Spring 2016 Professor Richardson School of Theology 618 Office Hours: by Appointment Phone No

Spring 2016 Professor Richardson School of Theology 618 Office Hours: By Appointment Phone No. 617 721 2268 [email protected]

CAS/HI/AA 590

The World And The West

Upper Division Undergraduate/Graduate Colloquium

By a close reading of key texts this course will explore the cultural underpinnings of the West’s encounter with the “non-white” world. After a theoretical introduction we will focus our work on race and empire in Winston S. Churchill’s self creation.

You should not be in this course unless you take ideas seriously and have a liking for intellectual discourse. This course will focus on ideas and attitudes. It will include discussion of literature, drama, poetry and art, Goethe’s Faust and Kant’s philosophy. If you are unwilling to appreciate the importance of these topics to western hegemony then you will be very unhappy in this course. If you expect set answers or are looking for easy truths you will not find them in this course. Nor will the course provide you with a roadmap to the history of western imperialism. This course is about asking questions and uncovering what likes to hide. It is not about giving you information or providing simple answers. This is a course for creative thinkers who want-in the words of Captain Ahab to Starbuck-to “strike through the mask.”

Course Orientation

Course Requirements

This course is designed for graduate students and upper division undergraduates. It entails a good deal of concentrated reading amounting to the completion of approximately one book per week. The minimum course requirement is attendance at and active participation in each weekly colloquium session. Students must read each required text before its due date and keep a reaction journal based on their readings. I reserve the option of collecting and examining student journals but they will not be graded. Each student must complete either a creative project such as a mini play, a short story, a draft outline of a script for film or TV or another such appropriate work; or an historical essay investigating the intellectual, emotional and spiritual encounter with empire and race of one European person. In either case your work must be based on research into historical sources and include notation and a bibliography. Students must submit their proposed project/essay topics and a selected bibliography of primary and secondary sources, in writing (hard copy only) on or before February 16. Whether you complete a creative project or an historical essay your document should be at least fifteen pages and should not exceed twenty pages for the historical essay or thirty pages for the creative work. Your project will form the only written work for this course and will constitute fifty percent of your grade. The other half of your grade will be based on your class participation including a ten minute oral presentation on one of the reading for this course. Your project/essay will be due on the last day of class for this course, without exception. On that day you will each make an oral presentation on your project or essay.

I will not accept research papers or creative projects on topics that I have not approved in advance.

I reserve the right to reduce by at least one full grade point the grade for late work.

Grading

Student grades will be computed as follows.

Project/Essay 50% Class Participation 50%

Important Dates

February 16: Project/Essay topic and bibliography due in class Essay/Project due in class on April 26. April 26: Oral presentation of your Project/Paper

Academic Honesty

The College regards any breach of academic honesty as a serious matter. Plagiarism will result in an automatic grade of F and may be reported to the 2 Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. For the purpose of this course, plagiarism will be defined as representing ideas, facts, data, research, graphic material, arguments, or any other such intellectual or artistic property as your own if such property is, in fact, the product of another person who created it prior to your use of it.

Attendance

Since this course meets once a week a missed class is a serious matter. I will not go over missed class material privately with a student who has missed class unless their absence is due to a documented medical emergency or other extraordinary situation. I reserve the right to reduce by one full grade point the grade of any student who misses three class sessions. Students who habitually cut class may earn a failing grade as a result.

Required Readings

The following texts are on sale in the University bookstore.

Immanuel Kant, Ground Work Of The Metaphysics of Morals Soren Kierkegaard, The Concept of Anxiety Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self Winston S. Churchill, Savrola Winston S. Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force 0-85052-260-9 Winston S. Churchill, The River War Winston S. Churchill, My African Journey Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life Winston S. Churchill, The world Crisis, Volume I Winston S. Churchill, The History of the English Speaking Peoples, Volume 4: The Great Democracies Geoffrey Best, Winston Churchill

Course Outline

January 19: Orientation

January 26: Kant, Ground Work

February 2: Kierkegaard, Concept of Anxiety

February 9: Nietzsche, Beyond Good And Evil 3

February 16: No Class

February 23: Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals; Siegel, The Idea of the Self, Part I March 1: Churchill, Savrola

March 15: Churchill, The Story of the Malakand Field Force

March 22: Churchill, The River War

March 29: Churchill, My African Journey

April 5: Churchill, My Early Life

April 12: Churchill, The World Crisis, Volume I

April 19: Churchill, A History of the English Speaking Peoples, Volume 4: The Great Democracies, Book XI The Great Republic; Best,Churchill

April 26: Oral Presentation of your Projects/Essays.