The Life of The Mind
USFS 100 First Seminar
Co-instructors: Susan Hinze and Kristine Kelly
Fall Semester 2004
TR 1:15-2:30 Clark Hall 104
W 4:00-6:00 Fourth Hour
INSTRUCTOR INFORMATION:
Instructor: Susan W. Hinze, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
Office Phone: 368-2702
Office: Mather Memorial Room 223F
Office Hours: T 4:00-5:30; W 1:30-3:00,
and by appointment
Instructor: Kristine Kelly, M.A.
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of English
Office Phone: 368-2337
Office: Guilford House 406
Office Hours: T 11-12:30
and by appointment
Email: susan.hinze@case.edu
Email: kristine.kelly@case.edu
COURSE DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVES
Welcome to “The Life of the Mind.” As first year, first semester college students, you are
beginning a new chapter in your own life of the mind. This course is designed to provide an
introduction to various dimensions of academic life and will also allow us to reflect, together, on
our own lives of the mind---past, present and future. The course is characterized by intense yet
open-ended intellectual inquiry, guided by reading from primary as well as secondary sources,
and will include practice in written and oral communication in small groups. The goals of the
course include the following: 1.) to enhance basic intellectual skills of academic inquiry, such as
critical reading, thoughtful analysis, and written and oral communication; 2.) to introduce basic
information literacy skills, 3.) to provide a foundation for ethical decision-making, 4.) to
encourage a global and multidisciplinary perspective on the learning process; 5.) to facilitate
faculty-student interactions; 6.) and, in the most general sense, to provide a supportive common
intellectual experience for first-year students at CWRU.
Various perspectives, from the neurological to the philosophical, psychological and
sociological, will be brought to bear on the theme “life of the mind.” Some questions we
will explore include: What is mind? What is the connection between mind, body and
soul? How does the body we are born into (girl, boy, black, white) and our location in the
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social structure (rich, poor, urban, rural) influence how we think and what we think
about? Does mind transcend such categories? Since this is a seminar course, you will be
bringing questions to the table as well. The success of a seminar depends on the full
preparation and cooperative participation of every one of us. You should come prepared
to engage the material. Also, students are expected to be respectful of each other and the
instructors, even when or especially when disagreeing, and to encourage and stimulate
each other's thinking.
READINGS
1. Kidder, Tracy. 2003. Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man
Who Would Cure the World. New York: Random House.
2. Nafisi, Azar. 2003. Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books. New York: Random
House.
3. Andrea Lunsford. 2001. The Everyday Writer (Second Edition). Boston: St. Martin’s.
4. CWRU Classpak: Available On Reserve in Kelvin Smith Library.
FOURTH-HOUR EVENTS
Videos:
1. Biographical Film TBA---Students’ choice.
2. Biographical Film TBA—Students’ choice.
Museum Visits:
1. Western Reserve Historical Society: “How We Remember; How We Know”
Wednesday, October 6th from 4:00-5:30.
2. Cleveland Museum of Art: “The Nature of Creativity and the Visual Arts”
Wednesday, October 13th, from 4:00-5:30.
Writing Conferences:
These are a required component of the course, and will be especially important after the first two
paper drafts.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
1. Class participation (20%). The students and instructors will work together to determine fair
evaluation of participation. In short, attendance and active participation in regular class sessions,
fourth hour activities and plenary events is required. Unexcused absences will result in grade
penalties. Positive contributions to class discussions will also be a factor in the determination of
this grade element. Students will be privately informed of their class participation performance
at two points during the semester.
2. Writing assignments (40% in all, 10% per paper). All students will complete four writing
assignments, which will be spread across the course of the semester. Each assignment will be
four to six pages long, totaling approximately twenty pages over the course of the semester.
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Considerable instructional attention should be devoted to the processes of research, organization,
editing, proofreading, and revising. As noted earlier, individual conferences will be required for
papers one and two.
All papers must be presented in 12-point font (Times New Roman or similar), double-spaced,
with one-inch margins on all sides. Students must retain both printed copies and electronic files
for all four papers, including each draft of those submitted in multiple drafts. Final versions of
these papers will be part of the student’s permanent Writing Portfolio, which s/he will maintain
throughout the SAGES program. (Although not part of the student’s grade for this course, the
Writing Portfolio will be evaluated at the end of the student’s second year, to determine that the
student has demonstrated writing competency.)
