From Antiquity to the Humanities (via Humanism) and the History of Ideas

This course looks at the origins of several subjects in the Humanities in order to explain, question, and sometimes challenge the ways in which those subjects are studied or understood today. Consideration of sources for the Humanities today – in the educational practices of classical antiquity, in the 'humanism' of the Renaissance and in the 17th-20th centuries– will throw new light on ideas and categories which are central to western education. Topics include grammar/language, persuasive argument, scholarship; theory/practice of history, literature, poetry, fiction, fantasy, and the novel; relationship between words and images, and connections between studying the Humanities and being human.