4:00P-5:15P TR (25) 3 cr

TOPIC: THE INDIVIDUAL AND INSTITUTIONS

COAS INTENSIVE WRITING SECTION.

We often talk vaguely about "the relationship between individuals
and society," but in fact we are much more affected by our
relationships to particular institutions than by our
relationships to an abstract "society."  What do companies,
schools and universities, marriages, laws, clubs, and a whole
range of other things have in common that warrants their being
called "institutions"?  Why is it that we need such institutions
and resent them at the same time?  How much of our sense of
ourselves derives from these affiliations?  How do we negotiate
the satisfactions they offer and the demands they make on us?=20
How do we negotiate the conflicting demands of two or more
institutions?  When are we justified in leaving an institution to
which we have made a commitment or in violating its dictates?=20
This course will consider a wide range of writings and films that
address the complex relationship between individuals and the
institutions within which we choose - or are induced/coerced - to
work.   I will lecture for brief periods, but class time will
usually be devoted to discussion.  Students must come prepared by
having read the assigned material and/or having viewed the films
by the first class in which they are to be discussed.  Students
will write 20-25 pages of material in the course of the semester,
in addition to weekly, one-page responses to the  assigned
readings and films; each student will negotiate with me, early in
the semester,  how those 20-25 pages will be allocated.  But for
each student, the final project will involve analyzing one
particular institution of his or her choice in the terms which
class readings and discussion will make available.

The materials listed below are partial and tentative; feel free
to email me (Hedin) later in the spring for a final list.
=20
Freud, CIVILIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS, Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
and "The Divinity School Address," Thoreau, "On Civil
Disobedience," Melville, "Bartleby the Scrivener," Foucault,
selections, Ehrenreich, THE HEARTS OF MEN.=20
Films:    THE FIRM, TWELVE ANGRY MEN, SERPICO (in conjunction
with NYPD BLUE), THE FOURTH OF JULY or COMING HOME, A TIME TO
KILL or IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT.