Scribner Seminar Program Fall 2011
Course Description
Human Dilemmas
- Mary DiSanto-Rose, Dance
- Michael C. Ennis-McMillan, Anthropology
- Sarah Goodwin, English
- Pat Hilleren, Biology
- Sue Layden, Student Academic Services
- Peter McCarthy, Social Work
- Viviana Rangil, Foreign Language & Literature
- 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.