Global Works and Society: Antiquity (GWA-UF)

The first semester of Social Foundations introduces students to the ancient world and ends with the dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, of the Gupta Empire in India, and of the Han Dynasty in China. This course takes a global perspective and uses an interdisciplinary approach, and part of its aim is to explore enduring questions such as the relation between the individual and society, between justice and power, and between humanity and the divine.

This course focuses on the world’s great traditions in philosophy, theology, history, and political science from the most ancient civilizations up to the Middle Ages. It familiarizes students with the earliest foundations of the world’s major discourses about the nature of human identity and society through a comparative study of seminal texts. The course includes such works as The Analects, Bhagavad Gita, and the Republic of Plato.