Interdisciplinary Humanities II
Dr. Kevin L. Hughes
Chair, Department of Humanities
Associate Professor
Theology and Religious Studies
Dr. Mark Shiffman
Associate Professor, Humanities
Affiliate Faculty, Classical Studies
Dr. Lauren Shohet
Luckow Family Professor
English
Dr. Hughes
Office:
Office Phn:
SAC, Room 304
(610) 519-4728
Dr. Shiffman
Office:
Office Phn:
SAC, Room 479
(610) 519-7159
Dr. Shohet
Office:
Office Phn:
SAC, Room 463
(610) 519-6966
(but email
preferred)
By appointment: as chair, I’m in almost
every day for much of the day.
Email: Kevin.Hughes@villanova.edu
Office Hrs:
Office Hrs:
MF 11:30-12:20 in Honors suite, Garey Hall
T by appt., SAC 479
Email: Mark.Shiffman@villanova.edu
Office Hrs:
W 11:30-12:20 in Honors suite, Garey
Hall, Mon 4-5 in SAC 463, and by appt.
Email: Lauren.Shohet@villanova.edu
Course Description: Interdisciplinary Humanities II
The Interdisc sequence of courses presents students with a unique opportunity to engage the
deepest and most fundamental questions that lie at the root of human experience through
intensive engagement with classic texts and artifacts in a collaborative interdisciplinary
environment. The second semester of Interdisc explores what we might call the ‘greater Middle
Ages,’ extending into early modernity, from the waning of the Roman Empire to edge of the
French revolution. We will consider relationships among the texts we study in the course's three
components, and also ask how questions are formulated, what counts as evidence, and the goals
of analysis in the three disciplines that constitute this year's version of Interdisc II: literature,
theology, and political science.
Policies and Procedures I: Course Structure and Attendance
As you know, this is an intensive seminar course, so careful preparation for and diligent
participation in class is required. Throughout the semester, course instructors will assign short 1page reading assessment papers, journal responses, or Blackboard responses, that will help you
prepare the reading for class discussion. These activities will contribute to your class participation
grade in the course's different sections. We provide below a general outline of how the course
will flow. However, in order to gauge our progress and assign the readings appropriately, we
may revise the reading and assignment schedule when our progress demands. Exact, updated
assignments will be kept on the course Blackboard pages.
Nuts and Bolts: The course will meet 3 times a week, MWF from 9:30am - 11:20am and
12:30pm-1:20pm. Students are expected to attend all sessions, armed with marked-up hard
copies of the readings and prepared to discuss the assigned material. In the event of an absence,
the student is responsible for any information or material missed. Since the focus of the course is
our in-class conversations, normally, missing the equivalent of more than a week of class --that
is, more than 4 days (or 12 sessions) of absence will lead to failure of the course.
Computer use in class. Discussion works best when your computer is closed. Likewise, this
course works on modes of reading and annotating that work best from paper copies (at least for
most texts). If you would like to take notes on your computer on factual presentations, or if there
are particular texts you would like to annotate and use electronically, please talk with us to
determine how to proceed.
Students with Learning Disabilities. Villanova seeks to make reasonable academic
accommodations for students with disabilities. If you are a person with a disability, please contact
us outside of class, and make arrangements to register with the Learning Support Office (x 9
5636; nancy.mott@villanova.edu).
Policies and Procedures II: Grades and Assignments
The formal work for each section of this course will consist of three papers, three coordinated
comprehensive oral exams, regular participatory work (both oral and written), and some sectionspecific quizzes and research exercises. For each section, the papers count for 60%, the tests for
20%, and participation for 20%.
All written work turned in to course instructors should be word-processed and on time, except
where you have arranged otherwise in advance with the instructor. Always keep an electronic
copy AND hard copy of written work. If any assignment should get lost or misplaced in the flurry
of paperwork this term, it is your responsibility to supply another copy immediately. Anyone who
cannot provide a hard copy of written assignments within 24 hours will receive an ‘F’ for the
assignment.
For the oral exams, which are coordinated among the three sections, you will be assigned in
advance a short text and a small group in which to prepare questions about that text in relation to
the course as a whole. During class time, the small groups will meet with the three of us to
present your prepared questions, to begin a conversation addressing one or two (selected by you
in advance), and then to continue the discussion in dialogue with the instructors.
Policies and Procedures III: Academic Integrity
All students are expected to adhere to the most rigorous standards of academic integrity.
