IF we look back a few thousand years, we will find that the human race has been engaged with itself in millennia of wars and only centuries of peace. Further, if we look to much of our art and philosophies—both today and in our history—we will find something similar: creative minds painstakingly imagining, molding, and shaping mythic, violent, and chaotic worlds that might shed some light on our own. Sure, many of us of course claim to both believe in the idea of peace and aspire to it, but given our track record it appears that we must ask ourselves a deceptively simple question: do our human natures agree with the project of peace, or are we just violent by design?
In this course we will investigate this questions as well as discuss why we as a people seem to be so drawn to—and even attracted by—violence. Among other texts that we will study, we will pore over works as old as the Bible and as recent as Sontag’s Regarding the Pain of Others, watch films such as Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange and pick apart wartime photographs by such photographers as Carter and Hetherington. Further, this semester we will be engaged with a composition project called Huck Finn & Hashtags that will aid you in exploring: 1) a seminal and seemingly innocuous work that contains, in fact, many violent themes within it; and, 2) your own digital citizenship in the modern world.
However, since the ultimate focus of this class is on writing, in terms of both process and finished product, we will consider our ongoing relationship to violence, both in the real world and in ones imagined, for the purpose of turning our thoughts and discussions into academic papers. Understand that the writing skills you hone in this class will not only help you over the course of your academic studies, but throughout your professional careers as well.
Instructor: Jon Udelson
Email: [email protected]
Office hours: Before and/or after class, by appointment