Hum/En 22
Inequality
Spring 2021
Prof. Kristine Haugen (haugen@caltech.edu)
Required books
To
participate in the class, you need *physical printed copies of the exact
editions* of our course books. None of
our major readings was originally written in English, and translations can
sometimes be so different it’s hard to believe the translators were reading the
same text. I’ve also chosen the translations
that sound the easiest and most natural to us in English.
You also
need printed books because reading onscreen is not effective enough for the
level of attention that you need to pay to succeed in this class. Focusing on the screen seems to impose a cognitive
load that makes it hard even to keep our place on the page, much less ask about
the real meanings of what we’re reading and how it might connect with the rest
of the book. I think this is why TikTok videos
and Snapchat photos are so successful—they don’t actually require you to use
the screen for reading extensive text.
I’ve made
the title of each of our three books into an Amazon link that will let you
choose a new or used copy. But
obviously, you’re free to obtain them anywhere.
If you’re searching a different site, use the 13-digit “ISBN” number
that I’ve given after each title.
Svetlana
Alexievich, Voices
from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a
Nuclear Disaster (Dalkey Archive Press, 2019 edition) 978-1628973303
Plato, The
Republic (Oxford World’s Classics, 2008) 978-0199535767
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse
on the Origin of Inequality (Oxford World’s Classics, 2009) 978-0199555420
Let me know
if you have any questions (haugen@caltech.edu), and if I think the answer would
be interesting to others I’ll update this page.