IDS 2210 B Turning Points and Connections

Georgia Southern University.  College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

W 6-6:50 Arts Bldg. 2071

D. H. Thomson, Newton 2220B dhthom@gasou.edu Office hours:  M 5:30-6:30; W 4:30-6:00; T,R 10-11 and by appointment.  I will always be available after class for meetings as well. 

 

Go here to check on attendance (last updated Nov. 18)

 

Go here for information on the final exam

 

This one-hour core class is designed to get students thinking across the disciplines. It focuses on two hugely influential and pivotal turning points: the shift from oral cultures to literate ones (orality -> literacy) and the Freudian revolution. We begin by studying and defining these turns in their historical and cultural contexts; we then connect these ideas to a number of different fields and disciplines (for example, art, advertising, education and more) and consider their continuing importance for how we understand the world today.

 

Course Objectives: 

  1. To enable students to understand the importance of two major turning points in human thought.
  2. To help students make connections among various academic disciplines
  3. To foster an attitude of intellectual curiosity and inquiry about the humanities and develop skills in critical thinking.

Required Texts

Turning Points & Connections class reader in the bookstore.  Various internet resources listed under Daily Schedule of Readings

IMPORTANT NOTE: check the web page frequently (certainly weekly) for any changes or announcements; there will also probably be some resources sites and notes pages added that will help you with your study and the exams.

Grading / Student Responsibilities:

Two exams: 100 points each; 200 points total.  Each exam will contain a written section and a multiple choice section covering the basic terms of the subject we will study (indicated in yellow highlighting below). 90% and up = A; 80% and up = B and so forth. Missing three or fewer classes adds five points to your final grade.

 

No make-up exams unless under extraordinary circumstances as defined by the GSU Student Handbook. The date for the make-up exam for section I is November 19; the deadline for informing the instructor in writing that you will need a make-up exam is Nov. 12.

Daily Schedule of Readings and Discussions

Aug 20: Introduction to the course:  why a one-hour class in the humanities??  the purpose and history of the Turning Points class and what you can expect to learn in the course.

 

27:  The Origins of Writing:   “The First Word:  Iraq to Celebrate 5,000th Anniversary of Writing.” Writing Mediums; Public Texts; Script and Literacy In Europe: From the Fall of Rome to the Gutenberg Press.  You can also visit other topics from Utah State’s Origins of writing page and Sumer:  The Birth of Writing

  • Before writing:  some characteristics of simple (or hunter-gatherer) societies. When was writing invented? Why was writing invented? Vocabulary terms: pictograph; cuneiform; hieroglyph; papyrus; parchment (or vellum); scriptorium; printing press. How did writing change human culture?

Sept. 3, 10: From Orality to Literacy and Orality vs. Literacy. Ong: 1-13 Note:  some of Ong’s analysis is quite technical but please read his essays carefully and take notes; we’ll go over the key terms and ideas in class.  For help see the following chart and the page “Origins of Writing.” In your readings, you’ll hear frequent reference to Plato’s Phaedrus.  Read that, too.  For the class on Sept. 10, also read 26-34.  You can also check out the U.N.’s Human Development Index and see how closely a nation’s standard of living is tied to its literacy rate.  This following site is just for my reference:  “The Introduction of Writing to Indigenous People of Brazil”

  • Continuing:  How did writing change human culture? Some positive effects of writing.  Theuth vs. Thamus:  literacy vs. orality.  Know some of the basic contrasts drawn on the chart (taken from Ong’s essay’s) and be able to apply them to Akinnaso’s story. 

