Spring 2003: Core Humanities 1001-016
T 6.10-8.50 SAC 120
Hugh Ormsby-Lennon, SAC 466 Office Hours TR 1.00-2.30 (and by appt)
COMMUNICATION: E-mail: hugh.ormsby-lennon@villanova.edu (this is best). Feel free to call me directly at home: 215-592-8102. A phone-call there is more immediately effective than one to my office: x94655. Please remember to consult the syllabus and other materials (available through my home page, itself available from the class page).
CORE HUMANITIES
This class takes its place in the second sequence of Villanova’s flagship classes on western civilization–Core Humanities 1000 and 1001–as viewed from a Catholic and Augustinian perspective. In the Fall semester students will complete the Academic Integrity Tutorial during the first three weeks of classes; in the Spring semester students will complete the Quest Information Literacy Tutorial. The class is Writing Intensive (see below); each student will receive How to Write a College Paper, an excellent guide recently prepared by staff from the university’s Writing Center. This class is organized around “The Portfolio Method.” For details of this and for other “Protocols” requisite for the successful completion of this class, please see below.
CLASS DESCRIPTION
Most historians agree that “the modern age”—indeed “modernity” itself—begins with the philosophical and scientific investigations of Rene Descartes and Francis Bacon at the outset of the seventeenth century. It may, at first, seem easy to see what is modern about “modernity”—its dreams of progress, its emphasis upon technological advancement, the conviction that people’s behavior will come to match the material improvement of their lives—but how can we square such ideologies of modernism with Augustinian perceptions of original sin? Much of our discussion will be devoted to exploring such problems, both in the authors on the syllabus and in light of news stories which bring us daily reports both of meliorism and of our ineradicable sinfulness. We shall also investigate how modernity may have influenced our ideas of what it means to be human, exploring shifting views of soul, spirit, body, identity, personality. . . .
Students should reflect upon what “modernity” and “the modern” mean to them and should also explore with the help of dictionaries and encyclopedias the different ways in which the words have been used in different contexts (e.g. the histories of art, literature, music, and theology). Are we now living in a “modern” or a “postmodern” age? What meanings can be assigned to “ancient,” “medieval,” “pre-modern,” “early modern,” and “post-modern”?
The introductory readings and screenings have been introduced to dramatize ideas of consciousness and materialism in Descartes (cogito ergo sum, res cogitans, res extensa, artificial intelligence) and of the movement of technological (and, perhaps, spiritual) progress towards utopia in Bacon. Students should note, however, that novelist Philip K. Dick and directors Ridley Scott and David Fincher see the future, which reflects our present, as a dystopia.
READING LIST (in the order of discussion)
Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Ballantine, 1968)
John Cottingham, Descartes (Routledge, 1999)
Dave Robinson and Chris Garratt, Introducing Descartes (Totem, 1998)
Jonathan Swift, Writings (Norton, 1973)
Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (Norton, 1986)
Francis Bacon, “The Four Idols” and The New Atlantis (xerox distribution)
Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats (available from instructor)
Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: I: My Father Bleeds History (Pantheon, 1986)
William Rankin, Introducing Newton (Totem, 1994)
Voltaire, Letters concerning the English Nation (Oxford, 1994)
Voltaire, Candide (Dover, 1991)
US Constitution (Oak Hill, 1999)
T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land and Other Poems, ed, F. Kermode (Penguin, 1998)
[Recommended: Richard Lanham, Revising Prose (4th ed., Allyn & Bacon)]
(Please note that there are links from my home page that offer not only “First Aid” with the works on the syllabus (Descartes, Voltaire, Franklin) but also “tips” about writing Journals and Papers. Students are also encouraged to take notes in class; these will help your performance on the final examination.)
SYLLABUS
(Please note that several classes have been assigned to several works; this indicates that discussion may take more or less time than can easily be predicted.)
Jan 14 Introduction to class. “The Dream of Mechanical Life.” Screening of Fight Club. Students should consider the film has to tell us about our ideas of modernity, progress, mind-body dualism, the evil demon, and the Cartesian cogito. Students will also begin reading Cottingham’s Descartes and Robinson/Garratt’s Introducing Descartes. Students should also begin reading Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? upon which (Sir) Ridley Scott based his 1982 movie Blade Runner. We shall be watching “the director’s cut” (1991). You are encouraged to watch videos of Fight Club and of Blade Runner at home.