3. Group interview project. During the last part of the course, students will explore the “life of
the mind” of a particular university faculty member; working in groups of two to four students
each, they will share what they learn through in-class group presentations. A list of available
faculty subjects will be provided by instructors. Carefully prepared interviews will be conducted
by the groups, in order to provide material for analysis, and the faculty member will suggest one
or two short, accessible readings for incorporation into the project. Areas of inquiry will include
the researcher’s domain (area of expertise, in both general and more specialist senses); the
background and potential significance of the work; the researcher’s career path leading to this
expertise; the particular approaches or methodologies s/he uses; and ethical issues involved in
the research. It will also be important to take account of the collaborative character of the
research process and its context within the larger community.
The primary goal of this assignment is to learn how individual research projects are actually
parts of larger scholarly “conversations,” spanning both time and space. A secondary goal is to
gain a greater understanding of the diverse and exciting range of research that takes place in this
university. A third goal is to provide further exercise in written and oral communication.
The project will culminate in an oral presentation on the faculty member and his or her research,
as well in a written paper that focuses on one particular aspect or theme with which the project
was concerned. The oral presentation will be conducted by the entire group that collaborated in
the project, but the papers will be individual. The oral presentation grade will constitute 10% of
the student’s course grade. The individual written paper will count as the last of the four writing
assignments described above.
4. Oral presentations (20% in all, 10% per presentation). Instructors will assign two oral
presentations, each comprising 10% of the course grade. One of these will be an individual oral
presentation, assigned in connection with one of the first three writing assignments. The other
will be the group oral presentation connected with the group interview project described above,
which will take place near the end of the semester. These should be analytical and interpretive,
not just descriptive narrative.
5. Writing folder (20%). In lieu of a final exam, each student will build a Writing Folder
comprised of revised versions of her/his three best papers and a two-page self-assessment of
her/his development as a writer through the course of the semester. (Do not confuse this final
course requirement with the SAGES Writing Portfolio.) Working with the writing instructors,
students will make final revisions that use the skills that have been acquired during the semester.
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These folders should be submitted in digital as well as paper formats, so that they may be
digitally archived. Instructors should emphasize that, as indicated by the grade point distribution,
this is a very important part of the course. We are emphasizing the revision process of writing
and students should look upon the development of this folder as a final examination, dedicating
time to this task that would be similar to the effort that would be taken in studying for a final.
Academic Integrity---Because trust is essential for true learning, academic dishonesty
should not be tolerated by students and will not be tolerated by the instructor. Students
found guilty of any form of academic dishonesty may receive an "F" in the assignment
involved or in the course as a whole. Additional penalties may be imposed through the
campus judicial process.
Plagiarism---The following guidelines are adapted from Prof. Vernon Lidtke of The
Johns Hopkins University (courtesy of Prof. Ken Ledford, Dept. of History, CWRU):
The term plagiarism covers a multitude of sins. It involves the theft of words, ideas or
conclusions from another writer. If an academic paper gives the impression that the writer
is himself or herself the author of words, ideas or conclusions that are in fact the product
of another person's work, the writer of that paper is guilty of plagiarism. In the following
cases, such a misleading impression is given:
1. Failure to give credit for ideas, statements of fact, or conclusions derived from
another writer.
2. Failure to use quotation marks when quoting directly from another writer, whether
an entire sentence or only a phrase is quoted. In addition, all quotations must
always be cited with page numbers.
3. Close and extended paraphrase of another writer even if credit is given in a
citation.
4. Citing a source that is quoted or cited by another author but that has not been
examined by the writer of the term paper.
5.
These examples do not exhaust the forms that plagiarism may take. Plagiarism is
committed whenever and however a writer appears to take credit for work done by
another. An entire paper may be plagiarized, as when a student submits a paper written
by someone else, or plagiarism may be limited to a single page. While plagiarism may be
more or less extensive in a paper, it is always a fraud, and it is always a most serious
offense.
Plagiarism need not be deliberate; it may be committed unintentionally through
carelessness or ignorance. Since accidental plagiarism in a paper is indistinguishable
from deliberate dishonesty, a student must be alert to avoid the sort of carelessness or
ignorance that may leave him or her open to a charge of having plagiarized another's
work. The safest rule to follow is: When in doubt, cite.
