Intercultural Studies

Greek Mythology Many of us learned all about Greek mythology in grade school, perhaps even still have our copy of the gorgeously illustrated D’Aulaire’s Book of Greek Myths. The beauty, simplicity, and excitement of the myths held us in rapt attention. The simplicity of the myths, at least, was deceptive. No one knows their origins, no one knows what they really mean— there are only theories, one of the most popular and least likely of which is that gods were personified causes. We’ll read a variety of theorists on the following topics: ways to distinguish myth from legend from folktale; the Creation; mythic time vs. historical time; the relation of myth to ritual; the various relations between myth and language; the Goddess hypothesis; archetypes; myth and the history of consciousness. We’ll take the myths themselves from poetic and mythographic sources, including passages from Homer, the Homeric Hymns, Hesiod, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Apollodorus, Pausanias, Ovid, Hyginus, and the modern poetic mythographer Robert Graves.

Cultural Perspectives: Latin America This area-study course deals with the Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking areas of Latin America from social, political, economic, and cultural perspectives. While the course emphasizes contemporary issues, it also investigates the colonial period and its implications for today. Topics include developmental dependence, foreign intervention, the third-world phenomenon of Latin America, and the role of the United States in the area. Prerequisite: sophomore standing.

Cultural Perspectives: Liberation Theology and Latin America A religious movement which has had a powerful impact on the social and political consciousness of people across Latin America, Liberation Theology spread rapidly throughout the continent in the 1960s as a compelling response to the crisis of the times and the failures of ill–conceived economic policies aggravated by violence and political instability. Indeed, Liberation Theology has played a decisive role in shaping the future of a number of Latin American countries; it has had an impact on populist social movements by promoting an awareness of issues deeply rooted in troubled societies desperate for solutions and change. This course will explore the tenets of Liberation Theology in the context of the historical, political, and sociological impact of churches in Latin America. The course will also explore connections between Liberation Theology and the Latin American feminist movement.

Cultural Perspectives: The Arab World This course examines a variety of texts pertinent to the cultural history of the Arabs. Since the advent of Islam in the 7th century, Arab culture has been markedly affected by the last of the three great monotheistic religions that emerged from the same region. Islam permeates Arab culture; thus, the focal point of the course is the Qur’an and the body of Islamic law known as the Shari’ah. Readings, discussions, and writing assignments focus on such topics as pre- Islamic Arabia, early Islam and the Five Pillars, oral traditions and the development of written religious texts, Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, Islam in Africa and Europe, bedouin versus urban culture, oral poetic and written literary forms, the Sufi traditions, stereotypes and the ideologies of “orientalism,” and the pros and cons of westernization.

The Mythic Imagination If there is “not one single shred of evidence” to support the widely accepted theory that myths betray a human need to explain phenomena — and very badly, at that (e.g. there must be a very powerful man hurling those thunderbolts) — then the question remains, from what kind of mentality do myths spring? In this course, we will examine four iconoclastic models for understanding mythology. In The White Goddess Robert Graves articulates a woman-centered cultural paradigm which suffered a violent overthrow by men and their gods. Carl Jung broke from Freud with an alternate and equally influential theory of the unconscious involving “archetypes” in a “collective unconscious,” wherein, he said, could be found all the patterns of myth. Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Dechend’s fugal essay, “Hamlet’s Mill” follows the single, very ancient myth of Hamlet all over the world, and finds encoded in this myth the origins of human science. And in “Saving the Appearances” (quoted above), English philosopher Owen Barfield proposes some radical conclusions based on an examination of early language and the evolution of human consciousness. In following these authors’ meditations on the origins of language, poetry, ritual, gods & goddesses, heroes, soul, time, and reality, and applying their theories to a cross-section of myths, we’ll directly confront the radical otherness of myth-making.