Everyone should read the university's policy on academic integrity, available on the University
homepage. Do not assume that you know what is and is not plagiarism. Check the policy, and ask
us if you have any questions. For the first offense, students who plagiarize or cheat on any
assignment will receive an F either on the assignment or for the whole course, depending upon
the gravity of the offense. At that time, a letter will be filed with the student's dean. Second
offenses may result in dismissal from the university.
HON 1051: LITERATURE
The literature component of Interdisc II explores intersections between writing and other aspects
of culture. Why do people write (or recite) and read (or listen)? What are the relationships
between texts and material history? Between rhetoric and culture? What continuities and changes
can we explore in the concepts of writing, forms of literature, conventions of reading, and modes
of publication across our time period? We will explore how rhetorical analysis of texts can
illuminate internal conflicts in the culture that produced them, with close attention to dissenting
paradigms of gender, political authority, and selfhood -- including the relations of human selves
to divine and to civil authority, the foci of the other strands of the course.
Required texts for Hon 1051, available in bookstore (in order of use)
Beowulf and Other English Poems, ed. Williamson (ISBN 9780812222753)
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales (Norton Critical) (ISBN 9780393925876)
Marlowe, Christopher. The Tragical History of Dr Faustus (ed. Wootton) (ISBN
9780872207295)
Shakespeare, William. The Merchant of Venice (9780743477567; other scholarly editions
acceptable)
Lanyer, Aemelia. Salve Deus Rex Judeorum (9780195083613)
Donne, John. Complete Poetry and Selected Prose (9780375757341)
Milton, John. Paradise Lost (9780872207332, but other scholarly editions acceptable)
Behn, Aphra. Oroonoko (9780393970142)
Anderson, M. T. The Amazing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation: Volume One, the
Pox Party
additional texts for Hon 1051, available on Blackboard:
Marie de France, fables and lays
Petrarch, Rime Sparse
Castiglione, Book of the Courtier
Katherine of Kent, For Nun I never be None
Jane Anger, Her Protection for Women
Ben Jonson, “To Penshurst”
sonnets of Philip Sidney
sonnets of Mary Wroth
poems of Anne Bradstreet
Daily reading questions and journal postings for LIT
For the literature strand, you will have one or two reading questions for each session,
usually announced at the end of the previous class and always available after class on the
“calendar” feature of Blackboard. (The “calendar” is under “course tools,” and you need to click
on the entry to open the full question.) For each class meeting, you should think about these
questions beforehand, taking a few notes on lines or passages that seem especially helpful for
considering one or both of them. Ten times during the semester, and not more than once a week,
you need to post a 1-2 paragraph response to one of these reading questions on the “main course
journal” feature of the 1051 Blackboard page, which you pull down from “Course Tools.” Entries
are due by 8 pm the night before the reading is scheduled to be treated in class. Please do not file
these as attachments: instead, paste text right into the journal page. These responses should
thoroughly engage specific elements of the text, offering line or page numbers to help us find
your words/passages in class discussion. They should reveal more about what you find in the text
than what the text lets you see in yourself. It is not a problem if you write a response you later
come to decide is “wrong”; thoughtful and detailed engagement is key.
Other requirements for LIT. For the literature strand, you also will write three short
papers (in multiple drafts) and will undertake four short on-line quizzes, based on disciplinary
terms, historical context, and analysis of passages from assigned reading. Terms you should know
will be catalogued in a running list on Blackboard, and historical events you should recognize
will be highlighted/boldfaced on the chronologies handed out in class (and archived on
Blackboard). Finally, you will be asked to complete some research and analysis worksheets. You
will file these to Blackboard, using the “worksheet” journal folder. It is easiest for all of us if the
main journal tab keeps accurate track of your 10 required responses, with the worksheets in the
separate tab.
HON 1052: POLITICAL SCIENCE
Since all human beings do all that they do for the sake of some apparent good, it is clear that all
associations aim at some good, and above all that the most sovereign good is the aim of the most
sovereign and comprehensive association. This is called the polis or political association. –
Aristotle, Politics
It is absurd for anyone to believe that politics or practical judgment is the most serious kind of
knowledge, if a human being is not the highest thing in the world. – Aristotle, Nicomachean
Ethics
In its classical origins, political philosophy raises fundamental questions about human existence
and co-existence: What kinds of standards of conduct ought human beings living under the same
laws observe toward one another, and what is required in order to bring them to observe such
conduct? What kind of human beings deserve to rule? Do laws derive their authority and
excellence from human design, from natural standards, or from divine wisdom? What are the
desires of human beings, and which of them are the most important to satisfy? These questions
cannot be avoided in political life; all forms of legislation and governance imply some kind of
answer to them.
