Humanities Concentration

OVERVIEW

Comprised of the fields of Art History, History, Literature, Music History, Philosophy, and Religion, the Humanities concentration offers students the chance to pursue essential questions about what it means to be human, to become familiar with perspectives from around the globe, to develop informed and humanistic goals and concerns, and to sharpen analytical, critical thinking and research skills.

Since the underlying focus of SUA’s education is toward deepening an understanding of both Eastern and Western cultures, students are encouraged to develop a balanced perspective encompassing East and West within their course selection plan. In this way, each student, whether she/he chooses to advance within one major discipline or seeks to develop a broader foundation encompassing several or all Humanities disciplines, will have a common bond and direction in which to organize her/his program.

The Humanities both prepares students for graduate and professional school and offers to all students a broad-based background in a number of disciplines that are at the basis of a liberal arts education. Three upper level Humanities courses (300 and up) are required to complete the Humanities concentration requirement.

The student learning outcomes for the Humanities concentration are:

  1. Demonstrate an understanding of and apply theoretical and methodological insights into one or more of the above disciplines
  2. Demonstrate a coherent and integrated understanding of the central issues and questions for investigation in the disciplines
  3. Demonstrate the capacity for original and rigorous research and inquiry
  4. Communicate ideas effectively in a manner appropriate to work in their field
  5. Demonstrate and articulate an understanding of how individuals and societies are interconnected within social, historical, political, cultural environments, and the human condition
  6. Exhibit imagination and curiosity in the study of the full range of human artifacts

Classes

ARTHIST 104 : Introduction to Visual Culture

The course explores the relation between the two terms ‘visual’ and ‘culture’ as constructions, examining visual forms of expressions, such as painting, photography, advertisement, comics and digital imagery. The course revolves around some of the following questions: What is the difference between the terms art and visual? What are the diverse forms of the visual? How has the visual impacted us today? How does culture determine visual form? With an emphasis on the determining role of visual culture in the wider culture to which it belongs, it draws on images from both western and non-western worlds to be analyzed and placed in their cultural context.

Units

3

ARTHIST 105 : Introduction to Art History

The course introduces the students to the major works of art and art movements of the world by analyzing the visual characteristics of works of art and placing them in their historical and cultural context. It covers sculpture, painting, architecture, print, ceramics, and photography from ancient to modern cultures from east and west. The course seeks to provide the beginning art history student with a range of conceptual, visual and verbal skills essential to the description and analysis of visual forms.

Units

3

ARTHIST 170 : Introduction to World Architecture

The course explores architecture as a cultural force and its interaction with the environment, in the context of social, cultural, and political realities. It draws examples from ancient Classical, Renaissance, Islamic, Asian, and Modern architecture comparing form, function, concept, association, and intent. Students will be introduced to the fundamentals of architecture and art, design, space, structures, styles, theories and development of architecture.

Units

3

ARTHIST 305 : Modern Asian Art

The course offers a broad view of Modern Asian Art, including painting, photography and print of China, Japan, Tibet, Nepal and India for a selective and meaningful understanding of its visual culture. The focus is on Tradition vs. Modernity with a wide range of art historical issues and discourses. Emphasis will be placed on thematic issues in visual culture such as movement of people, ideas, images, cross-cultural influences, and variations in the structure of political, economic, and social institutions.

Units

3

ARTHIST 310 : Art and Architecture of Asia

The course traces the development of architecture, painting, and sculpture of China, Japan, India, and Tibet for a selective understanding of its visual culture from the earliest times to 12th C CE. It is a comparative study of the cross-cultural influences and encounters via the silk and spices routes with a focus on ancient civilizations, philosophy, and religious institutions particularly the traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, Shintoism, Buddhism, and Hinduism. The goal is to understand the traditional Arts of Asia by examining the process of artistic and cultural assimilation that occurred along with movement of people, goods, and images between major cultural regions and substantiated in built environment, city planning, painting and sculpture.

Units

3

ARTHIST 315 : Contemporary Visual Culture

Visual Culture is an emerging field of study, and the course explores the relation between the two terms ‘visual’ and ‘culture’ as constructions by examining visual forms of expression: architecture, sculpture, painting, and photography. It probes into questions on visual perception, visual culture and visual problems. The course also examines generic and particular icons of public culture, such as those found in comics (including Disney characters) and advertisements. Images from both American and non-western world will be analyzed and placed in their cultural, historical and social context. The course will discuss issues of modernity, modernism, urban experience, technology, primitivism, feminism, identity and mass consumerism in visual culture in the context of various movements and theories, such as realism and neo realism, neo-expressionism, surrealism and postmodernism.

Units

3

ARTHIST 370 : Architecture and Urban Environment

Architecture and Urbanism will explore the history and patterns of urban forms in some major cities of the modern world, as it relates to urbanism, environment and community. The course focuses on Natural and Green Architecture as well as the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Rating System as an emerging movement and requirement in modern architecture that reconnects man to earth through the built environment, which will provide a new framework to approach buildings and structures.

