Syllabus

You can download the PDF course guide here.

TEXTS:

Knoebel, Edgar E.: Classics of Western Thought: The Modern World, 4th Ed.

Note: If you are a student with a physical or mental impairment and would like to request accommodations, please contact the Disability Resource Center (652-7516) in Room 201 of the Student Services Center. The Disability Resource Center will determine your eligibility for services based upon complete professional documentation. If you are deemed eligible, the Disability Resource Center will further evaluate your accommodation requests and will authorize reasonable accommodations that are appropriate for your disability.

“The value of an education in a liberal arts college is not the learning of many facts, but the training of the mind to think something that cannot be learned from textbooks.” (Albert Einstein)

COURSE DATA:

This course fills a requirement for graduation in the humanities area. It can also be taken as an elective or as a background course for majors in English, humanities, history, or philosophy. In this course students will study the enduring creative expressions of humans that reflect our experiences, as well as our feelings and ideas about ourselves, other humans, the past, and the universe.

The course will cover significant ideas, art forms, philosophies, and scientific developments in Western culture since the renaissance. Through examining such ideas and events, we can see the traditional ways in which humans viewed their relationship with the past, with the future, with God, with nature, with other humans, and with themselves.

We can also discover, in part, how we came to have the kind of culture we live in today. As one author has put it, we can learn to see the intellectual “shadow architecture” within which we live as inheritors of the world views and philosophies of Western culture.

OBJECTIVES:

1. To develop an understanding of western cultural diversity and continuity as well as some historical influences that have contributed to our present culture.
2. To develop an understanding of the interrelatedness of human history, great ideas, and the arts.
3. To recognize that the study of humanities is a study of the creators of ideas, words, and artifacts; the artifacts themselves, and the values those creators held.
4. To develop an increased understanding of what moves humans to create and how their creations reflect their world views.
5. To enable students to think critically about the correlation of aesthetic, philosophical and historical periods.
6. By learning how others have asked “big questions” in creative ways and in seeing their answers, students will make progress in answering those same questions for themselves and in realizing the universality of the human condition.
7. By seeing how famous men and women have analyzed their own culture, adopting many ideas while making breakthroughs in thought that enriched our lives, we will seek to examine, affirm, and challenge the patterns of thought in our own time.
8. To develop and demonstrate an understanding of the relation between current issues and those of other times, places, and cultures.

ATTENDANCE:

Attendance is important to the successful completion of the course. Class presentations and discussions will aid your understanding of the course material. The lectures, PowerPoint presentations, films, and class discussions are important to getting the full benefit of the course; therefore, excessive absences or tardiness will lower the grade.

In addition, there will be a series of quizzes over the semester that are intended to reward those who are in attendance and are prepared to discuss the readings.. Quizzes will generally be collected at the beginning of the class period and cannot be made up. Students who must miss an exam for school-related activities should make arrangements in advance to take the exam before the absence. Exam schedules will not be varied for convenience.

COURSE REQUIREMENTS AND GRADES:

The grades will be based on response quizzes to the readings and films, three exams, a scholarly paper, and attendance. Quizzes, whether assigned as take-home writings or as in-class quizzes, are accepted only at the beginning of the class or when they are given; they can not be brought in by a friend, dropped off, or handed in later. The lowest quiz will be dropped, however.

SCHOLARLY PAPER ASSIGNMENT:

(Up to 100 points) (4-5 pages; typed, double-spaced) (Please read the following carefully before asking what the paper assignment is.) The paper is designed for you to demonstrate that you can read, understand, synthesize, and analyze clearly some of the philosophical, literary, artistic, scientific, and/or cultural ideas that have been important in Western culture.

Option 1: A paper may be written in a formal manner or in the general form of a letter to one of the authors in our text book (or another important figure in our Western civilization approved by me), telling that author of the ways in which his/her ideas, philosophies, and deeds have influenced our western civilization and perhaps have influenced you in your personal world view. This assignment is not intended for you to give a mere chronology or biography of the person’s life; rather, you must show that you understand the historical impact of the person’s ideas, inventions or influence. Describe the ideas that were popular at the time, and explain how the person challenged and modified those ideas.

Paper Requirements:

• 4-5 typed, double-spaced pages
• 5-10 credible sources that go beyond our text; also, do NOT rely on print or Wikipedia encyclopedia sources
• A Works Cited at the end in the MLA style
• Appropriate parenthetical references in the body of the text in the MLA style Reber 4
• Demonstrated familiarity with primary sources
• No plagiarized data
• Standard Written English diction, punctuation, and usage

If you feel unsure how to write appropriate citations or avoid plagiarism, read Appendix 5 in this Humanities Guide; for additional help, go to the Dixie Owl <http://dsc.dixie.edu/owl/> and click on the MLA Style Guide for a review of correct research and citation processes. You may select a person from the following in our text: Galileo, Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Pope, Voltaire, Rousseau, Pascal, Smith, Burke, Wordsworth, Goethe, Thoreau, Mill, Darwin, Marx, Einstein, Freud, Woolf, Sartre, Jung, or Nietzsche. Or you may select one of the great writers, scientists, sculptors, musicians, architects, or artists from 1300 A. D. until the early 20th century. If there is another historical figure who is preeminent in your major field of study, please talk to me about him or her. Perhaps that person would be a suitable alternative for your paper topic.

Option 2: If you wish, you may focus on one of the arts during one of the periods. For example, you may write a paper on gothic architecture, baroque art, cubism, carpe diem poetry, impressionist painting, romantic music, etc. Identify characteristics that would allow us to recognize the particular art form, and describe some of the works of important figures during that period. With either option, it is important for you to follow the paper requirements listed above.

Avoiding Plagiarism: You must avoid the practice of taking ideas or quotes from books, periodicals, or encyclopedias without telling the reader where such data came. If you take words verbatim, put quotation marks around them. In particular, be aware that paraphrased ideas must still be cited. While teachers in some classes may have overlooked such plagiarism, it is considered a grave offense in serious source-supported writing. This does not mean that you cannot supplement your writing with data from other sources: indeed, the paper assignment requires that you research and support your positions with ideas from various authorities. But you must develop good habits of note taking that include not only writing down the ideas you like but also the author's name, title of the work, date you found it, page(s), and so on.

At Dixie College, and at other colleges and universities, the consequences of plagiarism are that you fail the assignment, and in some cases, the entire course.