SHIMER COURSES
Reading Lists and links to Related Toolkits (following descriptions) for each of Shimer's Core Curriculum Courses:
The Humanities
The Natural Sciences
The Social Sciences
Basic and Advanced Integrative Studies
THE HUMANITIES
The four core humanities courses acquaint students with both the imaginative representations and systematic explorations of the conditions of human existence. Seminal works by philosophers, theologians, and historians are read and discussed. As students learn to recognize and understand the techniques of persuasion used in the readings, they apply that understanding to their oral and written communication.
HUMANITIES 1: Art and 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. Artists shape that response through the particular way they employ the forms and elements we investigate in the course. This 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. The aim is to sensitize the ear and the eye to those elements. 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. Actual works of art and pieces of music serve as the primary texts of Humanities 1. The learning process is enhanced by trips to concerts and museums in Chicago, as well as 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.
Reading List: HUMANITIES 1
Plato, “Ion”
Balzac, “The Unknown Masterpiece”
Kafka, “A Hunger Artist”
Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception
Cooper, Learning to Listen
Copland, What To Listen for in Music
Taylor, Learning to Look
Related Toolkits: HUMANITIES 1
Perspective, Alberti and the Annunciation of Fra Angelico
The Book of Kells and Worship of Language
Ways to Read Botticelli's Primavera
Bruegel's Parables
Caravaggio's Emmaus Paintings
Caravaggio, Narcissus, and the Subject of Painting
Cezanne's Portrait of Gustave Geffroy
Chardin and the Still Life
Cimabue, Form and Movement
Light and Nature in Turner and Constable
Crucifixion (Crivelli 1480s)
Escher and Impossible Spaces
Giotto and the Betrayal of Christ
Hokusai, Hiroshige and Views of Mt. Fuji
Perspective and Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper
Figures in a Landscape: the Fete Champetre and Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe
Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne
Uccello, Machiavelli, and the Art of War
Perspective and the Hunt for Meaning in Uccello
HUMANITIES 2: Poetry, Drama, and Fiction
Humanities 2 provides an introduction to literary forms: lyric, narrative, and epic poetry, drama, and prose fiction. 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 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 and broaden outlooks at the same time that it affords practice in writing clearly. Faculty work intensively with students in their writing. (Prerequisite: Integrative Studies l)
Reading List: HUMANITIES 2
Homer, Odyssey
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex and Antigone
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
O’Connor, short stories
Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Norton Anthology of Poetry
Related Toolkits: HUMANITIES 2
Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne
What the Parthenon Tells Us that Greek Literature Does Not
Bruegel's Parables
HUMANITIES 3: Philosophy and Theology (Ancient to Early Modern)
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 that of the student. (Prerequisite: Humanities 1 and 2)
Reading List: HUMANITIES 3
Plato, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Symposium
The Bible
Anselm, Proslogion
Augustine, Confessions
Teresa of Avila, Life
Descartes, Meditations
Pascal, Pensees
Locke, Essay on Human Understanding
Related Toolkits: HUMANITIES 3
Perspective, Alberti and the Annunciation of Fra Angelico
The Book of Kells and Worship of Language
Caravaggio's Emmaus Paintings
Chardin and the Still Life
Cimabue, Form and Movement
David and the Death of Socrates
Giotto and the Betrayal of Christ
Goya and the Sleep of Reason
Perspective and Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper
HUMANITIES 4: Critical Evaluation in the Humanities (Enlightenment to Present)
In this course, significant works in the humanities from the 18th century onward are studied. This course serves to unify the previous Humanities courses by employing the disciplines (art, music, literature, philosophy, and theology) they embody. The course is also intended 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: HUMANITIES 4
Kant, Critique of Judgment (selections),"What is Enlightenment?"
