Humanities Interdisciplinary Program

HUMCORE 12Q. Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Middle Ages and Renaissance. 3-4 Units.

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? The second quarter focuses on the transition from the Middle Ages to Modernity, Europe's re-acquaintance with classical antiquity and its first contacts with the New World. Authors include Dante, Shakespeare, Machiavelli, Cervantes, and Milton. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the European track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study European history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future. Students who take HUMCORE 11 and HUMCORE 12Q will have preferential admission to HUMCORE 13Q (a WR2 seminar).
Same as: DLCL 12Q, FRENCH 12Q, ILAC 12Q

HUMCORE 13. Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Modern. 3 Units.

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This third and final quarter focuses on the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon.
Same as: DLCL 13, FRENCH 13, HISTORY 239C, PHIL 13

HUMCORE 13Q. Humanities Core: Great Books, Big Ideas -- Europe, Modern. 3-4 Units.

This three-quarter sequence asks big questions of major texts in the European and American tradition. What is a good life? How should society be organized? Who belongs? How should honor, love, sin, and similar abstractions govern our actions? What duty do we owe to the past and future? This third and final quarter focuses on the modern period, from the rise of revolutionary ideas to the experiences of totalitarianism and decolonization in the twentieth century. Authors include Locke, Mary Shelley, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Weber, Primo Levi, and Frantz Fanon. N.B. This is the third of three courses in the European track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study European history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future. Students who take HUMCORE 11 and HUMCORE 12Q will have preferential admission to HUMCORE 13Q (a WR2 seminar). **NOTE** This class meets Monday and Wednesday in room 20-22K and Fridays in room 260-113 to attend a lecture along with the other two HUMCORE courses this quarter.
Same as: DLCL 13Q, GERMAN 13Q

HUMCORE 20. Humanities Core: Dao, Virtue, and Nature -- Foundations of East Asian Thought. 3 Units.

This course explores the values and questions posed in the formative period of East Asian civilizations. Notions of a Dao ("Way") are common to Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, but those systems of thought have radically different ideas about what that Dao is and how it might be realized in society and an individual's life. These systems of thought appeared first in China, and eventually spread to Korea and Japan. Each culture developed its own ways of reconciling the competing systems, but in each case the comprehensive structure of values and human ideals differs significantly from those that appeared elsewhere in the ancient world. The course examines East Asian ideas about self-cultivation, harmonious society, rulership, and the relation between human and nature with a view toward expanding our understanding of these issues in human history, and highlighting their legacies in Asian civilizations today. The course features selective readings in classics of Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist texts that present the foundational tenets of Asian thought. N. B. This is the first of three courses in the Humanities Core, East Asian track. These courses show how history and ideas shape our world and future. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to the life of the mind.
Same as: CHINA 20, JAPAN 20, KOREA 20

HUMCORE 21. Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia. 3 Units.

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Same as: CHINA 21, JAPAN 21, KOREA 21

HUMCORE 21Q. Humanities Core: Love and Betrayal in Asia. 3 Units.

Why are lovers in storybooks East and West always star-crossed? Why do love and death seem to go together? For every Romeo and Juliet, there are dozens of doomed lovers in the Asian literary repertoires, from Genji's string of embittered mistresses, to the Butterfly lovers in early modern China, to the voices of desire in Koryo love songs, to the devoted adolescent cousins in Dream of the Red Chamber, to the media stars of Korean romantic drama, now wildly popular throughout Asia. In this course, we explore how the love story has evolved over centuries of East Asian history, asking along the way what we can learn about Chinese, Japanese, and Korean views of family and community, gender and sexuality, truth and deception, trust and betrayal, ritual and emotion, and freedom and solidarity from canonical and non-canonical works in East Asian literatures. N.B. This is the second of three courses in the East Asian track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study East Asian history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.
Same as: CHINA 21Q, JAPAN 21Q, KOREA 21Q

HUMCORE 22. Humanities Core: Everybody Eats: The Language, Culture, and Ethics of Food in East Asia. 3 Units.

Many of us have grown up eating "Asian" at home, with friends, on special occasions, or even without full awareness that Asian is what we were eating. This course situates the three major culinary traditions of East Asia--China, Japan, and Korea--in the histories and civilizations of the region, using food as an introduction to their rich repertoires of literature, art, language, philosophy, religion, and culture. It also situates these seemingly timeless gastronomies within local and global flows, social change, and ethical frameworks. Specifically, we will explore the traditional elements of Korean court food, and the transformation of this cuisine as a consequence of the Korean War and South Korea¿s subsequent globalizing economy; the intersection of traditional Japanese food with past and contemporary identities; and the evolution of Chinese cuisine that accompanies shifting attitudes about the environment, health, and well-being. Questions we will ask ourselves during the quarter include, what is "Asian" about Asian cuisine? How has the language of food changed? Is eating, and talking about eating, a gendered experience? How have changing views of the self and community shifted the conversation around the ethics and ecology of meat consumption?.
Same as: CHINA 118, JAPAN 118, KOREA 118

HUMCORE 33. Humanities Core: Global Identity, Culture, and Politics from the Middle East. 3 Units.

