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.

Spring Semester 2012

INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSES COVERING LITERATURE, HISTORY, AND PHILOSOPHY

IDS 171-01: Heroes and Saints (CH1)
Jim Allis
MWF 8:30-9:20

We humans have a certain freedom; we can make some choices as to how we live our lives.  But what sorts of choices might we make?  How will we use the freedom that we have?  In working with the mysteries surrounding freedom, other questions begin to arise.  Is life meaningful, absurd, or both?   With the freedom that I have, does it even matter how I choose to live my life?  How might I relate to and interact with other people who are also free?  What significance, if any, might there be to the reality that even with my freedom, I will eventually die?

In the history of the West, two different wisdom traditions emerge that explore such concerns about freedom and meaning.  On the one hand, we have the humanistic worldview of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and on the other hand, we have the more  theistic worldview of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  These two traditions have given us certain images as to how we might try to live, the image of the hero and the image of the saint. 

In a demanding, complex, sometimes beautiful but sometimes hurtful world of this 21st century, what relevance, if any, might these ancient accounts of hero and saint have for us today?  What might stories of heroes and saints suggest to us as we struggle with the challenges of freedom and meaning?  In this class we will try to investigate some of the possibilities and limitations of the hero and the saint for our own lives.  And we will consider what these stories might have to say to those of us who find all-too-often that we are living rather less than heroic or saintly lives.

IDS 171-02: The Middle Ages from Virgil to Dante (CH1)
Curtis Gruenler
MWF 9:30-10:20

IDS 171-04: The Middle Ages from Virgil to Dante (CH1)
Curtis Gruenler
MWF 11:00-11:50

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 171-03: Citizenship and the Good Life (CH1)
John Cox
MWF 11:00-11:50

"Citizenship and the Good Life" surveys history, literature, and philosophy from the ancient Greeks to the early Renaissance with two ideas as the focus: What does it mean to be a citizen? What does it mean to live a good life? Beginning with Greek tragedy, the course includes readings from Herodotus, Thucydides, Aeschylus, Plato, Aristotle, Lucretius, Epictetus, Virgil, Luke's Gospel, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, and Thomas More.

IDS 171-05: Real Life and the Good Life from Classical Times (CH1)
Joseph LaPorte
MW 2:00-3:20

IDS 171-06: Real Life and the Good Life from Classical Times (CH1)
Joseph LaPorte
MW 3:30-4:50

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.

IDS 171-07: Freedom, Justice, and the Good Life (CH1)
Dianne Portfleet
TR 9:30-10:50

IDS 171-08: Freedom, Justice, and the Good Life (CH1)
Dianne Portfleet
TR 12:30-1:20

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 172-01: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism (CH2)
Anthony N. Perovich Jr.
MWF  9:30-10:20

IDS 172-02: Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism (CH2)
Anthony N. Perovich Jr.
MWF  11:00-11:50

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 172-03: Reformation to Revolution (CH2)
Janice Gibbs
MWF 11:00-11:50

The theme of this interdisciplinary humanities course is “From Reformation to Revolution.”  The dynamic which will guide our investigation is change.  Change is an important dynamic in human societies.   At different times in history, men and women have developed ideas, technologies and movements which have challenged prevailing authorities, shifted people’s understanding of the truth, and changed the world.  Changes can be minor, or they can be radical.  They can improve existing institutions, or replace them entirely.  We sometimes call changes “reforms.”  If the changes are profound enough, we call them “revolutions.”  How do people foster change?  How do they react to calls for reform?  What transforms reformation into revolution?  What leads people to develop revolutionary changes, or to adopt them?  How and why do other people resist reform or revolution?  How can people transform the extraordinary energy of revolutionary movements into the energy required to build and maintain new institutions?  Do we use the term “revolution” too easily?  What is a “reform”?  When does a change become revolutionary?
 
We will study a series of changes between the late fifteenth century (i.e. late 1400s C.E.) and the early 19th century (1800s C.E.). Major topics include the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment and the French Revolution.   While we will not consider all of the important, or even all of the revolutionary, changes that have occurred during this period, we will be looking at a variety of kinds of change:  religious, political, intellectual, technological, social—and of course, combinations of these kinds of change, since none of them exist alone.
 
This course is also an introduction to three disciplines within the humanities—history, philosophy, and literature—and to the connections and distinctions between them.  We will use a variety of sources to discuss reformations, revolutions, and the people who made them, joined them, resisted them, and were swept up by them.  Literature, philosophy and history give us different, though related, ways of understanding the process and the experience of reform and revolution in human history.

IDS 172-04: Perspectives on Science
Jonathan Hagood
MWF 12:00-12:50

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 on these questions from the sixteenth century to the present day. Students will read leading philosophers’ texts on the nature of science, examine the lives and contributions of key figures in the history of science, and explore how the evolution of detective fiction through works by Voltaire, Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler, and others helps us better to understand changing perspectives on science and the scientific method. To this end, students will right their own pastiche – or imitation – of a Sherlock Holmes short story, highlighting the scientific aspects of the genre, the detective, and his methods for solving a mystery.

IDS 172-05: Do the Right Thing
Julie Kipp
TR 9:30-10:50

From the Enlightenment period to the present day people have pondered the characteristics of a civil and rational society and asked the questions: What does it mean to do the right thing? Is this the best of all possible worlds? To a large extent, however, these questions have been driven without consideration for those who have been excluded from Western concepts of civil society and from the very category of “the rational human.” This course will explore the development of Western thinking on these issues, both through an examination of canonical authors in the Western canon and through a substantial consideration of marginalized voices and positions. The course is interdisciplinary in nature, which is to say that we will work as historians (using primary source materials like newspapers, editorial cartoons, medical writings, and first-person narratives as well as literary and philosophical texts from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries) as well as literary scholars (focusing on close readings of texts and formal issues as well as on their historical significance) as a way to explore historical change across the last three centuries and the strengths and weaknesses of our Western cultural heritage as well as its relation to non-Western cultures. One of the primary goals of this course is to prompt students not just to think about what it means to them to “do the right thing,” but to consider ways to translate their ideas into concrete actions. To this end, students will be asked to develop over the course of the semester a service project, the results of which will be presented to the class orally at the end of the semester.

IDS 172-06: Authority and the Individual (CH2)
Marla Lunderberg
TR 12:00-1:20

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?

In this course, we will examine how others have seen their relationships to the many authorities in their lives.  We'll cover a great range of time and a great variety of kinds of thinking, from Luther's distinctions between spiritual and secular authorities, to Shakespeare's exploring the power held by colonial authorities, to Confucian emphasis on family ties.  We'll cover texts from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, from literature, history, and philosophy, from Western and Asian traditions.  We will consider texts as they relate to their particular moment in history and as they relate to each other.

Perhaps you'll see yourself in some of these thinkers.  Perhaps you won't.  Yet whether you agree or disagree with them, digesting what they have said can allow you to examine closely what you think.

INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSES: LITERATURE AND HISTORY

INTERDISCIPLINARY COURSES: LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY

IDS 175-01: Classical Mythology and Plato's Republic
Stephen Maiullo
TR 1:30 - 2:50

Classical Mythology is an invaluable component of the literature, art, and thought of the western world because it provided a great variety of stories for authors to read and adapt for their own artistic, literary, or intellectual purposes. From the ancient authors themselves to modern theater and film, the stories of the ancient world have captured our minds and imaginations for centuries. But myths are not only stories. Myths project a world-view, an ideology, a unique perspective on how ancient Greek and Roman societies lived and how they viewed their own cultures. This course will attempt to occupy the space in between: a careful study of the ways in which the Greeks and Romans used their myths, what those myths have to say about the world and the people that produced them, and also why those myths still capture our attention today. The main texts we will be reading are drawn from the fields of literature and philosophy: Homer’s Odyssey, Plato’s Republic, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Despite the fact that each of these texts propose radically different views about the nature of storytelling, they are all still concerned with the same perennial questions: the role of humanity in the universe, the influence of the gods in the human world, what is heroic action, the question of what happens to us after death, the differences between the sexes and if love really makes the world go round. Using these texts as our guides, we will examine not only how the ancient Greeks and Romans approached these questions, but how we too may (or may not) use them in our own search for the truth.

PHILOSOPHY COURSES

Philosophy 230-01: Ancient Philosophy (CH1)
Greg Basset
TR 1:30-2:50

Western philosophy from its beginning to the Middle Ages, including such figures as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and St. Augustine, through a study of primary texts. Partial fulfillment of the Cultural Heritage requirement

Philosophy 232-01: Modern Philosophy (CH2)
Jim Allis
MWF 12:00-12:50

One of the central characteristics of the modern age in the West has been the rise of science and technology. Developments in science and technology have transformed the material conditions of life and increased the opportunities and possibilities for many.  Today science and technology play hugely influential roles in contemporary society and world affairs.

In this course, we will explore such questions as:  How did modern science begin?  What is distinctive about modern scientific knowledge, and how might its approaches to the natural world and human reason contribute to its extraordinary success?  How do the efforts of science and technology influence our understanding of ourselves as humans and our possible relations to God?

Yet even as the successes of  science and technology continue to amaze us and shape our ways of living, ethical questions about the work of science begin to arise.  For example, science and technology give us considerable power over the natural world, but how are we going to use that power (e.g., nuclear energy and genetic engineering)?  How might we begin to figure out “good” and “not-so-good” uses of that power?  Science and technology may help us realize lives of greater convenience and comfort (e.g., an expanding number of “gadgets), but do science and technology help us to achieve lives that are genuinely “better” and “happier”?  Science and technology provide us with opportunities that previous generations did not have, but are we truly “freer” in any meaningful way?  While science and technology continue to give us incredible insights into the workings of human beings and our world (e.g., evolutionary theory  and the neurosciences), at the same time more questions emerge about our human “place” and “purpose” in the world and about the existence of God. 

Philosophy 295-01: World Philosophy (CH2)
Andrew Dell'Olio
TR 9:30-10:50

This course is an introduction to philosophy in a global context.  We will consider the classical philosophical traditions of Greece and Rome, India, China, and Japan.  We will be mostly concerned with the great texts of these philosophical traditions and what they have to say about humanity’s perennial questions: What is real? Who am I? What can I know? How should I live? What is the nature of the Divine?  What is enlightenment and how can I achieve it?  We will attempt to understand the answers offered to these questions by the great minds and texts of these traditions with some attention to each tradition’s cultural and historical context.  We will also compare and contrast the answers provided by each tradition with an eye to what each one has to offer us today for our own quest for wisdom.

HISTORY COURSES

History 130-01: Introduction to Ancient Civilization (CH1)
Albert Bell
T 6:30 pm - 9:20 pm

History 130-02: Introduction to Ancient Civilization (CH1)
Albert Bell
TR 1:30-2:50

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-: Introduction to Modern European History (CH2)
Marc Baer
MWF 2:00-2:50

History 131-: Introduction to Modern European History (CH2)
Fred Johnson
TR 9:30-10:50

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 sued to fulfill part of the cultural heritage requirement.

History 208-01: World Civilization II: 1500 to Present (CH2)
Tamba M’bayo
MWF 9:30-10:20

History 208-02: World Civilization II: 1500 to Present (CH2)
Tamba M’bayo
MWF 11:00-11:50

This introductory world history course surveys developments in human civilization in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe since 1500. It employs comparative methods to investigate cultures and societies that developed in different parts of the world, and it examines the ways in which world societies have interacted in the past and interact in the present. It fulfills the Cultural Heritage II requirement and is flagged for cultural diversity.

ENGLISH COURSES

English 231-01: Literature of the Western World I (CH1)
Stephen Hemenway
MWF 12:00-12:50  

Aesop's fables and Homer's tales of war and adventure start us on an oddysey of ancient literature. Ancient Roman and medieval Italian epics send us on a spiritual journey that also embraces excerpts from the Hindu Bhagavad Gita and the Islamic Koran. Chaucer takes us on a pilgrimage with the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath, and Cervantes inaugurates a quest with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Sappho, Lady Murasaki, Marie de France, and Sor Juana de la Cruz go places where few females dare to tread. Michelangelo and Shakespeare lead us through the Renaissance and Reformation and prepare us for the modern world. As you study these authors and works, you will read and write about the masterpieces of Western literature in a global context.