Leading scholars to teach new 'Humanities One'

It does to Bruce Jackson. As a SUNY Distinguished Professor in the Department of English who recently was named Samuel P. Capen Chair in American Culture, humanities are his game and he plays it with passion and determination.

Jackson and other members of the UB faculty have expressed concern that undergraduates have difficulty squeezing courses in literature, philosophy, art history or classics into their schedules. Thermo-fluids research and the study of cell biology, they would add, are enhanced by an understanding of the social environment in which they are produced and which they, in turn, inform in many unexpected ways.

To help busy students to place their studies in a cultural context, Jackson has spearheaded the development of a new 200-level course "Humanities One," which will be offered for the first time in the fall. It will feature lectures and discussions on issues in the humanities by some of the university's-and the nation's-leading scholars. Many of them have until now been relative strangers working within a stone's throw of one another along Putnam Way, sometimes in the same building.

The class, English 299, will be held in the Screening Room (112) of the Center for the Arts on Tuesdays from 3:30-6:10 p.m.

Humanities are widely cited as disciplines that help to order the intellect and teach students how to learn and to think for themselves. While "Humanities One" will not provide students with depth of knowledge in any one of the areas covered, it is designed to offer breadth and an opportunity for students to survey the field.

They will have a chance to hear experts discuss the astonishing cosmology articulated by William Blake, Samuel Beckett's black existential humor and just how and to what end popular media produces Shakespearean drama-and how about the new TV mini-series starring Armand Assante as Odysseus?

Students will discuss "new music" and its intriguing explorations of sound, the architectural imagination, personal narrative, the idea of justice and "Huckleberry Finn" with the cultural critic whose observations about Huck, Jim and the American cultural landscape have delighted and horrified not only the literati, but the general public for more than 30 years.

"The study of the humanities is as relevant today as it has ever been," according to Jackson, "because this field informs the practice of every field of human endeavor, including all of the natural and applied sciences and technologies."

The humanities field is generally considered to include the study of classics, art history and literature, but essentially it is defined as the study of the things humans do rather than instruction in how to do them; the study of how and why art is conceived and created, rather than the actual making of art; the meaning of technology and culture, as opposed to the production of technologies and cultural artifacts.

"It embraces English literature," says Jackson, "but not engineering and Buicks; the "meaning" of the atom bomb, but not how to make one; the "meaning" of cars, trucks and roads or the information superhighway, but not how to design a freeway interchange or a Web site; the "meaning" of art in human life, but not how to paint. These issues are the business of the humanities."

The notion of humanities as an important pursuit originated with the 5th century B.C.E. Sophists whose paideia, or course of study, engaged young Athenian students in analytical and critical methods of inquiry. The goal was to prepare them for an active and educated participation as citizens of a democracy.

That's because the strength and success of the Athenian polis was understood to be linked directly to active, educated and shared democratic practice, which, in turn, was described in terms of the citizens' appreciation of human values and of the unique ability of the human spirit to express itself.

It is a position widely supported by scholars over the past two-and-a-half millennia, from Plato to Augustine to long-time UB Chancellor Samuel P. Capen.

And what of claims that the humanities are "irrelevant" in a high-tech world demanding concrete skills, or "hardly rigorous" in the manner of physics, biochemistry or electrical engineering? Non-humanities faculty have been known to arch an eyebrow at students clogging up their academic pipeline with courses in film studies and art history. Some have made it clear that they don't even want their disciplines to be considered in the same breath as the humanities.

The suggestion that the humanities constitute a pseudo-discipline, a "lesser" field than, say, biosurfaces engineering, epidemiology or pharmacology, makes Jackson flame.

"Computer sciences, neuroscience, botany, education, art, architecture, law, medicine-every single field of study is illuminated by a study of humanities," he says. "To put humanities down as 'unnecessary' or 'not rigorous' is ignorant and seriously misrepresents the significance of these studies to our understanding of the world.

"The well-educated man or woman has a healthy appreciation for the many different ways of 'knowing' and of looking at and assessing the specific knowledge developed in other fields. The new course offers an excellent introduction to these different modes of thought, in no small part because highly qualified people will be discussing things they love."

As part of "Humanities One," Bruce Jackson will lecture on the topic "Truth Claims: Documentary, Personal Narrative and the Daily Paper." Other scholars of the soul who will lecture as part of the course and their topics are:

David Felder, an internationally regarded composer and Birge-Cary Chair in the Department of Music, "A Composer of UNpopular Music"

Historian Lawrence W. Levine, professor at George Mason University, "The Search for American Identity"

Robert Daly, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of English, "The 'Applicable Technology' of Literary Learning: Hawthorne's 'My Kinsman, Major Molineux'"

Renowned Homeric scholar John Peradotto, SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor and Andrew V.V. Raymond Chair in the Classics Department, "It's Greek to Me: An Introduction to Classical Studies"

Richard Fly, associate professor of English, "Shakespeare in Medialand: The Example of Othello and Richard III"

Beckett scholar and novelist Raymond Federman, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Melodia Jones Chair in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, "All About Samuel Beckett"

Sheila Lloyd, assistant professor of English, "Nationalism, Gender and Sexuality"

Architect Bruno Freschi, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, "What is Architecture: The Making of an Earthly Paradise"

Diane Christian, professor of English, "Words and Images: Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

Saul Elkin, SUNY Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance, "Bertholt Brecht and the Theater of Politics"

New York State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Howe, an adjunct associate professor of sociology, "The Idea of Justice"

Leslie Fiedler, SUNY Distinguished Professor and Samuel Langhorne Clemens Professor of American Literature in the Department of English, "Huckleberry Finn"