Guiding Questions and Texts
| Read the NMS curriculum Introduction and Overview here. The theme of New Millennium Studies is Creativity and Conscience. Each of the four units of the course has a set of guiding questions. Each instructor selects one or two common texts for each unit; these common texts provoke discussion of the guiding questions. The guiding questions and text options for each unit are listed below.  | |
Guiding Questions In the first unit, Composing A Self, we reflect on where we come from and what lenses or filters we bring with us, engaging questions that are at once basic but confounding: What is the relationship between self and identity? Who are we? How do we see ourselves? How do others see us? In what ways are we connected to other people and communities? While we will begin by thinking about our own selves, we will be pushed to consider the ways other selves, other identities, are composed, and how we perceive them. We will examine the assumptions underlying the categories that we create and impose on others and ourselves as a means of navigating our communities. What kinds of labels do we generate? Why do we apply them to certain people? How do we identify and think about ourselves? Texts
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| UNIT 2: Imagining Communities Guiding Questions How do we find and maintain balance between our private selves and our public selves? What are the obligations of individuals to a collective, and to other individuals within that group? What are the obligations of a group to its members? What is the relationship between the realities and perceptions of a community, among what communities are, what they believe themselves to be, and what they wish they were? How are the images and imagination of a community generated? How does the power of imagination affect the reality of the present? Texts
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| UNIT 3: Forming Ethical Perspectives Guiding Questions Our third unit is concerned specifically with ethical development. Our earlier examinations of self and the ways individuals coexist within larger communities—considerations about what is the case—give way to questions about what should be the case: "What ought I to do?" "How ought we to act?" The difficult task of making tough decisions is part of the process of discovering our own individual and collective identities, for values-which reflect where we come from, who we are now, and our vision of the future-are embodied in our behavior. They are essential choices not only because they are unavoidable components of life, but also because they engage the very essence of our beings. We ask, therefore, not only "What should I do?" but also "How will I make this decision?" "Where does my ethical code come from?" "How will this decision change who I am and who I aspire to be?" Texts
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| UNIT 4: Manifesting Vision Guiding Questions Manifesting Vision, the fourth and final unit, asks us to investigate the relationship between creating and changing. How do we know if we are changing and creating in ways that matter? What is your vision of the future you wish to inhabit, and what empowers you to make that vision manifest? What are the obligations of creators to their creations? What are the obligations of the educated to their knowledge? What are the potential repercussions of misguided vision? What are the potential repercussions of misguided action, or of inaction? Text
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