Humanities Curriculum Institute Project

FAIN: EO-10155-70

Scripps College (Claremont, CA 91711-3948)
Ralph Ross (Project Director: June 1970 to present)

Summer institute to develop a revised interdisciplinary humanities core curriculum. ABSTRACT: Four-week summer institute, July, 1970, to develop revised interdisciplinary humanities core curriculum. Twenty-four faculty members (practicing artists, art historians, literary critics, philosophers, theologians, musicologists, historian) from Scripps and the Claremont Graduate School to develop a four year program. All-college lectures substituted for regular lecture sections. Core curriculum to consist of seminars: 1) 8 courses organized around themes and problems confronting mankind since Classical period, through Medieval and Renaissance times, to present; 2) 4 courses in comparative methods of various disciplines, logic, ethics, mathematics, critical study; designed to enable students to become familiar with different approaches to experience, to study same thing from different perspectives (e.g., to study work of fictions as literature, as history, as philosophy, even as science). Institute allows each participant to broaden understanding of other fields and to contribute own expert knowledge to development of themes and problems outlined courses. Faculty members to handle of a team but also working independently, so must gain experience outside own field. Performance or creative activity in painting, ceramics, sculpture, dance, drama or music give participants deeper grasp of validity of nonverbal experience and understanding of role that creative arts play in development of whole person. Funds for administrative and faculty salaries.