The professor was a born performer. He jumped around, screamed, did mime, played with his voice and body all over the room. He was so enthused about his subject matter that he dragged the whole class with him. But the class didn’t leave much room for discussion or question. Being a theory class that would have been helpful. Towards the end of the quarter there was some disagreement coming from some students, but he was not very accommodating. He also had a few factual mistakes, at least I noticed only a few, those related to Marx and Marxism. Overall I found him too orthodox, not open to dissenting opinions and not really being able to answer questions from outside of an authoritative position. The content of the course, the theory of pragmatism, was also not to my liking. It was too utilitarian It was tempered with social consciousness, but that never became an integral part of the attitude, that pragmatic solutions always have highest precedence. I tried, I really tried to get into it because the professor’s worldview was the most optimistic I encountered in the last decade. I truly believe that he believes the future has a better chance than most people think. He based on this on his alignment with the pragmatic theory. But as I couldn’t accept that I couldn’t be similarly optimistic as he was. Too bad, I have to do it in another way.Books read for course:
- John Baldwin: George Herbert Mead: A Unifying Theory for Sociology
- Marvin Harris: Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures