Results for IHUM

First of a two quarter sequence. Through the metaphor of the journey, epic poems externalize the human quest for identity and self-definition: as the epic hero crosses the physical world and descends into the underworld, to visit the dead and seek counsel from them, he gradually comes closer to himself. The different goals of such journeys and the evolution of the epic hero as he struggles to reach his destination, with attention to how exile and alienation, the encounter with ancestors, the female voice, and divine guidance define the trajectories traced by the various epics in question.The diminished importance of the dead and the increased emphasis on the power of the living in various literary genres. How concepts of humanity and society are defined by the sense of rupture with the past, including a heightened importance given to innovation, the present, the living, and the everyday that contrasts with the formative power of the afterlife, tradition, and the dead.

Second of a two quarter sequence. Through the metaphor of the journey, epic poems externalize the human quest for identity and self-definition: as the epic hero crosses the physical world and descends into the underworld, to visit the dead and seek counsel from them, he gradually comes closer to himself. The different goals of such journeys and the evolution of the epic hero as he struggles to reach his destination, with attention to how exile and alienation, the encounter with ancestors, the female voice, and divine guidance define the trajectories traced by the various epics in question.The diminished importance of the dead and the increased emphasis on the power of the living in various literary genres. How concepts of humanity and society are defined by the sense of rupture with the past, including a heightened importance given to innovation, the present, the living, and the everyday that contrasts with the formative power of the afterlife, tradition, and the dead.

First in a two quarter sequence. How did the modern world come to be? The emergence of modernity from 1300 to the present. Demographic and religious transformations in Europe; the development of ideologies, social formations, and political institutions as they eventually crossed the Atlantic and were modified in the Americas; 20th-century social revolution and authoritarianism throughout Latin America. Students build an understanding of the modern world and engage with the creative/destructive tensions inherent in this long transformation. Readings include classics of imaginative literature, political thought, and historical criticism. Theorists who have confronted and analyzed the problem of the origins of capitalist modernity, such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber. Records of ordinary life, such as parish registers, wills and diaries illustrate changes in social and economic existence. Sources include materials drawn from literature, philosophy, economic and social theory, and primary source documents and visual media.

Second in a two quarter sequence. How did the modern world come to be? The emergence of modernity from 1300 to the present. Demographic and religious transformations in Europe; the development of ideologies, social formations, and political institutions as they eventually crossed the Atlantic and were modified in the Americas; 20th-century social revolution and authoritarianism throughout Latin America. Students build an understanding of the modern world and engage with the creative/destructive tensions inherent in this long transformation. Readings include classics of imaginative literature, political thought, and historical criticism. Theorists who have confronted and analyzed the problem of the origins of capitalist modernity, such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber. Records of ordinary life, such as parish registers, wills and diaries illustrate changes in social and economic existence. Sources include materials drawn from literature, philosophy, economic and social theory, and primary source documents and visual media.

How do men and women survive, physically, intellectually, creatively, spiritually in the world? Focus is on texts that imaginatively model strategies to overcome physical deprivation (such as enslavement, prison camp confinement, and sexual violence) and social oppression (such as religious persecution and gender discrimination). How does a legacy of psychic and social trauma manifest itself in the contemporary moment? How do people reach beyond survival and rise above the historical circumstances into which they are born? Sources include works from the 17th century to the present that look back to critical moments in the past. The texts confront events of political and psychological rupture: slavery, the Holocaust, Latin American dictators. History and memory, ritual and reality collide as characters confront the past and negotiate its meanings and its presence. Innovative strategies of survival represented in these works appear in forms such as physical resistance, bearing witness, purposeful manipulation, ritual communion, artistic challenge, cultural rebellion, or rhetorical suasion. Sources include drama, fiction, a graphic novel, and a slave narrative.

Two quarter sequence. Every day, each one of us faces problems about what to believe and how to act. Socrates began the tradition of philosophy by insisting that answers to these problems ought to be guided by reason¿that if we could only believe and act more rationally, our lives would be better for us overall. This course explores the fate of Socrates¿ proposal.nSome of our authors defend the power of reason to improve our lives. Others insist that purely rational principles demand too much of us, or else are insufficient to help us act well or reach important insights. Many writers focus on working out the proper relation between reason and the passions, or emotions. We will trace the fate of reason in several cultural traditions, thereby exploring the fundamental basis for our commitments about how to live, and for our most important beliefs about God, ourselves, the world, and our place within it.

