"Individual, Community, and Dissent in America"
Tuesday, February 21, 2006

This interdisciplinary event created a debate between a business, corporate model of American community, a radical critique by Randolph Bourne of economic exploitation, and William James' version of liberal individualism. Students read pieces from all three perspectives and then staged a debate between visions of American society that emphasize economic competition, and visions that attempt to discover modes of social cooperation.

Students gathered at the Johnston Center for dinner prior to the debate, having prepared by reading and working on presentations given from the point of view from the particular strand of thought their class studied

Three courses participated:

AMST 058 [006I]: Cultures of Dissent: Radical Social Thought in America Since 1880
Jay Garcia
This course examines the history of radical social thought in American history, focusing in particular on examples from "leftist" and collectivist" traditions. The course emphasizes the many forms radicalism has taken by exploring different radical thinkers' dissenting critiques of dominant political, economic and social arrangements. The course also attempts to reconstruct the social visions that animated radical movements by investigating uses of language, imagery and rhetorical styles. Among the topics the course will address are feminism, African American radical thought, the origins of the "Old Left," the emergence of the "New Left," anti-fascism, internationalism and environmentalism. The course content - speeches, novels, short stories, songs, films, among other forms - emphasizes the wide range of sources that offer historical insights into traditions of radical thought in American society.

ANTH 055 [006E]: The Modern Corporation: From the English East India Company to Wal-mart
Matthew Hull
Corporations have emerged as the dominant governance institutions on the planet. The largest among them reach into virtually every country in the world and exceed most governments in size and power. While corporations are characters in the larger stories of industrialization and capitalism, this seminar will emphasize the specific features of public corporations and their historical and contemporary relations to ndividuals, states, families, ethnic and racial groups, and other social actors. How did corporations emerge? How are they controlled and by whom? Under what circumstances do they exercise military force? How do we participate in them as consumers, employees, and tockholders, and what are the conflicts among these forms of participation? What rights should corporations have? How should we engage them as citizens? We will examine these questions with reference to corporate activities in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, with particular emphasis on the greatest early joint stock corporation, the English East India Company, and today's largest corporation, Wal-Mart.

ENGL 076 [006M]: Decadence, Nihilism and Aestheticism: 1870-1910
John McGowan
The end of the nineteenth- and beginning of the twentieth-century had many parallels to our own time. Nihilistic terrorists and decadent homosexuals were deemed a threat to established values by traditionalists, while radicals protested against corporate monopolies, corrupt politicians, and imperialistic foreign policies in the rich Western nations. This course will explore four writers of this period in order to examine a range of responses to what each writer saw as a crisis in the West's ability to provide both a prosperous and a meaningful life for all people. They believed that traditional sources of authority, including religion, were in decline, but were worried that an egalitarian democracy would only breed mediocrity and the materialistic quest for money. Art works, and more generally culture, become an important way to foster social cohesion in a world that features intense economic competition between individuals. Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde promoted the aestheticist doctrine of "art for art's sake" to replace the spiritual dimension they believed society had lost. Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed the "death of God" and searched for ways to avoid the "nihilistic" conclusion that a godless world offers no reason for living. William James took a more upbeat, American view of these questions, but also wondered what would motivate "striving" if this world was all there is and death ended our individual existences. Entangled in these more philosophical issues are the contrast between reformist and more radical (violent and terrorist) responses to Western society's failings, and questions of "deviant" and "decadent" behavior (Pater and Wilde were homosexuals) punished by the mainstream. Studying these writers will help us understand society in our own time, by leading us to examine the consequences of living in a modern commercial culture and the meanings that are ascribed to art and other marginal practices within such a culture..