Theme Proposal – Foreignness, the Stranger, and the Other

  1. Suggested title for the Core I course.

Foreignness, the Stranger, and the Other

  1. Describe your proposed theme, bearing in mind the criteria listed above. You need not address how students are to be evaluated (this is not a sample syllabus) nor must you provide a course outline, although it will be helpful if you could name specific readings and/or other course materials.

Please note the following things about all these Foundations 111 theme proposals:

(1) These are not finished products. The things you will see below are not THE way this theme should be or would be handled. Instead, these proposals are designed to show possibilities and examples sufficient to help faculty choose the theme that should worked out more carefully in a final version later.

(2) The resource list included below is not intended to be a final course outline. The number of works included in each of the themes would have to be pared down drastically for a final syllabus. And in many cases, the students will be dealing with excerpts of the works (this is often, but not always noted in the resource list itself below). The list here simply presents the sort of viable options from which those constructing the final syllabus would be able to pick and choose.

(3) The difficult titles included here would be taught at a level appropriate to freshmen.

Theme description

The Foundations 111 theme of “Foreignness/The Stranger/The Other” considers vital perennial questions regarding human beings’ responses to those perceived as “different” somehow. Readings address, for instance, the creation and maintenance of communities in terms of whom they include or exclude, and why; colonial encounters over the course of history in North America, Africa, India, and so forth; how concepts of race and ethnicity arise and change over time; the challenges facing minorities such as immigrants, women, and religious groups at particular historical or cultural junctures; and how disability and mental illness come to be defined and (mis)understood. Human history shows us ghastly encounters with the “other,” resulting in persecution and genocide, as well as productive and loving contact. The theme of Foreignness/The Stranger/The Other is particularly well suited for freshmen, who have left behind what is familiar and encounter in their first semester new roommates, new teachers, new mentors, and the like. Close study of responses to the “other” over time provides students with a multidisciplinary view of important topics and prompts speculation on their own shifts in and out of familiarity and “strangeness.”

All of the sample readings/works included below attempt to address one or more of the following questions:

1. How havepeoplehistorically conceived of the other?
2. Howhave peopleencountered the other? Fear, hatred, exclusion,curiosity, embrace, etc? Whyhavepeople tended to encounter them in those ways?
3. Howhavepeople beeninfluenced by the other? What have theyincorporated? How havepeople been changed by their encounters with the other?
4. Is it possible to see through the others’ eyes? In what ways canstrangers reach mutual understanding?

  1. Spring Core II courses need not connect in any way with the theme of Core I. Nevertheless, can you suggest ways in which instructors of Core II courses could respond to the proposed Core I theme?

Possible Core II courses stemming from Foreignness could involve issues of immigration, social justice (which could easily involve some sort of service learning/community service), literature in translation, diversity (adaptable to any discipline: biodiversity, diversity initiatives in higher education, multiethnic literature, etc.), history/literature/sociology-ish courses involving minority groups such as Appalachia, Native American, Hispanic, etc.--meshing nicely with GC's own diversity initiatives, or courses in gender studies, which could include sociology, English, Women's Studies, history, and the like.

  1. Please use the formon the next page to indicate which criteria you believe the theme addresses. Keep in mind that you need not be able to fill in all of the criteria to submit this proposal.

Return this form to Dathan Powell, Core I Subcommittee Chair, by such-and-such an early date.

Core 1 Theme Proposal – Criteria Evaluation Form

Course Topic/Historical Epoch as Related to Theme / Suggested Primary or Secondary Reading/
Fine Art/Historical Context Reading / Related Discipline (Select All Applicable) / Core Skills Addressed
(Please see list above) –
List All Applicable
LIT / REL / PHI / Natural & Social Sciences
(Please Name) / FA / HC

As the Core is to be presented “more or less chronologically,” please complete the form below as chronologically as possible.

