Welcome

AT OHIO WESLEYAN, undergraduates can take advantage of the increasingly rare opportunity to study and major in the “great books” comparative literature. The Department of Humanities-Classics offers an array of courses with varied focus: for example, thematic courses (folk heroes, love, gender, rites of passage), genre courses (tragedy, comedy), and period courses. (Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Post-Modern) in the traditional “great books” and in other creative masterpieces (architecture, art, and music). The Hellenic, Roman, Hebraic, and Italian Renaissance traditions are fundamental to this study of Western civilization. The lasting achievements of Homer, Sappho, Cicero, the Bible, and later writers such as Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Kafka continue to provoke, stimulate, and challenge contemporary thought.

In the non-Western tradition, Humanities-Classics embraces the extraordinary wealth of ancient and recent texts from India, Africa, Latin America, and the Far East that have become essential for an educated citizenry in the world today. Courses are therefore structured to encourage students to compare the values and artistic strategies of different traditions, and to observe different formulations of enduring questions regarding freedom and constraint, love and sexuality, self-knowledge and duty. Works from India (Rushdie), from Africa (Achebe), from Latin America (Borges), from the Far East (Basho) extend the range of the “great books” of civilization. We offer comparative literature courses in which topics, perspectives, and problems in various ethnic and literary traditions widen the field of vision. Many of these courses question traditional “canons” and hierarchies constructed both long ago and in recent decades.

Humanities-Classics also offers instruction in Greek and Latin languages and literatures at all levels, from elementary to advanced. Within the first two years, the student reads the epics of Homer, the tragic lyrics of Euripides, the dialogues of Plato, the antic elegies of Ovid, etc. in the original languages. The study of Greek or Latin provides a basis for independent insights into ancient Mediterranean languages and societies, which are significant sources of current American concepts in social and political thought. Humanities-Classics courses in archaeology and cultural history extend the student’s reach into the ancient Mediterranean world. Related courses in antiquity are also offered by the departments of fine arts, history, philosophy, and religion.

Our majors and minors confront the past and the present, American and many other cultures. The past shapes the present through its fiction, non-fiction, art, and perceptions of humans and their societies. As an integral and fundamental part of the liberal arts curriculum at Ohio Wesleyan, the Humanities-Classics curriculum prepares our students for all areas of humanistic study in the university and beyond.

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