Two quarter sequence. Every day, each one of us faces problems about what to believe and how to act. Socrates began the tradition of philosophy by insisting that answers to these problems ought to be guided by reason¿that if we could only believe and act more rationally, our lives would be better for us overall. This course explores the fate of Socrates¿ proposal.nSome of our authors defend the power of reason to improve our lives. Others insist that purely rational principles demand too much of us, or else are insufficient to help us act well or reach important insights. Many writers focus on working out the proper relation between reason and the passions, or emotions. We will trace the fate of reason in several cultural traditions, thereby exploring the fundamental basis for our commitments about how to live, and for our most important beliefs about God, ourselves, the world, and our place within it.

First in a two quarter sequence. Arts and Ideas will explore a broad sampling of cultural practices ¿ primarily dance and theater ¿ that use the human body as an art medium. From the critical perspectives of dance and drama history and theory, we will examine both established and emerging works. The focus will be on developing perceptual and interpretive skills for understanding how the performing arts have functioned historically and critically as key indexes to and challenging templates of cultural understanding. How can ¿we come to read the body as an art medium? What kinds of knowledge can a highly disciplined moving body reveal? What does it mean to re-present life through performance historically? How does a live performance work to construct the spectator who views it? How do we come to know ourselves through both watching and participating in performance?nn From romantic ballet and realist drama to the present ¿ including examples such as the Harlem Renaissance, the early-20th century European avant-garde, Happenings and the environmental theatre/dance experiments of 1960s New York, and new forms of ¿postdramatic¿ dance-theatre ¿ we will use performances as central texts for understanding the world. The class includes extensive viewing of performances in digital media and live venues as well as exhibitions at the Cantor Art Center. The syllabus will take advantage of leading artists visiting Stanford and the Bay Area during the winter and spring quarters.

Second in a two quarter sequence. Arts and Ideas will explore a broad sampling of cultural practices ¿ primarily dance and theater ¿ that use the human body as an art medium. From the critical perspectives of dance and drama history and theory, we will examine both established and emerging works. The focus will be on developing perceptual and interpretive skills for understanding how the performing arts have functioned historically and critically as key indexes to and challenging templates of cultural understanding. How can ¿we come to read the body as an art medium? What kinds of knowledge can a highly disciplined moving body reveal? What does it mean to re-present life through performance historically? How does a live performance work to construct the spectator who views it? How do we come to know ourselves through both watching and participating in performance?nn From romantic ballet and realist drama to the present ¿ including examples such as the Harlem Renaissance, the early-20th century European avant-garde, Happenings and the environmental theatre/dance experiments of 1960s New York, and new forms of ¿postdramatic¿ dance-theatre ¿ we will use performances as central texts for understanding the world. The class includes extensive viewing of performances in digital media and live venues as well as exhibitions at the Cantor Art Center. The syllabus will take advantage of leading artists visiting Stanford and the Bay Area during the winter and spring quarters.

Russia is where the most beautiful dreams and the ugliest nightmares of other places come true. There the doctrines of Christianity, Marxism, and now free-market capitalism, born elsewhere, have developed in fantastic ways, and borrowed artistic forms, from the novel to the ballet, have reached a new level. This course traces Russian culture over a millennium, focusing on the tensions that developed there between beauty and power, self and other, past and future. We start the winter with Biblical stories, folktales about princes and peasants, medieval icons and saints' lives, then turn to masterpieces of nineteenth-century literature. Alexander Pushkin transforms the bloody history of the Pugachev rebellion into a novella about disguise, power and love. Nikolai Gogol imagines an uneasy world where your own nose could leave your body to become your rival. Fedor Dostoevsky, in The Brothers Karamazov, questions why we trust the state, the church, the family, and language itself. Lev Tolstoy, in Hadji Murad, explores the margins of the ungovernable empire and the equally ungovernable interior of the self. At the end of the quarter, in the poetry of Blok and the music of Stravinsky, we hear the rhythm of violent revolution on its way.nnPoetic Justice maintains an extensive website at: www.stanford.edu/class/ihum28a.

