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First-Year Seminar Required Texts

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2022-2023
Required texts are available from the College Bookstore. 
Rely on the ISBN to be sure you are getting the correct edition. 
Students should purchase the paperback versions of the texts, not electronic ones.


Any student for whom acquiring these [core] texts is a significant financial burden should email [email protected] with a request to use the First-Year Seminar book funds to acquire books.
Campus Bookstore

Spring Semester

  • Genesis, The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, 5th edition, ed. Michael D. Coogan, Oxford.  ISBN: 978-0190276089.
  • Ibn Tufayl, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan:  A Philosophical Tale, trans. Lenn Evan Goodman, University of Chicago Press.  ISBN: 978-0226303109.
  • Plato, Meno, trans. G.M.A. Grube, Hackett.  ISBN: 978-0915144242.
  • Max Weber, The Vocation Lectures, trans. Rodney Livingstone, Hackett.  ISBN: 978-0872206656.
  • Margaret Cavendish, The Blazing World and Other Writings, ed. Kate Lilley, Penguin.  ISBN: 978-0140433722.
  • Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Vintage Books.  ISBN:  978-0679741954.
  • Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, Mariner Books.  ISBN:  978-0156628709.
  • James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, Beacon Press.  ISBN:  978-0807006238.
* Every student will receive a complimentary reader to accompany these texts.

Fall Semester

  • Marx, Karl, Selected Writing,  Hackett.  ISBN:  978-0872202184.
  • The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha, 5th edition, ed. Michael D. Coogan, Oxford.  ISBN:  978-0190276089.
  • Poems of the First Buddhist Women:  A Translation of the Therigatha, trans. Charles Hallisey, Harvard University Press.  ISBN:  978-0674251359.
  • Robertson, Robin, Euripides, Bacchae:  A New Translation by Robin Robertson with a preface by Daniel Mendelsohn, Harper Collins.  ISBN: 9780062319678.
  • Fanon, Frantz, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox, 60th Anniversary Edition, Publisher's Group West.  ISBN: 978-0802158635.
  • Locke, John, Second Treatise of Government, Ed. C.B. Macpherson, Hackett.  ISBN:  978-0915144860.
* Every student will receive a complimentary reader to accompany these texts.
* The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha will also be used in the spring.
 

Spring Reader Illustrations

Front cover images taken from Along the River During the Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan, 12th Century, ink and color on Silk, held in the Palace Museum, Forbidden City, Beijing, China.

Ice age map of New York and New England from “Drainage of late Wisconsin glacial lakes and the morphology and late quaternary stratigraphy of the New Jersey-southern New England continental shelf and slope” by E. Uchupi, N. Driscoll, R. D. Ballard, and S. T. Bolmer, published in Marine Geology 172 (2001) p. 128.

The Garden of Early Delights by Hieronymus Bosch, ca. 1500, triptych oil painting on oak panel, held at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, Spain.
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
 
“Topographia Paradisi” from Arca Noë by Athanasius Kircher, 1675, woodcut, held in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, GC6 K6323 675a (A)
 
 “Monte Ararat” from Turris Babel by Athanasius Kircher, 1679, woodcut, held in the New York Public Library, *OCM+ 93-6948
 
World map of al-Idrisi from a 1456 copy of the Kitab Rujar (the original text dates to 1154), manuscript held at Oxford's Bodleian Library as MS. Pococke 375 fol. 3v-4.
 
Physician preparing an elixir, folio from a 1224 manuscript of De Materia Medica by Pedanius Dioscorides, ca. 60 CE, ink, opaque watercolor, and gold on paper, held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, gallery 203
 
Map of the moon by Thomas Harriot, 1609

Sketches of the moon from Sidereus Nuncius by Galileo Galilei, 1610
 
 Micrographia by Robert Hooke, 1665, copperplate engravings, microscope setup
 Geometric optics
 Dronefly
 Fleas
 Seaweed, Rosemary, and Sage
Cork
 
Garden City diagrams from To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform by Ebenezer Howard, 1898, published by Swan Sonnenschein & Co., Ltd.
 Image 1
Image 2
 
Plan Voisin by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, 1925, © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris / FLC
 
Map of London by G.W. Bacon, ca. 1899
 

 

Fall Reader Illustrations

Along the River During the Qingming Festival by Zhang Zeduan 12th Century ink and color on Silk, held in the Palace Museum, Forbidden City, Beijing, China.
 
Hudson’s River Drawing from Adrian Block’s Charts, 1614-1616, taken from Indian Geographical Names by E.M. Ruttenber, published by the New York State Historical Association, 1906. 
 
Daguerreotype photograph of Chartist meeting on 10 April 1848 at Kennington Common, by William Edward Kilburn, restored version, held in the Royal Collection of the British royal family
 
Clover Leaf World Map of 1581 by Heinrich Buenting, originally published in Itinerarium Sacrae Scripturae (Travel Book of Holy Scripture), held in the Eran Laor collection in the National Library of Israel. 
 
The Calling of Saint Matthew oil on canvas by Michelangelo Merisi da Carvaggio, circa 1599-1600, held in the Contarelli Chapel, San Luigi dei Francesi, Rome.
 
Aerial photograph of the Theater of Dionysus, Athens, Greece, from the University of California, San Diego.
 
Still from Dionysus in ’69, directed by Bryan de Palma, Robert Fiore, and Bruce Rubin, 1970, from the University of California, San Diego.
           
Nansenbushu Bankoku Shoka No Zu (Outline Map of All Countries of the Universe) map of 1710, composed by the Buddhist monk Rokashi Hotan as a woodblock print.
 
Detail of Mahapajapati Gotami from a mural in Wat Pho Temple, Bankok, Thailand.
 
Catalan Atlas of 1375 attributed to Abraham Cresques, held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
 
Murals of Diego Rivera at the Secretariat of Public Education Main Headquarters building in Mexico City, Mexico, completed between 1923 and 1928.
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
 
Map of Tenochtitlan, printed 1524 in Nuremberg, Germany. Colorized woodcut. By Friedrich Peypus, probably after drawing made by one of Hernán Cortéz' men. Original is at the Newberry Library, Chicago, inventory number Ayer 655.51.C8 1524b (or 1524c or 1524d).

Rock art from Tassili n'Ajjer National Park, Algeria

Tracing of a 1747 Map of Barent Van Benthuysen’s Land, Stevenson Library Digital Collections, Bard College.

 

Contact Us

Program Directors:
Alys Moody, Paul Cadden-Zimansky, and Alex Kitnick
  • Questions?
    For further information, contact Program Assistant Julie Cerulli at [email protected] or 845-758-7514.
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