East Meets West: Outline and Readings
Students spend approximately 12 hours in class and 24 hours in class preparation per week during the spring semester. During Mayterm, students travel throughout the Balkans, visiting a variety of religious, historical, and cultural sites and meeting members of local Christian communities.
Week 1: Foundations I: the West, the Eastern Orthodox world, the Muslim world
Week 2: Foundations II: creation; humanity; pre-modern societies; the classical world
Week 3: Early Christianity
Week 4: Foundations of Christendom
Week 5: The Barbarian and Medieval West
Week 6: Byzantium, Eastern Christianity, and the Catholic-Orthodox Struggle for Europe
Week 7: The Emergence of Islam
Week 8: Interaction of Christendom and Islam
Week 9: The Turkish Tide and Its Effects
Week 10: Renaissance, Reformation, and the Foundations of Western Modernity
Week 11: The Rise of Western Dominance
Week 12: The Course of Western Dominance
Week 13: Western Creeds, Eastern Effects: Nationalism
Week 14: A Case Study: The Balkans in the 20th Century
Week 15: Western Creeds, Eastern Effects: Socialism and Democracy
Readings
Readings include either the whole or excerpts from:
- Thucydides: Pericles' Funeral Oration
- Plutarch: Life of Lycurgus
- Aristotle: Politics
- Homer: Iliad
- Aeschylus: Agamemnon
- Cicero: On the Commonwealth
- Virgil: The Aeneid
- Genesis; Esther; Daniel; Mark; Acts of the Apostles
- Tertullian: Apology
- Irenaeus: Against Heresies
- St. Augustine: City of God, Letters, Confessions
- Tacitus: Germania (S)
- Beowulf
- Aquinas: "Treatise on Law," ST I-II, 90-97 (S)
- Thomas à Kempis: The Imitation of Christ,
- The Dream of the Rood
- The Koran
- One Thousand and One Nights
- Dante: Inferno
- The Song of Roland
- Francisco de Vitoria: Political Writings
- Luther: "On Temporal Authority"
- Calvin: Institutes
- Shakespeare: The Merchant of Venice
- Hobbes: Leviathan
- Locke: Second Treatise of Government
- Voltaire: Candide
- Hume: "Of Commerce", "Of the Original Contract"
- Smith: The Wealth of Nations
- The United States Constitution
- Madison: Federalist No. 10
- Kant: Perpetual Peace
- Herder: The Philosophy of the History of Mankind
- Mill: "Of the Government of Dependencies by a Free State"
- Nietzsche: The Twilight of the Idols
- Dostoevsky: "Notes From the Underground"
- Bernard Shaw: Saint Joan
- Ivo Andrić: The Bridge on the Drina
- Vaclav Havel: Largo Desolato
- Vaclav Havel: Open Letters: Selected Writings
- Rushdie and Milosz: selected stories and essays
- Pope John Paul II: Memory and Identity
- Samuel Huntington: The Clash of Civilizations
- Meic Pearse: Why the Rest Hates the West
- Patricia Crone: Pre-Industrial Societies
- David Landes: The Wealth and Poverty of Nations
- Roger Scruton: The West and the Rest
- Richard Fletcher: The Barbarian Conversion
- Richard Fletcher: The Cross and the Crescent
- Ralph Lerner and Muhsin Mahdi (eds.): Medieval Political Philosophy
- Misha Glenny: The Balkans
- Henry Chadwick: The Early Church
- Jaroslav Pelikan: The Christian Tradition, Vol. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600)
- Dimitri Obolensky: The Byzantine Commonwealth
- Wil van der Bercken: Holy Russia and Christian Europe
- Peter Riddell and Peter Cotterell: Islam in Context
- Noel Malcolm: Kosovo: A Short History
- Noel Malcolm: Bosnia: A Short History
- Timothy George: The Theology of the Reformers
- Owen Chadwick: The Reformation
- Bernard Lewis: The Middle East
- R. J. Crampton: Eastern Europe in the Twentieth Century and After
- Michael Ignatieff: Blood and Belonging
- Michael Oakeshott: Rationalism in Politics
Cities, museums, churches, missions, etc.
The following list shows typical locations visited by honors students during Mayterm.
Hungary
- Budapest: city center, churches, Danube
Croatia
- Zagreb: art galleries, cathedral, St. Katherine's Church, parliament, STEP (student evangelical movement)
- Pula: Roman amphitheater, other Roman remains, city center
- Labin: museums, incl. the museum to Matthias Flacius Illyricus (co-worker with Luther)
- Rijeka: lecture (by local scholar/historian) on the 1920 crisis in Rijeka
- Plitvice: waterfalls at national park
- Šibenik: cathedral and ancient city center
- Trogir: cathedral and ancient city center
- Split: huge Roman ruins at Salona, fortress of Klis above the city, Diocletian's palace, ancient city center, visit to evangelical church congregation
- Dubrovnik: complete medieval walled city, museums, monasteries, churches, meeting with local Baptist pastor
- Osijek: staying at Evangelical Theological Seminary, city center, Slavonia Museum and Library
- Vukovar: destroyed city center, meeting with spokeswoman from Center for Peace and Nonviolence, churches
- Đakovo: cathedral and museum
Montenegro
- Risan: Roman mosaics
- Perast: museum, Orthodox church
- Kotor: medieval walled city, Catholic and Orthodox churches
Bosnia
- Mostar: city center and the famous bridge, evangelical church in Muslim half of city, Muslim dervish tekke at Blagaj
- Sarajevo: museum, Ghazi Husrev Beg mosque, Catholic church, site of assassination of Franz Ferdinand in 1914, Baptist congregation in the city
Serbia
- Belgrade: Kalemegdan fortress, Orthodox churches, shopping district, parliament
Italy
- Venice: many churches, incl. St. Mark's cathedral, St. Mark's Square, Rialto, Grand Canal, museums
