Great Ideas in Western Culture

Fall, 2005

Professor: Frances Weller Bailey

Office: New Snell Hall 182

Office Hours:

Phone: 268-3969

E-Mail Address: fbailey@clarkson.edu

Books

What's the Course About?

We'll start with a very short story by Franz Kafka, entitled Leopards in the Temple:

Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.

This narrative, which we'll be talking about in class, demonstrates three basic premises of the course:

• that within a given culture, individuals are taught to perceive the world and people around them in ways that the culture has defined as realistic (i.e., correct);
• that human beings understand the world outside themselves only by constructing both individual and cultural narratives about it, bestowing order on all the disparate elements and uniting them into a coherent whole;
• that what we call reality both influences and is a product of those stories.

One thing people of all cultures and all times have in common is their need to make sense of their lives through turning them into narratives. Through stories we give our experiences meaning, conferring a beginning, middle and end on something that previously existed only in the flow of time. Individuals use stories to define themselves and their relationship with their society. Societies, through parents and teachers, tell stories that teach children how to live and what to believe. Religious leaders create systems of myth to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown. Scientists construct elaborate theories to explain the processes of the natural world, constantly modifying those theories to accommodate new knowledge. Politicians use narratives to persuade the governed of the rightness of their leadership and the greatness of their ideas.

By studying the stories people tell, then, we can learn something vital about them, about what they believe and why they believe it. We can study the differences between one culture and another, and through this study gain a better understanding of the ways in which all people, including ourselves, are shaped and defined by the culture that produced them.

This is a writing-intensive course, and therefore you will be putting your ideas into writing as the semester progresses. We will do both formal and informal writing, in and and out of class, based on the understanding that one of the best ways to make ideas your own--or to reject them--is to write about them.

Return to Clarkson Home Page