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HUMN 1010-6 Introduction to Humanities I
Humanities 1010 is a 6 credit hour course that meets six times a week (three literature discussion classes and three lecture-demonstrations in art and music). The course provides an analytical and comparative study of works in literature, music, and visual arts from Antiquity to the 17th century. This course is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum in 2 areas: historical context or literature and the arts.
Music: The music lectures will cover the basic elements of musical compositions, providing those without a music background a solid foundation from which to build upon. The class studies the music found in a number of different time periods starting with Antiquity, then moving on to Medieval, followed by Renaissance vocal/instrumental music and dance, as well as the Reformation and Counter-Reformation periods. Readings and listening assignments will be assigned on a regular basis (an audio CD is included in the textbook).
Art: The Art lectures will begin by studying the Sculpture and Architecture of the various Greek time periods, including Classical, Late Classical, and the Hellenistic eras. From that point, the course will examine the various works of art produced during the time of the Roman civilization before moving on to Romanesque and early Gothic architecture. In addition, Renaissance portraits and the technique of perspective will be analyzed during lecture, with an emphasis on the works of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Michelangelo. Students are expected to complete weekly readings fromArt Through the Ages and Art History’s History as well as study the works listed on the course website.
Literature: The literature section includes works such as Homer’s Odyssey, Greek tragedy, Plato’s Symposium, Dante’sInferno, Cervantes Don Quixote, Boccaccio’s Decameron, a Shakespearean tragedy, selections from Montaigne’sEssais. When registering for Humanities 1010, students should sign up for a literature section. These sections meet three times a week, MWF.
HUMN 2000-3 Topics in Humanities
Paul Gordon/David Ferris/Davide Stimilli
Humanities 2000 will be team-taught by various members of the Comparative Literature and Humanities Department faculty who will each offer a separate “mini-course” on one of the essential issues or methodological concerns which students can expect to encounter in their future coursework for the Humanities major. Although the subject of each mini-course may be expected to vary from year to year, topics proposed by faculty in the past include: word/image studies; rhetoric; translation; the canon; gender studies; cultural studies; literature and the other arts; literary theory; philosophy and literature; etc. Prerequisite HUMN 1010 or 1020. Restricted to Humanities Majors.
HUMN 2145-3 African America in the Arts
Stuart Lawler
Introduces interrelationships in the arts of African Americans and the African American contribution to American culture as a whole. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: cultural and gender diversity or United States context. For information on this course, please contact Libby Residential Academic Program (303-735-4211).
HUMN 3015-3 Jung, Film and Literature
Jim Palmer
The basic themes of C. G. Jung’s archetypal psychology (shadow, anima/animus, character typology, and individuation) are studied and applied as tools of critical analysis to selected films and literary texts of the modern period. Prerequisite, instructor consent. Same as FILM 3022.
HUMN 3043-3 The Tragic Sense
Paul Gordon
In this course we will examine theories of tragedy (Aristotle, Hegel, Nietzsche) and apply those theories, in order to examine their potential efficacy, to various works of art. After a careful examination of Greek tragedy, beginning with Aeschylus and Sophocles and concluding with Euripides’ last play on The Bacchae, the only extant tragedy which deals with Dionysus and the “birth of tragedy,” we will examine the survival of tragedy in 19th and 20th century works of art—specifically, the works of the William Butler Yeats, Ibsen (Hedda Gabler), Chekhov (The Cherry Orchard), and Tennessee Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire). Restricted to Sophs/Jrs/Srs.
HUMN 3092-3 Literature in History: Shipwrecks, Mutinies & Other Catastrophes at Sea
Davide Stimilli
As the scene of sinking, the sea is the mise-en abîme par excellence of human history. But it is also the stage for a variety of other catastrophic events: mutinies, discoveries, acts of piracy, deadly confrontations with marine creatures natural and supernatural. This course will consider the conditions under which history stages its own catastrophe against the background of the sea, the most archetypical symbol of human destiny, and then sacralizes the wreckage as relic. Materials will include theoretical texts (selections from Aristotle’s Poetics, the Peri Bathous, or The Art of Sinking in Poetry, Thoreau’s Cape Cod, Ferenczi’s Thalassa, Blumenberg’s Shipwreck with Spectator), accounts of witnesses and survivors (selections from Columbus’ and Cortes’ reports, Melville’s Journal, Garcia Marquez’s Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor), historical accounts (Xenophon’s Anabasis, Barber’s History of the Amistad Captives, Conrad’s “Loss of the Titanic”), fictional narratives (selections from Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, Melville’s Benito Cereno and Billy Budd, Conrad’sLord Jim, Crane’s The Open Boat, Coetzee’s Foe, Yoshimura’s Shipwrecks, Barnes’ History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters, Junger’s Perfect Storm), poems (selections from the Aeneid and The Divine Comedy, Hopkins’ The Wreck of the Deutshcland, Ungaretti’s Joy of Shipwrecks, Walcott’s The Bounty), plays (Shakespeare’s Tempest and Pericles, Synge’s Riders to the Sea), paintings (Copely’s Brook Watson and the Shark, Turner’s Wreckers and The Slave Ship, Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa, Friedrich’s Monk by the Sea and The Sea of Ice), and movies (Eizenstejn’s Battleship Potemkin, Welles’ Four Men on a Raft, one version of The Mutiny on the Bounty, Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, Spielberg’sAmistad.)
