Auden's Syllabus
W. H. Auden taught at the University of Michigan during the 1941-42 academic year. Here’s a syllabus from one of his classes. Hey teachers: next time one of your students complains that your schedule is too demanding, show him or her this.
Reproduced with the permission of the Estate of W. H. Auden.
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1
Calligraphic images, via the Atlantic
But then, across the room, I saw this beautiful guy with gorgeous flowing hair, wearing a simple white linen tunic and swaying gently to the music with his eyes shut, which was especially impressive because the band consisted of two elderly men rhythmically squeezing a goat. I couldn’t help staring, even after Amy told me, “I’ve heard about him. His name is Jesus and he doesn’t have a job.” But then Jesus opened his stunning blue eyes and gazed upon me, and I said to Amy, “I think I’ve just discovered one of the lost tribes of Israel.” “Which one?” she asked, and I said, “The blonds.”Then Jesus came over and introduced himself and we chitchatted about everything, from keeping the Sabbath to how we both felt really sorry for the lame. Then I asked Jesus about his family, and he said, “My father is a carpenter,” and I could feel myself getting all flushed as I immediately thought, Hello, new coffee table.
Labour was treated to a 45-minute lecture on the moral limits of markets by Harvard University professor Michael Sandel in one of the more extraordinary and cerebral addresses to a Labour conference by a visiting foreign speaker.The author of Justice, who was asked by party leader Ed Miliband to speak to the conference, said: “If someone is willing to pay for sex or buy a kidney from a consenting adult, the only question standard economics asks is ‘how much?’ Each party decides for himself or herself on what value on the things being exchanged. This non-judgmental stance towards values lies at the heart of market reasoning and explains much of its appeal.”
But he said that a reluctance to engage in moral argument, together with the embracing of markets, had exacted a heavy price: “It has drained our public discourse of moral and civic energy, and it has contributed to the managerial, technocratic politics that has afflicted many societies. A debate about the moral limits of markets would enable us to decide about where markets do and not belong. It would invigorate our politics by welcoming competing notions of the good life into the public square.”
In the United States the notion that bike helmets promote health and safety by preventing head injuries is taken as pretty near God’s truth. Un-helmeted cyclists are regarded as irresponsible, like people who smoke. Cities are aggressive in helmet promotion. But many European health experts have taken a very different view: Yes, there are studies that show that if you fall off a bicycle at a certain speed and hit your head, a helmet can reduce your risk of serious head injury. But such falls off bikes are rare — exceedingly so in mature urban cycling systems.On the other hand, many researchers say, if you force or pressure people to wear helmets, you discourage them from riding bicycles. That means more obesity, heart disease and diabetes. And — Catch-22 — a result is fewer ordinary cyclists on the road, which makes it harder to develop a safe bicycling network. The safest biking cities are places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where middle-aged commuters are mainstay riders and the fraction of adults in helmets is minuscule.
“Pushing helmets really kills cycling and bike-sharing in particular because it promotes a sense of danger that just isn’t justified — in fact, cycling has many health benefits,” says Piet de Jong, a professor in the department of applied finance and actuarial studies at Macquarie University in Sydney. He studied the issue with mathematical modeling, and concludes that the benefits may outweigh the risks by 20 to 1.
If you plucked an average American (mean, median, or modal) out of Kansas City or Aurora, and plopped them down in the middle of Gothenburg, the average American would be very unhappy. Yes, they’d have generous social benefits and lots of vacation, but they’d also be crammed into a small apartment in a very small country. They wouldn’t be able to afford services that average Americans take for granted, like lots of restaurant foods and extremely high levels of customer service, which means they’d spend a lot more time doing basic housework, childcare, and so forth. They would find it very expensive to fuel their car, and the insular, almost formal culture would make them crazy.This is also true the other way, by the way; the average Swede would not be happy living in America. Sure, they’d have a huge house, filled with cheap consumer goods, and they could drive their car everywhere, particularly to their incredible array of dining options. But they’d miss their vacation and find America’s looser safety net both terrifying and inconvenient. They would hate the inefficiency of our government services, and miss their cozy circle of friends and family. Part of the reason that we have different systems from the Swedes and the Germans is that we place different emphasis on various possible sets of amenities, and of course, the availability of various amenities changes what we think of as the basic package for a decent life. In most of America it includes a house, preferably detached, and a car. In Sweden it includes a year of mandated maternity leave and a well-run streetcar system. Losing any of those amenities is usually more painful for people than getting whatever the other folks have—which is why most expats are some combination of young, unhappy in their home country, or wealthy enough to buy the stuff they miss.
It was already possible, by the early ’90s and actually long before them, to trace the terms of the current partisan divide in America. Conservatives — think in Jonathan Haidt–ish terms here — value tradition, authority, and group identity; liberals value tolerance, fairness, and care. Or whatever; you can draw the distinctions however you’d like. The point is, The Next Generation depicts a strict military hierarchy acting with great moral clarity in the name of civilization, all anti-postmodern, “conservative” stuff — but the values they’re so conservatively clear about are ideals like peace and open-mindedness and squishy concern for the perspectives of different cultures. “Liberal” ideals, in other words. You could say, roughly, that the Enterprise crew is conservative as a matter of method and liberal as a matter of goal. They sail through the universe with colonialist confidence sticking up for postcolonial ideals. I mean, Starfleet has a Prime Directive … but it’s explicitly non-interventionist! This is so weird that it’s almost hard to notice; your mind just sort of slides over it. But it’s fascinating in numberless ways. Picard is both indisputably the most patriarchal Star Trek captain and indisputably the least likely to punch anyone in the face.
Boise State University is seeking a specialist in precisely your area of study. Additional specializations in all of the other things you’ve studied, published on, or expressed the slightest interest in at any point in your scholarly career are also highly desirable. We have, in fact, designed this position specifically to match your cv, and fully anticipate offering you both an interview and a campus visit, both of which will go so stunningly well that it will be all you can do not to start pricing houses and friending members of our faculty on Facebook. We will, however, be awarding this job to another candidate entirely, whom we will describe to you in our rejection letter as “a better fit.”
Gluttony, from The 9 circles of hell from Dante’s Inferno recreated in Lego, at Monoscope