Course Descriptions

Humanities 1: The Foundations of Western Civilization: Israel and Greece (Winter)

Texts from the Hebrew Bible and from Greek epic, history, drama, and philosophy in their cultural context.

Humanities 2: Rome, Christianity and the Middle Ages (Spring)

The Roman Empire, the Christian transformation of the classical world in late antiquity, and the rise of a European culture during the Middle Ages. Representative texts from Latin authors, early Christian literature, the Germanic tradition, and the high Middle Ages.

Humanities 3: Renaissance, Reformation, and Early Modern Europe (Fall)

The revival of classical culture and values and the reaction against medieval ideas concerning the place of human beings in the world. The Protestant Reformation and its intellectual and political consequences. The philosophical background to the Scientific Revolution.

Humanities 4: Enlightenment, Romanticism, Revolution (Winter)

The enlightenment's revisions of traditional thought; the rise of classical liberalism; the era of the first modern poiltical revolutions; romantic ideas of nature and human life.

Humanities 5: Modern Culture (Spring)

Challenges to liberalism posed by such movements as socialism, imperialism, and nationalism; the growth of new forms of self-expression and new conceptions of individual psychology.