Cost and Registration Information
Early Registration Price (by May 19): $200
Regular Price (after May 19): $220
Seminar Description
This seminar explores how Europe's "age of exploration" spurred new European conceptions of the human condition itself. Through Thomas More's Utopia, Michel de Montaigne's "On Cannibals," William Shakespeare's The Tempest, and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, along with the Newberry’s extensive collection on early modern exploration, we will grapple with the deep ambivalence all these works reveal about European perceptions of what they called "savage" and "civilized" aspects of humanity simultaneously apparent in both colonial and colonized. Six sessions.
Stuart Patterson has taught all the works in this course as Associate Professor of Liberal Arts at Shimer College in Chicago.
Materials List
Required:
- Thomas More. Utopia. Norton Critical Edition Series. ISBN: 978-0393932461
- William Shakespeare. The Tempest. Norton Critical Edition Series. ISBN: 978-0393978193
- Johnathon Swift. Gulliver's Travels. Norton Critical Edition Series. ISBN: 978-0393930658
- The instructor would like to note that while these editions may be a bit more expensive than many editions, they contain supplementary materials that we will occasionally draw on in the seminar, and participants should otherwise find of interest as we seek to contextualize our main texts.
First Readings:
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Please read Part 1 of Thomas More's Utopia for the first class.
This class is part of the Newberry’s Adult Education Seminars Program. Learn more about our registration procedures.