“Cultural Foundations I” introduces the arts from their origins to the end of antiquity, as defined for these purposes by the roughly coincident dissolutions of the Gupta, Han, and Western Roman empires, focusing on how individuals and social relations are shaped in literature, the visual, plastic, and performing arts, and through music. Conceptions of the divine, the heroic, power and disenfranchisement, beauty, and love are examined within the context of the art and literature of East and South Asia, the Mediterranean world, and contiguous regions (such as Germania, Nubia, and Mesopotamia).

The Cultural Foundations sequence (CFI, CFII, and CFIII) is taken one per semester (sequentially, from the fall of the first year through the fall/spring of the second year) and investigates literary, musical, visual, and performing arts from prehistory to modernity, treating the works of cultures from around the globe as texts in their own right, as contexts for each other, and as ways of understanding the civilizations in which they were produced. In these interdisciplinary courses, we pose a central two-part question: What is art, and why do people produce it? Instructors for CFI prepare the way for Cultural Foundations II by giving some attention to the modes by which cultural transmission occurred across these regions prior to the rise of Islam.

Interested applicants should contact Mark Nakamoto at mark.nakamoto@nyu.edu