SSI1 124: Utopia/Dystopia Fall 2014

SSI1 124: Utopia/Dystopia Fall 2014

SSI1 124: Utopia/Dystopia

Wyatt 206, MWF 11:00 to 11:50

Fall 2014

William Breitenbach Office: Wyatt 141

Office phone: (253) 879-3167 Office hours:

E-mail: MWF 12:30 – 1:30

Web: http://www.pugetsound.edu/faculty-sites/bill-breitenbach/ TuTh 1:00 – 2:00

Writing Center Liaison: Alex Plant and by appointment

The purpose of this course is to introduce you to the process of scholarly inquiry by letting you engage in it. The hope is that you will thereby become more proficient in doing what inquiring scholars do: framing questions, making and supporting claims, and responding critically to questions and claims advanced by other inquiring scholars. To accomplish all this, we’ll set three subsidiary goals.

The first goal is to help you make yourself a better writer of academic expository prose—the kind of writing that you will be called upon to do repeatedly during your years at the University of Puget Sound. The word expository means serving to expound or explain. Expository writing is thus distinguishable from personal reactions or musings. It is concerned instead with describing, analyzing, and interpreting the words, ideas, and assumptions in a text. It is about explaining some implication that you have found in a text, not about explaining how you feel about what you have found there. By calling it academic prose, I do not mean to suggest that you will be learning a kind of writing suitable only for students and scholars. Making an argument—organizing information, developing a disputable claim, and using clear writing to persuade readers—these are skills applicable in any future endeavor that requires you to put words on paper or on a computer screen.

The second goal is to help you make yourself a more sensitive and sophisticated critical reader. This goal follows naturally from the first one. Good writers have good ideas. One way to get them is to train yourself to read closely, probing the assumptions and implications that lie beneath the surface of difficult texts. We have plenty of difficult texts in this course, and our encounters with them will give you frequent opportunities to practice alert, attentive, and analytical reading and thinking. Meanwhile our encounters with each other in class will provide you with frequent opportunities to expound and support your insights in formal oral presentations and informal conversations with other alert, attentive, and analytical readers.

The third goal is to help you learn about utopianism and anti-utopianism in Western thought and society from the ancient world to the twenty-first century. Although it might not seem so when you’re plowing through the readings, our coverage will be very selective, making gigantic leaps in time and space. Because I am by trade a historian of the United States, we’ll pay particular attention to utopian thought and communitarian experiments in America. Not unique to America, however, are the themes treated in our readings: the translation of utopian theory into community practice; the tension between communal coercion and individual freedom; the conflict between leaders’ authority and community members’ rights; the role of gender, family, and private love in utopias; and the relationship of utopian communities to the outside world.

We’ll find, in the writings about utopias, attempts to answer some of the most important questions that can be asked: What is the perfect society? Is it possible to achieve such a society? What is human nature? Is it malleable or fixed? What is human happiness? Can human beings live together in harmony?

ALERT: some readings in the course discuss unconventional sexual practices, including free love, rape, incest, and sexual relations between adults and adolescents. If these topics make you extremely uncomfortable, you should switch to another SSI1 course.

BOOKS AND WEBSITES

These required books are for sale at the University of Puget Sound Bookstore:

Plato, Republic, trans. G. M. A. Grube, revised C. D. C. Reeve (Hackett)

Thomas More, Utopia, trans. Clarence H. Miller (Yale)

Voltaire, Candide and Related Texts, ed. David Wootton (Hackett)

Spencer Klaw, Without Sin: The Life and Death of the Oneida Community (Penguin)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (Dover)

Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, trans. Mirra Ginsburg (HarperCollins)

Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers, A Writer’s Reference, 7th ed. (Bedford/St. Martin’s)

The following books are not required, but they can help you make yourself a better writer:

Michael Harvey, The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing (Hackett) [good on writing style]

Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein, They Say / I Say: The Moves that Matter in Academic Writing (Norton) [explains how arguments are structured in academic essays]

Communities Directory: A Comprehensive Guide to Intentional Communities and Cooperative Living (2010) contains essays about communal living and brief descriptions of intentional communities now existing throughout the world. (It is shelved in the Collins Library Reference section: HQ970. C64. 2010 Ref.; it is also available online at http://www.ic.org/directory/.)

