Selves

Exploring a diverse range of texts in various media across different historical periods and geographies, this first year seminar will take you on a tour from Ancient Greece and Ancient India to contemporary Iran and the United States by way of Japan, Algeria, France, Brazil and England.

Through the prism of thinking about the self, this course provides first-year students with an intensive introduction to studying the humanities at Yale. The course is anchored around six trans-historical models of thinking about selfhood: the ideal self, the lover, the revolutionary, the convert, the solipsist, and the social climber. We range widely across genres, media, periods, and geographies: from Plato’s Symposium to Machado de Assis’s Epitaph for a Small Winner, from the ghazals of Hafez to the Kamasutra. We also make extensive use of Yale’s rich manuscript archives, historical object collections, and art galleries and devote sustained attention to improving students’ academic writing skills.

We welcome all students, especially those who are looking to improve their writing, to explore courses in the humanities and who want to learn more about non-Western literatures alongside more canonical Western texts.