Ordering the World
Joanne Robinson (Joanne.Robinson@uncc.edu)
Office Hours: Macy 210, by appointment
Course Description and Goals
What is order? Is order inherent in nature or is it a human construct (or a mix of
both)? When is order appropriate and necessary and when is it restrictive or even
oppressive? What assumptions form the foundations for classifying and categorizing
things, people, and ideas? This class will examine foundational cosmological myths
alongside various historical approaches to classification. Students will have ample
opportunity to delve into classification and order schemes outside the classroom.
Human beings are constantly involved in making, unmaking, and maintaining
order, yet we rarely have time to reflect on what order is and why it matters. We
unthinkingly accept many ordering schemes (such as age-based grouping of children in
traditional classrooms) and consider others the concern of specialists (such as
botanical nomenclature). Yet concerns about order and the threat of disorder have
pervaded Western thought and practice. Many humanities courses explore specific
ordering systems related to race, gender, religion, and social class; consequently,
students tend to have a sensitivity to how race and class are “ordered,” but they
rarely have a chance explore other ordering systems. This course will examine order
as an abstract concept with very tangible and pervasive results. Above all, students
in this course will examine how the orders we posit or acknowledge shape our
understanding of ourselves in the world.
This course will aim to help students see the variety of contemporary and
historical contexts in which classificatory schemes come to the forefront; to present
historical and cross-cultural perspectives on systems of classification; to examine the
ethical, political, and social stakes of certain schemes of classification; to evaluate
classification schemes and identify their underlying assumptions.
Students in this class should expect to demonstrate the ability to learn
independently; to speak to a global audience by publishing materials online; to
collaborate with others; and to learn how to identify research questions and figure
out ways to answer those questions.
Required Texts
All texts will be made available through Moodle
Recommended: Barbara Ann Kipfer, The Order of Things: How Everything in the
World is Organized into Hierarchies, Structures, and Pecking Orders
Assignments
Reading Responses: To facilitate class discussion, you should write short responses
(no more than a page) to weekly readings. These short reading responses don't begin
until after we've acclimated ourselves (typically in the third or fourth week of the
course -- see Schedule of Events below), and they are not due in the last few weeks of
the course, in order to give you more time to devote to the final project. It is
expected that, in these responses, you will critically engage the texts under
discussion in relation to the ideas raised in class discussions and in relation to any
ideas and/or texts encountered in other courses that might be relevant. These short
responses will aid you in developing close reading skills and critical writing techniques
that are crucial to your success with the class project. Beware of simply summarizing
the reading or critiquing the author(s) without explaining your critique. This is not
about what you "like" or "don't like" about the readings but about how the readings
make you think about things in a new way.
Responses should be posted on your blogs (see description of final project for more
details).
Book Review: All good book reviews do more than simply summarize the topic of the
book: good, useful book reviews interrogate the author’s claim(s) and assess how
successful the author is at proving his or her claim(s). To that end, aim at putting
most of your thought into your critical assessment of what the author has (or has not)
accomplished. The book review should be 500 words (about 2 pages, double-spaced).
Final Project: We will work together to produce a class website. This is an
experiment, so I'm not committed to any particular outcome. I know there are likely
several of you who do not like collaborative work, and there are some of you who are
uncertain about your own ability to contribute usefully. We'll work around those
problems by maintaining individual "blogs" that will form the basis for the class site,
which we'll assemble during the final weeks of class. Those blogs will also be the
basis for your grade for the course, so steady work throughout the semester is
essential.
I have overseen a similar experiment once before and it was, on the whole, a
success. You can see the results
here: http://religiousexperience.wikispaces.com/Religious+Experience+Home (this
was done six years ago, when the web was young. We can do much, much more with
the technology available today.)
We will decide on the first day which platform we'll work from (either individual blogs
or something like https://googleapps.uncc.edu/). We'll talk about how to go about
all of this during the first few weeks of class.
Grade Calculation
Weekly Blog Posts, Participation in Class, Participation in Class Project: 70%
Book Reviews: 15%
Class Presentation: 15%
Course Schedule (Subject to Change) (All Readings Accessed through Moodle)
Week One: Introduction to the Course, Blogs, and Each Other
Week Two: Order and Chaos
Readings: Creation Stories from Around the World
Genesis 1:1-27 (NIV)
Genesis 2:1-25 (NIV)
Radiolab: Numbers
How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood
Italo Calvino on books and bookstores
In Praise of Wikipedia’s Category Pages
Week Three: Time, Numbers, and Patterns
Readings: Time Travel: There’s No Time Like Yesterday
Podcast: Hugh Mellor on Time
TED talk: Marcus du Sautoy on symmetry
The Numbers of Life
Week Four: Taxonomies
Readings: Aristotle’s Categories (excerpt)
Foucault on Classifying
Harriet Ritvo, “Out of Bounds”
Week Five: Collectors and Collections
Readings: Collyer Curiosa: A Brief History of Hoarding
Hoarders (watch a few episodes)
Excerpt from Homer and Langley
Of Monkey Girls and a Hog-Faced Gentlewoman: Marvel in Fairy
Tales, Fairgrounds, and Cabinets of Curiosity
Week Six: Human Bodies and Minds
Readings: The New DSM-V
The Real Problem with Psychiatry
The Kindness of Strangers: Kinds and Politics in Classification
Systems
Week Seven: Human Relationships
Readings: Family: Variations and Changes Across Cultures
Waiting for Goffman
Aristotle on Friendship
Montaigne on Friendship
Philosophy Bites (podcast): Mark Vernon on Friendship
Week Eight: OCTOBER BREAK NO CLASS
Week Nine: Social Orders
Readings: Geoffrey Bowker and Susan Leigh Star: excerpts from Sorting Things
Out: Classification and its Consequences
“Race, Culture, and Identity: Misunderstood Connections”
How Much Does Your Name Matter?
Sorting People (Online Activity)
Week Ten: Knowledge and Literature
Readings: Classifying Knowledge: Curricula, Libraries, and Encyclopedias
Introduction to Genre Theory
Week Eleven: On Food
Readings: Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, Introduction
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger, “Secular Defilement”
Colin McGinn on Disgust
TED talk: David Pizarro, “The Strange Politics of Disgust”
Eating Insects
Week Twelve: Art, Music, and Dance
Reading: Classification and the Philosophical Understanding of Art
TED talk: Artfully Envisioning Our Humanity
Classification as Culture: Types and Trajectories of Music Genres
Preserving the Magic
Week Thirteen: Sports, Games, and Pastimes
Readings: “The Church of Baseball, the Fetish of Coca-Cola, and the Potlatch
of Rock ‘n’ Roll”
The Elementary Forms of Sports Fandom: A Durkheimian Exploration
of Team Myths, Kinship, and Totemic Rituals
Week Fourteen: Words and Language
Readings: Podcast: Timothy Williamson on Vagueness
Steven Pinker: “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television”
RSA Animate: Steven Pinker on Language as a Window into Human
Nature
Your Brain on Metaphors
Week Fifteen: AAR Annual Meeting NO CLASS
Week Sixteen: OH, The Places We Go
Readings: “Against School” by John Taylor Gatto
Discipline and Punishment: The Panopticon
RSA Animate: Changing Education Paradigms
Alfie Kohn, The Case Against Grades
Extra resources are made available on Moodle for students to view at their leisure.