| Title: | Being and Not Being At Home |
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| Course Section Number: | FRT-101-08 |
| Department: | Freshman Tutorial |
| Description: | FRT-101-08: Being and Not Being at Home (Economy, Ecology, & Architecture). Jeff Gower teaches Philosophy and contributes to the program in Philosophy, Politics and Economics. He plays a little guitar, likes movies, and occasionally goes on walks in the woods. As you begin your college education at Wabash, many of you will find yourself living away from home for the first time and will face the challenge and the opportunity of learning how to make a home for yourself in a new place among new people. This course will explore what it might mean for us, for human beings today, to find ourselves at home or to make a new home. What does it mean to be at home? You might expect an easy answer to this question: one is at home in one's house or one's dwelling. Now, consider the fact that the verb "to dwell" develops from words that mean "to go astray," and "to be led into error." Does "home" name one's proper place? Or does it name whatever leads one away from what is most one's own? An answer may not come so easily, but throughout the semester we'll follow some clues. Consider that the Greek word for house, oikos, shows up as a root in the English words, "economy" and "ecology." Yet at first glance these clues seem to lead further into perplexity. For the Greeks, "economy" meant something like "household management." And yet today-think of the weary business traveler, or the immigrant searching for work-the economy is often what dislocates and displaces us. The notion of ecology introduces the possibility of finding oneself at home on the earth. And yet today, more and more people are driven from their homes as local ecosystems strain under the pressure of global climate change. We'll explore the perplexities that arise out of this dynamic interplay of being and not being at home, and will highlight the economic and ecological dimensions of our theme in studies of architecture as well as literary and philosophical texts. Examining the question of what it might mean for us, today, to be at home will provide the occasion to develop practices of careful reading, persuasive writing, and effecting speaking-practices that are essential for cultivating one's place in the world. |
| Credits: | 1.00 |
| Start Date: | August 22, 2019 |
| End Date: | December 15, 2019 |
| Meeting Information: |
08/22/2019-12/05/2019 Lecture Tuesday, Thursday 09:45AM - 11:00AM, Hays Science, Room 001
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| Faculty: | Gower, Jeff |
Course Status
| Section Name/Title | Status | Dept. | Capacity |
Enrolled/ Available/ Waitlist |
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