SRP 435: Literature, Philosophy, and Economics

FALL '99
SENIOR PERSPECTIVE COURSE

SRP 435: LITERATURE, PHILOSOPHY, AND ECONOMICS:CRITICAL REPRESENTATIONS OF COMMERCIAL LIFE

Core (A) Curriculum Requirement

Certified Writing Course

GENERAL INFORMATION

Professors:

Dr. Patrick Murray (Philosophy)
Dr. Fidel Fajardo-Acosta (English)

Course: SRP/PHL/ENG 435, Call #6193 (SRP), #5437 (PHL), #1866 (ENG)

Class Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays 12:30-1:45 PM

Class Room: Humanities Center (HC), Room 308

Course Dates: Thursday, August 26-Thursday, December 9, 1999

Office Hours:

Tuesdays & Thursdays 2:00-3:20 PM and by appointment (Fajardo)
MWF 1:00-2:00 & TTh 2:00-3:30 and by appointment (Murray)

Offices:

Humanities Center (HC) Room 106 (Murray)
Hitchcock Comunication Arts (CA), Room 304 A (Fajardo)

Office Phones:

(402) 280 1787 (Murray)
(402) 280 2522 (Fajardo)

Email:

WWW Home Pages:

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Drawing on contemporary work in critical theory, literary criticism, aesthetics, and rhetoric, this course examines the relations of philosophy, economics, and literature through an assessment of the representation of economic phenomena in selected literary and philosophical texts. The course will explore 1) how an analysis of such texts can reveal underlying social forms such as private property, the commodity, wage labor, and capital; and 2) how these ethically consequential forms tie in with problems of poverty, unequal distributions of income and wealth, overconsumption and depletion of natural resources, competition and conflict, and social instability.

TEXTS

Patrick Murray, ed., Reflections on Commercial Life: An Anthology of Classic Texts from Plato to the Present (Routledge, 1997)
Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Norton Critical Edition, 1990)
Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman (Viking Critical Edition, 1996)
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (Viking Critical Edition, 1997)
Miscellaneous handouts

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

1) Short Papers (40%)

Students will be required to write 7 short papers ( 2 pages each, approx. 250-300 words per page) establishing, assessing, and responding to the significance of the readings. The writing should be in essay style and should address issues from among those suggested in the study questions provided for each reading. All papers must be typewritten and will be due at class time on the indicated Thursdays--papers submitted on a given week must deal with the reading material assigned for that week. At least five papers must be completed by Thursday, October 7. All seven papers must be completed by Thursday, November 4.

2) Term Paper (30%)

Students will be asked to submit a term paper (approx. 10-15 pages) offering personal reflection on the course's issues and showing revision and integration of the writing done in the short papers. Term papers may attempt to answer one or more of the guiding questions of the course. Specially encouraged is consideration of the ethical implications of the course's materials and of the ways in which interdisciplinary study illuminates the subject matter. A draft of the paper is due on Thursday, November 18. The finished paper is due on the last day of class, Thursday, December 9.

3) In-Class Work and Participation (30%)

In addition to the writing portfolio, the instructors will assess and grade each student's overall involvement, development, and accomplishment in the course. This grade will take into account all aspects of a student's performance, including attendance, class participation, class preparation, contributions, effort, attentiveness, interest, improvement, responsibility, etc.

4) Make-up Work, Attendance and Other Policies

Make-ups/extensions for a missed deadline will only be given in cases of documented serious illness or other valid, non-frivolous excuses such as documented participation in official University sports or academic/service events (it will be up to the instructors to determine and decide on the acceptability of an excuse).
An attendance measurement will be calculated equal to the percentage of total class time attended. The course grade may not exceed that percentage (i.e. if the student attended only 75% of the class time, the course grade may not be higher than 75 or C, on a 0-100 point scale where 90-100 = A, 87-89 = B+, 80-86 = B, 77-79 = C+, 70-76 = C, 60-69 = D, and 0-59 = F). Notice also that, at the discretion of the instructors, any student missing more than 30% of the total class time may fail the course.
All students in the class are expected to observe the University's guidelines on student conduct as described in Creighton University's Student Handbook (see "Code of Conduct," and especially the section on "Academic Misconduct" dealing with problems of plagiarism, cheating, etc.).

