Welcome to the Course

Welcome to Humanities 2113, also known as "General Humanities I."  What is “General Humanities I”? Let’s start with what it isn’t: don’t expect a course where you are expected to memorize endless dates, figures, and factoids to regurgitate on a weekly exam. Instead, the goal of this class is to explore our shared cultural heritage, a collection of works that continue to shape how we see, appreciate, and evaluate the world. As the Preface of the Norton Anthology of World Literature explains, “World literature is ground in the history of the world, but it is also the history of imagining this world; it is a history not just of what happened, but also of how humans imagined their place in the midst of history.” In other words, this is a class that explains how we “made” history in our own image. 

The true ‘work’ of this course will be learning to read the literature that survived history to become culture, even though many of them will be unfamiliar to you.  From Greece to the Middle East, we’ll explore the most fundamental ideas of humanity so we can see ourselves in history.  If you are what you eat, you are also what you read—and what your ancestors wrote down to preserve for future generations.  Silly as it might sound, this is your story, preserved in black and white as your cultural DNA.  So start reading!

I've listed the books for class below in the order we're reading them.  Be sure to get them as soon as possible, since the ECU bookstore only holds onto the books for a few weeks before sending them back.  You are required to own all the books for class and read them along with the class.  

• Sappho, Stung With Love: Poems and Fragments (Penguin Classics)
• Homer, The Essential Iliad (trnsl. Lombardo, Hackett)
• Tales from the 1,001 Nights (Penguin Classics)
• Machiavelli, The Prince (Penguin Classics or other)
• Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing (Pelican Shakespeare or other)

I look forward to exploring these works with you over the Fall 2014 semester!  Please contact me with any questions or concerns at jgrasso@ecok.edu.  

NOTE: The posts below this one are from Fall 2013: they are not assignments for this week or next.  Feel free to browse through them if you like, but none of these questions or readings will appear in our course.