The section on Censorship: The Rushdie Controversy is a section of Core 120: Controversy, which is in turn an example of a CAS Collegiate Seminar. The description of Core 120 indicates some of the purposes of the course. Note, in particular, the eligibility requirements in the description of Collegiate Seminars. It is in turn followed by a more specific description of the seminar on Rushdie.
Core 120.
The College of Arts and Science describes Core 120 (in part) in the following terms.
Each section of this core course will focus on one or more important controversies, introducing students to the nature of factors generating intellectual disagreement, to the use and interpretation of evidence, and to the reasoned analysis and presentation of opposing views. Special attention will be paid to the conditions under which a controversy has been or can be productive and the conditions under which a controversy can degenerate into a polemical debate.
CAS describes Collegiate Seminars as follows. Please note the policy of eligibility.
Collegiate Seminars are intended for all freshman and sophomore students and for advanced transfer students in their first semester in the College of Arts and Sciences. These courses introduce students to the nature of college-level studies. Emphasis is less on mastering a given subject matter than on developing intellectual capabilities necessary for advanced academic work. Students will be guided in procedures of critical analysis and logical thought, the gathering and use of evidence, the assessment of ideas, and the synthesis and presentation of results., Practice and instruction in forms of written and oral presentation appropriate to academic inquiry are central features of the seminars; attention will be paid to preparing students for the Writing Proficiency Requirement. Students with more than 60 credits will not be admitted. Only one section of this seminar may be taken for credit; for example, one may not take two sections of C120 or two of C130 and so on. Only three collegiate seminars may be taken for credit; for example, one may take C120 and C130 and C150.
Censorship: The Rushdie Controversy
The section on the Salman Rushdie Controversy looks at Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses and at the controversies it engendered, including an order by the Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini that Rushdie be assassinated. Issues directly relevant to the Rushdie controversy include censorship and the role of the writer in contemporary society, the conflict between fundamentalist faith and postmodern doubt, and the nature of multiculturalism and of the values that are needed to make it work. These issues are also central subjects of Rushdie’s novel. The issues engage a variety of academic disciplines--literature and literary criticism, religious studies, philosophy, political science, and cultural theory, but the course is not a systematic introduction to these disciplines. The authors read in the course themselves come from a variety of cultures, some of which question the validity of the intellectual approaches used by others. The course should lead to an appreciation of the complexities and ambiguities created by the intersection of the different issues that are brought to bear on matters about which people from different backgrounds have strong and deep feelings.
Texts:
Thomas W. Lippman, Understanding Islam (Meridian)
Salman Rushdie, Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism 1981-1991 (Granta, 1992) [Cited as IH]
Salman Rushdie, The Satanic Verses (Owl [Holt])
The Rushdie File, ed. Lisa Appignanesi and Sara Maitland (Syracuse, 1990) [Cited as File]
Xeroxed packet of readings (available at the Wheatley copy store; cited as Packet).
Requirements:
In addition to the readings for the course, there will be six short papers and one five-to-ten page research paper. I will schedule two or three conferences with each student on the papers. Papers are briefly described on the course syllabus and will be described in more detail at least a week before they are due.