TENTATIVE READING AND DISCUSSION SCHEDULE

Click here for Course's Guiding Questions and Concerns

(click on the individual subjects for study questions)

Thu Aug 26

Introduction

Tue Aug 31

Adam and Eve in Eden (Genesis 1-3) (handout)
Tantalus (handout)
Midas (from Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book XI) (handout)
The Ages of the World (from Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book I) (handout)

Thu Sep 02

Selections from Plato's Republic, Book I.
SHORT PAPER DUE.

Tue Sep 07

Selections from Aristotle's Politics, Book I

Thu Sep 09

Selections from St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Contra Gentiles, Chapters XXX (wealth) and CXXXIII (poverty) and Summa Theologiae, Questions 66 (theft and robbery) and 77 (cheating, buying and selling).
SHORT PAPER DUE.

Tue Sep 14

Dante's Inferno Cantos XVII (usury) and XIX (simony) (handout)
Ezra Pound's Canto XLV (usury) (handout)
Selections from Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, Questions 78 (usury) and 100 (simony)

Thu Sep 16

Selections from John Locke's Second Treatise of Government ("Of Property").
SHORT PAPER DUE.

Tue Sep 21

Selections from Cervantes's Don Quixote ("The Merchants of Toledo," from Part I, Ch. 4, and "The Adventure of the Windmills," from Part I, Ch. 8) (handout)

Thu Sep 23

Selections from David Hume's Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary ("Of Commerce" and "Of Refinement in the Arts")
SHORT PAPER DUE.

Tue Sep 28

Selections from Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, I: 1-2, V: 1.

Thu Sep 30

Smith, Hume, Locke
SHORT PAPER DUE.

Tue Oct 05

Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Thu Oct 07

Charles Dickens, Hard Times.
SHORT PAPER DUE.

Tue Oct 12

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, "Balthazar's Marvelous Afternoon"(handout)
Georges Bataille, "Theory of 'Potlatch'," from The Accursed Share

Thu Oct 14

John Stuart Mill's Principles of Political Economy ("Of the Grounds and Limits of Laisser-Faire or Non-Interference Principle").
SHORT PAPER DUE.

Tue Oct 19

FALL BREAK

Thu Oct 21

FALL BREAK

Tue Oct 26

Selections from Karl Marx's Capital I:1-2, 4 (pp. 256-264, 274-282)

Thu Oct 28

Selections from Karl Marx's Capital II:4, 6 (pp. 282-291).
SHORT PAPER DUE.

Tue Nov 02

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

Thu Nov 04

John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.
SHORT PAPER DUE.

Tue Nov 09

Selections from Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism ("The Spirit of Capitalism")

Thu Nov 11

Selections from Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class ("Pecuniary Emulation" and "Conspicuous Consumption")
D. H. Lawrence, "The Rocking-Horse Winner" (handout).

Tue Nov 16

Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman

Thu Nov 18

Arthur Miller, Death of a Salesman.
TERM PAPER DRAFT DUE

Tue Nov 23

Selections from Simone Weil's Oppression and Liberty ("Sketch of Contemporary Social Life").

Thu Nov 25

THANKSGIVING BREAK

Tue Nov 30

Selections from Jean Baudrillard's Selected Writings ("Consumer Society")

Thu Dec 02

John Updike, "A&P" (handout)
Juliet Schor, "The Insidious Cycle of Work-and-Spend," from The Overworked American

Tue Dec 07

Allie Hochschild, "Joey's Problem: Nancy and Evan Holt," from The Second Shift

Thu Dec 09

Evaluations (bring a #2 pencil)
Conclusion.
TERM PAPER DUE.