Class Schedule for Spring 2025

Cultural events and cultural differences are created by individuals, but exceed individual intentions and actions. Because there are strong group differences within societies and between societies, culture is a constant process of negotiating diversity. There are two senses of culture—products such as books, paintings, music, and how people act and react in society. Our focus will be on how people act and react in society. In particular, in this course students will consider different conceptions of self that emerge in diverse cultural contexts in American society. These conceptions lead to questions about the nature of race, the role of experience, the relation of selves to religion, the nature of borders, the construction of selves in society, and the connection between self and place. In the process of the investigation, students will also be introduced to the practice of philosophy where philosophy is understood, in part, as a mode of inquiry that can contribute to the resolution of social conflict. At the beginning of the last century, W. E. B. Du Bois asserted, “the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” To the degree that America in the 21st Century still faces the problem of how to be a culturally diverse society, philosophy provides a means to address the problem.