The penalty in this course for plagiarism is a grade of "F" on the paper, and it will be
calculated as a zero ("0") into the student's final grade. All cases of plagiarism will be
reported to the Dean of Undergraduate Studies as prescribed in General Bulletin.
A final note about the Internet: Unfortunately, the Internet is contributing to a rise in
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plagiarism. However, sophisticated search engines are available for Professors to check
the authenticity of student work.
Student Responsibility---Regular attendance is crucial to performance in the class.
Also, it will be your responsibility to keep abreast of any changes in reading assignments
or due dates, which will be announced in class. We will start classes on time, and finish
on time. Students are expected to be just as courteous. Also, please turn off cell phones
(and all other objects that ring, beep or otherwise distract) during class times. 
Disability Statement---If you have a physical, sensory, medical or learning disability
that inhibits learning under usual circumstances, please inform us. We will make
whatever adjustments are necessary to improve the learning environment. In addition,
please be sure to contact Susan Sampson, the Coordinator of Disability Services, Kelvin
Smith Library, Room 105, 368-5230 (sms17@po.cwru.edu).
Office Hours---Please make use of our office hours! We enjoy talking with students
about course materials or any other topic that a student wishes to discuss. If our listed
hours are not convenient, feel free to make an appointment.
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
Schedule Of Class Topics And Assignments 
(Any revisions, and there will be some, to be announced in class)
Part I: Life of the Mind
Week One: August 24/26
An Introduction to The Seminar and to The Life of the Mind
What is a seminar? How should we run ours?
Why life of the mind?
Read: “The Seminar” by Michael Kahn.
http://www.sonoma.edu/users/m/mccaffry/libs320a_global/seminar_kahn.html
Read: Nafisi, Chapter 1 “Lolita”
“ . . . poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within
which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then
into idea, then into more tangible action.” Audre Lorde
Week Two: August 31/September 2
Literature and the mind, or, Gatsby on Trial
Is fiction relevant? Should some books be banned? Is reading dangerous? Why are Americans
reading less?
Read: Nafisi, Chapter 2 “Gatsby”
The Mind at War
Reading, writing and revolution
Read: Nafisi, Chapter 3 “James”
Writing Discussion: Developing Your Thesis: Read Handout and Lunsford pp. 27-39.
Hand-out Writing Assignment #1
“This is how you read a novel: you inhale the experience. So start breathing. I just want you to remember
this. That is all; class dismissed.” Azar Nafisi
“The decline in reading among every segment of the adult population reflects a general collapse
in advanced literacy. To lose this human capacity - and all the diverse benefits it fosters impoverishes both cultural and civic life." NEA Chairman Dana Gioia
Week Three: September 7/9
The Mind Under A Totalitarian Regime
READ: Nafisi, Chapter 4 “Austen” and Epilogue.
READ: Thiong o, Ngugi wa. “Decolonizing the Mind.”
Writing Assignment no. 1.
FIRST DRAFT DUE in class on Tuesday.
No Class Thursday. Writing Conferences.
4th Hour:
Writing Conferences
“War does not determine who is right - only who is left.” Bertrand Russell
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Week Four: September 14/16
Thinking and Writing about Self
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. “What is Self?”
Bateson, Mary Cathering. “A Mutable Self.”
Hampl, Patricia. “Memory and Imagination.”
Writing Discussion: Developing Paragraphs: Read Handout and Lunsford, pp. 40-61
WRITING aSSIGNMENT nO. 1: FINAL DRAFT DUE in class on Tuesday
“The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” Mary Heaton
Vorse
Week Five: September 21/23
Feelings, Reason and Memory
Adrienne Rich. “On Memory”
Engel, Susan. “Then and Now: Creating the Self through the Past.”
Schacter, Daniel L. “Building Memories: Encoding and Retrieving the Present
and the Past.”
Kington, Maxine Hong. “No-Name Woman.”
“Freedom is daily, prose-bound, routine, remembering . . . Putting together, inch by inch the starry
worlds. From all the lost collections.” Adrienne Rich
4th Hour: oRAL PRESENTATION No. 1
TBA
Week Six: September 28/30
Part II: Lives of the Mind.
Consciousness and Intelligence
READ: Gardner, Howard. “A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple
Intelligences.”
Crick, Francis. “The General Nature of Consciousness.”
Thinking Critically: Read Lunsford, pp. 62-88.
