Skip to Content

HUM 1010
Weekly assignments:

(L = literary treatment; P = philosophical treatment; L/P = either)
  1. Aug. 22 (for students who want to get an early start): Ovid, Metamorphoses (Mandelbaum trans.), pp. 90-91, from "And when her time had come..." to "'Yes, if he never knows himself.'" (L)
  2. Aug. 27: Kermode, "Institutional Control of Interpretation," first para. (L) or Fish, "What Makes an Interpretation Acceptable?", para. bridging pp. 350-351 ("The discovery of the 'real point'...") (P).
  3. Aug. 29: Euthyphro 7a-8b (from "Come then, let us examine what we mean" to "...what is loved by the gods is also hated by them"). (P)
  4. Sept. 5: Rousseau, 1st Discourse, p. 37 (from "Before art had moulded our manners...") to 38 (up to "...been essential to know him") (P), or Rousseau, Emile, p. 37, first para. (from "Everything is good..." to "...like a tree in his garden") (L).
  5. Sept. 10: Rousseau, Emile, p. 81, from "The real world has its limits..." to "...our ills are imaginary" (L) or p. 98, from "The first idea which must be given him..." to "...the first idea of it ought to be born" (P).
  6. Sept. 12: Rousseau, Emile, p. 184, para. starting "I hate books..." (L) or pp. 186-87, from "'My son is made to live with others...'" to "...dictating ours to him" (P).
  7. Sept. 17: Rousseau, Emile, pp. 212-13, from "The source of our passions" to "... in contradiction with himself" (L/P), or pp. 214f, para. starting "One wants to obtain the preference...", plus the following sentence, up to "...believe natural to it" (P; make sure to abstract away from the example to the general point Rousseau is after).
  8. Sept. 19: Rousseau, Emile, p. 405, from "I am not a visionary" to "... similar to his?" (L) or pp. 463-64, para. starting "Let us suppose the state..." (P).
  9. Sept. 24: Shelley, Frankenstein, p. 32, from "The astonishment which I had..." to "...than his nature will allow" (L), or Baldick, "Assembling Frankenstein" (this is one of the supplementary readings in the Norton edition), pp. 174f, para. starting "From such diagnoses..."
  10. Sept. 26: Shelley, Frankenstein, pp. 78-79, from "This reading..." to "...the fatal effects of this miserable deformity" (L), or p. 83, para. starting "The words induced me...", together with p. 89, para. starting "As I read, however.." (P; treat them as a response to Rousseau).
  11. Oct. 1: Shelley, Frankenstein, "I sat one evening in my laboratory . . . . the whole human race" (pp. 118-19; L); Lipking, "Frankenstein, the True Story," p. 426 (in the Hunter ed.), from "In this respect, Rousseau's work..." to "...born big and strong".
  12. Oct. 3: Shelley, Frankenstein, "His tale connected down . . . . is to posterity" (p. 151; L) or McGinn, "Who Is Frankenstein's Monster?", final paragraph, starting "And there is one more point..." (P).
  13. Oct. 15: Wilde, "The Decay of Lying," pp. 985-87, from "The theory is certainly a very curious one..." to "You have proved it to my dissatisfaction, which is better" (P), or The Picture of Dorian Gray, Preface, p. 3, "There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all" (L).
  14. Oct. 17: Wilde, "The Critic as Artist," pp. 374-75, from "The critic, then, considered as the interpreter..." to "...and so madly kissed" (P), or The Picture of Dorian Gray, pp. 24-25, from "Dorian made no answer" to "hideous, and uncouth" (L).
  15. Oct. 22: Wilde, "The Disciple," (L), or "The Critic as Artist," pp. 379-80, from "Life! Life! Don't let us go to life..." to "...the daughter of Brabantio, can never die?" (P).
  16. Oct. 24: Wilde, Dorian Gray, "You poisoned me with a book once. I should never forgive that. Harry, promise me that you will never lend that book to any one. It does harm." (L) Or: Wilde, "Pen, Pencil and Poison," the final paragraph, starting "Of course, he is far too close to our own time..." (P).
  17. Oct. 29: Douglass, Narrative, pp. 37-38, from "These words sank deep into my heart" to "I acknowledge the benefit of both" (L); p. 59, from "Our house stood..." to "I will run away, I will not stand it" (P).
  18. Oct. 31: Douglass, Narrative, p. 24, from "I did not, when a slave..." to "...prompted by the same emotion" (L); (sneak preview!) Elias, The Civilizing Process, pp. 51-52, from "Our consciousness is not always..." to the end of the section.
  19. Nov. 5: Elias, Civilizing Process, p. 119, para. starting sec. 6 ("The standard which is emerging..."; P), or pp. 67-68, from "This is the beginning..." to "...more deliberately than in the Middle Ages" (L).
  20. Nov. 7: Elias, Civilizing Process, p. 59, from "It is sometimes said..." to "...are bound to ours" (P), or pp. 170-71, from "In the 1774 edition..." to "...visual pleasure of earlier stages" (L).
  21. Nov. 12: PI 156-157 (L/P).
  22. Nov. 14: PI 241 (L); PI 258 (P).
  23. Nov. 19: PI 71, from "One might say..." to "...exactly what we need" (P/L).
  24. Nov. 21: PI II:257 (from "The question now arises..." to "...'Bring me something that looks like this'" (in the 4th ed., p. 224; in the 50th-anniversary ed., p. 182; in the 3rd ed., p.213; P), or the duck-rabbit (4th ed., p. 204, at II:118; 3rd. ed., at p. 194; 50th-anniversary ed., at p. 166; L).
  25. Nov. 26: PI 11-12 (P); PI II:252 (in the earlier editions, this is p. 213, the para. at the top of the page starting "If you look at a photograph..."; you can ignore the bit at the end about stereoscopes; L).
  26. Nov. 28: PI, Preface, from "After several unsuccessful attempts..." to "...really just an album" (P); PI 25 (L).
  27. Dec. 3: PI 304 or 308 (P); PI II:xi, sec. 174 (p. 212 in the 4th ed., 202 in earlier eds., from "And then it is strange..." to "... going to end") (L).
  28. Dec. 5: PI 122 (P). For the literary option: We started the semester by discussing some myths that concern learning and teaching (Narcissus, Pygmalion, Prometheus). Pick another work we read this semester and explain -- in a short para. -- how one of those myths illuminates its depiction of education.