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to read more | Humanities 1 - Art & Music
Humanities 1 investigates the elements and forms of the musical and visual arts. This course is primarily about the tasks of active listening and viewing, and of developing the ability to articulate one’s responses to works of art and music. The course is organized according to a layering principle, beginning with works that are “simple” in the sense that they underscore a particular element: melody, harmony, tonality in music; line, color, shape in the visual arts. As the course progresses, the works become more complex and the listening and viewing faculties are applied to works in which formal properties are paramount. The learning process is enhanced by trips to concerts and museums in Chicago, as well as by the study of works on aesthetics which explore the definition of art and the relationship of the artist to the work itself and to the audience. |
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Reading List
Plato, “Ion”
Honoré de Balzac, “The Unknown Masterpiece”
Franz Kafka, “A Hunger Artist”
Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception
Grosvenor W. Cooper, Learning to Listen
Aaron Copland, What to Listen for in Music
Joshua C. Taylor, Learning to Look
Art by Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Rembrandt van Rijn, and others
Music by Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig von Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and others
Humanities 2 - Poetry, Drama & Fiction
Humanities 2 provides an introduction to literary forms: lyric, narrative, and epic poetry; drama; short story; and novel. Literature is a way of representing the human condition. It is provocative because of its universals and because of its formal and rhetorical properties. Students in Humanities 2 articulate their responses to literature and think about the works as catalysts of those responses. They are also expected to come to terms with the works as both respondents and actors in the human drama that literature imaginatively depicts. Students write frequent short analytical and interpretive essays which increase comprehension, broaden outlooks, and afford practice in writing clearly. Faculty members work intensively with students on their writing. (Prerequisite: Integrative Studies 1)
Reading List
The Norton Anthology of Poetry
Homer, Odyssey
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex, Antigone
William Shakespeare, Hamlet
Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
Flannery O'Connor, short stories
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Humanities 3 - Philosophy & Theology
Humanities 3 serves as the student’s formal introduction to philosophy and theology prior to the 18th century. Concentrating on a few highly important works in each discipline, the course endeavors to isolate the distinctive purposes, problems, and methods characteristic of each. It also seeks to develop analytical skills appropriate to the examination of value systems, including the student’s. (Prerequisite: Humanities 1 and 2)
Reading List
Plato, "Apology", "Crito", "Phaedo", "Symposium"
The Holy Bible
St. Augustine, Confessions
St. Anselm of Canterbury, Proslogion
St. Teresa of Ávila, Autobiography/The Life of Saint Teresa of Ávila
René Descartes, Meditations
Blaise Pascal, Pensées
John Locke, Essay on Human Understanding
Humanities 4 - Critical Evaluation in the Humanities (Enlightenment to Present)
In this course, signficant works from the 18th century onward are studied. This course serves to unify the previous Huamnities courses by employing the disciplines they embody (art, music, literature, philosophy and theology). The course is also inteded to give the student an appreciation of the application of theory and methodology to the study of art, music, and literature.
(Prerequisite: Humanities 3)
Reading List
Erich Auerbach, “Odysseus’ Scar”
Susanne K. Langer, Feeling and Form
Martin Buber, I and Thou
Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy
Friedrich Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement (selections), “What Is Enlightenment?”
Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
Leonard Bernstein, The Unanswered Question
Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
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