Myth, Play, Reality

Interdisciplinary program in literature and philosophy planned with Kathleen Eamon

In this program for first-year students, we will trace theories of the mind that emerge in literature and creative writing and make connections to philosophy, literary theory, and other artistic practices, scrutinizing the role of myth, play, and reality in mindedness.

By “myth”, we mean a range of approaches to storytelling, models for life, and everyday experiences of meaning; for us, “play” encompasses creative and intellectual activities capable of both unsettling and concretizing norms and values; finally, by “reality” we mean ... who knows? As this is a first-year program, it’s our goal to build a lively introduction to literature, writing, philosophy, and the arts, and, more generally, prepare students for further study and research in the humanities. Students don’t need any special preparation except to be adventurous thinkers with the desire to write and read widely and voraciously and the readiness to talk about books and ideas as if they held the keys to understanding the world — and the keys to realizing we don’t understand anything.

We’ll explore ancient and modern examples of Western narrative and thought; we’ll be especially interested in imaginative philosophical and literary works that seek to construct a world or a way of thinking about being in the world — that old “human condition” — and those iconoclastic and skeptical thinkers and writers who work “negatively” and playfully to disrupt, critique, or reject received ideas.