Great Texts (GTX)

GTX 1301  Introduction to Great Texts  (3)  

Interdisciplinary examination of texts from multiple genres and historical periods, ranging from ancient to modern times. Fulfills the research writing distribution requirement by guiding students through the critical thinking process, mentoring them in the practice of building arguments, and introducing them to the process of academic writing.

GTX 2301  Intellectual Traditions of the Ancient World : Literature and Thought  (3)  

Interdisciplinary close reading and discussion of ancient literary texts that establish historic contexts for deliberation regarding society, ethics, knowledge, and imaginative enjoyment.

GTX 2302  Medieval Intellectual Traditions: Literature and Thought in Context  (3)  

Interdisciplinary close reading and discussion of major literary texts in relation to social, philosophical, and theological contexts of historic development in Western cultures from the medieval to the early modern period.

GTX 3320  Middle Ages  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An undergraduate seminar in the Great Texts of the Middle Ages. Students will read selections from Anselm, Bonaventure, Roger Bacon, Thomas Aquinas, Dante, Moses Maimonides, Julian of Norwich, Chaucer, and others.

GTX 3321  Early Modern Age  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An undergraduate seminar in the Great Texts of the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the early modern age. Students will read selections from Machiavelli, Erasmus, the Protestant reformers and Catholic counter reformation, Montaigne, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Bacon, Donne, Milton, Hobbes, Locke, Vico, and others.

GTX 3330  Great Texts by Women  (3)  

An undergraduate course in seminal texts written or narrated by women of various epochs. Readings may include Sappho, Ban Zhao, Scheherezade, Christine de Pizan, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Kate Chopin, Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, Toni Morrison, and others.

GTX 3331  Great Texts in Christian Spirituality  (3)  

An undergraduate seminar in the great texts of Christian spirituality and devotional literature. Readings may include texts by Origen, Augustine, Athanasius, Maximus Confessor, Richard of St. Victor, Catherine of Siena, Julian of Norwich, Thomas á Kempis, Luther, Traherne, Law, Bunyan, John and Charles Wesley, Kierkegaard, Sayers, Day, Lewis, Chesterton, and others.

GTX 3332  Black Intellectual Traditions  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

Seminar featuring Americans such as Sojourner Truth, DuBois, Ellison, Hansberry, Baldwin and Morrison, plus non-Americans such as Walcott and Mandela. Discussion of how these authors address questions about basic human goods, frequently under conditions of enslavement, oppression, poverty and the abuse of authority. Reflection on new forms of artistic beauty and literary excellence emerging from these conditions.

GTX 3340  Master Works in Art  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

Survey and analysis of master works of art, including painting, sculpture, architecture, and photography, in their relationship to the six eras of the Great Texts Seminar Sequence.

GTX 3341  Master Works in Drama  (3)  
Cross-listed as THEA 3341  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

Survey and analysis of a selection of the most important dramatic works of the Western intellectual tradition.

GTX 3343  Great Texts in the Origins of Science  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An historical overview of the significant developments in the science of the ancient and medieval periods. Students will read selections from Euclid, Archimedes, Pythagorus, Copernicus, Galileo, and others.

GTX 3350  Great Texts in Leadership  (3)  

An undergraduate seminar devoted to an examination of leaders and the virtues of leadership as found in the Great Texts. Students will read selections from the Bible, Aristotle, Cicero, Plutarch, St. Thomas Aquinas, Pascal, Machiavelli, Dickens, Hardy, Bernanos, Conrad, O'Connor, and others.

GTX 3351  Great Texts in Business  (3)  

An undergraduate seminar devoted to an examination of business, management, and entrepreneurship as presented through some of the great texts of the Western and Eastern traditions.

GTX 3360  Great Texts in the Principles of the Liberal Arts  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): GTX 2301 or 2302 Interdisciplinary study of major works on the conceptual relationships among the traditional arts of grammar, dialectic, and/or rhetoric  

Readings may extend from antiquity to the present, tracing connections among these disciplines in ways that are not usually contained within the customary modern treatment of a single liberal art.

