Well, here is the issue as I have found it: To teach in the flexible, liberal arts way you advocate, the prof must first be liberally educated him/her/themself. I teach my gen ed class as a chronological mini-core, but I make a point of doing what is now called intersectional interpretations of our texts from Day 1. Gilgamesh is from the fertile plains of present-day Iraq; Odysseus is no cardboard hero but something of a pirate and a trickster; Seneca is a rich colonial doling out advice at the heart of the Roman Empire; Perpetua and Augustine are Africans as well as the purveyors of a new religion; Heloise and Abelard are dueling gender philosophers and theologians; Chaucer problematizes marriage as a medieval institution and steals from the best while doing it; Equiano and Austen share a world where war and transportation—not to mention subjection—are central concerns, etc. etc. These “core texts” can be turned into something quite fresh and relevant. But first one needs to have the foundation already laid by one’s own education to do it.
I like this post! Yes, I think given the exigencies of this moment--you need to teach non-Western texts, or you just devalue your whole project. Whether you want to or not, you uphold white supremacy. Also, if you genuinely do want to remove cultural chauvinism, people should read Muslim writers and realize they were consciously carrying on the traditions of Aristotle, or read the Chinese writers and realize they cared less than nothing for what people in Europe were doing. Nothing could accomplish the goals of a Great Books education better than that.
Sure, Tim, and I have taught Sunjata in my gen ed classes over the years—in tandem with The Odyssey, in fact. But I’m an anthropologist, too, so I like to make the familiar strange as much as I like to make the strange familiar. We are not the 5th century BCE Athenians, after all, and that becomes apparent when one takes the religious accusations swirling around Socrates seriously—which means taking Plato’s reports of Socrates’s use of Delphi seriously, too. It cannot just be subbing in some “other” texts; it must also be taking apart the canonical assumptions of the “standard” ones. To do that, once again, the teacher needs to have been liberally and widely educated, or to be willing to learn the trick of it, themselves.
Well, here is the issue as I have found it: To teach in the flexible, liberal arts way you advocate, the prof must first be liberally educated him/her/themself. I teach my gen ed class as a chronological mini-core, but I make a point of doing what is now called intersectional interpretations of our texts from Day 1. Gilgamesh is from the fertile plains of present-day Iraq; Odysseus is no cardboard hero but something of a pirate and a trickster; Seneca is a rich colonial doling out advice at the heart of the Roman Empire; Perpetua and Augustine are Africans as well as the purveyors of a new religion; Heloise and Abelard are dueling gender philosophers and theologians; Chaucer problematizes marriage as a medieval institution and steals from the best while doing it; Equiano and Austen share a world where war and transportation—not to mention subjection—are central concerns, etc. etc. These “core texts” can be turned into something quite fresh and relevant. But first one needs to have the foundation already laid by one’s own education to do it.
I like this post! Yes, I think given the exigencies of this moment--you need to teach non-Western texts, or you just devalue your whole project. Whether you want to or not, you uphold white supremacy. Also, if you genuinely do want to remove cultural chauvinism, people should read Muslim writers and realize they were consciously carrying on the traditions of Aristotle, or read the Chinese writers and realize they cared less than nothing for what people in Europe were doing. Nothing could accomplish the goals of a Great Books education better than that.
Sure, Tim, and I have taught Sunjata in my gen ed classes over the years—in tandem with The Odyssey, in fact. But I’m an anthropologist, too, so I like to make the familiar strange as much as I like to make the strange familiar. We are not the 5th century BCE Athenians, after all, and that becomes apparent when one takes the religious accusations swirling around Socrates seriously—which means taking Plato’s reports of Socrates’s use of Delphi seriously, too. It cannot just be subbing in some “other” texts; it must also be taking apart the canonical assumptions of the “standard” ones. To do that, once again, the teacher needs to have been liberally and widely educated, or to be willing to learn the trick of it, themselves.