Instructor: Johanna Skibsrud
Wed | 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM | Hybrid/Flex In-Person
The first taxonomic description of human being is not a description, but an imperative: "nosce te ipsum," or "know yourself." This studio course asks students to challenge themselves not only to “think about” but to enact this imperative. Through guided readings and discussion on the history of the humanities, poetry and poetics, and the challenges we face in our current age of the Anthropocene, students will be challenged to create a unique creative project or performance that expresses the complex ideas explored through course. If it’s true that, following Helene Cixous, we write to give ourselves “a little water, a little paper to eat,” the challenge is to make explicit the implicit connections Cixous draws between different kinds of nourishment. I will encourage any and various approaches and interpretations to the task, and ask only that whatever students come up with will be sufficiently concrete enough that they are able to offer some photographic, audio, or video record of it, and briefly share their creative and/or critical process with the class.