Units

3

ENVST 170/PHIL 170 : Environmental Ethics

This course considers the role ethics and philosophy play in how wo/man relates to her and his human and natural environment. The central themes of the course are the relationship between human centered and nature centered views of the universe and wo/man’s responsibility for the care of the universe. Philosophies considered include but are not limited to Anthropocentrism, Confucianism, Taoism, Aristotelianism, Humanism, Transcendentalism, American Indian, EcoFeminism and Deep Ecology.

Units

3

HIST 119 : The World Before 1500

Beginning with the early civilizations of Southwest Asia and North Africa this course traces the rise of complex, stratified societies, including organized religions, political systems of thought and practice, and the various historical phases of Mediterranean society from the Greeks through the Renaissance.

Units

3

HIST 120 : Western Worlds II: Emerging Modernity

This course introduces students to the formative influences and developments that have shaped the modern Western world. It examines processes of state formation, scientific and technological change, political and religious upheaval, capitalist development, and territorial expansion as elements in the modernization of the West. The course explores the history of the West as a diverse congeries of peoples, ideas, and movements.

Units

3

HIST 242 : America in the Era of Slavery

This introductory course asks students to evaluate the centrality of slavery to the history of the United States. We examine how the enslavement of Africans and the conquest of the continent affected the development of capitalism, governments, and cultures in the US. Developing these themes entails comparisons across places and time periods. The course identifies a nascent global system, comparing the US with selected locations in South America, West Africa, and the Caribbean. Students make comparisons of the past and the present, seeking to understand how the era of slavery constructed race formations and other legacies for the contemporary world. Throughout, students gain an introductory narrative of American economic and political history and acquire an introduction to empirical methods, critical theory, and current scholarship.

Units

3

HIST 244 : Modern America

This course examines the role of cultural institutions and ideas in the forming of the American mind from 1865 to the end of the twentieth century. It explores the influence of native progressive traditions as well as European social thought on modern American thinkers from across the political spectrum. Readings from W.E.B. DuBois, Jane Addams, Henry George, John Dewey, Randolph Bourne, Lewis Mumford, Lionel Trilling, Ayn Rand, Richard M. Weaver, Richard Rorty, William F. Buckley, and others.

Units

3

Prerequisites

HIST 305 : The American West

The course explores the history and development of the American West, a space of settlement and contestation. It examines one of America’s more enduring myths, the idea of the frontier as a continuous line of expansion westward over time. Students compare and contrast the real and the symbolic West as a zone of encounter between different people, empires, and societies.

Units

3

HIST 330 : Modern China in Literature and Film

This course examines historical issues and problems of modern China (such as women, family, and revolution) through their representations in literature and film. The course considers literature and film in their relation to historical circumstances. Film and literature provide a multiplicity of class, ethnic, gender, generational, and regional perspectives.

Units

3

Prerequisites

100 level History course or sophomore standing.

HIST 333 : Inventing China

This course investigates the unfolding of the idea of “China” in history. The course examines the “invention” of the Chinese past and present according to the circumstances of different periods, political needs, and cultural self-images of the population inhabiting this area of the world a population that changed quite significantly over time in its constitution.

Units

3

HIST 380/ANTH 380 : Cultures of Learning

In this course we examine “education” by looking beyond the typical setting of the school. Instead, we will consider education in the context of learning and culture. As scholars in history and anthropology have shown in recent decades, learning can be found in classrooms, families, churches, and public places. It can be thought of broadly as the process by which people acquire knowledge, attitudes, values, and skills. We will study the past as a deeply constitutive force in the present. Historians call this approach cultural history, anthropologists call it historical ethnography. Specific topics will include prominent and influential theories of pedagogy and learning as well as the historical and cultural dynamics of race and ethnicity in learning. Throughout we will keep the long history of education reform in – including contemporary initiatives. The course is a reading and writing intensive seminar, with students expected to complete an original research paper testing or applying principles discussed in class. 

Units

3

HIST 384/ANTH 284 : Indigenous North America

The Americas were populated for millennia before European colonization transformed the hemisphere and the lives of its indigenous inhabitants. The descendants of these people live in many parts of North America – including Orange County, California. This seminar explores the histories and cultures of selected Native American peoples from Canada, Mexico, and the United States during selected eras from before colonization to the contemporary period. Reading current and classic scholarship on Native Americans and writing a research essay on a topic of the students’ choosing, students will acquire an understanding of the historical and cultural processes that have defined Native American lives.

Units

3

HUM 111 : Introduction to Global Ethnic Studies

Ethnic Studies emerged in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s to address patterns of inequality through education and social justice mobilization. In this course students learn the history of Ethnic Studies, including its relationships to Third World Feminism, global anti-imperialism movements, and other critical approaches to the past and present. Classes focus on multiple media, discussions, lectures, and student presentations. We consider how ethnicity, race, and indigeneity intersect class, gender, disability, and sexuality to create complex and nuanced relations of power. How do ethnic studies approaches help us study migration, popular culture, education, imperialism, war, and peace? Students attain an understanding of core concepts and the growing global turn in ethnic studies. Students hone their communication skills through discussion posts, a midterm presentation, and a final project focused on any ethnic studies topic of interest, anywhere in the world.

