Course Description and Information

Lodges at Baca in Fall

Welcome to Renaissance Culture. This two-block course offers an introduction to the history, literature, science and the arts of the European tradition. Its two-block interdisciplinary discussion will consider how major works in the Western canon at once frame and destabilize cultural norms. Students will observe the natural world in order to understand how the ancients saw it.  They will address how music expressed the harmony between humankind and nature for Renaissance and prior composers. Throughout thsi two-block sequence, Renaissance Culture will develop critical and analytical skills through reading of primary texts and frequent writing assignments, so preparing students for further study of the various liberal disciplines.

What was the role of the European Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in framing modernity?  Did it revive central characteristics of the ancient past, or did it bring novelty cloaked as history?  Is it possible for moderns to discover our predecessors' views of the world as different from our own, or are we always constrained by our cultural limitations?  Is our sense of the relationship among intellectual and artistic enterprises like philosophy, science, literature, and music fundamentally different from that of ancient, medieval, and early modern readers, viewers, and listeners: in this course, students will address these important issues largely through primary works, artifacts of the past, and their own observations, rather than through our contmporaries' accounts of how the past may have been.

Course description and requirements

This year Renaissance Cultures's first block will focus on ancient and medieval notions of order in the universe, and the ways in which the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution received and reframed these notions. Students will spend the second week of the block at the Baca campus (see photo above), starting with a visit the Sand Dunes National Park on Sunday, September 9. Notably--and perhaps surprisingly friom students' perspective--readings will be primarily works of and about classical Mediterranean and early modern European civilization, not from those centuries between medieval and modern generally labeled "Renaissance."  By examining what came before and what followed, we will pose a question for your continuing work in Block 2: how did the Renaissance use ancient models to craft a new Europe?  This challenging enterprise will demand the class's full attention, commitment, and a spirit of adventure.

The works of Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy represent the views of ancient and medieval authors who challenged and reframed accepted views of humankind's place in the universe.  Petrarch and Dante did the same thing, but later. Attention to their translated texts will clarify why modern perspectives are themselves innovative--and culture-bound.  In the middle of the 16th Century Copernicus argued that the Sun rather than the Earth was the center of the universe, and by the early 17th Century Galileo had used his telescope to see the moons of Jupiter, the mountains on our Moon, and Saturn’s “ears” (rings). The science we take for granted today was new and exciting (or threatening) then. Students will explore some of the ways the “new science” influenced the literature and life of the Renaissance. During the week at the Baca Campus, they will see for themselves astronomical phenomena that won Galileo a position at the Medici court and later led to his conflict with the church.

Instructors	email	office	phone
Dick Hilt	Dick	Barnes 218	389-6581 (office), (719) 447-7966
Owen Cramer	Owen	Cossitt 203	389-6443 (office)
Mentors
Richard Forbes	Richard		(484) 682-7893
Kira Osborn	Kira

The class will meet, unless otherwise indicated on the syllabus below and PROWL site, in Cossitt E at 9:00am. Students will be expected to arrive at each session not only fully  prepared by completion of the day's assigned reading and writing, but also with thoughtful questions and observations about the material.  No written work will be accepted late without prior excuse; revision will be an essential part of the writing process.  Written assignments will be returned promptly so that students have a good sense of how their work is assessed and how they may improve it, but final grades will await the conclusion of the second block of the course, when all four faculty will participate in final oral examinations and will view improvement across the two-block sequence favorably.

Each student will complete a short intellectual autobiography on the first day of the course, two five-page critical essays during the subsequent three weeks, and a written final on the last day of block.  They will also complete astronomical projects (Our moon, Periods of Jupiter's Moons), which will require different kinds of argument. For general comments on what makes a good paper, see the Writing Evaluations link. Studnets will wish to save all papers (both electronic versions and returned, marked-up hard copies) for possible inclusion in their First-Year Writing Portfolios, which must include at least one paper from an FYE course.

Readings and films for discussion

The following course readings are available for purchase from the Colorado College Bookstore.  Should you order them from online or other booksellers, be sure to buy the editions and translations indicated here, since several are standard works in print in multiple versions, and it is helpful for class discussion siv everyone is literally on the same page.  ISBN (publishers') numbers are included here for items for purchase, in addition to full bibliographical information such as students will be required to include in written work, for ease of comparison among editions:

Galilei, Galileo.  Essential Galileo.  Trans. Maurice Finocchiaro.  Hackett 2008.  ISBN-13: 9780872209374

Plato.  Symposium.  Trans. Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff.  Hackett 1989.  ISBN-13: 9780872200760

Petrarch. The Essential Petrarch. Trans. Peter Hainsworth. W. W. Norton 2010. ISBN-13: 9781603842884

Dante. La Vita Nuova. Trans. Stanley Applebaum. Dover 2006. ISBN-13: 9780486453491

The following further readings are excerpted in electronic form on PROWL (Colorado College electronic course resource site):

Bless, Robert C.  Discovering the Cosmos. Mill Valley CA: University Science Books, 1996. ISBN-10: 0935702679

 

Galileo.  Screenplay by Bertoldt Brecht et al.  Dir. Joseph Losey.  Kino Video, 1974.

Academic contexts

Colorado College has high expectation of students' academic integrity, and its supports the quality and the intellectual honestly of their work with well-detailed structures.

Honor Code

All new students will have learned about the College's Honor Code and Honor Council during NSO.   They will therefore understand that all work in this course is conducted under the Code's strictures, and that written assignments must include the Honor Pledge.

Critical essays will be prepared according to the standards of the Modern Language Association Handbook, available online through the Tutt Library website and in hard copy in both library and bookstore.  For the purposes of our short essays, short parenthetical references and a list of works cited will be adequate.

Work on tests will be entirely your own, although necessary formualas will be supplied. You may ask us questions during an exam (which instructors might or might not answer). You will sign the honor pledge on each exam, as on papers.

Work on papers should be your own. You may use sources in the library or Internet, but you may not copy another's ideas without proper citation. You may discuss your paper with friends or others. If someone gives you an important idea, you should cite her/him.

Work on homework problems and labs, as well as preparatory work for exams, may be collaborative. Science is a social enterprise, and so is humanistic discourse.  We encourage you to talk to your classmates, Dick, Owen, Richard, Kira, or anyone else you find helpful (such as former students of this course), but you must understand and write up each problem, paper, or exam for yourself.

Learning Commons

The Learning Commons is located on the first floor south of Tutt Library. It houses a variety of helpful enterprises, the most important of which are the Writing Center and the Quantitative Reasoning Center. At the Writing Center trained peer tutors help with all phases of writing papers, but they won't write the paper for you. At the QRC trained students with quantitative backgrounds (science, math, economics,...) are available to help with all sorts of quantitative challenges. Someone from each center will visit our class to explain the services available sometime in the block.

This page last modified 14:41, August 27, 2012.