Schiller, On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Kierkegaard, “Fear and Trembling”
Arnold, Culture and Anarchy
Nietzsche, Birth of Tragedy, Beyond Good and Evil
Buber, I and Thou
Langer, Feeling and Form
Auerbach, "Odysseus' Scar”
Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations
Bernstein, The Unanswered Question
Related Toolkits: HUMANITIES 4
Atget and Absolute Reality
Caravaggio, Narcissus, and the Subject of Painting
Escher and Impossible Spaces
Girodet's Endymion and Barthes' S/Z
Goya and the Sleep of Reason
Figures in a Landscape: the Fete Champetre and Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe
Ambivalent Imitation: Plato's Republic and Myron's Athena and Marsyas
Sullivan, Weber and Metaphors for Modernity
Velazquez's Las Meninas and Foucault
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THE NATURAL SCIENCES
Appreciation and understanding of science as a human activity, along with the technical competence to work with the language and models used in science, are goals of the Natural Sciences sequence. The student travels from the static world of nineteenth-century chemistry through the evolutionary world-view of Darwin to catch a glimpse of the evolution of atoms and proteins in the twentieth century. The student considers the essence of light and color in the study of animals and plants, prisms and relativity, and quantum jumps. Emphasis is placed upon developing an understanding not only of the conclusions reached by scientists but also of the methods used in reaching those conclusions.
NATURAL SCIENCES 1: Laws and Models in Chemistry
Historical and logical methods are used to understand and analyze the atomic theory of matter. The basic question of the course is: What is the world made of? Scientific models which purport to answer this question have historically been classified under the science of chemistry. Hence, Natural Sciences 1 is a chemistry course that begins with the Ancient Greek philosophers and continues into the early twentieth century. It begins with the idea that matter is composed of Thales’ one element or Empedocles’ four elements, and end with Mendeleev’s periodic table of some ninety-odd elements ordered in terms of weight. The course focuses upon several key concepts, such as weight, structure, and complexity, in an attempt to understand the material basis of the world.
Reading List: NATURAL SCIENCES 1
Aristotle, Physics
Kirk & Raven, Presocratics
Lucretius, On the Nature of the Universe
Lavoisier, Elements of Chemistry
Bacon, New Organon
Cannizzaro, Sketch of a Course in Chemical Philosophy
Selections from:
Boyle, Avogadro, Gay-Lussac, Joule, Pascal,
DuLong, Stahl, Priestley, Rumford, Dalton
NATURAL SCIENCES 2: Evolution, Genetics and Animal Behavior
Natural Sciences 2 explores the interaction amongst living organisms. Consideration is given to the level of genetic units within the organism, the level of species, the environmental level, and the level of human concern. The concept of evolution provides groundwork for this inquiry into biological organization.
Readings are organized so as to provide movement from general theoretical viewpoints to biological precision and back to the more general. The relationships between evolution, on the one hand, and cellular organization, genetics, the environment, animal behavior, and philosophical thought, on the other hand, are foci for discussion.
Reading List: NATURAL SCIENCES 2
Aristotle, On the Soul, Parts of Animals
Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy
Darwin, Origin of Species
Mendel, “Experiments in Plant Hybridization”
Lorenz, On Aggression
Goodall, Through a Window
Gould, Panda's Thumb
NATURAL SCIENCES 3: Light, Motion and Scientific Explanation
Within the context of the physical sciences this course explores the nature of scientific explanation. We examine through original source materials the development of the theories of falling bodies, gravitation, light, electromagnetic forces, and relativity. The investigation of physical theories leads the student to answer the crucial scientific question: What phenomena need to be explained? How are they explained? What constitutes a satisfactory explanation? What is the nature of physical reality? (Prerequisite: Natural Sciences 1 and Integrative Studies 2)
Reading List: NATURAL SCIENCES 3
Galileo, Two New Sciences
Newton, Opticks, Philosophy of Nature
Einstein and Infeld, Evolution of Physics
Einstein, Relativity
Selections from:
Oersted, Huygens, Young, Fresnel, DuFay,
Franklin, Maxwell
Related Toolkits: NATURAL SCIENCES 3
Light and Nature in Turner and Constable
NATURAL SCIENCES 4: Quantum Physics and Molecular Genetics
Natural Sciences 4 focuses on the question: What is life? In searching for an answer, students come to an understanding of modern quantum physics. They examine the complexity of DNA and RNA and the causal relationship of those substances to the laws of genetics studied in Natural Sciences 2. The concept of evolution is widened to include not only the microscopic (molecular evolution) but also the macroscopic (the universe as a whole). The course culminates in an extension of biological inquiry to the levels of knowledge and human interaction. (Prerequisite: Natural Sciences 2 and 3)
Reading List: NATURAL SCIENCES 4
Schoedinger, What is Life?
