Arts One
| Arts One | |
|---|---|
| 200px|center | |
| ARTS 001A or 001B | |
| Section: | |
| Instructor: | Christina Hendricks |
| Brandon Konoval | |
| John Beatty | |
| Gavin Paul | |
| Michael Zeitlin | |
| Email: | arts.one@ubc.ca |
| Office: | IKBLC 378 |
| Office Hours: | Varies per professor. |
| Class Schedule: | Lecture, Mon 10:00-12:00.
Seminars and Tutorials vary. |
| Classroom: | Varies per term. |
| Important Course Pages | |
| Syllabus | |
| Lecture Notes | |
| Assignments | |
| Course Discussion | |
Note: this page has been created by students; it is not an official Arts One course page.
Note Two: The above instructors were for "Dangerous Questions, Forbidden Knowledge" from 2010-2012. There are different instructors for each group, and they change every two years. There is a new set of instructors for 2012-2014, "Explorations and Encounters."
Arts One is one of three introductory paths to UBC. Each first year is required to take either a CAP programme, Arts One, or choose their own time table.
Central to this course is literature. It is a mix of English, history, and philosophy from Genesis to Cormac McCarthy's The Road*. You are allowed to take courses on the side with Arts One, but expect it to really take up much of your time. It is one book a week and a paper every other week, with a couple books spanning two weeks (Plato's Republic, Nietzsche's One the Geneology of Morality, and Foucault's History of Sexuality Vol. I†). The course is set up with one, 100-person lecture on Monday, a seminar with 20 of those 100 each Wednesday and Friday (or Tuesday/Thursday), and one tutorial with two to three others during the week to discuss the papers that week. There will be a time in the middle of the course where you will start questioning why you chose it, but you come out with the ability to quote Plato, Foucault, Freud, and Rousseau* in any everyday setting (take that however you like). Below, there is a quick, 'lite' guide to each of the readings, bearing in mind that, really, you should try to read them all for the sake of not being that one student who has no idea what they are talking about in seminar.
†Texts are different in Group A/Group B. These are Group A.
History
It was founded in 1967.
Syllabus: Group A - Dangerous Questions, Forbidden Knowledge
Note: Group A will be using the theme Explorations and Encounters for 2012-2014. The books will be slightly different as well.
| First semester | |||
| Author | Title | "Lite" study guide | |
| God? | Book of Genesis | Eat an apple, go through remarkable pain once a month–for women only. For men, you get a slap on the wrist and an eternity with women who now have this monthly gut-punching. | |
| Kant | What is Enlightenment/Conjectural Beginning of Human History | Giving the finger to God and getting kicked out of Eden? Good thing. | |
| Irvine | Socrates on Trial | (Later) | |
| Plato | Euthyphro | So...what's piety? Is something pious because the gods love it? Or do the gods love it BECAUSE it is pious? 25 pages later and we still don't know. Euthyphro is in a hurry to get somewhere else. *COUGH* Socrates 1: Euthyphro: 0 | |
| Sophocles | Oedipus | Parents worried that their son would sleep with his mother and kill his father, so, of course, they made sure of it happening. They find out, it gets bloody. Kids are probably scarred for life. | |
| Seneca | Oedipus Tyrannus | See Sophocles, except make it into a soap opera and add more vaginal stabbings. | |
| Plato | Republic | This will be the hardest book you read, until you read Nietzsche and wish you had Plato back. Philosophers are the best, everyone else are just sheep. We have metals in blood, meaning if you do not have a good metal, you are screwed. Also, man escapes from cave in Allegory of the Cave; men are given the chance to choose good/evil, they choose the opposite everytime they die, philosophers are the only ones who know what's up, of course. | |
| Machiavelli | The Prince | Lie, cheat, steal, and know your history to be a good prince. Don't be an idiot. | |
| Marlowe | Doctor Faustus | It may seem like a good idea to get everything you wanted for, you know, nothing big, but just your soul... it's not. Generally, trades with the devil, not a wise idea. | |
| Brecht | Life of Galileo | The Church is always right, even when it's wrong. Galileo was essentially given a horse head under his covers to shut up. | |
| Shakespeare | Hamlet | Doesn't do anything, ever... and when he does, he fucks shit up. All because he is an emo child. | |
| Rousseau | Discours on the Inequlity of Man | We were better off as post-Eden apes. | |
| Shelley | Frankenstein | Man builds monster, realises he built monster, chaos. | |
| Second semester | |||
| Author | Title | "Lite" study guide | |
| Lippman | The Scopes Trial | The American South was a scary place. | |
| Nietzsche | On the Geneology of Morality | This will be the hardest book you read until Foucault and wish you had Nietzsche back. Also, don't remember. Will to power or something. Will return. | |
| Wells | The Island of Dr. Moreau | Cutting open animals while still alive, good thing? | |
| Chopin | The Awakening | Spoiler: She kills herself. | |
| Freud | Dora, Sexualty, etc. | Subconsciously, all you want to do is sleep around with your father (or mother). | |
| Foucault | History of Sexuality Vol. I | This will be the hardest book you read and will wish for both Plato and Nietzsche... | |
| Plath | Bell Jar | Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical novel will make you cry tears that trickle into your patent leather shoes...unless you don't sympathize with her feminist struggles. | |
| Else | The Case of Rober J Oppenheimer | Man builds bomb, realises he built bomb, chaos. | |
| DeLillo | End Zone | A stoned football player questions football. | |
| Walter | The Zero | Uh, did not get this far in my readings... | |
| McCarthy | The Road | All hope is lost... Also, humans will scare the shit out of you after this one. | |
Syllabus: Group B - Monsters in Ink
Note: Group B is now called Monster in the Mirror