You Do You: an Exploration of Personal Agency

Catalog description

The question "What makes you you?" lies at the heart of our endeavors to understand ourselves, to make sense of our life experiences, and to choose from among possible paths we might chart for ourselves. That is, how a person answers that question will shape their sense of agency--the idea of actively finding and fulfilling their place in the world. This course will examine the idea of personal agency using an Aristotelian logic of motion/action as our guide. Using the basic principles of what is involved in a moment of human action, we will look at varying kinds of motion to help us thik about what inhibits and what liberates human agency and personhood. Examples are: aesthetic motion (e.g.:dance), therapeutic motion (e.g.:physical therapy), productive motion (e.g., building/creating things), athletic motion (individual and group), injured/dysfunctional motion, motion of body language in social spaces, etc. Students will be asked to engage critically with narratives from within these varying fields, in (guided) conversation with the components of Aristotle's logic of motion. Students will be guided to examine, in group discussions and in journal entries, varying ways humans experience agency, and the corresponding conditions we might be concerned about in social structures and settings.