HST 310: History of Beauty

Spring 2002

Instructor: Crispin Sartwell; Office: B435; Phone: 2302; mindstorm@pipeline.com

Required texts:

Plato, The Symposium; Thompson, Flash of the Spirit; Yanagi, The Unknown Craftsman

Koren, Wabi-Sabi; Coomaraswamy, The Dance of Siva

It's not surprising that a concept like "beauty" has a history. Different cultures at different eras have taken pleasure in different things, longed for different sorts of things, loved different sorts of things. A variety of factors influence such differences, including technologies, social and governmental systems, sexual practices, and spiritualities. This course is a whirlwind tour of beautiful stuff and ideas about beauty, placed into historical contexts.

Required work for the course consists of weekly 1-2 page essays on topics assigned in class, as well as mid-term and final papers of 5-7 pages. I will suggest and discuss topics for the longer paper, but you may also pick a topic suggested by the readings that particularly interests you. You will be able to re-write any paper if you are dissatisfied with the grade. Each longer paper will account for 25% of the grade, and the weekly essays for the other 50%. In addition, I will take classroom participation and improvement through the semester into account when assigning the grade.

Schedule:

Jan 22:

intro

Jan 29, Feb 5:

Plato

Feb 12, Feb 19, Feb 26:

Thompson

March 5, March 12

Yanagi, midterm due March 5

March 19

Koren

April 2, April 9, April 16

Coomaraswamy

April 30, May 7

handout, final paper due April 30