Enduring Texts: Happiness

An ancient Mesopatamian text regarded as the oldest surviving written literary epic. The epic deals with heroic and religious themes, and is often considered a prototype for themes and archetypes present in later sagas.

Primary Discipline: Literature
Secondary Discipline(s): History, Anthropology

Plato is one of the giants of Western Philosophy. Most of his writings are in dialog form, with Socrates as the central character. As well as illustrating the Socratic approach to teaching - what has come to be known as the Socratic Method - Plato's dialogues set the terms of debate for many of the central issues in philosophy: the nature of justice, the concepts of truth and knowledge, what it means to live a good life, and so on.

Primary Discipline: Philosophy
Secondary Discipline(s): Political Science, Psychology

List of available resources in Coulter Library's Physical Collection.

Plato's main concern in The Republic is the nature of justice and the just society. Through the main character of Socrates the reader is brought on a tour of any and all dimensions of the concept of justice, and along the way we see Socrates taking a deep dive into other areas of ethics, as well as into metaphyscis and epistemology. A hugely influential text in the Western philosophical tradition.

Primary Discipline: Philosophy
Secondary Discipline(s): Political Science,

The Symposium is primarily a dialogue about the nature of love. The setting is a banquet where we find a range of notable individuals from ancient Athens - including Alcibiades, Aristophanes and, of course Socrates - putting forward their ideas about love. Eros, the god of love, is the original subject matter in the dialog, but we also see Socrates emphasizing the love of the form of beauty itself - and it is here we find the origin of the idea of "Platonic Love".

Primary Discipline: Philosophy

List of available resources in Coulter Library's Physical Collection.

Aristotle was a student of Plato's and, as such, was influenced by the kinds of questions his teacher was exploring. Aristotle's mature approach was quite different than Plato's, however, in that he focused on the empirical aspects of the world around him. This emphasis on the empirical has sometimes led scholars to refer to Aristotle as the first scientist in the Western tradition, though he still has much to say about the traditional questions in philosophy pertaining to knowledge, justice, human well being, and so on.

Primary Discipline: Philosophy
Secondary Discipline(s): Political Science, Psychology, English, Rhetoric

For Aristotle, and many other ancient Greek thinkers, ethics is about how we ought to live. In this book Aristotle focuses on the question of happiness (eudaimonia) and how to achieve it. Like his teacher, Plato, Aristotle argues that the good life is only possible if one possesses virtues such as wisdom, courage, temperance, etc. Unlike his teacher, though, Aristotle argues that becoming a virtuous person involves developing certain habits, over time, with practice - and not just thinking deeply about what the virtues consist in.

Primary Discipline: Philosophy
Secondary Discipline(s): Political Science, Psychology

A treatise on political theory that discusses various forms of government, their strengths and weaknesses, the role of the citizen in the state, the importance of education, and the relationship between ethics and politics, ultimately arguing for a balanced form of government that combines elements of democracy and aristocracy, and emphasizing the importance of the common good.

Primary Discipline: Philosophy
Secondary Discipline(s): Political Science, Psychology

The Bible is the most important book in the history of Western civilization, and also the most difficult to interpret. It has been the vehicle of continual conflict, with every interpretation reflecting passionately-held views that have affected not merely religion, but politics, art, and even science. This unique edition offers an exciting new approach to the most influential of all English biblical texts - the Authorized King James Version, complete with the Apocrypha. Its wide-ranging Introduction and the substantial notes to each book of the Bible guide the reader through the labyrinth of literary, textual, and theological issues, using the most up-to-date scholarship to demonstrate how and why the Bible has affected the literature, art and general culture of the English-speaking world.

Primary Discipline: Religion
Secondary Discipline(s): Literature, Philosophy, History

Qurʾān, (Arabic: “Recitation”) also spelled Quran and Koran, the sacred scripture of Islam. According to conventional Islamic belief, the Qurʾān was revealed by the angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad in the West Arabian towns Mecca and Medina beginning in 610 and ending with Muhammad’s death in 632 ce.

