HUM 2230: Intellectual
Traditions II
Course Description and Syllabus
Daniel White
Course Description:
This course is designed to fit into the interdisciplinary,
writing-intensive curriculum of the
Honors Intellectual Traditions offers insights into the diverse intellectual and cultural heritages that have shaped the contemporary global civilization. The principal focus of study will be European and American cultures, viewed from interdisciplinary and multicultural perspectives. The course is writing intensive (each semester satisfies 6,000 words of the Gordon Rule writing requirement) and based on the study of primary sources in translation. Course contents may be varied from year to year so as to represent a wide variety of traditions. The constituent courses (HUM 2211 and 2230) need not be taken in sequence.
In HUM 2230H, Honors Intellectual Traditions II, we focus on key texts that have shaped modern and postmodern European, American intellectual history in a global context. As in Intellectual Traditions I, multicultural and women’s studies are prominent. Our study begins with the Northern Renaissance and the conflicts of European culture as it is rocked by the rise of modern science, the Protestant Reformation, and by the expansion of horizons and human diversity amidst the oppression generated by colonialism. Selections from the works of Luther, Erasmus, More, Montaigne, Shakespeare, as well as those of key scientists, artists and musicians of the period will be highlighted. The European Baroque, including the Catholic Reformation and French aristocratic culture are our next points of focus. The baroque style in visual arts and music adds rich dimension to the upheavals of the period. The rise of modern science in the works of Galileo and Descartes, as they reverberate through the centers of European learning, next comes into view, as what is perhaps the key intellectual revolution to mark the modern world takes shape. The foundations of scientific knowledge and its conflicts with the heritages of classicism and Christianity, epitomized in the learning of the Church, are prominent here. Another revolution to shape the modern world–the quest for political democracy, social equality and universal human rights–will be studied as a definitive element of the Enlightenment. Key writers studied here are Voltaire, Kant and, of particular interest for women’s studies, Wollstonecraft. Her A Vindication of the Rights of Woman challenges the limits of a political philosophy and of a humanism that would only recognize the “rights of man.” Likewise, the Travels of Olaudah Equiano offer a searing critical portrait of the slave trade, as well as a rich contribution to autobiographical literature, offering another challenge to an Enlightenment with too narrow a view of human liberation. Another challenge—to the view of nature offered by modern science, as well as to the masculinist perspective that would transform the world for power and profit—is presented by Romantic writers and artists, including Goethe, Mary Shelley, Delacroix, Beethoven and others. Here we pause to read literature, contemplate painting, consider alternative science, and listen to a symphony. The rise of modern art, particularly in the movements of realism, impressionism and post-impressionism, next comes to the fore. The modernist movements of the early 20th century follow, with new developments in science, philosophy, and the arts, highlighting a visual history in which painting moves into various forms of abstraction while photography takes over the “real world,” and modes of modern perception leading to film, television and digital media emerge. Multiculturalism and postcolonialism now take the stage, as the ideas, literatures and cultures of Africa, Latin America, Native America and African America increasingly join the international movement toward equality, women’s rights, human rights, and the pursuit of a democratic global culture. The impacts of science and technology, particularly in the realms of communications engineering and bioinformatics (see Thacker under Online Sources), on the formation of postmodern culture, become the tentative destination of our course of study, as we arrive at that rapidly changing state we call the “present.” Here we witness the emergence of a youth culture unconvinced by traditional values and skeptical about the prospects for the future, yet still hopeful for a meaningful life. Postmodernism finally emerges as a broad shift in global culture in the idiom of electronic communications.
Overall we will emphasize broad questions about trends in global culture. Key questions will include: What is modern culture? What is postmodern culture? What trends have led to and define these broad cultural movements? How are humanism, multiculturalism, globalism, feminism relevant to modern and postmodern cultural practices? What is “our” place in these developments?
Course Requirements:
1) A series of 12 reading responses, typically written in class, each 300 words = 3600 words, altogether 50% of final grade;
2) A mid-term and a final essay, each 1,200 words in length; each 20% of grade;
3) Class participation (attendance, quality of discussion) = 10%.
4) Late work will be downgraded. In-class responses based on
unexcused absence may not be made up. Writing processes will be emphasized; essays will be graded for composition and
content.