Jan 21 Finish screening Fight Club (if necessary). We shall begin our analysis of the philosophy of Rene Descartes, based on Cottingham and Robinson/Garratt. Begin screening of Blade Runner. Question: How much do the director Ridley Scott and the novelist Philip K. Dick owe to the philosophy of Rene Descartes?
Jan 28 Finish screening of Blade Runner (if necessary). Complete the philosophy of Descartes. Reconsideration of indebtedness of novelist Philip K. Dick and director Ridley Scott to Descartes?
Attacks on Descartes from a conservative Christian perspective. Swift, Writings, 348-349 (Descartes belongs in a lunatic asylum); 389 (death of the Modern philosopher Descartes, not Bacon, at the hands of the Ancient Philosopher, Aristotle); 168-9 (Descartes’s philosophy merely a “new Fashion”–or “paradigm”?). Mind/Body Dualism–Swift on the body: Swift Writings, pp. 535-40 (“Strephon and Chloe,” “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going to Bed”)
Improving the Modern City–Swift and Franklin: Swift, Writings, pp. 518-520 (“A Description of Morning,” “A Description of a City Shower”); Franklin, Autobiography, 105-108 (cleaning up Philadelphia and London).First Paper (Museum Visit) due.
Feb 4 Bacon, “The Four Idols” and The New Atlantis (xeroxes).
A Critique of the New Science: Swift, Writings, pp. 107-110 (the horrors of technological progress); 139-147 (how the flying island works and the violent uses to which it is put); 152-164 (the Baconian research academy as madhouse); pp. 177-184 (the dream or nightmare of longevity). The New Science at Work: Franklin, Autobiography, p. 90 (measurement); 130-33 (experiments); 140-42 (observation).
Feb 11 Marina Carr, By the Bog of Cats. We shall go, as a class, to see the production of this play at Vasey Theater on campus. Second Paper (Descartes, Fight Club, and Blade Runner) due.
Feb 18 Visit by Marina Carr. Please have your questions ready.
Art Spiegelman, Maus
Swift, A Modest Proposal, “Strephon and Chloe,” Writings, pp. 502-509, 540-47.
Feb 25 Continue previous week’s readings (if necessary).
Rankin, Introducing Newton (also bring Robinson/Garratt, Introducing Descartes)
Voltaire, Letters Concerning the English Nation, XI-XVII, pp. 44-86: inoculation; Bacon; Locke; Descartes and Newton; Newton. (For Franklin on inoculation see Autobiography, p. 83).
Third Paper (on By the Bog of Cats) due; First Journals due.
Mar 6 Midterm Vacation
11 Discussion of student papers and extracts from them.
Voltaire, Letters I-X, pp. 9-43 Quakers (why does Voltaire start with Quakers?), Church of England, Presbyterians and heretics, Parliament, Government, Trade. (These Letters comprise Voltaire’s droll plea for toleration and contain his support of “globalization.”)
Swift’s peroration against toleration and nonconformity: Swift, Writings, 340-45 (religious nonconformists as freaks, ancient madmen: compare Voltaire); 345-355 (Madness: why Descartes resembles a mad cultist; why the world is mad); 359-69 (sundry quirks of religious nonconformists). This is wild stuff that can be hard to understand. Is Swift wilder than his adversaries?
Bring Franklin’s Autobiography (so that we can explore his roots in nonconformity)
18 Continue previous week’s readings.
Voltaire, Candide
First Portfolio Method “Reflection Paper” due
25 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (we shall also look at part of the video)
Apr 1 Swift, Gulliver’s Travels (we shall also look at part of the video)
8 Franklin: The Video
Franklin, Autobiography (this can be a tough read [!], so please pay particular attention to the sections that I have starred in the “First Aid for Franklin” on my home page)
Franklin, xeroxes. Bring Swift’s Writings. First Revised Paper due
15 Franklin, Autobiography. Please examine responses to Franklin by such writers as Keats, Melville, Twain, and D. H. Lawrence (at the back of the volume). We shall discuss responses to Franklin. Bring Swift’s Writings
22 Franklin, Autobiography. Introducing Newton, The Declaration of Independence and The Constitution. If the bookstore has (again) failed to order the excellent edition I have ordered, please download copies from the Web. Bring Swift’s Writings.
29 Eliot, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” The Waste Land. FINIS
Fourth Paper due. Journals due. Second Portfolio Method “Reflection Paper” due. Second Revised Paper due. (Deadlines to be established.)
Conferences and the Quest Library Visit have yet to be scheduled.
The Portfolio Method
This course is organized around “the Portfolio Method” (= PM) as that has recently been introduced into the Core Humanities Program. The essence of PM is that students gather ALL of their writings–formal papers, revisions, journals, emails, and anything else–into a special “file” for the class. When students come to conferences with me, they will bring their complete portfolios. They should also bring their portfolios to class.
What will make a humdrum “file” of discrete papers into a “holistic portfolio” are the two “reflection papers” that students will compose about their writing on assigned dates: during the middle of the semester and again at the end of the semester. In these two-page “reflection papers,” students will discuss the challenges, difficulties and achievements they have encountered in writing their formal papers, their revisions, their journals, and anything else. The point of the exercise is to make students more “critical” about their writing, that is, they will write, reflectively, about the challenges they have encountered in writing.
Why have students (or why have they not) realized their ambitions in writing and revising their papers and in composing their journals? What are the problems that they need to address and overcome as thinkers and as writers? What are their strengths as writers that they have now come to recognize? What have they learned from the instructors’ comments or from class-room discussion of their colleagues’ papers or extracts from them? If students have discussed their papers with room-mates, friends, and family, they should indicate how those comments helped define their achievements and their goals? How has revising of papers helped students’ sense of greater mastery? Are students conscious that they are better at one kind of paper than another? If so, why? Each of the two “reflection papers” will receive a grade; when successfully undertaken, “reflection papers” can contribute 5-10% to the student’s final grade.
The PM is designed to make students conceptualize their strengths (and, indeed, their weaknesses) as writers. Thus this class does not simply require a series of discrete papers but encourages students to complete its writing requirements with a growing sense of their future as writers, a future that they can take into other classes and, indeed, into the real world itself. Of course, weaknesses that are correctly diagnosed will have to be treated, if not during the class then in the future. (Weaknesses can range from the mechanical–spelling, grammar, and punctuation–to larger issues like diction and the organization of papers.)
Further aspects of the PM will be discussed during the semester in a series of “hand-outs” to be circulated.
Every student is required to activate her VU e-mail addresses and its forwarding capacity. Students are required to check their mail regularly. Important information about paper topics, class-discussion, and other important matters will be communicated by e-mail. (See also below: class communication.)
Writing assignments: Topics will be assigned in consultation with members of the seminar. All papers must be typed, except for those completed in the classroom. The arrival of late essays will be noted and the student’s final grade will be penalized accordingly. Students must retain a printed copy of their papers. The assumption that a copy of an essay will continue to reside on a diskette or a hard drive does not remain an acceptable substitute for hard copy. In the event that a paper goes unaccountably astray, it is the student’s responsibility to have a replacement. Papers should, ideally, be handed to me in the classroom; but, in certain circumstances, they can be handed to a secretary in the English Department (please make sure that she has noted the time and date the essay was submitted. Papers can also be slipped under my office door (but this is the least desirable mode of submission). Because of viruses NO essays will be accepted on e-mail. With the instructor’s prior approval, papers may be faxed on certain occasions.
Formal essays should have a title and an epigraph. For further advice about my criteria for a successful essay, please see the link to “Tips on Writing” on my home page. Those tips will be further updated with links to comparable advice provided by fellow instructors in the Core Humanities Program and in the English Department. Other useful information about papers and journals is provided from links on my home page. For example, there are links to “Keeping a Journal” by Professor Evan Radcliffe and to “Effective Use of Quotation from Other Writers” by Professor Debra Romanick and Professor Margaret Boerner.
A Writing Intensive Course. This seminar is designated “Writing Intensive” by the University and thus requires 4000 words from each student in the course of the semester. This adds up to some thirty pages @ roughly 200 words per page; some students write more words per page, others less, but I keep a tally of each student’s productivity in my file on her.
Journals
Students are sometimes perplexed by the function and the purpose of their Journals. These are not primarily designed to invite students to write about informal topics such as shopping trips or nights out or Thanksgiving and other family occasions, although such occasions may indeed prompt a more analytic response that would make an appropriate Journal entry. Some help with Journals may be found on a link from Professor Evan Radcliffe’s Home Page.
If in doubt about the contents of their Journals, students should concentrate upon their responses to works on the syllabus. Such responses–more informal than those in the assigned papeers–may well provide germs of ideas and organization for the papers themselves. Other topics I particularly look for (and indeed expect to see) are:
(i) An account of a university-sponsored event (particularly lectures, plays, concerts but also (and importantly) literary readings, especially during Villanova’s Literary Festival (Spring Semester). Please check the University’s calendar for events; the calendar appears on the University Page which gives the link to our Class Page.
