Professor: Frances Weller Bailey
Office: New Snell 182
Office Hours:
| 8:30-9:30 am and 1:00-2:30 pm on Tuesday/Thursday | New Snell 182 |
Phone: 268-3969
E-Mail Address: fbailey@clarkson.edu
| Gertrude Crampton | Tootle | Western Publishing | |
| Benjamin Franklin | The Autobiography | Penguin | |
| Sigmund Freud | Civilization and Its Discontents | W. W. Norton & Co. | |
| Franz Kafka | The Metamorphosis and Others Stories, trans. Joachim Neugroschel | Simon & Schuster | |
| Alice Walker | The Color Purple | Pocket Books | |
| Tobias Wolff | This Boy's Life | Harper & Row | |
Leopards break into the temple and drink to the dregs what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance, and it becomes a part of the ceremony.
This narrative, which we'll be talking about in class, demonstrates three basic premises of the course:
One thing people of all cultures and all times have in common is their need to make sense of their lives by turning them into stories. Through stories we give our experiences meaning, conferring a beginning, middle and end on something that previously existed only in the flow of time. Individuals use stories to define themselves and their relationship with their society. Societies, through parents and teachers, tell stories that show children how to live and what to believe. Religious leaders teach systems of belief to bridge the gap between the known and the unknown. Scientists construct elaborate theories to explain the processes of the natural world, constantly modifying those theories to accommodate new knowledge. Politicians use narratives to persuade the governed of the rightness of their actions and the greatness of their ideas.
By studying the stories people tell, then, we can learn something vital about their cultures, about what they believe and why they believe it. We can study the differences between one culture and another, and through this study gain a better understanding of the ways in which all people, including ourselves, are shaped and defined by the culture that produced them.
Beyond reading and discussing the assigned texts on their own terms, we will be using them as the basis for an ongoing examination of how individuals define themselves in terms of—or in opposition to—their own cultures. Sigmund Freud was a keen observers of Western industrial culture as it developed through the 19th century and into the 20th, and his ideas will give us a place to start our own cultural analyses. Ben Franklin's Autobiography is the story of a cultural insider who uses all the tools available to him to succeed, as his culture defines the word. The fictions of Kafka, Walker and Wolff focus on those outside the dominant culture. These texts will provide us the opportunity both to apply and critique the theories of Marx and Freud and to observe the ways in which outsiders, through their opposition to generally shared cultural beliefs, can provide us with a clearer understanding of the ways in which all of us, willingly or unwillingly, are the products of our own culture.
This is a writing-intensive course, and therefore you will be putting your ideas into writing as the semester progresses. We will do both formal and informal writing, in and out of class, based on the understanding that one of the best ways to make ideas your own--or to reject them--is to write about them.