The Freshman Humanities class encourages students to think across the disciplines by encouraging reading, writing, thinking, and discussion about topics from art, history, and literature. The over-riding theme is "the journey". Beginning in Greece in the Heroic Age, the course goes on to cover 5th century Athens; the Roman Republic and Empire; the rise of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam as major world religions; the Dark Ages; the renaissances of the West; and ending roughly in 1603. Texts include: Homer's Odyssey, Sophocles' Antigone, Ovid's Metamorphoses, Beowulf or other medieval texts, and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, and selections from historians, authors, and philosophers ancient and modern. Artifacts, films, and works of art will also be used as "texts" where possible. Major themes for the year include: narrative and culture, the individual and society, morality, patterns of change, and plurality of worlds.