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Honors Course Archive: Summer 2008

  • Honors Civ (2)

    • H A&S 262 A: Self and Other: Alterity and Japanese Literature, Film, Anime
      SLN 13704

        Ted Mack (Asian Languages and Literature)
        tmack@u.washington.edu
      M-Th
      9:40 - 11:50
      TBA
      Credits: 5

      The website for this course is available at:
      http://faculty.washington.edu/tmack/0708/as262.html

      This course will explore the concept of alterity, or "otherness," with a particular focus on the phenomenon known as Orientalism, a term coined by Edward Said in his 1978 monograph of the same name. Through a combination of theoretical texts, short stories, live-action films, and animated films from Japan, we will examine the way concepts of "self" and "other" affect the way people (ourselves included) interpret difference, manage desire, and understand the world. This will include not only the ways in which these Japanese cultural products are consumed in "the West," but also the ways in which difference is negotiated within the works themselves.

      Reading will include theoretical works by Hegel, Nietzsche, Edward Said, Slavoj Zizek, and Rey Chow; literary texts by Tanizaki Jun'ichirô, Murakami Haruki, Kawabata Yasunari, and Mishima Yukio; live-action films by Kurosawa Akira and Ôzu Yasujirô; and animated films by Miyazaki Hayao and Oshii Mamoru.

    • H A&S 397 A: African Christianities as Tales of Faith, Consequence, and Power
      SLN 11270

        Clarke Speed (Anthropology)
        landogo@u.washington.edu
      M-Th
      F
      1:10 - 3:20
      1:10 - 3:20
      Smith 309
      Burke Café
      Credits: 5

      This summer Comparative Religion and Honors course is open to all students interested in the ways in which Christianity moves and takes hold in new populations. We assume complexity and radical change. While theological in orientation, one need not be any particular Faith or have mission experience to see the power in how a sacred Thou generates a new religious and social order. In a slight twist, we start, and finish with, the same complex Christian parables but watch them become culturally inscribed into different signs and historical contexts. Ultimately, the parables are answerable in the particular and idiosyncratic as well as universal and absolute. They do translate across time and space, but don't translate well. Mindful of the pitfall of translation versus the reality of re-interpretation, we jump into a topic not often taught and one filled with controversy - Christianity in Africa. As a philosophical course we must come to agree that we can study the theological content of Christianity in Africa at institutional and symbolic levels. But this summer I am interested in seeking the african christ at levels of soul, and as an alterity of knowing. We aim to unpack his transformative presence on its own terms. In essence, through an african-christ with his own african epistemologies that have pragmatic social consequences. Moving away from the comfort of comparison, we find a theomachy (a battle of god, son, and spirit) and a theogony (the genealogy of human souls with God) generating a huge distinction between a universal Western Christ and the range of particular african theomatics and gonics: If we unpack this further, we explore the theories and methods of a few african christianities as a condition of otherness. Digging further, we find african daughters cloaked behind african sons. Women, in essence mothers and grandmothers, are at the core of african christian community world making. These inverted spaces and agents are what the african hermeneuticists V. Mudimbe and E. Bongmba might call the controverted meanings of mystical otherness. Controversion is where so-called marginal agents invert the logic of domination for other purposes. So, using african-centered ideas we engage in a planned intellectual and spiritual dyslexia. Simply, where differences exist between Christian stories told for, and about, Africans; and christian stories africans tell for, and about, themselves.

      We read work by Isichei, Achebe, Oduyoye, Bongmba,and Bediako. Individual grades are based on Three Two Page (single spaced) Concept Papers (#1/20%, #2/25%, #3/35%); a Presentation and Précis on assigned readings (10%), a Concept Notebook and participation in a Friday tutorial (10%).