CULTURE AND EXPRESSION FALL 2021
The Making and Breaking of Community
There is something paradoxical about human communities. We awake to find ourselves embedded in a community that feeds, clothes and protects us. We grow up learning that we are members of multiple communities, sometimes chosen, often not: urban, rural, religious, political, one nation, many nations, physical, virtual, etc. And yet, some communities are oppressive, disciplinarian, and intolerant in ways that potentially imperil or diminish the quality of our lives. Many people, historically and in the present day, have found themselves questioning, struggling against, or escaping from, the communities that envelop them. Some seek identities, ideas, and experiences beyond the borders, dictates, and power structures of these communities; their well-being and even their survival may be at stake.
But what do we even mean by the word “community”? Is it more than a collection of persons? And, if so, what constitutes its imagined coherence? Does the term suggest modes of exclusion as well as inclusion? Does membership necessarily entail an obligation to the group? If so, how do we navigate among our many communities when their respective obligations conflict with one another? And, what are we to do when we find ourselves members of a community or communities that threaten us?
This semester, we examine these questions and paradoxes through the eyes of artists and thinkers from the ancient, medieval and early modern periods. We will consider the ways in which some communities rely upon rituals to create and enforce feelings of social solidarity, while others protect their borders by policing ideas and beliefs. We will discuss how in-group and out-group identities are formed around social constructs, including ethnicity, “race,” class and gender. And, because this is C&E, we’ll explore how these strategies find multifaceted representation in different media across the humanities and social sciences. Finally, as contemporary readers of these ancient, medieval and early modern works, we will attend to the ways in which they are sometimes misused to perpetuate structural inequities that affect our communities today.
As members of the Hofstra, HUHC and C&E communities, we invite you to join us in this semester-long discussion of community life. The works we consider are drawn from Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe, Western Asia, East Asia and Latin America. We turn to them to lift us beyond our own limited points of view, enabling us to see ourselves and our world more clearly.
The Strategy
C&E consists of two related courses in both fall and spring semesters. HUHC 011 and 012: Social Sciences has its emphasis on understanding the structures and values of a culture or civilization through the disciplines of history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, philosophy, religion, economics and geography. HUHC 013 and 014: Humanities has its emphasis on artistic expressions of the cultures under examination through the disciplines of literary analysis (e.g. English, Classics, Romance and Comparative Literatures), linguistics, music, drama, dance, the visual arts, architecture and aesthetics. Faculty on both teams develop a reading list and lecture schedule that work in tandem to reinforce a student’s understanding of the ancient world through to the Middle Ages and the modern world since the Renaissance. Twice weekly faculty lectures set the context for student-based discussion sections.
HUHC 011: Social Science: Professors Dardis, Doubleday, Frisina, Godlove, Robinson, Singer, Teehan, Terazawa, HUHC 013: Humanities: Professors, Bourignat-Kozol, Donahue, Efthymiou, Hollander, Keller, Lotier, Sills