Students in this course will be introduced to the concrete practice of classical politics in ancient
Greece and Rome, and then to the profound transformations of the fundamental understanding of
political life and the nature of law brought about in the encounter between Biblical religion and
classical political life and thought. The course will then turn to the modern thinkers who have
transformed the understanding of law and political life and shaped the basic aims and
assumptions of the modern nation state. Authors will include Plato, Plutarch, Augustine,
Aquinas, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.
REQUIRED TEXTS FOR PSC
Plato, Republic (Basic Books, ISBN 0465069347)
Saint Augustine, The City of God (Penguin, ISBN 0140448942)
Machiavelli, The Prince (University of Chicago, ISBN 0226500446)
Hobbes, Leviathan (Hackett, ISBN 0872201775)
Locke, Second Treatise of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration (Dover, ISBN
0486424642)
Rousseau, The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses (Yale University, ISBN
0300091419)
PSC Texts on Blackboard
Plutarch, “Cato the Younger”
Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (selections)
Hamilton, Madison, Jay, The Federalist Papers (selections)
Rousseau, Emile (selections)
HON 1053: THEOLOGY
Schools of Knowledge and Desire
In this era, the Hellenistic and Roman exploration of speculative and practical reason, of physics,
metaphysics, ethics, and politics, was brought into living relationship with the Abrahamic
(Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) revelation that the deepest truth of the world is personal. That is,
if from Athens we discern that the deepest question about everything is why it exists at all,
medieval Christian scriptural cultures grow out of the insight that existence itself is not derivative
or contingent shadow, neither some material prison for a divine spark, but rather, simply
everything-that-is is given and received as a gift. But far from answering all the deep questions,
this revelation disrupts many ancient sureties and changes everything, from philosophy to
economics to politics to architecture to friendship to everyday life. That is, if one can hold onto
that insight – for part of the consistent claim of the Christian thinkers we will discuss is that
humans are constantly tempted to idolatry – to treat something other than the Giver as a god, as
the deepest truth about the world, or (which amounts to the same thing) making “God” a
mechanism in the world, a “really strong power.” This dimension of Interdisc II will focus on
Christian scriptural cultures in the European world (We lack the time to do all three Abrahamic
traditions, alas) and the questions they ask to orient themselves to the cosmos: “Who or what do
we worship? How do we see the world and shape our lives in that light? What happens if we
don’t?” Toward the end of the semester, we will look at the dissolution of these scriptural
cultures, and we will ask why and how they disappear, and what of them persists and continues.
Texts include Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, John Scotus Eriugena, Anselm, Thomas
Aquinas, Dante, Martin Luther, Teresa of Avila, Descartes, Diderot, and others, but we will also
look at the gothic cathedral at Chartres as a ‘text’.
REQUIRED TEXTS FOR THL
BIBLE (preferably NAB, RSV, NRSV translations)
Dionysius the Areopagite, Works of Dionysius the Areopagite (ISBN: 9781483932422)
John Scotus Eriugena, The Voice of the Eagle (ISBN: 9780970109705)
Anselm, Proslogion (ISBN: 978-0-87220-565-9)
Thomas Aquinas, Holy Teaching, ed. Bauerschmidt (ISBN: 9781587430350)
Hollander & Hollander, trans., Dante’s Purgatorio (ISBN: 0385497008)
Teresa of Avila, trans. E. Alison Peers (ISBN: 9780486461458)
Martin Luther, Three Treatises (ISBN: 9780800616397)
Rene Descartes, Discourse on Method (ISBN: 9781463529031)
Denis Diderot, Rameau’s Nephew and D’Alembert’s Dream (ISBN: 978-0140441734)
J.-P. de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence (ISBN: 978-1586174712)
PREPARARING FOR THL DISCUSSION
I will occasionally, but not always, provide guiding questions for you to guide your reading, and
on some of those occasions I will ask you to post something on Blackboard as a blog or
discussion thread. But I always expect you to have your text in front of you, marked up with
pencil and/or with reading notes in your notebook. In the absence of specific reading questions,
you should always be asking at least these four kinds of questions:
1. Continuity/discontinuity? How does this reading relate to what we’ve read before? Is it
picking up on some threads in earlier parts of this text and/or in other authors we’ve read?
How?
2. Internal Critique? What’s the argument of the text? How do the pieces fit together? Do
they make an argument that holds water? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the
argument? Does it make sense in its own terms?
3. External Critique? Evaluate the argument. Make a judgment about it in relation to what
we have read before or what your own thinking brings to it. Is it true? Does it expand our
understanding or reduce it?
4. Implications and Applications? What does this argument imply about the deepest truth
about the world, about humans, culture, God?
