New Gen Ed Courses Planned for 1964-65

A new lower-level Humanities courses which will bring most of the Great Man of the English department to the General Education podium, and a new upper level Soc Sci given by Alexander Gerschenkron, Walter S. Barker Professor of Economics, will caliven next year's Gen Ed offerings.

Hum 1, "The Experience of Literature," which will replace both Hum 3 and Hum 7, will be "like a walk through a statue gallery, and the statuary will be both the authors and the professors," John H. Finley, Jr. '24, chairman of the Committee on General Education, said yesterday.

Under the direction of Walter Jackson Bate'39, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of the Humanist John M. Bullit '43, professor of English; and David D. Purkins '51, associate professor of English, the course will allow different professors to lecture on authors from Homer to T.S. Eliot '10.

Gerachenkron's spring half course, entitled "The Political Element in Economic History," will "attempt to assess the significance of the political element in economic development," Gerschenkron said. It will draw its examples of economic development from the history of nineteenth century Europe.

Hum 1 will be divided into several two or three week segments during which different professors will lecture on individual authors. In the first semester, lecturers will probably include Cedric H. Whitman '38, professor of Greek and Latin, on Homer; Finley on Sophocles; Wilbur M. Frohock, professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, on Rabelais; Bullit on Cervantes; and Harry T. Levin '23, Irving Babbitt Professor of Comparative Literature, on Shakespeare.

Heary C. Hatfield '33, professor of German, will open the second semester with a discussion of Faust, and Bullitt and Levin will follow with lectures on several novels. To and the course, Bate and Perkins will consider the development of modern poetry, giving particular emphasis to Keats and Eliot.

Finley noted yesterday that Hum 1 "had everything but the kitchen stove in it. It's impossible to get people to take up the White Man's Burden" and teach lower-level Humanities courses alone, Finley explained, and therefore, the Committee had devised this "vaudeville performance." Nonetheless, he said he has great hopes for the new course.

Humanities 7, "Uses of the Comic Spirit," will be dropped next year because Frohock has other commitments. Also scheduled for retirement, primarily because of a low undergraduate enrollment, is Humanities 3, "Forms of Literature."