HUM250 and 251, Ideas and Values in the Humanities.

Hi, Richard Felnagle speaking. I’m a faculty member here at Mesa Community College, and this program is an orientation to my sections of these classes.

Greetings. Together, 250 and 251 form a two-semester survey of the Western cultural heritage—by which I mean the cultural heritage that we Americans have received primarily, but not exclusively, from Western Europe.

The first course, 250, begins with the Ancient Greeks and their predecessors and continues through the Medieval Renaissance. The second course, 251, begins with the Italian Renaissance and continues to the end of the twentieth century. Each class is essentially self-contained, so you can take one or the other, and you don’t have to take both.

And it doesn’t matter in what order you take the classes, but if you’re planning to take both, you probably should start with the first class, 250.

Both classes share the same three fundamental objectives.

The first objective is to help you gain a better understanding of what it means to be Western. And I’m not talking about the Roy Rogers and John Wayne kind of Western here—although John Wayne does come up in the discussion, interestingly enough. No, I’m talking about Western, as in Western Europe. In other words . . .

What does it mean to be Western in one’s thinking? What are Western values? What is the Western way of life?

These questions are important because we Americans are so busy being Western that we don’t necessarily have a good conscious understanding of what that means.

And that becomes a problem because in America, Western and non-Western cultures are juxtaposed. And let’s face it, they often chafe each other. There is friction. And the best cure for the resulting abrasions is understanding. But before we can understand why other people are the way they are, we have to understand why we are the way we are. And that has always been the greater goal of the Humanities.

For example, why on earth do we need fifty different kinds of breakfast cereal in the supermarket?

Why are we so devoted to the democratic system of government, why are we so willing to go to war to force it down other people’s throats, when so few of us ever vote in an election?

Why do Christians all say they believe in the same God but go to so many different churches? Where did all those different churches all come from, anyway? And why can’t they get along with each other?

Why is it okay to have paintings and statues of naked people, but it’s not okay to have pictures of naked people on television?

Why is time money?

And what the hell are the liberal arts, anyway?

Well, the short answer to all of those questions is that they reflect the ideas and values that are our Western cultural heritage, and that begins with the people we know as the Ancient Greeks. Their ideas about so many things—architecture, drama, government, even truth and beauty—are the bedrock of our values. Although in recent years, there has been some revisionist scholarship that suggests that the Greeks may not have been as innovative as we thought. Some people claim that a lot of Greek innovations were really Greek imports, so just to be on the safe side, we look at other early cultures, too. In fact, we go all the way back to the origins of the human race.

But one way or another, Greek culture was exported throughout a sizable chunk of Europe and the Middle East by the person we know as Alexander the Great.

And a century or two after his death, Greek culture was then infused into that of the Roman Empire, creating the Greco-Roman tradition.

But after the decline of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, much of that tradition was abandoned as Western Europe began to be controlled by various tribes that evolved into the feudal kingdoms and, later, the hereditary monarchies that are of the ancestors of today’s European countries. During that time, European thinking was dominated by a different tradition, that of the Catholic Church.

Later, though, the Greco-Roman tradition was revived at the time of the Renaissance, and after the Reformation and the Wars of Religion that followed, a new Western culture emerged as a fusion of the Christian and the Greco-Roman traditions.

Now, I don’t mean to come off like I’m just a big cheerleader for Western civilization. Far from it.

In these courses, we do not turn away from the unbelievably cruel streak of the Romans, and we will look long and hard at the madness and the slaughter of the Crusades and the Inquisition.

We will also observe the damage done to many non-Western cultures by European colonialism and the slave trade, and when we get to the twentieth century, we will look into the black mirror of Fascism.

Along the way, we also examine a few non-Western cultures, too, especially the ancient and modern cultures of India and China, and we devote an entire unit to Islam, something that we Americans in particular need to understand.

In sum, my goal is neither to condone or to condemn. We just need to understand our own tradition so we can understand both how we perceive non-Western cultures and how we are perceived by those same cultures in return. That’s the first objective of the course.

The second objective is a little more prosaic, but a lot more practical. The goal is to familiarize you with a body of specific information—names of people, works of art, historical events, philosophical movements, famous buildings, etc.—that are the warp and woof of the Western cultural heritage. This is all information that any reasonably well educated person in the West should be expected to know.

Here’s a little quiz for you.

1. Giotto. Brunelleschi. Mussolini. Which one was the painter?

2. Is this building the Pantheon, the Parthenon, or the Panatheneum?

3. This building is known as the Dome of the Rock, and it enshrines the place where two legendary events are supposed to have occurred. Any idea what they were?

4. Any idea who painted these lovely ladies?

5. Or these?

6. Or these?

7. What seems to be the problem here?

8. Is iconoclasm a philosophical problem, a political problem, or a religious problem?

9. Where would you be most likely to find a flying buttress? On a church, on a bridge, or on a boat?

10. These are the three orders of Greek columns. Which one is a Corinthian column?

11. What do Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith Leyster, and Helen Frankenthaler and all have in common?

12. And why was George Washington often called the American Cincinnatus?

So, how’d you do? Not sure? Well, the answers, if you’re curious, are in a text box at the bottom of the page where you found the link to this program. But if you never heard of more than half of that stuff . . . well, that’s the second objective of the course.

The third objective is peculiar to me and the way I teach this course. To put it simply, I want to whet your appetite for travel. I mean, foreign travel. Outside the United States. And I don’t count that Spring Break when you went to Rocky Point.

I believe firmly that no one’s education is truly complete without travel. Now, I know not everyone has the opportunity or the resources to travel abroad, but I hope that at some time your life, you will, and when that opportunity comes, I hope you will consider traveling to Europe or to any of the other places that we cover in this course. You will never truly understand who you are and where you live until you leave this country for a while.

And if you go to Europe, and I hope you will have that opportunity, I want to try to make that experience more meaningful for you by filling in for you here some of the background of what you will see when you go there.

Because too many Americans go to Europe and just want to go to McDonald’s in Paris or to the Hard Rock Café in Rome. They trudge dutifully past the Mona Lisa or get rushed through the Sistine Chapel and for the rest of their lives, they wonder what the big deal was. I want you to have a better experience. And from time to time, I will show you some travel pictures just to make you want to go.

Okay. So, that’s what the course is about. I want you to understand what it means to be Western. I want you to be familiar with some of the treasures of the Western cultural heritage. And I want you to want to travel.

But before I sign off here, I need to talk a little bit about how the course is delivered.

As you have no doubt already noticed, there is no required textbook for this course. All of the required materials for 250 and 251 are provided to you online at no additional cost to you. The downside is that those materials include a lot of streaming media—like this video you are watching now—as well as links to other sites on the web and online multiple choice quizzes. So, to get the most out of this course, you need to have your own computer and a fast connection to the Internet.

Yeah, you can go ahead and print out a lot of this stuff, but you will still have to sit at the computer to watch the videos and take the quizzes and visit the linked sites. Besides, printing out all the pages runs into more money and kinda defeats the purpose of my putting all this stuff online in the first place.

And trying to use somebody else’s computer or trying to use your computer at work or something is not a good idea either. Between doing all the study units and writing the papers and all, you’re going to need a lot of computer time. This is just not the type of class you can do by reading the textbook while you ride the bus to work.

This course is really on line! So please keep that in mind before you decide to sign up.

And if you’re wondering if your computer will be up to the task—well, if you’re watching this video now, then you’re probably okay. But if you couldn’t get the video to play on your computer and you’re only reading the text on the page, then it’s time to upgrade.

So, that’s the orientation. I had a lot of fun setting up this course, and I hope you will have a lot of fun taking it, too. See you online!

Answers to the "Culture Quiz"

1. Giotto (1267-1337) was the painter; he primarily painted religious frescoes that are considered an important stylistic transition to the Italian Renaissance. Brunelleschi (1377-1476) was best known as an architect. He great achievement was constructing the dome on the cathedral of Florence. Mussolini (1883-1945) was a Fascist dictator who sided with the Nazis in World War II.

3. The Dome of the Rock stands in Jerusalem. Inside the building is a rock believed to be the place where Abraham was about to sacrifice his son (Isaac in the Jewish and Christian tradition, but Ishmael in the Islamic tradition). The same rock is believed to be the place where one night the Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven.

4. This painting is known as Primavera ("Spring"), and it was painted around the year 1482 by the Italain Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli.

5. This painting is known as "The Sabine Women," and it was painted by French Neoclassical painter Jacques Louis David. Completed in 1799, the painting shows the Sabine Women trying to stop further conflict between the Roman and Sabine men.

6. This painting by Pablo Picasso is considered one of the foundation works of Cubism. Painted in 1907, "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" ("The Young Ladies of Avignon") was Picasso's attempt to break with classical tradition and reflects, most radically, several different points of view incorporated into the same composition.

7. This sculptural group thought to be from the late Hellenistic period depicts an event from the mytical Trojan War as described by Virgil in The Aeneid. The priest, Laocoon, has tried to warn the Trojans not to let the wooden horse into the city, but Poseidon, who wants to see Troy destroyed, has sent serpents to kill Laocoon and his two sons.

8. Iconoclasm is a religious problem. The word denotes a religious heresy that erupted in the Eastern Roman Empire and the Greek Orthodox Church. In the eighth century, the first major outbreak occurred when Eastern Roman Emperor Leo III declared that all religious icons of Mary, Jesus, and the Saints constituted idolatry, and he ordered them destroyed. This first outbreak was ended by the second council of Nicaea. Several other outbreaks occurred in subsequent centuries.

9. A flying buttress is most often found on the outside of a Gothic cathedral. Buttresses help hold up the exterior walls, and "flying" buttresses are open underneath

10. The Corinthian column is identified by the decoration at the top, or capital. The intention is to create shapes that recall acanthus leaves. The Corinthian column is usually the tallest and the most slender of the three orders of columns and became extremely popular in Ancient Rome.

11. They are all famous painters. Artemesia Gentileschi (1593-1653) was a disciple of Caravaggio and painted in the dramatic Baroque style. Judith Leyster (1609-1660) was a highly successful Dutch painter of portraits. Helen Frankenthaler (b. 1928) painted in the style of Abstract Expressionism.

12. Cincinnatus was a famous Roman general during the era of the Republic. When called to fight, he left his farm and successfully led his troops, but when the fighting was over, he reputedly laid down his arms and returned to his farm--much as George Washington did after the conclusion of the Revolutionary War