STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Class of 2009

IHUM

Introduction to the Humanities

200506 COURSE CATALOGUE

Giving you a firm grounding in the ways humanists think and the kinds of issues they think about.
T H E O F F I C E O F T H E V I C E P R O V O S T F O R U N D E R G R A D U AT E E D U C AT I O N , S TA N F O R D U N I V E R S I T Y

ANY QUESTIONS? website: http:// approaching.stanford.edu email: approaching @stanford.edu phone: (650) 724-2625 IHUM program website: http://ihum.stanford.edu

How to Use This Course Guide

Read the descriptions of the various IHUM courses. Rank your preferences for autumn IHUM courses by filling out Form 4, online, at http://approaching.stanford.edu. Make sure youve submitted this form, as well as the remainder of your reply forms, online, by 8 a.m., Monday, June 14.

Contents
Message from the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Message from the Director of Introduction to the Humanities Overview of Introduction to the Humanities Choosing your IHUM Courses IHUM Courses at a Glance Autumn-Quarter Courses Conflict, Cooperation, and Human Nature Freedom, Equality, Difference The Human and the Machine Journeys The Literature of Crisis Old-World Encounters Race, Gender, and the Arts of Survival Representing Nature: The Boundaries of the Human Transformations: The Intersection of High Art and Contemporary Culture Visions of Mortality Autumn, Winter, Spring Residential Course Structured Liberal Education (SLE) Winter-Spring Course Sequences ClassicsAncient Empires Cultural and Social AnthropologyEncounters and Identities DramaArt and Ideas: Performance and Practice EnglishLiterature into Life: Alternative Worlds French and ItalianEpic Journeys, Modern Quests German StudiesMyth and Modernity: Culture in Germany HistoryWorlds of Islam: Global History and Muslim Societies PhilosophyThe Fate of Reason Religious StudiesApproaching Religion: Tradition, Transformation, and the Challenge of the Present Slavic Languages and LiteraturesPoetic Justice: Order and Imagination in Russia Spanish and PortugueseAmerican Genesis: Indigenous Texts and Their Resonance Frequently Asked Questions 2 2 3 3 4 515 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 1617 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 3031

As the vice provost for undergraduate education, I am very pleased to offer you this catalogue of the required courses that will provide the foundation for your liberal arts education at Stanford. Introduction to Humanities is a vital part of the integrated program of study designed for your first and second years at Stanford. In conjunction with Introductory Seminars and courses in Writing and Rhetoric, these courses will challenge you to think for yourself and to develop analytical and communication skills that will serve you throughout your undergraduate years and thereafter. The faculty teams assembled to teach these courses in the humanities represent the very best that Stanford has to offer. They are dedicated to inviting you to become members of the intellectual community in the humanities, through your active inquiry into the important topics and themes they present.

I am very happy, indeed proud, to welcome you to the Introduction to the Humanities program at Stanford (known, in typically irreverent Stanford terms, as IHUM). The humanities are surely in many ways at the heart of the university, and we hope our courses can show you why. Encompassing the written word, architecture, music, image, and gesture (for starters!), humanities courses at Stanford include classes in topics stretching from medieval music to the philosophy of mind; from African American fiction to Zen Buddhism; from Roman history to American art in the 60s. If your IHUM courses are your first encounter with the humanities at Stanford, youll find they will provide you with a firm grounding in the ways humanists think and in the kinds of issues they think about. If your IHUM courses turn out to be your most extended encounter with the humanities at Stanford, you may be pleasantly surprised at what these courses will offer you, no matter what future Stanford courses and life path you take, and, perhaps more importantly, alternative ways of looking at the world that can enrich your life in your undergraduate years and beyond. Welcome to Stanford, and, please, explore the full richness of the human experience while you are here. It gets tougher afterward.

John C. Bravman Freeman-Thornton Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education Orrin (Rob) Robinson Professor, Department of German Studies Christensen Professor and Director, Introduction to the Humanities Program

Overview of Introduction to the Humanities

Stanford University is committed to a broad liberalarts education for all undergraduates. The Introduction to the Humanities (IHUM) requirement builds an intellectual foundation in the study of human thought, values, beliefs, creativity, and culture. The courses that satisfy this requirement enhance your skills in analysis, interpretation, reasoning, argumentation, and expression, and thus also form a foundation for advanced learning in all subjects throughout your undergraduate career. The IHUM requirement is structured in two parts: 1) an autumn-quarter interdisciplinary course, followed by 2) a two-quarter course sequence in a humanities discipline. You will choose from among 10 autumn-quarter courses and 11 winter-spring courses to satisfy the requirement. All courses hold two hours of lecture and three hours of discussion section, led by post-doctoral scholars in the humanities. These complementary modes of instruction focus on the interpretation of texts written, visual, musical, dramaticthat explore what it means to be human. Autumn IHUM courses are organized around themes presented by faculty teams from different departments and disciplines. Winter-spring sequences represent a particular disciplinary approach to one topic studied in depth over 20 weeks, an opportunity unique in the Stanford humanities curriculum. Structured Liberal Education (SLE) is the only exception to the one quarter/two quarter structure for the IHUM requirement. SLE is an intensive, three-quarter sequence that satisfies the IHUM requirement, the Writing and Rhetoric Requirement, as well as one course in the Disciplinary Breadth Requirement humanities sub-area. It is a residential program, housing all students together. If you are assigned to SLE, you will not enroll in another IHUM autumn or winter-spring course.

