LH105 Origins of Human Thought and Culture 4 credits
This first-year seminar provides an initial university experience that enables students to begin the process of developing a Lasallian identity as an educated, competent and compassionate member of the global society. Students encounter several texts that have served to define our cultural legacy and have thus earned the designation “great work.” The Babylonian epic, Gilgamesh; Homer’s Iliad; selected books from the Hebrew scriptures and other texts both ancient and modern serve as points of departure for understanding the complex intellectual and spiritual traditions of the world. Artistic performances at Page Theater provide a window through which to reflect carefully on the nature and value of music and the arts in human culture. Through critical reading and discussion in a seminar setting, students develop the capacity to think actively and collaboratively. Frequent writing gives students the opportunity to practice various techniques for written analysis of texts and cultural experiences.
LH155 The Classical Tradition 4 credits
This course introduces first-year students to the great works of the classical tradition, beginning with Greek literature and philosophy, and continuing through representative texts of the late Roman Empire and early Christianity. Selected authors may include Homer, Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Plato, St. Augustine, and Virgil. The function of class discussions and frequent writing assignments is to provide the student with a critical understanding of the ancient works that have been central in the development of our Western intellectual tradition. A tutorial in Greek culture will accompany the seminar.
LH205 Justice and the Call to Servant Leadership 4 credits
One of the most enduring questions a liberal arts education must engage is, what does it mean to lead a just life? This leads to a further question: what is my responsibility to others within the human community? In this seminar, second-year students encounter texts that have provided a foundation for thinking about the problems of justice and moral responsibility. Such texts may include Plato’s Republic, as well as the writings of Aristotle, Dante, and Shakespeare. A service-learning experience is integrated into the course, in which the practical dimensions of justice and servant leadership are explored within the local community.
LH255 Great Ideas in Politics and the Sciences 4 credits
In this course, second-year students continue to explore questions of justice as they have shaped our political and scientific visions of the world. The lives and work of figures such as Francis Bacon, Machiavelli, Galileo, Descartes, Shakespeare, and Dostoevsky are approached from a variety of perspectives including the scientific, historical, literary, political and spiritual. Students continue to engage in service learning in order to explore the influence of political and scientific ideas on contemporary social issues.
LH305 Literature and the Arts 4 credits
Art: it is as natural to us as it is mysterious. It is as inspiring as it is commonplace. But what is art exactly? What do we make of it? What do we learn by creating art? By studying a diverse array of works of art—from poetry to the symphony, from painting to the novel—this course attempts to answer these and similar questions about the process and products we call art. Students learn to identify, explain, and appreciate an array of monumental artistic achievements, and why these works are considered substantial contributions to our cultural heritage. They also discuss how artistic expression affects or reflects our understanding of ourselves and the world in which we live. The course includes student creation of works of art in tutorial sessions.
LH355 Classics of The East and Pacific Rim 4 credits
This third-year seminar involves close reading and discussion of those texts honored by the Eastern traditions as an essential part of their own heritage, including the Bhagavad Gita, the Buddhist Scriptures, the Confucian Analects, the Tao Te Ching, the koans used by the Zen Buddhist tradition, and the Koran. A tutorial in Eastern art forms is designed to enrich the student’s appreciation of the role of language, self-cultivation and aesthetic expression within the intellectual and spiritual traditions of the East.
LH405 Lasallian Capstone 4 credits
This senior-year colloquium provides a capstone experience in which students explore the four spheres of adult life: citizenship, work, marriage and the family, and faith. Students are challenged to engage these themes through close reading and discussion of texts, reflection on their education in the Lasallian Honors Program, and service learning. The purpose of this course is to prepare students to live out the Lasallian charism in the contemporary world. Texts used in the course may include Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, essays by Dorothy Day, and short stories and essays by a variety of American authors. The course involves a service-learning component, in which students work with poor and homeless people at the Catholic Worker houses in Winona. One of the central questions of the course is whether Dorothy Day’s response to the needs of homeless people, which is gathered from the gospel imperative to bear witness to Christ by doing the works of mercy, provides a leadership model for the role that service can play in students’ own lives as citizens, workers, and people of faith.
LH455 The Modern World 4 credits
The word “modern” sometimes is used simply to describe anything new and advanced. In this course, the “Modern World” is recognized as the creation of revolutions of the mind that have their roots in seventeenth-century Western philosophy, but that took hold in many disparate fields in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This course explores the works and impacts of major thinkers of that world-transforming intellectual movement called Modernity. Students analyze some of modernity’s most influential works in philosophy, biology, physics, literature, psychology, and theology. Through reading, writing, and seminar discussion, the course challenges students to uncover what modernity means and how it shapes our lives. Such a discovery provides a critical understanding of contemporary culture and provokes consideration of how one can live a more thoughtful and responsible life as a scholar and servant in our postmodern world. |
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