Units

3

HUM 250 : Historical Foundations of Western Education

The course examines the historical development of educational thought and practice in the West from the early Greeks to the present, focusing on the theme of humanism – its interpretation by the early Greeks, its reformulation in the Christian era, its eclipse and later revival during the Renaissance and its tenuous existence in the age of the modern and pre-modern state (1600-1900). Students will read from the works of such writers as Plato, Dante, Pico Della Mirandola, Erasmus, Vico, Comenius, Pestalozzi, Montessori, and Rousseau.

Units

3

HUM 270 : Theater and Performance

This course will examine three central questions of the stage: What are the literary and cultural origins of the theater? How does an actor relate to the written word? How can the actor influence the audience? To investigate these questions, the course will provide basic training in theater exercises for motion, speech, and concentration, in-class discussion and performance of plays, and analysis of both Eastern and Western philosophical ideas of the theater.

HUM 310 : Early Modern European Literature

The goal of this course is to introduce students to some of the great – popular and classical works – written in Western Europe during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Readings include the bawdy tales of Chaucer, Boccaccio, Rabelais, and Cervantes; Dante’s great epic poem, Inferno (from “The Divine Comedy,”) Erasmus’ Praise of Folly, More’s Utopia, and Montaigne’s Essays. These timeless pieces have shaped and continue to shape the Western imagination from Shakespeare to James Joyce and Thomas Pynchon. Attention is paid to the historical contexts although emphasis will be on genres and forms.

Units

3

HUM 313W/WRIT 313 : Experimental Critical Writing

Experimental critical writing is a slippery genre that challenges and breaks down traditional genre distinctions, sidestepping and/or transforming conventional expository protocols. A hybrid form, experimental critical writing challenges disciplinary boundaries and borrows, as it pleases, from various genres – personal essay, historical writing, memoir, non-fiction, drama, diary, autobiography, fiction, reportage, poetry, rant, and manifesto. Exceeding genre and discipline boundaries, experimental critical writing produces new epistemologies not possible within forms bound by conventional constraints. This course will uncover some of the rhetorical possibilities traveling under the name “experimental critical writing;” explore emergent “alternative” theoretical and methodological frameworks related to the production of knowledge; blur the boundaries between disciplines, genres, the academic and non-academic; and consider what it means to produce new knowledge as a socially and ethically responsible global citizen.

This course satisfies the advanced writing skills course requirement.

Units

3

Prerequisites

HUM 333W : Film History and Cinematic Art

This is an intensive upper-division course designed for Humanities majors and non-majors who seek to prepare themselves to engage issues of graphic literacy in an increasingly visual global and professional culture. This course will pursue landmarks in the history of cinema and establish analytic vocabularies for interpreting film masterpieces as well as emerging visual technologies. Our curricular emphasis will be upon “film texts” of the highest artistic status. Our analytic emphasis will focus on (i) critical approaches to those texts and (ii) interpretive disputes carried out across the last century’s divergent critical viewpoints, now under siege by aesthetic and conceptual norms that seek consensus (hegemonic unity) in a world only recently opened to multiple cultural perspectives.

Units

4

Prerequisites

WRIT 101 and [LIT 140 or another Humanities course.]

HUM 335W/WRIT 335 : Writing about Film

Visual rhetoric can be understood as visual argument (or an argument using images). This course encourages students to explore and write about non-traditional forms of rhetoric drawing from a wealth of topics related to film genres, ancient rhetorical genres and film studies. This is not a film appreciation course but rather, a writing and rhetoric course, which encourages students to engage with the way in which visual culture communicates and makes arguments. Each week, we will explore and write about a different film genre and its particular concerns. Our analyses of movies in this course will turn on the fundamental examination of how meaning is created through the power of artistic vision and visual technology.

This course satisfies the advanced writing skills course requirement.

Units

3

Prerequisites

HUM 425 : The Rhetoric of Creativity

The goal of this course is twofold: to examine the evolution of Greek philosophy from the earliest known stages and explore the way in which philosophical and literary issues permeated and continues to permeate the work of contemporary thinkers and writers; and to provide a take on the antique world.

Units

3

HUM 430W : Japanese Cinema

This course will explore the development of the cinema of Japan over the past 120 years, with particular reference to its cultural relevance and aesthetic principles, as one of the only global film traditions that has emerged independent of a Western model. We will investigate its historical origins and the different genres created by the growth of the film industry in Japan, as well as various influences on its forms from literary and artistic sources.

This course satisfies the advanced writing skills course requirement.

Units

3

Prerequisites

HUM 480W : Media and Experience

Media have a long history. The term refers to the means of encoding and transmitting information beyond its original setting. It covers all technologies of inscription, not only the latest ones: from rhyme and writing to the Internet and virtual reality. "Mediology" (or the science of the media) argues that transmission alters the nature of the message -- the world encoded is the world reconfigured to be otherwise than it used to be. Do media function as prosthetic enhancements of our senses? Or do they bend hearing, seeing and sensing into shapes that would never emerge in the first place? Does the experience of the media obscure the nature of their impact? Who is the media subject: Narcissus or Orpheus? In addition to classic theories of the media (Marshall McLuhan, Walter Benjamin, Niklas Luhmann), this advanced seminar will also consider the emerging environmental media theories.

