Required Books:
Grandfather, Tom Brown Jr.
The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Maureen Gallery Kovacs
Ishmael, Daniel Quinn
The Overspent American : Upscaling, Downshifting, and the New Consumer, Juliet B. Schor
--And Course Packet
 

Civilized Consciousness and the Animate Mind
Week 1
Tues, Aug 27 Introduction to core.–glossary on materialism (p. 2)
        Jared Diamond, “The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race” (p. 53)

Thurs, Aug 29 D. H. Lawrence, “Indians and Entertainment” (p. 13),   Tom Brown Jr., Grandfather (Chapters 1-5, pp. 1-103)
                       Optional: Note on Lipan Apache in packet (last page)

Week 2
Tues, Sept. 3 Tom Brown Jr., Grandfather    Chapters 6 to end

Thurs, Sept 5 Lewis Mumford, “The First Megamachine” (1966) (p. 56),   Atrahasis (32)
                     Optional: Mumford, “Technics and Human Developmen,” (26)

Week 3
Tues, Sept 10 Gilgamesh

Thurs, Sept. 12 Gilgamesh

Week 4
Tues, Sept. 17 Ishmael Chapters 1-7

Thurs, Sept. 19 Ishmael Chapters 8-end

The Invention of the Mechanical World-View: Making the Time Matrix
Week 5
Tues, Sept. 24 Lewis Mumford, “The Monastery and the Clock” (1934) (62), E.P Thompson: “Time: Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism” (1967) (67)

Thurs, Sept 26 E.P. Thompson, “Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism,” Alfred W. Crosby, “Time” (67)

 Week 6
Tues, Oct 1  Morris Berman “Consciousness and Society in Early Modern Europe” (98)

Thurs, Oct.3 OPEN

Civilized Consciousness and the Mechanical Mind
Week 7
Tues, Oct. 8 Hobbes, from Leviathan (156-164), Descartes Selections: "Treatise on Man," "Automatism of Brutes" (173)

Thurs, Oct. 10 Fritz Lang’s film  Metropolis (1926)
                 Karl Marx, from The Communist Manifesto (254)

Week 8
Tues, Oct. 15 Karl Marx, selections from Grundrisse: “The Chapter on Money” (269)  Capital: “Commodities,” sections 1 and 4

Thurs, Oct. 17 Max Weber, from The Protestant Ethic, “Asceticism and the Spirit of Capitalism” (286)

Week 9 Sat, Oct. 19 to Sun, Oct. 27  BREAK

Making the Space Matrix
Week 10
Tues, Oct. 29 Witold Rybczynski, from Home, “Intimacy and Privacy” (108)

Thurs, Oct 31 Galen Cranz, “How Chairs Evolved” (126), Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (147)

Running on Automatic
Week 11
Tues, Nov 5 Franz Kafka, “In the Penal Colony” (179) Optional: Kundera, “Somewhere Behind” (200)

Thurs, Nov.7 Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless” (1978) (307)

Week 12
Tues, Nov. 12 Vaclav Havel, “The Power of the Powerless;” “The End of the Modern Era”

Thurs, Nov. 14 Montagu and Matson: “The Dehuman Syndrome: Profiles of the Living Dead,” from The Dehumanization of Man 212

Week 13
Tues, Nov. 19 Mumford, from The Pentagon of Power: “The New Megamachine” (235)

Thurs. Nov 21 FREE?

Consuming Culture
Week 14
Tues, Nov. 26 Borgmann, “The Moral Significance of  Material Culture,” (300)

Thurs. Nov 28 THANKSGIVING BREAK

Week 15
Tues, Dec 3 Juliet Schor, The Overspent American
Thurs, Dec. 5 Schor, continued

Week 16
Tues, Dec. 10 Schor, continued      last class

    STUDY DAYS, DEC. 12 – 15 (Thurs.-Sun.) FINAL EXAMS DEC. 16 -20 (Mon-Fri)