GW136—Mysticism
Syllabus--Winter 2007
INSTRUCTORS:
Professor David Buchman Professor
Melissa Eden
Office: FOB 305 Office:
CLA 111
Office
phone: 7369 Office
phone: 7203
Email: buchman Email:
edenm
Discussion:
135A3--CL 115 Discussion: 135A1--CL 201
Professor Frank
Luttmer
Office: CLA 113
Office phone:
7205
Email: luttmer
Discussion:
135A2--CL 114
COURSE OBJECTIVES:
This course is
designed to introduce students to great works of mysticism--the experience of
spiritual union with ultimate reality--selected from the world's great
religions. The objectives are to analyze mystical texts carefully,
to interpret them within the context of their own spiritual traditions, to
compare them with each other, and to consider the insight they bring to our
understanding of human beings and human spirituality.
TEXTS:
Corless, Roger J. The Vision of Buddhism.
Paragon House.
Hacker, Diane. Rules
for Writers. 5th
ed.
Lao Tzu.
Tao Te Ching. D. C. Lau, trans. Penguin
Merton, Thomas. The Way of Chuang Tzu.
Shambhala.
Shattuck, Cybelle. Hinduism. Prentice
Hall.
Stoler Miller, Barbara, trans. The Bhagavad-Gita.
Bantam.
Various handouts
CLASS
FORMAT AND RULES:
First and foremost, this is your
class. It will alternate between discussion
and lectures, but will function largely in a discussion format, and one of our
main jobs will be to make sure that discussions are engaging and productive.
Your job will be to pay attention, to read carefully, and to participate
actively. Participation counts in your
final grade, so get used to speaking up, asking questions, challenging others
in a friendly way, and most of all, commenting constructively on others’
writing, and presentations.
Attendance:
Regular class attendance is essential if you want to get the most out of
this course and if you want to pass it. We
therefore allow you a total of three absences from class (excused or unexcused,
it makes no difference). Save absences for emergencies, as each absence
after the third will drop your grade by one step. Remember that accidents, illnesses, and
broken hearts may still come to pass in November or December, so don't miss
class unnecessarily in September. If you
miss a test because of unexcused absence you may not make it up, and your grade
for that test will be recorded as an F.
Please
notice that college vacations begin at the end of the class day before the free
days and no earlier. You are required to
be in all of your classes on the day before and the day after vacations. Tell you parents NOW not to schedule family
vacations or plan travel schedules that will require you to miss class.
We reserve the right to fail any student
who misses over four classes.
Late papers: As a courtesy to us and to your classmates we
ask that you turn papers in on time. Each paper is due at the beginning of class on the
day it is assigned. Unless you
get approval from your section leader in advance, he or she will penalize late
papers by reducing your grade by 1/3 of a letter for every day late. No paper
may be submitted more than a week late. Please remember that if you do
have an unforeseen emergency you should contact your section leader as well as
the registrar’s office. They will inform your other faculty members on the
nature of your emergency and estimated time of absence.
We also ask that, out of respect for the
class, you make sure to prepare your class presentations on time and to lead
discussion on the day assigned to you. Re-scheduling presentations takes away
from valuable class time. If you need to reschedule due to an emergency, you
will need to contact you section leader ahead of time. We reserve the right to penalize late
presentations or failure to lead discussion on the appropriate date with a
failed grade.
GRADES:
We'll
base your final grade on an average of your essay grades, your in-class writing
and homework, presentations, class discussion, and your exam. Other factors that can bump
your grade up or down significantly are late papers, absences, and plagiarism. Your final grade will be weighted as
follows:
Formal
writing assignments # 1 & 2 15%
each
Formal
writing assignment #3 20%
Class
participation 10%
Presentation 10%
Exams 15%
each
MORE ABOUT WRITING:
All assigned essays must be typed, double-spaced,
stapled, and titled. They are to follow
standard essay form (with an introduction, a thesis sentence, paragraphs with
evidence, a conclusion, and a Works Cited page). You do not need a separate title page, but
you must be sure that your name is on the first page and that the pages are
numbered. Hacker in Rules for Writers
presents a model essay; your paper should look like that. Before you hand in your paper, place it in a
cardboard folder with pockets (not a plastic binder) along with all your
drafts and prewriting. Please
collect all copies of formal essays in a pocket folder and keep them for the
whole year.
