ʻATENISI INSTITUTE

HUMANITIES

E.L. 205 – Writing Laboratory

Hands-on supervision of written expression in the English language, focusing on clarity, concision, coherence, organization, vocabulary, grammar, and – as the student advances – elegance and captivation.

HST 210 – Global History

Global history not only traces the development of ancient Mediterranean empires but ancient Middle Eastern, North African, sub-Saharan African, Indian, Chinese, and native American civilisation as well. Within the ancient world, the Sumerian and Semitic-speaking civilisations of the Tigris/Euphrates Rivers, the Nile River, and the Levant are contrasted with the Indo-European speaking civilisations of Persia, Greece, and Rome, with the tension between tyranny, oligarchy and populism examined in the latter two. Medieval Islamic and Indian cultures are credited with preserving classical interest in philosophy and mathematics, enabling the European Renaissance. The hegemony of Anglophone capital and liberalism in the late second millennium is detailed whilst the various challenges to liberalism – intermittently by Spain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, and Islamism – are also considered.

PHIL 100 – Introduction to Philosophy

A survey of key philosophers beginning from the Milesian Substantialists of ancient Greece (e.g., Thales, Anaximander) to the European existentialists of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Milesians are examined as the bridge from mythology to naturalism; Herakleitos as the pioneer of a dynamic paradigm of interactive instability; Socrates as the trailblazer of investigative inquiry; Plato and Aristotle as the opposing forerunners of idealist and empirical philosophy. The course next credits Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume with inaugurating rigourous analysis in the 17th and 18th centuries whilst the counterpoint of German idealism (e.g., Kant, Hegel) is studied as a critique of rationalism and empiricism. Finally, 19th and 20th century existentialism (e.g., Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Camus) is variously considered as an individualist riposte to institutional theology, empiricism, idealism, and social democracy.

SOCIAL SCIENCE

ANTHRO 105 – History of Anthropological Theory

A survey of early anthropological thought, including Franz Boas’ synthesis of archaeology, biology, linguistics, and culture; Bronislaw Malinowski’s participatory observation and functionalist theory; A.R. Radcliffe-Brown’s notion of co-adaptive social behaviour; Claude Levi-Strauss’ structuralist theory; and Ruth Fulton Benedict’s cultural relativism. The course concludes with a critical analysis of Marxian anthropology.