Education and Utopia
This course was available in the past and may be presented again as part of the Basic Program of Liberal Education curriculum.
This course examines the relationship between schemes of education and utopian projects for human life, mostly by way of a sustained, close reading of Jean-Jacque Rousseau's Emile, or On Education. Rousseau's philosophy of education comes packaged as a novelistic account of the evolving relationship between a student and his tutor--or is it a novel that comes packaged as a philosophy? Throughout our reading of Emile, we will attend especially to the apparent dependence of Rousseau's pedagogy on a utopian relationship. We will conclude the course by reading Charlotte Perkins Gilman's feminist utopia Herland and Theodore Sturgeon's science fiction novel Venus Plus X, which can be understood as, simultaneously, extensions and critiques of Rousseau's project.
Course syllabus
Notes
Online registration deadline: Thursday, June 16 at 5 pm CT
Remote courses require you to login to Canvas to access the Zoom Classroom. You will receive an invitation to join Canvas about a week before your course begins. Please visit the Liberal Arts Student Resources page to find step by step instructions for Canvas and Zoom: Online Learning Resources