Humanities 3302: Faith and Reason
COURSES
TOPIC: The Making of European Thought and Culture
Instructor: Elisabeth Sommer
This course is designed to give you an overview of the Humanities as they shaped and were shaped by developments in Western Europe from the Middle Ages through the Reformation (c. 600-1600). To accomplish this somewhat monumental task, we will focus on “spotlight” readings in literature, philosophy, and religion, as well as exploring art and music as it relates to the course themes.
TOPIC: Medieval and Renaissance Thought
Instructor: Dr. Gary kieffner
HUMN 3302 surveys the art, philosophy, and history that inform the social, political and religious institutions of World Culture from the centuries prior to the Common Era to approximately 1600 CE. The survey examines the arts of the era, relating them to political and social-historical contexts.
“World culture” is a broad label referring to vast and diverse historical periods, geographies, human societies, language groups, political and economic systems. This section of Humanities 3302 aids in the development of an understanding of ancient, Medieval European and early Renaissance religious belief, philosophy, literature, architecture, music and arts that have shaped contemporary European history and today’s World Culture. While drawing such regional and global interconnections, our foci shall particularly include: creation of the New Testament canon and western Christianity, intellectual tension between faith and reason in the medieval and Renaissance eras, persistence and transformation of the myth of “Rome,” development of Islamic culture in Iberia, the crusading impulse, the medieval aesthetic in art and architecture in relation to medieval philosophy, technology and world views, civic humanism and transitions from medieval to Renaissance mentalities, Renaissance arts, social constructs and anomalies, the ideals of chivalry and western romantic courtship, protestant reformation, and the results of experiences in the Americas for both Europe and the western hemisphere. We shall engage in discussion and application of key topics as we develop a more complete understanding of World Culture.