Instructor:  

Carol Neel, Professor of History, Palmer 233

              Phone 389-6527, e-mail cneel@coloradocollege.edu

              Office hours 8:45-9:30 daily

Student mentor:

Caitlyn McCarty, History major

               Phone 301-602-0701, e-mail Caitlyn.McCarty@coloradocollege.edu

Course description and requirements 

During these two blocks, students will consider how humankind's relationship with the natural world has for millenia been mediated by books.  In so doing, they will begin thoughtful encounter with classical Mediterranean, medieval European, and modern global civilizations.  Course participants will ask how peoples' and cultures' relationship with the cosmos, the landscape, and with other living things has informed their social relations, political order, and ideational constructs.  Classroom discussion will address primary texts and images, works by people of the past, in cultural context.  Secondary readings will introduce students to critical perspectives on the relationship between the past and present of perspectives on the natural worlds.  Throughout, students will be challenged to develop mutually supportive skills in reading, conversation, research, and writing.

During Block 1, students will each complete one two-page response paper and one six- to eight- page critical essay as well as a group study for oral/written presentation and an oral group final based on individually prepared essays.  During Block 2, course participants will craft eight- to ten-page individual research papers improved by group critique and a take-home essay exam on teh material of both blocks.  All written assignments will address questions framed collectively and discussed in detail by the entire group.  Class discussion will be an important element throughout both blocks, and students excused from class for illness or other prearranged circumstances will prepare two-page summaries of the readings assigned for those sessions.  Assessment will be based one half on discussion contribution/collaborative projects and one half on individual written submissions.  Papers will be turned in as hard copies to the instructor's "in" box in the History suite by the stated deadlines.  Research essays will cite courses according The Chicago Manual of Style.  All work must be prepared according and in written acknowledgement of the Colorado College Honor Code.

Class activities will include forays into Tutt Library's Special Collections, the Press at Colorado College, and the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.

Course materials

The following books, listed here in order of their appearance in the syllabus, are available for purchase in the Colorado College Bookstore.  Some of the texts represented in these editions are available in other translations, but it will be helpful if class members use the same translations so that we can refer to specific pages and passages during our discussions.  If students avail themselves of discounted prices from internet merchants, they should be careful to find the editions listed:

• Bill Bryson, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, 2nd ed. (New York: Anchor, 2006).  ISBN-10: 0307279464
• Gilgamesh, trans. David Ferry (New York: Farrar, Strauss, 1993).  ISBN-10: 0374523835
• Pliny the Elder, Natural History: A Selection, trans. John F. Healey (New York: Penguin, 1991).  ISBN-10 0140444130
• Boethius, Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Douglas C. Langston (New York: Norton, 2009).  ISBN-10: 0393930718
• Book of Beasts: Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century, trans. Terence Hanbury White (New York: Dover, 2010).  ISBN-10: 0486246094
• Ugolino di Monte Santa Maria, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi, trans. W. Heywood (New York: Vintage, 1998).  ISBN-10: 037570020X
• Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the World Became Modern (ISBN-10: 0393343405
• John Man, The Gutenberg Revolution: How Printing Changed the Course of History (London: Transworld, 2009).  ISBN-10: 0553819663
• Johannes Kepler, The Six-Cornered Snowflake, trans. Jacques Bromberg (Philadelphia: Paul Dry, 2010).  ISBN-10: 1589880536
• Voltaire, Candide, trans. John Butt (New York: Penguin, 1950).  ISBN-10: 0140440046
• Michael Allin, Zarafa: A Giraffe's True Story, from Deep in Africa to the Heart of Paris (New York: Delta, 1998).  ISBN-10: 0385334117
• Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: 150th Anniversary Edition (New York: Signet, 2003).  ISBN-10: 0451529065
• Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 2010).  ISBN-10: 0393304515

The following further works and excerpts will be available on the course’s PROWL website:  

• Francesco Petrarca, "The Ascent of Mont Ventoux," in Renaissance Philosophy of Man, ed. and trans. Ernst Cassirer et al. (Chicago and London: U of Chicago P, 1948), 36-48.
• Adrian Johns, "The Book of Nature and the Nature of the Book," in Book History Reader, ed. David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 59-76.

The following website will be a resource for group research:

Aberdeen Bestiary (http://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/)

The following films will be subjects for common discussion; copies for review will be available from the instructor:

Michael Apted, dir., Nell (2004).

Tom Moore and Norah Twomey, dirs., The Secret of Kells (2009).

Jean-Jacques Annaud, dir., The Name of the Rose (1986).

François Truffaut, dir., The Wild Child (1970).

Jon Amiel, dir., Creation (2009).

Schedule of readings, meetings, written work and presentations

Discussion session will regularly be at 9:30 in Palmer 225, unless otherwise noted.  Special scheduling is as noted below in bold face and deadlines for written assignments in bolded italics..

BLOCK 3

Week 1 (September 1)--History, nature, and natural history

Week 2 (September 8)--Ancient knwoledge and a living cosmos

Week 3 (September 15)--The Christian world view

Week 4 (September 22)--The return to ancient paradigms

BLOCK 4

Week 1 (September 30)--Scientific Revolution and Being in Nature

Week 2 (October 6)--Reception of a Newer World

Week 3 (October 13)--Animals and mankind

Week 4 (October 20)--Mankind as animals

ELECTRONIC RESOURCES

This course's research tools sessions will introduce students to many web-based collections useful for the preparation of assignments and further exploration.  It will also urge critical techniques for the assessment of WWW sites.  The following solid websites are a beginning to useful web research:

for Mediterranean antiquity--Perseus, at Tufts

for the European Middle Ages--the Labyrinth, at Georgetown

for an individual bestiary--the Aberdeen Bestiary

for the modern world--the Modern History Sourcebook, at Fordham

                               .