Each paper may be
longer than what is suggested, but none may be shorter, so an essay assigned as
2 to 3 pages may be slightly longer, but it may not be any shorter than 2 pages
without incurring a penalty. Do not
adjust your paper's font, spacing, or margins to attempt to disguise its true
length.
Each
paper is due at the beginning of class on the day it is assigned.
GRADING
GUIDELINES--Essays and other written materials:
Grading
papers fairly is one of the most difficult things teachers do. There are so many elements of writing to
consider when grading; I find myself doing a tight-rope walk through
considerations of grammar, spelling, style, organization, thesis work, and, of
course, ideas. Like most English
teachers I want my final grade to reflect a balance between these elements. However, given the nature of any particular
assignment, I might emphasize some of these elements more than others when I
grade. To help you understand this difficult process I've put together some of
my guidelines for grading. These
guidelines should help you see why your essay falls into the grade range that
it does, and they should help you think about what you can do to improve if you
are dissatisfied with your grade.
Grammar:
An
excellent essay is one with very few or no grammar and spelling errors. From there on in I establish in my own mind a
rough system for considering grammar and spelling. A good paper will still have few errors, and
none of these errors will show serious grammar trouble. A paper with numerous errors, none of which
reflect a real lack of grammatical knowledge, would fall in the fair to poor
ranges. I might feel that a paper with
an overload of non-serious errors, one that looks rushed or sloppy, one that
contains loads of spelling errors, comma mistakes, verb agreement problems, and
the like, deserves to be marked down dramatically. The most serious grammar
errors, to my mind, are sentence-level errors, such as fragments, comma
splices, and run-ons, or errors on grammar essentials such as verb forms. If I see these kinds of errors, I reduce the
paper grade significantly.
Style:
Can
I understand the student's argument? Are her sentences garbled or clear? Do the paragraphs flow; are they cohesive;
are there good transitions between sentences, between paragraphs? Does the student rely too heavily on passive
voice and sentences with no agent? Does
he rely on rhetorical questions? Is her
prose so wordy that I feel I need a machete to cut through it? Is his prose so clear and elegant I wish I
had written it myself?
Organization:
A
well-organized paper moves carefully from one thought to the next. It presents its thesis first. Then, in the following paragraphs, it
presents its proof. Each paragraph has
its own topic, introduced by a clear topic sentence, and no unrelated ideas
(ideas that should appear elsewhere in the paper, or
ideas that shouldn't be in the paper at all) pop up in any paragraph. The paragraphs flow logically from one to the
next, and the reader never gets the idea that an idea
or a proof should have appeared sooner or should have been reserved for
later. A well-organized essay always
ends with a conclusion.
That all-important THESIS:
Here
are several ways to think about a thesis.
Choose whichever one works for you:
v
A
good thesis announces the paper's topic and gives the writer's assertion about
that topic. Topic + assertion = thesis.
v
A
good thesis answers the "so what?" question. It tells the reader why this particular topic
is important and why the reader should care about it.
v
A
good thesis crystallizes the argument of the paper. It tells what subject the writer is writing
about and what the writer's particular argument about that subject is.
v
A
good thesis presents the central idea of the essay and tells the writer's point
of view about that idea.
v
A
good thesis is argumentative in some sense; it is not a statement of fact.
Ideas:
There's
so much else to consider it's often hard to remember you should be thinking when you write! Nevertheless, you should be, and I consider
the quality of your thought along with everything else.
ACADEMIC HONESTY:
To be a student is to be a scholar, one who seeks to
learn and to understand, one who seeks wisdom. Honesty is one of the aspects of wisdom, and
the educated person is assumed to be honest.
Academic honesty is expected of all members of any academic community. Scholars would no more appropriate as their
own the words or ideas of others than they would pick their pockets.