“The essence of knowledge is, having it, to apply it; not having it, to confess your ignorance.” Confucious
Week Seven: October 5/7
Guest speaker: Tuesday, October 5th, Dr. Jim Zull will speak about the brain.
READ Zull, TBA
4th Hour:
UCI VISIT ONE: Western Reserve Historical Society: “How We
Remember; How We Know” Wednesday, October 6th from 4:00-5:30.
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NO CLASS THURSDAY! WRITING CONFERENCES.
Writing Assignment no. 2: First draft due Tuesday. Feedback by Thursday.
WORDS ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking.
1933 John Maynard Keynes
Week Eight: October 12/14
READING BREAK or only read about writing
Writing Discussion: Using Evidence
READ:
Handouts on Summarizing, Paraphrasing, and Direct quotations.
Review Lunsford, pp.365-461
Writing Assignment no. 2:
Final draft 2 Due Thursday.
4th Hour:
UCI VISIT TWO: Cleveland Museum of Art: “The Nature of Creativity
and the Visual Arts” Wednesday, October 13th, from 4:00-5:30.
“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.”
Aristotle
Week Nine: October 19/21
67FALL BREAK TUESDAY! FALL BREAK TUESDAY!!67
Writing The Mind
Reading and writing biography. What are the problems of biography? Who are “valid”
biographical subjects? (the famous, the notorious, the ordinary?)
Read: Kidder, Part I “Dokte Paul”
“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.” George Orwell
Week Ten: October 26/28
Reading Beginnings
Family origin, social context and motivation.
READ: Kidder, Parts II “The Tin Roofs of Cange”
Writing Discussion: Sentence Conciseness and Coherence. Review Lunsford, pp. 196-263.
4th Hour: View biographical film I
“Some disciplines have trouble distinguishing rigor from rigor mortis.” Paul Farmer
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Week Eleven: November 2/4
Partners in Health vs. the World Health Organization
Can one write the biography of a movement? Collective minds.
READ: Part III “Medicos Aventureros”
READ: TBA: Counterpoints to Farmer? Other short biography?
Writing Assignment no. 3: TBA
“How can I know what I think till I see what I say?” E. M. Forster
Part III: Lives of Our Minds
Week Twelve: November 9/11
From Harvard to Haiti to Siberia to Paris
READ: Kidder, Part IV “A Light Month for Travel”
READ: The Interview Process
Begin interview projects! Steps: 1.) Discuss the interview process, 2.) hand out list of faculty
who have agreed to be interviewed and have students choose, 3.) contact faculty for suggested
readings (primary sources!) and appointment set-up, 4.) students work together to formulate
questions, 5.) conduct faculty interview, 6.) follow-up interviews if necessary, 7.) prepare oral
presentation, 8.) individual students write papers.
"The art of writing has for backbone some fierce attachment to an idea."
Virginia Woolf
Week Thirteen: November 16/18
“Like ripples in a pond”: one man’s work in medicine and public health
READ: Kidder, Part V “O for the P”
READ: TBA anything related to biographical film? Another short biographical essay?
4th HouR: View biographical film II: TBA. Student’s Choice!
Week Fourteen: November 23/25
NO CLASS ON THURSDAY! THANKSGIVING BREAK!
676767
Writing Assignment no. 4: TBA.The final paper is a
biographical paper discussing the “life of the mind” of the faculty member whose work is
being studied.
“Refuse to write your life and you have no life.” Patrica Hempl
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Week Fifteen: November 30/December 2
oRAL PRESENTATION No. 2: Student groups present their commentaries on the person and
subject of their interview project.
Discussion and reflection about the course of the semester, and assembly of Writing Folders.
4th HouR:

Plenary Session two
TBA.
“Talking and eloquence are not the same: to speak, and to speak well, are two things.” Ben Jonson

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Class Pak Ideas
FROM: Jacobus, Lee A. 2002. A World of Ideas. Essential Readings for College Writers. (Sixth
Edition.) New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Douglass, Frederick. From: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.
Plato. “The Allegory of the Cave.”
Freud, Sigumnd. From: The Interpretation of Dreams.
Jung, Carl. “The Personal and the Collective Unconscious.”
Horney, Karen. “The Distrust between the Sexes.”
Gardner, Howard. “A Rounded Version: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.”
Crick, Francis. “The General Nature of Consciousness.”
