HIST 8960, "Academic Life as Pragmatic Action," W 1:25-3:30, Fall 2008. Led by Professor Thomas Wolfe

Registration

This course was offered in fall of 2008, and will be offered again at a date to be determined.

Description

The course has two dimensions. First it is aimed at students grappling with the writing of their dissertations, and to that end will be run as a semester long workshop in which we will pay sustained attention to the different issues and problems that arise in the course of writing. The interdisciplinary nature of the class will allow us to approach the particularities of the dissertation as a kind of document from a variety of perspectives, and we will grapple collectively among other things with the tension between disciplinary production and creative departures from disciplinary norms. The second aspect will be an exploration of our own commitments to and engagements with scholarship and the university, an exploration that it is hoped will focus and strengthen our writing. As provocations to discussion, we will read a number of essays in the tradition of American pragmatism, essays that sometimes touch directly on education and communication, but at other times explore the nature of will, belief, truth, and action. This is not a philosophy course, and yet the goal is to connect the dissertation to some larger context that we can construct by reflecting on our hopes for the academy, education, society, and the world. We will ask how the introductions and conclusions of dissertations might be the proper spaces for articulation of this commitment. Students should expect to read approximately 50-100 pages per week, and share with other students drafts of pieces of their dissertations. Course enrollment is limited to doctoral students from all disciplines in the dissertation planning or writing stages whose dissertation content would benefit from exchange with graduate students from multiple disciplines.This course would be especially useful to those students in the humanities and social sciences (including, but in no way limited to, History, Geography, Sociology, Cultural studies, and English) who want to engage more deeply with the process and purpose of the dissertation. Class size will be limited to 8 to 10 students.

Professor Wolfe is affiliated with the Department of History and the Center for German & European Studies. More about Professor Wolfe...