This one-credit multidisciplinary course in seminar format is designed for honors students preparing to write their honors theses.

It focuses on the notion of individuality, seeking to understand if our insistence on it is merely an illusion, a by-product of society, or a real mental or social construct (among other possibilities). Points of view will be offered from such disciplines as English & French Literature (Sartre's No Exit, Ibsen's A Doll's House, and Sophocles' Antigone), business and computer science (Brown & Duguid's The Social Life of Information), sociology, economics, and gender studies (Elizabeth Fox-Genovese's Feminism Without illusions: A Critique of Individualism), linguistics (Mark Turner's The Literary Mind), education (E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy), and film (Amnesty International's Closet Land).

Beginning with the presentation and discussion of Closet Land (weeks 1 & 2), students will each make an individual selection of one of the three plays mentioned above and then read assigned selections from the other two (week 3). They will learn through intensive analysis, synthesis, sharing of weekly essays (400-700 words), and group discussion of such issues as

(a) the artist whose "Closet Land" creativity represents a threat to "acceptable" social stability

(b) the ongoing battle in education to appreciate the needs of the individual student in the context of an acculturated society (Hirsch) (week 4)

(c) the notion of the human being as a homo economicus and its relationship to society in general, though special attention will also be paid to the female gender (Fox-Genovese) (week 5)

(d) learning as an individually isolated or social phenomenon and its relationship to reach, reciprocity, community, and distance learning (Brown & Duguid) (week 6)

(e) the manner in which the individual uses socially created language to tell unique (individual) as well as group (social) stories (Turner) (week 7).

Related issues will include (a) whether there can be moral responsibility without political engagement and (b) interrelationships of advances in science, the law, the arts, and social & individual morality as revealed in the various disciplinary means of inquiry. Throughout, we will try to appreciate the validity of the individual as free citizen as well as social prisoner. The weekly sharing of essays will promote enhancement of the students' written and oral skills, independent thinking, and group discussion. An oral presentation/final paper (week 8), to be developed from the essays and weekly discussions, will challenge the students to relate their responses to the intellectual content of the issues raised.

Before writing and submitting your essays, be sure to consider the following analytical questions:

I. Reading the work and understanding the author

• Definitions. List words and terms that need discussion.
• Major themes and key points (of the author--your own ideas will come later). For example, what is the claim? Is it an interpretation? a position on a controversial issue? a proposal for the solution of a complex problem? How is the claim developed? What values is the author applying? Is (s)he approaching this as a question of truth, opinion, or disciplinary clarification? How is (s)he thinking about this subject? Highlight points you feel need discussion.

II. Analyzing the author's thoughts

• Summarize the argument
  • What's the problem, issue or question being addressed?
  • What words are used to describe the problem precisely?
  • Why is (s)he doing this?
  • What will (s)he do with the conclusions?
• Evaluate the strength of the evidence. (These are your statements).
  • What's the author's prior knowledge and experience?
  • Source of data? (subject to bias?)
  • Are interpretations and judgements firmly grounded in work of others?
  • Would you rate claims as true/correct? untrue? plausible?
  • Is there anything that prevents you from saying whether the claims are true? What?
  • What specific additional data/information do you need?
• Decisions - burden of proof
  • What's your judgement of this work? What points will you accept or reject? Why?
  • In what ways would you have approached the task differently?

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This HTML document created by: Lew Kamm
On: July 25, 2000
Last Revised: Dec. 4, 2003