Primary Discipline: Religion
Secondary Discipline(s): Philosophy, Literature, History
Non-Western Text

St. Augustine's Confessions is sometimes said to be the first autobiography. In the text we see Augustine in mid-life carefully and honestly relating the story of his life to that point - from the varied sins of his youth, through his conversion to Christianity, to some profund meditations on the nature of time and memory. Throughout, Augustine is directly addressing God and is primarily concerned with the well-being of his soul, i.e. his essence, and questions about the will and the intellect.

Primary Discipline: Philosophy
Secondary Discipline(s): Religion

A prominent Viennese psychiatrist recounts his experiences in a Nazi concentration camp.

Primary Discipline: Psychology

April, 1984. Winston Smith, thinks a thought, starts a diary, and falls in love. But Big Brother is watching him, and the door to Room 101 can swing open in the blink of an eye. Its ideas have become our ideas, and Orwell's fiction is often said to be our reality. The definitive book of the 20th century is re-examined in a radical new adaptation exploring why Orwell's vision of the future is as relevant as ever.

Primary Discipline: Literature
Secondary Discipline(s): Political Science, Political Philosophy

Malcolm X, original name Malcolm Little, Muslim name el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz, (born May 19, 1925, Omaha, Nebraska, U.S.—died February 21, 1965, New York, New York), African American leader and prominent figure in the Nation of Islam who articulated concepts of race pride and Black nationalism in the early 1960s. After his assassination, the widespread distribution of his life story—The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965)—made him an ideological hero, especially among Black youth.

Primary Discipline: Autobiography
Secondary Discipline(s): African American Studies, History

In Birmingham, Alabama, in the spring of 1963, King’s campaign to end segregation at lunch counters and in hiring practices drew nationwide attention when police turned dogs and fire hoses on the demonstrators. King was jailed along with large numbers of his supporters, including hundreds of schoolchildren. His supporters did not, however, include all the Black clergy of Birmingham, and he was strongly opposed by some of the white clergy who had issued a statement urging African Americans not to support the demonstrations. From the Birmingham jail, King wrote a letter of great eloquence in which he spelled out his philosophy of nonviolence.

Primary Discipline: American History

Chinua Achebe, in full Albert Chinualumogu Achebe, (born November 16, 1930, Ogidi, Nigeria—died March 21, 2013, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.), Nigerian novelist acclaimed for his unsentimental depictions of the social and psychological disorientation accompanying the imposition of Western customs and values upon traditional African society. His particular concern was with emergent Africa at its moments of crisis; his novels range in subject matter from the first contact of an African village with the white man to the educated African’s attempt to create a firm moral order out of the changing values in a large city.

Primary Discipline: Literature
Secondary Discipline(s): African Studies

Anne Frank, in full Annelies Marie Frank, (born June 12, 1929, Frankfurt am Main, Germany—died February/March 1945, Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, near Hannover), Jewish girl whose diary of her family’s two years in hiding during the German occupation of the Netherlands became a classic of war literature.

Primary Discipline: Autobiography
Secondary Discipline(s): History, Holocaust Studies, Jewish Studies

"
At once a powerful evocation of James Baldwin's early life in Harlem and a disturbing examination of the consequences of racial injustice, the book is an intensely personal and provocative document from the iconic author of If Beale Street Could Talk and Go Tell It on the Mountain. It consists of two "" letters,"" written on the occasion of the centennial of the Emancipation Proclamation, that exhort Americans, both black and white, to attack the terrible legacy of racism."

