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Humanities Annotated Bibliography Assignment (Grant): Step 1: Identify a Topic

Identify a Topic

Identify a topic appropriate to the course.

Anything we study in Humanities during the time period covered in this course is fair game. (For example, Intro to Humanities courses can do any humanities topic while Greek and Roman course would need to limit themselves to topics from those time periods.) Some sample topics are listed below. These are intended as examples, but are not exhaustive. Anything we have studied in this class, or that fits in the time period is fair game

Sample Topics -- Greek and Roman or Intro

Greek and Roman

  • Greek Philosophy
    • Pre-Socratics, Sophists, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, etc.
  • Roman Rhetoric
    • Cicero, Cato
  • Political Configurations in the ancient world
    • The Greek Polis, Athenian Democracy, Roman Republic, Roman Empire
  • Literature
    • Greek Theatre (Tragedy, Comedy, Satyr Plays)
    • Epic Poetry
      • Hesiod, Homer, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Virgil, The Aeneid
    • Poetry
      • Sappho, Ovid
    • Religious Literature
      • Bible
  • Art
    • Sculpture, Pottery, Architecture
  • Important Figures
    • Solon, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Octavian/ Caesar Augustus, Hannibal of Carthage, Jesus, Paul, the apostle, Constantine
  • Religion
    • Greek Religion, Roman Religion, Rise of Christianity

Sample Topics -- Medieval and Renaissance and Reformation or Intro

  • Important Historical Figures and Thinkers: Charlemagne, Martin Luther, Thomas Aquinas, Copernicus, Galileo, Erasmus Darwin, The Medici Family etc.

  • Writers or Works: Shakespeare, Cervantes, Beowulf, Song of Roland, Augustine’s Confessions, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarch, Chaucer

  • Science and Technology: The Printing Press, Microscope, Telescope, Beer

  • Political Figures: Leo X, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Charlemagne, Popes like Leo X

  • Specific Artists or Movements like: Michelangelo, Caravaggio, Raphael, Botticelli, Leonardo Da Vinci, Romanesque, Gothic Art, Iconographic Art of the Medieval Period, Renaissance

  • Misc: Gothic Cathedral, Scholasticism, Monasticism, Medieval Mysticism, Crusades, The Black Death/Plague

Sample Topics -- Enlightenment and Romanticism and Intro

  • Important Historical Figures and Thinkers: Descartes, Kant, Hume, Voltaire, Freud, Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Isaac Newton

  • Writers: Mary Shelley, William Wordsworth Jane Austen, Jonathan Swift, Edgar Allen Poe, Walt Whitman, etc.

  • Science and Technology: Galvanism, Steam Engine, Trains, Calculus, Astrology, Royal Society, etc.

  • Political Figures: Louis XIV, William Wilberforce, Thomas Cromwell, George III, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Napoleon

  • Artistic Movements or Artists like: Baroque, Impressionism, Abstract, Art Nouveau

  • Artistic Mediums: Sculpture, Architecture, Musical Theatre, Ballet, Painting, Epic Poetry, etc.