FFC 100A Section 24: Neuroscience and Literature: A Cognitive Approach to Reading Fiction
Professor
Richard Ruppel, Fall 2024
Office: 07 Smith Hall
Meetings: Tuesday & Thursday,
2:30-3:45 PM, Hashinger Science Center, 205
Office Hours: 10-12pm Wednesday & by
appointment.
Phone: (714) 997-6754 (office)
Updated November 21, 2024
Weekly Syllabus
Assignments
Units
Canvas
Useful Links
EVENTS & ANNOUNCEMENTS
Academic Advising: Here’s the
link to the information about academic advising for first year
students. I recommend that all of you consult with Academic Advising
once a year.
Voting Information:
Nearly all of you will have the opportunity and privilege to vote on or
before November 5 this year. Chapman
maintains a student
voting information page, which includes a link to the California Secretary
of State’s student register to vote
page.
I’ll
add events through the semester, but if you know of other announcements or
events that might appear here, send them along to me.
Course
Description & Objectives: Literature has always
been centrally concerned with character—Odysseus: clever, loyal, very stubborn;
Don Quixote: chivalrous, honorable, slightly addled; Hamlet: noble, bitter,
deeply conflicted; the Satan of Paradise Lost: proud, rebellious,
grandly wicked; Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice: bright, witty, affectionate;
Mrs. Dalloway: so changeable, so psychologically rich, she can barely be
contained within her novel.
As readers, we know the characters in stories and novels better than we know
our friends and family, better, sometimes, than we know ourselves. A cognitive approach to literature attempts
to account for this and other miracles of reading. This semester, we’ll look at
short stories from a cognitive perspective, informed by our readings in Oliver
Sacks’s case studies and in articles concerned with neuroscience and
literature, to explore discoveries in neuroscience that shed light on how
writers write and readers read.
This
course involves significant reading and writing, both informal (on our
discussion board) and more formal (reflection essays). It will be
important for you to stay on top of the course assignments.
Here’s
the description of FFC courses that appears in the Catalog:
This course
engages students in interdisciplinary, university-level critical inquiry and
reflection. The FFC course focuses more on critical engagement, exploration,
and communication related to complex issues than on mastering a body of
material. The section topics vary, and students select a topic according to
their academic and personal interests. Some sections of this course may allow
students with more than 30 credits earned to enroll. Must be taken for a letter
grade.
Course Learning
Outcomes:
· We will explore and
begin to understand identity, narrative, memory, and other concepts from both a
literary and a neuroscientific perspective.
· We will hone our
ability to think, read, and write critically about literature.
FFC Program Learning
Outcome: Students
critically analyze and communicate complex issues and ideas.
To think critically about a subject or issue you
must be objective. This means you need to be aware of your own attitudes
and ideas about the subject or issue and avoid simply imposing those attitudes
and ideas when you read our neuroscience articles and short stories.
In our class, you will examine your attitudes
and understanding about consciousness, the unconscious, identity, the way we
construct coherence, mental illness, trauma, memory, and other cognitive
activities we all tend to take for granted. The attitudes and
understandings you take into this course may well be changed by our readings,
discussions, and your own reflections.
Thinking critically requires research,
discussion, analysis, and evaluation before you form a judgment, and your
judgment should remain open to change when you encounter new information or
data.
Texts
& Supplies:
Oliver Sacks. The Man
who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. (This is a complete online copy,
but you should still buy the book.)
All other readings will be online and/or
in the “Modules” and “Files” sections of our Canvas pages.
Course Requirements:
Attendance: Please make every effort to attend each
class. Let me know if you are unable to attend. If you miss more than three classes, your
grade will suffer, and if you miss six or more, you will not pass.
Communication:
Please be courteous and constructive in our classes. I receive a large
number of emails, so when emailing, please identify the course (FFC), your last
name, and the subject in the subject line. I will respond promptly to
your emails; please respond promptly to mine.
