First-Year Research Sem: Curiosity: Inquiry, Discovery, and Uncertainty

Catalog description

In this interdisciplinary research seminar, we will be curious about curiosity itself. Exploring a range of materials from trans-historical US and European contexts, we will investigate the value of not knowing and wanting to know, as well as the anxieties and dangers signaled by the phrase “curiosity killed the cat.” We consider: what leads us to ask questions and what happens when we ask a question whose answer is far from sight or endlessly inconclusive? We begin by analyzing children’s literature (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Curious George) alongside theories of education from Locke to Dewey to contemporary school psychology. We then examine the role of open exploration in both poetry and scientific discovery, working with ideas from literature (i.e. Frankenstein, Gothic mystery, Romantic poetry, theories of indeterminacy) and from present-day Mars exploration and the development of vaccines. We consider aesthetics and attributes of objects that spark curiosity in proto-museum curiosity cabinets, modern art, travel shows, and social media. Finally, we investigate the interpersonal ethics of how we fill “information gaps,” considering the fine line between openness to learning about others and treating humans as objects of curiosity (as in the case of Afong Moy, the first Chinese woman in the US). We consider who is allowed to be curious, and for whom curiosity is seen as nosiness, gossip, insubordination, or vice, particularly within the long gendered and racialized history of curiosity. As we analyze instances of curiosity in our sources, we also reflect on our own curiosity in our developing research processes.