Heisenberg, "Science in the Twentieth Century"
Gamow, Thirty Years that Shook Physics
Keller, A Feeling for the Organism
Feynman, QED
Dyson, Origins of Life
Margulis, Origins of Sex
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THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
The four courses in Shimer’s core Social Sciences sequence attempt to organize human experiences and analyze them in a disciplined manner. Social Sciences 1 delves into sociology, psychology, and anthropology in order to address questions concerning the nature of society and the individual. Social Sciences 2 introduces the student to several main currents of thought in the Western political tradition. Social Sciences 3 brings together the perspectives of the first two courses in order to consider critical studies of twentieth-century society. An examination of what it means for social and political texts to claim scientific validity is the chief focus of Social Sciences 4.
SOCIAL SCIENCES 1: Society, Culture and Personality
This course concerns the relationship of the individual human being to the society of which he or she is a member. By critically studying this relationship, we ask whether the individual is really free or determined by society’s norms, and whether these norms themselves might be a product of individual creation. Other considerations in the course include the development of personality and the role of culture. (Prerequisite: Integrative Studies 1)
Reading List: SOCIAL SCIENCES 1
Benedict, Patterns of Culture
Freud, lectures on psychoanalysis
Piaget, Moral Judgment of the Child
Kohlberg, "Moral Stages and Moralization"
Chodorow, "Family Structure and Feminine Personality"
Gilligan, In a Different Voice
Durkheim, Suicide
Marx, selections
Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
DuBois, Souls of Black Folk
Related Toolkits: SOCIAL SCIENCES 1
The Book of Kells and Worship of Language
Bruegel's Parables
Hokusai, Hiroshige and Views of Mt. Fuji
Sullivan, Weber and Metaphors for Modernity
SOCIAL SCIENCES 2: The Western Political Tradition
Social Sciences 2 concerns political judgment and the values which underpin it. The search for the “good life” through politics has been a human quest since antiquity. One’s education as a citizen of the state is the foundation of the classical formulation of a liberal arts education. The central objective of this course is the education of such citizens, those who participate through public judgment in shaping the political world. Such an education requires an understanding of the founding documents of the American political system as well as the seminal works in Western thought.
Reading List: SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
Plato, The Republic
Aristotle, Politics
Aquinas, “Treatise on Law”
Machiavelli, The Prince
Hobbes, Leviathan
Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws
Locke, Second Treatise on Civil Government
Rousseau, Social Contract
Smith, Wealth of Nations
Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women
United States Declaration of Independence
United States Constitution
The Federalist Papers
Related Toolkits: SOCIAL SCIENCES 2
Uccello, Machiavelli, and the Art of War
Ambivalent Imitation: Plato's Republic and Myron's Athena and Marsyas
What the Parthenon Tells Us that Greek Literature Does Not
SOCIAL SCIENCES 3: Modern Theories of State and Society
Social Science 2 aims at a further understanding of the conceptual content of the social sciences and how such concepts have been applied in modern social and political life. Nineteenth and twentieth century works suggest various ways of comprehending the social, psychological, economic, and political structure of the modern world. (Prerequisite: Social Sciences 1 and 2)
Reading List: SOCIAL SCIENCES 3
de Tocqueville, On Democracy in America
Hegel, Philosophy of Right
Marx, selections
Mill, On Liberty
Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
Sartre, Dirty Hands
de Beauvoir, Second Sex
Arendt, Human Condition
Fanon, Wretched of the Earth
SOCIAL SCIENCES 4: Methodology of the Social Sciences
This final course of the sequence examines the conceptual framework and methodology of the various disciplines of the social sciences. We turn from the examination of the structural and empirical makeup of social and political reality to the modes of inquiry that have been employed in the works read in the previous social sciences courses. All the old questions are reexamined in light of what kinds of questions they are, and which answers to such questions can claim scientific validity. (Prerequisite: Social Sciences 3)
Reading List: SOCIAL SCIENCES 4
Durkheim, Rules of Sociological Method
Weber, Methodology of the Social Sciences
Milgram, “Obedience to Authority”
Winch, Idea of a Social Science
Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia
Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Foucault, Discipline and Punish
Geertz, Interpretation of Cultures
Related Toolkits: SOCIAL SCIENCES 4
Bruegel's Parables
Hokusai, Hiroshige and Views of Mt. Fuji
Velazquez's Las Meninas and Foucault
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BASIC INTEGRATIVE STUDIES
The Basic Integrative Studies Courses develop the skills that are held by the College to be necessary for individuals to regard themselves as educated. These skills include systematic reasoning, critical inquiry, and apt expression in writing and speech.