Tentative schedule of work (subject to revision; check Blackboard for updates.
Exact reading assignments will be posted on calendar feature; click to open fully)
readings from
writing/assessment
other topics/activities
Old-English lyrics and
riddles (c. 400 BCE- c.
991 CE)
Beowulf (c. 700-1000)
Plato, Republic (d. 347
BCE)
Dionysius the Areopagite
(d. ca. 580 CE)
week 1 (1/12)
course introduction
Beowulf cont.
Plato cont.
John Scotus Eriugena (d.
877), The Voice of the
Eagle
week 2 (1/19)
[Mon MLK Day]
LIT worksheet and
paper #1 due Fri 1/23
(SAC 402 by 4:45 pm)
Thurs, 1/22. Giuseppe Mazzotta,
Yale University, “Dante’s
Europe”, CC Cinema. (optional)
Plato cont.
Marie de France (fl 11601215), fables and lays
Chaucer (1340?-1375),
Canterbury Tales, General
Prologue
Anselm of Canterbury
week 3 (1/26)
THL paper #1 due
Friday 1/30 (SAC 304
by 4:30pm)
Our Lady of Chartres cathedral
possible field trip to Church of
the Good Shepherd (Lancaster
Ave.)
(1033-1109), Proslogion
Anselm cont’d.
Plutarch (46-120 CE),
“Life of Cato”
Augustine (386-430), City
of God
Chaucer CT, Miller’s Tale,
Franklin’s Tale, Wife of
Bath’s Prologue
week 4 (2/2)
PSC paper #1 due Fri.
2/6
Augustine, cont’d.
Thomas Aquinas (12251274)
Petrarch (1304-74), Rime
Sparse
Katherine of Kent (fl
1420s), “For Nun would I
never be none”
Castiglione (1478-1529),
Book of the Courtier
week 5 (2/9)
Genesis, Exodus, Romans
Aquinas, cont’d.
Dante (c.1265–1321),
Purgatorio
week 6 (2/16)
Oral Exam, Mon 2/16
Aquinas cont.
Dante cont.
Marlowe (1564-1593), Dr
Faustus
Machiavelli (1469-1527),
The Prince
week 7 (2/23)
LIT paper #2 due
Thurs
2/26 (SAC 402 by 4:45
pm)
SPRING BREAK
Luther (1483-1546)
Machiavelli continued
Jane Anger (1558-1598),
Her Protection for Women
Shakespeare (1564-1616),
Merchant of Venice
week 8 (3/9)
PSC paper #2 due Fri
3/13
Shakespeare cont.
Jonson (1572-1637), “To
Penshurst”
Lanyer (1569-1645) Salve
Deus Rex Judeorum
week 9 (3/16)
THL paper #2 due Fri,
3/20 (SAC 304 by
4:30pm)
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Hobbes (1588-1679),
Leviathan
Teresa of Avila (15151582)
week 10 (3/23)
Oral exam #2 Monday
3/23
Philip Sidney (1554-1586),
sonnets
Mary Wroth ( 1587-1651),
sonnets
Descartes (1596-1650),
Discourse on Method
Locke (1632-1704),
Second Treatise of
Government
week 11 (3/30)
EASTER BREAK Fri
Locke, Letter Concerning
Toleration.
Descartes cont’d
Donne (1573-1631),
poems
Hamilton/Madison/Jay
(1787-8), Federalist
Papers
Pascal (1623–1662)
week 12 (4/6)
EASTER BREAK
Mon.
Donne cont.
Milton (1609-1674),
Paradise Lost
Rousseau (1712-1778),
Social Contract
week 13 (4/13)
THL paper #3 due Fri
4/17 by midnight,
electronically
Milton, cont’d.
Rousseau, Discourses.
Behn (1640-1689),
Oroonoko
Diderot (1713-1784),
Rameau’s Nephew,
D’Alembert’s Dream
week 14 (4/20)
LIT paper #3 due
Thurs 4/10 (SAC 402
by 4:45 pm)
30 Years War (1618-1648)
6:30 pm Wed 3/25. Connolly
Cinema: “Der Bestrafte
Brudermord” (a slapstick 18thcentury Hamlet): lecture by
Prof. Zachary Lesser (UPenn),
performance by Hidden Room
Theatre
Rousseau, Emile.
Anne Bradstreet (16121672), poems
Caussade (1675-1751),
Abandonment to Divine
Providence
M. T. Anderson, Octavian
Nothing
week 15 (4/27)
PSC Paper #3 due 4/29
by midnight,
electronically
Oral
exam/culminating
exercise during finals
period