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| hope college > academic departments > gen ed |
Cultural Heritage—Eight Credits
The dominant culture of the United States has its roots in the history and development of “Western culture” and its interplay with “non-Western” societies. For good or for ill, Western culture is now having an increasingly global impact. Hope students, whether or not they see the dominant culture of the U.S. as “home turf,” benefit from knowing and critically reflecting upon the cultural heritage of Western civilization. Whatever path a student chooses in meeting this requirement will provide an introduction to some of the central events, questions and concerns that have shaped Western culture. Students will gain an understanding of historical movements, as well as significant literary and philosophical texts. Through discussion and writing, students are encouraged to develop an informed evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the Western cultural legacy which will contribute greater self-understanding. The overall idea of the Cultural Heritage requirement is to give you an introduction to three humanities disciplines (literature, history, philosophy) through just two courses, and in a way that includes both the ancient world (CH1) and the modern world (CH2). The Cultural Heritage requirement may be fulfilled by taking IDS 171 and IDS 172, or by taking one of these interdisciplinary courses in combination with a Cultural Heritage course from English, History, or Philosophy. During fall 2008 there is also one interdisciplinary course that covers two disciplines: IDS 174, a CH2 course that includes only literature and history, can fulfill the requirement along with a CH1 course that includes philosophy (IDS 171, 175, or 177 or Philosophy 230). Students may also fulfill the requirement with a combination of three
single-discipline courses, one each from English, Philosophy, and History,
two of which must be 4-credit CH1 and CH2 courses; the third may be a
4- or 2-credit course from the third discipline. For a complete list
of options for fulfilling this requirement, see the college catalog under “Degree
Program” (pp. 109-110). If you have questions, contact Prof. Curtis
Gruenler, Director of Cultural Heritage.
COURSES OFFERED FOR SPRING 2010INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSES COVERING LITERATURE, HISTORY, AND PHILOSOPHY(under construction)
IDS 171-01: Tragedy, Comedy, Democracy (CH1) IDS 171-02: Tragedy, Comedy, Democracy (CH1) In Greece, the fifth century B.C. begins with a war (the Persian Wars), which Athens was instrumental in winning, and it ends with a war (the Peloponnesian War), which Athens lost. Throughout this time, Athens develops a flourishing, contentious democracy which contributes to a period of great innovation and turmoil. We see experimentation in self-government, military innovations, new and extraordinary approaches in art and architecture, significant advances in mathematics and science. In this atmosphere of freedom and power, there emerged the literary forms known as tragedy and comedy. In this class, while looking at the history of 5th century Greece and the rise of Athenian democracy, we will explore the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes, and the comedies of Aristophanes. We will investigate how these dramatic forms are used to consider such basic human concerns as freedom, its possibilities and its limits, what in our lives we control and what we don't control, the nature of human responsibility, the relations between gods and humans, the relations between men and women, the uses and abuses of power, the promises and dangers of sex and love, the struggles to realize justice, conflicts between duties to family and duties to city, what makes for a happy life. And throughout the course, we will ask, what, if any, connections might exist between the struggles of the Greeks 2500 years ago and our efforts to live today in 2009.
During the 1500 years between the birth of Christ and the Renaissance, the world as we know it today took shape through changes such as the rise of Christianity and Islam, the invention of romantic love, the formation of modern nations, and the interaction of Christian and classical thought. Yet even though this is such a formative time for our own culture, people saw the world much differently that we do. We will try to imagine medieval life and understand medieval thought through the lenses of history, literature, philosophy, and to a lesser extent theology, music, and art. Transporting ourselves to the past can give us a new perspective on the present and on big questions like what makes a good life, what it is to love, and how people can live together well in communities and nations. This will happen most powerfully through our encounter with great texts from this time such as Virgil’s Aeneid, Augustine’s Confessions, Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, philosophical works by Plato, Aristotle, and Aquinas, the Lays of Marie de France, and above all Dante’s Divine Comedy, which we will read almost in its entirety. Students will write several short papers, one longer essay, midterm and final exams, and a commonplace book.
