Draft of New HUM 110 Syllabus
Humanities 110 New Syllabus DRAFT (Assigned materials info only: lecture titles will be included once they are available)
Formations and Transformations
Fall Term: Ancient Worlds
UNIT 1
Beginnings and Foundations
This unit focuses on three written texts that tell different stories of beginnings and foundations from literary, cosmological, and philosophical standpoints. In this unit, students will learn how to perform close reading analysis of a passage from a primary source text. They will also identify key elements of a successful conference discussion at Reed and explore different strategies for getting information from a primary source text and an in-person lecture. Through the lectures, students will be introduced to different disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to reading these texts.
Week 1
M Aug. 31 - The Epic of Gilgamesh
W Sept. 2 - The Epic of Gilgamesh
F Sept 4- The Epic of Gilgamesh
Week 2
M Sept 7 - Labor Day
W Sept 9 - Genesis, Books-1-24
F Sept 11 - Genesis, Books 25-50
Week 3
M Sept. 14 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Books 1-2
W Sept 16 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Books 3-4
F Sept 18 Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, Books 5-6
Saturday Sept 19, Paper 1 due
UNIT 2
Empire, Cultural Contact, and the Construction of Self and Other
This unit explores three narrative texts about journeys and encounters across different geographical and cultural spaces. An important focus of this unit is developing a reading practice that enables sustained focus on long narrative texts. In this unit students will learn to analyze the broader construction of texts and to make interpretive claims that require the synthesis of information from different parts of a long text. We will pay attention to texts’ narrative structures, formal and thematic patterns, and historical, cultural, and philosophical significance. While we read the Tale of Sinuhe and The Golden Ass in their entirety, we will read selections from Herodotus’s Histories, given the course’s time constraints.
Week 4
M Sept 21 -Tale of Sinuhe
W Sept 24 - Herodotus, Histories Book 1.1-105
F Sept 26 - Herodotus, Histories, Book 1.106-216
Week 5
M Sept 28 - Herodotus, Histories Book 2
W Sept 30 - Herodotus, Histories Book 7.1-137
F Oct 2 Herodotus, Histories Book 7.138-239
Week 6
M Oct. 5 - Herodotus, Histories Books 8 and 9.107-122
W Oct 7 - Apuleius, The Golden Ass Books 1-4.27
F Oct 9 – no reading
Sat. Oct 10, Paper 2 due
Week 7
M Oct 12 - Apuleius, The Golden Ass 4.28-6
W Oct 14 - Apuleius, The Golden Ass 7-8
F Oct 16 - Apuleius, The Golden Ass 9-11
Fall Break: Oct 17-25
UNIT 3
Art, Spaces, Objects
This unit explores the ancient Mediterranean through the examination of objects, architecture, art, and landscapes. A principal goal of this unit is to teach students how to meaningfully engage with and analyze material and visual culture, while at the same time encouraging students to consider the effects of trade, empire, and cultural interaction on material culture more broadly. Each day takes as its subject objects, architecture, and landscapes in order to pay specific attention to ideological messaging through material culture, and the ways in which material culture changes as a result of cultural and economic contact and exchange. The focus on cultural interaction and its effects picks up from the previous unit. Each week has a slightly different focus to aid discussion: the first week focuses on sculptural traditions in the face of multi-ethnic empires and long-distance contact and exchange; the second focuses on landscapes and architecture as a means of ideological messaging; and the third focuses on material culture, trade, and exchange in imperial systems. In addition, students read secondary scholarship and learn how to grapple with and incorporate scholarly arguments into their own work. This unit groups together all the days on art and material culture in the fall syllabus so that students are able to engage with non-textual sources in a meaningful, sustained manner.
Week 8
M Oct 26 - Kouroi/Korai
Andrew Stewart, Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece (Cambridge
University Press, 1997), pp. 3-top of 13, pp. 63-70; p. 268 (glossary).
Gallery: Kouroi
W Oct 28 - Hatshepsut/Egypt [catalog excerpt; inscriptions]
Obelisk inscription and Deir el-Bahri birth and coronation narratives
Ann Macy Roth, “Models of Authority: Hatshepsut’s Predecessors in Power,” in Cathleen A. Keller, “The Statuary of Hatshepsut,” in Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, ed. Catharine A. Roehrig (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), pp. 9-14.
Cathleen A. Keller, “The Statuary of Hatshepsut,” in Hatshepsut: From Queen to Pharaoh, ed. Catharine A. Roehrig (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), pp. 158-173.
