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Humanities Program

GES246: Sophomore Spring Semester

Western Humanity in Christian Perspective IV

Western Culture from World War I to the Postmodern Era

 
This is the last of a four-course sequence centered on great writings and works of art, music, theatre, and literature from the Greeks through the present. 
 

Sample Texts:

 
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents.
Elie Wiesel, Night.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby.
T. S. Eliot, Waste Land and other Poems.
Thomas Kuhn, Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Flannery O'Connor, Complete Stories.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship.
François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper."
John Paul II, Centesimus Annus.
The Barmen Declaration.
Martin Luther King, Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans (exerpt).
 

Sample Lectures that support the reading:

 
Barth, World War I, and the Resurgence of Eschatology
Freud, Scientific Materialism, and the Crisis of Western Civilization
Modernism in Literature: Fitzgerald
Expressionism, Dada, and the Surreal
Science and Epistemology
Forerunners to World War II: Economic Depression, Fascisim and Totalitarianism
World War II, the Emergence of U. S. Power, and the Creation of Israel
Post-War and Postmodern Art
Bonhoeffer and the Resurgence of Trinitarian Theology
Expressionism and Modernism in Music
Postmodern Epistemology
Postwar U. S.: Civil Rights Movements, the Welfare State
The Cold War and Collapse of Global Communism
Global Christianity: Pentecostalism and "The Next Christendom"