These sites have material on utopianism and intentional communities. Links are also on Moodle.

http://www.ic.org/. Intentional Communities site, with a list of communities and many links.

http://www.thefec.org. The Federation of Egalitarian Communities.

http://www.utoronto.ca/utopia/. The Society for Utopian Studies, with links to other sites.

http://www.communalcenter.org. Center for Communal Studies at Univ. of Southern Indiana.

http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/exhibitions/no-place-earth-america-and-utopian-dream. Yale Library’s online exhibition (created in 2006) provides an introduction to American utopias.

Moodle Website

Readings identified in the syllabus with “[M]” may be found online at the Moodle website for SSI1 124. Login to Moodle at https://moodle.pugetsound.edu/moodle/login/index.php, using Mozilla Firefox as your browser. In addition to assigned readings, I’ll place on Moodle the course syllabus, paper assignments, recommended readings, general advice, and links to useful websites.

PROCEDURES, REQUIREMENTS, EXPECTATIONS

Class participation

This will be a discussion class. That means everyone needs to show up on time with the reading assignment completed and ideas to talk about. To help you get ready for class, I have provided “prep” questions in the syllabus for each session. I urge you to take notes, reducing the main points of each reading and class discussion to what you can write on a 3x5 index card. Bring the day’s assigned books to class, so you can refer to particular passages during discussions.

There will be a variety of formal and informal opportunities for oral participation. In class it’s your job to put your ideas out there for classmates to endorse, challenge, and transform. Be willing to ask questions, confess confusion, take a stand, and change your mind when presented with better evidence or reasoning. Listen attentively and respond respectfully to what your classmates say. Speaking directly to them (rather than through me) shows that you take them and their ideas seriously. Staring at an electronic device during class shows that you don’t.

Your regular participation will be important in determining both the success of the course and the grade you receive in it. After every class, I’ll evaluate your contribution to other students’ learning. Students who make outstanding contributions will get a 4, those who contribute significantly will get a 3, those who attend and listen but say little will get a 2, and those whose behavior makes it harder for themselves or others to learn (e.g., by arriving late, leaving the room during class, eating noisily, texting, erecting a laptop wall) will get a 1. Students who miss class will get a 0 for the first four absences and -2 for all subsequent ones. I have adopted this system to get out of the unprofitable business of judging absentees’ excuses and into the rewarding business of evaluating contributions of those students who are present in the classroom. Hence, there are no excused or unexcused absences. If you miss class, for any reason, the way to compensate is by speaking up in the classes that you do attend. At the end of the semester, the daily scores will be important in calculating your participation grade, which will count for 20% of the course grade.

Absences

When a student misses more than 20% of the classes (in this course, that’s more than 8), I have qualms about putting a grade on a transcript testifying to the world that he or she has performed adequately in my course. In such cases, I may ask the Registrar to withdraw the student from the course, which will result in a grade of W or WF, depending on the time of the semester and/or the quality of the work that has been completed.

Papers and other graded work. Assignment sheets will be provided well before due dates. The percentage in parentheses indicates the weight of the assignment in calculating your course grade.

·  Due Friday, September 12, by 4:00 at Wyatt 141: a close reading (1 page) of a brief passage in Plato’s Republic (5%).

·  Due Monday, September 22, by 4:00 at Wyatt 141: a comparative analysis (2 pages) of a significant similarity or difference between Plato’s Republic and More’s Utopia (10%).

·  Due Wednesday, October 1, by 4:00 at Wyatt 141: an interpretive essay (3 pages) answering the question, Is Candide a utopian or anti-utopian book? (15%).

·  Due Friday, October 31, at the beginning of class: a research paper (5-6 pages of text) on Oneida Community, plus source assessment forms (20%).

·  Due Friday, November 14, during class: an oral project/presentation on Gilman’s Herland and Zamyatin’s We, plus fiction reading forms (15%).

·  A final exam on Wednesday, December 17, from 12:00 to 2:00 p.m. in Wyatt 206 (15%).

