Arts & Humanities Social Sciences Joint Programs Dean's Office AHSS Institutes Performing Arts Center Development Office Faculty Information Student Information

Arts and Humanities Foundations

AHUM 1010 Understanding Art

This class introduces students to issues involved in the creation and interpretation of works of art.  Through slide lectures and discussion, we will examine works of art from different time periods and cultures. Students will study materials and techniques used by artists, and acquire skills and vocabulary necessary for visual analysis.  They also will examine art as personal expression and as a response to social, economic, religious, and political forces.  As students develop an awareness of the ways in which art both reflects and influences its audiences, they will become more confident critics of the visual arts.

AHUM 1110 Discovering Literature

Literature reflects the excitement and complexity of human experience and helps shape how we interpret and celebrate it.  Through a variety of engaging themes, the courses in Discovering Literature introduce students to the pleasures of interpreting poetry, fiction, and drama.

AHUM 1216 History: America in the 60's

This class will introduce students to the history of the United States during the decade of the 1960s.  We will examine some of the most thought provoking issues from the era, including: developments in the political arena; the struggle for civil rights for African-Americans; the emergence of student movements across the country; the steady escalation of US involvement in Vietnam; shifting relations between the genders, and the growing influence of popular culture.

AHUM 1216 History: Film and History

This course introduces students to the history of film-making and the rise of mass culture during the inter-war period in Europe, the United States, and the Soviet Union.  Students will view commercial films, documentaries, and experimental short films in these three areas in order to better understand the political and social history of the inter-war years (1918-1939), as well as the cultural impact of the rise of mass leisure practices and mass consumption.

AHUM 1216: History: Film and History WWI

This Foundations course has two simultaneous goals: to explore the United States' cultural experience of war - specifically, the First World War - while considering exactly how historians "do" History. To accomplish these goals we will view historical films and read scholarly histories to consider what each can tell us about the other, and together what they can tell us about the United States during World War I and about our own attempts to reconstruct it. You should leave this class with a better knowledge of how to analyze and understand both history books and historical films.

Please note that this course has film viewing requirements; your schedule should permit attendance at weekly evening screenings (days & times to be announced at the first class meeting).

AHUM 1216 History: Today's China

This course is intended to introduce contemporary China by making use of the tools of history to examine how it came to be the kind of society it is.  A major concern throughout the course will be to identify attitudes and beliefs that have had a lasting effect on the Chinese and continue to influence them today.  Classes will consist of a mixture of a small amount of lecturing, some video materials, and a good deal of discussion.

AHUM 1216 History: Genocide in the Twentieth Century

We will examine the interplay of politics, culture, psychology and sociology to try to understand why the great philosopher Isaiah Berlin called the 20th century, 'The most terrible century' in history.  Our focus will be on the Holocaust as the event which defined the concept of genocide.

AHUM 1216 History: Immigrant Voices in Modern America

The United States has aptly been called a "nation of immigrants."  This course explores the immigrant experience in the 19^th and 20^th centuries through analysis of personal accounts of newcomers in a variety of settings.  Students will assess the influence of old world customs, religion, education, gender, and anti-immigrant prejudice in shaping the process of adaptation to American society.  Sources will include memoirs, autobiographies, and correspondence. 

AHUM 1216 History: Europe in the Bourgeois Age 1789-1914

This class considers the 19^th century rise of the modern forces of Nationalism and Democracy from their roots/origins in the French Revolution, and how these two modern forces come to the very edge of political domination in all of Europe by 1914. 

 AHUM 1216 History: Europe in the Age of Violence

This class explores and examines how Europe, two times in this century, plunged itself into extraordinarily bloody civil war.  The world has never seen the likes of Verdun (1916) and Stalingrad (1941-1942).

AHUM 1216 History: Greeks in Ancient History

This class examines the civilization of ancient Greece from the Minoan Culture through the Classical Age and Alexander the Great.  The subjects emphasized are political history including the origin of democracy, cultural achievements including art, architecture, philosophers, and the first historians, and human interaction with the natural environment.

AHUM 1216 History: Rome in Ancient History

This class examines the civilization of ancient Rome and the Roman Empire from prehistoric

Italy through the reign of the emperor Justinian, who codified Roman law in AD 550.  Emphasis

is given to arts and architecture, political, cultural and economic history, human interaction

with the natural environment, and to the biographies of important individuals such as Julius

Caesar, Augustus, and Marcus Aurelius. Honors section offered.

