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UCU INTLAS31 Integrating Life PROGRAM.v2

This document provides the course program and schedule for the UCU INTLAS31 Integrating Life course in Spring 2023. It is divided into two parts, with Part 1 focusing on life and living as a complex problem and Part 2 focusing on integrating different perspectives on life. Some key elements include: introducing students to concepts of integration and interdisciplinarity through readings and discussions; having students explore their own disciplinary grounding and take perspectives from other disciplines; finding common ground across disciplines through practical exercises and case studies; and culminating in a final project where students work in diverse groups to address a real-world issue involving life from an integrated perspective. Students are also assigned to read and present on the biographies of influential figures

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59 views4 pages

UCU INTLAS31 Integrating Life PROGRAM.v2

This document provides the course program and schedule for the UCU INTLAS31 Integrating Life course in Spring 2023. It is divided into two parts, with Part 1 focusing on life and living as a complex problem and Part 2 focusing on integrating different perspectives on life. Some key elements include: introducing students to concepts of integration and interdisciplinarity through readings and discussions; having students explore their own disciplinary grounding and take perspectives from other disciplines; finding common ground across disciplines through practical exercises and case studies; and culminating in a final project where students work in diverse groups to address a real-world issue involving life from an integrated perspective. Students are also assigned to read and present on the biographies of influential figures

Uploaded by

Siem Van de Kar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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UCU INTLAS31 Integrating Life

Spring 2023

COURSE PROGRAM AND SCHEDULE


Version 1 (subject to change)

PART 1: Life and Living as Complex Problem

Week 1: Introductions
Feb 1 / Session 1: Course introduction: Integration, Sense, Life
Key literature: Martela and Steger, "The Three Meanings of Meaning in Life:
Distinguishing Coherence, Purpose and Significance" (in The Journal of Positive
Psychology, 2016); Jeremy Lent, The Web of Meaning (2022); Menken and Keestra,
Introduction to Interdisciplinary Research (AUP, 2016), and selections from De Jonge
Akademie, Grensoverstijgend (KNAW, DJA 2018).

Feb 3 / Session 2: Making Sense beyond Discipline: biographies project introduction


In this session students create small groups and pick one biography from a list of
biographies which they will start reading over the next weeks.
These include: Howard Markel's The Secret of Life (Norton, 2021; on Rosalind Franklin,
James Watson, Francis Crick), anthropologist Clifford Geertz, activist physicist Robert
Oppenheimer, Black scholar-activist Angela Davis, Native activist Rigoberta Menchú,
dissident peace activist and nuclear physicist Andrei Sakharov.

Week 2: Disciplinary Grounding 1


Feb 8 / Session 1: Being Grounded: theory (Sander)
In this session we will look into the history of the notions of discipline and disciplinarity.
In particular we look into the kinds of stories that disciplines make one tell about life.
Key literature: excerpts from Erwin Schrödinger, What is Life? (1944), Nobel-Prize
winning biologist Paul Nurse, What is Life? (Norton, 2021) and biochemist Nick Lane,
The Vital Question (Norton, 2015).

Feb 10 / Session 2: Being Grounded: Practical exercise (Micha) + being grounded assignment
In this session, Micha Hamel will work with students to creatively explore practices of
grounding. Through gamification he will make them discover and mutually define the
nature of their own discipline(s), and to articulate this disciplinary sense of grounding
by making their own disciplinary "passports" (assignment for next week). What criteria
of life does each discipline use? How does this empower and limit the discipline?

Week 3: Disciplinary Grounding 2

1
Feb 15 / Session 1: Being Disciplined: For this session we will design general disciplinary
narratives about the question "What is Life?" This exercise condenses, clarifies and
expresses the (grounded) relation we entertain to our various disciplines.
Optional: discussion piece by medical scientist Gabriele Bammer, "Should we discipline
interdisciplinarity?" in Nature (2017).

Feb 17 / Session 2: Being Disciplined: grounding assignment student presentations


(passports) (for grade)

Week 4: Perspective Taking 1


Feb 22 / Session 1: Being Open: theory (Sander)
In this session we will talk about conceptual and linguistic methods to conduct a
conversation on life across and beyond disciplinary boundaries.
Key literature: excerpts from cultural analyst Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the
Humanities (Toronto UP, 2002), Ch. 1 (concepts) and feminist zoologist Donna Haraway,
"Situated Knowledges" (1988) on the life of objects in science.
Case study: bio-artist and NWO researcher Spela Petric on human life/plant life
interactions.

Feb 24 / Session 2: Being Open: Practical exercise (Micha) + perspective taking assignment
In this session, students will:
1) explore openness though practical exercises (modelling the work of composer John
Cage and writer Georges Perec) and discuss ways to evaluate openness in a meaningful
and coherent way.
2) explore through practical exercises how disciplinary grounding (see Week 2-3) can be
mutually opened towards other disciplines. What does someone from another
discipline need to know about me and my own discipline in order to connect and start a
dialogue (and vice versa)? Students will work in small groups to articulate what is
needed in each group to make everyone's knowledge connectable, and present the
results in class (assignment for next week).

Week 5: Perspective Taking 2


Mar 1 / Session 1: Being Aware: perspective taking student presentations (interfacing) (for
grade)

Mar 3 / Session 2: guest lecture by and discussion with Rietveld alumna and earth scientist
dr. Esmee Geerken

Week 6: Common Ground 1


Mar 8 / Session 1: Being Creative: theory (Sander)
In this session we will ask whether common ground can be found in conceptualizations
of life, and if so, whether common ground is discovered or created.
Key literature: excerpts from Newell, "Decision-Making in Interdisciplinary studies"
(2007); Stasser and Birchmeier, "Group Creativity and Collective Choice" (Oxford, 2003).
Case study: science historian Robert Kohler, Inside Science: Stories from the Field in
Human and Animal Science (Chicago UP, 2019) as creative, storytelling-based
integration.

2
Mar 10 / Session 2: Being Creative: Practical exercise and case study (Micha) + common
ground assignment
In this session, we will explore common ground as the birth of a new collection of
objects. If disciplines are often organized around their own set of objects, the common
ground found (or created) by students will be used to articulate a set of objects
belonging to that new ground. As an assignment for next week, students will collect (or
design or make) objects corresponding to their common ground and thereby make their
interdisciplinarities become real.
Case study: radical thinker-activist-artist Tinkebell's objects, in particular the handbag
she made of her own cat.
Optional: Maria Boletsi, "Weird Futures: The Weird Turn in Aesthetics, Ecology, and
Economy" (2022).

Week 7: Common Ground 2


Mar 15 / Session 1: Being Responsible: guest lecture prof.dr. Sarah Durston
In her work, neuroscientist Durston argues for a revision our views on the nature of
consciousness and suggests integrating aspects of philosophical idealism with biological
reductionist materialism. How does this change her agenda? How does it change her set
of reading?

Mar 17 / Session 2: Being Responsible: integration student presentations (object collections)


(for grade)

= SPRING BREAK =

PART 2: Integrating

Week 9: Biographies: Integration and Role-Playing beyond Academia


Mar 29 and 31 / Sessions 1 and 2: Student video presentations (for grade)
In these presentations, students will explain how the person of their biography has
accomplished integrated knowledge. For this assessment, students will use the three-
step process: how has the person accomplished grounding, perspective taking,
integration? What role(s) have they played, and how do these roles (activist,
researcher, artist etc.) integrate in their case? What kinds of stories are being told here
as compared to disciplinary stories (cf. Week 2) and interdisciplinary stories (cf. Week
6)?

Week 10-12: Breakout Groups Project / Apr 5 thru 21


In this final project, students will create life-centered responses to real-world
problems/situations. In small and diverse groups they will:
1) select a real-world problem or situation involving zoë and/or bios (case examples:
the zoo of the future; windmills vs birds; the rights of oceans; creating an
interdisciplinary archive of life/living; or student idea);
2) use the three-step process to create an integrated view of life in the context of the
problem/situation;

3
3) create a life-centered solution on the basis of this integrated view that includes the
perspective of living;
4) define what roles will be necessary to embody this sense, and
5) explain how this solution will make sense in the world.
Students will pitch their project in class in Week 10 (session 2), and spend in-class time
in Week 11 and 12 working on their project coached by the instructors. They will log
their collaborative process and report on the results by presenting a poster in the final
class week.

Week 13: Group project: poster presentations / Apr 26 and 28 (for grade)

Week 14: Writing time / May 3

Week 15: Group project: final reflection due / May 12 (for grade)

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