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Comparative History of Ideas 390 Winter 2011
Junior Colloquium
Instructor: John E. Toews (toews@u.washington.edu)
Smith 312A 543-9855
Office Hours: Tuesday/Thursday 11:30-12:30
Course Overview:
The CHID Colloquium is a reading and discussion course that focuses on problems of interpretation and the production of knowledge that emerge from a historical and comparative study of texts and cultures. Examining ethnographic and historical accounts as well as theoretical essays and literary texts, we will evaluate some of the methods individuals and groups use to create and interpret knowledge about themselves and about others. Our readings and discussions will explore the ways in which different interpretive perspectives and practices are connected to issues of cultural exclusion and inclusion, marginalization and integration. We will examine what it means to say “ we”, and how the circle of the “we” is implicitly or explicitly defined. The current problem most obviously addressed, both indirectly and directly, in the assigned readings is that of cultural diversity, cultural pluralism or multi-culturalism, especially as it has been shaped by the experiences of colonialism and post-colonialism. We will examine carefully what the term "culture" means in present discussions and how we can think critically about issues like "cultural identity". One important question for investigation will be whether or not terms like “culture” and “identity” have lost some of their usefulness in thinking through relations to oneself and to others, both in terms of our contextually defined situation as subjects in a particular time and space and our responsibilities as ethical agents whose actions will shape the future. The ultimate aim of our work together is to learn to think critically about how we think, and how to frame our actions as meaningful, purposeful and ethical in the world.
The structure of the course is intended to underscore the content by encouraging critical self-reflection on the cultural assumptions that inform our analysis of - and interaction with - others. We expect students to take an active role in creating the content and the terms of our discussions. This is essentially a team-taught course in which we all share responsibility for initiating discussion and bringing new perspectives to the table. Such a format however, also entails a tolerance for diversity, lack of centralized authority, and even confusion (or at least lack of final resolution on any particular issue) which may be troublesome for some students. The goal is to use disciplined, critical inquiry to address questions and seek answers in collaboration with and in interaction with others, not in order to impose unity and clarity on others.
CHID 390 employs three interconnected critical practices: reading, talking and writing.
The first objective of the course is to expose students to a wide range of readings that deal with problems of interpretation, of the various kinds of guiding assumptions that regulate our thinking. Many of these texts are intellectually challenging and require thoughtful, patient, detailed reading. The second practice is engaged verbal discussion, a practice that creates and sustains the class as a collaborative learning community. Finally, everyone will write regularly in response to the readings. Writing shapes and clarifies our thinking and facilitates engaged reading and discussion.

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Assignments and Requirements:
1. Class Participation (attendance and contribution to discussions) and Short
Writing Assignments (weekly Response Papers or QandQs) (40% of final grade)
a) Attendance and active participation are required.
If you do not attend class or come to class late you will not be able to contribute to discussions.—one of the central pedagogical methods of the class. Seminar classes of this kind can only be successful if everyone comes prepared to talk and if everyone feels free to talk. The former is an individual responsibility, the latter is a collective one. Every student is responsible for doing all of the weekly readings on time (by the Tuesday class) and coming to class prepared with ideas and questions. All of us together are responsible for maintaining a class environment that is respectful to others.
Unexcused absence or lateness for class will signify poor participation and will be factored into your final grade
b ) Weekly Response Papers Typed, double-spaced responses of 2-3 pages to each week’s readings are due at the Tuesday class. You should bring two copies to class, one to exchange with a fellow student and one to be read and assessed by the instructor. The
Response Papers will be returned to you at the Thursday class.
Response Papers demonstrate that you have completed and thought about the readings. They also provide a forum to engage an idea or set of ideas from the readings that particularly interests you Each Response Paper should be centered on a thesis or arguable claim and contain focused analysis of one or two particular problems, questions or common themes in the readings. You should refer directly and specifically to the readings and quote texts using correct citation form (Chicago or MLA). The papers should also attempt to connect particular weekly readings with ongoing themes of the class in some way.
The papers will be assessed with either a “check” for satisfactory or a “minus” for unsatisfactory. Unsatisfactory papers must be rewritten and turned in on the following
Tuesday. Exceptional papers will receive a “check plus”
Response Papers MUST be submitted on time. Late papers will not be accepted.
Occasional Alternates to the weekly response papers . For Weeks, IV, VII, IX and X the weekly assignment will be simplified into a “Questions and Quotations” format
On these occasions you will be asked:
1) to formulate and submit three questions that emerge from your reading of the text and which would stimulate broader class discussion. You should elaborate on why you consider the questions important.
2) Pick three short passages from the text that you found difficult to understand and that might be illuminated through the diverse viewpoints of the other readers in the class.
Make sure to point out why you found these passages “difficult.”
2) Leading Class Discussion in Collaboration with another student and Writing a
Paper about the Experience (30% of final grade) a) Each student will lead discussion in one class session in collaboration with at least one other student. The discussion must be closely focused on the assigned readings for the week. Working in collaboration is an important component in this assignment. Each "duo" will develop a written plan (an outline setting up the goals for the class and methods to be used to achieve them) for their discussion, and meet with the instructor for both a pre-class (on the Monday before the
Tuesday session) and post-class discussion of the content and format of their presentation. I expect you to take this assignment seriously and there will be bonus points for extra effort and inventiveness.