F Oct 30- Gandhara and Greco-Buddhist Art
Excerpts from Osmund Bopearachchi, Beyond Boundaries: Buddhist Art of Gandhara
Gallery: Gandharan art
Week 9
M Nov 2 - Athenian Acropolis
Rachel Kousser, “Destruction and Memory on the Athenian Acropolis,” Art Bulletin 91.3 (2009): pp. 263-282.
Gallery: Parthenon
W Nov 4 - Persepolis/Persian Reliefs
Lecturer’s choice of Persian inscriptions from Kuhrt
Gallery (to be composed of images from University of Chicago site and other sources; include Neo-Assyrian palace reliefs for comparison)
F Nov 6 - The Trouble with “Art”
Carolyn Dean, “The Trouble with (The Term) Art,” Art Journal 65, no. 2 (2006): 24-32.
Sat Nov 7, Paper 3 due
Week 10
M Nov 9 - The Uluburun Shipwreck
Cemal Pulak, “The Uluburun Shipwreck and Late Bronze Age Trade,” in Beyond Babylon: Art, Trade, and Diplomacy in the Second Millennium BC, ed. Joan Aruz, Kim Benzel, and Jean M. Evans (Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 289-310.
W Nov 11 - Dura Europos
Lecturer's choice of one of two chapters: J. A. Baird, “Excavating Dura-Europos: From Field to Archive,” in The Inner Lives of Ancient Houses: An Archaeology of Dura-Europos (Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 1-38 OR J. A. Baird, “Everyday Life in Roman Dura-Europos: Household Activities,” in The Inner Lives of Ancient Houses: An Archaeology of Dura-Europos (Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 155-208.
F Nov 13 - Fayum Mummy Portraits
Christina Riggs, “Facing the Dead: Recent Research on the Funerary Art of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt,” American Journal of Archaeology 106, no. 1 (2002): 85-101.
UNIT 4
Inclusion, Exclusion, Belonging
This unit explores texts from the ancient Mediterranean from a perspective seeking to understand the distinct visions of inclusion, belonging, and enslavement presented in each text: Exodus, Medea, and Republic. Each text touches on one or more of these concepts from different perspectives, ranging from foundation narratives (Exodus) to idealized conceptions of the state (Republic). Students will be asked to define, problematize, and critique these concepts over the course of the unit.
Our proposal for this unit asks students to think about questions of inclusion, exclusion, and belonging in relation to language. How does rhetoric relate to truth, and what are the risks of persuasive speech in an imperial court, a covenant-bound community, or a deliberative democracy? How do these texts represent both the power and limits of language? How can communication achieve collective identities or distinguish insiders from outsiders? How does language constrain or liberate members of a community?
This final unit of the fall semester encourages students to synthesize ideas across units by connecting textual analysis of the three works assigned to broader takeaways and questions from previous lectures and conference discussions.
Week 11
M Nov 16 - Exodus
W Nov 18 - Exodus
F Nov 20 - Euripides, Medea
Week 12 (Thanksgiving week)
M Nov 23 - Plato, Republic 1-2
W Nov 25 - Plato, Republic 3-4
Week 13
M Nov 30 - Plato, Republic 5-6
W Dec 2 - Plato, Republic 7-8
F Dec 4 – no reading or lecture
Sat Dec 4, Paper 4 due
Week 14
M Dec 7 – Plato, Republic 9-10
W Dec 9 - Conclusion
REQUIRED TEXTS
Apuleius. The Golden Ass. Trans. Sarah Ruden. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011.
Berlin Adele, and Mark Zvi Brettler, eds. The Jewish Study Bible: Tanakh Translation. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2014
The Epic of Gilgamesh the Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. Trans. Andrew George. London: Penguin Classics, 2003.
Herodotus. The Histories. Trans. Aubrey de Selincourt. London: Penguin, 2003.
Lucretius Carus, Titus. On the Nature of Things. Trans. Walter G. Englert. Indianapolis: Focus, 2003.
“The Tale of Sinuhe” in The Tale of Sinuhe and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940-1640 B.C. Ed. R.B. Parkinson. London: Oxford University Press, 2009. 21-53.
Plato, Republic, trans. Reeve (Hackett)
Euripides, Euripides I, ed. David Grene and Richmond Lattimore (University of Chicago Press) (this is the one we used before OR this one: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/medea-9780195145663?cc=us&lang=en&)