(Ellen Mease) 4 credits, prerequisite: none.
A multidisciplinary intellectual history course in the thought of the 19th century, principally England during the period of revolutionary changes in literature and the arts (Romantic poetry and music, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice or Bronte's Wuthering Heights, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Shaw's Man and Superman), in natural science (Darwin's Origin of Species), in the sciences of man (Freud's Civilization and its Discontents), in political theory (Marx), in philosophy (Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra). We will take advantage of the extraordinary concentration of London's cultural resources, to attend performances of theatre, opera and symphony; to study Romantic landscape painting, pastoral and sublime (J.M.W. Turner); to tour Darwin's country home at Down, Kew Royal Botanical Gardens and the Natural History Museum's Origin of Species gallery 105; and to visit museums and exhibitions devoted to the Industrial Revolution, discoveries in science, natural history and technology, and England's role as a colonial power. Potential field trips include: Greenwich Royal Observatory, Natural History Museum, Liverpool's Maritime Museum and Quarry Bank Mills, Lake District (Wordsworth), Peak District (Bronte), Bath and Chawton (Austen house).
