HUMA 11000-11100-11200. Readings in World Literature I-II-III.

This sequence examines the relationship between the individual and society in a rich and exciting selection of literary texts from across the globe. We address the challenges faced by readers confronting foreign literatures, reading across time and cultures, and reading texts in translation. We focus on two major literary themes and genres: Epic Poetry (Autumn Quarter) and Biography/Autobiography (Winter Quarter). Selected readings may include: Homer’s Odyssey, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Ancient Indian Mahabharata, Saint Augustine’s Confessions, Vladimir Nabokov’s Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited, and Wole Soyinka’s Ake: The Years of Childhood. Students wishing to take the third quarter of this sequence in the Spring Quarter choose among a selection of topics (e.g., “Gender and Literature,” “Crime Fiction and Murder Mysteries,” “Reading the Middle Ages: Europe and Asia,” or “Poetry”)

HUMA 11500-11600-11700. Philosophical Perspectives on the Humanities I-II-III.

This sequence considers philosophy in two lights: as an ongoing series of arguments addressed to certain fundamental questions about the place of human beings in the world, and as a historically situated discipline interacting with and responding to developments in other areas of thought and culture. Readings tend to divide between works of philosophy and contemporaneous works of literature, but they may also include texts of scientific, religious, or legal practice.

HUMA 12000-12100-12200. Greek Thought and Literature I-II-III.

The first two quarters of this sequence are designed as a complete unit, and they approach their subject matter both generically and historically. First, they offer an introduction to humanistic inquiry into the most important genres of Western literature: epic poetry (Homer); tragedy (Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides); historiography (Herodotus and Thucydides); philosophic dialogue (Plato); and comedy (Aristophanes). Secondly, they offer a broad introduction to ancient Greek thought and culture, which aims at understanding what ancient works meant to their original authors and audiences as well as how they reflect the specific historical conditions of their composition.

HUMA 12300-12400-12500. Human Being and Citizen I-II-III.

Socrates asks, “Who is a knower of such excellence, of a human being and of a citizen?” We are all concerned to discover what it means to be an excellent human being and an excellent citizen, and to learn what a just community is. This course explores these and related matters, and helps us to examine critically our opinions about them. To this end, we read and discuss seminal works of the Western tradition, selected both because they illumine the central questions and because, read together, they form a compelling record of human inquiry. Insofar as they force us to consider different and competing ways of asking and answering questions about human and civic excellence, it is impossible for us to approach these writings as detached spectators. Instead, we come to realize our own indebtedness to our predecessors and are inspired to continue their task of inquiry. In addition to providing a deeper appreciation of who we are as human beings and citizens, this course aims to cultivate the liberating skills of careful reading, writing, speaking, and listening. 2010-11 readings for this Core sequence consisted of philosophical and literary texts of from different periods, organized around the themes of “Human Being” and “Citizen” (from Plato’s Apology). In the Fall, students read a selection from Genesis, Plato (Symposium and Meno, in addition to the Apology), and the Iliad. Readings for the Winter were Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Augustine’s Confessions, and Dante’s Inferno. The texts for the Spring were Shakespeare’s King Lear, Kant (Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals and “What Is Enlightenment?”), followed by Henry James’s novel What Maisie Knew.

HUMA 13500-13600-13700. Introduction to the Humanities I-II-III.

This sequence emphasizes writing, both as an object of study and as a practice. As we study the texts of the course, we pay special attention to the nature and effects of different writing structures and styles: How does the written form of a text influence the way that we interpret it? The texts raise enduring humanistic issues, such as the nature of justice, the scope of freedom, and the stability of knowledge. As we consider these questions, we consider how our views are shaped by the very language used to ask and to answer. This sequence also emphasizes writing as practice. Over the course of the year, students average one writing assignment per week, and we discuss these assignments in seminar groups of five or six. The writing workload is significant: this is not a course in remedial writing; rather it is a course for students who are particularly interested in writing or who want to become particularly proficient writers. Readings for this course are selected not thematically or chronologically but to serve the focus on writing.

HUMA 14000-14100-14200. Reading Cultures: Collection, Travel, Exchange I-II-III.