Course Topic/Historical Epoch as Related to Theme / Suggested Primary or Secondary Reading/
Fine Art/Historical Context Reading / Related Discipline (Select All Applicable) / Core Skills Addressed
(Please see list above) –
List All Applicable
LIT / REL / PHI / Natural & Social Sciences
(Please Name) / FA / HC
Classical/Ancient / Homer, The Odyssey / X
Sophocles, Philoctetes / X
Plato, “Apology” or “Protagoras” / X
Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War / X
Dalley, ed., Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (primary sources) / X
Coogan, ed., Stories from Ancient Canaan / X
Sources on “hospitality” and welcoming the stranger in early religious traditions / X
Hesiod, Theogony (excerpts) and Works and Days (first 200 lines or so) / X / X
Aristotle, Politics, book II / X
Course Topic/Historical Epoch as Related to Theme / Suggested Primary or Secondary Reading/
Fine Art/Historical Context Reading / Related Discipline (Select All Applicable) / Core Skills Addressed
(Please see list above) –
List All Applicable
LIT / REL / PHI / Natural & Social Sciences
(Please Name) / FA / HC
Medieval / Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou / X / X
Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel / X
Marco Polo, Travels / X
Extracts from Christian, Jewish, and Islamic chronicles, journals, and letters for the crusades / X
“Song of Roland” / X
Lowney, A Vanished World: Muslims, Christians, and Jews in Medieval Spain / X
Early Modern/Modern (1500-1800) / Roger Williams, Christenings Make Not Christians, and The Bloody Tenet of Persecution / X
John Wesley, Thoughts upon Slavery / X
Course Topic/Historical Epoch as Related to Theme / Suggested Primary or Secondary Reading/
Fine Art/Historical Context Reading / Related Discipline (Select All Applicable) / Core Skills Addressed
(Please see list above) –
List All Applicable
LIT / REL / PHI / Natural & Social Sciences
(Please Name) / FA / HC
Early Modern/Modern (1500-1800) / Montaigne, Des cannibals / X
De las Casas, In Defense of the Indians / X
Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels and Modest Proposal / X
Shakespeare, Othello or Merchant of Venice / X
Locke, On Toleration / X
Jerry Brotton, Renaissance Bizarre / X
Mancall, ed., Travel Narratives from the Age of Discovery / X
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Metaphysics of Morals, and Lectures on Anthropology / X
Lewis Miltfort, Memoirs or A Cursory Glance at my different travels and my sojourn in the Creek Nation / X
Vermeer, Officer and a Laughing Girl and Brook, Vermeer’s Hat (selections) / X
Course Topic/Historical Epoch as Related to Theme / Suggested Primary or Secondary Reading/
Fine Art/Historical Context Reading / Related Discipline (Select All Applicable) / Core Skills Addressed
(Please see list above) –
List All Applicable
LIT / REL / PHI / Natural & Social Sciences
(Please Name) / FA / HC
19th century / El Lazarillo de Tormes / x
Marx, “Alienation” (from the Political and Economic Manuscripts of 1844) / X / Politcs/
Sociology/
Economics
Ingres, The Odalisque with the Slave / X
Gibbs-Smith, The Great Exhibition of 1851 / X / X
Henry James, Daisy Miller and excerpt from Portrait of a Lady / X
Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter / X
Wilde, “The Canterville Ghost” / X
De Tocqueville, Memoir on Pauperism / X
Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle / Biology
Freud / Psychology
Course Topic/Historical Epoch as Related to Theme / Suggested Primary or Secondary Reading/
Fine Art/Historical Context Reading / Related Discipline (Select All Applicable) / Core Skills Addressed
(Please see list above) –
List All Applicable
LIT / REL / PHI / Natural & Social Sciences
(Please Name) / FA / HC
19th century (continued) / Lucretia Mott, Discourse on Woman / X
Frances Willard, Glimpses of 50 Years: The Autobiography of an American Woman / X
Hegel, Master/Slave Dialectic in Phenomenology of Spirit / X
Kierkegaard, Works of Love (“Our Duty to Love Those We See”) / x / X
Course Topic/Historical Epoch as Related to Theme / Suggested Primary or Secondary Reading/
Fine Art/Historical Context Reading / Related Discipline (Select All Applicable) / Core Skills Addressed
(Please see list above) –
List All Applicable
LIT / REL / PHI / Natural & Social Sciences
(Please Name) / FA / HC
20th century / Sartre, No Exit / X
Kafka, The Metamorphisis / X
Conrad, “An Outpost of Progress” / X
Morrison, “Recitatif” / X
Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (ch. 3) / X
Said, Orientalism (selections) / X
Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed / X
Moltmann, The Power of the Powerless (chs. 7 and 12) / X
Tatum, Why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria? A Psychologist Explains the Development of Racial Identity (ch. 4) / Psychology
Judson, Brief entries on the biology of strangeness / Biology
Course Topic/Historical Epoch as Related to Theme / Suggested Primary or Secondary Reading/
Fine Art/Historical Context Reading / Related Discipline (Select All Applicable) / Core Skills Addressed
(Please see list above) –
List All Applicable
LIT / REL / PHI / Natural & Social Sciences
(Please Name) / FA / HC
20th century (continued) / Steven Gould, The Mismeasure of Man / Biology/
Psychology
Dowty, Israel/Palestine / Political Science
Dower, War without Mercy / Political Science
Daniels, “Why Were Japanese Americans interned during WWII?” / X
Soerens and Hwang, Welcoming the Stranger / Sociology
McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” / Sociology
Heatherton, et al, eds., The Social Psychology of Stigma / Psychology
Kahn, Hillbilly Women / Sociology
Ursula von Rydigsvard, Various sculptures / X
Course Topic/Historical Epoch as Related to Theme / Suggested Primary or Secondary Reading/
Fine Art/Historical Context Reading / Related Discipline (Select All Applicable) / Core Skills Addressed
(Please see list above) –
List All Applicable
LIT / REL / PHI / Natural & Social Sciences
(Please Name) / FA / HC
Anself Kiefer, Lot’s Wife / X
Doris Salcedo, various sculptures / X