The American Inner-Self Industry
CHUM 333
Spring 2009
| Section:
01
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| Crosslisting:
ENGL 335, AMST 333 |
A few years ago, I received a Quotable Card (quotablecards.com) birthday greeting blazoned with Ralph Waldo Emerson's "What lies behind us and what lies before us are small matters compared to WHAT LIES WITHIN US." Bearing in mind Terry Eagleton's warning that what we are led to think of as "'inner space' is actually where we are least free," I "googled" terms related to this .com profundity with intriguing results: Inner Self (42,600,000 hits), Inner Self Business (5,230,000 hits), Inner Self Industry (1,400,000 hits), The Soul Business (70,900,000 hits), The Soul Industry (7,510,000 hits), and Soulmaking (906 hits). Our seminar will begin with Ben Franklin -- whose jingles still supercharge ads (Gold's Gym: "No pains, no gains") -- precisely because this architect of capitalist incentive has no use or time for notions of the "inner self." The other literary darling of advertisers is Emerson (his "Insist on yourself; never imitate" becomes Hugo cologne's "Innovate, don't imitate"). Are Franklin and Emerson in cahoots? From the Puritans through Jonathan Edwards to the antebellum Romantics and the modern age of psychology, tropes of the inner self have proven indispensable to the reproduction of capitalist incentive, even as these figurations are use to rebel against "soulless" mechanization and standardization. Why and how does Franklinian-Emersonian capitalism require an inner-self industry? We will study religious tropes of "the soul," move on to the literary securalization of what Keats termed "soulmaking," and then consider psychological discourses that supplanted the metaphor of soul [always probing: why?]. To develop interdisciplinary historical and theoretical perspectives, we'll read Franklin, Edwards, Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and O'Neill, and integrate and rethink the history and anthropology of emotional life, of interiority, and of incentive. |
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Essential Capabilities:
Ethical Reasoning, Interpretation |
| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
HA ENGL |
| Course Format: Seminar | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: None |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
We will read theoretical texts, historical texts, and mass-cultural texts such as advertising and magazines. Literary readings include:
Jonathan Edwards, sermons and essays
Benjamin Franklin, from POOR RICHARD¿s ALMANAC and other texts
Nathaniel Hawthorne, THE ARTIST OF THE BEAUTIFUL and other tales
Edgar Allan Poe, THE BUSINESS MAN and other tales
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, tales
Herman Melville, TYPEE, PIERRE, BARTLEBY THE SCRIVENER
Emily Dickinson, poems
Horatio Alger, RAGGED DICK
Mark Twain, A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR¿S COURT, THE AMERICAN CLAIMANT
Eugene O¿Neill, MORE STATELY MANSIONS
Arthur Miller, DEATH OF A SALESMAN
Zora Neale Hurston, tales and other texts
Richard Wright, NATIVE SON, TWELVE MILLION BLACK VOICES, and other texts
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Examinations and Assignments:
3 7-10 page essays. |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Each student will "pair up" with another student to help lead class discussion probably twice. |
| Instructor(s): Pfister,Joel Times: ...W... 07:00PM-09:50PM; Location: DWNY208; |
| Total Enrollment Limit: 15 | | SR major: 6 | JR major: 6 | | |
| Seats Available: 8 | GRAD: 0 | SR non-major: 0 | JR non-major: 3 | SO: 0 | FR: 0 |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 1 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 1 |
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