Course Schedule
| Reading and Revising One's Self | ||
| T, 9/5 | Introduction | Forum writing |
| Th, 9/7 |
Tracy Chapman. "Telling Stories." Patricia Hempl. "Memory and Imagination." I Could Tell You Stories. New York: Norton, 1999. 21-37. Mary Catherine Bateson. Composing a Life. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1989. 1-34, 232-241. Maxine Hong Kingston. The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts. New York: Knopf, 1976. 189-196. Audre Lorde. "The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action." Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. Freedom, California: Crossing Press, 1884. 40-44 | A 2-3 page essay on your own life of learning |
| T, 9/12 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 9/14 |
Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. "Little Briar Rose" and "Cinderella."
The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales. Trans. Margaret
Hunt. Revised James Stern. New York: Pantheon, 1972. 118-122,
64-71. "A Boarhog for a Husband" and "Yeh-Shen." Myths, Legends and Folktales of America. Ed. David Leeming and Jack Page. New York : Oxford University Press, 1999. 90-93, 202-206. "Making the Stone Smoke" and "Why They Name the Stories for Anansi." Afro-American Folktales: Stories From the Black Tradition in the New World. Ed. Roger Abrahams. New York: Pantheon, 1985. 97-98, 182-183. Karen Armstrong. Buddha. New York: Viking, 2001. 30-33. Anne Sexton. "Cinderella" and "Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty)." Transformations. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971. 52-57, 106-112. | Recompose your life of learning as a fairy tale |
| T, 9/19 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 9/21 | Bruno Bettelheim. "Reflections: The Uses of Enchantment."The New Yorker (December 8, 1975): 50-114. | Do an "analysis" of your fairy tale |
| Ordering and Re-ordering the World | ||
| T, 9/26 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 9/28 | Bertolt Brecht. Galileo. 1952; rpt. New York: Grove, 1966. | A 2-3 page essay on motivations/ways of revising stories, pros/cons of doing so. |
| T, 10/3 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 10/5 |
Edwin Abbott. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. 1885;
rpt. New York: New American Library, 1984. Michel Foucault. Preface and Forward. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 1966; | Revised essay incorporating ideas from Abbott/Foucalt. |
| T, 10/10 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 10/12 | Daniel Dennett. Chapters 1-3. "Tell Me Why," "An Idea is Born" and "Universal Acid." Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995. 17-83. | Revised essay incorporating ideas from Dennett. |
| T, 10/17 | Fall Break | |
| Th, 10/19 | Fall Break | |
| Recognizing and Using the Story Teller | ||
| T, 10/24 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 10/26 |
Michael Polanyi. The Tacit Dimension. New York: Anchor,
1967. 3-25 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. "Introduction: Who are We?" "The Cognitive Unconscious" and "The Embodied Mind." Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999. 3-44. | Summary of observations on tacit understanding |
| T, 10/31 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 11/2 |
Lev Semenovich Vygotsky. "The Problem and the Approach" and "Thought and Word." Thought and Language. Trans.
Eugenia Hanfmann and Gertrude Vakar. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1962.
1-8, 119-153 Steven Pinker. "An Instinct to Acquire an Art" and "Chatterboxes." The Language Instinct. New York: HarperPerennial, 1995. 15-54 | Draft interpretation of observations on tacit understanding |
| T, 11/7 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 11/9 | Oliver Sacks. "The Last Hippie" and "A Surgeon's Life."An Anthropologist on Mars. New York: Vintage, 1995. 42-107. | Complete paper on tacit understanding (4-5 pages) |
| Noticing and Revising Cultural Stories | ||
| T, 11/14 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 11/16 |
Leslie Marmon Silko. "Language and Literature from a Pueblo Indian
Perspective." Critical Fictions, ed.
Philomena Mariani.
Seattle: Bay Press, 1991. 83-93. Clifford Geertz. "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic, 1973. 195-240. | A 2-3 page essay on some aspect of a culture with which you are familiar |
| T, 11/21 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 11/23 | Thanksgiving Break | |
| T, 11/28 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 11/30 | Ray McDermott and Hervé Vareene. "Culture As Disability." Anthropology and Education Quarterly 26, 3 (1995): 324-348. | A 2-3 page essay on disabling features of a culture with which you are familiar |
| T, 12/5 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 12/7 | Octavia Butler, The Parable of the Sower, New York: Warner, 1993 | A 3-4 page essay on the relation between individual and cultural aspirations |
| T, 12/12 | Reflection/discussion | Forum writing |
| Th, 12/14 |
Helen Horowitz. "A Certain Style of Quaker Lady Dress" and
"Behold They Are Women!" Alma Mater: Design and Experience in
the Women's Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the
1930s. New York: Knopf, 1984. 105-133.
Rita Rubinstein Heller. "An 'Unnatural' Institution." "The Women of Summer: The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, 1921-1938." Dss. Rutgers University, 1986. 1-36. Selections from Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin. (October 1921-May 1935). Anthropology and Education Quarterly 26, 3 (1995): 324-348. | A final project (written and/or performed) reflecting critically on Bryn Mawr culture |
| Portfolio, including final project, are due by 12:30 pm, Friday, December 22. | ||