Honors Program Curriculum

AHD-1040 / AHD-1045

History and Theory of Modern Art I and II

1.5 art history credits per semester

Intended to link the visual with the theoretical and the historical, these courses will survey the relationship of art to the changing composition of ideas in a globalized context. Topics include: the contested concepts of the “modern,” modernism and primitivism; the emergence of abstraction; the invention of photography, collage and the found object. We will trace the development of modern art in the 19th and 20th centuries. As a model for analyzing contemporary practice, the conceptual structure of the avant-garde will be studied historically in this course. 

HHD-1040

Political History of the Modern World: 18th and 19th Centuries

1.5 humanities and sciences credits

This course will examine three significant themes unique to the modern era: 1) the struggle for individual rights; 2) the expansion of capitalism; 3) the increasing prominence of government as an agent for social change. These themes are traced from the founding of the United States and the dissolution of the European monarchies through the rise of the nation state.

HHD-1045

Political History of the 20th Century

1.5 humanities and sciences credits

This course is a continuation of the themes and events covered in HHD-1040, and will explore the 20th century as an age of war and ideology, social conflict and change, technological transformation and globalization.

HLD-1827 / HLD-1828

Modern Writing and Narrative Technique I and II

1.5 humanities and sciences credits per semester

What is modernity and what is modernism in the arts? What happened in literature while the visual arts, music and dance made their fundamental break from traditional forms? How do we account for the complex and puzzling literary techniques of the modern age? These courses will examine the parallel problems of expression and composition that literature shared with the other arts, to empower students in the many ways they will be writing. It analyzes turning points in modern writing and narrative technique (e.g., realism, point of view, subjectivism, abstraction, time-compression, stream of consciousness, montage, absurdism) and how these have mattered for the visual arts.

HMD-1050

Modern Philosophy and Critical Theory: 18th and 19th Centuries

1.5 humanities and sciences credits

This course will introduce some of the key Western philosophical ideas, from the period of the European Enlightenment to the dawn of the 21st century. Through readings by Hume, Kant, Rousseau, Marx and Nietzsche we will examine central terms within the variety of philosophical trends and disputes of each period, including empiricism, political philosophy and aesthetic theory. 

HMD-1055

Modern Philosophy and Critical Theory: 20th Century

1.5 humanities and sciences credits

This course will introduce some of the key Western philosophical ideas from the 20th century and into the dawn of the 21st century. Through readings by Freud, William James, Camus, Sartre, De Beauvoir, Weber, Fanon, Heidegger we will examine central terms within the variety of philosophical trends and disputes of each period, including empiricism, political philosophy and aesthetic theory. 

AHD-2010

The Origins of Art

3 art history credits

The Arts serve as a record of the history of ideas and society. This course will explore the development of what we call art, by examining its emergence and development in the context of specific Western and non-Western societies and civilizations. To do so, the class traces the changing nature of representation in painting, sculpture and architecture from the Paleolithic to the early 19th century. Topics include art and ritual, iconoclasm and theories of God, the separation of art and craft, the social history of art and the rise of the individual, idealism and aesthetics. Discussion, slide presentations and museum visits are a part of the course. 

Third-year Honors students are required to take one of the following courses:

AHD-3140

Memory and History in Film

3 art history credits

A range of issues will be addressed in this course, all intended to explore the relationship between history and memory in the films of Alain Resnais, Chris Marker, Andrei Tarkovsky and Alexander Kluge. How do the modernist and postmodernist discourses of memory and history take shape in these filmmakers’ works? Questions crucial to the understanding of how cinema (re)works the ideas of history and memory through representation will be raised. What is the nature of this relationship? How do individual and social memories intersect? We will attempt to answer these and other questions as we trace the trajectories of two forces—memory and history—always at odds with each other in the films of these directors.

AHD-3145

Issues in Contemporary Art: Globalism

3 art history credits

We will focus our attention this semester on the impact/influence of globalism on visual culture and contemporary art. On one hand, we will frame the idea of “globalism” by rifling through the bones of history, including post-World War II distribution networks and postcolonial legacies that begin to manifest in art in the 1960s and ’70s. On the other hand, we will investigate various exhibition formats, artists, audiences, narratives, circumstances and more (emphasis on the 1980s to the present), all of which contributed to the thrilling complexity of “worldwide visual culture” and the “global communication continuum.” As Guy Davenport stated, “Art is the attention we pay to the wholeness of the world.” This idea will be our starting point.

AHD-2591

Postcolonial Museum

3 art history credits

In an age where museums are routinely designed by celebrity architects to great fanfare, some of the most effective museum contexts have been created unconventionally and indirectly, by the forces of history, nature and time. We will analyze and discuss the exhibition spaces around the world that have been formed by history and unexpected events, as well as pre-existing structures that have been repurposed to become exhibition venues. A focus will be placed on genre-defying spaces such as the National Museum of Cambodia, and we will discuss the coexistence of cultural tourism and sacred spaces by looking at frequently visited temples, mosques and churches from around the world. Archaeological sites that are actively embedded into the everyday life of the communities that surround them will also be discussed in depth. Spaces such as these are evidence that the necessary cultural specificity for presenting certain works of art cannot always be purchased, commissioned, or designed, and that an object often retains its vitality when this is not the case.

Students must take at least four of the following Honors Program humanities courses during their second and third years of study. They may take these courses as their schedules allow, keeping in mind that 12 humanities credits from this list must be completed during this time. It is recommended that students take at least one of these honors humanities courses per semester. Students must choose at least one course from three of the following five areas:

Literature – HLD prefix

Philosophy and Cultural Studies – HMD prefix

Anthropology, Psychology, Sociology – HPD prefix

Science – HSD prefix

Writing – HWD prefix

By the end of their third year of the Honors Program, students will have completed all Humanities Distribution Requirements (HDR).

HHD-2118

Legacies of the Ancient World in Modern History 

3 humanities and sciences credits

This course will examine the legacies of the ancient world—primarily Greek, Roman and Near Eastern—in modern history. Major movements in European and American history have drawn inspiration, legitimacy and imagery from ancient history. So, too, have moments of anticolonial struggle and revolt against some of those same powers. Understanding these legacies is an essential part of understanding how the revolutionaries, statesmen and poets of the past three centuries have thought about themselves, their time and their work. We will examine cultural artifacts such as the French revolutionaries’ Phrygian cap; the origins and development of political forms such as democracy, the republic and empire; and how readings and misreadings of ancient history have informed political life in the modern world. The course is organized thematically, drawing heavily on works of art and literature as well as contemporary political and philosophical writing and secondary scholarship.

HLD-2123

Human and Divine

3 humanities and sciences credits

What is the relationship between sacred text and cultural practice? This course will examine themes and symbols that recur in pivotal philosophic and devotional texts in order to determine what might be considered essentially human and/or essentially divine. Beginning with ancient Babylonian, Judeo-Christian, Buddhist and Hindu texts and stretching into the modern, the class will study works from diverse origins, both spiritual and secular, to explore how language operates as a medium between physical and metaphysical worlds.

HLD-4374

Utopia and Dystopia

3 humanities and sciences credits

What is the best possible world? Throughout history, humanity has dreamed of perfect societies and nightmare worlds—visions that inspire hope, stir rebellion and spark fear. In this course we’ll journey through utopian paradises and dystopian wastelands, exploring how literature, as well as art, architecture and film imagine the futures we desire and dread. From Eden to Mars, from Thomas More’s Utopia to Michel Foucault’s “panopticon,” from Donna Haraway’s A Cyborg Manifesto to The Matrix franchise, we’ll dissect how cultural, political and technological forces shape these narratives. Along the way, we’ll question what it means to dream, build and sometimes destroy our visions of the “perfect” society. Whether it’s towering cities or shattered wastelands, utopia and dystopia speak to the most urgent questions of our time: questions of power, individuality, freedom, justice, technology and the role of the state. Will the future be a dream or a nightmare?

HMD-2010

Self, Culture and Society

3 humanities and sciences credits

This course studies problems basic to social, cultural and historical existence, as developed in foundational texts of economics, psychology, sociology and anthropology. In the midst of profound and rapid changes in our relationship to nature, to one another and to ourselves, these fields arose to turn a scientific eye inward. What the social sciences found was alternately sobering, revolutionary and terrifying. A new social and historical approach would be developed to the ancient command to know thyself. The course starts with the conceptual foundations of political economy, as well as theories of capitalism and modern society. Students will then consider the relation of nature, culture, society and lived experience. Finally, we will explore the social and cultural constitution of the person, with examination of class, race, gender and sexuality.

HMD-2018

One Book at a Time

3 humanities and sciences credits

Through a rotating content, this course is devoted to a semester-long close reading of the works of a single author or of one really good book (e.g., a semester on: Homer’s The Odyssey, Plato’s Republic, the Bible, Montaigne’s Essays, Rousseau’s Confessions, Lessing’s Laocöon, Blake’s poems, Hegel’s Aesthetics, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, Mann’s Doctor Faustus, Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, Hoffman’s Search for the Real, De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex, Benjamin’s Origin of German Tragic Drama, Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory, Weiss’s Aesthetics of Resistance, Lessing’s The Golden Notebook). The aim is to slow down and read thoroughly and completely the work in question. Different perspectives on the work and its legacies will be explored. This course aims to help students think through important questions by looking at classic texts that speak to these questions; to train students in the practice of close reading and rigorous textual interpretation; and to prepare students for self-education to come.

HMD-2438

Philosophy and Sexuality

3 humanities and sciences credits

This course is an examination of sexuality within the archives of modern and contemporary philosophy. It has two fundamental concerns. First, we will look at how sexuality affects and determines the trajectories and foundations of philosophy. Second, we will examine the ways in which contemporary queer, feminist and race theories employ and engage the “canon” of philosophy to think about the political and social effects of sexuality. The course will include close readings of seminal thinkers on the subject, such as Descartes, Freud, Fanon and Foucault. We will draw on philosophical traditions, psychoanalysis and artistic mediums to engage with core questions concerning how we think about the body and mind, self and otherness, desire and practice, nature and history.

HPD-2060

From Ancient Myth to the Birth of Modern Science

3 humanities and sciences credits

In this course we will begin by discussing the earliest forms of human thinking—animism and magic—and see how from these seeds, the human mind has created polytheistic religions, philosophy and ideas of law. We will conclude the semester by examining how philosophical and religious thought, from Aristotle to Galileo, has led to the development of scientific theory.

HPD-2073

Modernity and Identity

3 humanities and sciences credits

The idea of mental health is now central to the idea of what it is to be human. With the decline of religious belief in the 19th century, a new scientific psychology emerges that aims to answer the different ways in which the human individual suffers from their own thoughts and ideas. In this course we will look at the creation of a science of the mind that goes beyond the purely neurological to the understanding of psychological dynamics, as well as forms of therapeutics that aim to heal and shape the self. We will look at how the understanding of these dynamics has influenced advertising, medicine, politics and economics, as well as our understanding of class, race, gender, sexuality and the self. Students will read works by Juliet Mitchell, Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse, Michel Foucault, Christopher Lasch, Jonathan Metzl, Rubén Gallo, D.W. Winnicott, Alice Miller, Christopher Bollas, and others, along with analyzing surrealist artworks and the films of Adam Curtis. 

HSD-3114

Modern Art and Astronomy: The Expanding Universe

3 humanities and sciences credits

Where do stars come from? How big is the universe? What’s inside an atom? Why is the sky blue? In the last century, scientists have given revolutionary answers to these questions, profoundly altering how modern society perceives reality. This course presents fascinating responses to these questions in plain, easy-to-understand English, along with illustrations of their impact on art and culture. Topics include Einstein’s theory of the relativity of space and time, the discovery that the universe is expanding, space travel, the splitting of the atom, and the dawning of the nuclear age, as well as scientific metaphors in the arts. 

HSD-3115

Botany

3 humanities and sciences credits

In this course students will explore basic aspects of plant anatomy, physiology, plant types, and the historical and current importance of plants in human life. Students will actively participate in lab work to understand plant reproduction, propagation, cultivation and nutrition. The course will increase student awareness of and knowledge about the uses of plants and critical issues affecting ecology, including the threat and promise of science and agribusiness to modify plants for human and animal consumption.

HSD-3344

Ecological Economics

3 humanities and sciences credits

Economic progress in the industrialized world has been shaped by a profound and alarming reliance upon the Earth’s ecosystem. This course will examine the logic, justifications and ideologies that have propelled society toward global capitalism, with an emphasis on the environmental conditions related to that growth. Readings from Adam Smith to John Maynard Keynes will reveal the scope of traditional economic thought as it relates to the natural world; while texts from authors such as Aldo Leopold, Herman Daly and Elinor Ostrom will employ the pragmatism of economic philosophy to offer solutions for our most dire ecological predicaments.

HSD-3523

Conservation Biology

3 humanities and sciences credits

Conservation biology is the study of the maintenance, loss and restoration of ecosystems of biodiversity. This course covers the basics of paleontology, evolution and ecology, as well as relevant issues in environmental science. The objective of the course is to introduce students to the issues related to our current extinction crisis and to enable them to make informed decisions on both national and local levels. Special attention will be paid to current debate and controversy in this quickly growing field of study.

HWD-2261

Art Writing 

3 humanities and sciences credits

The written word has always had a close relationship to the visual arts, starting with Plato and The Puranas of ancient India and continuing right up to the era of Artforum and online magazines like Hyperallergic. In this course we will examine and work with many different kinds of art writing. Readings will range from artists’ writings, art criticism, interviews and manifestoes to essays about art and society and writings generated by galleries and museums. A series of short writing assignments will explore various subgenres of art writing and allow students to sharpen their writing skills and refine their authorial voice. The final project will allow students to write in depth about an art-related topic of their choice. Texts include pieces by a wide range of artists, writers and critics, including Max Beckmann, George Orwell, Oscar Wilde, Dave Hickey, Mira Schor, Ken Johnson, Nancy Princenthal, Salvador Dalí and Mina Loy.