First-Year Writing Seminar (101-8-20)
Topic
The Past & Future of the Future
Instructors
Bruce Greenhow Carruthers
847/467-1251
1808 Chicago Avenue, room 203.
Bruce Carruthers is the John D. MacArthur Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University and a Long-term Fellow at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study. He works in the areas of economic sociology, comparative-historical sociology, and the sociology of law, with research funding coming from the National Science Foundation, the American Bar Foundation, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and the Tobin Project. His most recent book, published in 2022 by Princeton University Press, is entitled The Economy of Promises: Trust, Power, and Credit in America.
Meeting Info
Harris Hall L04: Tues, Thurs 9:30AM - 10:50AM
Overview of class
"The Past & Future of the Future: How We Think About Individual and Collective Futures"
Individually and collectively, we think about what might happen. We consider the future over a range of time-horizons, from the immediate (what will happen in the next hour) to the distant (how will things look in a century). We worry about our own individual futures (will I have a job when I graduate from Northwestern?), we worry about other peoples' futures (will my child get a job after they graduate from college?), and we worry about our collective futures (what will climate change do to our society over the next 50 years?). Frequently, we make plans for the future, either to create a future that we seek, or to avoid a future that is problematic. Public policy is often concerned with how to create better collective futures, and the tricky part is figuring out which alternatives are better than others, and for whom. Sometimes people make contingency plans, deciding what to do if something happens (for example, disaster planning). Such activity generally involves making two types of guesses: what will or could happen in the future, and what will our future preferences be about those various possibilities. In certain cases, the predictions we make are "self-fulfilling" in that the prediction helps to make itself come true (bank runs are a classic example).
In this course, we will work through a series of examples where people have thought about the future, sometimes focused on its very specific features. Prompted by weekly required readings, we will discuss these examples seminar-style in order to hone our own thinking about the future.
Learning Objectives
Develop critical reading skills for both fiction and nonfiction writing; develop critical skills for verbal presentation and discussion of ideas and responses to the ideas of others; develop critical writing skills for analysis and summary.
Teaching Method
The class will be run seminar-style, with some introductory lecture material presented by the instructor, but with an emphasis on presentations and discussions by students.
Evaluation Method
Students will be evaluated on the basis of a series of short writing exercises, and on their in-class participation in discussion.
Class Materials (Required)
This course will have required books/other materials.
George Orwell, 1984, New York: Signet Classics. 1949. ISBN: 978-0-451-52493-5.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road, New York: Vintage Books. 2006. ISBN: 978-0-307-38789-9.
Class Attributes
WCAS Writing Seminar