Stanford Introductory Studies

ESF Course Descriptions

ESF 17 & 17A | What Can You Do For Your Country? | Russell Berman

What does it mean to serve your country? All ethical systems train the individual to relinquish self-interest in favor of a larger communal good. When you applied to Stanford, you answered many application questions designed to elicit evidence of your ability to serve others, which is considered a sign of good character, leadership, and the ability to thrive beyond the confines of your family and private world. Knowing you’ve wrestled with this question at length, showing sacrifice, endurance, empathy, and understanding of higher goods, this course asks you to examine the nation’s view. How can the nation present itself as worthy of your personal sacrifice? Do you need to believe in the greatness of your nation to serve? What kind of cause demands your devotion? Nations have differently articulated such a commitment. Some make modest demands and promise you your own sovereignty. Others request only that you dream of national greatness as your own and that you lend a hand. But all nations require at some point, everything from you. What and when are you prepared to give? This course satisfies the Aesthetic and Interpretative Inquiry Way (AII).

Selected Source Material

  • John F. Kennedy, “What can you do for your Country”
  • Frederick Douglass, "What is the Fourth of July to a Slave?"
  • Hannah Arendt, "The Decline of the Nation-State" and "Ideology and Terror" excerpts from Origins of Totalitarianism
  • Nelson Mandela "I am prepared to Die"
  • Locke, Second Treatise of Government

ESF 18 & 18A | Between Gods and Beasts |  Sarah Prodan

Centuries ago, Plotinus famously wrote that humanity was "poised midway between gods and beasts" (Enneads 3.2.8). Some individuals 'grow like to the divine", he asserted, and "others to the brute". Since antiquity, many different societies, east and west, have understood education as a fundamental factor in determining whether individuals became fully realized as human beings, or something less. Considered a civilizing force for individuals and societies, education aimed not only at the acquisition of knowledge and skills, but also at the cultivation of goodness, the attainment of wisdom, and the achievement of happiness. In short, the goal of learning was to live well. What does it mean to live well? How does one cultivate one's nature or become one's best possible self? What kind of personal and intellectual development does this presuppose? Are there limits to the human capacity for self-development and change? In this course we will ponder such questions as we reflect critically on human nature and on historical and contemporary ideas regarding education, self-development, and living well. This course satisfies the Aesthetic and Interpretive Inquiry Way (AII).

Selected Source Material

  • The Four Books: The Basic Teachings of the Later Confucian Tradition
  • Coetzee, John Maxwell, The Lives of Animals
  • Della Casa, Giovanni, Galateo: Or, The Rules of Polite Behavior
  • Haidt, Jonathan, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom
  • Pope, Alexander, An Essay on Man

ESF 22 & 22A | Confronting the Diversity of Life |  Kevin Boyce

The class will approach the travel writings of early modern scientists who used exposure to the tropics to establish the foundations of evolutionary biology. These first generations of scientists both had to learn from each other and make it up as they went along. Humboldt's travels from 1799-1804 were an inspiration for Darwin's travels in the 1830s. Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle inspired Wallace and Bates to go to the Amazon a generation later. None of them were far removed from being students themselves: Darwin, Wallace, and Bates were all in their early 20s when starting out and Humboldt was an old man of 29. Their writings capture the excitement of their youth, their scientific idealism, and the breadth and depth of their interest in the natural world. We can explore the history of the science and the modern updating of that science. There is also taking advantage of being exposed to new horizons, the importance of a rigorous curiosity in life, the recognition of unique opportunity. This course does not satisfy any Ways.

Selected Source Material

  • Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent
  • Charles Darwin,  Voyage of the Beagle
  • Ida Pfeiffer, A Lady's Second Journey Round the World

ESF 28 & 28A | Identity in the American Imagination | Allyson Hobbs

This course explores the ways that racial identity has been experienced, represented, and contested throughout American history, from Sally Hemings in the eighteenth century to the contemporary lives of everyday people living in the twenty-first century. Engaging historical, legal, and literary texts and films, this course examines major historical transformations that have shaped our understanding of racial identity. This course also draws on other imaginative modes—including autobiography, memoir, photography, and music—to consider the ways that racial identity has been represented in American society. Most broadly, this course interrogates the problem of American identity and examines the interplay between racial identity and American identity. Ways TBD.
 

ESF 29 & 29A | Immigration and the Making of the United States | Ana Minian

This course introduces students to the history of immigration to the United States, examining why people migrated, how governments regulated mobility, and how newcomers transformed the United States while maintaining attachments to their countries of origin. Rather than treating immigration as a single story, the course explores many migrations—voluntary and forced, documented and undocumented, welcomed and resisted. Students will read major works of scholarship and examine a range of historical sources, including letters, photographs, government records, oral histories, and films, in order to explore how migrants experienced movement, settlement, and exclusion. Throughout the quarter, we will connect past migrations to contemporary issues such as asylum, deportation, detention, and debates over national identity. Ways approval pending.

ESF 30 & 30A | The God-Shaped Question: Thought, Practice, and the Formation of the Self | Vincent Barletta

Are we connected to something beyond what we see and touch? What is our relation to the infinite? This course examines how philosophers, poets, and artists have approached these questions as matters of education and self-development. We begin with classical and medieval accounts of transcendence (e.g., Plato and Thomas Aquinas) then turn to modern analyses of the infinite (e.g., Simone Weil and Edith Stein). Non-Western perspectives such as texts in the Kyoto School expand and reframe the question. Pairing practice with theory, the course also places conceptual and sacred texts in dialogue with poetry, film, and music. Throughout the course, students explore how they might incorporate the transcendent into their daily and intellectual life—and what is at stake in its presence or absence. Ways approval pending.