UNIV 190: The Clarkson Seminar

Fall, 2013

Professor: Frances Weller Bailey

Office: Snell 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.

Our focus in this course will be on cultural difference: the ways in which each culture's works of the imagination reflect the ideas and assumptions of those within it. We'll proceed roughly chronologically, stopping off at key moments in a history stretching back roughly 4000 years to ancient Sumeria and finishing in the Adirondacks and Iran today. Beyond the texts listed above, we'll be factoring the art, architecture, and economic and political systems of each cultural moment into our understanding of the people whose texts we're reading. Since it is impossible to truly understand a concept without putting it into words, you will regularly put your ideas into writing and, more occasionally, present them to the class.

After completing this class, you should be able to:

• understand and clearly explain the concept of cultural difference;
• situate a literary or artistic text within the culture that produced it;
• demonstrate an improvement in your ability to translate your ideas into writing, with an emphasis on clarity, organization and critical thinking.

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