GTX 3361  Great Texts in the Practice of the Liberal Arts  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): GTX 2301 or 2302 Detailed study of specific liberal arts within particular traditions of practice (involving some combination of grammar, dialectic, and/or rhetoric)  

Readings focus on a selection of major texts or direct instruction in a liberal arts tradition that may range from antiquity to the present, considering how these works address perennial questions of human formation that are debated among Great Texas.

GTX 4320  Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An undergraduate seminar in the Great Texts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Students will read selections from Wollstonecraft, Rousseau, Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, de Tocqueville, Goethe, Austen, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Kierkegaard, Melville, Whitman, Darwin, Stowe, Newman, Mary Shelley, Frederick Douglass, Twain, Nietzsche, and others.

GTX 4321  Twentieth Century  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An undergraduate seminar in the Great Texts of the twentieth century. Students will read selections from Yeats, William James, Weber, Freud, Barth, Woolf, Beckett, Faulkner, O'Connor, Lewis, Eliot, Wiesel, Frost, Camus, Solzhenitsyn, Hemingway, Arendt, King, and others.

GTX 4330  Dante and the Italian Renaissance  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An undergraduate seminar focusing on the work of Dante Alighieri, especially The Divine Comedy. Other writers and artists such as Petrarch, Boccaccio, Catherine of Siena, Bruni, Ariosto, and Machiavelli may be read. Students will read texts in translation but with frequent reference to the Italian.

GTX 4331  Augustine and Aquinas  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An undergraduate seminar in the central texts of two of the chief authors of the Western Christian tradition, Augustine and Aquinas. Attention may be paid to predecessors such as Plato, Aristotle, Virgil, or Cicero, as well as to the influence of Augustine and Aquinas upon other thinkers such as Dante, Petrarch, Machiavelli, Descartes, Nietzsche, Joyce, Eliot, and O'Connor. Attention may also be paid to the influence of Augustine upon Aquinas.

GTX 4332  Master Works in Theology  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An undergraduate seminar devoted to the study of seminal works in theology, in connection with one or more historical periods, ranging from antiquity to the present. Emphasis will be placed on theological interactions with the literature, philosophy, social science, and/or artistic expression in these eras.

GTX 4340  Master Works in Music  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

Survey and analysis of seminal landmarks of music in their relationship to the six eras of the Great Texts Seminar Sequence.

GTX 4341  Great Texts in Modern Science  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An historical overview of the history and development of the natural and social sciences from the Enlightenment to the present. Students will concentrate on the Great Texts of science from Bacon, Vico, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Einstein, Heisenberg, Kuhn, and others.

GTX 4343  Great Texts Capstone Course  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Senior standing and Great Text major  

An undergraduate senior seminar culminating in a research project which draws upon the works and texts of the Great Texts curriculum. Students will present and defend their senior projects before student colleagues and a faculty panel.

GTX 4351  Confession and Autobiography  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing  

An undergraduate seminar devoted to the genre of confession and autobiography, with a focus on texts that address questions about the kinds of communities, activities and virtues that cultivate true human flourishing. Students will read selections from Augustine, Teresa of Avila, Rousseau, Tolstoy, Henry Adams, John Henry Newman, Dorothy Day, Malcolm X, Will Campbell, Nelson Mandela, Wendell Berry and others.

GTX 4360  Internship in the Liberal Arts  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): GTX 3360 or 3361 Draw from the liberal arts tradition to practice the skills required to introduce others to the interdisciplinary study of Great Texts  

Combines readings with observation and practical experience to improve instruction through apprenticeship.

GTX 4371  Epic and Romance in the High Middle Ages  (3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Consent of instructor  

Explores epic and romance texts from France and England in their native vernaculars. Reading competence in Latin (classical or medieval), French (old or modern), or Middle English required.

GTX 4V99  Special Topics in Great Texts  (1-3)  
Pre-requisite(s): Upper-level standing or consent of instructor  

Research projects to be undertaken by students or by classes under the direct supervision of the professor. Course may be repeated twice with a different topic of study.