Choosing Your IHUM Courses

This catalogue offers detailed information about all the courses that satisfy the IHUM requirement. As the centerpiece of your first year of studies, the decision should be one that you consider very carefully. Reflect on your unique educational interests and choose your courses accordingly. Selecting your IHUM preferences can be a preview of future academic decision making, if you are thoughtful and active in the process. For example, look closely at the departmental affiliations of the professors in the courses that appeal to you to see if there is an underlying connection from autumn to winter-spring. Identify thematic associations among courses that you find especially attractive. Go to the departmental or course websites listed in the descriptions for further information. Be flexible and open to all the IHUM course opportunities as spaces are limited in any one course. Autumn course preferences are collected through the online form at the Approaching Stanford website, and your assignment will be finalized over the summer. You will learn your assignment on the first day of orientation. Winter-spring preferences are collected in November, after an IHUM Open House where professors are available to meet you and answer questions about their courses. The winter-spring course assignments are finalized by the opening of winter quarter. Course changes between winter and spring are extremely rare, and only in response to compelling academic conflicts. If you are considering ranking SLE as your first choice, please note two things. First, SLE is a housing preference as well as a course choice. Second, SLE class meeting times are limited to Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 3:155:00 p.m. and from 6:007:00 or 8:30 p.m. Students with special obligations such as varsity athletics that conflict with these times should be sure to avoid a scheduling conflict. All other IHUM lectures and sections are offered throughout the day and into the evening. After you have read carefully the descriptions of the different course options, rank your preferences by filling out Form 4, online, at http://approaching.stanford.edu. We make every attempt to assign you to your top choices, and a vast majority of students enroll in their first or second choice course, although, of course, we cannot guarantee this outcome given the need to limit course size. You will learn your assignment when you arrive on campus for orientation.

IHUM course assignments are finalized during the summer. You will receive your assignment when you arrive on campus for Orientation.

IHUM Courses at a Glance

Rank preferences for autumn courses online now; you will be asked to rank winter-spring preferences in November.
AUTUMN UNITS WINTER UNITS SPRING UNITS TOTAL UNITS

Conflict, Cooperation, and Human Nature Freedom, Equality, Difference The Human and the Machine Journeys The Literature of Crisis Old-World Encounters Race, Gender, and the Arts of Survival Representing Nature: The Boundaries of the Human Transformations: The Intersection of High Art and Contemporary Culture Visions of Mortality ClassicsAncient Empires Cultural and Social AnthropologyEncounters and Identities DramaArt and Ideas: Performance and Practice EnglishLiterature into Life: Alternative Worlds French and ItalianEpic Journeys, Modern Quests German StudiesMyth and Modernity: Culture in Germany HistoryWorlds of Islam: Global History and Muslim Societies PhilosophyThe Fate of Reason Religious StudiesApproaching Religion: Tradition, Transformation, and the Challenge of the Present Slavic Languages and LiteraturesPoetic Justice: Order and Imagination in Russia Spanish and PortugueseAmerican Genesis: Indigenous Texts and Their Resonance

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 15

Structured Liberal Education (Residential) Satisfies requirements: IHUM, WRR, Disciplinary Breadth (partial)

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Autumn-Quarter Courses
Students in Introduction to the Humanities pair an autumn-quarter introductory course with a winter-spring course sequence. All autumn-quarter IHUM courses will hone your skills in the humanistic disciplines through close study and critical investigation of a limited and carefully selected number of works. These courses are interdisciplinary, so that you learn how different disciplines in the humanities approach the works you study. All autumn-quarter courses are designed and taught by a team of faculty members. Their lectures, ranging from 90 to 225 students in each course, provide lively interaction between differing points of view. Lectures form the basis for discussion sections of approximately 15 students led by postdoctoral Teaching Fellows.

Autumn-Quarter Courses
Conflict, Cooperation, and Human Nature
2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units
FACULTY TEAM

hat does your mothers brothers daughter call you? Chances are pretty good that she calls

you cousin, and because of this, you assume a host of duties, expectations, and social responsibilities. The classification of other people is a human universal, intimately related to the tension between conflict and cooperation that pervades human social systems and helps define who we are. In this course, you will explore some striking forms of human social interaction and their relationship with what makes us human. In addition to the

Libra Hilde, Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity James Holland Jones, Department of Anthropological Sciences
TEXTS

The so-called savage has always been a plaything to civilized manin practice a convenient instrument of exploitation, in theory a provider of sensational thrills. Savagery has been, for the reading public of the last three centuries, a reservoir of unexpected possibilities in human nature; and the savage has had to adorn this or that a priori hypothesis by becoming cruel or noble, licentious or chaste, cannibalistic or human according to what suited the observer or the theory Malinowski, Sexual Life of Savages

Shelley, Frankenstein Malinowski, The Sexual Life of Savages in NorthWestern Melanesia The Popol Vuh Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl Mailer, The Naked and the Dead

construction of family systems, warfare and slavery are uniquely human activities: upon these we will focus our discussion of human nature. How people manipulate such social classifications as nonhuman or kin in an effort to define a potential spouse, an opponent in war, or a slave, and how people resist attempts at denying them their humanity, will provide insight into what makes a person human. Using tools from anthropology and history, we will approach the question What is human? from a broad historical and comparative perspective. Throughout our investigations, we will strive to understand how variation on social structures and cultural norms can provide more general insights into human nature and the resolution of social problems. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winter-spring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.

Autumn-Quarter Courses
Freedom, Equality, Difference

2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units

FACULTY TEAM

reedom and equality are commonly appealed to as the fundamental principles of Western liberal societies. Individuals

are supposed to be treated as equals and to have a right to freedom. In particular, they are supposed to have the freedom to carry on their everyday lives and pursue their ambitions without respect to such differences as race, ethnicity, religion, or gender. Yet the principles of freedom and equality are often contested as soon as they move from the realm of abstract ideals to concrete social practices. People who agree in principle find them-

Eamonn Callan, School of Education David Palumbo-Liu, Department of Comparative Literature Debra Satz, Department of Philosophy
TEXTS

Society practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself. Mill, On Liberty

selves differing (sometimes violently) about what kinds of freedom and equality are important and indeed essential to a just society. Which freedoms will a just society promote and which must be curtailed for the sake of justice? What particular equalities properly concern governmentequality of opportunity or equality of well-being, for exampleand how can the achievement of equality be reconciled with respect for freedom? What roles should social and political institutions take in guaranteeing freedom and equality? This course will explore these and related questionssome of our most pressing issues today, both nationally and globallythrough interdisciplinary inquiry that includes political philosophy, education, literature, history, and law. We will repeatedly move between the realm of abstract ideas and actual case histories, using one to shed light on the other. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winter-spring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.
Most anyone ought to know that a man is better off free than as a slave, even if he did not have anything. I would rather be free and have my liberty. I fared just as well as any white child could have fared when I was a slave, and yet I would not give up my freedom. from the congressional testimony of Reverend E.P. Holmes, clergyman from Georgia and former house servant

