Course Descriptions

The following courses have been created and sequenced to form an integrated program of study. Courses are listed in the order in which they are presented. Later courses build on earlier ones to provide a powerful, cumulative learning experience.

HUMA 501 | An Overview of the Humanities: Framing the Conversation (3 units)

This course provides an advanced-level overview of the humanities and the diverse foundations of our shared intellectual heritage. Through analytic reading and guided discussion, participants will explore the disciplinary knowledge, modes of inquiry and core ideas of the humanities. Participants will also learn how each discipline within the humanities is defined, how the traditions of study and reflection allow essential ideas to shape lives and 
modes of thought, and how the traditions within the humanities have evolved across time and cultures.

HUMA 510 | The Sacred: What Is It? What Makes Us Seek It? (3 units)

This course examines and critiques the notion of the “sacred” in different cultural contexts and from distinct and varied perspectives, including those of writers such as Mary Daly, William James, Carl Jung and Paul Tillich. Participants will investigate historical and cross-cultural efforts to institutionalize the sacred through symbols, myths, rituals and physical spaces that influence people’s lives and choices. The course will also examine two conflicting present-day trends: namely, efforts to recover a more authentic sacred by cutting loose from institutional religion versus efforts to use institutional religion as a foundation for revolutionary social change. Both trends are influencing political and cultural contexts within and across national boundaries today in ways that are important for all who live and work in the interconnected global economy to understand.

HUMA 520 | Self: Body and Mind: Who Are You? How Do You Know? (3 units)

Across all cultures, beliefs and times, people have grappled with the nature of human existence. The dilemma of being both finite and conscious presents a wide range of challenges that have occupied the thoughts of philosophers, theologians, writers, social theorists and others. This course introduces participants to the history of ideas that focus on the study of ourselves, our bodies and our minds – from the writings of René Descartes to Sigmund Freud to Michel Foucault and beyond. Participants will consider different cultural conceptualizations of body and mind as well as the changing ways we perceive the relationship between these two fundamental and intricately connected aspects of the self.

HUMA 530 | Family and Life Cycles: The Nature of Connections Among Individuals (3 units)

Through the lenses of literature, art, philosophy, history and popular culture, participants will explore the nature and place of family and the human life cycle in the individual’s formation of a sense of self, an identity, personal values and an understanding of life’s purpose across different cultural traditions. The course will also examine the extent to which these aspects of our humanity are cultural constructs that vary according to historical time and geographic location. Participants will read and discuss the ideas of Stephanie Coontz, Emile Durkheim and Friedrich Engels, among others, and study portrayals of families in fiction, poetry and film.

HUMA 600 | Identity, Meaning and Culture (3 units)

Culture produces ideas, and ideas are the foundation of power, purpose, and the struggle for control. Indeed, the major conflicts among civilizations – right up to the 20th and 21st centuries – have been most often rooted in a clash of ideas and the ideologies they engender. Considering and examining cultures as structures built of contending ideas both influencing and influenced by historical contingencies will allow participants to build an understanding of how culture creates meaning and shapes how we see the world and act in it. Drawing on the ideas of a wide range of thinkers – such as Theodor Adorno, Sigmund Freud, Henry Louis Gates, Arundhati Roy and Edward Said – this course will also consider excerpts from literature, films and studies of various cultures and ethnic groups.

HUMA 610 | Space, Place and Geography: How Where (We Think) We Are Defines Who We Are (3 units)

This course explores how conceptualizations of space and place have contributed to a variety of different cultural understandings of the human condition. From Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem The Divine Comedy to films such as "The Matrix" and contemporary novels by William Gibson (Neuromancer) and Salman Rushdie (Shalimar the Clown), as well as to “virtual worlds” such as Second Life, this course looks at the concepts underlying the creation and representation of space and the role of landscape/environment in determining the human condition. Participants will also carefully analyze and reflect on the ways that differing ideas about space, place and the use and control of land have led to conflicts within and between societies.

HUMA 620 | Science and Magic: The Varied Modes of Knowing and Believing (3 units)

This course focuses on the distinctions in different times and cultures between what is defined as “science” and what is seen as “magic.” It both rigorously traces such thinking from as far back as written text permits and looks to contemporary thinkers and writers who examine such boundaries, including Karl Popper and Paul Feyerabend, as well as the observations and analyses of James Gleick, Susan Greenwood, and Stanley Jeyaraja Tambiah, among others. Participants will consider the different modes of human inquiry and discovery and the interplay between knowing and believing. Throughout today’s world, we find conflict between modes of knowing based on belief and modes of knowing linked to contemporary scientific methods of inquiry and evidence. Participants will explore how such divisions originate and operate both within and across cultures and how such apparently rigid and divisive boundaries can shift in both cultural and individual contexts.

HUMA 630 | Nation and Empire, Law and Government (3 units)

This course examines the formation of the modern nation-state and focuses in particular on how these states are constructed, represented and understood through art, literature and philosophical critique. Within the past century, shifts in national boundaries, conflicts between ethnic heritage and national identity, and struggles between nations for resources and control have affected and continue to affect countless millions of lives. Course participants will critically evaluate the influence of the modern nation-state on other societies with particular attention to colonialism, imperialism, patriotism and globalization. The course will conclude with a discussion of precursors, successors and alternatives to the nation-state, based on readings from historic thinkers such as Hugo Grotius, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke to more contemporary analysts, including Eduardo Galeano, Clifford Geertz and Edward Said.

HUMA 640 | Norms and Knowledge: How Ideas Define the World (3 units)

This course delves into knowledge, norms and values (i.e., the nature of epistemologies) as they are represented in philosophy, literature, religion and cultural studies. Using texts from René Descartes, Robert Borofsky, Michel Foucault, Carol Gilligan and others, participants will closely examine the development and transformation of these norms across time and between cultures, as well as through different forms of representation. The purpose of this exploration is to discover and appreciate how knowledge is not only defined and constructed but also characterized, configured and reconfigured by social groups, institutions and individual thinkers, including artists.

HUMA 650 | Capstone: The Good Life (3 units)

The program’s final course has its foundation in Socrates’ most famous dictum – “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Participants will draw on the preceding courses and also consider new readings to develop a thoughtully conceived critique of what constitutes a good life. Using readings from great historical philosophers – such as Aristotle, Plato, Confucius and Nietzsche – as well as the works of more modern literary figures – such as William Blake, William Butler Yeats, Bertolt Brecht, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Zadie Smith and Arundhati Roy – participants will frame, investigate and reflect on the following questions: How do we know what it is to be a good person or to lead a good life? Why do notions of what constitutes a good life seem to vary so much across time and cultures? Why is this seemingly essential notion so elusive when carefully considered? What effect does this elusiveness have on how each of us chooses to live? The emphasis will be on the role(s) that particular worldviews (especially those identified by the participants as their own) play in shaping both what we deem to be the good life and the means that each of us considers appropriate for its attainment.

HUMA 697 | Directed Comprehensive Studies (3 units)

In this course, all participants will work with a program faculty member toward completion of an individual “comprehensive experience,” a project involving careful analysis and synthesis of topics, readings and discussions begun in HUMA 501 and completed in HUMA 650.