Course Descriptions Fall 2007 UGC 111 World Civilization 1 Professor DesForges WF 2 00 2 50 104 Knox Reg recitation section This course attempts to understand continuities and changes in the human experience by tracing the origins and development of global civilization from earliest recorded times through the fifteenth century of the common era It suggests that we may usefully divide these many millennia into three sub periods each dominated by its own principal center that interacted in various ways with different peripheries It argues that each successive period made contributions to world civilization that were distinctive in kind equal in value and universal in significance In the first period of some hundred thousand years human beings homo sapiens sapiens first appeared in what is known today as sub Saharan Africa developed various hunting and gathering communities and cultures and in one or two migrations spread to the rest of the globe In the second period of some ten thousand years humans multiplied in the region around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers Mesopotamia the Nile and the Mediterranean Sea by engaging in agriculture trade and pastoralism developing theistic religion metallurgy and writing and forming cities states and empires social and political units that spread to or were independently invented in much of the rest of the globe In the third period of about two thousand years people concentrated in the Yellow and Yangzi River and the Indus and Ganges River valleys developed technologies concepts and institutions that enabled them to unify large numbers of disparate peoples into congeries of successive or contemporary polities that produced new levels of peace order and prosperity and that attracted the interest admiration and appetites of much of the rest of the world The course includes reading in a single volume of historical documents and three classic books one from each of the three major world regions slides videos and lectures by the principal instructor and a guest or two a mid term examination and a final paper comparing and contrasting the three chosen classics Grades will be based one quarter on participation in class one quarter on the mid term and one half on the final paper Recitation sections registration in a recitation section gives automatic registration in the lecture B1 B2 B3 B4 B5 W 10 00 10 50 T 11 00 11 50 T 2 00 2 50 T 3 00 3 50 F 12 00 12 50 Reg 099825 109 Baldy 114701 217 Clemens 076408 109 Baldy 166510 126 Baldy 202822 217 Clemens B6 B7 B8 B9 B10 W 12 00 12 50 Reg 444595 139 Bell W 4 00 4 50 380316 107Clemens F 10 00 10 50 144274 219 Clemens F 11 00 11 50 018828 217 Clemens M 10 00 10 50 091930 106 Baldy UCG 111 World Civilization I Professor Dewald TR 9 30 10 20 104 Knox Reg recitation section This course explores a handful of societies spread across the globe as they developed in the two millennia before 1500 As such the course is necessarily selective describing a series of moments in these societies development rather than attempting a full overview of them Two themes stand at the center of the course On the one hand the societies that we will examine differed profoundly from our own Some practiced human sacrifice and most had one form or another of slavery None of them understood the natural world very well and none had more than a limited hesitantly developing awareness of other cultures existence One task of the course then is to understand the nature of these differences from ourselves to become aware of our distance from the past This means understanding the specific logic according to which these other peoples thought and lived On the other hand these same peoples produced ideas and images that continue to shape modern life Texts and rituals from this period govern the world s major religions Though often in indirect ways art and literature from the period still affect modern sensibilities Even modern science owes surprising debts to the discoveries and reasoning of these earlier societies Alongside the theme of difference then we need to consider the theme of continuity and influence We need to ask how cultural forms remained powerful even as conditions of life changed in other words we need to ask how culture and social life intersected in different contexts Recitation sections registration in a recitation section gives automatic registration in the lecture F1 F2 F3 F4 F5 T 1 00 1 50 T 4 00 4 50 R 12 30 1 20 T 3 00 3 50 R 2 00 2 50 Reg 482126 110 Baldy 034260 111208 021776 091123 F6 F7 F8 F9 F10 T R F F F 11 00 11 50 3 30 4 20 2 00 2 50 11 00 11 50 12 00 12 50 Reg 135717 215 Clemens 179231 123 Clemens 140827 152 Park 129866 123 Baldy 080879 109 Baldy 1 UGC 111 World Civilization I Professor Bono MW 110 Knox 1 00 1 50 Reg recitation section This course will introduce students to the major contours of world history and to a number of different societies and cultures by concentrating particular attention upon the role played by ideas of nature and the body and of health and illness in the shaping of individual civilizations The development of ancient Greece of medieval and Renaissance Europe of China of India of Islam and of African and Native American civilizations evidences continuing engagements with nature illness and the demands placed upon human life by humankind s physical biological and social environments demands that lead to specific cultural beliefs and practices This course will use the ideas of nature the body health and illness developed by specific cultures as lenses through which we can bring into sharp focus the foundational beliefs and values of different societies In addition this course will pay particular attention to the role of religion and to the stories produced by particular civilizations Thus we shall read a good deal of literature selections from the Epic of Gilgamesh Homer s Odyssey Dante s Inferno Boccaccio s Decameron and Shakespeare s The Tempest for example and religious and philosophical texts from a variety of cultures Toward the end of the course we shall also examine how the cultural beliefs and models provided by literature and other imaginative texts shaped the encounters between different cultures in places like the New World To pass this course and to have any chance of passing the exams students must attend all lectures and recitation sections and also complete all readings and assignments on time Recitation sections registration in a recitation section gives automatic registration