 

17 Personal stories of the movement from orality to literacy: 19-25.

  • Autobiography; be able to supply some basic details from the stories of Malcolm X’s and the Amish family’s road to literacy. 
  • Know Jeanne Chall’s six stages of literacy (page 46 of your reader—see reading for next week): 

1.      Stage Zero:  learning the basics of (oral) language; reading the world (e.g. gestures, non-verbal commands); learning about books and what they are for

2.      Stage 1:  decoding—translating written symbols into sounds and words (first two grades)

3.      Stage 2:  fluency—achieving familiarity, speed, and accuracy (third and forth grade)

4.      Stage 3:  learning to read for different purposes and specific tasks—also vocabulary building and exposure to different kinds of prose

5.      Stage 4:  dealing with multiple perspectives—weighing evidence, evaluating arguments, making judgments (“critical thinking”)

6.      Stage 5:  managing one’s own learning process—individuals (unassisted by teachers and supervisors) choose what to read and how to use the knowledge gained in areas of interest)

 

24, Oct. 1  Secondary Orality? How the advent of electronic communication figures into the orality / literacy matrix.  Baron: 35-44. From Sven Birkert’s  The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age  (just section 8:  Into the Electronic Millennium).  Clinton: 46-52. Recommended if time:  How the Secondary Orality of the Electronic Age Can Awaken Us to the Primary Orality of Antiquity.  For a playful example, see “This is not a book.”

 

 

October 8:  Exam #1: 40 point scantron exam (bring the blue #882-E form); 60 points; 4-5 paragraph essay due, written out of class.  Possible topics (so far—other will arise from class discussion).  Go here for some helpful hints on how to construct an argumentative essay, if that’s what it looks like you have chosen to write:

1.      Connect the terms of the orality and literacy debate or movement to an experience that you have had. This one can be a personal turning point essay in which you record a key event in your own development of literacy and how it changed things or a reflection back to those days before you learned to read and how you then regarded the world.

2.      Consider your field of study or some contemporary cultural phenomena (for example, rap music, e-mail, video games, smart classrooms) in the terms of the orality vs. literacy paradigm shift defined by Ong.  You can also discuss this topic in terms of “secondary orality” occasioned by the shift to electronic media.

3.      Sven Birkert sees the movement away from book culture to the computer age as a bad thing.  Write an essay that attacks, defends, or modifies his position. 

4.      Referring to Chall’s six stages, discuss some ways the new methods of electronic communication (e.g. the internet, e-mail) will help improve or hurt literacy.

5.      Dennis Baron (pages 35-44) argues that as every new communication technology evolves, it finds means of addressing the concerns and worries that always accompany it.  Looking at Birkert’s attacks on computer technology, discuss some ways the new technology is already addressing or solving the problems that concern Birkert.

6.      Using some key terms from one of the two charts (orality vs. literacy, writing -->secondary orality ), discvuss some ways the computer revolution (or an aspect of it, e.g. e-mail) has positively or negatively effected your life.

 

 

15  Begin second section of the course: the Freudian Revolution.  Freud briefly considered in terms of the orality and literacy:  mental illness, superstition vs. science.

  • The “Scientific Freud” (neuroscientist and determinist) vs.  “The Humanist Freud” (the Viennese intellectual climate, his Jewish background, his study of literature and art).
  • Before psychology:  possession; phrenology; degeneration.
  •  Hysteria; Jean-Martin Charcot and hypnosis; Josef Breuer, “Anna O.,” and the “talking cure.”   

 

22:  Cover the basic tenets of the Freudian revolution. Class reader 57-63 (this is a somewhat technical account: for an intro to Freud, you can begin with the Freud website or pages 53-56 in our reader, instead, but eventually be sure to read 57-63). Visit and eventually read all the way through the excellent website Freud: Conflict and Culture.The Library of Congress Exhibition (be sure you read the whole thing!!).  Also helpful is the Freud Web. Blake’s poems on repression:  “The Garden of Love” and “The Angel.”

  • Unconsciousness; free association; catharsis; repression; dream analysis; id / ego / superego; neurosis; psychosis; sublimation (look to pages 104-106 for precise definitions of Freudian terms)

 

29:  continue study of Freudian basics: Class reader: 53-56; 64-69; 70-74; 104-106.

  • Pleasure principle (eros) and the Aggressive instinct (thanatos); developmental phases (see page 61 in class reader):  oral; anal; phallic; latent; genital.  Oedipal complex; penis envy; castration anxiety.