Defoe, Robinson Crusoe Ellison, The Invisible Man Locke, Second Treatise of Government and Letter on Toleration Mill, On Liberty Selected Supreme Court cases

Autumn-Quarter Courses
The Human and the Machine
2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units
FACULTY TEAM

his course explores the shifting boundary lines between the mechanical and the human by considering how

human individuals connect and interact with machines, how they may even be conceived, designed, and manipulated as machines. We will ask a number of questions together about what it means to think of the human body as a machine:

Science and technology multiply around us. To an increasing extent they dictate the languages in which we speak and think. Either we use those languages, or we remain mute. J. G. Ballard, Introduction to Crash

Henry Lowood, History of Science and Technology Collections, University Libraries Jeffrey Schnapp, Departments of French and Italian, and Comparative Literature Michael Shanks, Departments of Classics, and Cultural and Social Anthropology.
TEXTS

What is a machine? How would one design a body or personality as a machine or device? Does the future promise more intimacy between machines and humans? And what would that mean for human values and sensibilities? These questions will take us to the heart of ideas of what it is to be human. We will explore these ideas from a variety of directions ranging from paradigms of bio- and social engineering to ethical issues concerning biotechnology and creationist arguments for intelligent design that reveal the work of God. We will trace the history of thinking about people, society and machines from Plato and his antecedents through to our contemporary dilemmas over biotechnology. Our argument is that the ethical issues associated with designing people as some kind of device or artifact are not at all new. Our message is that we have been cyborgs for as long as we have been human, intimately associated with artifacts and machines, constantly exchanging properties with them, designed by and designing our social and cultural realities. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winter-spring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.

Plato, The Republic Marinetti, Selected Poems and Related Prose Ballard, Crash: A Novel A Japanese film Atwood, Oryx and Crake Peter Molyneux, Black & White

Autumn-Quarter Courses
Journeys
2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units
FACULTY TEAM

he journey is our most fundamental narrative, and no wonder; we are all, from the day of our births, embarked on a

constant passage through space and time toward an end we can only think we know. Death itself is in dispute: Is it final, or only the beginning of another journey? The mysteries of destination infuse our lives, giving rise to our most basic questions of purpose and meaning and faith, our proper relation to others and the physical world. The works we will examine in this course were written

It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. Joyce, The Dead

Tobias Wolff, Department of English Lee Yearley, Department of Religious Studies

TEXTS

across a span of some 2,300 years, from very different cultural and historical situations and in very different forms and genres. But each of them presents some essential aspect of that journey we all share, and of the multiplicity of passages we make within that one great journeymoral, spiritual, and emotional passages that relentlessly challenge and transform us even as we advance toward what the poet Thomas Gray called our inevitable hour. The writers of these works are not in agreement as to where we are going or how we should get there, but all compel us, by the penetration of their vision and the power of their art, to make part of our own journey in their company. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winterspring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.

Selected stories of Tolstoy and Flannery OConnor Writings of Chuang Tzu, with selected poems from the Tang Dynasty Baldwin, The Fire Next Time Joyce, Dubliners

Autumn-Quarter Courses
The Literature of Crisis
2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units
FACULTY TEAM

ost human lives contain major turning points: crises that transform an individuals future

Friends and companions, Have we not known hard hours before this? God will grant us an end to these as well. You sailed by Scyllas rage, her booming crags, You saw the Cyclops boulders. Now call back Your courage, and have done with fear and sorrow. Some day, perhaps, remembering even this Will be a pleasure. Vergil, Aeneid

development. On a much larger scale, cultures undergo crises too: political, intellectual, and religious changes that alter forever the course of human history. This course will focus on both kinds of crisis. We will consider the personal upheavals brought about by the political, social, religious, and erotic ties of our authors and their characters. These crises were pivotal moments that dramatically altered the trajec-

Martin Evans, Department of English Marsh McCall, Department of Classics

TEXTS

Plato, Apology Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy Sophocles, Oedipus the King Shakespeare, Hamlet Vergil, Aeneid Voltaire, Candide

tory of their lives. Moreover, each of our texts reflects not only a personal crisis but also the turbulence of its cultural environment; each develops a unique strategy for coping with it. In addition to offering a unique introduction to these great texts, this course aims to provide a conceptual and historical framework enabling you to address crises in your own life and in the modern world with a greater degree of understanding and, perhaps, a clearer sense of how to survive them. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winter-spring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.

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Autumn-Quarter Courses
Old-World Encounters
2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units
FACULTY TEAM

n this course we will examine five moments of intellectual encounter among the far-flung civilizations of the Eastern

Hemisphere in the premodern and early modern eras. The texts we will investigate are landmark works of cultural translation and ethnographic analysis, penned by scholar-travelers from across the Old World. In addition to reading works by two Western analysts of the East, you will be introduced to early Chinese and Persian appraisals of India, as well as a North African encounter with sub-Saharan Africa. Each of our chosen works shows a self-critical mind at work; each represents a lifetime of empirical research, drawing on firsthand experience of foreign lands as well as careful interrogation of prior accounts; and each went on to become an influential classic in a distinctive intellectual tradition.

Martin Lewis, Program in International Relations Kren Wigen, Department of History

AUTHORS

In all manners and usages they differ from us to such a degree as to frighten their children with us, with our dress, and our ways and customs, and as to declare us to be the devils breed.... By the by, we must confess, in order to be just, that a similar depreciation of foreigners not only prevails among us and the Hindus, but is common to all nations towards each other. from al-Birunis account of his travels in India

Herodotus, Hsan Tsang, al-Biruni, Ibn Battuta, Matteo Ricci

Using methods from intellectual history and cultural geography, we will focus on reconstructing the worldviews and geographical imaginations that inform each text. Historical maps and images will assist us in eliciting the authors spatial and ethnographic categories, which will be analyzed in their geopolitical context. All of the works we will consider are associated with large-scale cultural movements that significantly refashioned the human landscapes of the Eastern Hemisphere. Our goal in juxtaposing these works is twofold: to explore how the concept of civilization itself has been produced through cross-cultural contact and to probe how such contact was perceived from within the distinctive humanistic traditions of premodern Afro-Eurasia. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winter-spring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.

