Visions

Through the kaleidoscopic lenses of visionary writing, art, and film, this course provides first-year students with an intensive introduction to studying the humanities at Yale. The course focuses on six trans-historical objects (or modes) of visionary experience: God(s), Paradise, Cosmos, Self, Text, and Future. We journey into and explore together visionary landscapes and material ranging from communion with Native American ancestral deities to the cosmic forms of the Hindu god Krishna, from the paradises of John Milton and William Blake to the futuristic dystopias of Stanley Kubrick and Mamoru Oshii, from the angelic orders of Hildegard von Bingen to the metatextual theatrics of Buddhist sūtras, from the ever-expanding self of Walt Whitman to the self-transcending consciousness of Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Friday sessions alternate between writing workshops and field trips to Yale collections.