AP/HUMA 3465 6.00
Renaissance Humanities
The questions that Renaissance humanists cultivated are central to the humanities today: why study the Liberal Arts? How does the life of the mind relate to an active professional career? What defines humanity? What is the individual’s proper relation to the state? What is the role of sexuality, faith, and money in the pursuit of a meaningful life?
In the Renaissance, the humanities were public, interdisciplinary, and relevant. The humanists rediscovered a classical civilization that embraced a multitude of peoples and cultures from the three continents surrounding the Mediterranean. These scholars adapted the rich heritage of antiquity to the needs of their own times in their work as administrators, diplomats, politicians, teachers, merchants, publishers, and lawyers. They operated at the nexus of vibrant cultural and commercial forces, and their movement spread throughout Europe and across the globe. It drove the epochal changes that formed the modern world and shaped its animating ideas. This course explores the reinvention of the Liberal Arts in the Renaissance and its contemporary relevance by following an interdisciplinary approach that brings together history, literature, art history, and philosophy.