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Autumn-Quarter Courses
Race, Gender, and the Arts of Survival
2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units
FACULTY TEAM

ow do men and women survivenot just physically, but intellectually, creatively, spirituallyin the world? Our

course examines texts that imaginatively model strategies to overcome physical deprivation (everything from enslavement to castration) and social oppression (from religious persecution to gender discrimination). The often brilliant and innovative strategies of survival represented in these works, which range from the twelfth century to the present, appear in diverse formssometimes as physical resistance, racial passing, or political ultimatum, and other times as artistic challenge, educational reform, or rhetorical suasion. The strategies take shape in similarly diverse genres: We will be reading and discussing drama, fiction, epistolaries, and a slave narrative.

Michele B. Elam, Department of English Harry J. Elam, Jr., Department of Drama

TEXTS

In a minute ma boyll be runnin from de white folks with their hounds and their ropes and their guns and everything they uses to kill po colored folks with. My boyll be out there runnin. Colonel Tom, you hear me? Our boy out there runnin. You said he was ma bastard boy. I heard youbut hes yours tooout yonder in de dark runnin from yo people. Hughes, Mulatto

Abelard, The Letters of

Abelard and Heloise

Shakespeare, Othello Jacobs, Incidents in the

Life of a Slave Girl

These texts ask us to consider how to creatively survive the constraints of gender, of race, of nation, of history itself; they ask us as well to consider at what cost and for what greater purpose does one survive. Our readings thus explore not only the many arts of survival but also the possibilities for effecting social and personal change. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winter-spring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.
I spoke of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field; Of hairbreadth scapes i th imminent deadly breach; Of being taken by the insolent foe And sold to slavery; of my redemption hence Shakespeare, Othello

Hughes, Mulatto Whitehead, The Intuitionist

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Autumn-Quarter Courses
Representing Nature: The Boundaries of the Human
2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units
FACULTY TEAM

ur thinking about the place of human beings in the natural world is profoundly influenced by our val-

ues, beliefs, and cultures. This course will examine the ways that five writers in the modern period represent and conceptualize the natural world. We will explore their different conceptions of human and nonhuman nature, and the ways that these ideas reflect specific historical and cultural contexts. Although all these writers share basic assumptions about the natural world, each constructs

Andrea Nightingale, Departments of Classics and Comparative Literature Richard White, Department of History
TEXTS

As I came home through the woods with my string of fish, trailing my pole, it being now quite dark, I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for that wildness which he represented. Thoreau, Walden

and conceptualizes nature in a different way. Each offers a distinct account of human relations to nature, and in doing so often offers an account of human social, racial, and gender relations. In general, the course focuses on an exploration of the problem of representing nature in language (literary, philosophical, etc.). This course focuses on the construction of a set of conceptual relations between humans as social beings and a natural world that may, or may not, include human beings. The evolving conception of nature allows certain human actions and practices to be read as either natural or unnatural, as correct or deviant. When human beings argue about their relation to the natural world, they are also arguing about their relation to each other. In this course, we will explore the ways that human beings include themselves as part of the natural world or define themselves against it. What are the boundaries of the human? What defines us as humans? Are humans animals or some other form of being? We will discuss literary and philosophical representations of nature in various places and at various times. By examining these issues over a sweep of several centuries, students can see how ideas of what is natural and what is social shift over time. The representations of nature we are examining are part of a long and complicated debate about human and nonhuman naturea debate that has profound implications for our own understanding of the natural world and our relation to it. In this course, we will try to find the roots of the current environmental crisis by examining the porous boundary between nature and culture and by exploring how our thoughts and ideas about nature affect the way that we treat the earth and its inhabitants. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winter-spring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.
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Descartes, Discourse on Method Shelley, Frankenstein Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle Thoreau, Walden Walcott, Omeros

Autumn-Quarter Courses
Transformations: The Intersection of High Art and Contemporary Culture
2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units
FACULTY TEAM

umanities courses usually concentrate on written texts. In this course, taking a different approach, we will encounter

characters and themes not simply in a written form, but as each appears in and is transformed by a variety of different media (film, opera, symphonic music). The emphasis of the

One must have chaos in oneself to give birth to a dancing star. Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Stephen Hinton, Department of Music Susan Stephens, Department of Classics

WORKS

course will be not only on reading, but on viewing and hearing as well, and on consideration of how the artistic medium itself affects experience. We will introduce you to a variety of aesthetic experiences and to the differing interpretive challenges that each presents. The course is organized around three characters or ideas that have figured prominently in the Western imagination in the 20th century. In each case we trace this character/idea from its initial occurrence through its various media transformations in order to see how each contributes, in multiple ways, to the modern construction of the self and our understanding of the human condition. Each unit is constructed to move from texts that today fall into the category of high culture or art (Mozart, Shakespeare, Nietzsche) to works of todays culture (in each case, a modern film), in order to allow you to see the ways in which this material is transformed in the process. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winter-spring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.

Mozart, The Magic Flute Shakespeare, Othello Verdi, Otello Nietzsche, Also Sprach Zarathustra Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey

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Autumn-Quarter Courses
Visions of Mortality
2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units
FACULTY TEAM

f you are reading this sentence, you are now alive. If so, someday you will die. In this course we will examine

Our terrors and our darknesses of mind Must be dispelled, then, not by sunshines rays, Not by those shining arrows of the light, But by insight into nature, and a scheme Of systematic contemplation. Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

some of the basic issues arising from these facts. We begin with several of the most fundamental questions arising from the first-person confrontation with thoughts of our own mortality. Is death bad for me, and if so, why? What can the badness or the indifference of death tell us about what makes my life good? If death is the permanent end of my existence, is it necessary that my choices are arbitrary and my life meaningless?

Christopher Bobonich, Department of Philosophy Ron Barrett, Department of Anthropological Sciences

TEXTS

Bhagavad Gita Lucretius, On the Nature of Things Toni Morrison, Beloved Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilyich

Taking an anthropological perspective we will examine the biocultural process of dying and its relationship to the human experience of loss. We will compare funerary traditions from around the world and consider their role in the social transitions that follow the death of a family member. We confront issues of theodicy (why bad things happen to good people) and compare the ways that different religions approach this problem. Throughout these issues, we will consider the boundaries of human life and death, and wrestle with the ethical dilemmas that they engender. This autumn-quarter course may be followed by any one of the Introduction to the Humanities winter-spring sequences. You will be asked to rank your preferences for these sequences during autumn quarter.

