The purpose of this course is to introduce students, whether in the humanities, social sciences or sciences, to cross-disciplinary issues raised by the telling and retelling of stories. The course will examine how narrative orders experience and thought in primary texts drawn from a range of disciplinary contexts. Read together, these diverse texts will form a new context for the examination of issues raised by storytelling: sequence and consequence; narrative as argument and proof by scenario; instabilities amongst "history," "fact," "fiction," "myth," "law," and "science"; construction and deconstruction of identities.
Required Texts
The Book of Job
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
Francois Girard/Don McKellar, Thirty-two short films about Glenn Gould
Stephen Jay Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack
Jane Jacobs, The Nature of Economies
Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Book):
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Michael Ondaatje, Running in the Family
Plato, The Republic
Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre
Selected Shorter Works
Time
Tuesdays 11-1, Thursdays 11-12
Evaluation
Essays, term tests, oral presentation
Format
Lectures, Seminar Discussion
Instructor
Deborah Knott