Reflective Essays: We will discuss criteria
for the reflective essays well before they are due. (There is a
description of how to write a reflection and a sample reflection, on memory, in
our Canvas “Files” section. Click here
for another detailed definition of a reflective essay, with advice about how to
approach it.) Generally, you will be asked to reflect on the ways clinical,
neurological studies inform our understanding of literature. These reflections
should be submitted directly to my email address: ruppel@chapman.edu. Send the paper itself as an MSWord file or,
if necessary, as text, not as a pdf. And
do not send me a link to a Google doc.
Late
reflections will receive reduced grades, and I will not accept papers submitted
more than a week late unless you provide a convincing explanation. To pass this course, you
must complete these two reflections. If you are
having difficulty completing a reflection or a Canvas discussion post, let me
know.
I will accept a revision of one of your reflections, but you must
schedule a conference with me to discuss that revision before you submit
it. I will average the grade of the original paper and the revision.
I will both
grade and mark essays earning a grade of C- or higher. I will not put
a grade on a reflection that earns a grade lower than C-. If I
return an essay to you that does not include a grade, you will need to schedule
a meeting with me so we can go over the essay together and work out a revision
strategy. I may ask you to schedule a
consultation with the Writing
Center before our meeting.
Presentations: Each of you will make two presentations with
three or four partners. For the first, you will present on some aspect related
to neuroscience. (Examples are listed in
the Presentations section of the Modules area of Canvas.) For the second, you and your partners will
select a short story for us to read and then you will lead a discussion.
Canvas Discussion Posts: I will assign Canvas Discussion responses for
many of the assigned readings. These responses will be due before we discuss
the readings.
Minutes: Because some of you may miss classes, I’m
adding one more graded assignment. All
of you will take class notes – minutes – twice this semester. You will work with a partner. Each of you will take the notes for one week
of classes. Then you will collate your
notes and send the collated notes to me.
I’ll check them over briefly for accuracy and then post them in the
Modules section of Canvas.
Grades:
2 Reflections: 10% for the first, 15% for the second
Information literacy
project: 5% (complete by October 7)
Minutes: 5%
Presentations: 10% for the first, 15% for the second.
Participation*: 20%
Final: 20%
*This is primarily your grade on the Canvas Discussion Board
posts. Here are my criteria for evaluating your posts:
I will post
grades in Canvas, which will calculate your overall grade for the class. The
official grades are those I calculate myself, and these are nearly always the
same as those Canvas creates. If there
is a discrepancy between the grade you see in Canvas and the grade I have in my
gradebook, however, the gradebook grade is the one that’s correct. I am always
happy to discuss assignment grades.
Chapman
University Academic Integrity Policy:
Chapman University is a community of scholars that emphasizes the
mutual responsibility of all members to seek knowledge honestly and in good
faith. Students are responsible for doing their own work, and academic
dishonesty of any kind will be subject to sanction by the instructor and
referral to the university's Academic Integrity Committee, which may impose
additional sanctions up to and including dismissal. (See the
"Undergraduate Catalog" for the full policy.) Though I am not requiring you to submit your
reflections via Turnitin, I am an expert at finding sources, online and
otherwise, so I will notice if you make unacknowledged use of someone else’s
work. And if I have doubts, I will
submit your work to Turnitin myself. So
please save both of us from trauma and write your Canvas Discussion posts and
reflections yourself.
ChatGPT and other Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots:
1.
Typing a prompt into an
LLM chatbot, copying the response, and then submitting that response for an
assignment is an obvious form of academic misconduct. Don’t do it.
2.
Chatbots are sometimes
inaccurate. When I asked for a biography
of Richard Ruppel, a Chapman English professor, I found that I was born in
Fairview (false), had been an expert on the Holocaust (mostly false), had graduated
from Yale and Harvard (false), and was now dead (demonstrably, I hope,
false). People in the field describe
these errors as “hallucinations,” but they are presented with supreme
self-confidence. Hallucinations are not uncommon.