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Autumn,Winter, and Spring Residential Course

The Program in Structured Liberal Education (SLE) offers students an intensive, residence-based learning experience that simultaneously satisfies the IHUM requirement, the Writing and Rhetoric I and the Writing and Rhetoric II requirements, and one General Education Disciplinary Breadth Requirement in the humanities. Assignment to Structured Liberal Education will override any preferences you have expressed for housing or for Writing and Rhetoric courses. Structured Liberal Education is a three-quarter course sequence. If you are assigned to SLE, you will be enrolled in the sequence for autumn, winter, and spring.

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Autumn,Winter, and Spring Residential Course

Structured Liberal Education (SLE)
INTERDISCIPLINARY

tructured Liberal Education (SLE) is a special program that encourages students to live a life of ideas in an atmos-

3 hours of lecture 4 hours of small-group discussion, plus sessions with writing tutors Weekly film series 9 units autumn and winter quarters 10 units spring quarter
FACULTY DIRECTOR

phere that stresses critical thinking and a tolerance for ambiguity. SLE asks students to confront central questions that have perplexed and confounded humankind throughout the ages: What is knowledge? What is the relationship between reason

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. Marx, Theses on Feuerbach

and passion? How does the concept of justice change over time? Is coherent meaning possible in the modern era? Can one live a spiritual life in the contemporary world? These questions and many more provide the foundation for a chronologically structured course beginning in the ancient world and ending with the modern period. SLE is academically rigorous, but it also fosters close student-instructor relationships and provides an environment that encourages students to develop lasting friendships. Together with other students, SLE freshmen live and learn together in three houses (one freshman and two four-class) in Florence Moore Hall, the informal setting for lectures, small-group discussions, films, and plays. This SLE community promotes the active and often fierce exchange of ideas, not only in the classroom setting but also in the dining room at mealtime and in the dorm late at night. SLE instructors participate actively in the intellectual life of the dorm, regularly dining with students and holding individual writing tutorials. Each week culminates with a film, a visual text serving as a commentary on the written texts studied in lectures and discussion sections. In addition, each quarter students organize and produce a play, which is not only always great fun for everyone but also offers another lens for viewing the period under study. Students receive individualized writing instruction from SLE instructors and upper-class writing tutors. Because of its intensive concentration on both the analysis of texts and the written and oral communication of ideas, SLE is a nine-unit course in autumn and winter quarters and a ten-unit course in spring quarter. SLE satisfies simultaneously the IHUM requirement, the Writing and Rhetoric I and the Writing and Rhetoric II requirements, and one General Education Breadth Requirement in the humanities. Students enrolled in this track will remain in the sequence for three quarters.

Mark Mancall, Department of History

SELECTED TEXTS

The Bible, The Koran, Buddhist Sutras; works by Plato, Aristotle, Euripides, Sappho, Homer, Confucius, Chuang Tzu, Mencius, Augustine, Dante, Descartes, Machiavelli, Saikaku, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, Woolf, Kafka, Sartre, Camus, Arendt, Salih

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Winter-Spring Sequences
On the following pages you will find information about the various winterspring course sequences in Introduction to the Humanities, along with brief descriptions of the disciplines they represent. These departmentally based courses offer you the opportunity to use the skills you will gain and explore the disciplines you will learn about in your autumn-quarter IHUM course, in a new, challenging, and faster-paced course sequence. Any one of these course sequences, combined with an autumn-quarter IHUM course described in the preceding section, will complete the first-year requirement. There is no need to rank your preferences for winter-spring sequences now; you will be asked to do so during autumn quarter after the IHUM Open House in November. Winter-spring course sequences are described here so that you know what to expect during the coming year.

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Winter-Spring Sequence
Classics Ancient Empires
For more information about Classics at Stanford, consult the departments website at http://www.stanford.edu /dept/classics 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

hy are wealth and power so unevenly distributed around the world today, with so much in the hands of

Roman, remember by your strength to rule Earths peoplesfor your arts are to be these: To pacify, to impose the rule of law, To spare the conquered, battle down the proud. Vergil, Aeneid

Europeans and their descendants in other countries? In this course sequence you will investigate one of the decisive places and periods in the worlds history: the Mediterranean basin between about 800 BCE and 400 CE. Great empires Assyria, Persia, Macedonia, and Romewere carved out in bloody wars and permanently changed the course of human

development. We will ask why these empires arose when and where they did, how they worked, and what their legacy is. We will balance their economic, religious, and artistic achievements against their record of genocide, enslavement, and brutal warfare. We will ask what these empires meant, not only for the people who created and ruled them but also for those who lived within their power or struggled to resist them. What drove some people to conquer, others to submit, and others still to fight back? How do we set the turbulent details of their histories against the deeper currents of economic and environmental changes across a thousand years? In this course you will examine the rich evidence surviving from ancient literature and archaeology, tracing the roles of religion, property, and freedom across these centuries and what they meant for the shape of the world today. Students enrolled in any

Winter Quarter: Ian Morris, Department of Classics Spring Quarter: Jennifer Trimble, Department of Classics
SELECTED TEXTS

Assyrian and Persian inscriptions; the Hebrew Bible; histories of Herodotus, Xenophon, Polybius, and Tacitus; epic poetry of Vergil; letters of Cicero and Pliny; the writings of early Christian martyrs

autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Classics
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Winter-Spring Sequence
Cultural and Social Anthropology Encounters and Identities
For more information about Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford, consult the departments website at: http://www.stanford.edu /dept/anthroCASA 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

ow have some of our most cherished ideas about our identities emerged through a his-

Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. Marx, The German Ideology

tory of encounters between people from different areas of the globe over the past five hundred years?