Required Texts:
Fiero, Gloria, The Humanistic Tradition, vol. 2 (Fourth Edition)
Cahoone, Lawrence, ed., From Modernism to Postmodernism
Students enrolled in
this course agree to abide by the Honors College Honor Code. Please review this important document: http://www.fau.edu/divdept/honcol/students/honorcode.html
HONORS COLLEGE
FORUM: Reading Descartes'
Meditations
Online Sources:
Foucault, Michel: Online Texts and Interviews
National Museum of Native American Art
Whitney Museum of Art: American Century
— . Critique of Practical Reason
UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights
The Virtual Museum of Japanese Arts
Some Basic Elements of art appreciation:
Outline for the Analysis of the Visual Arts
Principles of Chinese Painting
Films: (Films will be
viewed in extra sessions, typically on Monday or Tuesday evenings.)
The Battleship Potemkin (S. Eisenstein)
Ghost in the Shell (Toshihiko Nishikubo)
The Golem (Paul Wegener, Carl Boese)
Impromptu (J. Lapine)
The Matrix (Larry Wachowski, Andy Wachowski)
Week
Worlds in Collision: The
Ptolemaic Cosmos and The Copernican Revolution . A Medieval backdrop: Giotto's Life of Christ, Giotto's
Madonnas, The Renaissance frame for modern
European culture: Raphael's
Madonnas, The
School of Athens, Leonardo's paintings;
Pico’s Oration on the
Dignity of Man. Mannerism: Parmigianino;
Northern Renaissance, Christian humanism and the scientific revolution,
creativity and conflict in the formation of modern Europe: Fiero II, ch. 19: Northern
Renaissance art: Dürer: Revelation of St John; Engravings
(1520-1528); Grünewald: Isenheim Altarpiece (1515); compare Massacio’s
Renaissance Trinity
(1425-1428); Bosch's Garden: Breugel: Paintings
Protest and Reform: Luther’s “Address to the German
Nobility”; Northern Renaissance literature: from
Erasmus, In
Praise of Folly, More Utopia; Cervantes,
Don Quixote (Quijote), Montaigne On
Cannibals; Shakespeare, selections
from Hamlet and Othello, Plays Online. The Globe Theatre. Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Response
1.
The Scientific Revolution:
Philosophy and the origins of modernity: Descartes, from Meditations on First
Philosophy, Cahoone 29-40. Bacon, Locke see Bjorn's Philosophers Online; Isaac
Newton; Fiero pp. 582-589; the impact of the sciences on the arts, Fiero
pp. 589-599. The Baroque in the Protestant north, Fiero, ch.
22: Rubens; van Dyck;
Rembrandt;
Wren; literature: the King James Bible, Donne,
5 Feb. 3-5
Absolutism and the French Aristocracy: Versailles, the
aristocratic baroque versus French neoclassical style; aristocratic styles in
Europe— Rigaud, Velázquez, Analysis
of Las Meninas; Foucault's
Commentary on Las Meninas (PDF format); Rubens,
van Dyck; literature, from Molière’s Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme.
Absolutism and aristocratic styles beyond Europe, Islamic Architecture, the Ottoman
Empire: Persian Art,
The Safavids; Isfahan, Iran; the multicultural Moghul
Art, India, architecture, the Taj Mahal; Chinese poetry of the T’ang Dynasty; Chinese imperial styles, the Ming Dynasty,
Ming
Painting, Calligraphy,
Decorative
Art; Hall of
Supreme Harmony; Forbidden
City tour; Qing Dynasty; Principles of Chinese
Painting; Japanese imperial styles, the Tokugawa dynasty and Japan in the Edo Period;
The Woodblock Print: Hiroshige;
art screens by Korin, woodblock prints by Sharaku et al., scroll by Ekaku,
haiku by Bashō; Zen Buddhism, the Tea Ceremony; Tea and Zen Buddhism; Japanese Buddhist Gardens; also see
Chanoyu
(The Japanese Tea Ceremony); Japanese Painting; two
traditional Buddhist sources: Dhammapada
and The
Diamond Sutra; about The Diamond Sutra;
Fiero, ch. 21. Indian Music; Chinese Music; Japanese Musical
Instruments; World Music
Archive Response 4.