Two quarter sequence. The difference between justice and law in 19th- and 20th-century Russian writers. Focus is on the notion of poetic justice: the artistic representation of order whether divine, natural, or human. Goal is to heighten awareness of familiar narratives, mythologies, ideas, and images, and to convey a sense of a long-established national culture with its own dynamic vision.

First in a two quarter sequence. Which is preferable: a life of thought or a life of action? Are the two necessarily in conflict, or is it possible to reconcile them? This course focuses on literary treatments of the ongoing debate over ¿the active life¿ versus ¿the contemplative life¿ as it is carried out in texts from the classical to the modern eras. While the debate itself is perennial, it takes on different forms and implications as it moves across changing literary, historical and philosophical contexts. The winter quarter will consider the debate as it is defined by classical authors, early Christian thinkers, and medieval mystical and literary texts, and is redefined in the Renaissance by humanist and posthumanist treatments of it. The spring quarter will consider the role of contemplation in an increasingly market-driven and secular world.

Second in a two quarter sequence. Which is preferable: a life of thought or a life of action? Are the two necessarily in conflict, or is it possible to reconcile them? This course focuses on literary treatments of the ongoing debate over ¿the active life¿ versus ¿the contemplative life¿ as it is carried out in texts from the classical to the modern eras. While the debate itself is perennial, it takes on different forms and implications as it moves across changing literary, historical and philosophical contexts. The winter quarter will consider the debate as it is defined by classical authors, early Christian thinkers, and medieval mystical and literary texts, and is redefined in the Renaissance by humanist and posthumanist treatments of it. The spring quarter will consider the role of contemplation in an increasingly market-driven and secular world.

First in a two quarter sequence. Are you concerned with fundamental questions about the human condition? Do you ask yourself whether your life is controlled more by your own free choices or by your genetic code? Do you wonder whether the universe is just or unjust? Do you worry whether a superpower can function without hubristic arrogance? If these sorts of issues seem central to your intellectual and personal explorations, this IHUM sequence will reveal to you that the ancient Mediterranean world was equally consumed with identical questions about the nature of human society and human existence. We will undertake our explorations by reading a wide and deep selection of important and influential literary texts from Greece and Rome, amplified by a smaller selection of texts from other cultures in the Mediterranean and the Near East. The sequence will be organized historically, with the winter quarter covering the period from c.2000BC to the fourth century BC, and the spring quarter continuing to the end of classical antiquity. In the winter term, drawing from both the Near East and Greece, creation texts, epic, lyric, tragedy, history, and philosophy will be studied. In the spring, the discussion will center on how the emergence of the Roman Empire transformed the ideas of the Greeks, as well as their adaptation by the early Christians.

Second in a two quarter sequence. Are you concerned with fundamental questions about the human condition? Do you ask yourself whether your life is controlled more by your own free choices or by your genetic code? Do you wonder whether the universe is just or unjust? Do you worry whether a superpower can function without hubristic arrogance? If these sorts of issues seem central to your intellectual and personal explorations, this IHUM sequence will reveal to you that the ancient Mediterranean world was equally consumed with identical questions about the nature of human society and human existence. We will undertake our explorations by reading a wide and deep selection of important and influential literary texts from Greece and Rome, amplified by a smaller selection of texts from other cultures in the Mediterranean and the Near East. The sequence will be organized historically, with the winter quarter covering the period from c.2000BC to the fourth century BC, and the spring quarter continuing to the end of classical antiquity. In the winter term, drawing from both the Near East and Greece, creation texts, epic, lyric, tragedy, history, and philosophy will be studied. In the spring, the discussion will center on how the emergence of the Roman Empire transformed the ideas of the Greeks, as well as their adaptation by the early Christians.