What can the exploration of a vivid South African history of conquest, colonialism, racial domination, and resistance tell us about our own dilemmas of identity today? This two-quarter sequence will introduce you to the formation of ideas about individual and collective identities in South Africa, Western Europe, and the United States. We will trace contemporary ideas about identity, including national, racial, ethnic, and gender identity, to the historical encounters and social transformations linking different areas of the globe. In emphasizing both the similarities and differences among ideas of individual and collective identity found in different regions of the world, we will challenge popular assumptions about the origins of our identities. The course will equip you with critical concepts and methods of analysis from cultural anthropology to help you face the challenges of your own social encounters and changing identities. Students enrolled in any

Winter Quarter: James Ferguson, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology Spring Quarter: Jane Collier, Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology
SELECTED AUTHORS

autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Ramphele, Biko, Mda, Marks, Locke, Marx, Rousseau, Malinowski, Hurston

Cultural and Social Anthropology

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Winter-Spring Sequence
Drama Art and Ideas: Performance and Practice
For more information about the Drama Department, consult the departments website at http://www.stanford.edu /dept/drama/index.html 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

his sequence will introduce key issues in aesthetics and performance through examples drawn from the classical

age to the present. Concepts of art and practice will be illuminated by close readings of texts and performances that intersect with concerns such as imitation, instruction through pleasure, the creative process, perception, social

Works of art are not mirrors, but they share with mirrors that elusive magic of transformation which is so hard to put into words. E.H. Gombrich

analysis, and embodiment as a form of knowledge. We will highlight drama, dance, music, visual arts and performance art practices that reflect these aesthetic ideas. Questions over the two quarters will include, What is the relationship between the performance and society, between utility and pleasure? How are lived experiences in an historical moment embodied, restored, or represented in performance? How do art media affect meaning? What does it mean for the body to be a medium? How does performance embody and challenge the values of a culture? Students enrolled in any autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Winter Quarter: Alice Rayner, Department of Drama Spring Quarter: Janice Ross, Dance Division, Department of Drama
SELECTED AUTHORS

Plato, Ibsen, Chekhov, Sidney, Shakespeare, Shklovsky, Kleist, Langer, Berger, Benjamin, Goodman

Drama
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Winter-Spring Sequence
English Literature into Life: Alternative Worlds
For more information about English at Stanford, consult the departments website at: http://english.stanford. edu 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

his two-quarter sequence will introduce you to the literary genres of poetry, drama, and fiction from the

Renaissance to the present day. The course will focus on the interaction between art and life. How does literature come alive on the page, vivifying personal and social experience? How do writers create alternative worlds, stretching human awareness? What have fiction and poetry to do with historical crisis, environmental urgency? We will also consider parallel cases from art and music.

The sharp swallows in their swerve flaring and hesitating hunting for the final curve coming closer and closerThe swallow heart from wing beat to wing beat counseling decision, decision: thunderous examples. I place my feet with care in such a world. William Stafford, The Well Rising

Students enrolled in any autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Winter Quarter: David Riggs, Department of English Spring Quarter: John Felstiner, Department of English
SELECTED AUTHORS

More, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Milton, Defoe, Swift, Keats, Hopkins, Dickinson, Whitman, Yeats, Frost, Williams, Bishop, Levertov, Celan, Vietnamera poets

English
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Winter-Spring Sequence
French and Italian Epic Journeys, Modern Quests
For more information about French and Italian at Stanford, consult the departments website at: http://www.stanford.edu /dept/fren-ital 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

hrough the image and metaphor of the journey, epic poems externalize the human quest for identity and

self-definition. The epic hero crosses the physical world and descends into the underworld to visit the dead and seek counsel from them. We will examine the different goals of such journeys and the evolution of the epic hero as he struggles to reach his destination, with particular attention to how exile and alienation, the encounter with ancestors, and divine guidance define the trajectories traced by the various epics in question. As the course develops, we will examine the diminished

When I understood those injured souls, I bent my face downward, and I held it down so long that the poet said, What are you pondering? When I replied, I began, Alas, how many sweet thoughts, how much yearning led them to this grievous pass! Dante, Inferno

Winter Quarter: John Freccero and Robert Harrison, Department of French and Italian Spring Quarter: Daniel Edelstein and Joshua Landy, Department of French and Italian
SELECTED AUTHORS

importance of the dead and the increased emphasis on the power of the living in various literary genres. We will pay particular attention to how concepts of humanity and society are defined by the sense of rupture with the past, including a heightened importance given to innovation, the present, the living, and the everyday that contrasts with the formative power of the afterlife, tradition, and the dead. Students enrolled in any autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Homer, Vergil, Dante, Boccaccio, Baudelaire, Diderot , Kafka

French and Italian

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Winter-Spring Sequence
German Studies Myth and Modernity: Culture in Germany
For more information about German Studies at Stanford, consult the departments website at: http://stanford.edu/dept /german/ 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

his course explores the tension between tradition and progress through an examination of German cultural

Not only children can be quieted with fables. Lessing, Nathan the Wise

history. Individualism, as a key figure of modernity, can challenge community values, but meaningful lives also

depend on shared cultural structures. The experience of modernity typically involves overcomingor denying?the past, but that same past can return to haunt the present in the form of myths. This course sequence investigates the interplay of myth and modernity, the irrationality of narrative and the reason of progress, through the example of German culture, especially in literature, from the heroic epics of the medieval era through the catastrophes of the last century. We will ask about the distinctiveness of the German experience within the larger frame of Western culturehow different is Germany?as well as the standing of the values of that Western culture in the contentious clash of cultures today. Do cultures require myths, or should mythic thinking be overcome? Are individuality and freedom necessary components of culture, or are they only a myth? Students enrolled in any autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Winter Quarter: Russell Berman, Department of German Studies Spring Quarter: Amir Eshel, Department of German Studies
SELECTED WORKS AND AUTHORS

Nibelungenlied, Bachs St. Matthew Passion; Expressionist poetry and painting, Nazi cinema and architecture; Wagners Lohengrin; Kant, Goethe, Marx, DuBois, Nietzsche, Freud, Kafka, Mann, Celan

German Studies
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Winter-Spring Sequence
History Worlds of Islam: Global History and Muslim Societies
For more information about History at Stanford, consult the departments website at: http://history.stanford. edu/ 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

his course provides students with a chronological and geographical overview of a broad range

of times and places in which Islam has been the dominant cultural framework. Over the course of two quarters we will examine the basic elements of the Muslim faith and its related political, social, and cultural practices. The chronological range of the

