Program Overview

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Unit Overview

The unit WCIV600, Slow Reading in Wisdom: Interpretation and Research Methods, is designed to direct students in the careful reading of a key text from the history of Western thinking. This unit aims to hone students' abilities in reading, interpretation, and research methods, providing practice in raising exegetical and theoretical questions that can be turned into fruitful avenues of research.

Unit Rationale, Description, and Aim

The unit focuses on the careful reading of canonical texts from Western culture, exploring diverse roads to wisdom. Students will encounter profound visions of human nature, happiness, meaning, and morality, and will develop skills in close reading, interpretation, and research methods.

Learning Outcomes

To successfully complete this unit, students will be able to:

1. Critically analyse and discuss canonical visions of the human offered by key philosophical, literary, artistic, and/or spiritual teachers of the Western tradition.
2. Discuss literary, social, historical, philosophical, political, aesthetic, and/or ethical ideas and movements that influenced and were expressed within selected wisdom texts.
3. Locate, use, and appropriately reference a variety of critical sources relevant to developing coherent and consistent positions in relation to Western wisdom traditions.
4. Learn and apply graduate-level skills in research.

Unit Content

Topics may include:

• Conceptions of the good
• Desire and aversion
• Emotions and passions
• Happiness and transcendence
• Virtue and vice
• Meaning and purpose
• Love, Beauty, Reason
• Madness, Folly, Despair

Research methods developed in this unit:

• Active reading
• Interpretation of historical texts
• Selecting a research topic
• Mastering the methods of graduate-level research
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Research Methodologies
• Producing an annotated bibliography
• Producing a prospectus
• Planning an essay

Assessment Strategy and Rationale

The assessment strategy is designed to require students to demonstrate their ability to engage closely and slowly with a given text, as well as to view the text in its contexts and consider a variety of interpretive frameworks. The assessments include:

1. Close Interpretation (20%): Students will produce a thoughtful interpretation of one of the assigned texts.
2. Research Methods: Annotated Bibliography (30%): Students will produce an annotated bibliography to demonstrate graduate-level mastery of skills in research methods.
3. Research Essay (50%): Students will produce a graduate-level research essay building upon the Annotated Bibliography and pertaining to a text covered in the unit.

Learning and Teaching Strategy and Rationale

This unit will be taught in a small-group setting, using the Socratic method to stimulate analytical discussion and dialogue. A substantial portion of class time will be devoted to carefully reading texts together and practising active reading techniques. Students will learn to utilize slow and careful reading as a means of cultivating research topics and developing novel theses.

Representative Texts and References

The following is a list of representative texts and references:

• Alter, Robert, Wisdom Books: Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes: a Translation with Commentary
• Hart, David Bentley, New Testament: A Translation
• Fagles, Robert, The Three Theban Plays: Antigone, Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus
• Sheed, F. J., trans., Augustine: Confessions
• Sellink, Manfred, Bruegel: The Complete Paintings, Drawings and Prints
• Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Bizup, and William T Fitzgerald, The Craft of Research
• Byrne, D., Research Ethics
• Hammond, M., and J.J. Wellington, Research Methods: The Key Concepts
• Martin, K. L., Please Knock Before You Enter: Aboriginal Regulation of Outsiders and the Implications for Researchers
• McGregor, D., J. Restoule, and R. Johnston, Indigenous Research: Theories, Practices, and Relationships
• Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
• Wortley, R., & Smallbone, S., Situational prevention of child sexual abuse

Locations and Credit Points

This unit is available at the North Sydney campus and is worth 10 credit points.