IDS 171-05: Real Life and the Good Life from Classical Times
to Christian (CH 1) In this course, we will be keeping our eyes on ethical questions, particularly those pertaining to sex and gender, power, and still more broadly, how to live well. The readings for this course are in large part classics, texts that have through the ages been regarded as masterpieces that transcend their own times, and that have something important to say to people of various times and cultures. We will be looking at literature, philosophy, and history as well as some theology; we will be covering these disciplines as they apply to classical Greece and Rome, and then as they apply into the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Because the course proceeds chronologically, we can see in a powerful way how later authors build on earlier ones. Something that particularly excites me about the course is the way it illustrates how Christianity, which became the dominant religion in the West, was born in a classical world and how Christians came to incorporate classical learning and culture from ancient Greece and Rome.
This course will focus on 4 specific time periods in history: 5th-century B.C. Greece, 1st-century Rome, beginnings of Islam and its expansion, and Dante's Florence. In each of the historical, philosophical and literary readings, we will be focusing on the themes of freedom, justice and the good life. The last half of the semester will be spent reading the Dante’s complete Divine Comedy and expanding on all of the ideas introduced in the earlier writings.
IDS 171-07: Twin Pillars of Western High Culture (CH1) This course will examine the Western cultural heritage from three angles: examples of the Judeo-Christian religious tradition; examples of the Greco-Roman philosophical and literary traditions; and the historical development of the emergence of a geographical and cultural West. The first half of the semester will focus on the first two angles of the course, with assigned readings of primary texts from the Judeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman tradition. It will also provide a broad historical outline of the history of Mesopotamia, the ancient Greek city-states, and the Roman Republic and Empire. The second half of the semester will focus on the historical developments that went into the making of a geographical and cultural West from the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance. We will examine the twin historical developments of the institution of the Church and the institution of the national monarchy, and the primary texts assigned for this portion of the course will reflect the twin concerns regarding the relationship between the temporal and the spiritual on the one hand and that between the Christian and the pagan on the other.
IDS 172-02: Perspectives on Science from the
Enlightenment to the Present (CH2) IDS 172-03: Perspectives on Science from the
Enlightenment to the Present (CH2) What is science? How have society and culture shaped science? How has science in turn shaped society and culture? This course examines a variety of perspectives based upon a firm foundation in the history of science from the Enlightenment to the present. We will read leading philosophers’ texts on the nature of science, examine case studies in detail, and explore how literature helps us better to understand the changing perspectives on science. In particular, we will read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and the classic steampunk novel, The Difference Engine.
IDS 172-05: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism IDS 172-06: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism While the French Revolution was one of the major events of modern history, the buildup to it and the fallout from it are of equal interest, and all three will be examined in this course. This section of IDS 172 is a “three-discipline” interdisciplinary course: it will focus on European history, literature, and philosophy from the middle of the seventeenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century. Special attention will be paid to the intellectual movement known as “the Enlightenment,” to the Revolution itself and the Napoleonic period that ensued, and to the Romantic movement that sprang up alongside the Revolution and continued beyond it. Figures to be read or studied will include Voltaire, Kant, Goethe, Napoleon, and Hegel. The connections of the main themes of this course to other cultural and historical developments, such as the Scientific Revolution, the American Revolution, and the rise of nationalism, will also be explored.
IDS 172-08: Do the Right Thing (CH2)
IDS 172-09: Authority and the Individual (CH2) How do you define yourself as an individual? And how
do you relate to the many different authorities in your life? When someone
(parent, spiritual leader, government authority or dorm resident director)
lays down a rule, do you respond positively? Break it as a matter of
principle? Toe the line but grumble? Do you react differently to different
kinds of authority? When two kinds of authority conflict, how do you
respond?
INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSE: LITERATURE AND HISTORY IDS 174-01: Indigenous: Native American Literature
and History in (What Came to Be Called) North America (CH2) Chronologically our course begins at the height of the Aztec Empire and proceeds through the colonial period, the ages of nation building and manifest destiny, and finally ends in the Now. In order to avoid the pitfalls of a straight linear chronology, however, our route will begin in modern Mexico with the Zapatista and other indigenous movements. We will proceed back into history, going through the nationalism and colonial periods all the way back to the eve of the Conquest in Mexico. At this point we will venture across the Border, and while staying in the past, we will explore Native American creation stories and the various ways in which people made sense of their relationships to each other, to the world, and to the divine. We will continue on this road, traveling from the early period of contact with Europeans toward the US colonial period and then to the era of expansion and Manifest Destiny. Our course will end by examining modern Native American authors who look back toward the past as a way of discussing modern US issues. The goal of our travels is to understand our cultural inheritance, sometimes through the lens of Western European thought and culture but most time in juxtaposition to it, through the disciplines of history and literature. We will look carefully at governmental treaties and historical events, as well as the thoughts and ideas governing both inter-cultural and intra-cultural dialogue.
