While the university is currently set up along disciplinary lines devised about a century ago, and changes slowly as disciplines combine or come into being, each department and program trains its students to study along the lines it established for what knowledge is considered to be in that discipline.

Clearly, what is "known"changes; particularly in science, which we nonetheless persist in thinking of as giving us "the facts" of "objective reality," change is happening at ever faster paces. What is known to be "so" shifts as our ways of seeing shift. We are more used to thinking of how perspective affects what is seen in the arts - fiction, drama, poetry, painting, film - even history, sociologogy, anthropology, psychology - and of course math: all depend on being able to delineate the perspective and assumptions we are starting with. Is this 10-based math? If so, thenwe can agree 2+2=4; with another base, that wouldn't be so. The lens we look through shapes what we see. Microscopes and telescopes work the same way, and can't let us see beyond their capacity to see. But new ones can be constructed.

Similarly, as people, the lenses we see through shape what shows up when we look. What discourses shape our ways of seeing in the production of knowledge? This course takes students through the post-modern turn theoretically. We move from modernist discourses that assume the world is simply "out there" - and can be seen in an unmediated, direct way, by objective observation - through the study of theoretical moves that begin to notice how language and thus culture shape our seeing mechanisms, calling into question the assumption of objectivity. It has taken three quarters of a century for relativity in physics to make significant impact in the production of knowledge on a daily basis, but all the disciplines are shifting rapidly now in noting the social construction of discursive practices in the production of knowledge. This course is an introduction

Texts:

The Heath Anthology of American Literature Vol II, Third Edition. Lauter, Ed. Selections on reserve; handouts

Projects:

Each student will prepare extra work for the class on one of the writers or critical issues studied, due the day of class discussion. Any supplemental handouts are to be passed out before that day so other students can read them before class discussion.

Each student will write concerning issues, readings, questions, interpretations of texts, responses to readings and class discussion; will write a minimum of twice a week; will read aloud from the journal from time to time in class and/or post a comment on the class Caucus on-line discussion group.

A term paper, the area of concern to be determined in consultation with the teacher. A Project Proposal with suggested bibliography will be due half way through the term. Toward the end of the course a Paper Contract will be due, including a promised deadline for turning in the paper, Caucus/journal, and/or any incompletes negotiated with and agreed upon by the teacher.