6916:2024:about_this_seminar
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| 6916:2024:about_this_seminar [2024/07/09 23:27] – Ryan Schram (admin) | 6916:2024:about_this_seminar [2024/07/09 23:28] (current) – Ryan Schram (admin) | ||
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| Each of the people whose work we read combines these different voices. No scholar or thinker is ever speaking in just one voice at the exclusion of the others. As I said, it's a hypothesis I'd like us to play with in this class. | Each of the people whose work we read combines these different voices. No scholar or thinker is ever speaking in just one voice at the exclusion of the others. As I said, it's a hypothesis I'd like us to play with in this class. | ||
| - | Like many classes at the postgraduate level, this class is organized as a seminar, and thus centers on an open discussion among students. I provide guidance to the discussion. I will not, however, give any lectures in this class.[^rec] | + | Like many classes at the postgraduate level, this class is organized as a seminar, and thus centers on an open discussion among students. I provide guidance to the discussion. I will not, however, give any lectures in this class. Each week we will come together to help each other understand a set of readings better. Each week's readings represent the work of one important scholar whose ideas have influenced the way people in many social sciences formulate and seek to answer questions about social life. Our job is to find out all the different ways that these ideas can be interpreted and applied. This means we all have to contribute something to the discussion each week, so that we discover as many different perspectives as possible. |
| Indeed, in many cases we will be reading the original works of these key thinkers. Each of them speaks in different voices of social thought and some of these can be unfamiliar to us. Part of this class is learning to hear voices that are hard to hear. When these authors were writing, they were arguing for ideas which many people found hard to understand and hard to accept. They were breaking new ground. The authors themselves often had to struggle to figure out what they wanted to get across because it was new. This means that they often present their ideas in dense prose or in evocative but obscure metaphors and poetic language. These works will not be clear on the first reading, or even after several readings, since they are open to interpretation. After decades of debate, the scholarly community has arrived at several possible interpretations, | Indeed, in many cases we will be reading the original works of these key thinkers. Each of them speaks in different voices of social thought and some of these can be unfamiliar to us. Part of this class is learning to hear voices that are hard to hear. When these authors were writing, they were arguing for ideas which many people found hard to understand and hard to accept. They were breaking new ground. The authors themselves often had to struggle to figure out what they wanted to get across because it was new. This means that they often present their ideas in dense prose or in evocative but obscure metaphors and poetic language. These works will not be clear on the first reading, or even after several readings, since they are open to interpretation. After decades of debate, the scholarly community has arrived at several possible interpretations, | ||
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| Your participation in discussion is, in that sense, something you do for your fellow students. By offering your views, especially to people who disagree with you, you help them to reflect critically on their own reasoning. Likewise, when you seek out the perspectives of other people, you are able to become aware of your own thought processes. This is ultimately what you will take away from this class: an understanding of your own perspective, | Your participation in discussion is, in that sense, something you do for your fellow students. By offering your views, especially to people who disagree with you, you help them to reflect critically on their own reasoning. Likewise, when you seek out the perspectives of other people, you are able to become aware of your own thought processes. This is ultimately what you will take away from this class: an understanding of your own perspective, | ||
| - | [^rec]: And since there are no lectures, there are also no lecture recordings for this class either. | + | |
6916/2024/about_this_seminar.1720592827.txt.gz · Last modified: 2024/07/09 23:27 by Ryan Schram (admin)