This course satisfies the advanced writing skills course requirement.

Units

3

Prerequisites

INTS 120/HIST 140 : East Asia: A Historical Survey

This course is a survey of East Asian history from the earliest time to the present. The course is restricted to those aspects of East Asian history that enable us to understand the complexities and diversities in the historical experience of three East Asian countries: China, Japan, and Korea. This course concentrates on how three East Asian societies have achieved their own economic, political, social, and cultural developments, sometimes by way of mutual inspiration, influence or actual interaction with each other, and, later, with a broader world.

Units

3

INTS 261/HIST 231 : Modern China: Roots of Revolution

This course is a survey of modern China from around 1600 to the present. The course helps students to understand the origins, processes, and outcomes of the revolution in 20th century China. The course analyzes the complex and contradictory process of revolution, including the Communist Revolution and the many other revolutions that have transformed Chinese society and politics.

Units

3

INTS 283/HIST 234 : Third World and the West

This course examines the emergence of the Third World in modern history, the response to and reformulation of the question of modernity among Third World peoples and intellectuals, and the formation of modern global relation, beginning around 1450 to the present, in which Euro-Americans played a central part. This course also explores recent changes in the status and the meaning of the Third World and lays out numerous historical problems that still remain in this increasingly globalizing and interactive world.

Units

3

INTS 316/HIST 315 : Ideas of East and West

Many scholars have argued that the whole idea of Asia is an invention, since geographically speaking the separation of Asia from “Europe” (or West, in a strict sense) makes little sense. This is the point of departure for this course, which will examine constructions and representations of East (Asia) and West, as ideas, in significant scholarly and literary works, and films, both Euro-American and Asian. The course examines each work in its relationship to its historical circumstances in order to convey a sense of changes historically in such constructions and representations.

Units

3

Prerequisites

Any 100-level International Studies or History course, or sophomore standing.

INTS 326/HIST 326 : Women in East Asia

This course introduces historical complexities and issues, and various constraints that have shaped the lives and struggles of East Asian women from the “pre-modern period” to the present, in their dealings with the questions of their own culture and, later, modernity. Literary works and films will be widely used. 

Units

3

Prerequisites

Sophomore standing or INTS 215.

INTS 333/HIST 335 : China since 1949: The People’s Republic

This course is intended as an advanced survey of the People’s Republic of China from its beginnings in 1949 to the present. The survey will cover internal developments in Chinese socialism and its global context as well as developments in Chinese society and culture since 1949.

Units

3

Prerequisites

Sophomore standing.

INTS 350/HUM 350 : Gandhi and Modern India

The course aims to study the ideology and Programs of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) on peace and non-violence, in the context of British colonial rule. The emphasis of the course is on concepts such as colonialism, imperialism, nation, community and nationalism, in the light of historical, religious and political environment. Students will learn to analyze primary and secondary sources as well as pre-conceived notions using multidisciplinary approaches.

A product of the Indian reform and nationalist movements, Gandhi’s philosophy highlighted the importance of peace, human dignity and social inclusion. This has allowed other societies elsewhere to adopt his methods to resolve political, economic, and social disputes. Gandhi stirred the social conscience of his nation and the world through his use of non-violence (ahimsa) and active civil disobedience.

Units

3

INTS 371W/HIST 371W : The Emergence of Modern Japan

This course is a survey of modern Japan from the mid-19th century to the present, with emphasis on historical issues that have led to diverse understandings and interpretations. The course focuses on the development of modern ideology, social relationships, and economic and political institutions in a global context. The course takes the development of Japanese capitalism in the global economic system as the central event of modern Japanese history and of Japan’s changing place in the world during the 20th century.

This course satisfies the advanced writing skills course requirement.

Units

3

Prerequisites

INTS 489/HIST 489 : Culture and Imperialism

European empires created the historical context out of which the United States emerged. Since the US attained national independence, it has pursued its own imperial and colonial ambitions around the world. Many of the twenty-first century's international arrangements--from the United Nations to the global trade system--reflect this imperial history, at least in part. However, although often described as a global hegemon, the US, in fact, must negotiate its power as it frequently encounters resistance at home and abroad. Investigating the imperial and colonial dimensions of contemporary life and understanding the resources of hope and resistance in the cultures of people all around the world are central themes of this seminar. Students read current and classic scholarship in the traditions of Critical Ethnic Studies, Imperial Studies, Postcolonial Studies, and Settler Colonial Studies to interpret both empire and the cultural dynamics of power and resistance of colonized peoples. While course content focuses special attention on the US, Africa, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, the themes and methods of the course are global, and students are free to write their final research paper comparing any region of the world.

