HUM 211 - The Birth of the Modern I

Beginning with the cultural and intellectual entanglements of the Christian and Islamic worlds in the Middle Ages, this course examines how Europeans’ understanding and experience of the world they inhabited were transformed between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. Through readings of authors such as Ibn Tufayl, Averroës, Dante, Machiavelli, Diaz, Luther, Rabelais, Marguerite de Navarre, and Montaigne, we will explore how the momentous social, cultural, political, religious, philosophical, literary, and artistic developments of this period-encounters with non-Christians in the Mediterranean and Atlantic worlds, the emergence of new genres in the literary and visual arts, and the social and religious upheaval of the Protestant Reformation-provoked a period of crisis and creativity that transformed the complex legacies of the ancient world. In particular, we will study how the reconfigured understandings of humanity’s relationship to nature, society, and the divine challenged assumptions about political, intellectual, religious, and gendered authority.

Unit(s): 1
Group Distribution Requirement(s): Distribution Group I, Distribution Group II
Prerequisite(s): HUM 110 or sophomore standing
Instructional Method: Lecture-conference
Grading Mode: Letter grading (A-F)
Group Distribution Learning Outcome(s):

Understand how arguments can be made, visions presented, or feelings or ideas conveyed through language or other modes of expression (symbols, movement, images, sounds, etc.);
Analyze and interpret texts, whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts;
Evaluate arguments made in or about texts (whether literary or philosophical, in English or a foreign language, or works of the visual or performing arts).
Evaluate data and/or sources;
Analyze institutions, formations, languages, structures, or processes, whether social, political, religious, economic, cultural, intellectual or other;
Think in sophisticated ways about causation, social and/or historical change, human cognition, or the relationship between individuals and society, or engage with social, political, religious or economic theory in other areas.