Sections offered SPRING 2020:
#33426 |
FRITZ LIEBER |
MW 11:15am-12:30pm |
HU 217 |
CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd S&H credit; COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit
Historic virtues of friendship are eclipsed today by the likes of social media and a culture of materialism and me-firstism. We return in this course to the roots of true friendship across time and discipline to ask a basic set of questions: what are the fundamental virtues of friendship, how does friendship grow and change, what are its limitations?
We read Aristotle, Sappho, Cicero, Saint Augustine, Alberti, Montaigne, Emerson, Po Chü-I, Emily Dickinson, The Book of Ruth, Shakespeare, Virginia Woolf, and Hannah Arendt, among others. We study friendship in psychology, sociology, art, and critical theory. We read letters between friends.
Other questions of the course include: how do friendship and intimacy cooperate or confuse, what is friendship in business, can interpersonal friendship map international friendship, how is friendship similar and different at developmental stages and contexts of our lives, who are the enemies of friendship, and in what sense is friendship the prose of love?
Students interview a friend, conduct original research, write two short papers and a final paper. There are no exams. The class is taught as a seminar.