First in a two quarter sequence. In a world marked by rapid globalization and forward-looking technology, heritage presents a particular paradox. Increasingly, heritage sites are flashpoints in cultural and religious conflicts around the globe. Simultaneously heritage is viewed as a unifying force in nation-building and in forging international alliances. Clearly, ¿history¿ matters but how do certain histories come to matter in particular ways, and to whom? How is research on the past shaped through present-day concerns about identity, community, nation, alongside transnational flows of people, money, and goods?nn The main topics of our course are the impact of the past on the present, and the impact of the present on the past. Thus we will be looking both at how the past plays a role in contemporary society, and at contemporary archaeological research, management and conservation. Through close study of important archaeological sites, we will critically analyze landscapes, architecture, and objects as well as related literary works, religious texts, films, political essays, and scientific articles. We will examine topics as diverse as debates about the peopling of the New World to present-day religious conflicts over heritage sites. Far from being a neutral scholarly exercise, archaeology is embedded in the heated debates about heritage and present-day conflicts.

Second in a two quarter sequence. In a world marked by rapid globalization and forward-looking technology, heritage presents a particular paradox. Increasingly, heritage sites are flashpoints in cultural and religious conflicts around the globe. Simultaneously heritage is viewed as a unifying force in nation-building and in forging international alliances. Clearly, ¿history¿ matters but how do certain histories come to matter in particular ways, and to whom? How is research on the past shaped through present-day concerns about identity, community, nation, alongside transnational flows of people, money, and goods?nn The main topics of our course are the impact of the past on the present, and the impact of the present on the past. Thus we will be looking both at how the past plays a role in contemporary society, and at contemporary archaeological research, management and conservation. Through close study of important archaeological sites, we will critically analyze landscapes, architecture, and objects as well as related literary works, religious texts, films, political essays, and scientific articles. We will examine topics as diverse as debates about the peopling of the New World to present-day religious conflicts over heritage sites. Far from being a neutral scholarly exercise, archaeology is embedded in the heated debates about heritage and present-day conflicts.

Whether we realize it or not, all of us are forced to make a fundamental choice: by deciding what is most valuable to us, we decide how we are going to live our life. We may opt for a life of reason and knowledge; one of faith and discipline; one of nature and freedom; one of community and altruism; or one of originality and style.We may even choose to live our lives as though they were works of art. In every case, hard work is required: our lives are not just given to us, but need to be made. To live well is, in fact, to practice an art of living.n Where, however, do such ideals come from? How do we adopt and defend them? What is required to put them into practice? What do we do when they come into conflict with one another? And what role do great works of art play in all this? ¿The Art of Living¿ will explore the various ways in which it is possible to live well and beautifully, what it takes to implement them, and what happens when they come under pressure from inside and out. GER: IHUM-1

How is a living, thinking human being like, or not like, a machine? This might seem like a new question for the Information Age, yet it has been a preoccupation of our civilization for centuries. From the culmination of the Scientific Revolution in the seventeenth century, philosophers, physiologists, engineers, authors, political actors and artists of every kind have taken humanity¿s measure by comparing humans with machines. Our course follows this tradition.nTogether, we ask a number of questions about what it means to think of the human mind, body, and society as types of machines. How has the machine served as a metaphor for the cosmos and culture? How do we interact with machines, and how have machines influenced literature, performance, and the arts? What separates us from our machines, and are we really as separate as we think we are?nWe explore the shifting boundary lines between the mechanical and the human by considering how humanity has created or imagined machines and our interconnections with them. What do the concepts of ¿machine,¿ ¿human,¿ ¿alive,¿ ¿intelligent¿ and ¿self-aware¿ mean in different times and places, including our own? We will consider how humans may be conceived and designed as well as manipulated as machines, and how our artificial creations may in turn reflect and reflect upon their human creators.nThe philosophical, scientific and ethical questions regarding the relationship of humans to machines are not just the preoccupations of our current moment. These questions have generated long, rich traditions of responses. We must draw upon these if we are to confront our current concerns, not as isolated actors, but as members of an ever-evolving culture.