The Enlightenment and the limits of reason. Fiero, ch. 25. Equiano, from Equiano’s
Travels; Olaudah Equiano online; Wheatley, “On Being Brought
from
8 February 24-26
18th century art and music, the Rococo: Bouchet,
more Bouchet, Watteau; Fragonard; Neoclassical: Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, David: Oath of the Horatii; Ingres,
Angelica
Kaufmann, Kauffmann
Self-Portrait, styles in painting, architecture, sculpture; Satire in the
works of William
Hogarth; orchestral, classical music Haydn ; Mozart; The Romantic view of nature: Fiero, Ch. 27:
Wordsworth, Turner, Shelley, Keats; nature in Chinese literature and art: Shen Zhou: Landscape, Bridge, Poet on
Mountaintop; Shen
Fu’s “Six Chapters from a Floating Life”
9 March 3-7 Spring
Break
10 March 10-12
Midterm Essay Due . Romanticism and Classicism in Beethoven's Symphony No. 5; European Romantic landscape painting: Blake, Constable, Turner; transcendentalism, Emerson, Thoreau; Pre Civil War American Art; Post Civil War American Art; the portraiture of , the romantic individualism of Whitman (Eakins Portrait); American landscape painting, Cole: Falls at Kaaterskill, Audubon: Eagle, Bierstadt: Emigrants, Church: Niagra Falls; Catlin: Indian, Native American Art; Explore Native American Art and literature.Early 19th-century thought: Hegel, “Absolute Freedom and Terror,” Cahoon pp. 83-90; dialectics, Fiero, pp. 701-702; Shelley, A Defense of Poetry.
Hegel continued: handout on Philosophy of Right. Guest discussion with Dr. Tunick. Romantic Heroism, Fiero, ch. 28; Romanticism in art,
music and literature, Fiero, ch. 29: Goya; The Disasters of
War; humanity and nature in Mary
Shelley and Goethe. Romanticism versus
science: Goethe and Shelley, vs.
12 March 24-26 Marx
& Engels, “Bourgeois and Proletarians,” from The Communist Manifesto; Colonialism,
Realism, and the Modernist Turn, Nietzsche, “Natural History of Morals,” Genalogy of Morals,” Will to Power, Cahoone pp. 102-135; Baudelaire, “The Painter of Modern
Life”; Weber, from The Protestant Ethic
and the Spirit of Capitalism.
13 March 31 to April
2
Modernization and the turn toward abstraction: paintings by Manet,
Luncheon
on the Grass; Homer, architecture by Sullivan, poetry by Mallarmé, music by Debussy; impressionism and
post-impressionism, Monet,
Later
Monet; Renoir, Renoir again; Pissarro, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Degas.
Japanese art and the shaping of modernism:
Woodblock prints by Kunisada, Hokusai,
Hiroshige; Woodblock
Prints; Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Kiyonubu,
Mary Cassatt; Sculpture by Degas and Rodin.
Colonialism and the arts: contributions from Africa and Oceania: Yoruba
sculpture. Paintings by Van Gogh, Gauguinm, Cézanne.
Fiero, ch. 31.
Art
Nouveau & Architecture; Art Nouveau and the
City; Response 9.
The triumph of Modernism in early 20th century
arts and letters: the cubism of Braque and Picasso; Futurism—Boccioni and Duchamp; Fauvism--Matisse abstraction
in Brancusi, Weston, Mondrian;
non-objectivist art, Kandinsky organic versus mechanistic architecture,
Wright and Le Corbusier; the music of Igor Fyodorovich
Stravinsky (1882-1971); the structuralist turn. Marinetti,
Manifesto of Futurism; Saussure, “Course in General Linguistics”; Weber, “Science
as a Vocation”; Le Corbusier, from Towards
a New Architecture, Cahoone pp. 118-138; Freud,
from Civilization and its Discontents, C 219-225. Fiero, ch.
32; excerpts from Proust, Kafka, ee
cummings; painting by Munch, Kirchner, Chagall, de Chirico,
Duchamp,
Klee;
the Surrealism of Miró, Magritte, more Magritte; Dali's Last Supper; Dali
Museum, St. Petersburg: Women
and Surrealism: Frida Kahlo, O’Keeffe; Surrealist and
Dadaist photography, Höch. Film: The Golem. Fiero, ch.
33. Response
10.
15 April 14-16
Total War, totalitarianism, and the Quest for Meaning in the
arts: Fiero, chs. 34-35 to p. 895. Film: The Battleship Potemkin. The poetry of
Wilfred Owen Randall Jarrell; from Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front; Strakov and Soviet art:
Emancipated Women Build Socialism!
The murals of Diego Rivera and T.H. Benton, photography by Dorothea Lange,
Picasso’s
Final Essays are due
by 12:30 PM, Monday April 28th (Our regularly scheduled exam period is
FRIDAY APRIL 25, 10:30 to 1:00 PM; so that you will have more time to complete your final essay, I
will hold a class session from 12:30 to 1:50 on Monday, April 30th, to collect final papers and
discuss your work.)
