INRW/HUMA 1301: Spring '25: Your HUMA 1301 Assignment!

Making Connections Assignment Instructions

Overview:
This assignment allows students to explore great works from different cultures throughout history and discuss their relevance and impact. 

Prepare:
On Blackboard, go to Assignments → Making Connections. Scroll down to Making Connections Guidelines, which takes you to the website. Scroll down past the map to see the topic list for Unit 1. Review the list of approved topics for Making Connections, and choose a topic. Sign up on the Google Doc linked on Blackboard under Assignments --> Making Connections, and be sure that no other student has signed up for this topic. All of the topics are researchable, and no matter how much you “know” ahead of time or not, you’ll learn a lot as you work through the steps.

Complete the Assignment:
Working with your professor and a librarian for guidance, research your topic and develop your answers to the prompts below. When you are ready to start preparing your presentation slides, be sure you have your sources handy, as well as notes tracking relevant content from each one. You should have at least three sources, preferably academic sources found using the ACC Library databases. Tourism websites and history.com, study.com, etc. are not considered academic sources.
 
Open the Making Connections Template (available in PPT and Google Slides formats in Assignments→ Making Connections) and prepare five total slides to accompany your oral presentation of approximately 4-6 minutes total. Throughout your presentation, your narration should include additional information about the work in your own words, not just the data on your slides. The slides are a jumping off point for your analysis and insights.

• Slide 1 will include the name of your work, your name, and the name of your instructor.
• Slide 2 should focus on presenting the basic factual info and description of the work itself. Find an image that represents your work (as well as a source image credit). Include the required basic factual information required by the template, unless a category does not apply to your topic.
• Slide 3 should focus on considering the work’s cultural context. First, describe the culture this work emerged from. What are some facts about this culture? To whom was this important or significant when it was created? Another way to think about this is to consider what its purpose was at the time, who would have known about it, enjoyed it (or not), what meaning it would have had individually or culturally, or similar lines of inquiry.
• Slide 4 should focus on contemporary significance. What have you found about what people today think about the work? What do scholars say about it? In what contexts is it still of interest? What does this work tell us about who “we” are as human beings, and/or what does it allow us to understand about a time period distant from our own? What does this work tell us about where “we” have come from? What are some contemporary human needs, values, cultures, and/or global ethics that came to mind as you learned about this work?
• Slide 5 should feature your Works Cited page in MLA format.
   

Making Connections Topic List

EARLY CIVILIZATIONS: Literature/Theater/Philosophy/Music

1. Babylonian Creation Story: Enuma Elish
2. Epic of Gilgamesh
3. The Code of Hammurabi
4. Rig Veda
5. Egyptian Book of the Dead
6. Navajo Night Chant

EARLY CIVILIZATIONS: Sculpture/Architecture/Art

1. Cave paintings at Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc
2. Venus of Willendorf
3. Ziggurat at Ur
4. Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut
5. Nasca Lines of Peru

CLASSICAL / GREEK: Literature/Theater/Philosophy/Music

1. Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian Wars
2. Sophocles’ Oedipus the King
3. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics or Poetics
4. Sappho’s poetry (fragments)
5. Vitruvius’ Ten Books on Architecture

CLASSICAL / GREEK: Sculpture/Architecture/Art

1. Lion Gate at Mycenae
2. Myron’s Discobolus (Discus Thrower)
3. The Parthenon, Athens
4. Praxiteles’ Aphrodite of Knidos
5. Agesander, et al’s Laocoön and His Sons

ROMAN: Literature/Theater/Philosophy/Music

1. Virgil’s Aeneid
2. Ovid’s Metamorphoses
3. Juvenal’s Satires
4. Josephus’ The Jewish War
5. Seneca’s On Tranquility of Mind

ROMAN: Sculpture/Architecture/Art

1. Trajan’s Victory Column
2. Arch of Titus
3. The Colosseum, Rome
4. Pont du Gard, near Nîmes, France
5. The Pantheon

CLASSICAL: GLOBAL: Literature/Theater/Philosophy/Music

1. The Dao De Jing
2. The Xuzni
3. Bhagavad Gita
4. The Yoga Sutras
5. The poetry of Nammalvar

CLASSICAL: GLOBAL: Sculpture/Architecture/Art

1. Dhamek Stupa, India
2. Olmec Heads, Mexico
3. Bronze Bells, Zhong Dynasty
4. Nok Terracottas, Africa
5. Star Ushak Rug, Ottoman Empire

MIDDLE AGES: EUROPE: Literature/Theater/Philosophy/Music

1. Hildegard of Bingen’s ♫O Successores or Ordo virtutum (Play of the Virtues)
2. Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy
3. Song of Roland
4. St. Ambrose’s “Ancient Morning Hymn”
5. Magna Carta, England, 1215 CE

MIDDLE AGES: EUROPE: Sculpture/Architecture/Art

1. The Lancet Windows of Sainte Chapelle, Paris
2. The Bayeux Tapestry
3. The Book of Kells (Manuscript Illumination)
4. San Isidoro Crypt in Leon, Spain
5. Last Judgment, Autun Cathedral, France

MIDDLE AGES: GLOBAL: Literature/Philosophy/Theater/Music

1. Shantideva’s Way of the Bodhisattva
2. Murasaki Shikibu The Tale of Genji
3. Ibn Sina's (Avicenna) The Canon of Medicine
4. Ibn Rushd’s (Averroes) Commentaries on Aristotle and Plato
5. Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda

MIDDLE AGES: GLOBAL: Sculpture/Architecture/Art

1. Hagia Sophia, Turkey
2. Mo’ai Heads, Easter Island
3. Khajuraho Temples, India
4. Summer Mountains, Song Dynasty
5. Mosque at Djenne, Mali

14th-17th CENTURIES: EUROPE: Literature/Philosophy/Theater/Music

1. Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women
2. Boccaccio’s Decameron
3. Alberti’s On the Family
4. Cervantes’ Don Quixote
5. Dufay’s ♫Missa L’homme armé

14-17th CENTURIES: EUROPE: Sculpture/Architecture/Art

1. Lorenzetti’s The Allegory of Good Government
2. Michelangelo’s Pietà
3. Ghiberti’s “Gates of Paradise”
4. Raphael’s The School of Athens
5. 5. Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights

14th-17th CENTURIES: GLOBAL: Literature/Philosophy/Theater/Music

1. 1001 Nights, Arabia
2. Matsukaze (“Wind in the Pines”) by Kan’ami
3. Benin Scarification Masks, Africa
4. Rumi’s Masnavi
5. Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West

14th-17th CENTURIES: GLOBAL: Sculpture/Architecture/Art

1. The Forbidden City, China
2. Machu Picchu, Peru
3. Teotihuacan Pyramids, Mexico
4. Topkapi Palace, Turkey