Thomas Streeter, 31 So. Prospect, 656-2167
Office Hours: MWF 11-12, & by appointment
email: thomas.streeter@uvm.edu
Scheduled Guests and Readings:
This interdisciplinary seminar is designed to inquire into the relationship between theory and knowledge across the disciplines. The course is open only to those Arts & Sciences students who have been admitted in their sophomore year to the Honors Program.
On most class days, guest lecturers from various disciplines
will visit the class to discuss some of their scholarship and
intellectual approach. The organizing theme of this section of
the course will be the relations between knowledge and modes of
communication: in many of our classes and assignments we will
look at different kinds of communication, from medieval manuscripts
to computers, and their relation to the life of the mind.
Course Requirements: Students will be expected to participate
conscientiously in discussions and finish reading assignments
before they are due to be discussed in class. In addition each
student will: 1) obtain an email account and join an electronic
discussion group (or "list") about the class. 2) Prepare
a 10-12-page annotated bibliography on the research question you
are pursuing for your final paper. (Due March 8). 3) Write in
three stages (proposal, draft, and final form) a 12-15 page research
paper expanding on a question that you have raised in this course
or in another class in the humanities, social sciences, or fine
arts. Changes an additions to assignments may be necessary during
the semester.
Readings: Two books have been ordered for the class at
UVM's bookstore -- Victor J. Vitanza's Cyberreader
(2nd edition, September 1998) Prentice Hall), and Thomas
S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
(3rd edition, November 1996, Univ of Chicago Press). There will
also be numerous articles assigned. Some of these may be handed
out in class, but most of them should be available on Bailey/Howe
Library's electronic reserve system: go to http://sageunix.uvm.edu:8080/e-res/
(or from UVM's home page, go to "Bailey/Howe Library,"
click on "Reserve" and then "Electronic Reserve").
Next, when asked for name type in your last name, and where it
says "password" type in the last seven digits of the
barcode # on your UVM ID. On the next page, where it says "Instructor"
type in "Streeter," select hon 100b, and you should
be there. I highly recommend that you print the files rather than
try to read them onscreen.
Feb. 22: The Ethics of Genetic Engineering
Guest: President Judith Ramaley.
Readings:
Kuhn, pp. 136-173
All other readings are available online:
March 1: Books, Knowledge, Consciousness
2:30 -- 3:45, Pat Mardeusz, Reference Librarian, Meet in
Bailey/Howe Instructional Classroom
4:00 -- 5:15, meet in A500 Lafayette. Guest: Prof. Patrick Hutton,
Chair, History. Topic: Print, Consciousness, and Social Change.
Readings:
Elizabeth Eisenstein, excerpts from The Printing Press as an Agent
of Change: Communications and cultural transformations in early-modern
Europe, London: Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 43-47, 66-91,
113-125, 129-136.
Robert Darnton, "Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication
of Romantic Sensitivity," from his The Great Cat Massacre
(New York: Basic Books, 1984) pp. 215-56
Excerpts from Ted Nelson, Literary Machines (self-published,1981).
Raymond Kurzweil, "The Future of Libraries," in Cyberreader
Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel," in Cyberreader.
March 8: Books, Bodies, and the Middle Ages
Guest: Prof. Anne Clark, Religion
Reading (on electronic reserve):
Mary Carruthers, "Reading with Attitude, Remembering the Book," in The Book and the Body, ed. by Dolores Frese and Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), pp. 1-33.
March 22: Rhetoric, Feminism, and the Digital Era
Guest: Prof. Nancy Welch, English
Reading (on electronic reserve):
Ellen Ullman, "Come in CQ: The Body on the Wire," from Cherny and Weise (eds.) Wired Women: Gender and the New Realities in Cyberspace, Seal Press, 1997, pp. 3-23.