Course Syllabus

Welcome to the Humanities Core in Winter 2022! This is the shared Canvas site for the following courses (click on the titles to see the syllabi):

• Ancient Knowledge, New Frontiers: How the Greek Legacy Became Islamic Science

• The Renaissance in Europe

• Beauty and Renunciation in Japan

• Love, Loss, and Devotion in Indian Literature

HumCore classes meet twice a week. Every Wednesday you will meet in a collaborative conversation with the other students and faculty from all three of the HumCore courses listed above. Every Monday you will focus on a text or object selected by your professor, whose syllabus will lead you through the specific area or question named in your course title (e.g. "Love, Loss, and Devotion in Indian Literature").  

Here is the plan for the Wednesday meetings:

• Week One: introductory examples: Tsuredzuregusa, Machiavelli, Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Islamic astronomy.

• Week Two: spaces: European and Japanese gardens.

• Week Three: love: Sanskrit, Petrarch, Boccaccio, The Tale of Genji.

• Week Four: cosmic religion: Porphyry on Plotinus, Vedānta, Yogavāsiṣṭha.

• Week Five: cosmic religion: Pico, Botticelli, al-Hallaj.

• Week Six: images: mathematical diagrams and Chinese motifs.

• Week Seven: religion and science: Bhakti rasa, al-Khatib al-Qazwini

• Week Eight: in individual sections (Presidents' Day having been on Monday)

• Week Nine: final roundtable: no readings.

Email Humanities Core Director Alexander Key with any questions.