How do we face the future? What resources do we have? Which power structures hold us back and which empower us? What are our identities at college in the Bay Area? In 1850s Lebanon, Abu Faris Shidyaq faced all these same questions (except the last one; he was a Christian magazine editor). In this course we will engage with claims about identity, culture, and politics that some might say come from the "Middle East" but that we understand as global. Ganzeer's graphic novel is as much for California as it is for Egypt. Ataturk's speech is about power and identity just like Donald Trump is about power and identity. In Turkish novels and in Arabic poetry, the people we engage in this course look to their pasts and our futures. What happens next? This is the third of three courses in the Middle Eastern track. These courses offer an unparalleled opportunity to study Middle Eastern history and culture, past and present. Take all three to experience a year-long intellectual community dedicated to exploring how ideas have shaped our world and future.future.
Same as: COMPLIT 33, DLCL 33

HUMCORE 52. Global Humanities: The Grand Millennium, 800-1800. 3-4 Units.

How should we live? This course explores ethical pathways in European, Islamic, and East Asian traditions: mysticism and rationality, passion and duty, this and other worldly, ambition and peace of mind. They all seem to be pairs of opposites, but as we'll see, some important historical figures managed to follow two or more of them at once. We will read works by successful thinkers, travelers, poets, lovers, and bureaucrats written between 800 and 1900 C.E. We will ask ourselves whether we agree with their choices and judgments about what is a life well lived.
Same as: DLCL 52, HISTORY 206D, JAPAN 52

HUMCORE 111. Texts that Changed the World from the Ancient Middle East. 3-5 Units.

This course traces the story of the cradle of human civilization. We will begin with the earliest human stories, the Gilgamesh Epic and biblical literature, and follow the path of the development of law, religion, philosophy and literature in the ancient Mediterranean or Middle Eastern world, to the emergence of Jewish and Christian thinking. We will pose questions about how this past continues to inform our present: What stories, myths, and ideas remain foundational to us? How did the stories and myths shape civilizations and form larger communities? How did the earliest stories conceive of human life and the divine? What are the ideas about the order of nature, and the place of human life within that order? How is the relationship between the individual and society constituted? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Same as: COMPLIT 31, JEWISHST 150, RELIGST 150

HUMCORE 112. Great Books, Big Ideas from Ancient Greece and Rome. 3 Units.

This course will journey through ancient Greek and Roman literature from Homer to St. Augustine, in constant conversation with the other HumCore travelers in the Ancient Middle East, Africa and South Asia, and Early China. It will introduce participants to some of its fascinating features and big ideas (such as the idea of history); and it will reflect on questions including: What is an honorable life? Who is the Other? How does a society fall apart? Where does human subjectivity fit into a world of matter, cause and effect? Should art serve an exterior purpose? Do we have any duties to the past? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Same as: CLASSICS 37, DLCL 11

HUMCORE 113. Order, Patterns, and Disorder in Early China. 3 Units.

This course explores the human impulse of order-making and its limits in the specific context of Early China. Since antiquity, the Chinese civilization displayed constant efforts to understand the natural world and human society, to seek patterns from the numerous and the diverse, and to fathom individuals¿ positions in the world and the proper ways to respond to all its complexity. Such attempts manifested in a cosmology with an emphasis on the resonance between the human and the natural realms, the prescription of ideals for behaviors and morals, the persistent pursuit and celebration of refined patterns in expression, and the state¿s construction of order through policies and cultural projects of standardization. Yet, despite the efforts of order and control, there had always been a strong tendency of anarchy, unveiling how much the seemingly prevailing structures could not contain. The course will probe into ancient philosophy, dynastic histories, literature, and arts to trace these efforts of establishing order and their consequences. The materials will also lead us to contemplate the other side of the story: What was left out? What were the restrictions? What if one failed to conform? Were any advantages found in disorder? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Same as: CHINA 163A

HUMCORE 117. Ancients and Moderns: Africa and South Asia in World Literature. 3 Units.

How might we make sense of culturally significant texts and text equivalents? We'll compare different answers to abiding human questions, such as: Where do we come from? Why do origins matter? What role do different media (written, spoken, otherwise performed, or visual) play in conveying a sense of the past from one generation to another? In what ways is our access to such cultural productions framed by colonial histories, with their discrepant experiences and perspectives? Readings include the Ramayana; the Bhagavad-Gita; Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart; and Chimamanda Adichie, `The headstrong historian'. This course is part of the Humanities Core sequence.
Same as: CLASSICS 45

HUMCORE 121. Ancient Knowledge, New Frontiers: How the Greek Legacy Became Islamic Science. 3 Units.