HUMN 3321-3 Culture and Literature of Ancient China
M.A. Richter
Focuses on the religious, cultural, philosophical, and literary aspects of ancient Chinese civilization (1500 B.C. – A.D. 200). Special attention is paid to foundational works that influenced later developments in Chinese culture. All readings are in English. Recommended prerequisite EALC 1011 or CHIN 1051. Same as CHIN 3321.
HUMN 3841-3 Modern Japanese Literature in Translation
Brad Ashbury
Surveys the major works, authors, and genres of literature from the late Meiji period and 20th century in their historical and cultural contexts. Attention is given to various approaches of literary analysis and interpretation. Taught in English. Recommended prerequisite JPNS 1051. Same as JPNS 3841. Approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: critical thinking.
HUMN 4000-3 Studies in Romanticism: The Later Romantics
Jill Heydt-Stevenson
This course places a major emphasis on French, German, and British writers and artists of the 19th century. Prerequisite HUMN 2000 or Jr/Sr standing. Same as ENGL 4574-002.
HUMN 4120-3 Greek and Roman Tragedy
John Gibert
We will be reading a selection of the surviving works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides (all works written at Athens in the 5th c. BCE) and Seneca (whose 1st c. CE tragedies represent the sole examples of the genre at Rome surviving in non-fragmentary form). There will also be substantial secondary or background reading to guide the development of an understanding of the religious and moral dimensions of tragic drama in context. In this course, the aim will be to develop skills and habits of close observation, analysis and argument, as well as respect for ideas, nuances and differences. As we read, we will attend to the importance of the texts in the literary historical tradition and their role in shaping cultural norms, habits of thought and the imaginative landscape of western civilization. We will also consider what they tell us of what it is to be human in a complex and ever-changing world. There is no formal prerequisite, but experience writing and talking about literature will be helpful. This course is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.
HUMN 4155-3 Philosophy, Art and the Sublime
Paul Gordon
“Perhaps the most sublime utterance is that inscribed on the temple of Isis: “I am all that is, that was, and that will ever be; no mortal has lifted my veil.” (Kant) In this course we will examine theories of the sublime and apply those same theories to various works of art. Beginning with Longinus, we will then move to the beginning of modern discussions of the sublime in Burke and Kant before proceeding to the “golden age” of sublimity, 18-19th century German and English romanticism. After a study of sublimity in Goethe’s Faust we will then turn our attention to the writings of the English romantic poets (Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge), as well to the early 19th-century novel, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. After an examination of the sublime paintings of Turner (and his predecessors) we will move, in the final section of the course, to an examination of the survival of the sublime in the 20th century paintings and films of Barnett Newman, Georgia O’Keefe, Werner Herzog, and John Carpenter. This course is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum in 2 areas: critical thinking or ideals and value. Prerequisite HUMN 2000 or Jr/Sr standing. Restricted to Humanities majors.
HUMN 4504-3 Goethe’s Faust
Adrian Del Caro
We emphasize Goethe’s Faust parts I and II, but the course begins with Marlowe’s reworking of the original Faust material, includes Byron’s Manfred and selections from Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, before concluding with Thomas Mann’s novel Doctor Faustus. The Faust theme has intrigued students of literature and thought for many centuries, and it serves as a metaphor for the modern condition. How does one assign a value to the human soul, if Christianity is not accepted as the supreme authority? What happens to notions of the good life in the age of Enlightenment? How are human beings disposed to conceive of their essence “after the death of God?” How does evil manifest itself in the twentieth century? How does the dualism of the here and now versus the here-after influence humanity’s habitation of the Earth? Requirements include short papers on the three main readings, midterm, and final or research paper. Same as COML 5504 and GRMN 4504/5504.
HUMN 4811-3 19th Century Russian Literature
Vicki Hendrickson
The 19th century was a turbulent time in Russian society, and nowhere are the heated debates over the future and welfare of the country more acutely revealed than in the literature produced in that period. Such issues as “the women question,” the liberation of the serfs, radicalism, and nihilism all find expression through the various writers who dominated the literary scene – Pushkin, Gogol, Lermontov, Turgenev, and Dostoevsky, among others. This course is intended to introduce students to not only the social movements, but the cultural movements as well. Aside from the topics listed above, we will explore the sentimentalism and romanticism that reflected the Western influence on the Russian novel in the first half of the 19th century, and move on to the novels of realism exemplified by the literary giants of the second half of the century. Grades for the course will be determined by quizzes, short papers, and a final, as well as participation in class discussions. No prior experience with Russian language or literature is required. Same as RUSS 4811-001. Approved for the arts and sciences core curriculum: literature and the arts.
HUMN 4835-3 Literature and Social Violence
Cathy Comstock
Provides a theoretical understanding of heightened awareness arising from literary and sociological investigations of contemporary sources of social violence (gang culture, racism, domestic violence), combined with the concrete knowledge offered by an internship in a social service agency. Optional internship credit is available. Please contact the Honors Department for more information. Restricted to Sophs/Jrs/Srs. This course is approved for arts and sciences core curriculum: contemporary societies.