·  Participation: based on contributions to classmates’ learning in formal presentations and informal discussions, and on attendance, engagement, preparation, and participation (20%).

Grading scale

Grade ranges are A (93-100), A- (90-92), B+ (87-89), B (83-86), B- (80-82), C+ (77-79), C (73-76), C- (70-72), D+ (67-69), D (63-66), D- (60-62), and F (below 60). I will round up to a higher course grade when the numerical score is within 0.2 points of the cut-off (e.g., 89.8 will get an A-).

Writing help

The assigned text by Diana Hacker and Nancy Sommers, A Writer’s Reference, contains much excellent instruction about researching and writing papers. It also has a section on the MLA style, which is the documentation system we’ll be using in this course.

The UPS Center for Writing and Learning is located in Howarth 109. Its mission is to help all writers, whatever their level of ability, become better writers. Our course liaison is Alex Plant. To make an appointment, call 879-3404, email , or drop by Howarth 109. You must use the Writing Center at least once, preferably for your Candide or Oneida paper.

Harvard University’s Writing Center has a website with useful advice on writing academic essays: http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~wricntr. Click on “Writing Resources” and then on “Strategies for Essay Writing” to find eighteen online “handouts.”

Late work and missing work

Normally I grant make-ups, extensions, or “Incomplete” grades only for weighty reasons like a family emergency or a serious illness. If you are facing circumstances beyond your control that might prevent you from finishing a paper or taking an exam, talk to me in advance about the possibility of getting an extension. (Extensions are prospective, not retrospective; that is, an extension granted after the deadline does not cancel the penalty already accrued.) As appropriate, provide written documentation supporting your request from a medical professional or from the Counseling, Health, and Wellness Services; the Academic Advising Office; the Office of Student Accessibility and Accommodations; or the Dean of Students Office.

Late papers should be slipped under my door at Wyatt 141. If Wyatt is locked, send me the paper by email to stop the penalty clock, but then subsequently give me an unaltered hard copy. Late papers will be docked 3.5 points on a 100-point scale (about ⅓ of a letter grade) if submitted in the first 24 hours after the deadline. If turned in during the second 24 hours, there will be an additional penalty of 6.5 points (about ⅔ of a letter grade). For each additional 24-hour period, papers will lose 10 points (a full letter grade), until the points reach 0.

Other policies

If you have a physical, psychological, medical or learning disability that may impact your course work, contact Peggy Perno, Director of the Office of Accessibility and Accommodations, 105 Howarth, 253-879-3395. She will determine with you what accommodations are necessary and appropriate. All information and documentation are confidential.

Students who want to withdraw from the course should read the rules for withdrawal grades in the Academic Handbook (link provided below). Monday, October 13, is the last day to drop with an automatic W; thereafter it is much harder to avoid a WF. Students who are dropped for excessive absences or who abandon the course without officially withdrawing will receive a WF.

Students who cheat or plagiarize; help others cheat or plagiarize; deface or steal library materials; or otherwise violate the University’s standards of academic integrity will be given an F for the course and will be reported to the Registrar. Before turning in your first paper, read the discussion of academic integrity in the Academic Handbook (link provided below). Ignorance of the concept or consequences of plagiarism will not be accepted as an excuse.

In these and all other matters, I follow the policies in the current Academic Handbook, at http://www.pugetsound.edu/student-life/student-handbook/academic-handbook/.

Classroom Emergency Response Guidance

Please review university emergency preparedness and response procedures posted at www.pugetsound.edu/emergency/. There is a link on the university home page. Familiarize yourself with hall exit doors and the designated gathering area for your class and lab buildings.

If building evacuation becomes necessary (e.g. earthquake), meet your instructor at the designated gathering area so he can account for your presence. Then await further instructions. Do not return to the building until advised by a university emergency response representative.

If confronted by an act of violence, be prepared to make quick decisions to protect your safety. Flee the area by running away from the source of danger if you can safely do so. If this is not possible, shelter in place by securing classroom or lab doors and windows, closing blinds, and turning off room lights. Lie on the floor out of sight and away from windows and doors. Place cell phones or pagers on vibrate so you can receive messages quietly. Await further instructions.