Units

3

LIT 140 : Introduction to Literary Studies

This is an introduction to literary genres and to the art of critical reading. The course will survey important examples of lyric poetry, short narratives, essays, novels, and drama. The main objective is to help students gain confidence and insight as they read difficult literary masterpieces, such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet, as well as help in grappling with the intense poetic strategies of poets such as John Keats and W. B. Yeats. The course will survey a variety of critical approaches to literary texts and it will also focus on the student’s growth as a critical writer. Lit 140 serves as a prerequisite for higher courses in literature.

Units

3

LIT 155 : Critical Reading and Writing

This introductory course offers a rigorous initiation to the “close reading” of literary texts and critical essays as well as to in depth interpretive activity. While it serves as a prerequisite for advanced courses in literature and humanities, it serves no less as preparation for critical reading in all intellectual disciplines in which difficult texts, complex writing and both research and scholarly rigor are in play. Lit 155 serves as a prerequisite for higher courses in literature.

Units

3

LIT 205 : 19th Century American Literature

This course explores powerful and complex major work from the remarkable period of North American literary maturity, an era often called the “American Renaissance:” Melville’s Moby Dick; Twain’s Huckleberry Finn; Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; Emerson’s Essays; Henry Adams’ Education; Thoreau’s Walden; and Emily Dickinson’s elegant poetry, and other texts.

Units

3

LIT 210 : 20th Century American Literature

This course examines major texts of literature in North America’s 20th century cultural upheaval: the poetry of William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens; novels by Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner and Joseph Heller; dramatic texts by Eugene O’Neil alongside studies in the relationship between art and the rise of cinema with its competing but often derivative narrative and imagistic techniques.

Units

3

LIT 211 : Classical Asian Literature

This course will survey the major works, genres, and themes of Chinese and Japanese pre-modern literature, focusing on literature of the Tang/Song dynasties and the Nara/Heian eras (c. 700-1200 AD). Students will study the works of individual poets and essayists, their contributions to the classic anthologies, and excerpts from the major novels and prose narratives of the premodern age. The course will also examine foundational critical theories within Asian literature, such as the genesis of poetry, the relationship between images and ideographic meaning, and the roles of fiction and diaries within society.

Units

3

Prerequisites

LIT 140, or sophomore standing.

LIT 212 : Medieval Asian Literature

This course will survey the principal works, authors, and themes of Chinese and Japanese medieval literature, focusing on literature of the Song, Yuan, and Ming dynasties and the Kamakura, Muromachi and Edo eras (~1100-1800CE.)The course will look at the three dominant genres of poetic anthology, personal narrative and staged drama, with particular attention paid to the conflicts between elegance and earthiness, worldliness and reclusiveness, and the changing perspectives towards gender and personal identity.

Units

3

Prerequisites

LIT 140, or sophomore standing.

LIT 213 : Modern Asian Literature

Students taking this course will read and discuss texts from various Asian countries but will focus primarily on works from China and Japan. The literature dealt with in class will be drawn from various periods, nations, and genres in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Units

3

Prerequisites

LIT 140, or sophomore standing.

LIT 215 : Latin American Literature

This course explores various aspects of the literatures that have developed in Latin America. The works read in class may be drawn from indigenous sources as well as from the Spanish and Portuguese traditions. All works are read in translation.

Units

3

Prerequisites

LIT 140, or sophomore standing.

LIT 225 : Art of the Essay Across Media and Time

The essay is everywhere: a newspaper, a YouTube Channel and a college app. Invented by Montaigne in the Early Modern Europe, the essay has risen to be a dominant cultural form. What did Montaigne want the essay to be? Has the essay become a victim of its success? We will consider four epochs in the history of the essay: Antiquity (Plutarch and Marcus Aurelius); Renaissance and Early Modern (Montaigne and Thomas Browne); Romanticism (Rousseau and Hazlitt); and Contemporary (Joseph Brodsky, Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, James Baldwin, Zadie Smith, etc.) The class culminates in the examination of the cross-media forms of the essay (photo-essays of Lee Friedlander, essay films of Orson Wells and Chris Marker, and online video-essays).

Units

3

LIT 230/ENVST 230 : Thinking Through Nature

From Heraclitus on, the concept of nature has proven to be unique in its ability to expand imagination, stimulate thought, and articulate disagreement. This class will place major texts in the traditions of natural philosophy, pastoral, and cultural critique alongside contemporary interventions, including arguments for the ecology without nature. Our goal is to rethink nature in response to the technological mastery of all life made possible by the advancement of science. The texts to be studied include Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Lucretius, Virgil, Rousseau, Diderot, Thoreau, Darwin, Dennett and Will Self. 

Units

3

Prerequisites

LIT 140, or sophomore standing.

LIT 250 : Comedy as Politics

This class examines the styles of comedy from Aristophanes to Samuel Beckett and contemporary stand-up. We begin by clarifying distinctions fundamental to comic representation of action (such as invective, humor, grotesque, wit mock, irony, sarcasm, deadpan, etc.) Then we undertake a journey through different worlds of comedy (the comedy of errors, satire, grotesque, nonsense, and black humor). Throughout our readings, we will consider the following alternatives: Does comedy subvert or reinforce existing social norms? Does it unmask or justify inequality? Is laughter a servant of hegemony or an agent of emancipation? In each of our readings, we will work to identify the potential of comedy to sketch sociological commentary, supply models of selfhood and offer incentive to political action. Primary texts will be supplemented by reading in the theory of comedy (Hegel, Baudelaire, Bergson, Freud).

