Darwin and The Battle of Beliefs I: Views from the Humanities
This online course is designed as an eye-opening introduction to six different academic disciplines via an exploration of the shockwaves that Charles Darwin and like-minded nineteenth-century naturalists produced in the fields of theology, history, literature, environmental science, archaeology and the visual arts.
Students will be able to work briefly but intensively with each discipline in turn, so as to get a good sense of its individual preoccupations, concerns and methods while gaining an understanding of the inter-relationships between these subjects and how they can affect and motivate each other.
Delivery: Distance Learning (Online)
Deadline for registrations: Thursday 29th October 2009
NB: Late entrants will be able to work through and catch up on the material they have missed - or they can skip the missed weeks and concentrate on the material at the point where they join the course - but unfortunately we cannot offer fee reductions or course extensions for late entrants.
Course overview
How to register
Course preparation
The massive cultural impact of Darwin's work is still reverberating today, as shown by the following examples.
Disclaimer: The following links are to external websites and the University of Exeter is not responsible for their content. This course is not endorsed by or produced in partnership with Hanway Films, the Telegraph, the Guardian, the National History Museum or the BBC. These links are provided solely as examples of the continued relevancy of Darwin’s work to modern culture and society.
- Darwin 200 at the National History Museum
- BBC news item - 'Vatican hosts Darwin conference' - 3rd March 2009
- BBC article - 'Who goes to a creationist museum'? - 14th June 2009
- 'Darwin's complex loss of faith' - article in the Guardian, 17th September 2009
- 'Creation, Review' - review of the film in the Telegraph which includes discussion of how Origin of Species still creates controversy, 24th September 2009
- Creation - official film website (film released 25th September 2009)
Learning / Teaching Methods
This course is delivered via the internet using an online educational environment called WebCT. Students will be given a username and password to log in to the course. A 'unit' of course material will be released every week (with two weeks given for units five and eight). Students will work through these, and class discussions on the material will take place in the online forum.
Class discussions are asynchronous - i.e. students do not need to be online at a 'set' time - they can leave and collect messages from the online discussion environment at a time suitable for them.
A chat room facility is also available. This is entirely optional, but students can arrange a mutually convenient time to communicate with each other 'instantly', by means of this facility, if they would like more immediate contact with others studying this subject.
Assessment
As this course is non-credit-bearing there are no exams or assessments.