AHUM 1216: History: American History and Film

This course focuses on cinematic narratives, commonly known as "films." From the moment of its invention, the cinema was recognized as a medium that could not only record historical events, but also affect and alter them. We will begin by considering the earliest years of film as a technology, an industry, and a cultural force. Like most films (and most histories), the course will move chronologically, beginning in the 1890s and ending just after the Second World War. Along the way we will explore such key themes and events in U.S. history as nationalism, race relations, the rise of mass society, the Great Depression, and war."

AHUM 1416 Discovering Culture: European Cinema: From Page to Image

Filmmakers have often used story lines of fiction and non-fiction to crate powerful movies, while projecting their own vision of characters, action, and setting onto the screen.  In this course, students will examine a number of award-winning international films that have been adapted from various literary sources - plays, stories, novels, histories, and letters.  Students will read original works and examine their film adaptations-literal, faithful, or loose - in works that include ­A Room with a View, Death in Venice, The White Rose and others.

AHUM 1416 Discovering Culture: The Dark Side

This class will examine our fascination with gore and horror, the power of darkness, the connection between love and death, the role of evil, the power of the subconscious, and the concept of the alter ego.  We will read some representative texts from 19^th and 20^th century (German and British) literature: Heinrich von Kleist's novellas, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Bram Stoker's Dracula, Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis, and Patrick Süskind's The Perfume. 

AHUM 1416 Discovering Culture: Myths of Greece and Rome

We meet-and for some class exercises, imaginatively become-gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, and even monsters of the Greco-Roman myths.  We study the leading mythology both as basis for the ancient polytheistic people's understanding of their world and of their own history and as material that artists and writers continue to exploit right into our own day and age.

AHUM 1416 Discovering Culture: Exploring the Japanese Imagination

This course is a broad introduction to modern Japanese culture, language, and literature.  Students will search for "Japanese Imagination" in modern Japanese works including some masterpiece mysteries.  In Miyazaki's anime series and other films, students will examine the ways in which Japanese people perceive their existence within natural environments.  Through these readings and films, this course intends to give students a Japanese perspective on language and culture.

AHUM 1416 Discovering Culture: French Poetry of Modern Times

How can poetry respond to change?  This course reads a selection of French or Francophone poetry in translation.  All of these writers experiment with new forms, and their writing is challenging to read.  We will focus on close reading and interpretation of their work.  We will also link their writing to their historical contexts: the modern city, technological change, political change, revolutions, war.  There will be some discussion of the problems of translation.  This course will involve intensive work on writing critical papers on literature.

AHUM 1416 Discovering Culture: Victor Hugo: Les Misérables and Company

This class is a study of two novels and three plays of Victor Hugo and the musical dramas that were based on them.  The intent of this course is to demonstrate how Hugo's defense of human rights for all members of society, including the abused and the marginalized, has been adapted to the social need of different places and times through drama and music. Honors section offered.

AHUM 1416 Discovering Culture: Wisdom and Folly

This class is a study of the theme of Folly or madness as a superior form of wisdom when it represents the pursuit of spiritual as opposed to materialistic values.  The intention of this course is make students aware of the importance of spiritual values above the material concerns of everyday life

AHUM 1416 Discovering Culture: Women Writers of France

This course will explore the women writers of France from the Middle Ages to the present, including Marguerite de Navarre, Madam de Lafayette, George Sand , Colette, Simone De Beauvoir. The Intent of this course is to lead students to appreciate vision of the world and a way of writing that differs from those of the male perspective. 

AHUM 1416 Discovering Culture: Lost Love in the Russian Novel

This course provides an overview of unrequited love in Russian novels, from Dostoevsky to today.  Higher love is often the most unattainable - we will be examining the nature of love and its expression in Russian literature.  The course will present an unfamiliar view of what the novel is and how it is expressed in Russian society.  And no, not everyone dies at the end. (honors section available)

AHUM 1516 Music: Popular Music in America

We will explore the history of popular music in America, paying special attention to developing listening skills, investigating the interrelationships between music and society, and understanding scholarly approaches to various repertories and issues.  Listening and reading will be wide-ranging, encompassing diverse vernacular styles.  For non-music majors.

AHUM 1516 Music: The History of Jazz

This course will concentrate on the early history of jazz, surveying the development and influences which have shaped this most American musical style.  Classes will consist of lectures, class discussions, demonstrations and listening. For non-music majors.

AHUM 1516 Music: The Birth of Rock and Roll

This course offers an overview of the early history of rock and roll, with a concentration on the major influences of pop, rhythm and blues, and country and western.  Classes will consist mainly of lectures, including a discussion of the different elements of music that make up a style, and a listening to recorded excerpts.  For non-music majors.

