201 Common Syllabus

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Fine Arts Events

Unit E: How do we know and understand the sacred? What therefore should we do?

Dr. Baumer's Fine Arts Course

Dr. Baumer's Unit E Syllabus

Dr. Baumer's First Class Reading

How individuals and societies treat differing notions of the sacred has been a fundamental problem in human existence, one that animates many of today's conflicts. Addressing this problem may well begin with understanding different religious traditions, and music is a significant window into this realm. In virtually all societies, religious music intensifies the experience of the sacred, grounding metaphysical concepts in physical and emotional sensation. Unfamiliar musical expressions of the sacred are often difficult to accept; the non-believer can hardly be expected to feel as the believer does. In light of this, we will examine how music facilitates contact with the sacred in Mozart's Requiem, African American Sanctified worship, the Sufi tradition of Islam, and Tibetan Buddhist chant. We will also consider recent arguments that sacred experience is "natural" and
ingrained, rather than imaginary or superfluous.

Just as the notion of the sacred extends beyond religion to such concepts as
patriotism, honor, family, love, or even fandom, music's associations with
the sacred spill over into its "secular" forms as well.  From opera to rap,
musical works derive meaning from sacred concepts, reflect the views of an
artist or society, and propose influential new views of the sacred, leading
to controversy. Beginning with Richard Strauss's opera based on Oscar
Wilde's Salome, we will move on to several popular songs of the 1960s-1990s
and some musical reactions to 9/11. The primary texts will be recordings and
videos; close attention to these examples is required, but specific musical
knowledge (i.e. score reading) is not. A selection of journal articles will
provide further context.

Dr. MacLeod's Philosophy Course

Dr. MacLeod's Unit E Syllabus

Dr. McClenahan's Literature Course

Dr. McClenahan's Unit E Syllabus

Not even the visionary or mystical experience lasts very long. It is for art to capture that experience, to offer it to, in the case of literature, its readers. (Salman Rushdie)

Certainly work is not always required of a man. There is such a thing as a sacred idleness - the cultivation of which is now fearfully neglected (George MacDonald)

Commerce is of trivial import; love, faith, truth of character, the aspiration of man, these are sacred. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Death cancels everything but truth; and strips a man of everything but genius and virtue. It is a sort of natural canonization. It makes the meanest of us sacred—it installs the poet in his immortality, and lifts him to the skies. (William Hazlitt)

For me to make lasagna would be a desecration of a great Italian dish. . . . I don’t mess with sacred things. (Mario Cuomo)
                                                                                                                                               

As we can see from this handful of quotes, “the sacred” is an elusive concept that keeps shifting meaning among religions, cultures, and individuals.  This unit will explore the question of how literature can help us understand and perhaps even experience the sacred. Since new perspectives often help to clarify our thinking, the readings range from 19th-century poetry to 20th-century novels and a play, with an emphasis on contexts and viewpoints that are somewhat unfamiliar.

Our exploration of the question will probably lead us to further questions like these: who feels the need for experiences of the sacred? What purposes does such experience serve? What is the relation, if any, of the spiritual and material worlds? What roles do emotion, reason, and imagination play in experiences of the sacred?

Readings (note: please use editions ordered in the bookstore):

Louise Erdrich,  The Last Report on The Miracles at Little No Horse
William Blake,  The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (a satiric illuminated text)
(NB: This is a verbal and visual text, so you NEED the “illuminated” edition. You can preview the book online at Blake Archive.org)
August Wilson, Joe Turner’s Come and Gone (play)
Octavia Butler, The Parable of The Sower

Dr. Ricketts' History Course

Dr. Ricketts' Unit E Syllabus

Is McDonald’s, as described by the author of The McDonaldization of Society, a “sacred American institution?” More importantly, how did the term sacred—once reserved to the religious sphere—reach such a level of colloquial usage? Does this tell us something important about how we understand the transcendent in the 21st century?

We will begin our historical pursuit of the concept of the sacred by tracing the concept of sacred through time, observing the interplay of society and religion that has functioned to broaden the term’s usage, and by developing a paradigm for discussing how the sacred is viewed in contemporary society. Our specific areas of focus will be to (1) study the changing nature of death rituals in western society from the medieval period to the present as a case study of the historical interplay between religion and society, (2) examine how the concept of sacred has been used historically to establish and sustain civil religions, (3) look briefly at how women, who have been marginalized in the Judeo/Christian traditions, have created their own sacred rituals and spaces, and (4) consider the responsibility of secular society toward the religious and civil sacred.