Throughout history, philosophers have speculated about the nature of the ¿good society¿ and how to achieve it. Although earlier writers had offered their own views, Sir Thomas More gave a name to this ideal society that has now become part of common language: utopia. In the almost 500 years since More¿s Utopia appeared, changes in society¿including enormous advances in science and technology¿have opened up new possibilities for the utopian society that More and his predecessors could not have envisioned. At the same time, science and technology also entail risks that suggest more dystopian scenarios¿in their most extreme form, threats to humanity¿s very survival. This course looks at several works that consider how literary visions of society have evolved with the progress of science and technology. The Readings begin with More and continue forward to the much more technologically determined visions of the late 20th century. The course also considers one cinematic treatment of technology and utopia, Fritz Lang¿s film classic Metropolis.

The journey is our most fundamental narrative, and no wonder; we are all, from the day of our births, embarked on a constant passage through space and time toward an end we can only think we know. Death itself is in dispute: Is it final, or only the beginning of another journey? The mysteries of destination infuse our lives, giving rise to our most basic questions of purpose and meaning and faith, our proper relation to others and the physical world.n The works we will examine in this course were written across a span of some 2,300 years, from very different cultural and historical situations and in very different forms and genres. But each of them presents some essential aspect of that journey we all share, and of the multiplicity of passages we make within that one great journey¿moral, spiritual, and emotional passages that relentlessly challenge and transform us even as we advance toward what the poet Thomas Gray called our ¿inevitable hour.¿ The writers of these works are not in agreement as to where we are going or how we should get there, but all of them compel us, by the penetration of their vision and the power of their art, to make part of our own journey in their company.

First of a two quarter sequence. 75,000 years ago there were barely 20,000 people on earth and each of them consumed about 4,000 calories of energy each day, half of it for food and half for everything else combined. Today, by contrast, there are 6,000,000,000 people on earth and in the US we each, on average, burn through 230,000 calories per day, for everything from driving Hummers to eating much more than we need. We take for granted things that would have seemed like magic a hundred years ago; we have penetrated every niche on the planet and have even moved beyond planet. Yet at the same time, other species are going extinct at the rate of one every 20 minutes and we have poisoned the atmosphere and seas. Depending on how you look at it, people are the greatest success story or the greatest disaster of the last million years. We may be on the verge of an astonishing transformation, transcending biology and making death obsolete; or we may be on the verge of destroying ourselves (and everything else) completely.nHow did we get here? And where are we going? This course tries to answer these questions by taking a global approach to the whole of human history. nIt looks at every continent, from the Ice Age to 21st century, asking how and why humans have multiplied so much, spread out so much, fought so much, and consumed so much; why some of their number¿chiefly those in Europe and North America¿became so much richer than others; and why that is now changing.nThe course aims to identify the long-term patterns of history and asking whether we can project these questions into the future to see what will come next. In the process the class focuses on the great global processes that have brought us to this point¿the evolution of humans; the creation of art and religion; the origins of agriculture; the invention of hierarchy, gender discrimination, and slavery; the rise of cities and states; the formation of empires; globalization; the scientific and industrial revolutions; and finally the ongoing revolutions in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics and the competing revolutions in weapons of mass destruction.nThe course aims to provide a framework to make sense of the world and skills to analyze the relevant evidence, including artifacts spanning 15,000 years and written texts spanning the last 5,000. The goal is to provide the tools you need to put the greatest questions of our age into historical context. Only by knowing where we¿ve come from can we see where we¿re going.n GER: IHUM 2

