Concentration in Self and Society

Students Admitted Prior to Autumn 2007
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Students Admitted Autumn 2007 and After
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Overview

Concentration Coordinator: Rob Crawford

Philosophers and theologians, painters and poets, sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists have all attempted to provide answers to the questions: Who am I? Why am I here? How should I live? How am I related to others and the world around me? This concentration examines how, in various cultures and in different historical periods, the self is shaped, how individuals acquire particular identities, and how these identities are grounded in values and understandings about the social and natural world.

Career Options

Self and Society prepares students to pursue careers and advanced studies in all fields that aim to enhance individual capacities, self-understanding, and ethical relations with others and the natural world. Careers could include but are not limited to education, counseling, community services, public service, social work, environmental protection, religion, and the arts.

Student Learning Outcomes

Students graduating withing this concentration should:

• Appreciate the varied ways that literature and the arts, philosophy and religion, and social sciences and humanities conceptualize the self and its relation to social life.
• Grasp how the intricate relations between self and society are not only a part of an ongoing conversation within and among disciplines but a conversation that also takes place in the public sphere.
• Recognize the varieties of individual and collective identities and how these identities entail values, character and personality, ways of seeing, social interaction, political perspectives, and consciousness.
• Achieve skills in critical analysis, creative thinking, artistic expression and written and oral communication.

These student learning objectives are consistent with the Essential Learning Outcomes of Liberal Education and America’s Promise, AAC&U.

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