HIS-449 |
Historiography |
This course introduces students to fundamental questions about the nature of history and to the varieties of history that different answers to these questions have inspired. Students will investigate the kinds of questions historians ask about the past, the relationship between theory and evidence in historical writing and the varieties |
|
of evidence historians use to reconstruct the past. |
3.00 |
||
HON-100 |
Mysticism and Transcendence |
This course investigates the human being as having a capacity for transcendence and an ultimate desire to be with God. Students read the relevant works of the Western philosophical and theological traditions, surveying a broad range of possibilities and perspectives on mysticism, transcendence, the soul, philosophy of religion, and |
|
related themes. |
3.00 |
||
HON-150 |
Philosophy of the Sublime: the Awesome |
||
This course is a historical introduction to the concept of the sublime, or the ' awesome '. The sublime, a feeling of | |||
great exhilaration, excitement, or awe, is a positive aesthetic experience in response to a vast or powerful object, | |||
or one that appears vast or powerful. Traditional examples of sublime objects, or things that evoke the feeling, | |||
are waterfalls, icebergs, raging storms, deep ravines, mountains( Rockies, Alps, Himalayas), and perhaps some | |||
works of art( land art, film, poetry, fiction). As " disinterested," the experience of the sublime is not to be | |||
identified with fear; as an intense feeling or " affect "( emotion), the sublime is to be distinguished from wonder | |||
and curiosity. Can the sublime be evoked by art and nature alike, or only one of these? How is it distinguished | |||
from beauty? How is it connected to, and different from, the ' moral feeling '? What causes it from a psychological | |||
or scientific point of view? We will examine the theory of the sublime from its roots in Longinus ' s rhetorical | |||
theory, through the British and German traditions, concluding with the perspective of contemporary thinkers | |||
( Lyotard, Danto) and neuroscience. Students will read and respond to canonical ' sublime ' texts( fiction, poetry), | |||
react to works of art( photos, film, etc.) associated with the sublime, and engage with texts from history of | |||
philosophy and rhetoric. The course will thus offer an opportunity to study basic ideas of logic( argumentation), | |||
rhetoric, and the relation between them. It may be taken for English or Philosophy credit. It may be used to fulfill | |||
a General Education requirement or an Honors Program requirement under " Rhetoric " or " Dialectic." |
3.00 |
||
HON-151 |
Dangerous Books |
This course exposes students to a " dangerous " canon of works that have been regarded at various points in history as being prohibited, radically transformative, and / or subversive. Students will analyze these texts according to their philosophical content and historical context and assess their enduring impact on society. It may be taken for History or Philosophy credit. It may be used to fulfill a General Education requirement or an Honors |
|
Program requirement under " Rhetoric " or Dialectic." |
3.00 |
||
HON-152 |
History, Memory, & Forgetting |
This course seeks to facilitate students ' critical thinking about history as constructions of the past. In the United States and throughout the world, debates and sometimes violent campaigns have focused on official narratives and commemorative depictions about the past that function to sustain existing norms of status and power. Who contributes to making these choices? Whose voice, and thus perspective, remains muted? How does this affect what stories about the past get told and how they get told? Why do these questions and the manner they get resolved matter? This course addresses a rich body of literature about collective memory, an emerging literature |
|
on cultural forgetting, and case studies relating to various current topics. |
3.00 |
||