Course Details

HUMN 221: Western Humanities II, is a required course for all Geneseo students, and satisfies SUNY's Western Civilization requirements.  The course involves a search for moral, social, and political alternatives and meaning embodied in the institutions, culture, and literature of Western Civilization from 1600 to the present.  The course is factual as well as conceptual, including a narrative history of the period covered.

Program Details

Experience key documents and readings from HUMN II on the campus of Georgetown University.  The D.C. area provides an outstanding opportunity to consider the theme of man's relationship to the state surrounded by an extraordinary wealth of civic and museum resources.  Planned excursions and field trips are designed to inform and reinforce the United States History Documents, and include:

• Mt. Vernon: Declaration of Independence, Federalist Nos. 10, 21, and 24
• U.S. Capitol: Constitution of the United States and Bill of Rights
• Museum of the American Indian: The Iroquois Constitution and supplementary readings of Washington's Speech to the Delaware Chiefs
• Antietam battlefield: The Fourth of July (USHD) and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation
• Gettysburg battlefied: Lincoln's Gettysburg and 2nd Inaugural Address

Students will also be reading and discussing the Political Non-Existence of Women (USHD) and supplementary readings from Miss Martineau's Retrospect of American Travel (1838) when right now, bills establishing a National Women's History Museum are presently under congressional consideration.  The program also includes a weekend stay in the city center of Philadelphia.