Woolf, Virginia. “Shakespeare’s Sister.”
FROM: Colombo, Gary. 2002. Mind Readings. An Anthology for Writers. New York: Bedford/
St. Martin’s.
McKibben, Bill. “Television and the Twilight of the Senses.”
Percy, Walker. “The Loss of the Creature.”
Schacter, Daniel L. “Building Memories: Encoding and Retrieving the Present and the Past.”
Hampl, Patricia. “Memory and Imagination.”
Kington, Maxine Hong. “No-Name Woman.”
Hooks, bell. “Columbus: Gone But Not Forgotten.”
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. “What is Self?”
Bateson, Mary Cathering. “A Mutable Self.”
Nussbaum, Martha. “The Narrative Imagination.”
Blum, Deborah. “Heart to Heart: Sex Differences in Emotion.”
Stoll, Clifford. “Isolated by the Internet.”
Hofstadter, Douglas R. “The Turing Test: A Coffeehouse Conversation.”
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Moravec, Hans. “Grandfather Clause.”
FROM: Hirschberg, Stuart and Terry Hirschberg. 2003. Past to Present. Ideas That Changed
Our World. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
Douglas, Frederick. “Learning to Read and Write.”
Thiong o, Ngugi wa. “Decolonizing the Mind.”
De Beauvoir, Simone. “The Married Woman.”
MISC:
Jamila, Shani. “Can I Get a Witness? Testimony from a Hip Hop Feminist.” FROM Anderson &
Collins: Race, Class & Gender. Fifth Edition. 2004. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
OTHER:
Angelou, Maya. “Shakespeare was a black woman.”
Playing in the Dark-Whiteness and the Literary Imagination.
Collins, Patricia Hill. From: Black Feminist Thought.
Other resources?
Bryson, Bill. 2002. Bryson’s Dictionary of Troublesome Words: A Writer’s Guide to Getting It
Right. New York: Broadway Books.
MAYBE:
De Beauvoir, Simone. “Woman: Myth and Reality.”
Gilligan, Carol. “Woman’s Place in Man’s Life Cycle.”
For women, then, poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality
of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first
made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action. Poetry is the way we help give
name to the nameless so it can be thought. The farthest horizons of our hopes and fears are
cobbled by our poems, carved from the rock experiences of our daily lives.
If
men [sic] define situations as real, they are real in their consequences.”
W.I. Thomas
“Much of the time, I feel like an anthropologist on Mars.”
Temple Grandin
4th Hour:
Plenary Session One

Wednesday, October 15, 8 pm, Hatch Auditorium.
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The study also documents an overall decline of 10 percentage points in literary readers from 1982 to 2002, representing a loss of
20 million potential readers. The rate of decline is increasing and, according to the survey, has nearly tripled in the last decade.
The findings were announced today by NEA Chairman Dana Gioia during a news conference at the New York Public Library. "This
report documents a national crisis," Gioia said. "Reading develops a capacity for focused attention and imaginative growth that
enriches both private and public life. The decline in reading among every segment of the adult population reflects a general
collapse in advanced literacy. To lose this human capacity - and all the diverse benefits it fosters - impoverishes both cultural and
civic life."
How then can we pose the problem of biography? Leon Edel says that the central aim of
biography "is to relate the life lived to the particular achievement-to tell the life story of a
man or woman whose uniquess makes him or her a valid biographical subject." I'd say
this draws circle too narrowly and disarticulates the subject from wider historical
determinations, which are just as important for a writer, be it HenryJames or George
Eliot, as for a thinker, e.g., William James, or a scientist. My own short version is: how
does the individual bear, mediate, and integrate the individual, intellectual, cultural,
ideological, socioeconomic forces which constitute the labor process of her or his
production of what interests us about that person, be it knowledge, art, policy, heroism,
great good or evil? To include the concept of the labor process is to invoke another
model which overlaps the Marxist and psychoanalytic ones. Or rather it is a matrix for
them, since the terms of reference of labor process theory offer a very accommodating
framework for laying bare the elements and connections or articulations of any product
having a use value, whether theory, therapy, thing, act, fact, artifact, policy, treatise,
essay, or scientific paper.
Robert M. Young
“Medical statistics will be our standard of measurement: we will weight life for life and see where the dead
like thicker, among the workers or among the privileged.” Rudolf Virchow (1848)
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