examines a diverse range of key monuments, texts, and practices, including the theorization of art in the Italian Renaissance, twentieth-century feminist retellings of "classic" tales, and the international exchange of plots and the formal language of storytelling between the Hollywood Western and Japanese samurai films. The course considers the pleasures and parameters of genre, the conception of intellectual property, and the politics of appropriation.

HUMN 225     The Nobel Prize  (4)

The Nobel Prize is widely considered the most highly reputable award in the fields of literature, medicine, physics, chemistry, peace, and economics. This course considers the history of the awards, the Nobel Foundation, and the selection process. Primary emphasis centers on particular awards and the impact they have had in their fields and in the world. Topics vary from offering to offering.

HUMN 250     Special Topics  (4)

This course focuses on special topics in the humanities not already covered in existing courses in the program. This course may be repeated twice for credit when the topic differs.

HUMN 380     Junior Seminar  (4)

Students use methodologies gleaned from previous humanities courses--and acquire new ones--to approach topics relevant to contemporary study of the humanities. The course focuses on a set of interrelated themes, such as justice and power, faith and reason, or journey and exploration. Prerequisite: HUMN 103, HUMN 104, and two 200-level humanities courses.