Tuesday & Thursday, 2:00-4:30

        The CHID Colloquium is a reading/discussion course centered on general problems of knowledge and interpretation that emerge from the historical and comparative study of texts and cultures. 

        We will examine ethnographic and historical accounts, theoretical essays, and literature that demonstrate a range of disciplinary and cultural interpretive strategies.  From these texts we will evaluate some ways through which people interpret their world, as well as methods they use to perceive, create, explain and interpret knowledges. We will continue to examine the ways in which these interpretative perspectives are tied to problems of societal & cultural exclusion and inclusion, marginalization and integration. Issues of how/whether we can learn to hear, encounter or represent the voice of the “other” for itself perhaps are connected to social & cultural issues of preserving, protecting and integrating “we-ness” and “otherness.” Ethnicity, nationality, race, class, sexuality, and gender – all very problematic concepts – will loom large in our discussions of the “other.”

        This course employs four interconnected critical practices: reading, talking, hearing and writing.   The first objective of the course is to expose students to a wide range of readings that deal, explicitly or implicitly, with problems of interpretation.

        I believe that engaging in discussion is crucial to the creation and maintenance of a learning community. The structure of the course is intended to underscore the content by illustrating that what one thinks to be important, or obvious, is not necessarily seen to be so by others – my common sense is not your common sense. For this reason the student-led discussions are perhaps the most important aspect of the course with the logical corollary that the course not be dominated by the professor. Often this “decentered” aspect of the course is the most troublesome for students.

        Finally, we will write regularly in response to what we reading. Writing is a crucial component of Western academic thinking, and is a practice that can facilitate engagement in, and understanding of, texts and ideas.  As the quarter progresses we will continue to reflect on the tension between the desire to create clarity and an intellectual honesty which attacks that clarity. We will also reflect on the relative value of developing and using manageable methods on the one hand and critiquing those methods on the other in the process of problem solving. Finally, we will consider the dialog between the value of authority and discipline on the one hand and the critique of authority and discipline on the other.

       Tuesday’s class will normally be devoted to student presentations and discussion of the assigned readings.  At Thursday’s class, the instructor will lead further discussion of the assigned readings within the context of the broader themes of the course.