What contributions did Arabic and Islamic civilization make to the history of science? This course will read key moments in Greek and Islamic science and philosophy and ask questions about scientific method, philosophy, and religious belief. We will read Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Ibn Haytham, and Baha al-Din al-Amili, among others. What is the scientific method and is it universal across time and place? What is Islamic rationality? What is Greek rationality? Who commits to empiricism and who relies on inherited ideas? This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Same as: CLASSICS 47, COMPLIT 107A

HUMCORE 122. Humanities Core: The Renaissance in Europe. 3 Units.

The Renaissance in Europe saw a cultural flowering founded on the achievements of pagan antiquity, a new humanism founded on the conviction that nothing which has ever interested living men and women can wholly lose its vitality, and the foundation of the modern state. We start with those ¿Renaissance men¿ Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. We then turn to Martin Luther¿s rejection of Papal Rome and his erection of a competing, Protestant ideal. Montaigne and Shakespeare invent our modern sense of subjectivity before our eyes. And Machiavelli and Hobbes create a science of power politics. Each week, during the first class meeting, we will focus on these issues in Europe. During the second class meeting, we will participate in a collaborative conversation with the other students and faculty in Humanities Core classes, about other regions and issues. This course is taught in English . This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Same as: ENGLISH 112C

HUMCORE 123. Beauty and Renunciation in Japan. 3 Units.

Is it okay to feel pleasure? Should humans choose beauty or renunciation? This is the main controversy of medieval Japan. This course introduces students to the famous literary works that created a world of taste, subtlety, and sensuality. We also read essays that warn against the risks of leading a life of gratification, both in this life and in the afterlife. And we discover together the ways in which these two positions can be not that far from each other. Does love always lead to heartbreak? Is the appreciation of nature compatible with the truths of Buddhism? Is it good to have a family? What kind of house should we build for ourselves? Can fictional stories make us better persons? Each week, during the first class meeting, we will focus on these issues in Japan. During the second class meeting, we will participate in a collaborative conversation with the other students and faculty in Humanities Core classes, about other regions and issues. This course is taught in English.
Same as: JAPAN 163A

HUMCORE 131. Modernity and Novels in the Middle East. 3 Units.

This course will investigate cultural and literary responses to modernity in the Middle East. The intense modernization process that started in mid 19th century and lingers to this day in the region caused Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literary cultures to encounter rapid changes; borders dissolved, new societies and nations were formed, daily life westernized, and new literary forms took over the former models. In order to understand how writers and individuals negotiated between tradition and modernity and how they adapted their traditions into the modern life we will read both canonical and graphic novels comparatively from each language group and focus on the themes of nation, identity, and gender. All readings will be in English translation. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Same as: COMPLIT 43

HUMCORE 133. Humanities Core: How to be Modern in East Asia. 3-5 Units.

Modern East Asia was almost continuously convulsed by war and revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. But the everyday experience of modernity was structured more profoundly by the widening gulf between the country and the city, economically, politically, and culturally. This course examines literary and cinematic works from China and Japan that respond to and reflect on the city/country divide, framing it against issues of class, gender, national identity, and ethnicity. It also explores changing ideas about home/hometown, native soil, the folk, roots, migration, enlightenment, civilization, progress, modernization, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and sustainability. All materials are in English. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Same as: CHINA 24, COMPLIT 44, JAPAN 24, KOREA 24

HUMCORE 134. Freedom Fighters, Terrorists, and Social Justice Warriors: Protest and Decolonization in South Asia. 3 Units.

The South Asian region comprises the contemporary nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan, and the Maldives. Racially, linguistically, politically, religiously, and in every way diverse, this region has also experienced the challenge of European colonialism, the effects of global climate change, the impact of rapid industrialization and urbanization, and internal conflicts within and between nations. It is also a creatively and intellectually vibrant region in which principles of non-violent resistance, award winning arts and literature, stunning natural environments, and scientific discovery are integral and celebrated. How have South Asians engaged the rapid social change of the twentieth century with decolonization and regional conflicts? What artistic and literary formations emerged from and drove the freedom movements against colonial rule and the nation forming projects that ensued? How have globalization and internal debates about national identities shaped contemporary South Asian societies?.
Same as: RELIGST 118

HUMCORE 135. Atlantic Folds: Indigeneity and Modernity. 3 Units.

The Atlantic as an infinite doubling of ancient and modern. The Atlantic as an endless, watery cloth of African, American, and European folds, unfolding and refolding through bodies and ideas: blackness, whiteness, nature, nurture, water, blood, cannibal, mother, you, and I. The Atlantic as a concept, a space, a muse, a goddess. The Atlantic as birth and burial. One ocean under God, divisible, with salt enough for all who thirst. Authors include: Paul Gilroy, Gilles Deleuze, Chimamanda Adichie, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Davi Kopenawa, Pepetela, Beyoncé, and José Vasconcelos. This course is part of the Humanities Core: https://humanitiescore.stanford.edu/.
Same as: COMPLIT 46