Fall 2008 Honors Core Courses

The Honors Core courses are a sequence of four courses designed to stimulate rigorous reflection on key ideas and movements from the ancient to the contemporary worlds. 

Admission to the Honors Core is by application only. Students apply for admission to the program at the beginning of the sequence, at the time of enrollment for Honors 210. The application process is open to all students with a cumulative GPA of (typically) 3.0 or higher.   

Honors 210 The Ancient World is being offered for the first time Fall Semester 2008. Two sections include:

Honors 210A The Ancient World: Intellectual Developments in the Ancient World

This course will examine the major intellectual developments of antiquity in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, and China. Together we will explore the eternal problems of justice, ethics, love, death, and more, meeting along the way great thinkers from Homer and Socrates to Confucius and the Buddha. Prerequisite: by permission only.

Instructor:  Philip Freeman (Classics)

Time:  MWF 1:30-2:30 

Honors 210B The Ancient World: Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient and Classical World

Where do our contemporary attitudes toward gender and sexuality come from, and how do we challenge the customs and practices of the past?  A focus on the roles of women and men, sexuality and marriage, in defining periods of western and eastern culture, from "trickster women," priestesses, and Bacchanalian rites, to manly love and the male code of the war hero and political leader. 

Readings include stories from the Hebrew Bible, Greek plays and poetry, a Roman epic, Arabic and Chinese folk tales, marriage laws and rituals, as well as interpretations by historian, artists, and philosophers of gender roles and lives lived in antiquity. Prerequisite: by permission only.

Instructor:  Diane Scholl (English)

Time:  MWF 11:00-12:00