Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description
Human Dilemmas
Instructor(s):
- Mary DiSanto-Rose, Dance
- Bina Gogineni, English
- Viviana Rangil, World Languages and Literatures
- Mahesh Shankar, International Affairs
- Sheldon Solomon, Psychology
As you begin college, you are confronting the recurring dilemmas that define and shape our lives: Who am I? What exactly am I? What is my relationship to others? What is my responsibility to them and to the world? As biologist E. O. Wilson contends in his 2003 book The Future of Life, life is "an insoluble problem, a dynamic process in search of an indefinable goal. [It is] neither a celebration nor a spectacle but rather, as a later philosopher put it, a predicament" (xxii). "Human Dilemmas" will challenge your conventional assumptions surrounding these predicaments as we focus our attention on interdisciplinary readings, critical thinking, and academic inquiry. Debates, field trips, and writing will move us toward an understanding of what it means to be human in our contemporary world.