Wheaton College (Massachusetts)
First Year Seminar 1999: The Future
Fall 1999
Michael Drout
Office: Meneely 317
Office Phone: 286-3607
Hours: Thurs, 2-5 & by appointment.
home page: http://www.wheatoncollege.edu/Faculty/MichaelDrout.html
Aims of the Course
Your First Year Seminar is supposed to accomplish two complementary goals. First, it is a course that teaches you how to succeed in college. Second, it introduces you to an important and controversial issue and provides you opportunities to think, write and talk about your own ideas.
To accomplish the first goal, we will spend time getting comfortable with the many resources and tools Wheaton provides for students: the library, the internet, the knowledge of faculty, students and staff, the advising center, etc. We will learn techniques for writing a solid academic paper, ways to study for difficult exams and quizzes, methods of organizing time and making the most of free moments. We will work on oral communications skills, discussion and practicing how to argue (and win your argument) in class without hurting your colleagues' feelings, how to challenge a professor without provoking anger, how to concede a point graciously when you are wrong and bring your opponent in an argument onto your side when you are right. In short, when you have finished FYS you should have developed, if you've worked hard, a whole grouping of skills that you will put to use in all your future classes.
Our second goal is easier to discuss but perhaps harder to accomplish. We will be examining one of the great questions facing you (and me) in the next few years: what will the future bring and what should be do about it? Many smaller controversies (about technology, social change, gender, race, class, politics, religion) can fit within this large controversy about the future and who gets to control it. And since there is no Ph.D. awarded in "future studies" (and if there were one, I don't have it), we will be going into this investigation together. I've done more reading, I have some ideas, but it will be the job of the class as a whole to figure out exactly what the problems surrounding the future are and how we can discuss them.
By the end of the course:
• You will be able to read, understand, explain and comment on a complex argument.
• You will be able to construct a logical, coherent, and well-organized short essay free of basic grammar and spelling errors.
• You will be able to use feedback and criticism to improve and substantially revise an essay.
• You will be able to help your peers with constructive and insightful criticism.
• You will have learned a variety of strategies for coping with difficult reading and writing problems and will be ready for further challenges.
• You will have had some fun reading enjoyable literature and interesting non-fiction and discussing this material with your intelligent and enthusiastic classmates.
Schedule of Meetings
September
W 8 Introductions. Predictions, changes and conflicts in the future. Reading due today: Postrel, Introduction.
M 13 The reading process. Reading due today: Postrel, 1-26.
--and assignment: "who are these people?" -- handout.
W 15 Dealing with intertextuality. Reading due today: Postrel, 27-53.
Organize class work on intertextuality.
M 20 Mixing genres and cultures. Reading due today: Gibson, 1-129.
W 22 "Reading" art. Reading due today: Gibson, 130-end.
Joseph Cornell slides.
M 27 Planning the intertextuality essay. Reading due today: Postrel 55-82.
Quiz 1
W 29 "Style" and complexities. Reading due today: Burgess 1-47.
October
M 4 "Reading" music. In class discussion of Burgess 1-47 and Beethoven.
Essay 1 Due
W 6 Dystopias and human nature. Reading due today: Burgess 48-105.
Quiz 2
M 11 Mid-Semester Break. Class will not meet.
W 13 Which is worse, the "illness" or the "cure"? Reading due today: Burgess 106-end.
M 18 Other visions; "reading" film. Reading due today: view Stanley Kubrick's version of A Clockwork Orange. Details of screenings to be arranged in class.
W 20 In-class work on Essay 2.
M 25 Insider knowledge -- who do we get some? How do we explain to others? Reading due today: Postrel 83-110.
Essay 2 Due
W 27 Discussion of oral presentations. Reading due today: Tempest, Act 1 and Postrel 111-146.
Quiz 3
November
M 1 Oral presentations begin. Plus: How to read "different" kinds of writing. Reading due today: Tempest Acts 2 and 3.
W 3 Drama vs. fiction vs. other sorts of writing. Reading due today: Tempest Acts 4 and 5.
M 8 Utopia or dystopia, who decides and why? Reading due today: Huxley 1-71.
W 10 Nuances of intertexuality (and what's a "nuance," anyway?). Reading due today: Huxley 173-152.
M 15 In-class work planning essay 3. Reading due today: Huxley 153-end. Also, by today view the film of Brave New World. Screening details to be arranged in class.
W 17 Humor, satire and prediction: when is seriousness effective? What about joking? Reading due today: Postrel 147-69 and Stephenson 1-69
M 22 Essay 3 Due. Reading due today: Postrel 171-89.
W 24 Thanksgiving Break -- No classes
M 29 The wild and wooly future. Reading due today: Stephenson 69-163.
December
W 1 Could it really be like this?. Reading due today: Stephenson 163-249 and Postrel 191-end.
Quiz 4
M 6 Or are we there all ready? Reading due today: Stephenson 249-365.
W 8 Linking it all together. Reading due today: Stephenson 365-end.
M 13 Essay 4 Due
Texts
*Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange. New York: Norton, 1995. ref=nosim/
*Gibson, William. Count Zero. New York: Ace, 1987.
*Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash. New York: Bantam, 1993.
* Postrel, Virginia. The Future and Its Enemies. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998.
* Huxley, Aldous. Brave New World. New York: Harper Collins, 1998.
* Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. New York: Bantam, 1988.
You will also need (for college in general, not just for this class) a good dictionary. I recommend Random House Webster's College Dictionary or the American Heritage Dictionary. I really can't stress the value of a simple thing like a dictionary enough. You are never educated enough not need one. I use mine more now than I did during my undergraduate education and supposedly I know more now.
* = required text.
All books are available at the bookstore. You may of course buy the books on line or from a used book store if you can find them. Make sure that you have the same editions as the class so that page numbers will be the same throughout the texts.
Course Requirements
Students are expected to attend all classes, to be on time and to be prepared by having finished the readings. For evaluation and self-evaluation purposes there will be four short papers due. One of these papers must be revised for an additional grade. There will be an oral presentation. There will be in-class writing assignments and quizzes. All students will, on a rotating basis, be asked to help get discussions started by preparing brief leads into the materialÜeither a question or an observation that will help others think about the readings. These leads are informal, but they are important. Students will also turn in note cards with potential discussion questions for each reading.
Please note the following regulations
1. You are required to attend classes. A record of your attendance will be kept as one measure of your commitment to the class and will be included in the calculation of your final grade.
2. If you must miss a class it is your responsibility to get all notes, handouts, etc. from your classmates and the instructor (in other words, I will not track you down to remind you that you need to turn in assignments and I will not re-teach classes in my office hours).
3. You are required to submit written work on the date due. Unless legitimate emergencies arise, extensions will be given only if you speak with the instructor in advance. Papers will be collected in class.
4. Wheaton's regulations concerning academic honesty are strict and fair. If you are at any time unsure about a debt to an outside source, ask me for assistance.
Grades will be computed as follows:
The first essay is worth 10 points.
The second essay is worth 10 points.
The third essay is worth 15 points.
The fourth essay is worth 20 points.
The oral presentation is worth 10 points.
The mandatory revision is worth 5 points.
Quizzes, in-class writing and other assignments are worth 15 points.
Your work in class, including attendance and engagement in discussions, is worth 15 points.
Total = 100 possible points. |