3 b) Following the discussion, each leader will write a 6-8 page paper about the texts covered and the discussion leading process. A first draft of the “presentation paper” is due one week after you lead the discussion. A final draft must be submitted by the second Tuesday after the discussion. The Leading-Class-
Discussion-Paper should be seen as an account of a process followed by a reflection on that process. It should include a) a response paper that expresses your original reading of the texts b) the class plan you developed with your partner. c) A descriptive account of your actual experience of the class. d) a reflection on your experience—this reflection should be written after you read your partner’s account of the class and should address the issue of collaboration and divergent interpretations.
3) Final Paper (30 % of Final grade)
Every student will write a 8-10 page final paper (or create its equivalent in another medium) The paper should take the form either of a critical analysis of an issue, or set of issues, raised by the readings, presentations and discussions or a research project that brings new material to bear on one of these issues.(in all of these cases you could consider this paper as a preliminary attempt to explore a senior thesis possibility) The paper must be newly written for CHID 390 and must be directly related to issues and themes covered by texts and discussions in the course. A title, two-page outline and bibliography are due at the Thursday meeting of the 8th week of term (May 21) Further guidelines and advice about this project will be provided during the course of the term.
The term paper will be due on the exam date listed in the course schedule. Late papers will be penalized.
Schedule of Meetings and Readings
The Tuesday Meeting will normally be devoted to student presentations and discussion of the assigned readings.
At the Thursday meeting I will lead further discussion of the assigned readings within the context of the broader themes of the course.
Required Texts (available at U Bookstore)
Barack Obama,Memories from my Father (some of you may have read this book as the
UW “common book “ of 2009-2010. We will be reading the first part-- “Origins” -- for our concluding discussions during the last week of the class.
Franz Fanon,BlackSkin,White Masks
Tayeb Salih, Season of Migration to the North
Toni Morrison, Beloved
Octavia Butler, Kindred
COURSE READER- The Readings are available On Line on your MyUW Website and can be printed into a bound Course Reader at RAMS Copy on the Ave
( strongly recommended)
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Tuesday / Thursday January 4 and 6: General Introductions; Identity Politics in Global
Contexts: Inclusion and Exclusion, Love and Violence
Required Reading:
Amartya Sen: Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny (2006) Chapters 1 & 2
Amin Maalouf , In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong ,
Introduction and Chapter 1 (“My Identity, My Allegiances”)
Assignment for Week I: Identity Narrative. Due for the Thursday Class

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Tuesday/ Thursday:January 11, 13
Required Readings :
Clifford Geertz:"Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture" from
Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (1973). ( Course Reader )
Trinh Minh-ha: “The Language of Nativism: Anthropology as a Scientific
Conversation of Man with Man”(
Course Reader )
Supplementary Further Reading (i.e. Optional)
Russell Jacoby, “The Myth of MultiCulturalism” ( Course Reader )
Geertz, “The Uses of Diversity” Tanner Lecture on Human Values, University of
Michigan
Geertz," Being Here: Whose Life is it Anyway?" from Works and Lives: The
Anthropologist as Author ( Stanford, 1988)
Clifford Geertz, After the Fact, Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist
(Harvard U.P., 1995) (autobiography and self-commentary)
Geertz , Local Knowledge (Basic Books, 1983) especially Chapters 1 ("Blurred Genres:
The Refiguration of Social Thought"); 3 ("From the Native's Point of View: On the
Nature of Anthropological Understanding") and 7 ("The Way We Think Now: Toward an
Ethnography of Modern Thought")
Representations: Special Issue Summer 1997: The Fate of "Culture": Geertz and
Beyond : 7 essays edited by Sherry Ortner,
Aletta Biersack, "Local Knowledge, Local History: Geertz and Beyond," in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Berkeley, 1989),pp.72-96.
January 18, 20
Required Reading:
James Clifford: "Identity in Mashpee" from Clifford , The Predicament of Culture:
Twentieth Century Ethnography , Literature and Art (Harvard, 1988) ( Course
Reader )
Jonathan Lear: “After this, Nothing Happened” from Lear: Radical Hope: Ethics in the
Face of Cultural Devastation (2006) ( Course Reader )
K.Anthony Appiah, ”Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social
Reproduction.”( Course Reader )
Optional:
A Debate over Culture and Race (using Clifford as a jumping off point)
Walter Benn Michaels: From “”Race into Culture: A Critical Genealogy of Cultural
Identity” (pay special attention to the long footnote on Clifford)
Avery Gordon and Christopher Newfield: “White Philosophy”
Walter Benn Michaels: “The No-Drop Rule”
Judith Butler: “Collected and Fractured”
(all in Course Reader )

