Harman Academy for Polymathic Study, DML 241

The Academy for Polymathic Study guides its enquiries through four flexible pathways or Quadrants:  (1) critical and integrative thinking; (2) study of the polymaths; (3) the tapestry of knowledge; and (4) communication.  In order to explicate these Quadrants more fully, Edwin McCann, professor of philosophy and English, will conduct four conversational workshops over the fall and spring terms from a philosophical, historical, and practical point of view.  Attendance at these two sessions covering all four quadrants is required for Academy certification.

Quadrants (1)...

The Harman Academy sometimes defines a polymath as “a person of much or varied learning; a great scholar.”  Is this all there is to being a polymath?  Someone who knows a lot of stuff?   As we have learned over the past six years, and especially this fall, there is much more to the pursuit of the polymathic life: the utility of failure; the imperative of curiosity; and the importance of community, humor, emotion and so on to expand our horizons and enrich both thinking and being.  To conclude this semester we will look at the practice of belief as a...

"Don't stress over anything you can't change." – Mickey Mouse

That’s easy for a mouse to say.  What if the emotion you are feeling is actually determined by a gene and not something that you can easily change or control?  University Professor Jean C. Shih will discuss her current research that focuses on the neurobiology of emotional behaviors and the gene identified as related to aggression and anxiety.  In her field of pharmacology, Professor Shih has branched out into psychotropic research as a crucial element not only of medical practice but...

So what do 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Michael Richards debacle, and the election of Barak Obama all have in common?  They are all momentous events in our country that can be understood by the metric of race? They each constitute seismic shifts in the telling of what it means to be black in the US??  They each possess contested narratives negotiated by various racial groups??? Yes, but what they also all have in common is that they all provide great material for comedic routines! (Say what?) For this session, linguistic anthropologist Lanita Jacobs will show us how humor functions...

“I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.”     --Eleanor Roosevelt

It is apropos that the Mars Rover, bouncing and trekking across the red planet is named CURIOSITY.  Polymaths, too, are a curious lot.  Professor Josh Kun is one such exemplar polymath, an intellectual rover of sorts, gifted with a heavy dose of curiosity.  He will discuss with us the utility of inquisitiveness in his research on such topics as the cultural, racial, and...

“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” - Thomas A. Edison

“When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.” - Ellen DeGeneres

“Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein

Failure possesses definitive value. Unfortunately, our culture regularly denigrates the mistake, the blemish, and the imperfect.  But failure often accompanies our most major breakthroughs,...

“To be capable of seeing things from multiple points of view, to be capable of being sympathetic, not just with our friends but with our enemies, is perhaps not enough to prevent wars or to change the world, but it is certainly necessary if we want those things to happen.” Viet Thanh Nguyen

How might the idea of community be understood within an integrative framework, or even as a viable feature of the polymathic life?  Professor Viet Thanh Nguyen helps us explore community as polymathic through a discussion of his recent Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Sympathizer....

In September 2012, Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores, filed a lawsuit against the United States over a provision in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) which mandated that health insurance provided by employers must include access to emergency contra-ceptives. Hobby Lobby stated that this provision violated their religious beliefs, and argued that they were protected by the First Amendment and Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA). The Supreme Court eventually ruled in their favor. This panel will seek to discuss the various ethical issues associated with...

“Give to Nature praise and honor, blithe of heart and sound of eye, knowing for the world of colour, where its broad foundations lie.”                                                 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"All nature,” wrote Goethe, “manifests by means of colours to the sense of sight.”   Moving away from the conventional mechanistic approach to science, Goethe approached the natural world as phenomenological, focusing...

As small children, play is often the first way we express ourselves imaginatively. We create fantastic imagined stories for ourselves, our family, our friends, even our stuffed animals. The recent rise in video games suggests a passionate desire to continue to play and express ourselves imaginatively in new worlds and through expanded narratives. Video games routinely outsell films, and Grand Theft Auto 5 was the fastest selling property across all forms of entertainment upon its release. Gaming gives participants a narrative agency more akin to childhood play than any other form of...