Robert Kiely

The First Year Seminar program at SAIC gives students the opportunity to develop their analytical writing skills while studying compelling subject matter. Consequently, this course plays two roles. First and foremost, it serves as a writing studio, a forum in which students can develop their prose style and their ability to construct effective written arguments. The course also explores the relationship between artistic expression and the ideologies that characterize a given culture. Artists live in a specific cultural context. Their works reflect the influence of the dominant ideas of that culture, and often serve as a conscious commentary on those ideas. In this course, we will examine the impact of ideology upon art in a variety of world cultures, with an emphasis on cultural comparison.

The First Year Seminar Program at SAIC gives students the opportunity to develop their analytical writing skills while studying compelling subject matter. Consequently, this course plays two roles. First and foremost, it serves as a writing studio, a forum in which students develop their capacity to construct effective written arguments. The course also treats the history of religion and cosmology in a global context; the analysis of this material provides the grist for student writing in the course. In this course, we will study the interrelationship of religion and cosmology in a number of different historical periods and cultural settings, from ancient Egypt to medieval Mesoamerica. We will examine different mythological, religious and philosophical traditions: examples include the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Greek poet Hesiod, or the Arab philosopher Ibn Sina. We will place these works in their cultural context, and trace their influence on the visual arts. Finally, we will look at the rise of modern secular views of the natural world and their effect on contemporary culture and views of the environment. Students should expect to write 20 pages of formal, revisable writing, including 3 short papers, one research project, and a significant amount of in-class writing, including regular journal entries.

The story of European philosophy in the Middle Ages is one of loss and recovery. A great deal of classical thought was lost when the Roman Empire crumbled, and those ideas were reintroduced and reconciled to European culture in a series of intellectual events spanning a thousand years. In this course, we trace the course of this process, from the monastic culture of the Early Middle Ages, to the Aristotelian world of the High Medieval universities, to the classical resurgence of the Italian renaissance. We explore a wide variety of written material. Augustine of Hippo and Boethius illustrate the period immediately after the fall of Rome, while Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd demonstrate the crucial role played by Arab philosophy after the 9th century. Hildegard of Bingen and Peter Abelard embody the energy of European thought in the 12th century, and the scholastic synthesis of Thomas Aquinas represents the culmination of that intellectual energy. Finally, the work of Christine de Pisan and Pico della Mirandola manifest the Humanist character of the Otalian Renaissance. Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.

In the first scene of Marlowe?s Dr. Faustus, the main character systematically dismisses the foundations of medieval European thought. The play represents the profound skepticism of the late Renaissance, a skepticism that takes formal philosophical form in the thought of Rene Descartes. Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a new intellectual orthodoxy arose in Europe, one that continues to influence global thought and culture to this day. In this course, we encounter the varied approaches to truth, self, nature, and power that combined, sometimes dramatically, to produce this new modern worldview. The course closely examines the work of some of the seventeenth and eighteenth century European philosophers: Rene Descartes, Baruch Spinoza, Anne Conway, John Locke, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, to name a few. However, the course places their work in its cultural context by exploring the religious, scientific, and political thought of the period, as well as literature and the visual arts. Assignments vary, but they might include some or many of the following: weekly reading responses, quizzes, papers, and exams.