English 300

Humanities Education:

Ancient Greeks didn’t use the term, but Plato’s dialogues and Aristotle’s treatises on logic, rhetoric and poetics established patterns of inquiry and analysis of human experience and values

Greek concept of paideia— educating the young aristocrat for civic participation

Ancient Romans developed the idea of “humanities” as a mark of elevated civilization

Italian Renaissance society was the first to use the term “humanities” to refer to a specific kind of intellectual inquiry

“Humanities” had associations of “kind behavior,” not just “human behavior”

English 300

Culture:

From Latin colere, with associations of agriculture (“cultivation”) and also religious worship (“cult”)

In English, during the early modern period, “culture” began to be related to social phenomena

“Culture” implied elevated status— “high culture”

Johan Gottfried von Herder (18th C)—advocated for the term “cultures” instead of “culture”

English 300 In the past 50 years, English Studies has become the center of Humanities education, and Literary scholars tend to generalize about the humanities—how did we get to this point?

In Humboldt’s vision of the modern university (early 19th C), philosophy was the core of the humanities (and the core of the university)

After 1900 the Harvard “elective” curriculum began to break down the traditional structure of the curriculum (deriving from the Renaissance “trivium” and “quadrivium”)

The elective curriculum fostered more rigid “disciplinarity” and undermined the implicit “generalist” interdisciplinarity of the traditional curriculum

But, the concept of rigid disciplinarity can also be seen as an inevitable outcome of the core assumptions of Modernity—cf Francis Bacon’s New Organum

English 300

English 300: Senior Seminar

Professor: Ron Strickland

Email: rlstrick@ilstu.edu

Phone: 438-7596

Office: Stevenson Hall, 333-D

Hours: 8:30-9:30 TR

http://www.english.ilstu.edu/strickland/300/