PHILOSOPHY COURSES In this course we will examine ancient western philosophy,
beginning with the Greeks. Plato, a pupil of Socrates, wrote dialogues
in which Socrates often appears as the main character. They are conversations
like the ones that we have, but they are based on a certain question,
like “what is justice?” We will read a number of Plato’s
dialogues, and then consider Plato’s own student, Aristotle. Not
only were these two figures enormously influential for the Greek and
Roman thinkers that followed them, among them, the Stoics (of whom we
will read Epictetus), but their influence extends to two towering figures
in the history of theology as well as philosophy, namely St. Augustine
and St. Thomas Aquinas. We will finish the course by considering the
philosophical contributions made by these last two figures. We’ll even ask:
This course is an introduction to Western philosophy and religious thought in the Middle Ages, a period that has been referred to as “the Age of Faith.” We will trace the interplay of religion and philosophy, faith and reason in the development of Christian philosophy in the West and in representative Jewish and Islamic philosophers. In addition to the relationship between faith and reason, other topics to be discussed include the nature and existence of God, the problem of evil, the immortality of the soul, the nature of knowledge, the nature of happiness and virtue, and the inner journey of the soul to God.
This course is an introduction to western philosophy
as seen particularly in the works of the “modern” philosophers.
The texts are not easy, but the questions they are asking are as deep
and as important as they come. Here are some:
HISTORY COURSES History 130-01: Introduction to Ancient Civilization (CH1) History 130-02: Introduction to Ancient Civilization (CH1) The course will focus on significant developments in history from its Greek origins through the Renaissance. It is designed to introduce the student to the discipline of history and can be used to fulfill part of the cultural heritage requirement. History 131-01: Introduction to Modern European History (CH2) The course will focus on significant developments in modern European history from the Renaissance to our own time. It is designed to introduce the student to the discipline of history and can be used to fulfill part of the cultural heritage requirement.
History 208-02: World Civilization II (CH2)
ENGLISH COURSES English 231-01 — Literature of the Western World I (CH1) The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation—initiation—return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth. A hero ventures forth from the realm of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man. Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1948) English 231 is a course in the classics: the texts that form the foundation of western—that is, European—literature from the beginnings of written history to about 1600. From Gilgamesh and Homer (the ancient world) through Dante’s Inferno and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (the Middle Ages) to Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus and the plays of the Mexican nun Sor Juana (the Renaissance), we will trace the development of literary expression, learn to surmount its difficulties, and recognize its continuing presence in the way that even we perceive our world and ourselves. Obviously it’s impossible to cover so many centuries with anything like thoroughness, but we make a valiant effort to investigate works either artistically superior or most representative of the culture that produced them. While the contentious climate of postmodern opinion now challenges the whole concept of “the classics,” most students who give these texts a careful reading come to confirm their value as embodiments and transmitters of all that is best in our tradition. To give a thread of continuity to this wide-ranging foray into the literature of the past, we will follow the recurrent themes of nature versus culture, male versus female, and action versus contemplation, and we will confront in particular the mighty archetype, persistent from Gilgamesh to Superman, of the hero’s journey. What gets these heroes going? What do they seek? How do their journeys lead them into the strangest of all regions, the human mind? And can their journeys tell us something, even at the distance of centuries, about the journeys we ourselves must undertake? These are some of the questions that will concern us this semester.
Do you like to read? Are you interested in the literary
works that both shape and reflect the values of Western culture? Do you
like classes that are a mix of discussion and lecture?
English 232-02: Literature of the Western World II (CH2) This course is designed to introduce students to a wide variety of social, historical and cultural perspectives on the growth and development of the literature of the Western world. It will focus on a selection of texts from the Renaissance to the Post-modern era. The course will address major world views that have shaped and defined cultural norms, diversity within western culture, and differences and interactions between Western and other cultures. Students in this course will be exposed to critical thinking, reading and writing with a view to engaging the complexities of the literature, developing their own independent judgments and crafting critical responses to the issues addressed.
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