Last week I had a lovely two hour zoom conversation with Dr. Nicole Newendorp, one of the senior people who run Social Studies at Harvard. I am the last surviving member of the original committee that set up Social Studies 63 years ago and the purpose of this conversation was to add my memories of those early days to their historical archive.
At one point she observed that the books we assigned to the
first groups of sophomores in 1960 are for the most part still on the list of
books assigned in the first half of what is now a course, Social Studies 10.
When she asked what books I would add, I responded facetiously “well, I might
suggest some of my own.” But after the conversation, I thought about it a bit
and wrote to her suggesting that they add two books: Black Reconstruction by W. E. B. DuBois, and
Charles Mills’ very important short book The Racial Contract.
After my facetious remark, I did mention to her chapters 2
and 3 of my book Autobiography of an Ex White Man. Yesterday I reread those two chapters, very
possibly for the first time since I published the book in 2005. I say without
the slightest hint of false modesty that I am very pleased with what I said
there and I am rather sorry that the book got virtually no attention when it
was published.
If things keep going in this way, I suppose I shall soon be posting memories of the red diaper preschool I attended 85 years ago in Sunnyside, Queens New York.
13 comments:
When they put up your Zoom interview on their site, I will watch it (though maybe not the whole two hours -- that depends).
The reading list for Soc. Stud. 10 has not remained static over the years. When I took it (in 1976-77), the syllabus consisted of -- after some background historical reading (which included parts of Moore among other things) -- five authors: Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Freud. Smith and J.S. Mill were, I think, usually included, but for some reason not that year.
The syllabus today has been much expanded (I just looked at the catalog online) to include Hobbes, Rousseau, Frederick Douglass, Mary Wollestonecraft, Ottobah Cuguano, Nietzsche, Du Bois, S. de Beauvoir, Fanon and Foucault, in addition to Smith, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud (no Tocqueville, apparently).
Now even if they end up skipping one or two of those, what it gains in breadth it must lose in depth. When I took it we read a lot of Marx, including (though not limited to) most of Capital vol. 1. Given the number of authors they're stuffing into the course now, they can't possibly do that today. Now maybe that's a good tradeoff: perhaps it's better to read some Fanon, de Beauvoir, and Foucault and less of the classical canon. (I've never read de Beauvoir myself, and not very much Fanon.) I'm not sure. I do recall Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society as very boring, probably not helped by the translation, so just as well to skip that, imo.
LFC,
If you've never read anything of De Beauvoir, I suggest The Mandarines, a novel that won the Prix Goncourt. It narrates the story of a group of easily identifiable French intellectuals from the liberation of Paris through the beginnings of the cold war.
There's a character who is more or less Camus, one who is more or less Sartre, one who is more or less Arthur Koestler, one who is more or less Simone de Beauvoir, one who is more or less Nelson Algren, with whom De Beauvoir had a love affair. Surprisingly, the Camus character often comes off better than the Sartre one. It's long, but it reads easily. She's an excellent story-teller.
The Second Sex is great, but most of the stuff there has been repeated and repeated by countless feminist intellectuals and activists, although de Beauvoir deserves credit for being a pioneer.
s.w.
I'll put The Mandarins on my list, thanks.
I'm somewhat torn on the question I implicitly posed above, re the content of the reading list. One position wd be that this is all too hip etc. The other that it's just changing w the times.
I would be interested to hear Pr. Wolff's thoughts on this, since he was present at the program's creation. Though I cd more or less guess what his view is.
Please correct the headline: "Another"
“The syllabus today has been much expanded (I just looked at the catalog online) to include Hobbes, Rousseau, Frederick Douglass, Mary Wollestonecraft, Ottobah Cuguano, Nietzsche, Du Bois, S. de Beauvoir, Fanon and Foucault, in addition to Smith, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Freud (no Tocqueville, apparently).”
This seems to me to partake more of political correctness than a coherent intellectual program. Du Bois certainly, de Beauvoir, Fanon, and Foucault no. Wollstonecraft and Nietzsche also no. I mean, what is the theory supposed to be behind this list? I suspect the Du Bois selection is not from Black Reconstruction.
Clearly, they need to bring me back to shape up the program and make sense of it Oh well, that is just the maunderings of an old man.
Pr. Wolff
Thanks for the response. I was not giving the list quite in the order the catalog does.
The fall term description says the focus is on emergence of capitalist democratic societies and "concomitant" modes of thought w emphasis on "empire, race, and inequality." Spring term just says it's a continuation.
I tend to agree w your reaction to some extent, though given the announced emphasis some of the additions may make sense.
Some of it must reflect a desire to move away from only "dead white males." Though I'd think it wd make more sense to find some pioneering women social theorists -- Harriet Martineau maybe? Beatrice Webb? -- rather than Wollstonecraft and de Beauvoir.
Hannah Arendt?
I don’t know what’s politically correct about Nietzsche. If one actually reads what he wrote, it’s hard to conclude he’s on the side of any of the politically correct desiderata. Equality, race, democracy? Yeah, he didn’t like capitalism. Other than that? I don’t know, except that we’ve come a long way since Walter Kaufmann imperiously ruled the roost in the Anglophone world as to what Nietzsche was up to and made a humanist out of him. (Leiter, I think, makes the most sense out of him.)
s.w.
Yes, I think so. (In well-chosen selections, which they'd have to do anyway rather than whole books.)
Back in the day the course was billed as an intense intro to classics of modern social theory. Now it seems to be a bit more all over the place.
Some writings that might be included as more of a part of what the professor calls 'a coherent intellectual program' (I'm really not sure; is the theme something like 'Classic Social Theory with attention to Justice'?) would be Simone Weil's 'Are We Struggling For Justice?' and Aimé Césaire's 'Discourse on Colonialism'. For fireworks I would add Elizabeth Anscombe's 'Mr. Truman's Degree'.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/14/ignoring-robert-f-kennedy-jr-not-an-option
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