MY ON-LINE "COURSE" NEXT SEMESTER

A reader code-named Yurkle asks for the reading list for the "course" I shall teach next semester on my blog.  Although I shall repeat all of this when I begin, some time in January, I am happy to post the list  of "required" readings now.  Folks can ask for some of these as Christmas presents.

We shall read seven books and an essay, and [if possible] watch a video and a movie.  Here are the materials:

First segment:              Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia

Second segment:         Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore, editors,                        Kalahari Hunter-Gatherers:  Studies of the !Kung and Their Neighbors

                                    Edwin Wilmsen, Land Filled With Flies

Third Segment:           Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Signifying Monkey

                                    Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
                                    Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Coda:                          Jane Austen, Mansfield Park
                                    Edward Said, "Jane Austen and Empire" in Culture and Imperialism

With the Coda, it is highly desirable that students watch the 1999 movie of Mansfield Park made by the Canadian director Patricia Rozema.   Lee and his associates made a 50 minute video of the !Kung called "Man the Hunter," I believe, and if anyone can find it on-line somehow, watching it would be very useful.

There it is, folks.  I believe that this will be one of the most interesting, sophisticated [although not pretentious or obscure] and rewarding courses I have ever taught.  I do hope someone actually sticks with it to the end.  But in the Blogosphere, one never knows.