Readings include Petrarch, Machiavelli, and Erasmus. For the oral communications component, students will carry out three oral assignments in the context of exploring the Renaissance humanist emphasis on rhetoric. An interdisciplinary approach to war and peace, this course incorporates the dual perspective of philosophy and history. Students study various ethical arguments as shaped in different cultures. The course begins with warfare as treated in the Bible and concludes with nuclear terrorism.
Students learn principles of mathematical thinking by investigating a particular mathematical topic.
Recent topics included dynamic geometry, mathematics of games, and cryptology. Students investigate ideas through technical and non-technical reading and problem solving, introducing them to mathematical literature and exposition. The study of counterpoint is a way of better understanding the compositional techniques of great composers, as well as developing one's own fluency in writing music. Students learn advanced contrapuntal techniques in Renaissance, Baroque, and 20th-century styles, studying the works of such composers as Palestrina, Bach, and Barber. Class periods to be arranged.