HISTORY 321 - The Evolution of Human Emotion

Institution:

Hobart William Smith Colleges

Subject:

Description:

This course explores how we have become the emotional creatures that we are. It traces the evolutionary and cultural turns that have formed us into sensitive beings with unprecedented capacities to laugh and smile, to shed tears of both sorrow and joy, to fall in love, to sense betrayal, and to experience mourning. Our wide and expressive range of feelings is examined through the lens of anthropology, history, child psychology, genetics and neurobiology. Through a sustained engagement of historical events with reflective literature and analytical reporting, we learn how deeply our sentimental lives have depended on long-term temporal interactions with our environment. Students take on the momentous project of employing their special power of conscious awareness, itself a product of sentient evolution, to read and articulate the subtleties of individual feelings. (Flynn, offered alternate years)

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

WWW.HWS.EDU

Phone Number:

(315) 781-3000

Regional Accreditation:

Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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