Experiences to extend and complement the Blount Scholars Program foundation courses. May be repeated once for credit.
Culture and nature are not merely the spaces we inhabit, they are the principal objects of human reflection and interpretation, or should be. This year-long course uses a survey of influential texts in philosophy, science, religion, political theory, and literature produced in the West over three millennia to provide students with an introductory practicum in the interpretation of culture and nature. Within this framework, more specific concepts to be explored will include the nature of society, the nature of the individual, the nature of government and justice as regulatory mechanisms between the two, the nature of power in its various forms, the concept of nature itself, and America as a social experiment in which these concepts are continually interpreted and reinterpreted.
Culture and nature are not merely the spaces we inhabit, they are the principal objects of human reflection and interpretation, or should be. This year-long course uses a survey of influential texts in philosophy, science, religion, political theory, and literature produced in the West over three millennia to provide students with an introductory practicum in the interpretation of culture and nature. Within this framework, more specific concepts to be explored will include the nature of society, the nature of the individual, the nature of government and justice as regulatory mechanisms between the two, the nature of power in its various forms, the concept of nature itself, and America as a social experiment in which these concepts are continually interpreted and reinterpreted.
A text-centered examination of a more specific problem connected with core concepts of the first-year Foundations sequence and viewed through the methodological lens of one of the disciplines in the liberal arts. May be taken 3 times for credit.
The student will work 10 hours per week with an approved mentor/organization and complete several academic projects based on their work.
Through the trope of sight-as-knowledge, the term worldview identifies any system of ideas, beliefs, and practices used by a particular group of people at a particular time in order to inhabit and understand the space they occupy and their lives within it. The concept of a worldview is intrinsically connected to the issues that structure the Blount first-year Foundations sequence, to wit, the nature of society, the nature of the individual, the nature of the regulatory mechanisms between the two, the nature of power in its various forms, and the concept of nature itself. The Capstone Worldviews course asks senior Blount students to explore some aspect of the concept of a worldview by undertaking a series of theoretical readings and developing a critical or creative project over the course of the semester.