IPHS 113-114: Odyssey of the West

Professors Copland, Elkins, and Shutt

In the first semester, we explore the themes of love and justice, purity and power, fidelity to the family, and loyality to the state. With the Hebrew Bible, Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides, Virgil, and Dante, we investigate these themes through the Judeo-Christian and Greco-Roman traditions and their European legacies. In the second semester, we focus on the themes of law and disorder, harmony and entropy, and modernity and its critics. Beginning with Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Hobbes, we investigate the desire to construct a unified vision through reason and the disruption of that vision in the works of such authors as Nietzsche, Darwin, and Marx. Throughout the year, we explore the connections between the visual arts (through art history and film), literature, and philosophy. In tutorial sessions, students concentrate on developing the craft of writing. In addition, we offer them an opportunity to express their creative talents in short performances and hypermedia projects.

IPHS 113-114 will fulfill some of the College's diversification requirements: up to 1/2 unit of history and/or political science, and/or up to 1 unit of English. Enrollment limited.