HUM 500: RESEARCH METHODS AND SCHOLARLY INQUIRY IN THE HUMANITIES
FALL 2006
The Teacher:
Peter J. Kareithi, Ph.D.
Course description
The purpose of this course is to introduce students to graduate work in the Humanities in general and to the Master's Program in Humanities in particular. Class work will focus on questions about the nature of the disciplines in the Humanities and investigations of the idea of interdisciplinary work. In order to do work in the Humanities today, especially interdisciplinary work, it is necessary to come to terms with some of the important critical theories that have developed in the last 30 years. To that end, we will be reading a wide range of texts to help you develop an overview of developments of theory in literary and inter-art studies. We will be working on important skills, such as close and careful reading of texts, analysis and interpretation, and proper documentation of research.
In brief, our three objectives will be: 1) to explore the nature and practice of interdisciplinary study in the humanities; (2) to examine current theories and methods of scholarly analysis in the humanities; and (3) to assist students in developing advanced research skills and in presenting the results of their research in a professional manner.
This course will have a number of different foci, and quite a range of different scholarly activities. In the first part of the course, we will be reading about the field of interdisciplinarity in order to get some sense of what the conversation is in this field. In the second part, we shall explore in greater detail some of the important theories that have informed most of that conversation. In the later part of the course, we will be focusing on the issue of race and representations of race in the 19th century and late 20th century to see how the discourse of race works in a number of different contexts. In addition, we will be paying attention, throughout the course, to the methods of scholarly research, and the production of correctly documented and formatted papers.
Because of one of the purposes of this course is to introduce students to work in the Humanities Master's Program, we will have a number of sessions in which members of the Humanities faculty will visit our class. These visits will serve the dual function of introducing you to a number of faculty and of presenting different disciplines and different approaches to the concept of interdisciplinary study.
By the end of this course, students should have gained competence in defining a research problem; locating and using appropriate research resources; applying pertinent methodological tools; and organizing and writing an extended research essay. Assignments in the texts for the course, handouts, and directed research are intended to encourage intellectual rigor and to stimulate informed discussion about the range and validity or interdisciplinary studies.
Graduate school is an intensification of what you experienced as an undergraduate. More is demanded of you, both in terms of the effort you put into assignments and in term of your class participation. This class offers challenging ideas to explore. I do not expect anyone to master them completely, but I do expect open minds and willing participation in discussion. You should be willing to challenge yourself, each other and me; and be open to trying new ideas and approaches and to raising new questions.
Required Readings:
Reading assignments are given in the course schedule for each meeting. Please read these before the week for which they are assigned, to provide a basis for class discussion. The readings are from the texts for the course and from books and articles that have been placed on reserve in the library. (See the library reserve list below.) For your convenience, some of the readings outside the course texts will be provided by the instructor in photocopy or electronic form, where possible.
Required Texts:
Literary Theory: An Introduction, 2nd. Ed., by Terry Eagleton
A Dictionary of Cultural and Critical Theory, by Michael Payne
MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, 6th Ed. (or most recent), by Joseph Gibaldi
The Heart of Darkness, 4th Ed (Norton Critical Edition), by Joseph Conrad, Robert Kimbrough (Editor)
Exterminate all brutes, by Sven Lindqvist
Devil on the Cross, by Ngugi wa Thiong’o
Additional Readings
The following essays from Interdisciplinarity: Essays From the Literature, by William H. Newell, ed (on reserve at PSH Library)
· Nancy Cluck, "Reflections on the Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Humanites" in Interdisciplinarity
· Clifford Geertz, "Blurred Genres" in Interdisciplinarity
· Giles Gunn,. "Interdisciplinary Studies" in Interdisciplinarity
· Julia Klien,. "Blurring, Cracking, and Crossing ... " in Interdisciplinarity
Isak Dinesen. “Farah” in Shadows on the Grass
Troy Thomas, "Interart Analogy: Practice and Theory in Comparing the Arts, Journal of Aesthetic Education, 25 (2), 1991: 17-36
Peter Kareithi. “The White Man's Burden: How Global Media Empires Continue to Construct Difference.” Rhodes Journalism Review 20 (2001):6-19.
Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Towards and Investigation), in L. Althusser,Lenin and Philosophy, (Trans. Ben Brewster), New York: Monthly Review Press, 2001, pp. 127-186
Raymond Williams, Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory, in R. Williams, Problems in Materialism and Culture, Verso, London:1980, pp.30-49
Stuart Hall, Rethinking the ‘Base and Superstructure’ Metaphor, in J. Bloomfield et. al. (eds) Class, Hegemony and Party, London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977
Stuart Hall, “Encoding/Decoding," inCulture, Media and Language, London, Hutchinsons, 1980
Cultural Studies: “Two Paradigms,” in Media, Culture and Society, no. 2, 1989, pp. 57-72
Richard Johnson, “What is Cultural Studies Anyway?”, in Social Text, no. 16, 1986-87, pp. 38-80
Raymie McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric: Theory and Praxis”, Communication Monograms, Vol. 56, June 1989
Books on Reserve at PSH Library
· Bal (ed), The Practice of Cultural Analysis
· Brannigan, New Historicism and Cultural Materialis
· Dinesen. Out of Africa
· Dinesen. Shadows on the Grass
· During (ed), The Cultural Studies Reader
· Geertz, Local Knowledge
· Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures
· Gibaldi, Introduction to Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literatures
· Messer-Davidow, Knowledges: Historical and Critical Studies in Disciplinarity
· Newell (ed), Interdisciplinarity: Essays from the Literature
· Ngugi. Writers in Politics
· Ngugi. Decolonizing the Mind
· Rosaldo, Culture and Truth
Course Policies
Attendance and class participation
This is a graduate seminar, and an exploration on both our parts. You will need to be an active partner in an on-going conversation, both with me and with your fellow classmates. Not only must you be in class regularly, but you must also participate regularly. I'm primarily interested in your willingness to engage and be engaged in our discussions, rather than in the "correctness" of your contributions. In assessing your class participation, I will not be evaluating the quality of your participation, but rather the quantity - your willingness to seriously venture and explore the issues of interdisciplinarity and race. Since discussion will be the primary mode of instruction, significant silence (and significant absence) will lower your final grade.
