Fall '98 Humanities Course Looks Like A Toe-Curler

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Mmmm-mm -- "extreme emotions!" Dario Fo? What about a guy who's spent his life writing music the public doesn't understand? Where did the Romans bury their cows? Why doesn't "Sioux" usually = "you?"

Find out when the Good Ship Humanities One sails in September. Get on board and pick up a couple of zeitgeists! Seats are still available.

Humanities One is a course developed last year at the University at Buffalo by SUNY Distinguished Professor Bruce Jackson, Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture. It was a popular hit the first time around and is scheduled again for the fall semester.

"It's important to emphasize to our students the importance of the humanities in our lives," said Jackson. "This is a field involving the study of many and varied sets of ideas used by human beings to understand the world we live in.

"This year we've broadened the course topics to embrace more and varied discussions of how the humanities inform all other fields of study," he said. "The faculty is again composed of a dozen of UB's finest teachers, along with one visiting professor, Henri Korn, the research director of Paris' Pasteur Institute. This year, we've added more women faculty members and expanded the discussion to include Latin-American and Native-American perspectives."

Top UB humanities scholars from several schools and faculties will offer focused topical explorations by employing different forms of literature, visual and performing arts, film, philosophy, classics, architecture, music and social sciences.

Some will focus on a text or idea, Jackson said. Others will offer broad visions of their fields. Jackson promises that whatever their major field of study, students will come away with a deep understanding of the rich connections among many areas of inquiry. "They will realize, some for the first time, the many human contexts in which the humanities and sciences -- and we ourselves -- operate," Jackson said.

Humanities One (English 299, Registration #206939) will be held from 3:30-5:10 p.m. Tuesdays and 3:30-4:30 p.m. Thursdays in the Screening Room in the Center for the Arts (Rm. 112) on the UB North (Amherst) Campus. The 1998 faculty and works or topics to be discussed are:

o John Peradotto, Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Classics and Andrew V.V. Raymond Professor of Classics, "Classics: The Study of Greek and Roman Culture"

o Bruce Jackson, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of English and Samuel P. Capen Professor of American Culture, "The First Western Was an Eastern"

o Carolyn Korsmeyer, professor of philosophy, "Enjoying Extreme Emotions: Fear and the Experience of Sublimity"