Academics

Humanities

SYLLABUS FOR HUMANITIES I & II, 2005-2006

Mr. Ryan Asmussen (English/Fine Arts, Elk Grove High School)
E-mail: ryan.asmussen@d214.org

“But I mean that we shall find, as a matter of experience, if we know the best that has been thought and uttered in the world, we shall find that the art and poetry and eloquence of men who lived [...] have in fact not only the power of refreshing and delighting us, they have also the power,ó such is the strength and worth, in essentials, of their authors' criticism of life,óthey have a fortifying, and elevating, and quickening, and suggestive power, capable of wonderfully helping us to relate the results of modern science to our need for conduct, our need for beauty.”
-- Matthew Arnold, “Literature and Science” (1882)

“We know what we are but not what we may be.” -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Humanities 1 & 2” is a course governed by the idea that it is a good and necessary thing to expose students to, in the words of Arnold, “the best that has been thought and uttered” in world culture -- for the purposes of education, of course, but also for the purposes of self-improvement, for the construction of a self that may begin to understand, appreciate, and question the intellectual, the aesthetic, and the moral. It will be these three areas of concern that will serve as the foundation of the course. And we will remain, all this while, centered on learning to follow the Socratic injunction, “Know thyself.”

HUMANITIES I: Western/Eastern Culture, 2000 B.C.E. - A.D. 1500

First Quarter

The Hebrews: The Books of Genesis, Exodus, Job, and Ecclesiastes
The Ancient Greeks: Literature, Drama, Art, Architecture, and Philosophy
Western Philosophy: Early Christianity: Jesus and Paul
Eastern Philosophy: Buddha

Second Quarter

Medieval Theology: St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas
Medieval Literature: Dante Alighieri
Italian Renaissance Art: da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, et. al.
Northern Renaissance Art: Vermeer, Bruegel, and Van Eyck

HUMANITIES II: Western Culture, 1500 - 20th century

Third Quarter

Fourth Quarter

Classical/Romantic Music: Mozart and Beethoven
British Romantic Literature: Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, Arnold, and Tennyson
Impressionism/Post-Impressionism: Manet, Degas, Renoir, Monet, Seurat, Gauguin, Rousseau, and van Gogh
Philosophy Roundtable: "The Question of God" (Freud and C.S. Lewis)