We will primarily read a series of journal articles along with one monograph, Western Attitudes Toward Death by Philippe Aries.

Unit F: Must the Need for Social Order Conflict with the Need for Individual Liberty? What therefore should I do?

Dr. Baumer's Fine Arts Course

Dr. Baumer's Unit F Syllabus

“Let me write the songs of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws.” – Andrew Fletcher (after Plato)

“I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free” – Lee Greenwood

“Bring down the government, they don’t speak for us.” – Radiohead

“Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome someday” – Charles Tindley, altered by Pete Seeger

From Bunker Hill to South Africa, most revolutions have had a soundtrack. Songs on both sides of the barricades have been credited with helping to create and sustain mass movements, and not just in the political realm. Jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, punk, and rap have all had revolutionary effects on society, and caused generational and cultural rifts that still resonate today. Throughout history, music has been an expression of liberty and identity, as well as a site of social conflict. Just as the ruling powers in every age have tried to control music for their own sake, music has helped to generate an opposition in ways small and large. Social movements have grown from musical styles created for worship or entertainment, and revolutionaries have used this music to create and sustain mass movements. 

Dr. McClenahan's Literature Course

Dr. McClenahan's Unit F Syllabus

This question continues to have an almost painful relevance to our lives this year as Americans struggle to decide what reasonable and ethical responses to terrorism are and how to balance our desires for safety, security and justice with our desire to preserve fundamental American freedoms.

So it’s often useful to explore these questions in unfamiliar contexts. Sophocles’ famous play about the conflict of the individual and the state, Antigone, takes us to ancient Greece, though A.R. Gurney’s re-vision of this play brings us back to a modern university in Another Antigone to begin with a conflict between a student and a professor.

Two other readings pose the unit questions within science fiction novels, because our core question has been a special theme of this genre since its modern beginnings (which is often held to be the publication of Frankenstein). As Isaac Asimov wrote, “technological changes lie at the root of political change.” What Asimov called “social science fiction” is “social experimentation on paper” or as Ursula LeGuin called it (borrowing an idea from Einstein), “thought experiments.”  One reason that SF writers create whole worlds, technologies, and cultures in their fictions is that authors and readers can thereby consider familiar problems or solutions in new contexts. These thought experiments may help us analyze the problems more clearly and sometimes to see possible new solutions. The classic Victorian novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde focuses more on the problem of societal repression of human instinct and one man’s tries to achieve an ultimate freedom through a secret scientific discovery.  In contrast, A Woman on The Edge of  Time tries to extrapolate logically from present science and social conditions to create a new world and consider its possible relationship to ours. This kind of novel aims to let readers think about how factors like class, race, gender, culture and material conditions (environment, economics, scientific and technological levels) have a significant impact on who enjoys liberty and who has control over individual freedoms. 

Our readings also lead us to ask further questions. For instance, what are the specific conditions in which history is likely to move in the direction of greater or lesser individual freedom? IS individual freedom always a positive value, for individuals or society? What kinds of conditions or events may tip the social balance toward repressive social order or greater individual freedom and opportunity. Finally, our readings help us consider what kinds of liberty or order are possible to achieve and what benefits or dangers they present to society.         

Course Texts:

Sophocles                    Antigone

A.R. Gurney               Another Antigone

R.L. Stevenson           Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Marge Piercy               A Woman on The Edge of Time

Dr. Ricketts' History Course

One of the great conundrums in the quest of the good society—however that vision has been delineated—has been balancing the liberty of the individual with the general welfare of society. Using the United States as our case study, we will begin by establishing the historical debates and a common terminology to facilitate discussion. In the U.S., civil society (primarily in associationism) and the state (generally through the rule of law) have traditionally been viewed as the major instruments for establishing and maintaining both social order and individual liberty. We will take a fairly close look at the Supreme Court, which empowers the Constitution, examining the major decisions that, in the works of on author we will read “illuminate the tensions between individual liberty and the interests of society, the challenge of balancing majority rule with minority rights, the difficulties of applying old laws to new technologies and changing cultures, and the need to address crises in the short term while preserving fundamental rights in the long term.” We will also take a look at the Red Scare of the 1950s to better understand the fundamental fragility of our system of checks and balances as it evolves in changing historical circumstances.

Readings will include Michael Trachtman’s The Supremes’ Greatest Hits: The 34 Supreme Court Cases That Most Directly Affect Your Life; Lillian Hellman’s memoir of the McCarthy era, Scoundrel Times; and a selection of journal articles.