Units

3

LIT 263 : African-American Literature

This course is designed to provide an introduction to the study of the literature produced by African-American writers in the social, historical, and political context of the United States. But we are also aware that the designation “African-American” might refer, as well, to peoples of African descent in various parts of the New World complex, from Canada to the southern tip of the United States, from Florida to the Yucatan, and from Cuba and the Caribbean across Central and South America. This course is devoted to an examination of writing and its creative product across the genres of fiction, poetry, and social critique from roughly the middle of the nineteenth century to the early twenty-first.

Units

3

LIT 301 : Studies in Ancient Literature

This course introduces students to the ancient literatures of Mesopotamia, Greece and Rome, primarily poetry and drama, from Gilgamesh through Virgil. The course is designed to give students a broad understanding of the major literary works of this period and their historical significance.

Units

3

LIT 302 : Shakespeare

Shakespeare is the greatest dramatist of all times. Most recently the sixteenth-century bard has been a great scriptwriter for Kenneth Branagh and Hollywood. This course focuses on a close reading of selected tragedies and comedies. Attention will be paid to the specificity of the English language of the period in order to facilitate reading. Due attention will also be paid to action, character as well as to the heft and swing of the meter and rhyme. The goal of the course is to help students understand the reasons for Shakespeare’s unparalleled success by locating the remarkable achievement of his literary career in the context of the theatrical, literary, social, and political world in which he worked.

Units

3

LIT 305 : Studies in Contemporary Literature

This course examines recent trends in literature and/or criticism across cultures from a comparative point of view. The primary emphasis is on examining the way in which both literary texts and critical methods respond to changing points of view about the individual, culture, and history. The works examined in this class changes from year to year, but normally includes major works of drama and fiction.

Units

3

LIT 317W : Murasaki Shikibu

This course will examine the life, work and influence of Murasaki Shikibu, author of the Tale of Genji (c. 1005-1015 CE), taking into consideration the intellectual and aesthetic heritage of the Heian era as a whole. Students will also investigate the arts and culture of her age, her concept of Yamato-damashii, or “essential Japanness,” and her vision of the role of the author within the “floating world” of human actions.

This course satisfies the advanced writing skills course requirement.

Units

3

Prerequisites

WRIT 101 and Instructor consent.

LIT 321 : Literature of Dissent

This class examines the evolution and disintegration of literary dissent in the twentieth-century Europe. We begin by surveying the three forces responsible for the emergence of dissent: the ideology of communism; totalitarianism as the governmental form; and socialist realism as the literary canon. The conceptual backbone of the class is the contrast between individual acts of dissent and the dissident movement. While the individual acts of dissent proceed from rejection or disagreement with the regime, the dissident movement was born out of seduction and subsequent disillusionment in the very idea of the communist state. In the final segment of the class, the students will inquire into the legacy of dissident thought through class presentation and discussion. Readings include texts by H. Arendt, K. Marx, F. Furet, C. Lefort, M. Bulgakov, A. Platonov, Abram Tertz-A. Syniavsky, Solzhenitsyn, Milosz, Havel and others. We will also study films by Alexander Medvedkin, Chris Marker, and Sergei Eisenstein.

Units

3

LIT 341 : The Novel

In the 21st century the novel continues to thrive as a literary genre nourished by a long and rich history with sustained cross-cultural significance. What factors contribute to the resilience of this literary form? How has the novel become synonymous with modernity itself? What, if any inter-textual dialogue among writers and books may be discerned? This course examines the phenomenon of the novel by evoking these trajectories: its emergence, its ongoing diversification and its global dispersion and reinventions. From year to year the course will stress readings drawn from Anglo-American, European, Post-Colonial and/or Asian spheres. Traditional categories (realism, modernism, postmodernism will be supplemented by local variations and re-orientions Alongside such authors as Dickens, Sterne, Austen, Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Conrad, Joyce, Nabokov, Beckett, Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, Natsume Soseki, Mo Yan, and others, theoretical texts will frame the novel’s significance in the context of cultural production and the formation as well as erosion of historical consciousness: George Lukacs, Bakhtin, Auerbach, Ian Watt, Raymond Williams, Edward Said, Fredric Jameson, Eto Jun et al.

Units

3

LIT 342 : French Colonialism and Insubordination

The purpose of this course is to explore through literary, historical, and political documents the unique way in which French intellectuals were affected by, reacted to, and in some instances voiced their outrage about colonialism and to examine the role some French intellectuals played in the resolution of these conflicts.

Units

3

LIT 480 : Critical Theory

This course begins with a brief survey of the history of the main theories of reading as they emerged in the West with Plato and Aristotle. The goal of the course is to help students understand and familiarize themselves with a body of texts written about the role and function of literature within the disciplines. The course includes an examination of the relationship between primary and critical texts in light of movements that took shape in the twentieth century such as Formalism, Structuralism, Post-Structuralism, and Cultural Studies. The aim of the course is to equip students with the necessary tools to become sophisticated and demanding readers and to sharpen their critical judgment whether or not they intend to pursue graduate studies in the Humanities.

