Online Master of Arts in Humanities (MA)

This is the first course in the graduate humanities program. It is designed to introduce the student to the theory, concept, and general approach to a program of study centered on civilization’s great works, authors, and ideas. Course topics include how to approach study of the great works, authors, and ideas; a philosophy grounded in the classical/liberal tradition; and the university and curricular concepts centered on the great ideas. Students are expected to use this course to orient themselves for the remainder of the graduate humanities curriculum, prepare for a life of focused and purposeful study based on fundamental concepts and a particular modus of thought and reflection, and apply themselves within a general framework of knowledge acquisition and application. Readings for this course include Adler and Van Doren's How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading.

This course acquaints students with the Hebrew Scriptures and the world of the ancient Greeks. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians, and other peoples to whom the Hebrews and Greeks are indebted are also considered. Among the topics to which the course attends are the human experience of the divine, man's struggle with human and natural forces, warfare and the meaning of justice, the development of logos as human reason or cognition, and the emergence of science, technology, and artistic experience. Readings for this course include The Epic of Gilgamesh; The Bible; Homer's Odyssey; Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War; Aeschylus' The Oresteia; and Plato's The Republic.

This course addresses the possibility of the existence of a proper way or path through life. Texts are chosen based on their ability to clarify moral values in the middle ages and antiquity, and are loosely grouped around themes of devotion, consolation, and the otherworld. Primary texts will be read in conjunction with historical background information. Readings will include selections of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Anchorene Wisse, the letters of Abelard and Heloise, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, Old English stoic literature, Chaucer’s “Book of the Duchess,” and examples of journeys to the otherworld including Aeneus’ journey to Hades in Virgil’s Aeneid, selections of Dante’s Divine Comedy, Beowulf’s decent into Grendel’s mere, faerie ballads, and The Pearl.

HUMN530 provides an overview of major works of the Renaissance, and offers a detailed study of its primary thinkers. Issues include the birth of rationalism, individualism, skepticism, and emergent secularism. Questions address the inherent tensions between intellectual tradition and change, and the increasing dominance of the sphere of science. Readings for this course include: Petrarch's Selections from the Canzoniere and Other Works; Elizabeth I’s Poems; John Donne's Selected Poems; Machiavelli's The Prince; Francois Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel; Michael de Montaigne's Essays; Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote; Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus; Shakespeare's Sonnets and The Tempest; Edmund Spenser’s “Letter to Raleigh” and The Mutabilitie Cantos.

HUMN541 provides an overview of major works of the Enlightenment, and offers a detailed study of its primary thinkers. Issues include the birth of rationalism, skepticism, individual liberation and emergent secularism. Questions address the inherent tensions between intellectual tradition and change, and the increasing dominance of the sphere of science. Readings for this course include: Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice; Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women; Meriwether Lewis and William Clark’s Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition; Rousseau's Confessions; Thomas Paine's Common Sense and other Political Writings; and Ekaterina Dashkova's Memoirs.

This course is a study of issues related to genetics, the human nervous system, and artificial intelligence. Course topics include computers, computation, and its limitations; natural and machine intelligence; and the ethical responsibility of the scientist, the politician, the philosopher, and the artist as they relate to emerging issues. Philosophical, ethical, and scientific points of view will be discussed. Readings for this course include selected works of Mary Shelley, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Paul Churchland, and Edwin O. Wilson, among others.

In this course, students will explore diverse representations of nineteenth century literature. Students will seek to critically identify and analyze literary meanings from interdisciplinary perspectives. They will question how the works discussed reflect and impact a range of cultural issues in the nineteenth century-- a time of radical social change. Through the lens of literature students will look at social upheaval in terms of national identities, urbanization, science, music, class, popular culture, gender, industry and, in the U.S, slavery.