Division of Arts and Humanities
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Culture: Cities, Makers of Modernity
In the eighteenth and increasingly in the nineteenth century, a curious thing happened: an age-old balance between large agrarian populations and small urban centers began to shift dramatically in favor of urban centers. Cities grew…
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Fate and Virtue
In this course—one of three in the Humanities foundation series—we will read one of the greatest poems ever written (Homer’s Iliad), excerpts from two writers who can lay claim to have created the discipline of…
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Topics in Francophone History: The Great War
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History, Historians, and Historiography
This is a history course, but it is different from the other history courses you have taken. It is not about a particular place, period, or people. Nor is it about a particular theme. Instead,…
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Identity and Perspective
That question underlies much of what we do in the humanities—in literature, philosophy, history, and the fine and performing arts. In this course, one of three in the interdisciplinary Humanities foundation sequence, we will investigate…
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Reason and Freedom
This course emphasizes the foundations of the modern world. Reason and Freedom explores the self-conscious nature of modernity and its belief in reason, and explores the paradoxes of our position in history. It examines the…