` Order and Chaos 1.0

ORDER AND CHAOS version 1.0 Fall 2016 Mondays 10-10:50am

Is Conflict Inevitable?


Course Description

This course examines the human quest to find order in the sometimes chaotic array of sensations that surround us: How does the world work? Why do people behave the way they do? We will study the interplay of order and chaos within three interrelated quests: the quest to understand individual human behavior by exploring ideas about justice, gender, free will, love, and the psyche; the quest to understand how the world works by exploring ideas about language and nature; the quest to understand human social behavior by exploring ideas about cultural, social and political entities.

Course Objectives: Upon completing this PEP course, students will be able to describe: various ways that human beings come to know the world and themselves, and the various ways in which they express that knowledge; connections and conflicts among and between different intellectual and cultural traditions.


Exams: There will be two lab exams and 8 quizzes- Weeks 8 and 14.

Grading: Grades will be assigned as follows.

Attendance & Participation 20%

First Exam 40%

Second Exam 40%

A+ 96.7 - 100% C 73.4 - 76.6%

A 93.4 - 96.6% C- 70.0 - 73.3%

A- 90.0 - 93.3% D+ 66.7 - 69.9%

B+ 86.7 - 89.9% D 63.4 - 66.6%

B 83.4 - 86.6% D- 60.0 – 63.3%

B- 80.0 - 83.3% F <60%

C+ 76.7 - 79.9%

Section I- The Conflict Within

Week 1

Plato's "Phaedrus" and excerpts from Jonathon Haidt's "The Divided Self"

Week 2

W.E.B Dubois' Double Conscious (excerpts from "Souls of Black Folk")

Week 3

Sigmund Freud's essay on Narcissism and Ovid's "Narcissus"

Week 4

Sigmund Freud vs. Karl Gustav Jung and "Cupid and Pysche"

Section II- The Conflict Without

Week 5

Ferdinand de Saussure's essay On Linguistics - Sign, signifier...

Week 6

Ngugi wa' Thiongo's "Decolonizing the Mind"

Week 7

Virginia Wolfe (excerpts from "A Room of Her Own")

Week 8

Judith Butler's essay on gender roles

Section III- Within Confronts Without

Week 9

Excerpts from Plato's "Republic"

Week 10

The Communist Revolution

Week 11

Rise of Nazi Germany/WWII

Week 12

Suffragist and Civil Rights Movements

Section IV- Tell Me What the Elders Knew

Week 13

Introduction to Folklore - German, Russian, African American

Week 14

Differences Between The Male and Female Adventure in Fairy Tales

© Orin James 2016