Course
Description: Of the three kinds of
signs (icon, index, symbol), the symbol most clearly separates humans from
other animals. Through symboling we
construct our social and natural worlds.
Why and how this construction process occurs is the overarching thematic
question of the course, but it must be approached indirectly. This course intends to investigate more
directly, and in seminar mode, the symbolic languages of the body (its parts,
products, ornaments, clothes, gestures, and postures, and housing), as well as
the languages of space, time, sound, and script). These topics will be discussed particularly as they are
interwoven into the major related human concerns of cosmology, religion, and
power. The language(s) of iconography,
dealing with graphic representations of things and ideas by non-script means,
will be dealt with as a parallel concern that can convey information of
historical import without the use of writing.
Notions of context and universality in symbolism and iconography will be
interrogated through specific examples.
No
exams: Readings will be assigned as
homework for seminar discussion and several short written projects will be
required.
Textbooks:
packet of readings available from Longhorn Copies
Recommended supplementary reading:
Raymond Firth, Symbols: Public and Private
Francis Huxley, The Way of the Sacred
A. Berger, Signs in Contemporary Culture
05/10/2001