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Written by Seth Einterz and Jacob Stump
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Monday, 15 March 2010 20:30 |
The Wabash Commentary: Personify C&T by one of its characters.
Professor David Blix: First, I would say Du Fu. He’s this marvelous poet who’s open to all the varieties of the human condition. He meets everybody, writes about everything. He is always on the move. I find him an altogether admirable character.
But of course Odysseus is one possibility. He doesn’t quite cut it altogether, because he doesn’t listen as much as he should. Maybe Odysseus and Penelope together.
TWC: If, as seems imminent, C&T is replaced by some one semester course, what is lost? Is it comparable to Odysseus drowning halfway through his journey, or Penelope weaving her shroud much too quickly?
DB: I’m tempted, by all means, to go in that dramatic a direction. The simple answer is that we would lose a lot in terms of quantity, we’d just cover less material, and that, to me, is lamentable. Do you take out modules? Would you just shorten each module to a couple of readings? Do you take each module and try to put it…I’m baffled by it. There’s a certain amount of syllabus time that has to be developed to begin to get even a rudimentary sense of the culture. So either we would lose attention to two or three cultures, or we would not be able to sense syllabus-time elapsing.
I also think there’s a developmental process for the students over the course of nine months. Now I should hasten to add that colleagues whose good opinion I respect do not agree with me on this. But my experience is that sophomores do get better, and it takes a lot of repetition, it takes a lot of practice, to learn how to read, discuss, and make connections among items and issues. And it takes time. My personal opinion is that would be very hard to do – not impossible, but very hard to do – in the course of one semester.
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