(ii) Movie or television reviews (that transcend the mere statement of opinions or merely personal responses). Remember that the university sponsors a Cultural Film Series: movies are screened on Saturdays at 7 p.m., Sundays at 3.30 &7 p.m., and Mondays at 7 p.m. (after which there is a lecture on the film). Consult www.culturalfilms.villanova.edu/ or call (610) 519-4750.
(iii) A review of books or other materials (perhaps television documentaries or newspaper articles) that seem relevant to topics discussed in class. Other book reviews are also most acceptable (because they indicate the extra-curricular reading students are undertaking).
(iv) Please feel free suggest to suggest other rubrics that can be added to the aforementioned. For example, an analytic account of your personal involvement in the university’s social programs would also make a good Journal entry.
I recognize that you may not be able to attend all such events, but they make good materials for Journal entries. This class is designed to widen your cultural horizons and these suggestions for your Journals offer good ways of doing so.
The final purpose of Journals is to get students to write in a more informal (but not completely casual) fashion than in their papers. Journals are designed to familiarize students with the tasks and joys of writing itself.
For reasons of clarity, legibility and professionalism, Journals should be completed on the computer screen and presented in hard copy rather than in chicken scratch. This medium will also help students to undertake some revision and clarification before the submission of Journal entries to the instructor.
Journals must be dated; the total page count should be at least fifteen pages, but students are actively encouraged to explore at greater length the topics upon which they have chosen to write. The journals will be collected twice, first at mid-term, and again at the end of the semester. Longer journals of quality will be rewarded..
A helpful discussion of “Keeping a Journal” by one of my colleagues, Professor Evan Radcliffe, is available on a link from my home page.
Classroom discussion: “Speaking across the curriculum”—that is, the encouragement of a student’s ability to speak eloquently and intelligently—has been accorded a new importance on our campuses in America.
Grades: Final grades will be based primarily upon the performance of undergraduates as writers in their essays and in the final examination. I acknowledge a recurrent paradox: that some students who write well are not active in classroom discussion. The requirement that all students contribute to classroom discussion is designed to smoke the laconic out of their lairs.
All students are required to revise at least one paper. The new grade will not replace the old one, but improvements will be registered in a new grade which should improve the undergraduate’s overall grade. Please note that a revision will NOT be accepted as a revision UNLESS it is accompanied by a copy of the original paper with my suggestions and corrections upon it. Undergraduates are encouraged to visit the Writing Center; I shall keep a copy of the peer counselor’s report in each student’s individual file.
Student journals will not be graded, but I shall keep an informal record of student performance. E-mail has become an important part of all our lives; I shall keep a record of each undergraduate’s communications with me. E-mails sent during the course should not be treated as “shopping lists” or as other casual scribbles designed “for your eyes only.” Grammar, spelling, and general literacy will thus be scrutinized.
The final examination is open-book: bring notes, syllabi, e-mails, and whatever else you wish to the examination room. In certain circumstances, laptops may be permitted. This examination is important insofar as I am convinced that a student’s performance on the identification and commentary question reflects her familiarity with crucial ideas and themes in the works that we have discussed during the semester. Please note that I often comment in the class-room that “This is an important passage; students should realize that it comprises just the kind of passage that will appear in the identification and commentary question.” (Hint: take notes.) There will also be an essay question on the final. Student essays on the final will provide further indications of a student’s familiarity with works and themes.
A variety of other “imponderables” also enters into the assignment of a final grade. Improvement (particularly in writing) can prove a major consideration. Remember to bring your books to class; remember to take your books out of your book-bag; remember to open your books to the pages that we are discussing. Don’t fall asleep in the classroom; don’t stare blankly out the window; or don’t endeavor, surreptitiously, to catch up with work for other classes. Don’t chatter with, or pass clandestine notes to, your colleagues. Read the newspaper at home, please. A student’s overall attitude is important, and it will be noted. Please remember, too, that grades in every class must display some “curving.”
Grading is an art not a science. I refrain from assigning “cut-and-dried” percentages for written work, for classroom discussion, for the final examination, and for other components of the semester’s grade. I do, however, expect a competent performance on the final examination. (Taking into account “speaking across the curriculum,” I offer as a rule of thumb of percentages: 40% writing; 20% final exam; 15% class discussion; 15% journal; 10% reflection papers.) Rest assured that I try to be scrupulously fair and, all things being equal, invoke mercy as well as justice.
Conferences: At least one conferences will be scheduled with each student. You are expected not only to be on time but to have something to say about your work. “Blowing off” a conference will adversely affect a student’s cumulative grade. If circumstances prevent you from keeping an appointment on the day of our conference, call the English Department secretary and leave a message; I do not have e-mail facilities in my office so an e-mail will not reach me there. Conference appointments will be faithfully observed (and cumulative grades will suffer from any cavalier disregard by students). Come to conferences with something to say; don’t stare at me like a fish. My time is valuable; yours should be too. Would you present yourself for an important job interview in a casual or unprepared fashion?
Class communication: Students are expected to read their e-mails (since the e-classroom becomes more of a reality each year). If you arrive in class and find yourself in a minority of one (or two or even three) as regards a missive from me, there is clearly something wrong with your communication system! Often I make significant remarks in e-mails about the works we have discussed. The serious student will keep a record of these. Students (particularly those who have been absent from class, for whatever reason) are required to remain familiar with syllabus and fresh postings about the class.
Academic honesty: Students will be familiar with the university’s Academic Integrity Tutorial. Given the enticements of the Web (schoolsucks.com etc), plagiarism seems to have gone high tech. You should realise, however, that your instructors’ search engines are awesomely powerful . . . At a more old-fashioned level, professors pass students’ papers around and I may well have read “that paper you borrowed from a friend who submitted it to another class.” We shall probably be visited by a member of the university administration who will discuss, in greater detail, the principles of academic honesty, the search-and-destroy techniques for rooting out academic dishonesty, and the procedures for dealing with reports of student dishonesty that have been formally lodged by instructors.
You are required to familiarize yourself with the latest statements of the university’s policies on academic honesty. You will read material in the primer assigned by Core on plagiarism and using work not your own. Pay particular attention to problems annotating work not your own. In this class, I design my paper topics in such a way as to discourage any temptation to plagiarism. The final is tamper-proof.
You should be aware that I have reported students for plagiarism in the past and that I shall not hesitate to do so again. The university protocols for dealing with my reports protect the interests of both professor and student, but they are, necessarily, time-consuming and labor-intensive. Far better that you should avoid, scrupulously, any suspicion of plagiarism on your part. Let me underscore my previous remarks about the web. Students should be aware that powerful search-engines have been devised for detecting any plagiarism from materials on the www; the resources of the web may seem to make it easier to pull of plagiarism, but they make academic dishonesty far more detectable.
Etiquette and More: Gentlemen may wear hats. Undergraduates are requested to eschew the use of bubble-gum in the classroom and during conferences. (Chewing gum, by contrast, is permissible.) Unexplained absences, as well as late arrivals to class, will be recorded by the instructor. (If you arrive late in class or turn in a late paper, please confirm that I have made appropriate changes in my record book.) Please familiarize yourself with university policy on absences that lack a legitimate excuse.
Students can, alas, encounter sudden crises in their lives—I am always sympathetic—but please do not wait until the end of the semester to explain why you haven’t attended class or submitted papers. I am not nosey about your personal dramas, but a call from the University’s Counseling Center or a doctor’s note will help substantiate your explanations. The university requires that students be prepared to document their reasons for missing class. Please note university deadlines for “WXing a class.” If your name appears on my grade sheet and you have, for whatever reason, disappeared from class without leaving a paper trail, I gather from the Registrar’s Office that your capacity to receive a passing grade will be very gravely compromised.
Conference appointments will be faithfully observed (and cumulative grades will suffer from any cavalier disregard displayed by undergraduates). Students who neglect to bring their books invite summary extrusion from the classroom. Students (particularly those who have been absent from class) are required to remain familiar with the syllabus and with fresh postings on my home page. I recognize that seniors are susceptible to “senioritis” as they search for jobs in the real world. But I am still required to grade your performance in this class. Please bear that in mind.
Academic Accommodations for Qualified Students with Disabilities. “It is the policy of Villanova University to make reasonable academic accommodations for qualified individuals with disabilities. If you are a person with a disability and wish to request accommodations to complete your course requirements, please make an appointment with the course professor as soon as possible to discuss the request. If you would like information on documentation requirements, contact the Office of Learning Support Services at 610-519-5636, or visit the office in Geraghty Hall.