Athens to New York
Syllabus and Study Guide
Spring, 1997
Professor Kim Pearson
104 Bray Hall
phone: 771-2692
fax: 771-3345
email: kpearson@tcnj.edu
Office Hours: Mon., Thurs., 2-5 pm
Purpose
Four central questions are thought to be at the center of the interdisciplinary core courses you are required to take at the College:
What does it mean to be human?
What does it mean to be a member of a community?
What does it mean to moral, ethical or just?
How do individuals and communities respond to differences of race, class, gender and ethnicity?
We intend to approach this question by asking a fifth: What does it mean to be an American? Specifically, what common core of belief and practice (if any) defines Americans as a people?
Our examination of the stories we tell ourselves about key ideas and events both in American history and in contemporary reality will demonstrate that the formation of a national ethos has always revolved around the answers to questions such as the four central questions of this course. We will also see that our various national self-definitions draw upon multiple, sometimes contradictory sources. Thus, the formation of the American ethos has always carried with it certain contradictions, such as: How do Americans reconcile their stated belief in equality and human rights with a history of race, gender and class discrimination? What is the balance between our stated belief in individual self-definition and self-determination, and the need for order in a civil society? How relevant the Judeo-Christian ethic, as historically defined, in a country with a multiplicity of beliefs and practices?
Course Requirments
Class Participation: 10 percent
response to the class discussion questions
e-mail assignment: 5 percent
Midterm, Final: 15, 20 percent
Three projects: 15 percent each
Journal of your service learning experience, with
a summary statement tying your experience to the
course themes. You must complete this to get a passing grade.: 5
percent
E-mail address
Read materials for class when due
Adherence to college rules with regard to style, footnoting, attribution
No make-up exams without a doctor's note.
In addition, you are encouraged to form study groups with other members of the class. We will discuss study groups during the first class session.
description of major class assignments
1. The e-mail assignment: We will distribute, by e-mail, discussion questions for the upcoming class session, based on the assigned readings. You will each be responsible for generating discussion questions for a specific class session. At least two questions are expected for each session. During the first class, you will be asked to sign up for your session as discussion moderator.
After each session, you will each be expected to be prepared to respond in class, to the discussion question for that class. (these questions can come from discussions in your study groups.) This will be part of your class participation grade. You are also encouraged to add your own questions and observations to the discussion. If, for some reason, you cannot attend class, you may respond by e-mail.
These questions should relate to at least two of the following themes:
Attitudes toward difference
2. Project #2: The IDSC Talk Show. (February 25, 28)
Students will be divided into three groups. Each group will prepare a 20-minute TV "talk-show" which will people who either participated in the founding of the United States, or have been major interpreters or critics of the American idea. Each group must have at least the participants listed below. If there are more people in your group, you may add additional interviewees of your choice.
Group 1 Group 2 Group 3
Host/Hostess Host/Hostess Host/Hostess
Thomas Jefferson Benjamin Franklin Roger Taney
Benjamin Banneker Coincoin David Walker
Squanto Alexander Hamilton Anna Julia Cooper
Mary Wollstonecraft John Locke Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Thomas Hobbes Richard Allen Pocohantas
3. Project #3 (April 25 and 28) Creating the American community
You will be assigned to task forces which will consider and make proposals designed to affirm or redefine the American social contract. These task forces can focus on areas such as: economic development, education, culture, or human relations. Or, you might choose to rewrite or redefine some aspect of the Constitution. You will receive readings and a resource list related to this project.
Class topics, readings and schedule
January 21
Introduction to the Course.
COVENANT
We will:
In class exercise -- exploring our worldviews
discuss service learning and enrichment sessions
HOMEWORK
Prepare writing assignment and make one-minute presentation at next class:
January 24
Discuss: How do we learn? How do we decide what is true? Consider the following readings, on reserve and on the Web:
2. Noam Chomsky interview on class. Keeping the Rabble in Line Consider this quote: "A work is commonly considered objective if it reflects the views of those in power."
January 28
Worldview, religion and dissent.
"In antiquity, religion was not yet separable from other forms of public life. One's worship was dictated mainly by one's nationality and by other forms of social identification such as the household to which one belonged or the city in which one lived. The family, including slaves as well as the immediate kin groups, honored its own household gods, celebrated with religious rites, feasting and various entertainments. In the Roman world, some religius aspect must be paid to the genius or divinity of the ruling city, and later on, to the emperor who embodies its rule. ... Philosophical groups, too, sometimes organized themselves as voluntary communities of worship, as did social clubs. Even so, for most people, religion remained a part of their familial or ethnic identity; and since the individual had no place in society...one scarcely thought of changing one's worship except as part of a larger social unit"
L. William Countryman -- Dirt, Greed and Sex. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, c 1988. p 21
http://www.wisc.edu/arth/ah201/09earlyclassical.3.html
Discussion of the Divine
Read: What is Religion? on reserve, in the Humanity anthology.