Units

3

Prerequisites

LIT 140/LIT 155 and Instructor consent.

MUSICHST 150 : Introduction to World Music

This course is a survey of traditional music from around the world. It is designed to help students develop their skills in listening to, and describing music, and through this engagement, to deepen students’ appreciation of both the universal human activity of music-making and some of the specific cultures and peoples involved in it and their histories. The course is open to all students regardless of level of previous musical training.

Units

3

MUSICHST 215/ENVST 215 : Music and Ecology: Studies in Interconnection

This course will examine embedded views of the relationship between humans and their environments in the context and function of music in different times and cultures. Music is commonly both a means of the most profound communication between humans and nature, and an embodiment of cultural understanding and expression of this relationship, of humans’ place in nature. Readings will include examination of music cultures, the expressed views and philosophies of the people in those music cultures, and studies of the ecological systems and ecological impacts of human actions where those people live.

Units

3

MUSICHST 220 : Music, Mind and Brain

This course will explore the relationship between the universal human activity of music-making and biological and psychological aspects of our mental processes. Readings will be drawn from a range of disciplines, to include the physics of sound and hearing, the neurobiology of perception, the cognitive psychology of memory, temporal processing, emotion, entrainment, and expectation, the social psychology of functions such as communication, empathy and intercultural understanding, and related philosophical questions. These theoretical foundations will be applied to listening and music-making activities, but no prior experience is required. The primary goals are 1) to develop an enriched understanding of and appreciation for the function of music in human life, and 2) to develop an enriched understanding of and appreciation for the complexities of the human mind, through the lens of our musical activities.

Units

3

MUSICHST 250 : Music in Latin America

This course explores traditional and popular musical practices in Spanish-speaking Latin America. Focusing on the rich mixture of African, European, and indigenous cultures that characterize this region, the class will examine technical aspects of music itself, cultural contexts of musical creation and performance, and the historical development of particular musical styles. Case studies, explored through listening and reading, will highlight various local and national musical traditions and their presence in transnational migrant communities and emerging world music markets.

Units

3

MUSICHST 251 : Music in East and Southeast Asia

This course examines classical, folk, and popular music of East and Southeast Asia, with an emphasis on both technical aspects of music as well as its cultural and historical context. Topics may include court music and theater traditions, music and nationalism, folk music revitalization movements, music and politics, and the development of contemporary popular music styles. Individual case studies will be explored through extensive listening and the reading of musical ethnographies.

Units

3

MUSICHST 260 : Classical Music of the West: Middle Ages to the 20th Century

This course, open to students regardless of previous background in music, examines the history and development of what is often called “classical music,” the art music of Europe up to the 20th century. Students will focus on developing listening skills and thinking critically about musical compositions and styles, while learning about the social and cultural contexts in which the music was created.

Units

3

MUSICHST 310 : Women in Music

Women in Music is an investigation into and a celebration of women’s musical activities in a variety of capacities and musical traditions. The course will cover not only women composers in the Western tradition and some non-Western traditions, but also women performers, women patrons, and women as objects and symbols in the marketing and consumption of music.

Units

3

MUSICHST 320 : Music and Peacebuilding: Questions and Applications

This seminar course will investigate the possibility that musical activities (musicking) might contribute to peacebuilding. Beginning with examination of the common sense or assumption that this is true, students will explore the use of music in promoting war and other forms of violence, theories and methods developed in peace studies concerned with cycles and root causes of violence, and some institutional and non-institutional means of addressing them. Following this, we will explore, from multiple disciplinary perspectives, the function of music in social bonding, links to emotion and cognition, and case studies involving music in community therapy, conflict transformation and other peacebuilding efforts.

Units

3

PHIL 100 : Introduction to Philosophy

This course will introduce the student to the main themes of Western philosophy and the various approaches within philosophy. It will acquaint the students with the major thinkers of the philosophical tradition by analyzing and discussing challenging texts of the history of philosophy.

Units

3

PHIL 240 : Ethical Foundations and Issues: East and West

This course examines major philosophical approaches to ethics. The course includes Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Confucian, Taoist and Existentialist approaches, among others. Issues that pose ethical dilemmas are examined. The purpose of the course is to teach the skills of critical reflection especially as they apply to understanding the foundations of ethics.

Units

3

PHIL 280 : Introduction to Philosophical Thinking

This course will introduce students to the methodology of philosophical thinking and the grand topics that have engaged philosophers over the ages including the problem of evil, the existence of the Deity and the problem of human life. Students will be introduced to the general sub-disciplines of philosophy, including the history of philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, normative ethics, applied ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy. They will study select contemporary periods. They will also be introduced to meta-philosophy, different styles of philosophy; e.g., analytic, system building, existentialism and phenomenology.