 

Nov. 5:  Freud as humanist: the groundwork of spiritual autobiography. Class reader 75-78 and from Proust’s Swann’s Way 83-85. Wordsworth, “Spots of time;” Blake, “Introduction” to Songs of Innocence

  • Spiritual autobiography; “spots of time”

 

12:  Art and the Irrational: Class Reader: 85-101; slide presentation

  • Surrealism; dada; the title and artist of one surrealist or Dadaist work (your choice).   

19: Freud and Advertising; or “The Ad and the Id.” Discuss strengths and limitations of the Freudian method.

  • Subliminal advertising

 

Final Exam:  December 3, 6-6:50, Arts Bldg. 2071

 

A new model for second 100 points of your grade:

 

20 points (due Nov. 12):  You have 2 options:

  • A paragraph or two of Freudian analysis on one of the following Blake short poems:  “My Pretty Rose Tree;” “The Sick Rose;” “The Clod and the Pebble;” “A Poison Tree;” “Ah! Sunflower;” “The Lilly.” For Blake’s poems use either this site or this one (or both). In this paragraph simply offer an interpretation using Freudian terms of one or some of the poem’s symbols or main actions.
  • Select and briefly describe a “spot of time” from your own past (some incident that has stayed with you vividly in memory) and analyze its significance (e.g. why this memory? What is there to be learned from it?).  Because this is a brief essay or a couple of paragraphs, you might do best choosing a small, seemingly inconsequential incident or “spot” (like the kind Proust chooses in our reading selection); then your analysis would have the added interest of explaining why something so seemingly minor or of little interest has stayed and resonated with you.

 

80 points (Final Exam) : 

  • 20 multiple choice (20 x 2 = 40 points)
  • paragraph using eight of the Freudian vocabulary words from this list of 14 ; I choose the eight (or so) terms the day of the exam (8 x 5 = 40 points). Be sure your paragraph has coherence or an inner logic; don’t just list definitions of the term (no lists):  repression; possession; hysteria; psychosis; id; ego; superego; unconsciousness; dream analysis, oral phase; Oedipal complex; spiritual autobiography; reference to one surrealist, metaphysical, OR Dadaist painting; subliminal advertising

 

Two Freudian models of neurosis and cure

 

1.

                                                                                                                        Psychosis or neurosis

                                                <--repression                                                              _______past_______________________________________________xxxxx______-->

 

           unconsciousness                                                                                                      

                                                            catharsis through one of several methods:  hypnosis; free

                                                            association; talking cure; dream analysis (the work of

psychoanalysis)

 

 

 

2.               id or libido                                     ego                                          superego                                                                                            

        (contains primal instincts:                      mediator                                 agent of repression

            eros and thanatos)

            Pleasure principle                                 Reality principle                              Societal principle

            (see page 66)

 

in this model, neurotic behavior occurs when the ego can no loner successfully mediate or negotiate between the urgently conflicting demands of the id and the superego.  A classic scenario would involve “a store of memory traces which have been withdrawn from conscious disposal” (71) by repression at the insistence of the superego; this repressed (or latent) content, however, continues to unconsciously effect in damaging ways the present life of consciousness; only by confronting these thwarted desire (catharsis) can an individual (the ego) restore a healthy balance between the id and super-ego

 

 

 

 

Attendance info:  students who have missed three or more classes.  Updated Nov. 18

 

SS#      #missed

8374    4

0649    3

5392    5

2127    5

3639    7

7958    4

8282    4

2232    3

9250    4

3543    3

5352    9!

0363    5

0730    3

 

 

 

 

There are in our existence spots of time,

That with distinct pre-eminence retain

A renovating virtue, whence--depressed

By false opinion and contentious thought,

Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,

In trivial occupations, and the round

Of ordinary intercourse--our minds

Are nourished and invisibly repaired;

A virtue, by which pleasure is enhanced,

That penetrates, enables us to mount,

When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen.

This efficacious spirit chiefly lurks

Among those passages of life that give

Profoundest knowledge to what point, and how,

The mind is lord and master--outward sense

The obedient servant of her will. Such moments

Are scattered everywhere, taking their date

From our first childhood.
 

