Reacting to the Past Liberal Arts Honors 305 Elon Lang, Ph.D. Fall Semester 2018 E-mail: [email protected] T-Th 9:30am-11:00am Office phone: 512-471-6649 GAR 0.128 Office: Office hours: Unique # 30250 Preceptors: ‘…we mustn’t exercise any form of compulsion in our teaching.’ ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Because a free man ought not to learn anything under duress. Compulsory physical exercise does no harm to the body, but compulsory learning never sticks in the mind.’ ‘True.’ ‘Then don’t use compulsion,’ I said to him, ‘but let your children’s lessons take the form of play. You will learn more about their natural abilities that way.’ From Plato. The Republic , Book VII, 536e-537a COURSE DESCRIPTION: “Reacting to the Past” seeks to introduce students to major philosophical ideas and texts that have informed how we think about social justice in our time. Because ‘compulsory learning never sticks in the mind,’ as Plato noted, this course introduces these major philosophical concepts with role-playing games, letting students re-create the historical contexts in which these ideas acquired significance. During this semester, students will play three role-playing games: “Democracy at the Threshold: Athens in 403 B.C.E.;” “Harlem 1919: A Struggle for Leadership;” and “The Collapse of Apartheid and the Dawn of Democracy in South Africa, 1993.” In each of these games, students will be assigned different character roles, including some prominent historical figures and some fictional characters typical of their age and social positions, all derived from the game’s historical setting. Each role is defined largely by its game objective, which corresponds to a political position in a community during a time of crisis. In the course of the semester, each student will play three or more roles, so the student who begins the semester as a radical may end it as a conservative. Students must determine on their own how best to achieve their victory objectives, drawing upon the course texts for intellectual guidance, as well as strategic advice from the instructor, the preceptor, and each other. COURSE FORMAT: For the first few sessions of each game, the class will meet in a traditional seminar setup, where we will discuss the historical setting of the game and the philosophical issues that will animate the debates—prompted by key readings. After these introductory studies, the class will break into competing groups, where students with similar roles join forces to accomplish their objectives. Then, as debates begin, students will come to class in their character roles and will lead the sessions themselves. The instructor will evaluate all student writing and will serve as the Game Master, stepping in to help manage technical aspects of each 1 game, to resolve any operational problems, and to ensure the game remains faithful to the historical context. The student preceptors, Thomas Sipp and Jack Thielman (former ‘Reacting to the Past’ students with writing fellow training), will help the Game Master keep track of each game and will provide students with feedback on their public speaking. Both Dr. Lang and the preceptors will be available to contact and/or to meet with at appointed times to offer students assistance and advice on strategy, sources, and assignments. You are always encouraged to email them with questions. The heart of each game is persuasion. For nearly every role to which you will be assigned, you must persuade others that your political and philosophical views make more sense than those of your opponents. Your views must be informed by the texts cited in your game objectives; the more you draw upon these texts and the more cleverly you expand upon them with outside research, the better. You will express your views verbally and in writing, and both will be graded. REQUIRED TEXTS: For the Athens Game: (1) Carnes, Norman, and Ober, The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C. (4th Edition, Norton) (2) Robin Osbourne, Ed., The World of Athens: An Introduction to Classical Athenian Culture (2nd Edition, Cambridge University Press) (3) *Plato, The Republic (Penguin Classics, 2012 translation by Christopher Rowe) For the Harlem 1919 Game: (1) Treacy, Harlem 1919: A Struggle for Leadership (available at Jenn’s Copies, 2518 Guadeloupe St., for approx. $25, date TBA) For the South Africa Game: (1) Eby and Morton, The Collapse Of Apartheid And The Dawn Of Democracy In South Africa, 1993 (Reacting Consortium Press, 2017) (2) Clark and Worger, South Africa: The rise and fall of apartheid (3rd Edition, Routledge) For Writing: Hacker, Diana Rules for Writers, 8th Edition (Bedford/St.Martins) *There is an abridged copy of The Republic the Norton gamebook, but I advise getting the Penguin translation/edition for more complete context. REQUIREMENTS: Your course grade will be based on the following: (1) Written Work (70%). The majority of your grade will be based on seven or eight major writing assignments (possibly including: position papers, biographies, newspaper articles, poems, persuasive researched essays, bulletins, policy proposals, opinion column series, legislation, and a final comprehensive synthesis paper) totaling 25-35 pages, submitted promptly by assigned due dates which will be staggered among group members. Most written assignments will be weighted equally and evaluated according to a rubric supplied on Canvas. 