Consistent and rigorous preparation for class activities as well as quality and appropriate contributions to class discussions are the most essential part for full realizing the promises of this course. Enrolling in this course signifies your agreement to contribute to the education of your fellow students and to learn from them and me.
Come to class prepared to discuss the reading critically, imaginatively and insightfully. Active participation in class discussion is essential. Contributing during class sessions provides an opportunity to practice speaking and the skills of persuasion, as well to listen to, critique, and develop the arguments and analyses of your peers. If speaking in class is a challenge for you, please let me know. We can work together to address the matter.
Your first task is read the materials with care. Many of our texts are dense and multi-layered. You may need to read them more than once. I have tried to limit the amount of reading accordingly but it is still significant. This means you’ll have to make (sensible) decisions about where to focus your attention. Typically, I will close each class with a few comments about the up-coming reading. Especially before you’ve developed your own strong path into the materials, this should help you find focus. (Keeps notes of what you think should be cut, kept and expanded!)
This course is structured to be largely discussion based. Due to this, we all— instructor and students— share in the responsibility of engaging with assigned texts as well as each other. The learning community we create as a class is greatly enhanced by everyone's active participation. This means you are expected to come to class ready to engage with your peers as well as the texts, assignments, myself, and any guest presenters we may invite to join our group. You are not required, nor encouraged, to make final pronouncements about the readings and discussions we have, but rather to use class as a forum for asking questions and developing deeper understandings of the issues raised throughout our shared time. Dissent within discussion is a part of the learning process—and it is especially important in a civil society for us to develop the skills necessary to speak across our differences in ways that foster understanding, justice, and dignity. You will be expected to engage with the course materials and with each other in a respectful and intellectually serious manner. However, there is no expectation that we will all agree with each other perfectly by the end of the day, or for that matter, at the end of the semester. Please note that the quality of your contributions is much more important than the quantity of your words. Listening attentively and responding thoughtfully to your peers is an important part of your contribution to the class.
This course takes as its highest principle the integrity of free intellectual inquiry. Criticism, exploration, and scrutiny of all topics and ideas are requirements for meaningful intellectual development. In this classroom, such criticism will be undertaken with the highest standards of intellectual integrity and respect for others in the class. Taking another person’s comments seriously enough to subject them to thoughtful critique should always be regarded as a sign of high intellectual respect for that person’s ideas. Respect, civility, and consideration should be given to each individual person in the classroom. Conference is a space where we will (and in fact must sometimes) make mistakes. Please be generous with yourself, with your classmates, and with me as we work through challenging material together; productive conversations are always based in language that is imperfect and wander through ideas that are not yet refined. It is of course always fair to ask people follow-up questions about points they’ve made, but please do so respectfully and generously (that is, extending to everyone the benefit of the doubt where appropriate). Everyone in the course is entitled to speak about any subject that comes before the class in discussion.
As stated above, class discussion is a central feature of this course and requires students to be proactive in their preparation. Active participation in class is defined as promoting a positive and safe learning environment through respectful discourse with students and the instructor about the topics at hand. As you will learn in this course, almost everyone has had some experience with psychopathology, some more closely than others. As such, class members should be sensitive to the differing experiences of their peers. To maintain appropriate boundaries in class, please do not disclose personal experiences with these disorders; questions/comments regarding symptom presentations or consequences should be phrased in general terms. You will be asked to provide written feedback to your peers on their class presentations. It is your responsibility to do so in a constructive and collegial manner.
A course of this nature will cover on a regular basis sensitive and difficult topics in both its reading and discussion material, including (but not limited to) scenes and discussions of eating and regurgitation, sex, masturbation, sexual violence, sadism and masochism, voyeurism, child molestation, animal abuse, anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. All students who elect to take this course do so entirely at their own risk, and with the full knowledge that we will never censor reading materials, class discussions, or passages read out loud in class, and that all students will be held responsible for all the course readings and assignments.
I will not provide alternate readings and/or assignments; nor will I provide individual content warnings for specific readings. The only exception to this would be in special circumstances having to do with individual cases of PTSD that have been cleared both with me and with Reed’s Disability & Accessibility Resources beforehand.