Dangerous Ideas and Forbidden Knowledge
Seminar Prep #1: Due Friday, 4/8
Read: Galileo by Bertolt Brecht (handed out in class)
Reading actively:
Underline or circle words and/or concepts that are unfamiliar to you and highlight or
underline passages that seem important or are confusing. Note your questions or responses
in the margins. Make a list of words and concepts that you don’t know and look these up.
This list is for your own use, but you should bring it to seminar to ask about a concept you
don’t understand or to help others.
Also as you read: Think about Brecht’s alienation effect and his desire to get people to
stand back and really look at how their society functions. How does this play’s style and
form attempt to achieve this effect? Look for ways Brecht weaves in ideas about class
structure and class struggle and ways he examines social institutions like the church, the
government, the universities, etc. Think about the various ideas and attitudes about science
that arise in the play. And think about the various ways the idea of a sun-centered universe
is deemed dangerous . Who in particular resists and/or rejects the idea and why? Again, try
to make notes to yourself in the margins about these things as you read.
Written Seminar Prep:
Go back over your reading notes and focus on one of the following two topics:
A. the ideas and attitudes about science you noticed
OR
B. the ways and reasons Galileo’s theory about the earth moving around the sun is deemed
dangerous and by whom
Pick two quotations—in this case, small sections of dialogue, probably—that each relate to
the topic in an important and distinct way. At the top of your seminar prep write which
option, A or B, you’ve chosen.
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Write down the first quotation verbatim—in the exact words of the text. Put quotation
marks around the quotation and write down the page number of the quotation in
parentheses at the end.
Paraphrase the quotation—put the sentences or lines into your own words. This means
just retelling the content of the quotation without yet discussing its importance. In other
words, just say what the quote says; don’t add your own thinking yet.
Now explain how this quotation relates to the topic you’ve chosen—why did you find
this quote particularly important and relevant? Stick to explaining just this quotation’s
significance, not all that happens before or after it.
Now repeat these three steps with the second quotation you’ve chosen.
Gentle reminder: Must be word-processed and double spaced.