One Christmas-time,

On the glad eve of its dear holidays,

Feverish, and tired, and restless, I went forth

Into the fields, impatient for the sight

Of those led palfreys that should bear us home;

My brothers and myself. There rose a crag,

That, from the meeting-point of two highways

Ascending, overlooked them both, far stretched;

Thither, uncertain on which road to fix

My expectation, thither I repaired,

Scout-like, and gained the summit; 'twas a day

Tempestuous, dark, and wild, and on the grass

I sate half-sheltered by a naked wall;

Upon my right hand couched a single sheep,

 Upon my left a blasted hawthorn stood;

With those companions at my side, I watched

Straining my eyes intensely, as the mist

Gave intermitting prospect of the copse

And plain beneath. Ere we to school returned,--

That dreary time,--ere we had been ten days

          Sojourners in my father's house, he died;

And I and my three brothers, orphans then,

Followed his body to the grave. The event,

With all the sorrow that it brought, appeared

A chastisement; and when I called to mind

That day so lately past, when from the crag

I looked in such anxiety of hope;

With trite reflections of morality,

Yet in the deepest passion, I bowed low

To God, Who thus corrected my desires;

And, afterwards, the wind and sleety rain,

And all the business of the elements,

The single sheep, and the one blasted tree,

And the bleak music from that old stone wall,

The noise of wood and water, and the mist

That on the line of each of those two roads

Advanced in such indisputable shapes;

All these were kindred spectacles and sounds

To which I oft repaired, and thence would drink,

As at a fountain; and on winter nights,

Down to this very time, when storm and rain

Beat on my roof, or, haply, at noon-day,

While in a grove I walk, whose lofty trees,

Laden with summer's thickest foliage, rock

In a strong wind, some working of the spirit,

Some inward agitations thence are brought,

Whate'er their office, whether to beguile

Thoughts over busy in the course they took,

Or animate an hour of vacant ease.

 

 

               Grades

(extra-credit for the Akinnaso assignment included; short paper on Nov. 12 not included—I’ve added these to my grade book; just add your score to the midterm and you’ll get your present grade, with 80 points yet to come on the final)

 

79

 

8374

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

84

 

5904

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

66

 

0694

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

78

 

9606

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

86

 

5392

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

70

 

6121

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

78

 

3323

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

83

 

1279

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

75

 

2725

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

79

 

2127

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

89

 

0622

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

75

 

3639

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

87

 

5538

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

83

 

9525

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

85

 

7958

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

76

 

8282

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

91

 

9727

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

76

 

8183

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

76

 

1391

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

71

 

1802

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

80

 

4292

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

91

 

3505

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

86

 

6290

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

78

 

2232

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

84

 

8313

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

75

 

7190

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

85

 

3285

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

82

 

2879

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

74

 

9250

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

82

 

2978

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

74

 

3543

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

92

 

5669

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

86

 

5428

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

82

 

0711

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

96

 

5811

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

80

 

5352

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

93

 

2113

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

91

 

2181

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

0

 

4232

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

90

 

0151

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

74

 

9103

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

67

 

4238

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

86

 

3877

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

79

 

2194

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

63

 

4677

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

78

 

9507

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

84

 

3328

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

79

 

1187

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

81

 

3619

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

87

 

2097

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

72

 

6181

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

82

 

9219

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

83

 

8981

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

75

 

0363

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

85

 

0966

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

77

 

7117

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

83

 

8699

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

83

 

8400

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

76

 

0730

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Origins of English:  although the story is a complex one, involving interactions among various peoples and frequent invasions, they are predominantly two distinguishable strands in the English language:  the Germanic and the Latinate.  Consider the words below:  there difference will shed light on the nature of these two original sources:

 

OE                                           French /Latinate

 

Word hoard                            vocabulary

Ring-giver                              emperor, governor

Ear-shattering                        noisome

Stinging, biting                       satiric, critical

Tantrum, hissy-fit                   loss of self-control, hysteria

Heart-felt                                genuine

Lovesick                                 romantic

 