2 There may be exceptions depending upon individual character objectives and the scope of some assignments designed to prepare you for game play. Each full-sized assignment will be given a point value on an 11-point scale so that an A is 11, an A- is 10, a B+ is 9, a B is 8, a B- is 7 and so forth. This system allows for easy calculation of averages, such that for your final course grade, an A will be awarded for point averages between 10-11 points, A- for 9-10, B+ for 8-9, etc. E.G. a final average of 7.85 would be a B, an average of 8.3 would be a B+. This course carries the Writing, Ethics, and Global Cultures Flags. Writing Flag courses, in particular are designed to give students experience with writing and revision. One of the primary goals of the course is to make you a more confident, effective writer. To that end, the instructor will comment in detail upon your written work, offering suggestions for improvement on several of your papers. The instructor will look for a trajectory of improvement in your writing, and will expect you to develop as a writer over the course of the semester. We will try to devote class time and office hours to discussing elements of strong papers, and offer advice on how to strengthen your own writing through research and rhetorical crafting. For more information on the other flags please see https://ugs.utexas.edu/flags/. The Writing Process: Drafting and Revising. For all papers, the preceptors and instructors are available via electronic communication and in person at appointed times to give you advice on how to approach your assigned or chosen topic. The instructor will even look over partial drafts of papers in progress if you send them via email 24 hours in adVance of the 10 pm submission deadline (so that you have time to revise them based on feedback). The preceptors are also available to give you feedback and advice as you write. You will have the option to rewrite, revise, and resubmit one of the first two papers during the course of the semester (only if you make less than a 9 on it). This revision process will not only improve your writing, it will help clarify goals for the quality of your future papers. The Rules for Writers handbook is a helpful resource to remind you about the mechanics and structure of effective writing and citation: especially chapters 53-60 and especially chapter 55. As we will discuss, we will be adapting MLA source integration conVentions to meet the needs of the persuasive writing that will be central to our role-playing games. For example, instead of acknowledging published modern scholarship on an historical period in a conventional manner like in (A) below, you will be writing (and speaking) in the voice of an historical persona and silently citing your sources like in (B). NOTE: Both of these examples refer to an entry in a Works Cited section at the end of the paper for Josiah Ober’s book, Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (see the ‘Threshold of Democracy’ gamebook’s Selected Bibliography). (A) As Josiah Ober claims, the key to the power of Athenian democracy was “the mediating and integrative power of communication between citizens—especially between ordinary and elite citizens” (Ober 35). Therefore we should open more spaces for the poor and rich to mingle. (B) It is my firm belief that the key to the power of our polis’ democracy is “the mediating and integrative power of communication” between all our citizens—“especially between ordinary and elite citizens” (Ober 35). Therefore we should open more spaces for the poor and rich to mingle. You also will want to take advantage of the FREE writing support services at the University Writing Center (UWC). The UWC offers FREE, individualized, expert help with writing for any UT student, by appointment or on a drop-in basis. Several former Reacting students work there, so 3 you might be able to request someone with particular experience with this style of writing. The UWC is located in the Learning Commons at the PCL, Room 2.330, (512) 471-6222 (http://uwc.utexas.edu/). The UWC also offers excellent on-line resources for examples and tutorials on topics like proper documentation, comma usage, paragraph structure, and other fundamentals that you will apply to all your courses (http://uwc.utexas.edu/handouts).