Supplementary Further Reading:
Charles Taylor, “The Politics of Recognition,” (
Course Reader )
K. Anthony Appiah, “The Trouble with Culture”, in Appiah,
The Ethics of Identity
(2005) 114-154
James Clifford: "On Ethnographic Authority", in The Predicament of Culture . pp.21-
54.
______________: "On Ethnographic Allegory," and "Introduction: Partial Truths" in
Clifford and Marcus, eds. Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of
Ethnography .(Berkeley, 1986),pp.1-26; 98=121.
John Toews, “Historiographical Exorcism: Conjuring up “Foreign Worlds and
Historicizing Subjects in the Context of the Multi-Culturalism debate,” Theory and
Society (August,1998)
January 25, 27
Required Reading:
Stuart Hall, “The Work of Representation” (
Course Reader )
Stuart Hall, “Ethnicity, Identity and Difference” (
Course Reader )
Assignment for Week IV: “Questions and Quotations”
February 1 and 3.
Required Reading
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York, 1978), Introduction and 2003 preface( Course
Reader )
Timothy Mitchell."Orientalism and the Exhibitionary Order" in N.Dirks, ed.,
Colonialism and Culture (Ann Arbor, 1992) ( Course Reader )
Optional:
Emran Qureshi and Michael Sells, “Introduction: Constructing the Muslim Enemy”
From The New Crusades (2003) ( Course Reader )
Supplemental Further Reading:
There is a huge critical Literature on Said's book and its impact in shaping the whole field of "postcolonial studies". See for example, the five essays in Part 2 of Patrick
Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds., Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory (
Columbia U.Press, NY, 1994)
Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism: Race. Femininity and Representation
(New York, 1996)
Matthew Bernstein and Gaylyn Studlar, eds ., Visions of the East: Orientalism in
Film (Rutgers, 1997).
Emran Qureshi and Michael Sells, eds. The New Crusades: Constructing the
Muslim Enemy (2003)
February 8 and 10.
Required Reading:
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Frantz Fanon, Black Skin/White Masks
All chapters are important, but if you are terribly strapped for time, don’t skim: instead focus on the
Introduction, Chapter 1 and Chapters 5-8
February 15 and 17 (Term Paper outlines are due February 17)
Required Reading:
Tayeb Salih: A Season of Migration to the North
Saree S. Makdisi. "The Empire Renarrated: Season of Migration to the North and the
Reinvention of the Present," Critical Inquiry (1992) ( Course Reader )
Assignment for WeekVII: “Questions and Quotations”
February 22 and 24.
Required Reading:
Toni Morrison , Beloved .(1987)
Supplemental Reading:
Beloved is part of a fictional trilogy on the African-American Experience in the United
States. It was followed by Jazz (1992) and Paradise. (1998)
It would be helpful to compare the novel to Jonathan Demme's and Oprah Winfrey's much criticized Film version.
Toni Morrison, " Site of Memory," in William Zinsser , ed., Inventing the Truth, The
Art and Craft of Memoir (Boston, 1987)
_____________: "Unspeakable Things Unspoken ," Michigan Quarterly Review 28
(1989)
Toni Morrison: Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination (1992)
Mae G. Henderson, " Toni Morrison"s Beloved : Re-membering the Body as a Historical text." in Hortense Spillers, ed., Comparative American Identities: Race, Sex and
Nationality in the Modern Text (New York, 1991)
Required Reading:
Octavia Butler: Kindred
On Thursday we will engage in a comparative analysis of Morrison and Butler in the context of the themes of the class
Assignment:IX “Questions and Quotations” or “Pick a scene or event in the novel and indicate why you think it raises important issues and why the class should discuss it.
Required Reading:

Barack Obama: Dreams from my Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance (1995)
Part I: “Origins”
Zadie Smith: “Speaking in Tongues” (December 8, 2008
)(Course Reader)
Assignment for X: “Questions and Quotations”
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