History 315A - ST: Civilization and Depravity x Garnand

Institution:

Whitman College

Subject:

Description:

This course examines how certain ancient Mediterranean societies defined themselves in opposition to their own ancestors and to other groups. Ancient authors combined history and ethnography, using "depravity" in the chronologically remote past (back then) and the geographically remote present (over there) to define themselves as "civilized" (here and now). We look at how the authors of the Hebrew Bible used depictions of stereotypical depravity in order to define themselves as Israelites, and at how Greeks and Romans defined themselves by depicting depravity arrayed around the edges of their world, at the extreme North, South, East and West. This course focuses less upon the reality of depravity among marginal societies, and more upon how the depiction of "depravity" created a mirror image, an ideal of "civilization," that set one's own Israelite, Greek or Roman culture as the norm. Finally, we show how the mechanisms create such norms of civilization persist in the historical and ethnographic imagination.

Credits:

4.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.whitman.edu

Phone Number:

(509) 527-5111

Regional Accreditation:

Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities

Calendar System:

Semester

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