So the second semester next year, I have to teach the second half of a freshman seminar that is basically a Great Books seminar. It's a pretty canonical list of western philosophy with some non-western stuff thrown in at the end. The reading list (off the top of my head) is something like this (it's a set list, b/c there are multiple sections but a shared reading list). Descartes, Mary Shelly - Frankenstein, Neitsche - Beyond Good and Evil, Kant, Marx - Communist Manifesto and something else, Weber - Protestant Ethic, Dostoyevski - Notes from Underground, Chinua Achebe - Things Fall Apart, Darwin - Origin of Species, Freud - Civilization and its Discontents, Primo Levi The theme of the class is the Age of Revolutions. Now, I've read a lot of the above but I've never taught them (I'm an environmental historian of the American Southwest). Has anyone taught any of these before? If you remember what really engaged the students about the books, I'd love to hear it.
I have not taught this book, but it looks like I'll be teaching it in the upcoming year. I'm actually trying to avoid it, because I heard that several of the students read in in a previous year, but we'll see. Anyway, next month, I'm going to do my usual information/source grabbing marathons, so I'll let you know what I come up with.
No on 3-6, 8,9 & 11. 1) For Descartes... well, I find that engineering students tend to love Descartes, to the point where they find everything on the reading list after it to be superfluous. I mean, we found truth, why go on? 2) A good answer to that question. If the students get annoying, remind them how old Shelley was when she wrote this novel, and how it was basically the result of a parlor game. 4) Better you than me on this one! 7) Students seem to have a hard time relating to someone who thinks so much. Emphasize the intensity of the character and his situation, and maybe suggest that they imagine they're hanging out with the narrator and listening to him in a bar or dank coffeehouse. That helps to get them into it. 10) Well, if they read it, you'll have some great discussions.
Well, I'm probably not going to have any engineering students (small arty liberal arts school). Although, since it is the first book, maybe I can take that tack. "Well, there it is. Truth. Have a good semester" How do you keep the teacher from getting depressed though? Or are you assuming graduate school produces a general sense of bitter resignation about your own inadequacy? This is probably the one I'm dreading most. I couldn't make sense of him the last time I read it and just wrote it off as something I've decided I'm not going to know. Now, of course, I have to teach it. (For the life of me, I can't remember what Kant it is). The edition sucks too. It's only 70 pages but its that full page, 9-point type, kind of book. That's a good idea. I'm also thinking of suggesting that they start by reading it out loud to themselves to better get his tone.
Re: Achebe I have taught Achebe before, but in a class so large that a paper rather than discussion was assigned. The biggest challenge there was formulating a question that was insightful, relevant, and unique - unique because, like to the other books on the list, Things Fall Apart is canonical, and hence loads of papers floating around Greek Houses and on the internet. But in a seminar setting, you shoudl have great discussion since it is quite diffeent from most of what is on the list. My favorite book to teach is Isabel Allende's House of the Spirits.