Primary Discipline: African American History

Gabriel García Márquez, (born March 6, 1927, Aracataca, Colombia—died April 17, 2014, Mexico City, Mexico), Colombian novelist and one of the greatest writers of the 20th century, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1982 (see Nobel Lecture: “The Solitude of Latin America”), mostly for his masterpiece Cien años de soledad (1967; One Hundred Years of Solitude). He was the fourth Latin American to be so honoured, having been preceded by Chilean poets Gabriela Mistral in 1945 and Pablo Neruda in 1971 and by Guatemalan novelist Miguel Ángel Asturias in 1967. With Jorge Luis Borges, García Márquez is the best-known Latin American writer in history. In addition to his masterly approach to the novel, he was a superb crafter of short stories and an accomplished journalist. In both his shorter and longer fictions, García Márquez achieved the rare feat of being accessible to the common reader while satisfying the most demanding of sophisticated critics.

Primary Discipline: Literature
Secondary Discipline(s): LatinX studies

A Pequot and Christian minister, William Apess was an advocate and activist for Native peoples in the northeast during the first half of the nineteenth century. He published is autobiography, A Son of the Forest, in 1829. He helped the Mashpee Wampanoag in Massachusetts defend their lands, and in 1836 he delivered the public lecture, "Eulogy on King Philip," in which he extolled the seventeenth-century Native leader (also known as Metacom) for being as important as any European American leader.

Primary Discipline: History
Secondary Discipline(s): Native American History, Political Science

Rooted in Gloria Anzaldúa's experience as a Chicana, a lesbian, an activist, and a writer, the essays and poems in this volume profoundly challenged, and continue to challenge, how we think about identity. Borderlands / La Frontera remaps our understanding of what a "border" is, presenting it not as a simple divide between here and there, us and them, but as a psychic, social, and cultural terrain that we inhabit, and that inhabits all of us. This twenty-fifth anniversary edition features a new introduction by scholars Norma Cantu (University of Texas at San Antonio) and Aida Hurtado (University of California at Santa Cruz) as well as a revised critical bibliography.

Primary Discipline: Autobiography
Secondary Discipline(s): Cultural Studies, Linguistics

Also available here: http://users.uoa.gr/~cdokou/TheoryCriticismTexts/Anzaldua-borderlands-la-frontera.pdf

One of the most prolific Native American thinkers of the twentieth century, Vine Deloria Jr. (Standing Rock Sioux) was a historian, educator, activist, and theologian. His landmark work, Custer Died for Your Sins (1969) helped bring national attention to Native American issues. He continued this throughout his life and career.

Primary Discipline: History and Native American Studies
Secondary Discipline(s): Philosophy, Religion, Politics

Leslie Marmon Silko is one of the key figures in the "Native American Renaissance" of the late twentieth century, the collection of authors, artists, scholars, and activists who produced groundbreaking and popular literary works. Drawing upon her Laguna Pueblo heritage, Siko's work explores themes of cultural traditions, identity, the mingling of tradition with contemporary life, and racism and imperialism. Her acclaimed novel Ceremony touches on all of these issues, as well as veterans confronting and trying to heal from trauma.

Primary Discipline: Literature
Secondary Discipline(s): Native American Studies, Gender Studies

Zitkala-Sa (Gertrude Simmons Bonnin) was a Yankton Dakota writer, translator, editor, educator, musician, and Indigenous activits of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. An attendee of boarding schools, she later spent her adult life advocating for the rights of Native Americans, and helped establish Native American rights organizations. Her works drew upon her heritage and questions around cultural identity.

Primary Discipline: History
Secondary Discipline(s): Native American Studies, Gender Studies, Women's History

Though he's the illegitimate nephew of a German baron, Candide grows up in a castle under the tutelage of the scholar Pangloss. Pangloss is so enraptured by the Enlightenment--an era of prosperity and intellectual growth--that he proclaims the world to be "the best of all possible worlds." As an adult, Candide tries to cling to this optimistic philosophy despite experiencing a series of horrible misfortunes while striving to be reunited with the woman he loves. The French novel Candide satirizes the philosophies of the Enlightenment and humorously criticizes the nobility, religious viewpoints, and politics of the time. Voltaire--the pen name of French author François-Marie Arouet--first published his satire in 1759. This is an unabridged version of an English translation, published in 1918.

