FIRST YEAR SEMINAR
FALL 2003
The two-semester First-year Seminar, through the reading of a series of core texts common to all sections, introduces every in-coming student to crucially important intellectual, artistic, and cultural ideas which serve, in turn, as a strong basis for a liberal arts training as it develops in subsequent years at the college. Yet the course is not meant to be a mere survey of background material. Rather, frequent writing assignments and an intimate seminar format among peers encourage an active debate over ideas for which there is no foregone conclusion. Seminar reading and discussions are supplemented by a mandatory series of guest lectures, panel presentations and films.
The seminar's current
yearlong theme is "What is
Enlightenment: The Science, Culture and Politics of Reason." Though
17th - 18th Century European Culture is the main focus, the course also looks back
to the Ancient World and to non-European thought in the first half; and, in the
second half, will look forward to the modern era where many assumptions of the
Enlightenment have fallen under severe critical scrutiny. The Fall Semester
includes major texts by eleven authors: Plato, Confucius, Mencius, Montaigne,
Descartes, Galileo, Pascal, Locke, Defoe, Equiano and Austen. Authors to be
considered in the Spring Semester may include: Kant, Hume, Rousseau, Mary
Shelley, Paine, Mary Wollstonecraft, Darwin, Marx, Nietzsche, Freud, and
Achebe. By way of an engaged encounter
with the above texts, a number of critical problems will emerge that pertain to
the formation of modern intellectual disciplines. For instance, scientific
method, psychology, political theory, economics, and the novel were all new
ways of knowing the world that came into being during "the long eighteenth
century". Not only did the concepts of equality and individual liberty
represent a radical departure from the past, but the rise of global exploration
and empire influenced scientific and political thought as well.
Students are encouraged
to pursue the development and articulation of their own point of view on the
core reading. The spirit of First-year Seminar is best exemplified by the observation
that in our daily lives we frequently encounter (and ourselves invoke) concepts
drawn from the selected texts; without a first-hand knowledge of those concepts
and a critical and historical framework in which to understand them, we risk
having others define them for us. First-year seminar is designed to be the
cornerstone of your introduction to rigorous, individual learning at Bard.