Peoples of Egypt, you will be told that I have come to destroy your religion; do not believe it! Reply that I have come to restore your rights, to punish the usurpers, and that I respect more than the Mamluks God, His Prophet, and the Quran. Napoleons Proclamation to the Egyptians July 2, 1798

course stretches from the rise of Islam in the 7th century CE to the very recent past. The geographic range includes the historic Arab heartland of Islam, Africa, Persia, the Ottoman Empire, the Muslim lands conquered by the British Empire, Central Asia, and some of the Muslim-majority states that have been in conflict with the United States since the end of World War II. For much of the period from 1000 CE to 1750 CE, Muslim societies, along with East and South Asia, were far wealthier and culturally and scientifically more sophisticated than Europe and its peripheries. Consequently, to study Islamic history is to study global history and also a pre-modern form of globalization. Students enrolled in any autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Winter Quarter: Joel Beinin, Robert Crews, Sean Hanretta, Aron Rodrigue Spring Quarter: Joel Beinin, Robert Crews, Sean Hanretta, Aron Rodrigue, Priya Satia
SELECTED TEXTS

Quran, Averroes, On the Harmony of Religion and Philosophy, The Travels of Ibn Battuta, Nigerian Shara law cases, Edward Said, Covering Islam

History
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Winter-Spring Sequence
Philosophy The Fate of Reason
For more information about Philosophy at Stanford, consult the departments website at: http://www-philosophy. stanford.edu/ 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

very day, every one of us faces problems about what to believe and how to act. Socrates began

the tradition of philosophy by insisting that our answers to these problems ought to be guided by reasonthat if we could only believe and act more rationally, our lives would be better for us overall. This course explores the fate of Socrates proposal.

Tell me, Socrates, are you serious now or joking? For if you are serious and these things that youre saying are really true, wont this human life of ours be turned upside down, and wont everything we do be the opposite of what we should do? Plato, Gorgias

Some of our authors defend the power of reason to improve our lives. Others insist that purely rational principles demand too much of us, or else are insufficient to help us act well or reach important truths. We will trace the fate of reason in several cultural traditions, thereby exploring the fundamental basis for our commitments about how to live, and for our most important beliefs about God, ourselves, the world, and our place within it. Students enrolled in any autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Winter Quarter: Christopher Bobonich, Department of Philosophy Spring Quarter: Nadeem Hussain, Department of Philosophy
SELECTED AUTHORS

Plato, Sextus Empiricus, Maimonides, Al Ghazali, Ibn Tufayl, Descartes, Hume, Nietzsche

Philosophy
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Winter-Spring Sequence
Religious Studies Approaching Religion: Tradition, Transformation, and the Challenge of the Present
For more information about Religious Studies at Stanford, consult the departments website at: http://www.stanford.edu /dept/relstud 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

ne cannot open a newspaper in these first years of the new millennium without encountering the serious

challenges posed to the contemporary world by religion, or in the name of religion. Less visible, but no less important, are the challenges posed by the contemporary world to the worlds religious traditions and communities. Such challenges to religious traditions are not unique to the modern world. In fact, all major religious traditions have grappled with controversy and dissent since their founding moments. But the modern experience in religious transformation has been marked by the number of such challenges. Science, politics, feminism, a world grown much smallerthese and other factors have conspired against the religious status quo, forcing the worlds

When faith is replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassionits message becomes meaningless. Religion is an answer to mans ultimate questions. The moment we become oblivious to ultimate questions, religion becomes irrelevant, and its crisis sets in. Heschel, God in Search of Man

Winter Quarter: Charlotte Fonrobert and Michael Zimmermann, Department of Religious Studies Spring Quarter: Arnold Eisen, Department of Religious Studies
SELECTED TEXTS

religious leaders and adherents to wonder whether religion can keep pace. Can the worlds faiths be transformed rapidly enough to meet the many challenges they face right now? And can they make the changes required while remaining true to all they have stood for in the past? This course sequence will equip you to begin addressing these questions. Focusing on three religious traditionsJudaism, Buddhism, and Islamwe will investigate a founding moment in each tradition, followed by an instance of premodern transformationthus emphasizing that religions have faced the problem of change long before the advent of the modern world. Finally, we will investigate the various responses offered by the worlds religions to the challenges of the present, ranging from the rise of the nation-state and new notions of the self to tolerance and pluralism in the face of difference. Students enrolled in any autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Readings from Hebrew Bible, Buddhist sutras, the Quran, and other religious texts as well as works by leading contemporary theorists and religious thinkers

Religious Studies
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Winter-Spring Sequence
Slavic Languages and Literatures Poetic Justice: Order and Imagination in Russian Culture
Poetic Justice may be used towards the electives in the Russian Major or Minor. For more information about Slavic Languages and Literatures at Stanford, consult the Stanford Bulletin and the departments website at: http://slavic.stanford.edu 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

hat is the difference between justice and law? And what do literature and other arts have to do with this question?

The great Russian writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their counterparts in other arts, including cinema,

Long live the United State! Long live Citizen-Numbers! Long live the Benefactor! Zamyatin, We

wrestled with these issues as they imagined and then tested various religious and secular ideas about human nature, society, and history. As we study their works, we focus on what we call poetic justice, namely, the artistic representation of order, whether divine, natural, or human, that appears both beautiful and true. The aim of this course is to heighten awareness of poetic justice in familiar narratives, mythologies, ideas, and imagesand at the same time to convey a sense of Russias long-established culture, with its own dynamics and vision. Poetic Justice maintains an extensive website at: www.stanford.edu/class/ihum28a/. Students enrolled in any autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Winter Quarter: Gabriella Safran, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures Spring Quarter: Gregory Freidin, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures (www.stanford.edu/~gfreidin/)
SELECTED TEXTS

Genesis, the Gospel of Matthew, Russian folktales, works by Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Karl Marx, Evgeny Zamyatin, Isaac Babel, Andrey Platonov, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky, Tatyana Tolstaya
SELECTED FILMS

Sergey Eisensteins Battleship Potemkin and Alexander Nevsky, Vsevolod Pudovkins End of St. Petersburg, The Vasiliev bothers Chapaev, Nikita Mikhalkovs Burnt by the Sun