AHUM 1516 Music: The History of Rock and Roll

In a way this course could be called the rebirth of rock, as it picks up where the Beatles arrive on the scene and breathe new life into the near lifeless musical style.  Much listening is mixed with lectures, demonstrations, and lively class discussions. For non-music majors.

AHUM 1516 Music: Understanding Music

We will explore numerous ways of understanding music: as sonic substance, of course, but also as related to cultural influence, stylistic diversity, historical process, and scholarly perspectives.  The emphasis will be on developing listening skills and articulating what we hear and why we are hearing in that way.  Listening and reading will be wide-ranging, encompassing vernacular musics, world musics, and Western art musics. For non-music majors.

AHUM 1516 Music: Understanding Classical Music

We will explore the history of Western art music, paying special attention to developing listening skills, investigating the interrelationships between music and society, and understanding scholarly approaches to various repertories and issues.  Listening and reading will be wide-ranging, from the medieval period to the current day. For non-music majors.

AHUM 1610 Discovering Philosophy

In this class we will engage with some of the most powerful ideas and texts of the world's great philosophical traditions.   Students will develop their own capacity for philosophical reflection and analysis.

AHUM 1650 Honors Philosophy: Greek Moral Philosophy

We will read selections in Plato, Aristotle and the stoics (Epictetus).  We will reexamine the nature of justice, friendship, the virtues, character, and happiness.  We will also pay some attention to ancient Greek history and culture, especially the comedies of Aristophenes and the tragedies of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles.

AHUM 1716 Exploring Religion: The Sacred Quest

This class introduces students to the five main world religions.  We will emphasize the formative period and the scriptures of the five religions.  Students will be introduced to pivotal issues like the systematization of beliefs, the development and canonization of rituals, and the development of theological schools.  Where relevant, we will also discuss the rise of sectarianism, the fragmentation of the community, and how the religious traditions have fared in modern times.  No prior knowledge of the five religions is necessary.

AHUM 1716 Exploring Religion: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

This class presents an overview of the history, practices, and teachings of the three major Western religious traditions.

AHUM 1716 Exploring Religion: New Testament

This class is an historical, literary-critical introduction to the writings that comprise the New Testament, to the religious ideas contained therein, and the social world of earliest Christianity. 

AHUM 1716 Exploring Religion: Old Testament

This class covers the contents and history of the Old Testament (Hebrew Bible), including its central religious, literary and historical ideas.

AHUM 1716 Exploring Religion: Works and Lives

The course will investigate major aspects of religions through reading people's life stories, some famous, some less well-known.  At least two traditions and two historical periods will be considered.

AHUM 1716 Exploring Religion: Western Traditions

The course will explore major themes, thoughts, texts, and cultural practices in early Judaism and Christianity.  Attention will be given to the Old Testament, New Testament, Roman Christianity, and the Protestant Reformation.

AHUM 1810 Page to Stage: The Process of Theatre

This course examines the process playwrights, directors, actors and designers use in creating a theatrical production.

AHUM 1910 Ancient Worlds

This course uses the field of archaeology to illustrate the perspectives, methods, and results of humanistic inquiry.  It investigates human belief, creativity, and spirituality prior to the rise of the modern world.  These aspects of life are examined through the study of human material culture, art, architecture and urban design.  Case material includes Stone Age Europe and Africa, Megalithic Britain and France, the Neolithic Asian and American Southwest, Old Kingdom Egypt and Pre-colonial Central America. 

AHUM 1913 Moral Issues

This course develops students' capacity for moral reasoning through the philosophical exploration of a variety of contemporary issues. Although students will be introduced to a broad range of ethical perspectives, the emphasis is on practical moral decision-making in real world contexts.

AHUM 1914 The Quest for the Individual

In this class the focus rests on the march of equality and the experience of freedom understood as the emergence of the democratic individual.  For Honors students only.

AHUM 1915 The Quest for Peace, Prosperity and Progress

This class addresses the modern quest for peace, prosperity, and progress, a quest which explicitly critiques the earlier understanding of freedom as the quest for the Good.  For Honors students only. 

AHUM 1916: Controversy and Social Change: American Literature and Film

This course will examine controversial works that reflect deep divisions and dramatic shifts in American values and policies at various points over the last two centuries.   Although literary works will receive disproportionate attention, the course will also look at controversial works in other genres.  

AHSS Dean's Office, Sturm Hall 457
Telephone: 303.871.4449, FAX: 303.871.4436, E-mail: jkaras@du.edu
University of Denver, Denver,  2000 E. Asbury, Colorado 80208
The University of Denver is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.