Degrees & Programs
Curriculum and Core Texts
These core text lists may be supplemented each year with two or three other texts. Next to the course number are listed the number of credit hours.
Freshman Seminars
HNRS 110 [5]: Foundations
Gilgamesh,
Homer, The Odyssey,
Hesiod, Theogony and Works and
Days,
Plato, The Last Days of Socrates,
Ovid, Metamorphoses (Selections),
Sophocles, Oedipus Rex,
Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound,
The David Story.
Supplemental texts:
Music: Selected pieces,
Art: Ancient and heroic art
HNRS 120 [5]: Liberty and America
Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale, The Constitution of the United States
of America, The Declaration of Independence, Lincoln, Speeches and Letters,
Locke, Second Treatise on
Government,
Mill, On Liberty,
Plato, The Republic,
Toqueville, Democracy in America
HNRS 130 [5]: Scripture I
Bhagavad Gita,
Genesis,
Ruth,
Micah,
Jonah,
Hosea,
Job,
Mendelssohn, Elijah (oratorio),
Blake, engravings of Job and Genesis,
Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel paintings.
Supplemental texts:
Other Old Testament Books,
C.S. Lewis, Perelandra
Sophomore Seminars
HNRS 210 [4]: Cosmos
Bacon, Novum Organum, Galileo Galilei, Dialogue Concerning,
the Two Chief World Systems,
Hawking, A Brief History of Time,
Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions,
Lewis, The Discarded Image.
Supplemental texts:
Johnson, Darwin on Trial (audio),
Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker,
Holst, The Planets (audio), 2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
HNRS 220 [4]: Self and Society
St. Augustine, Confessions,
Austen, Persuasion,
Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of
Religious Life,
Fugard, "Mater Harold"...and the
Boys,
James, Varieties of Religious
Experience,
White, Life Sketches,
Woolf, A Room of One's Own.
Supplemental texts:
Freud, The Future of an Illusion,
Naipaul, Among Believers,
Smith, The Wealth of Nations,
Rousseau, Confessions,
Rushdie, Midnight's Children
HNRS 230 [4]: Scripture II
Mark,
Acts,
Romans,
I John,
Bach, St. John Passion (music).
Supplemental texts:
Various non-canonical NT texts, The Gospel According to St. Matthew (film), Jesus of Montreal (film),
Pendereski, St. Luke Passion (music)
Junior Seminars
HNRS 310 [4]: Virtue
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics,
Confucius, Analects,
Thoreau, On Civil Disobedience,
San Juan de la Crux, poems,
Conrad, The Heart of Darkness,
Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals,
Weil, The Need for Roots, 21 Grams (film)
HNRS 320 [4]: Christianity
Athanasius, On the Incarnation,
Bull and Lockhart, Seeking a
Sanctuary,
Dante, The Divine Comedy,
Milton, Paradise Lost,
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Luther (film) or The Mission (film), Requiem Mass, (selected musical
score).
Supplemental texts:
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity,
Julian of Norwich, Showings
HNRS 349 [4]: Pattern
Dunham, Journey through Genius,
Abbot, Flatland,
Euclid, Elements (selections),
Hofstadter, Godel, Escher, Bach,
Johann Sebastian Bach, Selected
Works
Senior Seminars
HNRS 410 [4]: Alterity
Simone DeBeauvior, The Second Sex,
Mahatma Gandhi: The Essential,
Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings
on His Life, Work, and Ideas (selections),
Franz Fanon: Black Skin, White
Masks,
Martin Luther King Jr.: "Letter from
Birmingham Jail",
V.S. Naipal: Among the Believers: An
Islamic Journey,
Edward W. Said, Orientalism,
Jean-Paul Sartre: Anti-Semite and Jew:
An Exploration of the Etiology of
Hate,
Rabindranath Tagore: Sadhana
HNRS 420 [4]: Progress
Huxley, Brave New World,
Malthus, Essay on the Principle of
Population,
Marshall McLuhan, The Medium is
the Massage,
Heffery Sachs, The End of Poverty,
E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful,
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations,
Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching,
Voltaire, Candide
HNRS 498 [3]: Honors Project
An individual research or creative
project designed to explore issues, ideas,
or art forms encountered in the Honors
seminars. Qualifies for IP grading.
Summer Abroad Seminars
HNRS 300 [5]: Beauty
Aristotle, Poetics,
Burke, A Philosophical Inquiry into
the Origins of Our Ideas of the
Sublime and the Beautiful De Bottom, The Art of Travel (selection),
Dewey, Art as Experience (selections),
Greenberg, Modernist Painting (essay),
Plato, Ion and The Republic (selection),
Vasari, Lives of the Artists,
Winterson, Art Objects (selection).
Supplemental texts: Babette's Feast (film),
Da Vinci, The Notebooks of Leonardo
Da Vinci,
Goldsworthy, Rivers and Tides (film),
Michelangelo, Poems, Pollack (film),
Potok, My Name is Asher Lev,
Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring (music),
Selected art, concerts, and architecture
Guidesheets
Honors Program