2014-2015 Catalog

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 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 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. 2013–14 readings for this Core sequence consisted of philosophical and literary texts from different periods, organized around the themes of “Human Being” and “Citizen” (from Plato’s Apology). In the Autumn Quarter, students read Genesis, Plato (Symposium and Apology), and Homer (Iliad). Readings for the Winter Quarter were Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Augustine’s Confessions, and Dante’s Inferno. The texts for the Spring Quarter were Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Kant's "What Is Enlightenment?" and Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, a selection of American political and literary documents, and J. M. Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians.

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 is devoted to the cultivation of the art of interpretation through the close reading of objects across a broad range of times and places, from the Homeric epic to contemporary film, folk tale to museum. In each case the goal is to work outward from the textual details—construing the term text generously so as to include any form of cultural production—and develop insight into the local emergence and global circulation of objects of interpretation. In the process the sequence explores questions about memory, home, and belonging; the various historical forms of cultural production, from epic to folk tale, music, film, and novels; about the challenges of translation to responsible interpretation; about texts as formative sources of human community, inter-personal obligation, and transcendence; about hybridity and the legacy of colonialism; and, of course, about the role of humanistic inquiry in addressing all these questions. The year is divided into three conceptual themes that allow us to explore the above questions: homelands, travel, and exchange. Readings in the past have included Homer’s The Odyssey, The Arabian Nights, Honoré de Balzac’s Pierre Grassou, Harriet Jacobs’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen, Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, Zora Neale Hurston’s Of Mules and Men, T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane, Tomás Rivera’s And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, Teresa Cha’s Dictee, Jamaica Kincaid’s A Small Place, the Coen Brothers’ O Brother, Where Art Thou?, Haruki Murakami’s Sputnik Sweetheart, Alfonso Cuarón’s y tu mamá también, a visit to a museum, graphic novels, music, visual art, and cultural criticism.

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 literature, cinema studies, philosophy, music and sound studies, theater, and the visual arts. We construe "aesthetics" broadly: as a study in sensory perception, value, and the close analysis of artistic objects. "Medium," too, is understood along a spectrum of meanings that range from the materials of art (words, sound, paint, stone, film, air, light) to various technical apparatuses and communications systems (print, photography, film, radio, television, and digital media). Our central questions include: What is the relation between media and various 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, music, and cinema? What happens when we adapt or translate objects into other media: painting into photography, writing into film, or music into video? This not a course in “media studies” in any narrow sense. It is rooted in a broad range of criticism and philosophy by such writers as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Bazin, Derrida, Mulvey, Baudrillard, and Barthes. It ranges across historical eras to consider aesthetic objects of many kinds: films, paintings, photographs, novels, plays, stories, poems, songs, and albums. Occasionally, 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 language--and more specifically, of the ways we, as speakers or writers, use it to communicate meaning.�

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 careeradvancement.uchicago.edu/jobs-internships-research/internships-for-credit. 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 025 units of credit 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 20710-20711-20712-20713. At the Piano I-II-III-IV.

Keyboard Studies for Non-Music Majors

HUMA 24005. Understanding Wisdom. 100 Units.

Thinking about the nature of wisdom goes back to Aristotle and has changed in many ways over the history of thought. However, in modern times the term "wisdom" has appeared less in popular discourse except as a synonym for being "smart" or "clever." This course examines the basic question of how wisdom has been defined and how the definition has changed. We examine whether wisdom really exists or whether it is simply a creation of mythology or fiction or wishful thinking. Further, the course considers whether and how wisdom can be studied scientifically, that is, how it can be measured and experimentally manipulated. Readings are drawn from philosophy, classics, history, behavioral economics, neuroscience, and psychology. In addition to considering the theoretical concept of wisdom and how it can be studied scientifically, the course explores how concepts of wisdom can be applied in business, education, medicine, and the law. We conclude by discussing the notion of how practical wisdom can be applied in daily life to increase human flourishing.

Instructor(s): H. Nusbaum, B. Keysar, B. Hoeckner, A. Henly     Terms Offered: Autumn
Prerequisite(s): Third- or fourth-year standing
Equivalent Course(s): BPRO 24000,PSYC 24050,PSYC 34050

HUMA 25204. Posthuman Condition: Robots, Internet, Mind. 100 Units.

How have we become posthuman—if we are no longer solely "human"? This course investigates cultural logics of how one of our more recent machines—the digital computer—provides reciprocal models between people and their machines, such as robots, laptops, smart phones, the internet. How do our capabilities for communication inform our databases and social networks, and likewise, how do emergent machine functionalities influence our technogenesis as we learn not only to think and do things with digital media, but also to learn with them? In relation to myths, games, rituals, and dreams of learning, we examine kinesthetic as well as inter- and intra-personal intelligences in human embodiment and their digital replication, with a focus less on information than on meaning and ideologies.

Instructor(s): M. Browning     Terms Offered: Autumn 2014
Equivalent Course(s): HIPS 25204

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.