Fall 2009 Course Section Descriptions

Katharina Altpeter-Jones
Assistant Professor of German
Core 106-06
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Quests for Knowledge and the Discovery of the Self
Humans search. They search for food, shelter, a mate. They seek love, adventure, recognition, wealth. They desire knowledge, freedom, salvation, immortality. Life, it would seem, is in its essence a great search. It is in this spirit, that I invite you to explore and discover. The terrain we will explore is a slate of texts that taken together help us approach one of the most fundamental human questions: What does it mean to be human and how do we live humanely in this world and among our fellow human beings? Thus the authors whose works we will be reading and the literary characters they create venture on quests—for the meaning of justice and injustice for example (Plato); for an understanding of what is (Descartes); and for and understanding of the responsibility a dispassionate observer has when faced with instances of human brutality (Musil). But as we set out to explore how each individual text approaches such enduring human questions, we will also journey on a much more personal quest, a quest towards understanding how to better “read” our intuitive reactions to texts; a quest towards articulating our thoughts more clearly in speaking and in writing; a quest, in short, towards and understanding of who we are as intellectuals, i.e. as individuals engaging in/with thought and reason.
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Susan Cohen
Adjunct Professor of Humanities
Core 106-07
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Self and Society
This section takes as its primary premise that we are all here, both at Lewis and Clark and in the world, to learn—about the world around us, ourselves, and our communities. What is the nature of human being, and how has that manifested in some key literary expressions of the Western philosophical tradition? Is there such a thing as “human nature”—that is, universally understood--and how has it been apprehended by the authors we will read this term? What do we mean when we talk about something called the Western canon, and why is its relevance debated today? In this course, we will explore the ways in which the foundational literature of the West can be understood to continue to inform our knowledge of the world around us as well as our fundamental understandings of self. Understanding the philosophical roots of the Western tradition is vital to understanding how and why the world operates as it does today, and I take it as a primary endeavor for a sound liberal arts education. We will explore this history and knowledge together this fall, through discussion, debate, and critical and close reading of texts--including literature from outside the Western tradition and outside the normative view presented by mostly male authors.
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Kimberly Brodkin
Visiting Assistant Professor of History / Gender Studies
CORE 106-08
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Transgressions and Transformations
This section is concerned with paths to self-discovery and the quest for knowledge—a journey much like your own in coming to Lewis & Clark College. This semester we will examine a series of texts that relate to grand questions in the liberal arts. We will ask how we know what we know, what it means to create our own sense of authority and to challenge received wisdom, and how we are transformed by our interactions with others. Some of the books we will read this semester may be familiar to you. But the richness of these texts allows us to pick them up repeatedly, discovering them in a fresh light with each reading.
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Rebecca Copenhaver
Associate Professor of Philosophy
CORE 106-09
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Wisdom & Folly
Why didn't you go to Engineering (Business, Nursing...) school instead of Lewis & Clark College? In this section, we explore one of the fundamental tenets of liberal arts education: the claim that successful human life does not require just expertise; it requires wisdom. According to Immanuel Kant, in "What Is Enlightenment?" we can never escape from effective enslavement by others who would use and manipulate us unless and until we learn to exercise individual and autonomous judgment. But such judgment does not mean simply believing whatever one feels like believing, rejecting all authority-"going it alone." Those who do may act so foolishly as actually to destroy any chance they might have had to flourish, in the only life they will ever have to live. So what follies control us, and how can we be free of them? And what would life look like if we could really become wise, instead of merely developing our expertise? This section explores great ideas less through tight reading of a few texts than an expansive reading of many texts. We'll try to grasp a big picture about wisdom and folly by taking a whirlwind tour through many complete, important texts.
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Chana Cox
Senior Lecturer of Humanities
CORE 106-03
MWF 10:20-11:20am
and
CORE 106-10
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Ghost Stories
Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a story about a man who dances with ghosts. We all live in a world of ghosts. According to Pirsig, even the “Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. . . .The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. . . . We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us.” Our minds are “nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.... Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.” In this section, we will visit with some of those ghosts of the past while they pursue and are pursued by their own ghosts. We will travel with a writer of computer manuals across a country as he is pursued by a ghost from his past, and as he pursues, to the point of madness, the ghost of reason itself. We will stand witness for Socrates who 2300 years earlier continued in his own relentless pursuit of the ghost of reason even though it would lead to his death. We will sit and meditate with René Descartes as he seeks to exorcize all the ghosts of the past in his single-minded pursuit of the ghost of certainty. We will watch as Aeneas, guided by the ghosts of Troy, overcomes incredible obstacles in order to plant the seeds for a city on Palatine Hill. Finally, we will watch as Victor Frankenstein drives himself across the frozen arctic pursued by and in pursuit of a creature of his own making. Together we will consider the ways in which these ghosts find their place in our consciousness.
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Eddie Cushman
Visiting Professor of Philosophy
CORE 106-25
MWF 9:10-10:10am
and
CORE 106-20
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Somewhere Between the Beasts and the Gods
This section will be a collaborative inquiry into some of the deepest questions about the human condition, informed by texts that have profoundly shaped our understanding of what it means to be human. One promising strategy for better understanding our humanity involves systematic exploration of liminal cases—anthropomorphic gods; humans who aspire to divinity, or who have been made in the image of God; beasts and monsters who are in respects recognizably human; creatures who have been made in the image of man, and who wish to fully embody our humanity; humans and gods dominated by their darker, bestial sides; and humans who have been transmuted into monstrous forms, where the status of their humanity remains tenuous and troubling. Exploring the significance of such liminal cases will be one of our major themes this semester.
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David Galaty
Adjunct Professor of Humanities
CORE 106-05
MWF 11:30-12:30pm
and
CORE 106-11
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Ghost Stories
Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a story about a man who dances with ghosts. We all live in a world of ghosts. According to Pirsig, even the “Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. . . .The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. . . . We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us.” Our minds are “nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.... Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.” In this section, we will visit with some of those ghosts of the past while they pursue and are pursued by their own ghosts. We will travel with a writer of computer manuals across a country as he is pursued by a ghost from his past, and as he pursues, to the point of madness, the ghost of reason itself. We will stand witness for Socrates who 2300 years earlier continued in his own relentless pursuit of the ghost of reason even though it would lead to his death. We will sit and meditate with René Descartes as he seeks to exorcize all the ghosts of the past in his single-minded pursuit of the ghost of certainty. We will watch as Aeneas, guided by the ghosts of Troy, overcomes incredible obstacles in order to plant the seeds for a city on Palatine Hill. Finally, we will watch as Victor Frankenstein drives himself across the frozen arctic pursued by and in pursuit of a creature of his own making. Together we will consider the ways in which these ghosts find their place in our consciousness.
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Karen Gross
Assistant Professor of English
CORE 106-12
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Inventing Ways of Knowing
“Invention” derives from the Latin word invenere, meaning “to come upon, to find, to discover.” This etymology is strikingly contrary to the modern sense of “invention” as “to derive, contrive, or make up.” Which meaning is accurate for how we invent knowledge? That is, how do we make sense of the world around us? Is knowledge something that we assemble ourselves through our sensory experiences? Or does true knowledge preexist outside of us? Where does authority lie, with received tradition or empirical observation? And what is the present generations’ responsibility to the past? These are some of the questions we will answer this semester. We’ll be encountering works from various periods, ranging from the Hebrew Bible to the Victorian era, that all offer different perspectives on how we can learn what is true—if there is indeed a single truth.
This section also seeks to improve your abilities as a thinker and a writer. Along with analyzing our texts in relation to the course’s themes, we will also evaluate readings for how an argument is made effectively and how we can practice those skills necessary to convince our readers (e.g. clearly presented evidence, logically written paragraphs, grammatically correct sentences). What will become apparent is that the same methods that make literary, religious, and philosophical works effective are also necessary for the analytical arguments you construct in your essays, namely memorable description, a clear point of view, the articulation of a thesis, and the organization of evidence.
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Jerry Harp
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
CORE 106-13
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Traditions and Transformations
This section explores various of the ways that knowledge has been structured, conceived of, challenged, and explored in a variety of traditions—Jewish, Greek, Roman, Christian, etc. As we shall soon see, none of these traditions is ever really singular; thus, we shall also explore ways that traditions confront each other, intersect, mix, synthesize, shift, and continue to develop. Discussions also will explore ways that these traditions continue to shift, develop, and influence parts of the contemporary world. Besides exploring the above-named traditions and texts, we shall also explore—through in-class discussions, exams, and writing projects—ways that we structure, conceive of, challenge, and explore our own thinking.
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Maureen Healy
Associate Professor of History
CORE 106-14
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Ghosts and Selves
According to Robert Pirsig, “Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. . . . The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn’t a human invention. . . . We see what we see because these ghosts show it to us.” Our minds are “nothing more than the voices of thousands and thousands of these ghosts from the past.... Ghosts trying to find their place among the living.” In this course, we will visit with some of these ghosts of the past while they pursue and are pursued by their own ghosts. We will travel with a writer of computer manuals across a country as he is pursued by a ghost from his past, and as he pursues the ghost of reason itself. We will follow medieval pilgrim Margery Kempe’s journey to fulfill the call of the Holy Ghost. We will sit and meditate with René Descartes as he seeks to exorcize all the ghosts of the past in his single-minded pursuit of the ghost of certainty. We will watch as Aeneas, guided by the ghosts of Troy, overcomes incredible obstacles in order to plant the seeds for a city on Palatine Hill. We will stand witness for Socrates who, even as he is pursued by oracular ghosts, continues in his relentless pursuit of wisdom and self-sacrifice. We will watch as Victor Frankenstein drives himself across the frozen arctic pursued by and in pursuit of a creature of his own making. Finally we will read Franz Kafka, and follow Gregor Samsa’s struggle with creature and self. Throughout we will consider how past and present selves haunt the mind, and the ways in which ghosts find their place in our consciousness.
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John Holzwarth
Assistant Professor of Political Science
CORE 106-15
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Decisions in the Dark
A famous allegory in Book VII of Plato’s Republic depicts education as a path out of a cave of darkness and intellectual confinement into a realm of light and wisdom. The image has inspired students and teachers alike across the ages, but they have often overlooked its most troubling aspect: education is a lifelong process, and so for all our aspirations to wisdom, it remains mostly fugitive while we fumble through varying shades of intellectual darkness. If wisdom is a goal for a lifetime, will it arrive too late to be helpful? Is there any way to live in the meantime without folly? Will I fare better by trusting myself or looking for guidance from those wiser than me?
As the name suggests, “Exploration and Discovery” is primarily a course about journeys and processes, rather than destinations and final states. All of the texts we read in one way or another describe attempts to derive a principled method through life’s uncertainties. We will observe Aeneas’s literal voyage through uncharted waters, Descartes’ attempt to demolish philosophy and start over from scratch, biblical encounters with an often inscrutable God, and Joseph K’s attempt to navigate the absurdity of an incomprehensible trial, to name just a few. In noting their approaches, we seek not just a catalog of successes and failures, but a means of assessing them and finding for ourselves a way through a life in the dark.
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Loretta Johnson
Adjunct Professor of Humanities
CORE 16-01
MWF 9:10-10:10am
and
CORE 106-16
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

These Lands Are Made by You and Me
The specific theme of our section is “These Lands Are Made by You and Me,” a phrase derived from Woodie Guthrie’s folk song, but with the twist that we can shape our worlds. We, as readers in the liberal arts, as explorers of our intellectual landscapes, have the power to effect change. Our texts present landscapes--ancient, mythical, national, paradisiacal, sublime--perceived and in some ways constructed by humans. From the Garden of Eden to the sublime of Shelley’s Alps, from the exodus from Egypt to the founding of Rome, from a mathematical flatland to the heights of paradise, from the material of the body to the spirit of the soul, where we live, where we call home, “These Lands” are the focus of our study. These classical texts are grounded in values about home, nation, earth, and beyond. Let us explore them and discover the universal and particular meanings of “Our Lands.”
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Gordon Kelly
Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities / Classical Studies
CORE 106-17
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Reconstructing the Past
This section will examine how man's desire to reconstruct and understand past events (both in human and natural history) profoundly affects our views of the present and future. We will read a wide variety of works that represent attempts to understand the past in some way, whether it be the origins of the universe (Book of Genesis; Gamow’s The Creation of the Universe), the mythological beginnings of a nation (Virgil's Aeneid), a personal discovery of one's own past (Sophocles' Oedipus Rex; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), a historical inquiry (Herodotus' Histories), or even the search to discover the nature of knowledge itself (Plato’s Euthyphro; Descartes' Meditations, Mill’s On Liberty).
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Susan Kirschner
Senior Lecturer of Humanities / English
CORE 107-04
MWF 10:20-11:20am
and
CORE 107-18
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Human Limitation, Human Capacity: An Investigation (or: How to Hear the Mermaids Sing)
In T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Prufrock famously admits that, though he has heard the mermaids singing, he does not think that they will sing to him. He seems to come terribly close to knowledge of the transcendent, but he does not believe in his own capacity to access it: he does not believe it is for him.
What kind of knowledge is for us? And how do we access it? This section explores the various ways that authors have conceived of human capacity and human limitation. As humans, what can we know? What should we know? How should and shouldn’t we pursue knowledge? By considering texts from Jewish, Greek, Roman, and Christian traditions, we will examine a wide variety of perspectives on the capacities of both human individuals and human communities. We will consider ways that these perspectives confront each other, as well as the ways in which they intersect, mix, and synthesize.
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Oren Kosansky
Assistant Professor of Anthropology
CORE 107-19
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

New Worlds and Old
The liberal arts tradition invites us to reflect critically on our own lives through consideration of works produced in previous and distant worlds. It is this process, which one philosopher has characterized as “the understanding of the self by detour of the other,” that will characterize our Exploration and Discovery in this section. Towards this end, we will examine seminal works - in religion, literature, philosophy, and mathematics - that are situated between worlds separated by time and space, but also by intellectual tradition, cultural difference, and political antagonism. We will pay particular attention to the ways these works express and navigate encounters between the close and distant, the familiar and the foreign, the new and the old.
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Michael Mirabile
Visiting Assistant Professor of English
CORE 106-21
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Laws, Crimes, and Monsters
In this section we will examine key texts in the Western tradition, placing special emphasis on questions of law and criminality. Monstrosity, the third term of our thematic focus, will be understood as the ultimate embodiment of the transgression of nature, the sacred, and of social constructions of group identity. We will address the place of normalizing and transgressive forces in society from antiquity to the twentieth century.
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Will Pritchard
Assistant Professor of English
CORE 106-22
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

New Worlds and Old
The liberal arts tradition invites us to reflect critically on our own lives by considering works produced in previous and distant worlds. It is this process, which one philosopher has characterized as “the understanding of the self by detour of the other,” that will characterize our Exploration and Discovery in this course. Towards this end, we will examine seminal works - in religion, literature, philosophy, and mathematics - that are situated between worlds separated by time and space, but also by intellectual tradition, cultural difference, and political antagonism. We will pay particular attention to the ways these works express and navigate encounters between the close and distant, the familiar and the foreign, the new and the old.
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Maureen Reed
Adjunct Professor of Humanities
CORE 106-02
MWF 9:10-10:20am
and
CORE 106-23
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Conversations of Consequence
This section will provide you with an introduction to the Western humanistic tradition as well as the intellectual practices of critical thinking, analytical writing, and intensive discussion that will define your work as a liberal arts student at Lewis and Clark College. Along with CORE 106 students enrolled in other sections, we will take on the ambitious project of reading a group of “core” texts and engaging in questions about what they mean, how they fit together, and why they matter. With this last issue particularly in mind, we will conclude the course with a look at how writers from diverse American backgrounds have invoked and responded to some of the key issues raised by our core texts—such as the pursuit of knowledge, justice, and power—in more recent times.
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Stepan Simek
Associate Professor of Theatre
CORE 106-24
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

CREATION MYTHS
Humanity exists, but an individual, a society, a culture, and a civilization “creates itself.” The texts that we are reading are, to a larger or lesser degree, self-conscious attempts to create oneself, one’s society, civilization, and culture by means of myths, stories, ruminations, etc.

The section is divided into four distinct parts. Part One, “Where the @#!* Do We Come From” explores two “stories” of the origin of a society and the individual. Part two, “Me and the Higher Power (whatever “power” it may be)” looks at several possible ways in which the newly “invented” individual accommodates him or herself in an equally newly “invented” society. Part three, “What the @#!* Do We Know” examines several texts that try to position the individual and the society in relationship with the unknown and unknowable God, and at the same time tries to reconcile possibility of knowledge with the existence of the unknowable. And finally, Part Four “The Monster Within and Without” looks at the “monsters” that may or may not turn against us as we strive to know more about ourselves, about the world that surrounds us, and as we try to learn about the unknowable, and to create new myths of our existence.
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Mary Szybist
Assistant Professor of English
CORE 106-26
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Human Limitation, Human Capacity: An Investigation (or: How to Hear the Mermaids Sing)
In T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” Prufrock famously admits that, though he has heard the mermaids singing, he does not think that they will sing to him. He seems to come terribly close to knowledge of the transcendent, but he does not believe in his own capacity to access it: he does not believe it is for him.
What kind of knowledge is for us? And how do we access it? This section explores the various ways that authors have conceived of human capacity and human limitation. As humans, what can we know? What should we know? How should and shouldn’t we pursue knowledge? By considering texts from Jewish, Greek, Roman, and Christian traditions, we will examine a wide variety of perspectives on the capacities of both human individuals and human communities. We will consider ways that these perspectives confront each other, as well as the ways in which they intersect, mix, and synthesize.
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Pauls Toutonghi
Assistant Professor of English
CORE 106-27
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

New Worlds, Old Worlds
The liberal arts tradition invites us to reflect critically on our own lives. It also compels us to consider works produced in previous and distant worlds. And, importantly, the liberal arts tradition offers us texts—centuries upon centuries of texts. And these texts have the capability of changing our current words. They can open worlds of possible meaning, open new modes of being-in-the-world.This is what Paul Ricoeur termed: “Self-understanding by means of the long detour of interpretation.”
In our section we will examine works—in religion, in literature, in philosophy, and in mathematics—that are situated between worlds. We will pay particular attention to the ways these works express and navigate encounters between the close and distant, the familiar and the foreign, the new and the old. We will read texts that are separated by time and space—but also by intellectual tradition, by cultural difference, and by political antagonism.
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Ben Westervelt
Associate Professor of History
CORE 106-28
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Narratives of Human Being
An idiosyncratic collection of classic texts, this section will explore some efforts to characterize what it means to be human. We will look at some of the formative (and often competing) pressures that narrators have identified, such as reason, emotion, passion and duty, free will and grace, fate, autonomy, and destiny. The first section, "Identity and Experience," tracks these themes as they develop and are adapted in "tradition trajectories" from the Hebrew Bible through Dante's Divine Comedy. The texts in the second section, "Identity and Experiment," will illuminate how these traditions fare when our authors, from Descartes to Shelly's Frankenstein, find a new and dominant place for reason, subordinating or replacing the authority of both antiquity and religion. We will end with some reflections about the humanities, the liberal arts, science and your education.
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Kristi Williams
Adjunct Professor of Humanities
CORE 106-29
MWF 1:50-2:50pm

The Power of the Master Narrative
The general focus of this section will be on the concept/role/power of “metanarrative,” or master narrative, as we find it reflected in the texts that we will study. Metanarrative has been defined in a variety of ways, most simply perhaps, as “a set of beliefs applied universally that is unquestioned by the individual and/or group holding those beliefs.” Our exploration of the creation and prevalence of these narratives will lead us into considerations of the power of "authority" and of the individual in the construction of a given "reality."