3.
If I suspect that you
have pasted in a response produced by an LLM, I will check the various services
that can detect this. If those services
confirm my suspicion, I will call you in for a conference.
4.
Chatbots can be
inaccurate, but they do offer clear, useful information which users should
check. These are early times, but
through this semester (and through your academic career) we will all discover
ways to help you use them to enhance your learning.
The following discussion of the use of LLMs in
academic settings was developed by Dr. Nora Rivera, a professor in Chapman’s
English department:
|
Acceptable
Uses of LLMs |
Not
Acceptable Uses of LLMs |
|
·
To improve your work ·
To brainstorm ·
To explore potential counterarguments ·
To fine-tune research questions ·
To draft an outline to organize your
thoughts ·
To check grammar and style ·
To check format · To
translate words and phrases |
·
To replace your work ·
To cheat on the writing & research
process ·
To obtain answers to assessments ·
To generate a full draft of your work · To generate
large chunks of text with little or no input from you as an author |
·
Students must cite AI
technologies when appropriate (e.g., when using images generated by AI
technologies, when referencing an answer provided by AI technologies, et
cetera)
·
Copying works entirely
generated by AI technologies and submitting them as original content is
considered an academic integrity
violation
·
Always revise your work
before submitting it. You are responsible for any inaccurate, biased,
offensive, or otherwise unethical content you submit regardless of whether it
originally comes from you or an AI model.
In-Class
use of laptops, tablets, and phones:
You
may use a laptop to take class notes only when you are one of the week’s
note-takers. Otherwise, laptops and
tablets must remain closed, and you may not consult your phone during
class. If you have a reason to use one
of these devices during class, you must receive my permission to do so
beforehand. If I see you consulting your
phone during class, I will mark you absent.
Chapman's
Students with Disabilities Policy:
In
compliance with ADA guidelines, students who have any condition, either
permanent or temporary, that might affect their ability to perform in this
class are encouraged to inform the instructor at the beginning of the term. The
University, through the Disability
Services Office, will work with the appropriate faculty member who is asked to
provide the accommodations for a student in determining what accommodations are
suitable based on the documentation and the individual student needs. The
granting of any accommodation will not be retroactive and cannot jeopardize the
academic standards or integrity of the course.
Please contact me if you have ANY concerns about completing any of the
requirements of this course. I want you to feel challenged, not
overwhelmed.
Chapman
University is committed to ensuring equality and valuing
diversity. Students and professors are reminded to show respect at
all times as outlined in Chapman’s Harassment and Discrimination Policy. Any violations
of this policy should be discussed with the professor, the Dean of Students
and/or otherwise reported in accordance with this policy.
Week 1 – August 27-29:
Introductions, Illness, & Identity
Week 2 – September 3-5: Illness & Identity
Week 3 – September 10-12:
Illness & Identity
Week 4 –
September 17-19: Illness, Identity, & Memory
Week 5 –
September 24-26: Illness, Identity, & Memory
Week 6 – October 1-3: Memory CUE visit Thursday. BE SURE TO COMPLETE THE INFORMATION LITERACY
MODULE BEFORE WE VISIT THE LIBRARY OCTOBER 8.
Week 7 –
October 8-10: Information
Literacy library visit, Oct. 8—room 305. Memory. [3-5
page reflection on “Illness” and/or “Identity” due October 10].
Week 8 –
October 15-17: Memory. Begin first
presentations on some concept related to neuroscience. Groups 1-4.
Week 9 – October 22-24: Groups 5-8.
Week 10 – October 29-31: Perceptions.
Week 11 –
November 5-7: Perceptions.
Week 12 – November 12-14:
Perceptions.
Week 13 – November 19-21:
Groups 1-3 present their short stories Thursday. [3-5 page reflection on memory and/or
perception due Nov 19]
THANKSGIVING BREAK
Week 14 – December 3-5:
Groups 4-6 present on their stories on Tuesday, 7-8 on Thursday.