Primary Discipline: Literature

Poet and satirist of the English Augustan period, best known for his poems An Essay on Criticism (1711), The Rape of the Lock (1712–14), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1733–34) (Britannica online). His works ranges from social satire to philosophical thinking about human ability to reason and its limits in knowing the universe and God.

Primary Discipline: Literature
Secondary Discipline(s): Philosophy

Best known for his short stories and poetry, Poe is often credited as the inventor of the modern detective story. His characters demonstrate complex motives for criminal behaviors often due to alienation, terror and madness. His work was an influence on the French Symbolist Movement of the 19th century.

Primary Discipline: Literature

Friedrich Nietzsche, (born October 15, 1844, Röcken, Saxony, Prussia [Germany]—died August 25, 1900, Weimar, Thuringian States), German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture, who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. His attempts to unmask the motives that underlie traditional Western religion, morality, and philosophy deeply affected generations of theologians, philosophers, psychologists, poets, novelists, and playwrights. He thought through the consequences of the triumph of the Enlightenment’s secularism, expressed in his observation that “God is dead,” in a way that determined the agenda for many of Europe’s most-celebrated intellectuals after his death. Although he was an ardent foe of nationalism, anti-Semitism, and power politics, his name was later invoked by fascists to advance the very things he loathed.

Primary Discipline: Philosophy

James Joyce, in full James Augustine Aloysius Joyce, (born February 2, 1882, Dublin, Ireland—died January 13, 1941, Zürich, Switzerland), Irish novelist noted for his experimental use of language and exploration of new literary methods in such large works of fiction as Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake (1939).

Primary Discipline: Literature

Karl Marx, in full Karl Heinrich Marx, (born May 5, 1818, Trier, Rhine province, Prussia [Germany]—died March 14, 1883, London, England), revolutionary, sociologist, historian, and economist. He published (with Friedrich Engels) Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei (1848), commonly known as The Communist Manifesto, the most celebrated pamphlet in the history of the socialist movement. He also was the author of the movement’s most important book, Das Kapital. These writings and others by Marx and Engels form the basis of the body of thought and belief known as Marxism.

Primary Discipline: Political Science
Secondary Discipline(s): History

American fiction writer during the last 19th and early 20th century. Her most famous work The Awakening--a novella dealing with societal constraints on women in the late 19th century. Chopin's work focuses on the inner lives of women dealing with societal expectations as mothers and wives often from a critical lens. Her writing deals with themes of identity, selfhood, feminine sexuality and personhood, and societal conformity.

Primary Discipline: Literature
Secondary Discipline(s): Women's Studies

Freud may justly be called the most influential intellectual legislator of his age. His creation of psychoanalysis was at once a theory of the human psyche, a therapy for the relief of its ills, and an optic for the interpretation of culture and society. Despite repeated criticisms, attempted refutations, and qualifications of Freud’s work, its spell remained powerful well after his death and in fields far removed from psychology as it is narrowly defined. If, as the American sociologist Philip Rieff once contended, “psychological man” replaced such earlier notions as political, religious, or economic man as the 20th century’s dominant self-image, it is in no small measure due to the power of Freud’s vision and the seeming inexhaustibility of the intellectual legacy he left behind.

Primary Discipline: History
Secondary Discipline(s): Psychology

The end of 18th Century Britain is brought to life in Austen's six novels. Social commentary is depicted through realism and irony that is particularly focused on the accepted norms of the landed gentry and the constraints placed on women.

Primary Discipline: Literature
Secondary Discipline(s): Women's History and Gender Studies

The Constitution acted like a colossal merger, uniting a group of states with different interests, laws, and cultures. Under America’s first national government, the Articles of Confederation, the states acted together only for specific purposes. The Constitution united its citizens as members of a whole, vesting the power of the union in the people. Without it, the American Experiment might have ended as quickly as it had begun.

