Love: Art, Science, and Practice

Catalog description

Love is said to be the key to everything from psychological development to achieving social justice. But as renowned psychologist Erich Fromm said as far back as the 1950's, love appears to be disintegrating in modern society. This may be partly because most of us don't in fact understand it very well. It may be true that, as the Beatles say, All You Need is Love, but it also seems, as Lady Gaga says, we Don't Know What Love Is. This class is designed to give students an opportunity to take a deep dive into the nature of love - its history, its practice, and how it has been studied - and develop your skills for communicating what you've learned through presentations to your peers. We will look at all types of love, from familial and brotherly to romantic and spiritual, and you will be introduced to conflicting ways it has been defined (a drive, an emotion, an orientation to the world, etc.), functions it has been given (reproduction, kinship, finding ultimate truth, etc.), and ways people have cultivated it (service, therapy, spiritual practice). The course will introduce you to how various disciplines such as anthropology, biology, psychology, and art approach a complex experience such as love. And it will introduce you to different ways we can talk about big topics like love, especially through short presentations about our own learning. You will write a short research paper, a short story, and at the end of the quarter you will make a formal oral presentation about what your research and writing has taught you. Click here for the form to apply: https://forms.gle/YEtw7R9tYof2PAir7