The rich traditions that shape human social life consist of ideas,
visions, and cultural practices that are shared, lasting, and tenacious.
Whether we look at the prevailing values of modern, cosmopolitan society
or the folk traditions that develop in small communities, these deeply
rooted realities help us both to understand our identity and to make choices about our affinity
with family, community, history, values, and place.
Through direct engagement with primary texts,
students learn to ask questions, debate ideas, and come to understand ways
that we experience past events and ideas as part of the fabric of our own
lives.
Tier II courses in this curricular area will have vary in
emphasis. Some examine powerful visions that philosophers, political theorists,
historians, writers, religious thinkers, scientists, and social critics have of the
common experience. Othes explore completing ideas about human nature,
liberty and equality, and the consequences of social change. Still others
uncover those traditions that grow out of the particular experiences of
women, ethnic groups, and indigenous peoples as they express and preserve
their own principles of social organization and cultural expression.
Course Goals:
- Understand the historical and philosophical traditions of the
modern, cosmopolitan world.
- Read and discuss fundamental texts which have formed these
traditions.
- Examine and assess evidence, draw conclusions, and evaluate
the meaning of these conclusions.
- Examine historical and philosophical issues critically and
comparatively.
- Consider the contributions of ethical and religious sytems to
human life.
- Discuss the complex interplay between the rich varieties of
tradition and the necessity of change.
-
Recognize that Western intellectual traditions are defined
by diversity as much as by commonality, by both resistance
to and enrichment, by influences from the rest of the world,
and that challenging authority has been a distinctive
characteristic of these traditions.
Themes and Topics
Historical reasoning with texts
Discussion of E. H. Carr's What is History?
E. H. Carr's Intellectual project
Further reflections on "what is history?"
A critique of Carr's conviction that historians are "in dialogue with
the facts."
Further refecltions on Carr's idea in the context of philosophy of history
Do-History: piecing together
the past
Pre-Modern Condition
5th Century Athens
Greco-Roman World - Perseus
12th Century and the 3rd Crusade / the 14th Century
Europe's 14th Century . . a developing page of links
Online Resources for Medieval Study
Virtual Library of Medieval Europe . . Michigan State
NetSerf: Internet Connection for Medieval Resources
Electronic Canterbury Tales
"Ordinance of Laborers": Impact of the Black Death . . Ency.Brit-Sources for British History
Peasant's Revolt: Wat Tyler meets Richard II . . Ency.Brit-Sources for British History
Tudor England
Tudor England, 1485-1603
Henry VIII
English Renaissance - Perseus
Shakespeare and the Internet
German Traveller's account of the court of Eliz. I . . Ency.Brit-Sources for British History
The ancien regime: France prior to 1750
Revolutions
American Revolution
Declaration of Independence . . Library of Congress
Commentary on the Declaration of Independence . . History Channel
French Revolution
Declaration of the Rights of Man . . Yale Law School
Russian Revolution
Empires and Colonies
Roman Empire
British Imperialism in India
Frontier Expansion and Indian Displacement
Vietnam
Virtual Library on Vietnam . . Australian Nat'l Univ.
The Middle East
The Politics of Resource Development
Nigeria and the Story of Oil
Comparative Slavery
Immigration
Resources and Backgrounds:
American Memory Collection . . Library of Congress
Picture Credit: Wall painting from Pompeii, sometimes entitled "Woman with stylus" -- Willard's "The Spirit of '76" (1876) -- Prof. Mark Miller -- Rodin's "The Thinker" (1880) -- Blake's "Ancient of Days" (1794).