Do not,
then, ever use another's words or ideas as though they were your own. All work you submit is to be entirely your
own. You must always give credit to
those whose words or ideas you quote. The college statement on use of sources
is to be applied to everything you write or present while you are a student
here. Use of another's words or ideas without
acknowledgment, in however short a portion of any paper or presentation, will
result in an F grade for that paper or presentation, a course grade lower by
one level than what you would otherwise receive with that F and in any case no
higher than C, and automatic report to the College Academic Rules Board. This rule applies, by the way, to assistance
from friends and relatives: do not let your mother, father, brother, or friend,
revise your paper for you, because that too will result in an F. Familiarize yourself with Hacker Section 52, “Avoiding
plagiarism.”
Remember
that you are welcome to quote other writers or to take advantage of ideas or
suggestions that come to you from other people.
Just provide a note acknowledgment, footnotes, textual references,
quotation marks, and works cited pages where they are appropriate.
CLASS SCHEDULE
Hindu Mysticism: The Bhagavad-Gita
Mon., Jan. 8: Lec.—Hinduism (Buchman)
Wed., Jan. 10:
Disc.--Shattuck read to p.34
Fri., Jan. 12:
Disc. Cla.102—Shattuck to p. 63
Mon., Jan. 15: Lec.—Hindu Art (
Wed., Jan. 17: Disc.—Shattuck
to p. 118
Fri., Jan. 19: Lec./disc.-- (
Mon., Jan. 22: Disc.--Gita to p. 63
Wed., Jan. 24: Disc.--Gita to p. 108
Fri., Jan. 26: Disc.
Cla.
102--Gita
to p. 146; first paper due
Mon., Jan. 29: Disc.
Cla.
102--poetry of Kabir (handout)
Wed., Jan. 31: Disc.—Kabir continued, plus poetry of Rabindranath
Tagore, excerpts from the Gitanjali (handout)
Fri., Feb. 2: Disc.
Cla.
102—Tagore continued
Buddhism
Mon., Feb. 5: Lec.—Buddhism (Buchman); read VOB
(Vision of Buddhism) Introduction through
p. 26
Wed., Feb. 7: Disc.—VOB
Chapts. 1 & 2
Fri., Feb. 9:
Disc. Cla.
102—VOB Chapts. 3 & 4
Mon., Feb. 12:
Disc.--VOB Chapts. 5 & 6
Wed., Feb. 14:
Disc.—VOB Chapts. 7 & 8
Fri., Feb. 16:
Disc. Cla.
102—VOB Chapts. 9 & 10
& Appendix
Mon., Feb. 19: Lec.—Buddhist Art (
Wed., Feb. 21:
Disc. Cla.
102—Buddhist Art
Fri., Feb. 23: EXAM
Feb. 26 - Mar.
2—no class—Winter Break
Mon., Mar. 5:
(Japanese Buddhism book)
Wed., Mar. 7:
Fri., Mar. 9: research
prospectus due
Taoism
Mon., Mar. 12: Lec.—Taoism (Buchman?
Wed., Mar. 14: Disc.--TTC
(Tao Te Ching),
read Introduction through p. 32
Fri., Mar. 16: Disc.--TTC
to p. 59
Mon., Mar. 19: Disc.
Cla.
102—TTC to p. 88
Wed., Mar. 21: Disc.—Merton,
xi – xvi, 1 - 28, 31 - 50
Fri., Mar. 23: Disc.—Merton
to p. 94
Mon., Mar. 26: Disc.—Merton
to p. 140
Wed., Mar. 28: Disc.
Cla.
102--Merton to p. 181
Fri., Mar. 30: Presentation day
Mon., Apr. 2: Lec: Chinese Art (
Wed., Apr. 4:
Disc.--Chinese poetry (handout)
Fri., Apr. 6: Lec.—Mysticism and the New Age Movement (Luttmer); Tolle to p. 101
(Note: Somewhere
in this week we will set up showings of a film on artist Andy Goldsworthy
entitled Rivers and Tides)
Mon., Apr. 9:
Disc. Cla.
102—Tolle to p. 200
Wed., Apr. 11: Disc. Cla. 102.—Tolle to end
Fri., Apr. 13: Lec.—The Art of
Andy Goldsworthy (Eden); research
paper due
Final Exam: TBA