Nov 22, 2024
OHIO University Undergraduate Catalog 2024-25
HIST 4115 - Ancient East Asian Ideas and the Contemporary World
The ideas of ancient East Asian philosophers, thinkers, and mystics offer us surprising insights into life in the 21st century. In this interdisciplinary capstone course, we read and discuss the foundational texts of the East Asian tradition (including, but not limited to, the classic works of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism). We look at these writings as historical documents which need to be placed in the context of their times, as creative works to be analyzed as literature, and as living philosophical texts which contain ideas that resonate with our own lives.
Credit Hours: 3
OHIO BRICKS: Bridge: Ethics and Reasoning, Capstone: Capstone or Culminating Experience
General Education Code (students who entered prior to Fall 2021-22): 3
Repeat/Retake Information: May be retaken two times excluding withdrawals, but only last course taken counts.
Lecture/Lab Hours: 3.0 seminar
Grades: Eligible Grades: A-F,WP,WF,WN,FN,AU,I
Learning Outcomes:
- Students will be able to describe the major concerns of several schools of East Asian political and moral thought.
- Students will be able to use their previous experience in humanistic study to perform close readings of foundational texts from the East Asian tradition.
- Students will be able to contextualize traditional East Asian texts within the societies that produced them and will be able to explain how East Asian understandings of these texts has changed over time.
- Students will be able to apply ethical ideas from traditional East Asian political and moral thought to contemporary political and social problems as well as to their own personal experiences.
- Students will be able to explain the relevance of traditional East Asian political and moral thought for living in our increasingly multicultural and globalized society and will be able to connect that explanation to their own experiences.
- Students will be able to use evidence, context, and inspiration from classical texts in order to orally communicate their own observations of the contemporary world
- Students will be able to discuss, argue, and debate ethical concepts in a productive, engaged, and reasonable manner.
- Students will be able to apply and self-assess connections between East Asian political/moral thought and their own ethical self-awareness and decision-making.
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