Possible CoreOne Essay #1 Topics (F’06)



Core 1: The World at Home Essay 2 (“Application”) Topics

Due April 6

Write a 3-5 page essay that gathers some of your impressions on our course material into a coherent argument assembled around a prevailing thesis. Be specific, creative, exhaustive and orderly in your reasoning, engage our reading (introduce it, quote it, cite it properly, and demonstrate your interpretation of it), elaborate your perspective, and ensure that your work is your own (send an electronic copy to ). Use one of the following topics for essay ideas. With your instructor’s permission you may craft an alternative topic.

1. Analyze a work of art (for instance, a painting or a song, which you clear first with your instructor) using one article you’ve read for Core 1 (for instance any of those written by Foucault, Didion, Thomas, Berger, Sampson, Hebdige, Lipsitz, Johnson-Sheehan, Gorn, Hampl, King, Livio, or Lakoff & Johnson) and write an essay that carefully assesses the artwork’s significance. Apply the article to the interpretation of the artwork; demonstrate your understanding of the article and employ some of its concepts to your analysis of the artwork. Your essay could explore such questions as: What does the work mean? How does it communicate that meaning? Of what “use” or “value” is this work, perhaps in terms of the context in which it appeared, and perhaps in terms of controversies it invokes? How does the form of the artwork affect its content (and/or vice versa)? Based on the style of the work (i.e., how it looks or sounds), what might one infer about the culture that produced it, or about cultures that have adopted it? What metaphors inform the work, and what do they suggest? Interpret the artwork and its contexts closely and carefully. Pursue purposeful exploration of such questions as: Why do/don’t you like this artwork? What’s in it, what isn’t, and how are these inclusions/exclusions significant?

2. Drawing on the readings by Lakoff & Johnson or Johnson-Sheehan, carefully identify and examine the ways in which metaphor works in anything we’ve read for Core 1 so far. For instance, in what ways is it significant that Linnaeus uses anthropocentric and/or progress-oriented metaphors in describing the natural world? What metaphors prevail in specific conceptualizations of the cosmos (or of Pluto)? What metaphors prevail in speaking about art, cognition, mathematics, or economics? What role does metaphor play in specific scientific pursuits?

3. Carefully examine a recent course lecture or reading—any that have occurred since 25 February—in terms of its implications for (1) the concept of knowledge, and/or (2) the idea of evolution. Refer back to Sagan’s “Can We Know the Universe?” essay and/or Descartes’s “Discourse on Method” as a source of guidance and/or critique-able quotes, and describe your subject in as much detail as possible (making use of quotes, data, etc.). You might analyze one of our recent readings from the standpoint of your academic field of interest. How does this subject refine or complicate a given conception of knowledge?

4. You’ll notice that in Modules 3 and 4 (“Origins of Societies and Cultures” and “Language and Communication”) our focus has turned away from “science” (at least as it’s often popularly conceived) and toward the “humanities” (again, at least as they’re often popularly conceived). Citing one or, at most, two specific examples in depth, examine this seeming distinction between “the sciences” and “the humanities” (support or dismantle it) with respect to a topic we’ve covered in Core 1. For instance, given what we’ve learned about art, might there be a “science” to it, in a specific instance? Alternatively, do any social phenomena we’ve studied in Modules 3 and 4 shed light back on scientific preoccupations we covered previously in the course (in Modules 1 and 2)? To what extent is a given difference between the sciences and the arts artificial? To what extent does Laura Cunningham’s A State of Change: Forgotten Landscapes of California bridge the gap between art and science, and to what end or significance? (Engage specific passages and/or pictures to make your case.)

5. Whereas the concept of classification may be relatively easier to uphold with respect to the natural world, when applied to human subjects, concerns, art, music, or even cognition it can run into pronounced difficulties. With reference to one or two specific sustained examples, examine how well a concept such as art, mathematics, cognition, history, or economics lends itself to classification. In what ways does this concept problematize classification? What might this suggest about the subject? What might it suggest about the ways in which we classify it?

6. Craft an argument based on select principles from readings by Archibald, Lassiter, Gorn, and/or Hampl, and/or the lecture by DeLugan, to examine ways in which a specific historical event is commonly remembered (or the ways in which you have remembered it). What values are inherent in the cultural memory of the event, as compared to other, perhaps more “objective” or historical, accounts?

7. To what extent does scholarly pursuit overlook important economic underpinnings or imperatives, and how might this be significant for specific scholarly subjects? Examine the rhetoric of something we’ve read this term to identify ways in which it may underestimate the importance of economics or finance. Alternatively, examine the economic spillover that some form of academic work occasions. Specifically engage, in depth, one or two readings and examples.

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