Second of a two quarter sequence. 75,000 years ago there were barely 20,000 people on earth and each of them consumed about 4,000 calories of energy each day, half of it for food and half for everything else combined. Today, by contrast, there are 6,000,000,000 people on earth and in the US we each, on average, burn through 230,000 calories per day, for everything from driving Hummers to eating much more than we need. We take for granted things that would have seemed like magic a hundred years ago; we have penetrated every niche on the planet and have even moved beyond planet. Yet at the same time, other species are going extinct at the rate of one every 20 minutes and we have poisoned the atmosphere and seas. Depending on how you look at it, people are the greatest success story or the greatest disaster of the last million years. We may be on the verge of an astonishing transformation, transcending biology and making death obsolete; or we may be on the verge of destroying ourselves (and everything else) completely.nHow did we get here? And where are we going? This course tries to answer these questions by taking a global approach to the whole of human history. nIt looks at every continent, from the Ice Age to 21st century, asking how and why humans have multiplied so much, spread out so much, fought so much, and consumed so much; why some of their number¿chiefly those in Europe and North America¿became so much richer than others; and why that is now changing.nThe course aims to identify the long-term patterns of history and asking whether we can project these questions into the future to see what will come next. In the process the class focuses on the great global processes that have brought us to this point¿the evolution of humans; the creation of art and religion; the origins of agriculture; the invention of hierarchy, gender discrimination, and slavery; the rise of cities and states; the formation of empires; globalization; the scientific and industrial revolutions; and finally the ongoing revolutions in genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics and the competing revolutions in weapons of mass destruction.nThe course aims to provide a framework to make sense of the world and skills to analyze the relevant evidence, including artifacts spanning 15,000 years and written texts spanning the last 5,000. The goal is to provide the tools you need to put the greatest questions of our age into historical context. Only by knowing where we¿ve come from can we see where we¿re going.n GER: IHUM3

Is a picture really worth a thousand words? This familiar phrase, which began to appear frequently in the U.S. press around 1920, is particularly worth pondering in our image-saturated era, when an image shown for a few seconds can sell a product, seal an election, result in death threats, or shift public opinion. What roles do pictures and words play in our perception and understanding of the world, in how we learn, enjoy, remember, and experience emotions? What is the relationship of an image or a word to that which it represents? These and similar questions are raised today in many different places: in journalism as much as in cognitive science, in science as much as in literature, on the internet and in the criminal justice system.nnHow images argue, prove, convince - and how they argue, prove and convince differently from the written or spoken word - are central questions asked in this course. It is a question that, with differing degrees of urgency, has concerned those that produce images as much as those who talk or write about them since antiquity. Are images more immediately comprehensible than texts? Are they more or less dependent on cultural contexts? And how do we go about reading an image anyway? As internet and computer technology propel us towards a new global culture of the image, the question of how to develop a grammar appropriate to this proliferation of images becomes ever more pressing. Beyond hysteria or thoughtless celebration - what would constitute a genuine twenty-first century relationship to the words and images that shape our lives, opinions and politics?

Contemporary environmental crises such as climate illustrate how all human societies depend in intricate ways on their interactions with natural resources, habitats and other species. Some human societies survive for thousands of years, whereas others collapse after a few decades or centuries. Exploring such cases of survival and collapse requires drawing on the resources of the sciences as well as the humanities, since they usually involve complex interactions of natural resources and limits with social organization and cultural ideas and values. "Sustainability and Collapse" will explore these interactions and the complex issues 21st-century societies face. We will ask where our current concepts of environmental sustainability, crisis and disaster come from, how they are used in particular social, cultural and political contexts, how they affect human behavior, and in what ways they shape social choices and policies in dealing with the many problems that confront the global community.nn"Sustainability and Collapse" will explore what people in different historical, geographical and cultural settings envision as successful ways of living with nature, how such ways of life come under pressure, how they deal with crisis, and how cultural ideas and practices shape these processes. The class will focus particularly on the interface between scientific information and concepts with the stories and images that literary texts, films and popular culture use in addressing questions of environmental crisis and survival. What do we mean by "nature," and how do we envision its functioning? What stories do we tell about how societies have either ignored or attempted to improve the workings of nature? What textual and visual images inform our ideas about what it means to live sustainably? Do they accord or conflict with scientific insights into human uses of nature? In what ways have such stories and images informed the way in which we, individually and collectively, have thought about and interacted with landscapes and other species? Do different cultures mean different things when they refer to nature, survival and crisis?