From Birkert’s “Into the Electronic Millennium”

 

Paradigm Shift:  From Print or Book culture (“Literacy”) to Electronic communication (“Secondary Orality”)

 

Linear, bound by logical progression

Hypertextual, jumping from one point of interest to another

Vertically cumulative, requiring memory and interpretation of the presently read moment of the text in relation to previous text

Laterally associative, encouraging attention to presently encountered text

Requires active engagement of the reader’s attention, concentration

Work of art as autonomous

“Browsing” or sampling of what grabs the reader’s attention at the moment

Work of art as manipulable

Essentially private, meditative

Public, governed by rules of the marketplace

Reader as interpreter

Reader as consumer

Emphasis on concept, idea, sequence (the logic of cause and effect, relationships); encourages re-reading

Emphasis on image and impression; knowledge as transitory, even disposable

Encourages a sense of history

Anchors one in an ever-changing, fluid present

 

Birkert’s apocalyptic concerns; or, how a book-loving humanist fears where the computer will take us (see his “morbid symptoms”):

 

1.  a decline in our educational systems and literacy (see September 17 class)

2.  dumbing down of standards (e.g. adolescent fiction replaces the classics, because they are too “hard” to read)

3.  decline of serious political discourse (replaced by sound bites and buzzwords)

4.  undermining of the importance of the arts and the humanities (cut funding); especially erasing the line separating high art from popular culture

5.  language erosion:  “the complexity [and richness] of written expression will be replaced by a more telegraphic sort of plainspeak.”

6.  loss of respect for and interest in (or just plain knowledge of!) history:  the past becomes simply a construction of what we make of it and how we use it from the present

7.  waning of the private self:  “the slow but steady destruction of private space” (“we are always potentially on-line”)

8.  the advent of homogenized, “mass man”:  commodification

 

 

 

Kruger #1, #2

Munch #1, #2

Duchamp

 

Gothic  Literature

Blake’s Songs

WORP

 

 students:  ignore stuff below this line 

Answer four (4 only) of the following with very well-detailed paragraphs.

 

1.  In his essay on “Infantile Sexuality” (class reader 8-12), Freud defines and explores the concept of “infantile amnesia.” Discuss what this is and its importance for psychoanalysis.

 

2.  In the passage from Civilization and Its Discontents (class reader 24-26), Freud discusses at least three examples of defense mechanisms (although he doesn’t call them so in the passage), ways human beings avoid suffering through various displacements of the libido.  Pinpoint at least three of the displacements he examines and discuss, according to Freud or your own point of view, how successful they are in “averting suffering” (24).

 

3.  Offer a brief Freudian interpretation of the poem “The Angel” (assume the speaker is a young woman).

 

4.  In “Freud and the Image of Man” (class reader 99-103), Jerome Bruner discusses some ways in which Freud’s image of man is derived more from an artistic or dramatic point of view than a scientific one (you know, more qualitative than quantitative).  Discuss what Bruner or you consider to be some of Freud’s more artistic or dramatic concepts (you can also reference Freud’s “Creative Writing and Daydreaming” [13-16] if you wish).

 

5.  From the class reader “Vocabulary” section (108-109), choose at least six terms to use in a well-written paragraph that provides insight into the psychoanalytic method.

 

 

// faulty parallelism:Examples include stress at home or at school, test anxiety, they may have bad long term memory, or some people are just not good test takers.
 

Vague reference:The revolution in astronomy was not accepted by everyone.This was most seen in church officials who saw it as a threat to their authority, which caused the church to crack down.This led to Galileo having to renounce some of his theories.
 

Overuse of “to be”:One of the big problems is that there was no way to measure such a qualitative thing; it was assumed that if it was not measurable, scientist were able to ignore it.-> If scientists could not measure it qualitatively, they ignored it.
 

SS, non-sentences (frag, cs, ros):Recent statistics showed that SAT explains only 22% of the variation of freshman grades.Which means that high school grades do a better job of measuring first year performance.  

Galileo amazed his colleagues with this discovery moreover his inventions led to other discoveries.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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