INTEGRATIVE STUDIES 1: Analysis, Logic and Rhetoric
This course addresses the question, How do we see the world and what factors shape our vision? To this end, students are trained in rigorous, close textual readings of original sources in the Humanities, Natural Sciences, and Social Sciences. The goals of the course include the development of discussion, writing, and analytical skills. Students whose skills in these areas are already strong receive credit for this course based on their performance on the IS 1 placement examination after successfully completing either Social Sciences 1 or Humanities 2.
Reading List: INTEGRATIVE STUDIES 1
Abbott, Flatland
Gilman, “Yellow Wallpaper”
United States Constitution
Selected Supreme Court cases
Plato, Meno
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
INTEGRATIVE STUDIES 2: The Nature and Creation of Mathematics
Integrative Studies 2 is devoted to the development of an understanding and appreciation of mathematics. The student studies the axiomatic method by examining various mathematical and geometrical systems throughout written history. The student learns the basic skills of accuracy in the use of terms, rigor in reasoning, and precision in expression. In dealing with fundamental mathematics, the course introduces the student to concepts that are useful for understanding and appreciating other branches of knowledge. Logic and axiomatic systems are studied within the contexts of finite, Euclidean, and non-Euclidean geometries. An application of mathematics to the world of experience is included through discussion of the geometric aspect of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. Other topics—such as analytic geometry and inductive reasoning, arithmetic, number, paradox, and symbolic logic—are also considered. Unlike Integrative Studies 1, Integrative Studies 2 may not be bypassed through examination or transfer credit.
Reading List: INTEGRATIVE STUDIES 2
Euclid, Elements, Vol. 1
Aristotle, Posterior Analytics
Descartes, Rules for the Direction of the Mind
Descartes, Discourse on the Method
Einstein, Relativity
Lobachevsky, “Theory of Parallels”
Nagel and Newman, Gödel’s Proof
ADVANCED INTEGRATIVE STUDIES
INTEGRATIVE STUDIES 5 and 6: History and Philosophy of Western Civilization
Integrative Studies 5 and 6 are designed as a unified, full-year sequence to be taken in the student’s last full year of residence. Further, they emphasize the essential unity of the Shimer curriculum. The works in this sequence are chosen for their historical significance and their potential for integrative analysis. They are arranged chronologically in order to demonstrate their historical relationship to one another. (Prerequisites: Final-Year status and successful completion of the Basic Studies Comprehensive Examination.)
Reading List: INTEGRATIVE STUDIES 5
Inanna
The Epic of Gilgamesh
Homer, Iliad
Hesiod, Theogony
The Bible
Sappho, Poetry
Aeschylus, Oresteia
Plato, Republic
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, On the Heavens
Herodotus, Persian Wars
Thucydides, Peloponnesian War
Virgil, Aeneid
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Augustine, City of God
Beowulf
Aquinas, Summa Theologica
Dante, Divine Comedy
Ptolemy, Almagest
Related Toolkits: INTEGRATIVE STUDIES 5
Laokoön: Sculpture and Story
Homer's Shield of Achilles and the Etruscan Chariot
Purgatorio, 28
Ways to Read Botticelli's Primavera
History Painting without a Source: David's Oath of the Horatii
Giotto and Dante
Ambivalent Imitation: Plato's Republic and Myron's Athena and Marsyas
What the Parthenon Tells Us that Greek Literature Does Not
Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne
Reading List: INTEGRATIVE STUDIES 6
Pisan, Treasure of the City of Ladies
Chaucer, Canterbury Tales
Luther, “95 Theses”
More, Utopia
Shakespeare, Tempest
Galileo, "The Starry Messenger"
Bacon, New Organon
Milton, Paradise Lost
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Hume, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Kant, Prolegomena to any Future
Metaphysics, Foundation of the
Metaphysics of Morals
Goethe, Faust
Hegel, Reason in History
Nietzsche, Use and Abuse of History
Copernicus, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres
Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy
Related Toolkits: INTEGRATIVE STUDIES 6
Caravaggio, Narcissus, and the Subject of Painting
Chardin and the Still Life
David and the Death of Socrates
Goya and the Sleep of Reason
Figures in a Landscape: the Fete Champetre and Manet's Dejeuner sur l'herbe
Light and Nature in Turner and Constable
Velazquez's Las Meninas and Foucault
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