This sequence introduces methods of literary, visual, and social analysis by addressing the formation and transformation of cultures across a broad chronological and geographic field. Our objects of study range from the Renaissance epic to contemporary film, the fairy tale to the museum. Hardly presuming that we know definitively what “culture” means, we examine paradigms of reading within which the very idea of culture emerged and changed.

HUMA 16000-16100-16200. Media Aesthetics: Image, Text, Sound I-II-III.

This three-quarter sequence introduces students to the skills, materials, and relationships of a variety of disciplines in the humanities, including literary and language study, philosophy, cinema studies, history, theater, and the arts. We construe "aesthetics" broadly: as a study in sensory perception, value, and the formal properties of artistic products. "Medium," too, is understood along a spectrum of meanings that range from the "material cause" of art (sounds for music, words for poetry) to the "instrumental cause" (the apparatus of writing, film, the broadcast media). Our central questions include: What is the relation between media and kinds of art? Can artistic uses of media be distinguished from non-artistic uses? What is the relation between media and human sensations and perceptions? How do media produce pity, fear or pleasure? Do we learn new ways of seeing and hearing through the devices involved in painting, photography and cinema? What happens when we adapt or "translate" objects into other media: painting into photography, writing into film, or music into words?  This not a course in "media studies" in any narrow sense. It is rooted in works of criticism and philosophy by such writers as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Freud, Lessing, Kracauer, Benjamin, and Barthes. We will range across historical eras to consider aesthetic objects of many kinds: films, paintings, photographs, novels, songs, poems, plays, and operas. In some instances, we ask questions about how the aesthetic object is situated in cultural history. More often, though, we will be fostering sensitivity to, and analysis of, the sensory, cognitive, and emotional shaping of the aesthetic experience as framed by the medium in which it occurs.

HUMA 17000-17100-17200. Language and the Human I-II-III.

Language is at the center of what it means to be human and is instrumental in most humanistic pursuits. With it, we understand others, describe, plan, narrate, learn, persuade, argue, reason, and think. This course aims to provoke us to critically examine common assumptions that determine our understanding of texts, of ourselves, and of others.

HUMA 19100. Humanities Writing Seminars. 000 Units.

These seminars introduce students to the analysis and practice of expert academic writing. Experts must meet many familiar standards for successful writing: clear style, logical organization, and persuasive argument. But because they work with specialized knowledge, experts also face particular writing difficulties: they must be clear about complexities and specific about abstractions; they must use uncomplicated organization for very complicated ideas; they must create straightforward logic for intricate arguments; they must be concise but not incomplete, direct but not simplistic; they must clarify the obscure but not repeat the obvious; and they must anticipate the demands of aggressively skeptical readers. The seminars do not repeat or extend the substantive discussion of the Humanities class; they use the discussions and assignments from those classes as a tool for the advanced study of writing. We study various methods not only for the construction of sophisticated and well-structured arguments but also for understanding the complications and limits of those arguments. These seminars also address issues of readership and communication within expert communities. As students present papers in the seminars, we can use the reactions of the audience to introduce the techniques experts can use to transform a text from one that serves the writer to one that serves the readers.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Note(s): These seminars are available only in combination with either a two- or a three-quarter general education sequence in the Humanities.

HUMA 02980. Practicum. 025 Units.

This course is for students who secure a summer internship. For details, visit frogs.uchicago.edu/internships/course_credit.cfm. Students write a short paper (two to three pages) and give an oral presentation reflecting on their internship experience.

Instructor(s): D. Spatz     Terms Offered: Summer
Note(s): Must be taken for P/F grading; students who fail to complete the course requirements will receive an F on their transcript (no W will be granted). Students receive .25 course credits at completion of course. Course meets once in Spring Quarter and once in Autumn Quarter. Course fee $150; students in need of financial aid should contact Susan Art at 702.8609.
Equivalent Course(s): SOSC 02980

HUMA 20710. At the Piano-I. Keyboard Studies for Non-Music Majors. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): C. Bohlman

HUMA 20711. At the Piano-II. Keyboard Studies for Non-Music Majors. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): C. Bohlman
Prerequisite(s): HUMA 20710 or consent of instructor

HUMA 20712. At the Piano-III. Keyboard Studies for Non-Music Majors. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): C. Bohlman
Prerequisite(s): HUMA 20710 or consent of instructor.

