IDS 2055 Spring 2019 Kirby

Every thinking person wants to be a public intellectual, that is, somebody who deals with the best ideas but in a way that speaks to the broadest possible audience.

In this class, students will read, discuss, and write about books by major figures past and present; we’ll start with towering figures who have shaped our thinking and end with some contemporaries. Each is a thinker who, rather than merely contributing to a particular discipline (though they have certainly done that), has used that discipline to explain the world, thereby making both discipline and world more alive and dynamic.

Students will leave this class with three new types of knowledge: (1) an exposure to ideas they haven’t encountered yet, (2) a sense of their own heightened ability to work with big ideas and communicate them, and (3) a road map for their own progress toward becoming a public intellectual.