The Renaissance

The Renaissance is a Baby CTY course where students learn about the rebirth of Greek and Roman cultures. This course is only offered at Palo Alto First Session.

Course Description

From the CTY Summer Catalog:

"Renaissance" means "rebirth," and in 14th- and 15th-century Europe, this meant the rebirth of ancient Greek and Roman cultures. The Renaissance brought radical changes to Western civilization: reason surpassed revelation, strong city-states and a growing merchant class replaced feudalism, and scholars began to view the classics through a humanistic lens. But was this period simply a rebirth of ancient ideas and cultures, or the signal of an entirely new way of viewing the world?

This interdisciplinary course spans the Renaissance period and considers developments in philosophy, science, commerce, government, and industry. Students explore Renaissance cultural history by examining primary and secondary sources. They compare experiences described in works of literary masters such as Shakespeare to those depicted in artwork by such masters as Giotto, Dürer, Brueghel, and Michelangelo.

Students complete both individual and group projects. They could, for example, research and write reports on astronomical discoveries; interpret and perform scenes from Shakespeare's The Tempest; or design and construct models of Brunelleschi's Duomo in Florence.

Students must have completed grades: 5 or 6