IDS 400: Artes Liberales

This seminar examines the historical, literary, philosophical, theological and scientific perspectives that animate liberal education from its inception in classical Greece to its modern American manifestations. As such the course integrates a variety of disciplines while exploring selected texts, practices and institutions associated with liberal education. The readings are extensive, and lectures and discussions take up historically important primary works as well as scholarly studies of the subject. The purpose of the course is to develop an integrative understanding of liberal education, its seminal texts and modes of thinking (both about specific disciplines and itself), and to explore the possibilities for perpetuating the liberal arts in contemporary education.