c 19-20 course
hi all,
i'm currently trying to figure out what to do with an upper-level course on 19th and 20th century continental philosophy i'm revamping for the fall. the main problem is that i'm a little constrained by our rental system at WCU. students pay a fee each semester and are entitled to get the main course text for each course they take. so for most of our courses, we try to get some kind of anthology as the primary text. we can have the students buy supplementary texts, as well, but due to the economic constitution of our students, it's generally expected that these not run to more than a $40-50 addition.
my big problem is that i can't find a good anthology that i like. we've used the blackwell reader in the past, but i'm not super happy with the selections it includes. and then there's the kearney reader, but it doesn't look like what i'm after either. here's the way i'd like to structure the course:
4 units,
1 -- philosophy, history, and freedom (primarily hegel and marx)
2 -- technology and art (heidegger's technology and origin of the work of art essays)
3 -- god and man (mainly kierkegaard and nietzsche, but i wouldn't mind throwing in some hegel, marx, and feuerbach)
4 -- modern existentialism (sartre and de beauvoir)
one obvious solution would just be to excerpt small selections within copyright laws from a bunch of things and put them up as pdf's on my webpage, but i have found that our students tend to read less when they are forced to pull things off the web like that.
so, any suggestions for either a good anthology or a couple of anthologies that would capture a decent amount of this sort of stuff?
i'm currently trying to figure out what to do with an upper-level course on 19th and 20th century continental philosophy i'm revamping for the fall. the main problem is that i'm a little constrained by our rental system at WCU. students pay a fee each semester and are entitled to get the main course text for each course they take. so for most of our courses, we try to get some kind of anthology as the primary text. we can have the students buy supplementary texts, as well, but due to the economic constitution of our students, it's generally expected that these not run to more than a $40-50 addition.
my big problem is that i can't find a good anthology that i like. we've used the blackwell reader in the past, but i'm not super happy with the selections it includes. and then there's the kearney reader, but it doesn't look like what i'm after either. here's the way i'd like to structure the course:
4 units,
1 -- philosophy, history, and freedom (primarily hegel and marx)
2 -- technology and art (heidegger's technology and origin of the work of art essays)
3 -- god and man (mainly kierkegaard and nietzsche, but i wouldn't mind throwing in some hegel, marx, and feuerbach)
4 -- modern existentialism (sartre and de beauvoir)
one obvious solution would just be to excerpt small selections within copyright laws from a bunch of things and put them up as pdf's on my webpage, but i have found that our students tend to read less when they are forced to pull things off the web like that.
so, any suggestions for either a good anthology or a couple of anthologies that would capture a decent amount of this sort of stuff?
Posted by John Whitmire on
Tuesday February 27, 2007 at 12:09pm
Do you use Blackboard and/or do you have electronic reserves that are easy to use? If so, you can defray costs by putting materials on line for the students. There is no need to have students purchase Marx's texts, for instance; they can all be found on marxists.org. You can also find many of Hegel's texts, if you don't mind using older translations (if you have loads of time, you can take an older translation, edit and amend it yourself, and then post it on Blackboard--I did this last semester).
Then you might get the Existentialism reader from Modern Library edited by Gordon Marino--it has kierk, Nietz., Heid., Sartre, etc. I might not be all of the stuff that you want to use, but you might use some of it and then photocopy supplemental things and put them on e-reserves...
Damn I sound like a shill, don't I?
joe, i have put stuff up on the web the last couple years, but i've had a little trouble with it -- primarily that the students don't seem to read as well when it's something they have to take the initiative to pull up themselves (as opposed to finding it in the book). diehm is trying to convince me to give weekly quizzes, but i just hate doing that. i may very well link to some stuff on marxists.org, at least, though.
jamey, i haven't tried proteus before, but i will check into it and see what they've got. thanks for the advice!
Despite this, though, I think using on-line readings is a good way to put together all the readings you want. I would not just link to marxists.org, though--I would edit out what you want and make it into a pdf yourself. For one thing, this is a good option because most of Marx's text want editing...