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21L.001X

Foundations of World Culture I: World Civilizations and Texts

Undergraduate · Historical course

Fall 2011

This course aims to introduce students to the rich diversity of human culture from antiquity to the early 17th century. In this course, we will explore human culture in its myriad expressions, focusing on the study of literary, religious and philosophical texts as ways of narrating, symbolizing, and commenting on all aspects of human social and material life. We will work comparatively, reading texts from various cultures: Mesopotamian, Greek, Judeo-Christian, Chinese, Indian, and Muslim. Throughout the semester, we will be asking questions like: How have different cultures imagined themselves? What are the rules that they draw up for human behavior? How do they represent the role of the individual in society? How do they imagine 'universal' concepts like love, family, duty? How have their writers and artists dealt with encounters with other cultures and other civilizations?

Readings

  • The Epic of Gilgamesh . Translated by Andrew George. Penguin Classics, 2003. ISBN: 9780140449198.
    Listed reading
  • Homer. The Odyssey . Edited by H. Rieu. Translated by E. V. Rieu. Penguin Classics, 2003. ISBN: 9780140449112.
    Listed reading
  • Plato. The Republic . Translated by Robin Waterfield. Oxford World’s Classic, 2008. ISBN: 9780199535767.
    Listed reading
  • Leitch, Vincent B., William E. Cain et al., eds. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism . W. W. Norton & Company, 2010. ISBN: 9780393932928.
    Listed reading
  • Aeschylus. The Oresteia . Edited by W. B. Stanford. Translated by Robert Fagles. Penguin Classics, 1984. ISBN: 9780140443332.
    Listed reading
  • Sophocles. Oedipus the King . Translated by Stephen Berg and Diskin Clay. Oxford World’s Classics, 1988. ISBN: 9780195054934. [Preview with Google Books ] ↗
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  • Coogan, Michael D., Marc Z. Brettler et al., eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha . Oxford University Press, 2010. ISBN: 9780195289558.
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  • The Analects of Confucius . Translated by Roger Ames and Henry Rosemont, Jr. Ballantine Books, 1999. ISBN: 9780345434074.
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  • Rahula, Walpola. What the Buddha Taught . Grove Press, 1974. ISBN: 9780802130310.
    Listed reading
  • The Bhagavad-Gita . Translated by Barbara Stoller Miller. Bantam Classics, 1986. ISBN: 9780553213652.
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  • Babbitt, Ellen C. The Jataka Tales . Lulu.com, 2010. ISBN: 9780557687473.
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  • The Qur’an . Translated by Tarif Khalidi. Penguin Classics, 2009. ISBN: 9780143105886.
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  • Alighieri, Dante. The Divine Comedy . Translated by Allen Mandelbaum. Everyman’s Library, 1995. ISBN: 9780679433132.
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  • Narayan, R. K. The Ramayana . Penguin Classics, 2006. ISBN: 9780143039679.
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  • The Arabian Nights . Edited by Daniel Heller-Roazen and Muhsin Mahdi. Translated by Husain Haddawy. W. W. Norton & Company, 2009. ISBN: 9780393928082.
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  • Saavedra, Miguel de Cervantes. Don Quixote . Edited and translated by John Rutherford. Penguin Classics, 2003. ISBN: 9780142437230.
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Sources