Instructor: Dr. Jason Swedene
Office location and phone number: Arts Center 223 (phone: 635-2122)
e-mail: jswedene@lssu.edu
Office Hours: by appointment
This course is an examination of our inherited culture through historical, philosophical, religious, literary, and artistic analyses. Our specific focus is on the styles from prehistoric civilizations through the Renaissance. The aim of this course is not only to understand the triumphs and shortcomings of the humanistic subjects, but most importantly, to examine our own place in the wider culture that transcends each of us.
Required Texts:Required Course Website:
http://www.lssu.edu/faculty/jswedene
Course Requirements:
1) You must attend class regularly and participate in all class activities. You may lose considerable grade points of up to 5 points per class for excessive unexcused absences. Please let me know via e-mail if you plan to miss a class.
2) All assignments for a given day must be done before class.
3) There will be six one-hour tests. The final test, test six, is a non-cumulative exam to be held during finals week. Make-up tests are given only as warranted by circumstance (e.g., documented illness or documented family emergency) and as granted by instructor. The testing center in the basement of the library provides a monitored environment. Bring a picture ID and this document (the aptly entitled Professor's Permission Form). You will not be issued a test without these items.
4) “In
compliance with
5) Students are responsible for the assignments outlined on this syllabus and the course website. Absence at a previous class is not an acceptable excuse for not completing assignments on time.
6) An important note about extra credit: students may add up to 4% to their final grade by doing extra credit work.
The first 2% may be earned by completing a chapter summary of a book, pre-approved by the instructor. The due date for that extra credit opportunity is 5/30/05 (by 6 p.m.). Click here for the proper form to fill out.
The next 2% may be earned by attending a cultural event and submitting a two-page journal entry on the experience. The due date for all cultural event journal submissions is 6/6/05 (by 6 p.m.). Click here for the appropriate questions to consider. No late extra-credit submissions will be accepted.
7) Offensive language in class is strongly
discouraged in
favor of, let's say, more intellectually refined ways of saying the
same thing.
Calculating the final grade:
Your final grade is the average of your six test grades plus any extra credit (see course requirement #6). Failure to attend regularly will result in a final grade deduction (see course requirement #1). Truancy, tardiness, and leaving class early each will be counted against regular attendance. Beware of this policy so that you arrange other engagements such as work, dinner parties, vacations, child care, hunting excursions, etc. accordingly.
Cheating Policy:
Any form of cheating or plagiarism earns the student an automatic failure for the course and disciplinary action as determined by the University's Academic Standards Committee. Cheating includes (but is not limited to) the use of any unauthorized assistance in taking quizzes, tests, or examinations; dependence upon the aid of sources beyond those authorized by the instructor in writing papers, preparing reports, solving problems, or carrying out other assignments; or, the acquisition, without permission, of tests or other academic material belonging to a member of university faculty or staff. Quotations must be used when the words are not your own and citations must accompany the use of others’ ideas, even if you paraphrase their wording. Failure to do so is plagiarism.
Week 1
A: Course Intro;
overview; Hume
"Of the Standard of Taste";
B: Fleming Ch.
1; Matthews and Platt (Selections from Code of Hammurabi
and
the Epic of Gilgamesh)
A Fleming
Ch.
1; Matthews and Platt (Selections from
Dispute of a Man
with His Soul, Great Hymn to the Aten,
Selections
from the Iliad)
B: Fleming Ch. 2;
Matthews and Platt (Selections from
History of
the Peloponnesian War and Bush’s
9.20.01 address on website);
Matthews and Platt (Oedipus the King)
Fleming
Ch. 2;
---------Intro to Socrates-------Matthews
and Platt (Selections from Plato’s
Republic)
Week 2
A: Fleming
Ch. 4; Matthews and
Platt (Selections from
the
Aeneid)
B:; Fleming Ch
4
A: Fleming
Ch. 7
B: Fleming Ch. 8;
Matthews and Platt (Selections from
Canterbury
Tales); Matthews and Platt (Selections from
Dante’s
Inferno)
Week 5
A: TEST
FOUR; Picture List
B: Fleming
Chs. 9; Matthews and Platt
(Selections
from Machiavelli’s The Prince)