Trial and Death of Socrates. You might look at "The Hypertext Crito:" http://metaphor.uoregon.edu/crito.htm#contents
Question for class discussion: Of what city is Socrates a citizen? How might his teaching be construed as a violation of his duties as a citizen?
For two different views of the relationship between the individual and the state read:
January 31, February 4
Read: Antigone, either in text or in hypertext (http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/text?) Of what city is Antigone a citizen?
Consider the study questions at (http://www.emory.edu/WESTCIV/antigoneqs.html)
Note: ( A production of "Antigone" will be shown in the dorms somtime early in the semester.)
In class, we will discuss Carey Schwaber's essay: "Antigone: A Greek Tragedy Wrongly Labeled Feminist" (http://www.tiac.net/users/process/care/antigone.html) For additional background on views of women in Greek and Roman civilizations, you might look at "Women in Classical Mythology" (http://vanaheim.princeton.edu/Myth/), and "The Rape of Lucretia" (http://www.emory.edu/WESTCIV/lucretia.html) What do these reference teach us about the nature and limits of a woman' power?
Also: do you see parallels between the characters of Ismene and Crito? What are they?
February 7
Human motivation: read Humanity anthology pgs. 263-299
(If you like, you can read Bentham's essays on the principle of utility at http://www.utm.edu:80/research/iep/text/bentham/benthpri.htm)
Nietszche, "The Fable of Intelligible Freedom,", http://www.cris.com/~Huntress/nietz1.html
February 11 and 14
The causes and meaning of the Columbian encounter. Watch "500 Nations" video.
Read:
On Being Brought from
AFRICA to AMERICA
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God and there's a Saviour too
Once I redemption neither fought nor knew.
Some view our fable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,
May be refined, and join th'angelic train.
(From, "Crossing the Danger Water: Three Hundred Years of African-American Writing.) For the moment, contrast what Wheatley says to the views expressed at (http://www.indians.org/welker/america1.html)
We will return to this question in a week or two.
February 18, 21
Historical background on Africa. Read:
African Civilizations (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/CivAfrica/ .
Click through the Bayly African Art exhibit: (http://www.lib.virginia.edu/dic/exhib/93.ray.aa/African.html)
Achebe: Things Fall Apart (on reserve). Discuss and compare concepts of the Divine, human nature,
February 25 and 28
Background on American history up to Civil war. Read: gopher://ericir.syr.edu:70/00/Lesson/Crossroads/essays 03,04,05,06
Background on ideas of the Enlightenment -- Read: Mort Winston -- Introduction A Philosophy of Human Rights, (on reserve)
Slavery and the founding of the Republic
Read Olaudah Equiano's narrative (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/Equiano.html), followed by William Henry Holcombe's "The Alternative" (http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/Holcombe.html
Also, consider the contrast between Equiano and Wheatley. What accounts for it?
In class: The IDSC TALK SHOW
March 4 and 7 (Remember Cornel West lecture on March 5)
Defining the American Idea
See Thomas Jefferson: Notes on the State of Virginia: gopher://gopher.vt.edu.:100010/02/106/9 Skim past the lengthy discourses on Virginia's geography, flora, fauna and resources to what he says about women, Native Americans, and African-Americans. Note, particularly, his solution to slavery.
Read the following excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" (http://xroads.virginia.edu./~HYPER/DETOC/preface.htm)
March 11 -- Screening of "Daughters of the Dust" at 9 am and 3pm -- please make very effort to attend one of the screenings; Midterm review
March 12 -- 3 pm speech by Julie Dash -- Director, Daughters of the Dust
(http://www.pacific.net/geechee1)
March 14 --Midterm
Midterm Break
March 25 -- Screen excerpts from "Birth of a Nation." Are there parallels to be drawn here from the Rape of Lucretia? Recall Du Bois' essay in the beginning of the class. What function did this film serve in 1915? Why was Wilson so fond of it? Continue reading the Crossroads history outline -- essays 7-8
This was an imperialist age. Rudyard Kipling's famous poem, "The White Man's Burden," was written at this time. Kipling wrote the poem to encourage America's colonization of the Philippines Check (http://web.syr.edu/~fjzwick/kipling/whiteman.html) for the poem, and sample some of the criticism it received. The cartoons, some of the parodies and the speech by Pitchfork "Ben" Tillman are especially noteworthy for the parallels they draw between Asians and African Americans. Finally, skim some of the letters written by American soldiers in the Philippines.
March 26 -- enrichment session
March 28, April 1
Brooklyn, 1991
Ethnic Newswatch Search.
Discuss Background
Read Elie Weisel, "Night," and "The Other, The Brother and the Almost the Same" (on reserve)
April 4 -- Fires in the Mirror screening
Interview with Anna Deveare Smith at http://www.gigaplex.com/celebs/smith.htm
Review of Smith's "Voices at Twilight" -- http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/pmc1issue.194review-1.194
April 7 Creating Community Task Force (Handout and resource list to come)
Project Presentations due April 22 and 25
Review
Final
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