Can poetry change the world? In this course we will show how poetry has proved itself to be a resilient aesthetic form at the intersection of the personal and the political. We will follow the poem as it is written by men and women facing wars, imprisonment, journeys, social upheavals and the intense fragmentation of their worlds. nnThrough reading works from different historical, cultural and poetic traditions, we explore the question of whether something as individual as subjective artistic experience can help us cope with social and political events that threaten suffering and destruction.nnThe course uncovers the adventures of the individual poet: a young man caught in the trenches of the First World War; a Japanese haiku master and inspired wanderer of the 17th century; an American Beat, Jack Kerouac; a poet from St Louis who went to England and changed the course of 20th century poetry; an English woman trapped in the conventions of her time; a contemporary US soldier in Iraq. These poets show us the many similarities, as well as rich cultural differences, between us all.nnFinally, looking closely at two very different poetic creations ¿the greatest of all haiku travel journals and the modernist masterpiece ¿The Waste Land¿ ¿we consider how the making of a poem can also be the re-making of a world; how the poet uses form and language to hold up a mirror to the events that change the world and in the process manage to defy their destructiveness.

Is there more to life than survival, or does it have some higher purpose? Why is there suffering, death, and evil in the world, and is there some way to overcome them? Religious communities often answer such questions through the art of story-telling, through history, myth, biography and other forms of distilling human experience into narrative. These stories have shaped the world we live in, helping people to cope with difficult aspects of experience, influencing the way we love, suffer and die, inspiring the imagination, and helping to ignite conflict and violence.nThis course introduces you to some of the great stories of the world¿s religions¿the sacred narratives of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We will read these stories to learn something about the religious cultures that produced them, and how they have shaped human experience.nIn the winter quarter, students will be introduced to stories drawn primarily from the Buddhist tradition in the many forms which it developed as it spread across Asia from India to Japan and beyond. We will look at the biography of the founder, the Buddha, the tales of his previous lives, the stories of his disciples, and of later saints and heroes, religious practitioners and ordinary folk. Students will learn to read these stories to see how they elaborate a persuasively constructed world of meaning in terms of which people can make sense of their own personal histories.nIn the spring quarter, the focus will shift to the foundational narratives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam¿the stories of the Israelites¿ exodus from Egypt, the suffering Job, the life and death of Jesus and the calling of the prophet Muhammad. Do these stories have only one meaning, and who determines what that meaning is? Can a story¿s meaning change over time, and if so, what do such stories mean today, in a partially secularized culture very different from the ones that produced them? We will address these questions by exploring how these ancient stories have been re-imagined by recent thinkers and writers who can help us understand how their meaning has changed¿or is changing¿in the light of modern experience.

Is there more to life than survival, or does it have some higher purpose? Why is there suffering, death, and evil in the world, and is there some way to overcome them? Religious communities often answer such questions through the art of story-telling, through history, myth, biography and other forms of distilling human experience into narrative. These stories have shaped the world we live in, helping people to cope with difficult aspects of experience, influencing the way we love, suffer and die, inspiring the imagination, and helping to ignite conflict and violence.nnThis course introduces you to some of the great stories of the world¿s religions¿the sacred narratives of Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. We will read these stories to learn something about the religious cultures that produced them, and how they have shaped human experience.nnIn the winter quarter, students will be introduced to stories drawn primarily from the Buddhist tradition in the many forms which it developed as it spread across Asia from India to Japan and beyond. We will look at the biography of the founder, the Buddha, the tales of his previous lives, the stories of his disciples, and of later saints and heroes, religious practitioners and ordinary folk. Students will learn to read these stories to see how they elaborate a persuasively constructed world of meaning in terms of which people can make sense of their own personal histories.nnIn the spring quarter, the focus will shift to the foundational narratives of Judaism, Christianity and Islam¿the stories of the Israelites¿ exodus from Egypt, the suffering Job, the life and death of Jesus and the calling of the prophet Muhammad. Do these stories have only one meaning, and who determines what that meaning is? Can a story¿s meaning change over time, and if so, what do such stories mean today, in a partially secularized culture very different from the ones that produced them? We will address these questions by exploring how these ancient stories have been re-imagined by recent thinkers and writers who can help us understand how their meaning has changed¿or is changing¿in the light of modern experience.

The place of slavery and the war in American cultural memory; its representation in literature, visual arts, music, high art, popular culture, and film. How the battle shifted from real to imagined locations. How stories told by writers and artists are shaped by memories and narratives of the past. Themes include competing ideas of race and nation, freedom and citizenship, personal and collective identity, and the purpose of literature and the arts.