Course description

This history course considers the long-term quest to understand the origins of the human species. When did we originate? Where do we come from? How do we differ from other animals? How do we differ from each other? Where are we going? What is the meaning of our existence? These sorts of questions have been asked at least since the beginning of recorded history but the answers have depended on changing social, cultural, and intellectual contexts. We will therefore consider how the idea of human origins was shaped by religious, scientific, and historical modes of thinking, from the early modern period to the present. Specific subjects to be explored in this context include race, gender, evolution, progress, degeneration, the environment, extinction, the global, and the future. Students will learn to examine how the ideas about human origins were shaped by and reflected different cultural contexts and also how they changed over time.

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