Primary Discipline: Political Science
Secondary Discipline(s): History

The Declaration of Independence was designed for multiple audiences: the King, the colonists, and the world. It was also designed to multitask. Its goals were to rally the troops, win foreign allies, and to announce the creation of a new country. The introductory sentence states the Declaration’s main purpose, to explain the colonists’ right to revolution. In other words, “to declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” Congress had to prove the legitimacy of its cause. It had just defied the most powerful nation on Earth. It needed to motivate foreign allies to join the fight.

Primary Discipline: Political Science
Secondary Discipline(s): History

This work is especially noteworthy as an early work by a woman writer/philosopher. She outlines her criteria for living a happy life.

Primary Discipline: Philosophy
Secondary Discipline(s): Women's Studies

A fascinating examination of the relationship between civilization and inequality from one of history's greatest minds The first man to erect a fence around a piece of land and declare it his own founded civil society--and doomed mankind to millennia of war and famine. The dawn of modern civilization, argues Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this essential treatise on human nature, was also the beginning of inequality. One of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, Rousseau based his work in compassion for his fellow man. The great crime of despotism, he believed, was the raising of the cruel above the weak. In this landmark text, he spells out the antidote for man's ills: a compassionate revolution to pull up the fences and restore the balance of mankind.

Primary Discipline: Political Science

Censored in its own time, the Social Contract (1762) remains a key source of democratic belief and is one of the classics of political theory.

Primary Discipline: Political Science

First published in Spain in 1605, it was intended a parody of chivalric romances. The novel was immensely popular and is thought to have laid the foundations for the understanding of the modern novel. It is the realistic story of a knight (Don Quixote) and his companion (Sancho Panza) who set off on a serires of 'magical' quests in contemporary Spain and meet wtih unfortunate results. This is where the phrase "tilting at windwills" and the term "Quixotic" come from.

Primary Discipline: Literature

James Madison, in full James Madison, Jr., (born March 16 [March 5, Old Style], 1751, Port Conway, Virginia [U.S.]—died June 28, 1836, Montpelier, Virginia, U.S.), fourth president of the United States (1809–17) and one of the Founding Fathers of his country. At the Constitutional Convention (1787), he influenced the planning and ratification of the U.S. Constitution and collaborated with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in the publication of the Federalist papers. As a member of the new House of Representatives, he sponsored the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, commonly called the Bill of Rights. He was secretary of state under President Thomas Jefferson when the Louisiana Territory was purchased from France. The War of 1812 was fought during his presidency.

Primary Discipline: Political Science
Secondary Discipline(s): History

The Great Law of Peace provides the foundation for the traditional government of the Haudenosaunee, and constituted by the original Five Nations of the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, and Senecas, with the Tuscarora later joining as the Sixth Nation. Onondaga Nation still follows the traditional structure. The Great Law reads as part historical narrative, part governmental framework, with overlays of metaphysics in the message of the Peacemaker. It talks about the responsibilities, obligations, and powers of the chiefs and clan mothers, with a strong emphasis on community health and good authority.

Primary Discipline: History
Secondary Discipline(s): Political Science, Philosophy, Anthropology, Native American Studies
Non-Western Text

Best known for his work of political philosophy, Levithan, published in 1651 during the English Civil War. He is known for his argument that life is "nasty, brutish, and short' in the natural state and that humans come together in societies to gain protection. His work was highly influential in political circles and serves as a foundational text in Western political philosophy, influencing Locke and Rousseau, and, in his metaphysical philosophy, Descartes.

Primary Discipline: Political Philosophy
Secondary Discipline(s): Economics

The term "Kafkaesque" comes from his name and means "characteristic or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka's fictional world." (Oxford). His most famous work, The Metamorphosis tells the story of a man who wakes up one day and realizes he has become an insect. All of his works have a dreamlike/nightmare quality to them and are often thought to shed light on fundamental questions of the human condition.