Slavic Languages and Literature

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Winter-Spring Sequence
Spanish and Portuguese American Genesis: Indigenous Texts and Their Resonance
For more information about Spanish and Portuguese at Stanford, consult the departments website at http://www. stanford.edu/dept/ span-port/ 2 50-minute lectures 3 hours of small-group discussion 5 units per quarter
FACULTY

he New Worlds original inhabitants told stories about how the world began, creating a body of texts

Here is the Account: Now it still ripples, now it still murmurs, ripples, it still sighs, still hums and it is empty under the sky. Here follow the first words, the first eloquence: There is not yet one person, one animal, bird, fish, crab, tree, rock, hollow canyon, meadow, forests. Only the sky alone is up there; the face of the earth is not clear Popul Vuh

remarkable in their scope and vitality. These Native American creation stories worked together in important ways, corroborating each other in terms of cultural experiences extending back far beyond contact with Europe. From the first moments of contact, too, native mythic texts radically affected European beliefs. Subsequently, this tradition prompted whole clusters of writers, painters, and other artists working in what have become the nation-states of the American continent. Today, this legacy lives on among those peoples who, despite the ever-near menace of harm and extermina-

Winter and Spring Quarters: Gordon Brotherston, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Lucia Sa, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
SELECTED WORKS

tion, have survived since Columbus, celebrating the fact in art and literature written in their own languages. In this course sequence we will become familiar with these ancient texts, the cultural traditions they communicate and preserve, and their legacies. We will compare these stories with other, perhaps more familiar, traditions from the European tradition, and we will consider them within broader literary and philosophical frames to discover their shared paradigms and the ethics that derive from them. Students enrolled in any autumn-quarter IHUM course may elect this course sequence during autumn quarter.

Spanish and Portuguese

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Woodengraving courtesy of Anna B. Hogan, artist

Popol Vuh (Maya); Legend of the Suns (Nahuatl); Watunna (Carib); Dine Bahane (Navajo); Guaman Pomas Chronicle; trickster narratives from North and South America; essays by Montaigne and Rousseau; and 20th-century works by Asturias, Andrade, Silko, Menchu, and Diego Rivera

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I have to fulfill the IHUM requirement in my freshman year? Yes. IHUM courses are designed as introductions and foundations for further university-level studies, so you are expected to fulfill this requirement in your first year at Stanford. It is to your benefit to have this experience as early as possible in your undergraduate career. Once I receive my IHUM course assignment during orientation, can I change it? Because each IHUM course has a specific allotment of spaces, it may be difficult to change your assignment. We do our best, however, to accommodate students who have a pressing need to change. Youll receive further information about requesting a change in your IHUM assignment during New Student Orientation. If I am assigned to an autumn-quarter IHUM course, how do I complete the three-quarter requirement? You complete the requirement by taking any of the two-quarter IHUM course sequences offered in the winter-spring. During autumn quarter, you will have an opportunity to rank your preferences among these winter-spring course sequences. How can I plan my other courses around IHUM? The University publishes a Time Schedule containing the meeting times of courses for the academic year. This information is available online in September, and will enable you to plan for the year. Your academic advisor will assist you in making your other course choices for autumn quarter and throughout the year. The Epic Journeys course in French and Italian looks really interesting, but its only offered in the winter-spring. Can I sign up to take it now? As long as you are not enrolled in the SLE sequence, which encompasses all three quarters, youll be eligible to take Epic Journeys, or any one of the other winter-spring IHUM sequences. For now, you should rank your top choices from among the various autumn IHUM courses described here; youll be able to state your preference for winter-spring sequences during autumn quarter. Which is the easiest IHUM course? How big are the lectures? the sections? Individual variations among courses are to be expected as the IHUM course topics and approaches are different. IHUM lecture enrollments range from 90 to 225, with most of the 21 IHUM courses enrolling about 150 students. Section size averages about 15 students, and workload equity across courses and sections is ensured by a variety of means. A Faculty Governance Board appointed by the Vice Provost oversees the courses for comparability in the length and quantity of required readings, and a Teaching Fellow Coordinating Committee monitors the writing assignments so that all students experience equitable academic demands.

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Will I be assigned to my first choice of IHUM course? We would like to give all students their first choices, but in order to keep the discussion sections small (15 students on average), we have to impose enrollment limits. This is why we ask you to rank all 11 of the IHUM courses on the Approaching Stanford online preference form. We will do our best to assign you to one of your top choices. Im a varsity athlete and have to attend practice every day. How can I fit an IHUM section meeting 90 minutes twice a week into my schedule? The discussion sections accompanying the IHUM courses are scheduled at a range of different times, including evening; the IHUM program staff can help you find one that fits your needs. Im in ROTC and I have to spend some time every week off campus. How can I fit an IHUM course into my schedule? IHUM lectures are offered either Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday. You should be able to enroll in one that accommodates your ROTC obligations. The discussion sections accompanying the IHUM courses are scheduled at a range of different times; the IHUM program staff can help you find one that fits your needs. SLE sounds like an interesting option, but SLE classes are scheduled in late afternoons and evenings. If I take SLE will I be able to fit other courses into my schedule? Yes. SLE meets in the afternoon from 3:15 Tuesdays through Thursdays; that schedule frees you to take courses all day on Monday and Friday and any time on Tuesdays through Thursdays before 3:15. However, you should be aware that approximately one-third of the 100-plus freshman seminars are scheduled at the same time as SLE classes, so if you are an SLE student your freshman seminar choices will be limited to the other two-thirds (still a large number). You should also be aware that if you plan to go out for a varsity sport that trains in the afternoon, you wont be able to take SLE. Where do I find the IHUM course preference form? And how do I return it? Rank your preferences for autumn IHUM courses by filling out Form 4, online, at http://approaching.stanford.edu. Make sure youve submitted this form, as well as the remainder of your reply forms, online, by the June deadline.

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ANY QUESTIONS? Approaching Stanford website: http://approaching. stanford.edu email: approaching@stanford.edu phone: (650) 724-2625

IHUM
IHUM program website: http://ihum.stanford.edu

200506 Course Catalogue