An introduction to the history, archaeology and literary sources of one of the most dynamic periods of ancient Egyptian history. We investigate the development of Egyptian foreign policies and military expansion, and topics such as ideology and imperial identity.
This course focuses on the humanities through an intensive study of transatlantic biographers. We examine six roles biographers can play: the archivalist, the contemporary, the fictionalizer, the listener, the miniaturist, and the systematizer.
This seminar, part of the “Six Pretty Good Ideas” program, serves as an introduction to the Humanities. The course considers the way that poetry, across cultures and historical eras, allows authors to navigate the relationship between the universal and the particular.
Through the lens of “worldmaking,” this course provides students with an intensive introduction to studying the humanities at Yale. Six building “types” provide a foundation for questions about how societies and individuals organize value systems.
Through the lens of six trans-continental travel accounts—by merchants, envoys, scholars, pilgrims and wanderers—this course provides first-year students with an intensive introduction to studying the humanities at Yale.
Humanistic study has always been a tool for posing the big questions. In a class divided into two halves but taught by both instructors, we will explore these two concerns beginning with Gilgamesh and ending with the present.
The aims of the course are to have students learn about the workings and history of the system of capital punishment in the U.S and decide whether the experiment is succeeding or failing—why and how.
How does The Crown help or hinder our understanding of British history? What problems are posed by a show about actual events and people, some still living? What and who gets left out?
Modern empires depicted themselves as hegemonic purveyors of progress whose endeavors contributed to a “civilizing mission.” Through this course, we apply a critical lens to the material expression of these narratives in a variety of forms and through visits to Yale collections.
Questions of self and other, identity and difference, are at the heart of personal experience and present social conflicts. But what do we mean by “self” and “other”? This class explores this questions through readings in modern literature, philosophy and social theory.
Study of the creative interactions produced by informal associations of innovative minds in literature, philosophy, politics, science, psychology, the arts, war, and law.
An introductory course on the art of watercolor as a humanistic discipline. Readings, discussions, and studio work emphasize critical, creative thinking through “learning by doing” study.
Study of how fantasy ideas about race and gender, good and evil, and religion and culture reflect and influence changing ideas about what it means to be human. Authors include Neil Gaiman, Ursula K. LeGuin, Octavia Butler, & Nalo Hopkinson.
This European intellectual history seminar explores the epistemological question in philosophy: does the world really exist? How do I know it’s really there and not just a projection of my consciousness? is there such a thing as truth?
Exploration of the divergent notions of divine law in Greco-Roman antiquity and biblical Israel; the cognitive dissonance their historical encounter engendered and attempts by Jewish, Christian, and contemporary secular thinkers to negotiate competing claims.
This first-year seminar considers the relationship between science and the humanities by looking at several intersections throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Why does the universe exist? What is reality? Who are we? Where are we? We will address such uncertainties by looking at three seemingly disparate disciplines: literature, physics, and philosophy.