HIGH SCHOOL 2011 – 2012


American History I
This class follows American History through the 1830s. A review of the Crusades and the Reformation provides a European context before moving to Spanish exploration and conquest. Our study of colonial North America begins with accounts of Native American culture before examining English settlements, including Virginia and Puritan New England and the structure of colonial life.  We follow the causes, course, and results of the American Revolution, read the nation’s founding documents, and learn about life in the early republic amid the social and economic changes of the early nineteenth century, with special interest in the expansion of slavery. Longer readings throughout the year include Calvin, Columbus, Diaz, Bradford, Edwards, Franklin, Paine, Jefferson, and Douglass.

American History II
The second half of our study of American History begins with Andrew Jackson and the Second Party System and moves to the present day. It follows the political developments of the nineteenth through the twenty-first centuries, including the election of presidents, national growth, the passage of legislation, and the fighting of wars. Lincoln and his speeches receive longer attention. The course also focuses on social and economic changes, the development of modern American life, and the changing roles of women, minorities, and immigrants. The goal is to understand historical developments, to question historical actors, and to think critically about ideas, political results, and historical judgments.

History of Western Philosophy
In Plato's Apology, Sokrates asks, "Who knows the excellence of the citizen, who knows the excellence of the human being?" We will pursue this question through a series of readings from antiquity to the present; readings from: Plato, Sophokles, Aristotle, Genesis, Exodus, the Gospels of Matthew and John, Paul's Letter to the Romans, Lucretius, Cicero, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, Kant, Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Heidegger.

Community, Identity, and the Other
Humans have shown a long standing tendency to define themselves in comparison with or even in opposition to others. This course will focus on the Middle East and Mediterranean of the 6th century BC to the 8th century AD, a time during which time-honored beliefs were being called into question; the means by which identity had been traditionally constructed were under assault; and group and individual identity was in almost constant flux. It was the age that witnessed the Jewish Diaspora, the rise of Christianity, and the advent of Islam. Readings in ancient texts will include selections from the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran, and the biographical traditions focused on Muhammad. Modern readings will include works like Binur’s My Enemy, Myself, al-Khalili’s The House of Wisdom, and Menocal’s The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain.

PREVIOUS OFFERINGS

European Intellectual History (2010 – 2011)
This course is an examination of European History from the High Middle Ages to the present. Its focus will include central primary texts of European intellectual history following the development of European political, religious, social, scientific, and philosophical thought.  Political history forms the background structure of this study, with issues of social development and intellectual change filling in the foreground of our examination. Questions that will be addressed include: What are the origins of the modern state? How do ideas change culture and culture change ideas? What were the origins of and alternatives to democracy and to capitalism? What roles did religion and scientific discovery play in this history? How do individual rights emerge? How did life change for the average person? The goal will be to understand and evaluate ideas in historical context and the ideas of historians attempting to explain that context.

Magna Graecia and Sicily (2010 – 2011) 

An interdisciplinary study of Magna Graecia and Sicily from, roughly, the first Greek colonial foundations in Southern Italy (ca. 740 BCE) through the age of Dionysius (367 BCE).  We will study the archaic Greek West as a frontier that attracted numerous counter-cultural thinkers and seekers, as well as various utopian—and, in Sicily, tyrannical—political leaders.  Readings will include selections from Porphyry and Iamblichus (on Pythagoras), Empedocles, Parmenides, Plato, Pindar, and later Greek (and Latin) historical accounts; significant attention will also be given to art-historical and archaeological remains.