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Course Description and Outcomes:
Humanities 516 takes an interdisciplinary approach to the humanities of the twentieth century. The course provides a solid foundation in the ideas and concepts that were either dominant or emergent, and it locates them within their historical and cultural contexts. The learner will trace developments of ideas, compare and contrast texts, and look for core belief systems and ethical stances that may inform the period's unique position with respect to discourse production. In addition to seeking new insights and views into the period, the course encourages thinking across cultures, periods, and modes of thought.
Further, the course requires the learner to apply the ideas and the concepts to issues in current times, in order to develop new perspectives and vantage points, which the learner will share in a learning community, and will develop in dynamic research and writing. The course requires clarity of vision and courage to encounter, question, develop and integrate new ideas and ways of thinking. This course is intended for students who already possess a bachelor's and, ideally, a master's degree, and who would like to develop interdisciplinary perspectives that integrate with their prior knowledge and experience.
Learning Outcomes:
By the end of this course, students should be able to do the following:
1. Identify and discuss major intellectual, historical, and cultural trends and topics.
2. Evaluate themes across the disciplines and relate them to emergent ideas and notions.
3. Analyze the relationship between texts and the particular historical, social, cultural, and biographical contexts of their production.
4. Research and critically evaluate the constructs and ideas, and evaluate how they have changed, and how attitudes and perspectives toward them have evolved.
5. Make connections between the course texts and concepts to current contemporary events, ideas, and issues, and discuss the insights that result.
6. Apply the ideas to current contemporary issues, with particular emphasis on ethics, how the individual, communities, and the global community can be impacted if certain ideas or points of view are promulgated.
7. Construct solid annotated bibliographies and a research paper that posits a new way of looking at contemporary issues and the texts covered in the course by synthesizing ideas and re-envisioning thinking, particularly "critical" thinking.
8. Discover connections, propose explanations, and defend positions.
Course Content:
1. Interdisciplinary texts that have been designated as being produced within the category of the course topic and period.
2. Discussion of the historical, social, cultural and biographical contexts in which those works were produced.
3. Intellectual movements in various periods.
4. Discussions of the theoretical issues and questions related to historical, social, cultural, and biographical approaches to the study of the course topic.
5. Ethics and ethical dilemmas, found both in the primary texts and in connections to historical (or current) situations.
6. Criticism and reflection upon political and economic systems.
7. Discussion of the relevance of course readings to the understanding of contemporary global issues.
8. Critical analysis and interpretation.
9. Research projects.
10. Learning community-centered collaborative activities and projects.
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