Workload
This will be a student-centered course. As members of a graduate-level seminar, we will all be a part of a learning community. Classes will be run on a discussion basis, with group work and sharing of work a regular feature. Individual workload will be composed of the following activities:
· 2 personal statements ( not graded)
· Angel postings
· 2 essays - 30%
· 2 bibliographies (one annotated)
· 1 reading presentation
· 1 group project/presentation
· 1 portfolio
Personal Statements
In the first week of the course, each student will be required to submit a personal statement setting out his/her reasons for seeking an interdisciplinary graduate degree in the humanities, and his/her expectations for this course. Two weeks to the end of the course, each student will be required to submit a second statement evaluating the outcomes of this course for him or herself and detailing how those outcomes are expected to influence the his or her work or plans for the remainder of his or her studies in the graduate Humanities program. Each of the statements should be two pages, typed double-spaced. The first statement will be used to assist the instructor in directing the course to the maximum benefit for the course participants. The second statement will be used to guide the Humanities graduate faculty in designing appropriate individual study plans for each of you. These statements will not be graded, but they must be written in professional memo format and must adhere to the MLA style in every aspect.
Posting to Angel
You are required to write and post on the Angel discussion board a response to the readings for every class. The response should be posted before class, so I can have a chance to read your postings before I come to class. You are not to summarize the readings. I want you to discuss the issues raised by the readings, and to explore your own reactions to those issues. In classes where there are no readings (say, for instance, in the classes where we have faculty panels or visual presentations such as movies), you are to post your responses after class. Your audience for these responses is all of us who are in the room. Not only will you need to read all of your classmates' postings, but you will be required to respond to at least one of your classmates' postings every week. I will be reading along with you, and will be selectively responding to your postings, but I will not be evaluating them. The objective of this exercise is to create a discussion forum outside the walls of the classroom.
Write all the responses and you will get an "A" for this requirement. For each posting you miss or for each that isn't substantial enough, your grade on this requirement will be lowered one letter grade.
Two essays:
Each of these essays should be preceded by a memo addressed to me (in correct memo format) in which you discuss your paper and its strengths and weaknesses. The essays will be revised for the final portfolio. If you wish, I will give you a provisional grade on each essay. That grade will be an evaluation of what the essay would receive were it to be submitted in the same state at the end of the semester (it is your responsibility to indicate when you hand the paper in that you want a provisional grade). I will not record this grade, nor will I give any provisional grade lower than a C minus.
There first essay will be an analysis of some aspect of your educational experience relevant to the content of this course by using some of the concepts discussed in the readings on interdisciplinarity that are assigned in the first two weeks of class. Your essay should contain at least eight citations for the assigned readings. – including two citations each from three different texts. This essay should be five to seven pages long. (A five-page paper does not include the references). This paper is due Thursday October 5.
Your second essay will be in the form of an interdisciplinary research paper of 10 to 12 pages (not less than 10 and not more than twelve pages) on a particular topic comparing/contrasting some aspect(s) of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness with one or more of the following texts: “Out of Africa”, “Amandla”, and “Devil on the Cross.” The paper should bring out or utilize methods of interart analysis as applied to one or more works or areas of the humanities. You should foreground critical methods of interart analysis through the particular topic chosen as well as analyze in detail the work(s) selected from any two of the areas of concentration in our graduate program art history, history, literature, music history, philosophy and communications. This paper is due Thursday November 16.
I will work with each of you to determine a focus and a topic that engages your interest and that fulfills the methodological requirements of the course and critical analysis.
Late papers will not be accepted.
During the last three weeks of the course, each of you will be asked to present a brief twenty-minute oral report to the class on your research project.
Two bibliographies
The first of these is to be a print bibliography which should consist of at least 10 items, the majority of them being journal articles. We shall brainstorm a list of possible areas in class. The second bibliography will be annotated and will consist entirely of web-based material.
Readings Presentation
Students will be assigned, individually or in teams, lead class discussion on assigned texts by making a close-reading presentation of the weekly assigned texts in this course.
Guideline on these presentations will be provided once class starts.
Group project
You will be divided into teams of two or three for this assignment. In this project you are to present some other aspect of race in the nineteenth-century colonial Africa that we haven't discussed in class. I've appended a list of possible topics below, but I will approve others if I think they're feasible.