Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

An introduction to issues and concepts central to the study of the humanities around the world. Through exposure to primary materials drawn from different periods, disciplines, and regions, students will become acquainted with a range of topics and ideas relating to the study of human values and human experience. Students with credit for HUM 101 may not take this course for further credit. Writing/Breadth-Humanities.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course introduces students to the field of the Humanities through the study of writings and images that raise questions about what it means to be human. We will focus on texts from different forms and genres—philosophical debates, literature (fiction and theatre), rhetorical battles, satire, political philosophy, inscriptions, graffiti, and visual art. The readings span different worlds (East and West) and historical ages: from the ancient Greek world of Socrates and Euripides and the classical philosophical Daoism of 4th century China’s Chuang Tzu, through the medieval Byzantine Empire (Justinian, Leon VI, Prokopios, Psellos, and Attaleiates) to the age of modern political thought (Hobbes and Rousseau) and the literary and artistic reimagining of identity, narrative, and social justice of late modernity (Ah Cheng, Anouilh, Christa Wolf, and graffiti art). Our trajectory will be only loosely chronological, paying attention instead to the intersections and tensions between different forms of thought and creativity from diverse cultures and ages.  

Themes to be discussed will be put in conversation with each other: the relation of language to knowledge, the value of education and cultural practices in human lives—especially during political and social turbulent times—law and power, the fights for equity and justice, enfranchisement and free speech, narratives of identity (self) and difference (others), conventional morality and the subversion thereof, nature and history, the socio-historical understandings of gender and the role of sex in human lives, rhetorical battles and the search for truth, memory and politics, beauty and aesthetics, and the ethical responsibility toward others and the natural world.  

We will examine the ways in which language and narratives construct possibilities of knowledge of oneself and the world—and thus of transcendence of the historical and material conditions of our lives (emancipatory practices)—and how text, genre and agency can be discussed as we reflect on the humanities.  

This is a writing-intensive course (W). In their study, students will use writing to perform textual analysis and develop their faculties of critical thinking, but also to explore their scholarly voices and creative imagination. 

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

By the end of the course, students will be able to: 

• Demonstrate a knowledge of written and visual texts and be able to situate them in their historical context. 
• Demonstrate an understanding of the different critical perspectives in the analysis and discussion of texts (historical, literary, philosophical, religious, and aesthetic). 
• Develop sustained, persuasive and well-structured arguments in their writing, linking evidence to argument. 
• Communicate information and ideas in a confident and clear way to their peers. 
• Recognize the limits of their subjective perspectives and appreciate how the humanities are embedded in all aspects of human societies. 

This course is designated B-HUM and meets the Breadth-Humanities undergraduate degree requirements. 

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

REQUIRED READING NOTES: