One of the courses I teach is a senior capping course for several different majors as divergent as psychology to medical imaging. The course is to contain a major research thesis that encompasses depth in the discipline, critical thinking and engagement of liberal arts, and an engagement of values. The other part of the course is to bookend the undergraduate experience by reflecting on a course all students take during their first year which introduces them to the importance of values as a way to bridge their intellectual development with their service as contributing members of society. It really is kind of an early 20th century liberal arts curriculum in terms of the shape of society today.
This year I had no time to develop the course and built it as I drove it. I killed them with Simone Weil who was unintelligible to them. I also killed them with postmodern discourse on apocalyptic literature. They liked Brave New World in this vein. So I am rethinking it again.
I always approach a course like this from a philosophical premise. When I taught an introductory course in religion, it was through Habermas' use of Husserl's concept of lebenswelt. I want to do a similar thing, but through Simone Weil's notion of "reading" the world.
What I want to do is approach value by way of West meets East. The Western side will engage media and consumerism as a critique of what shapes values on a more or less global scale. For the East part, I want to focus on the plight of people who struggle in the midst of real oppression and for that I want to focus on Sudanese refugees who have not gotten much press at all in the West (unless you watch BBC World which my students on balance have not even heard of).
I am wondering how to tie these two aspects together seamlessly so that it is relevant to what they will be doing with their research – and this will be a stretch since they research topics as divergent as the ethics of proper shielding in medical imaging to the social effects of windmills in Somerset County, PA. SO here is my short list of readings in order of the curriculum starting with the West. I would love to know if anyone has a thought or two to add to this!
1. West – One of the following:
- Mediated: How the Media Shapes Our World and the Way We Live in It
(Thomas de Zengotita) - Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say (Douglas Rushkoff)
- The High Price of Materialism (Tim Kasser)
- The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (Barry Schwartz)
- The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (Juliet B. Schor)
- Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Neil Postman)
I am definitely going for a Neo-McLuhan theme here.
2. East – One of the following, but probably the first title:
- Slave: My True Story (Mende Nazer with Damien Lewis)
- They Poured Fire on Us From the Sky: The Story of Three Lost Boys from Sudan (Benjamin Ajak, Benson Deng, Alephonsian Deng, Judy Bernstein)
3. Then read either Brave New World again or Fahrenheit 451.
4. Then I want to close with something that illustrates the reconstruction of society according to what is good, just, and beautiful but I am not sure where to go with this. Weil's The Need for Roots was way over their heads.
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