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Home 2013-2014 Undergraduate College Catalog Course Offerings Castle Scholars Courses CSCH 3002: Decoding da Vinci (4 cr.)

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CSCH 3002: Decoding da Vinci (4 cr.)

This interdisciplinary seminar takes as its point of departure Dan Brown’s contemporary fictional thriller, The DaVinci Code. The class will use this pop culture phenomenon as the starting point for analysis of primary texts that will allow for a deeper understanding of the more controversial historical “facts” alleged by Dan Brown. Students will read biblical, exegetical, and Gnostic literature to come to a better understanding of the historical identity of Saint Mary Magdalene. The class with then be introduced to the discipline of art history – and will begin an in-depth analysis of the life and work of one of the best known, but perhaps least-understood, artists of the Italian Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci. We will read Leonardo’s own words about the making of art, as well as those of other authors who in one way or another invent or reinvent Leonardo, from the sixteenth century biography of Leonardo written by Giorgio Vasari to Sigmund Freud’s famous psychobiography of the artist (1910). There will also be a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art Drawings Study Room to view the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci. Approved for Art History credit. (Fall)

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