2009 marks the 31st anniversary of the Integrated Humanities Program (IHP). Courses include Western Literature, History, and Religion/Philosophy. IHP professors work together to ensure continuity in course material in the exploration of influential texts, great thinkers, and expansive philosophies. Assignments focus on common themes in the disciplines. Each teacher assigns reading and writing material with the other two courses in mind, so that students can benefit most without the assignments being unnecessarily burdensome. Several of the core faculty members are recipients of the prestigious Kroepsch-Maurice Award for teaching excellence at UVM.
The IHP program is residentially-based. Students in the program share suites and take all their classes in the Living/Learning Center, and thus benefit from living, learning, and studying together. While primarily a learning community, students tend to form friendships extending
IHP students acquire a solid foundation in the humanities as well as develop a deep and intimate understanding of the material. With the core education in the liberal arts that IHP provides, students can go on to major/minor in virtually any subject in the College of Arts & Sciences. IHP alumni have gone on to study medicine, journalism, communication, law, and foreign relations, as well as other careers based on disciplines within the liberal arts. For more detailed information, contact us via email or by phone: 802-656-4383.
Students wishing to enroll in the program are strongly encouraged to apply online at either of the addresses above. You may also write to: IHP, Living and Learning Center, 633 Main St., Burlington, VT 05405.
This course explores a number of the major literary landmarks of the Western Tradition, from Homer to Dante. These works are views within the interdisciplinary context of the Integrated Humanities Program and are considered for their historical and philosophical importance as well as for their literary achievement. Works considered will include Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, poems of Sappho, Greek tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Plato’s Symposium, Virgil’s Aeneid, and Dante’s Inferno. We will have a selection of films related to the material plus at least one concert related to the medieval period. Student work will include weekly discussion list postings, group reports, class discussion, and a number of formal essays.
Requirements Satisfied: Literature
Meets: Tuesday, Thursday 1:00-2:15
Contact: 802-656-4383, tom.simone@uvm.edu
Tom Simone: Professor of English, helped establish the IHP in 1978 and directed the program from 1979 to 1994. He also worked to establish the UVM Humanities Center and directed it from 1994 to 2004. He has written books and articles on Shakespeare, Beckett, Joyce, Ibsen, Shakespeare on film, pedagogy, and the history of recorded classical music. He has recently published a new translation and commentary on Dante’s Inferno and is currently working on an edition of Dante’s Purgatorio. With the grace of nature he hopes to be able to proceed to an edition of Dante’s Paradiso.
This course surveys masterworks of literature, philosophy, and religion in the historical context of ancient Greece and Rome. We shall study the role of epic in oral tradition, the values espoused in Greek tragedy, the rise of democracy in the Greek city-states, the appeal of Hellenistic religions with particular attention to Judaism and Christianity, ancient conceptions of time, tradition, and history, the civic ideals of the Roman Republic, and the culture of the late Roman Empire. Readings include the Epic of Gilgamesh, Greek tragedies by Sophocles, the Socratic dialogues of Plato, the history by Thucydides, the Book of Genesis, the Gnostic Gospels, and essays by Seneca and Augustine.
Requirements Satisfied: Humanities
Meets: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 3:00-3:50
Contact: 802-879-7988, Patrick.Hutton@uvm.edu
Patrick Hutton: Professor Emeritus of History, is an internationally known scholar who researches and writes on European intellectual history. He has taught courses for the Integrated Humanities Program at the UVM for some 27 years. Among all of the history courses that he has taught over the years, the TAP "Ideas in the Western Tradition" is his favorite.
This course is an introduction to the study of religious and philosophical thought in Western culture from the formative perspective of the Greek and Hebraic worlds. As such, it focuses on their continuing implications in dealing with ultimate questions about the meaning of human existence. We will emphasize the search for human happiness, responses to human suffering, justice, love, law, and holiness, in dialogue with some of the great thinkers and texts of the Humanities. This class is a combination of lecture and discussion.
Requirements Satisfied: Humanities
Meets: Tuesday, Thursday 10:00-11:15
Contact: 802-656-4383, richard.sugarman@uvm.edu
Richard Sugarman: Professor of Religion and Director of IHP, has taught in the Integrated Humanities Program for over 27 years, and served as a director since 1989. The recipient of the Fall 2006 Dean's Lecture Award, he approaches religion as a philosopher, believing that the study of religion and philosophy should inform our understanding of the most urgent questions of contemporary life. When not teaching,Sugarman spends most of his time writing on the subject of time. He is the 2007 recipient of the George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award.
This course offers students the opportunity to read major authors and great books in the Western literary tradition, focusing on the modern and contemporary period. By way of transition from the Classical world, we will begin with Dante's Inferno, and explore imaging of the formation of the modern world in Shakespeare. The focus, however, will be on works from the Enlightenment to the 20th century, including authors such as Moliere, Goethe, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Ibsen, Mann, Kafka, Dante, Joyce, and Woolf.
Requirements Satisfied: Literature
Meets: TBD
Contact: 802-656-4383, thomas.simone@uvm.edu
Tom Simone: Professor of English, helped establish the IHP in 1978 and directed the program from 1979 to 1994. He also worked to establish the UVM Humanities Center and directed it from 1994 to 2004. He has written books and articles on Shakespeare, Beckett, Joyce, Ibsen, Shakespeare on film, pedagogy, and the history of recorded classical music. He has recently published a new translation and commentary on Dante’s Inferno and is currently working on an edition of Dante’s Purgatorio. With the grace of nature he hopes to be able to proceed to an edition of Dante’s Paradiso.
What is the role of ideas in helping to define and shape the modern world? Working from a close reading of several exemplary texts, this course will explore some of the main currents of European thought from the eighteenth century to the present. We will examine themes such as social criticism in the Enlightenment period; reactions to the French Revolution and industrial production, from romanticism to utopian socialism; the rise of Marxism and classical sociological theory; the late-nineteenth-century "revolt against positivism"; and intellectual responses to the two catastrophic wars of the twentieth century. Particular attention will be devoted to the writings of Voltaire, Rousseau, Shelley, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud, and Foucault.
Requirements Satisfied: Humanities
Meets: TBD
Contact: 802-656-4383,
TBD:
We will focus on how "religion" has been imagined and explained in the modern West. This will include attention to the way science, secularization, modern values, and cross-cultural perspectives have conditioned ways of viewing religious life and belief. We will examine some classic texts, authors, and theories on the nature of religion and in that sense the course will function as a kind of introduction to the academic study of religion. We will look carefully at two different ways of explaining religion: religion as a social construction and religion as a subjective, psychological reality. We will also consider the study of cross-cultural patterns of religious behaviors and symbols, and conclude with an analysis of contemporary issues such as evolution, fundamentalism, violence, and the clash of conservative and liberal culture.
Requirements Satisfied: Humanities
Meets: TBD
Contact: 802-656-4383, richard.sugarman@uvm.edu
Richard Sugarman: Professor of Religion and Director of IHP, has taught in the Integrated Humanities Program for over 27 years, and served as a director since 1989. The recipient of the Fall 2006 Dean's Lecture Award, he approaches religion as a philosopher, believing that the study of religion and philosophy should inform our understanding of the most urgent questions of contemporary life. When not teaching,Sugarman spends most of his time writing on the subject of time. He is the 2007 recipient of the George V. Kidder Outstanding Faculty Award.
Last modified November 10 2009 05:15 PM