Units

3

PHIL 311 : Philosophy and Literature

This course examines philosophical viewpoints as manifested within selected literary texts. The relationship between the literary form of the text and the philosophical content, as well as the relationship between philosophy and literature, will be explored and conceptualized.

Units

3

Prerequisites

Any previous philosophy course.

PHIL 350 : Global Philosophy, East, West and South

This course chooses essential, primary philosophical texts from the East, the West and the Global South with an eye to comparing the methods of thinking and the philosophical goals to be achieved. The overall objective of this course is to improve the thinking abilities of the student, to learn the cultural differences between the philosophers from different civilizations and to pivot toward a global philosophy that integrates and distills the essential human values and wisdom that a world philosophy can offer to our students.

Units

3

PHIL 460 : Corporate Social Responsibility

This is an extensive course on how and why corporations make the decisions that they do regarding what constitutes the private good, the public good, both nationally and internationally. In what ways does the capitalist profit motive affect ethical decision making? What are the consequences? What constitutes good management, destructive management? What is an accident? A tragedy? A disaster? Who should ultimately be responsible? A philosophical examination of intensive case studies will analyze what responsibility corporations have for risk management, social welfare and environmental sustainability in the global interface of the 21st century.

Units

3

REL 104 : World Religions Today

This course explores the major religious traditions today to identify their common patterns and points of difference and to find methods of understanding and engaging human life in its religious depth. Topics include distinctive practices, primary stories, scriptures, relation to society, and attitudes on issues of nature, life-and-death, justice, and global citizenship.

Units

3

WRIT 313/HUM 313 : Experimental Critical Writing

Experimental critical writing is a slippery genre that challenges and breaks down traditional genre distinctions, sidestepping and/or transforming conventional expository protocols. A hybrid form, experimental critical writing challenges disciplinary boundaries and borrows, as it pleases, from various genres – personal essay, historical writing, memoir, non-fiction, drama, diary, autobiography, fiction, reportage, poetry, rant, and manifesto. Exceeding genre and discipline boundaries, experimental critical writing produces new epistemologies not possible within forms bound by conventional constraints. This course will uncover some of the rhetorical possibilities traveling under the name “experimental critical writing;” explore emergent “alternative” theoretical and methodological frameworks related to the production of knowledge; blur the boundaries between disciplines, genres, the academic and non-academic; and consider what it means to produce new knowledge as a socially and ethically responsible global citizen.

Units

3

Prerequisites

CAPSTONE 390 : Capstone Proposal

All SUA students participate in a Capstone research project during their senior (fourth) year, consisting of three courses. Capstone 390 is usually taken in the fall semester, Capstone 400 during the winter block, and Capstone 450 during the spring semester. This research project is intended to be a culminating experience, drawing upon the skills and expertise that they have developed during their career at SUA. Each student works with a faculty mentor to develop and carry out a research project related to their chosen Concentration. Students meet regularly with their Capstone mentor for support and feedback. All Capstone work must meet the criteria set in the Undergraduate Capstone Policy as well as standards set by the individual Concentration.

Beginning in academic year 2026/2027, the credit value and grading basis for Capstone courses will change. Until and including academic year 2025/2026, Capstone 390 will remain a 1-unit course graded on a P/NP basis.

Units

2

Prerequisites

Prerequisites: Senior standing. This course cannot be taken on a P/NP basis.

CAPSTONE 400 : Capstone I

All SUA students participate in a Capstone research project during their senior (fourth) year, consisting of three courses. Capstone 390 is usually taken in the fall semester, Capstone 400 during the winter block, and Capstone 450 during the spring semester. This research project is intended to be a culminating experience, drawing upon the skills and expertise that they have developed during their career at SUA. Each student works with a faculty mentor to develop and carry out a research project related to their chosen Concentration. Students meet regularly with their Capstone mentor for support and feedback. All Capstone work must meet the criteria set in the Undergraduate Capstone Policy as well as standards set by the individual Concentration.

Beginning in academic year 2026/2027, the credit value and grading basis for Capstone courses will change. Until and including academic year 2025/2026, Capstone 400 will remain a 4-unit course. Capstone 400 may not be taken on a P/NP basis.

Units

2

Prerequisites

CAPSTONE 390. This course cannot be taken on a P/NP basis.

CAPSTONE 450 : Capstone II

All SUA students participate in a Capstone research project during their senior (fourth) year, consisting of three courses. Capstone 390 is usually taken in the fall semester, Capstone 400 during the winter block, and Capstone 450 during the spring semester. This research project is intended to be a culminating experience, drawing upon the skills and expertise that they have developed during their career at SUA. Each student works with a faculty mentor to develop and carry out a research project related to their chosen Concentration. Students meet regularly with their Capstone mentor for support and feedback. All Capstone work must meet the criteria set in the Undergraduate Capstone Policy as well as standards set by the individual Concentration.

Beginning in academic year 2026/2027, the credit value and grading basis for Capstone courses will change. Until and including academic year 2025/2026, Capstone 450 will remain a 4-unit course. Capstone 400 may not be taken on a P/NP basis.

Units

2

Prerequisites

CAPSTONE 400.This course cannot be taken on a P/NP basis.