GREAT WORKS IN DIALOGUE: ORIGINS

In this class we embark upon a two-year sequence of seminars, where students will come together to read great texts of philosophy, religion, and literature and to discuss the enduring questions these texts examine. We plan to offer you a long-term engagement with some of the monumental works and thinkers of the past and present. We will encourage you to challenge your own and others' ideas in the light of a rich, thought-provoking text.

Course Description
The first quarter of our sequence focuses on origins, both as themes and as phenomena. We'll dive into the founding text of Judaism, the Hebrew Bible (Torah), in order to situate the familiarstories of Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham and Isaac, and Moses within an overarching narrative establishing the identity of the Jewish people. We'll then investigate the Koran and the foundations of Islam in the Word of God revealed to Mohammed. We'll focus in part on the ways that other “Religions of the Book,” Judaism and Christianity, and their sacred texts, are understood and treated in the Koran. Our final text, Milton’s Paradise Lost, recasts Jewish and Christian sacred texts in a new literary and historical context, re-imagining ancient origins in an epic mode for a new audience.

Instructors
Cheri Ross
Associate Director, Introduction to the Humanities
Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education

Edward Steidle
Lecturer in English

Richard Cushman
Lecturer in English

Texts (available At Stanford Bookstore)
The Torah (Jewish Publication Society)
The Koran (Penguin)
Milton, Paradise Lost (Norton)