HUMA 20713. At the Piano-IV. Keyboard Studies for Non-Music Majors. 100 Units.

Instructor(s): C. Bohlman
Prerequisite(s): HUMA 20710 or consent of instructor.

HUMA 23000-23100-23320. Medieval Jewish History I-II-III.

This three-quarter sequence deals with the history of the Jews over a wide geographical and historical range. First-quarter work is concerned with the rise of early rabbinic Judaism and development of the Jewish communities in Palestine and the Eastern and Western diasporas during the first several centuries CE. Topics include the legal status of the Jews in the Roman world, the rise of rabbinic Judaism, the rabbinic literature of Palestine in that context, the spread of rabbinic Judaism, the rise and decline of competing centers of Jewish hegemony, the introduction of Hebrew language and culture beyond the confines of their original home, and the impact of the birth of Islam on the political and cultural status of the Jews. An attempt is made to evaluate the main characteristics of Jewish belief and social concepts in the formative periods of Judaism as it developed beyond its original geographical boundaries. Second-quarter work is concerned with the Jews under Islam, both in Eastern and Western Caliphates. Third-quarter work is concerned with the Jews of Western Europe from the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries.

HUMA 24900. Happiness. 100 Units.

From Plato to the present, notions of happiness have been at the core of heated debate in ethics and politics. Is happiness the ultimate good for human beings, the essence of the good life, or is morality somehow prior to it? Can it be achieved by all, or only by a fortunate few? These are some of the questions that this course engages, with the help of both classic and contemporary texts from philosophy, literature, and the social sciences. This course includes various video presentations and other materials stressing visual culture. (A)

Instructor(s): B. Schultz     Terms Offered: Autumn
Equivalent Course(s): GNDR 25000,PHIL 21400,PLSC 22700

HUMA 26303. The Human Condition: Self as Subject/Object/Machine. 100 Units.

Self, subject, object, individual, person, personality, identity: who or what are we human beings? In Western traditions, a modern conception of self has developed from the Cartesian universal and unhistorical subject to a subject objectivized by human sciences, by cultural divisions, by technologies of the self.  How do these kinds of 'self' serve (or don't serve) the modern state, economy, society, or the individual?  This course examines temporal, spatial, personal, and communal disciplines of media, work, and labor with regard to how human sciences configure subjects as objects of study and how machines serve as models of human being from clocks and engines to computers, robots, cyborgs, and networks.   

Instructor(s): M. Browning     Terms Offered: Autumn 2012
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 26302,LLSO 27703

HUMA 28109. What Is Enlightenment? 100 Units.

What is enlightenment? How does one become enlightened, and who is enlightened? In Euro-American civilization, the eighteenth-century Age of Enlightenment championed the powers of human reason against religion and superstition to achieve scientific progress. Buddhism in the nineteenth century was represented by the heirs of Enlightenment as a religion for the Enlightenment to the point of not being a religion at all. Both traditions offer pathways to freedom (or liberation?) that draw on our rational capabilities, and both sponsor the production of knowledge that re-visions our place in the world. But they seem to be opposed: how could reason reject “religious” beliefs but also take part in “religious” traditions that aim to bring certain kinds of persons into being? We compare the mental models, discourses, methods of analysis, world-images, and practices of these traditions of enlightenment to assess the kinds of disciplines that their theoreticians and practitioners acquire and use.

Instructor(s): M. Browning, Staff     Terms Offered: Spring
Prerequisite(s): Third or fourth-year standing.
Equivalent Course(s): BPRO 28100,RLST 23403

HUMA 29700. Reading Course. 100 Units.

Terms Offered: Autumn, Winter, Spring
Prerequisite(s): Consent of instructor and senior adviser.
Note(s): Students are required to submit the College Reading and Research Course Form.