Understanding Cultural Difference:
What is Unique about the South?
Philosophy 94
January Interim
Rex Gilliland
Office:
Norton 265
Phone:
226-7718
Home
Phone: 930-0754
Email:
rgillila@bsc.edu
Phil-Science 308 TWTh
Office Hours: TWTh
12:30-1:30 pm,
TWTh 5-6 pm,
and by
appointment
Syllabus Writing Center Information
Tentative Schedule Click on dates for reading questions. All
changes in red.
Th
1/3 Introduction to the
course: Culture and Difference
Weekend
Reading Assignment: V.S. Naipaul, The
Enigma of Arrival
T
1/8 1. What is Cultural Identity? Defining Culture and Human Nature
Reading
Assignment: “Relations, Internal and External,” “The Concept and Components of
Culture,” “Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” “Romulus and Remus,” and
Boorstin
W 1/9 What
Happens to the Individual? How Precise are Group Identities?
Reading Assignment:
Horowitz
Th 1/10 Multiculturalism
and the Alterity of the Other
Reading
Assignment: Levinas, Sartre, Jay (“What is Multiculturalism?”), and
“Multiculturalism”
Writing Assignment #1 due Friday 1/11 at noon (turn it
in at the Humanities Division Office, Phil-Science 103)
Weekend Reading Assignment: Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness; and W.E.B. Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk
T 1/15 2. External
Difference Colonialism and
Images of the Primitive and the Enemy
Reading
Assignment: selections from Kipling, Kiano, and Killian
W 1/16 The External Other
Reading
Assignment: Geertz, and Lingis (“Matagalpa,” “The Trace of an Imperative,” and
“The Other”)
Th 1/17 3.
Internal Difference The Internal
Other: Social Norms and Hierarchies
Reading
Assignment: Zembaty, Frye (“Sexism,” and “Oppression”), and Young
Writing Assignment #2 due Friday 1/18 at
Weekend Reading Assignment: Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye
T 1/22 The Internal Other cont.
Reading
Assignment: de Beauvoir, and Jay (“Who Invented White People?”)
W 1/23 Responding to Oppression, Articulating
Particularity
Reading
Assignment:
Th 1/24 4.
What is the South, and what is unique about it? The Complexity of the South
Reading Assignment: Vance, selections from the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture,
Shelley and Webster
Writing Assignment #3 due Friday 1/25 at
Weekend Reading Assignment: William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
T 1/29 The
Debate about Southern Distinctiveness
Reading Assignment:
Grantham, Cobb, Gray,
W 1/30 The
Debate about Southern Distinctiveness cont., Visiting Speaker: Guy Hubbs
Reading
Assignment: Reed (“Regional Cultural Differences,” and “Lazy No More”)
Th 1/31
Reed and Naipaul?
Final Paper due Friday 2/1 at