Course Overview

The CHID Colloquium is a reading/discussion course centered on general problems of knowledge and interpretation that emerge from the historical and comparative study of texts and cultures.

Examining ethnographic and historical accounts, as well as theoretical essays and literary texts that demonstrate a range of disciplinary and cultural interpretive strategies, we shall evaluate some of the methods through which people interpret one another, as well as methods people use to create and interpret knowledge—about themselves and others. We will continue to examine the ways in which these interpretative perspectives are tied to problems of cultural exclusion and inclusion, marginalization and integration. Issues of how/whether we can learn to hear, encounter or represent the voice of the “other” for itself—and not only for ourselves—are connected to social and cultural issues of preserving, protecting and integrating “otherness.” Ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, and gender will loom large in our discussions of the “other.”

This course employs three interconnected critical practices: reading, talking, and writing.

The first objective of the course is to expose students to a wide range of readings that deal, explicitly or implicitly, with problems of interpretation.

Engaging in verbal discussion is crucial to the creation and maintenance of a learning community. The structure of the course is intended to underscore the content by illustrating that what one thinks to be important, or obvious, is not necessarily seen to be so by others. For this reason the student-led discussions are perhaps the most important aspect of the course. For this reason it is also important that the course not be dominated by the professor. Often this “decentered” aspect of the course is the most troublesome for students.

Finally, you will write regularly in response to the readings. Writing is a crucial component of academic thinking, and is a practice that facilitates engagement in, and understanding of, texts and ideas.

 As the quarter progresses we will continue to reflect on the tension between the desire to create clarity and an intellectual honesty which attacks that clarity. We will also reflect on the relative value of developing and using manageable methods on the one hand and critiquing those methods on the other in the process of problem solving. Finally, we will consider the dialog between the value of authority and discipline on the one hand and the critique of authority and discipline on the other.

Required Texts (available at University Bookstore unless otherwise noted):

• Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions

• Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull

• Octavia Butler, Kindred

• Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North

• Linda Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples

• Joe Sacco, Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995

• Course Reader (available at RAMS Copy Center, 4144 University Way NE)

 Assignments and Requirements

 1.) Class Participation and Short Writing Assignments (40% of total course grade)

Consists of three components: attendance, contributions to class discussions, and graded response papers. Please do not underestimate the overall effect that each element of participation will have on your final grade.

Attendance and active discussion are required. Clearly, if you don’t attend class, you won’t be able to contribute to discussions. If you know that you must miss a class, please call or e-mail me before the class. Discussion is one of the central pedagogical methods of this class. You are responsible for doing all of the weekly readings on time (by the Tuesday class meeting) and coming to class with ideas and questions; all of us are responsible for maintaining an environment that is respectful toward others.

Students will turn in typed, double-spaced weekly papers of 2-3 pages for each week’s reading. They are due each Tuesday in class. See attached page for a more detailed description of these papers.

 2) Leading Class Discussion and writing a paper about the experience (30% of total course grade)

Goal: Presentations are an opportunity for a pair of students to structure and facilitate the discussion of an assigned text. If possible, your group should focus on an aspect of the text(s) that is of interest to you, while at the same time addressing the concerns that are central to the text(s). You should facilitate, while not dominating, the discussion, and you should attempt to ensure that members of the group are not being excluded from the conversation.

Structuring your presentation: You may design the structure of the presentation however you see fit: use of questions or activities for the class; presentation of useful background material; etc. Please keep in mind, however, that your primary goal is to facilitate discussion of the text, not to entertain your classmates! If you can both entertain and instruct, wonderful; if you must choose, opt for the latter.

Written Work: You must turn in two documents to Amy: (1) a one-page outline of your proposed discussion, to be handed in by the Monday before your presentation; (2) a two to three-page assessment of your presentation, to be handed in no later than two weeks after the presentation. In this assessment you should discuss your specific goals for the class (what you thought you would accomplish through your lesson plan) as well as any new insights into the course materials you gained through this exercise.

Assessment: Presentations will be assessed according to three criteria: (1) thoroughness and depth of the presentation (did it focus on aspects relevant to the text and class?) (40%); (2) facilitation of class discussion (did the discussion stay at least marginally “on topic,” as that was defined by the student presenters? were class members encouraged to talk?) (30%); (3) written component (30%).

You need not turn in a response paper the week you lead discussion.

 3) Final Paper (30% of course grade)

Students will write a 10-12 page final paper. This paper should take the form either of a critical analysis of an issue (or set of issues) raised by the readings, presentations and discussions or a research project that brings new material to bear on one of these issues. The paper must be newly written for CHID 390 and must be directly related to issues and themes covered by texts and discussions in the course. I strongly suggest that you begin working on this paper early, since it constitutes a substantial portion of your grade.

You must submit a title, a brief description (one paragraph), short outline, and bibliography for this paper by May 18th. The final paper is due Wednesday, June 7th in Padelford B102 (CHID main office) by 5pm.

Schedule of Meetings and Readings

Part I: Models and Methods for “Reading” Cultures

Week I (3/28 and 3/30): The Idea of Culture: Processes and Problems of Cultural Identification and Interpretation

Geertz offers us a look at early efforts at interdisciplinary scholarship. How does he use linguistic and literary theories to study “other” cultures? How does the notion of ethics figure into his methods?

Required Readings (Course Reader)

• Stuart Hall, “Representation, Meaning and Language,” in Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices, ed. Stuart Hall (London and Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997). Read for Tuesday! AND do not use this as your “summary” reading for your paper!

• Clifford Geertz, “Thick Description: Toward and Interpretive Theory of Culture.” In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

• Geertz, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” In The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Week II (4/4 and 4/6): Narrative Production: The “real” vs. the “interpretation”

As Geertz tries to represent the realities of contemporary “others,” these authors raise the question of how we can represent the realities of historical “others.” Are his methods transferable from anthropology to history?

Required Readings (Course Reader)

• Philip Hill, Lacan for Beginners (New York: Writers and Readers, 1997), pp. 40-50, 78-85. do not use this as your “summary” reading for your paper!

• Hayden White, “The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality” Critical Inquiry Autumn 1980.

• Michel Foucault, “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” In Language, Counter-memory, and Practice, Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault. Edited by Donald F. Bouchard. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977.

• Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. (Intro and Chp. 2).
  FYI—document is on page 102.

Week III (4/11 and 4/13): Harnessing Wonder: Construction and Encounter

Greenblatt is a student of Geertz. Can you tell? What tools does he give us for thinking about how cultures interact?

Required Reading

• Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions, The Wonder of the New World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991

Part II: The Politics of Identity, Identification & Interpretation

Week IV (4/18 and 4/20):  Identity and Embodiment in History

Joan Scott asks some key questions about history: “Can the historical narrative—the great story of Western Civilization or American Democracy—sustain the pluralizing of its subject? Can we conceive of a notion of humanity that is not embodied—not, that is, constructed in gendered terms? Can we expand the concept of the human to include different embodiments of it? Is it possible to think about difference without reference to a standard or norm, without establishing a hierarchical ordering?” (196).

Required Reading

·         Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. Please read the following sections:

• Preface to the Revised Edition

• Introduction

• 2. Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis

• 8. The Sears Case (see course reader for supplement!)

• 10. Some More Reflections on Gender and Politics

Week V (4/25 and 4/27): Sex, Science, and Identity

How does Butler take the questions raised by Joan Scott to their theoretical extremes? Is Laqueur able to help make her theories more convincing? How can we apply the theories we have discussed to date to the realm of natural science?

Required Readings (Course Reader)

• Butler, J. (1993). Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of “Sex.” New York & London. Routledge. (intro)

• Laqueur, T. (1990). Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Selections in course reader)

Week VI (5/2 and 5/4): Culture and Power: The Western Construction of the “Other”

Said lays the groundwork for thinking about the ongoing impact of western imperialism on the “Eastern Other.” Smith addresses how academics have perpetuated that “othering” through their methodologies.  While she is writing specifically for indigenous academics, are her ideas useful for a wider academic audience? What can we (as a diverse group of native and non-native, colonized and colonizer students in this class) do with her ideas?

Required Reading (Course Reader)

• Edward Said, “Introduction” and “Redrawn Frontiers, Redefined Issues, Secularized Religion” in Orientalism. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.

• Smith, Linda Tuhiwai (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London & New York: Zed Books Ltd.

Week VII (5/9 and 5/11): Morality/amorality and Aesthetic Interpretation of the “Other”

You can approach these readings in a variety of ways: How is Sacco challenging and/or reinscribing the “orientalist” narrative on the story he tells? What impact do his visual representations have on his presentation of the different groups involved? How does his journalistic perspective inform the construction of this narrative? How does he include himself in his narrative and to what effect?

Required Reading

• McCloud, Scott, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Northampton, MA: Kitchen Sink Press, 1993, pp. 24-93.

• Joe Sacco, Safe Area Gorazde: The War In Eastern Bosnia, 1992-1995.

Week VIII (5/16 and 5/18): Occupying Liminal Spaces

A liminal space is one that is “betwixt and between” other spaces. How are the possibilities and dangers of occupying such spaces represented by the characters of the narrator and Mustafa Said?

Required Reading

·         Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North

Part III: Culture, Memory and Identity: The Past as Fiction, Fact and Collective Memory

Week IX (5/23 and 5/25): Modern Identity and the Echo of the Past

This week brings a new genre into our toolbox—science fiction/fantasy. Is this the only way we can tell the history of people whose voices have been erased by history? Or, as Foucault might argue and Butler seems to suggest, is their history written on our bodies? What does Butler accomplish by retelling a slave narrative through a modern African American woman?

Required Reading

• Butler, Octavia E. (1979). Kindred. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1979.

• Levecq, Christine (2000). Power and repetition: Philosophies of (literary) history in Octavia Butler’s Kindred. Contemporary Literature 41 (3), 525-553.

Week X (5/30 and 6/1): Constructed Memories and the Process of Reconciliation

How does memory promote and inhibit reconciliation? What is truth and in what ways does it matter or not matter in the formulation of an historical narrative? What is the role of narrative in the process of reconciliation?

Required Reading

·         Antjie Krog, Country of My Skull: Guilt, Sorrow, and the Limits of Forgiveness in the New South Africa. New York: Times Books, 1999.

Week XI (6/6 and 6/8): Where Do We Go From Here? Education and the Question of the Moral Imperative

Required Reading

• James, William, “The Will to Believe.” In The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Edited by Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, Ignas K. Skrupskelis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979.

• Clowes, Jim. “If I am killed.” Email, 23 Mar 2003.