Major and Minor - Requirements
The Great Ideas curriculum explores the ideas of some of the best minds of Western thought such as Homer, Plato, Vergil, Augustine, Aquinas, Machiavelli, Shakespeare, and Austen. Through careful reading of great literary, philosophical, scientific, and religious texts, students come to grips with the fundamental and immediately relevant questions they raise: What is love? What is justice? What is the best way of life? What is the physical world? What is knowledge and how do we come to know things? What is faith and what does faith demand? What is happiness? In class, students will grapple with the different and often opposing answers the texts contain in order to clarify, reflect upon, and further develop their own understandings. Students will begin to shape their own responses to these and other questions that necessarily occupy responsible and thoughtful human beings and citizens.
The Great Ideas curriculum introduces students to a broad range of texts while also permitting intense study of certain texts over an extended period of time. As they encounter some of the richest and most challenging texts ever written, students will become proficient at analyzing complex ideas and arguments, at comparing the texts to each other, and at writing and speaking about them clearly and effectively.
Major
The major consists of 40 credits. Five courses are required for all majors: GIFW 221, 222, 231, 241, 242. Two are seminars on the foundations of Western thought (it is suggested that students take these two courses as soon as possible); the remaining three narrow the focus somewhat by concentrating respectively on American, mathematical, and natural scientific thought. (It is suggested that students take the mathematics course before the natural science course.)
In addition, majors take four electives, all of which focus on primary texts of Western thought and at least two of which focus on the close reading of a small number of such texts.
Finally, students write a thesis in a capstone seminar (GIFW 400).
Minor
The minor consists of 20 credits. Two courses will be required for all minors: GIFW 221 and 222.
One of the following is also required: GIFW 241 or 242.
The remaining two courses can be selected from among any of the courses taken by Great Ideas majors (including 231 Foundations of American Thought and the other math or science course and excluding the capstone seminar).
Majors/minors choose electives from among the following courses (or other courses with similar emphases on major primary texts):
| CLAS 301 | Advanced Ancient Greek |
| CLAS 301 | Advanced Latin |
| CLAS 300 | The Golden Age of Athens |
| CLAS 310 | Age of Augustus |
| ENGL 311 | Shakespeare |
| ENGL 315 | Special Studies in a Major Author Prior to 1700 |
| ENGL 316 | Special Studies in a Major Author After 1700 |
| PHIL 200 | Studies in the History of Philosophy |
| PHIL 271 | African-American Social and Political Thought |
| POLS 205 | Philosophical Foundations of Political Economy |
| POLS 325 | Classics of Social and Political Thought |
| POLS 326 | Studies in Political Theory |
| RELI 306 | Luther and the Reformation |