Primary Discipline: Literature

Published in the first half of the nineteenth century, Mary Jemison's narrative has become a valuable historical document for the way it covers the later half of the 18th and 19th centuries. She recounts her early child, and then capture by Native peoples and adoption by the Seneca Nation. She would live with the Seneca for the remainder of her life and witness as the colonies transitioned into an independent United States, and as New York expanded into former Seneca lands. The narrative is important for the women's perspective it shares, as well as the questions it explores concerning family, community, race, and ethnicity.

Primary Discipline: History
Secondary Discipline(s): Native American Studies, Gender Studies, Women's History

Published originally in 1845, this extremely influential autobiography by Frederick Douglass follows in the tradition of the American slave narrative. In it, he tells his own story of learning to read and write, his eventual escape from slavery, and his own work in the American abolitionist movement. Douglass is one of the preeminent abolitionists of the nineteenth century United States, whose work as an activist, public intellectual, writer, and publisher his work galvanized the abolitionist movement in the United States and abroad.

Primary Discipline: Autobiography
Secondary Discipline(s): Literature, American History, African American History

American sociologist, historian, author, editor, and activist who was the most important Black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century (Britannica online). His intellectual work is wide ranging and produced in a variety of forms. He both documented the struggle for equality in the USA as well as took an active role in that struggle. The Negro is a comprehensive history of the Black people in the US, from first stepping foot on the continent to the time in which it was published.

Primary Discipline: Sociology
Secondary Discipline(s): History

The writings of Machiavelli, particularly The Prince, are generally political and discuss the acquisition, maintenance, and exercise of power, often using historical examples to illustrate his points, and is known for its pragmatic and amoral approach to politics that emphasizes the importance of maintaining power and stability through any means necessary.

Primary Discipline: Political Science

Shakespeare's 39 plays consist of Comedies, Tragedies and Histories. Each play is filled with complex characters who grapple with the same enduring questions we attempt to understand today. Motives, causes, effects, and consequences all become evident through these dramas.

Primary Discipline: Literature
Secondary Discipline(s): History

American sociologist, historian, author, editor, and activist who was the most important Black protest leader in the United States during the first half of the 20th century (Britanica online). His intellectual work is wide ranging and produced in a variety of forms. He both documented the sturggle for equality in the USA as well as took an active role in that struggle. This text is a sociological study of Black people in the US and set him apart from other Black intellectuals of the time like Booter T. Washington.

Primary Discipline: Sociology
Secondary Discipline(s): History

The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address are the “words that come before all others.” The address is spoken at the opening and closing of governmental and ceremonial gatherings held by the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee (Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayugas, Senecas, and Tuscaroras). The Thanksgiving Address acknowledges the people, earth, waters, plants, animals, birds, bushes, trees, winds, sun, moon, stars, as well as the unseen spiritual forces. The address draws attention to the many connections between human beings and other living beings in the world, expresses thankfulness of what nature provides, and acknowledges the ongoing impact of these forces on human lives.

Primary Discipline: History
Secondary Discipline(s): Philosophy, Environmental Conservation, Ecology, Native American Studies

More creates his vision of the perfect society on an isolated island. He coined the phrase Utopia from the Greek words "ou-topos" meaning no place and "eu-topos" meaning a good place. Many see this as a socio-political satire while others suggest it is a more serious depiction of a better society.

Primary Discipline: Political Science
Secondary Discipline(s): Philosophy

Wollstonecraft argues for the education of women.

Primary Discipline: Philosophy
Secondary Discipline(s): History, Women's History and Gender Studies

Friedrich Engels, (born Nov. 28, 1820, Barmen, Rhine province, Prussia [Germany]—died Aug. 5, 1895, London, Eng.), German socialist philosopher, the closest collaborator of Karl Marx in the foundation of modern communism. They coauthored The Communist Manifesto (1848), and Engels edited the second and third volumes of Das Kapital after Marx’s death.

Primary Discipline: Political Science
Secondary Discipline(s): History