First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: The Use and Abuse of Story

Catalog description

Once upon a time, a story (or “narrative”) was regarded as a sequence of words or other symbols arranged to create the impression of events connected over time by the continuing presence of an individual or community. In the West, the formal study of narrative began with a focus on its role in rhetoric and aesthetics--does it persuade or instruct? does it please? In the 2020’s, however, as fledgling fashion designers are told they “must have a story” and struggling politicians are told to “get a new narrative,” story/narrative seems to have taken on all sorts of new applications—some good, some questionable. Through a survey approach, this class will critically explore the uses of story over time and new understandings of narrative and media emerging today. We will explore the use of story across disciplines, its important functions and forms, and its relation to problems of truth and fiction, intention and interpretation. We will read works that use narrative to give pleasure and conduct philosophical inquiry, build nations and propagate belief, and make sense of our individual and collective lives. The syllabus will include literary and philosophical texts (by Plato, Shakespeare, Nietzsche, Morrison, and others); films, tv shows, and other visual objects; and recent work in the fields of marketing, applied psychology, art history, and anthropology.