Sociology of Self-Knowledge: Course Topic as well as Pedagogical Strategy

Book excerpt: This Fall 2004/Spring 2005 (III, 1&2) double-issue of Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge demonstrates the extent to which the sociology of self-knowledge as advanced by this journal from its inception can serve as both a course topic as well as a pedagogical strategy in teaching sociology and related subjects. The issue includes student papers of various faculty at UMass Boston and a symposium of student (and faculty) papers organized by Khaldoun Samman from Macalester College. Samman had earlier taken the step of turning his senior seminar into a course on the sociology of self-knowledge and encouraging his students, all graduating seniors at Macalester, to subject their own lives and “troubles” to their sociological imaginations. The student papers included in the issue as a whole are highly demonstrative of how self and socially critical and liberating the sociology of self-knowledge can be. Authors use a variety of class and outside readings, as well as films and documentaries, to explore in-depth currently unresolved issues in their lives, while making every effort to move in-depth to relate their personal troubles to broader public issues. Contributors include: Deborah D’Isabel, Claudia Contreras, Katherine Heller, Rebecca Tink, Caitlin Farren, Haing Kao, Harold Muriaty, Rachel A. DeFilippis, Lee Kang Woon, N.I.B., Sharon Brown, Jennifer Lambert, Anonymous, Jorge Capetillo-Ponce, Khaldoun Samman (also as journal issue guest editor), Ellen Corrigan, Jeremy Cover, Jesse Mortenson, Jessica Sawyer, and Mohammad Tamdgidi (also as journal editor-in-chief). Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge is a publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics). For more information about OKCIR and other issues in its journal’s Edited Collection as well as Monograph and Translation series visit OKCIR’s homepage.