Week 15 – Final: Wednesday, December
11. 10:45-1:15pm.
*This syllabus may change, but I will give you plenty of notice,
and I will keep the syllabus updated on the Web.
For Tuesday, August
27: Course introduction. We’ll introduce ourselves and go over this
Web page and our Canvas pages.
For Thursday,
August 29: Read through our syllabus and bring questions
and comments to class.
For Tuesday,
September 3:
Read “The Disembodied Lady” (43-54) in our text, The
Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. (If you
don’t have the text yet, you can click on the book title and look for “The
Disembodied Lady.”) For a good
introduction to Oliver Sacks, watch this
Ted talk.
And read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”
and respond to the first Discussion Question in Canvas by 10am, Sept. 5.
For Thursday,
September 5: Read “Witty Ticcy
Ray” (The
hyperlink takes you to the original version in The London Review of Books.
It’s on 92-101 of The Man Who
Mistook His Wife for a Hat). Watch
this You
Tube on Tourette
Syndrome.
For Tuesday, September 10: Class visit by Erin, Laura, and Diane to
discuss careers, internships, and our Tutoring Center.
For Thursday, September 12: Read “The Lost Mariner” (23-42)
and “A Matter of Identity” (108-15).
For Tuesday, September 17: Read Vladimir Nabokov’s “Symbols and Signs.” : By 10 am
Thursday, the 19th, respond to the Canvas Discussion Board prompt, where
I ask you to comment on the way the son’s mental illness is represented and
treated in “Signs and Symbols.”
For Thursday, September 19: Begin reading “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr.
Hyde.”
For Tuesday, September 24:
Finish “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr.
Hyde.” Description and discussion about the first
reflection, due Oct. 5.
For Thursday, September 26:
Continued discussion of “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr.
Hyde.”
For Tuesday, October 1:
Read “The Abyss: Music and Amnesia,” by
Oliver Sacks. (I’ve also loaded a copy
into the Canvas Modules section.) This is an introduction to Clive Wearing, who
lost his ability to retain any short-term memories. Clear your topics for your first reflection
with me. The first reflection is due
October 10.
For Thursday, October 3:
Read “First Love,” by Vladimir Nabokov.
It’s in the Modules section of Canvas.
For Tuesday, October 8:
MEET IN ROOM 305 IN THE LIBRARY.
BE SURE TO HAVE THE INFORMATION LITERACY MODULE FINISHED. Read “Funes the Memorious,” by Jorge Luis Borges
(also available in the Modules section of Canvas).
For Thursday, October 10: First reflection due – email
a copy to me. Please email a text copy,
not a pdf, and please don’t send a Google docs link. Continued
discussion of “First Love” and “Funes the Memorious.” Discussion of the
neuroscientific understanding of memory.
Preparation for presentations beginning next week.
For Tuesday, October 15:
Discussion of “Funes
the Memorious.” Preparation for presentations beginning October 17.
For Thursday, October 17:
Presentations by Groups 1-3.
For Tuesday, October 22:
Presentations by Groups 4-6.
For Thursday, October 24:
Presentations by Groups 7-8.
For Tuesday, October 29:
Read “The
Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.” (8-22 in the book.)
For Thursday, October 31:
Begin reading “The Turn of the Screw,” and feel free to dress appropriately
for the day.
For Tuesday, November 5:
Continued discussion of “The Turn of the Screw.” Be sure to have to read
through Chapter 10. Decide on a topic
for your second reflection, and be sure to clear your topic with me by November
8.
For Thursday, November
7: Finish reading “The Turn of the Screw.”
For Tuesday, November
12: Continue finishing 😊”The Turn of the Screw” and respond to
the Discussion question in Canvas by 10am November 12.
For Thursday, November
14: Prepare to meet in your
groups to settle on the work for your presentation.
For Tuesday, November 19: Work in class on presentations. Second reflection due.
For Thursday, November
21: First three
presentations. Read Plath’s “Lady Lazarus”
and “Daddy”
for Group 1. Read Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart” for
Group 2.
For Tuesday, December 3: Presentations 4-6. Read the
Shakespeare passages from Macbeth, King Lear, Richard III,
and Hamlet (under the Presentation heading of the Modules section of
Canvas) for Group 4. Read Poe’s “The Black Cat” for Group
5. Read Gogol’s “Memoir
of a Madman” for Group 5.
For Thursday, December 5: Presentations 3, 7, 8. Read Perrault’s “Bluebeard” for Group
3. Read Maupassant’s “The Horla” for group 7, and read Poe’s “The
Fall of the House of Usher” for group 8.
Readings
Oliver
Sacks
Illness & Identity: “The Disembodied Lady,” “The Man who
Fell out of Bed,” “Witty Ticcy Ray,” “Cupid’s
Disease,” “A Matter of Identity,” “Yes, Father-Sister,” “The Possessed,”
“Murder,” “The Visions of Hildegard,” “Rebecca,” “A Walking Grove,” “The
Twins,” “The Autist Artist,” “A Bolt
from the Blue” (in The New Yorker,
July 23, 2007). A near-death experience leads a physician to an obsession with
music and a new life. Discussion
of schizophrenia, beginning with his brother Michael.
Memory: “The Lost
Mariner,” “Reminiscence,” “A Passage to India,” “The Abyss: Music
and Amnesia” (in The New Yorker,
September 24, 2007)
Perceptions: “The
Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat,” “Hands,” “On the Level,” “Eyes Right!”
“The President’s Speech,” “The Dog Beneath the Skin.” “Altered
States: Self-Experiments in Chemistry” (Sacks’s experiences with
mind-altering drugs, in The New Yorker,
August 27, 2012). “Face Blind: Why
are some of us terrible at recognizing faces?” Another piece by Sacks in The New Yorker about his own experience
with prosopagnosia.
Short
Stories:
Illness: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow
Wallpaper”; Perkins Gilman’s letter, “Why
I Wrote “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Nabokov, “Symbols
and Signs.” (There is a brief film
of Symbols and Signs, but it’s no longer available on You Tube)
Identity: Robert Louis Stevenson, “The Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.” The
entire 1920 silent film.
1931 film
segment. 1941 film trailer. A Wikipedia
article that lists the story’s many adaptations.
Memory: Rudyard Kipling, “The Finest Story in the
World”; Vladimir Nabokov, “First Love,” (Still
Life with gilt Beer Tankard a
painting including details that remind me of Nabokov’s extraordinary memory for
detail, Willem Claesz 1634); Jorge Luis
Borges, “Funes
the Memorious.” H.G. Wells, “The Door in
the Wall” [audio
recording]; Washington Irving, “Rip
Van Winkle”
Acquired
Savant Syndrome: This
occurs in “Funes the
Memorious.” Here’s a video
describing the phenomenon. [This
video looks authoritative, but it needs to be substantiated. The speaker
is Clemens Steinek, pursuing his PhD in Biology at
Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich.]
Perceptions: Henry James, “The Turn of the Screw.” [Scene from the 1999 BBC television adaptation, with Colin Firth
and Jodhi May. The
Innocents, the entire 1961 adaptation
of the story with Deborah Kerr as the governess – a much-admired film.] Conrad
Aiken, “Silent
Snow, Secret Snow.”
Articles:
Illness:
·
“Literature &
the History of Neuroscience,” Mary Harrington (On “The Yellow
Wallpaper.”)
·
A
History of Hysteria, from McGill University’s Office of for Science and
Society.
·
"Sacred
Dangers: Nabokov's Distorted Reflection in "Signs and Symbols," by
David Field, from Studies in Short
Fiction (June, 1988): 285-293. (In
the Canvas Module section.)
·
Anne
Stiles on “The
Rest Cure: 1873-1925.”
·
From
the NY Times, October 15, 2015. “The
Chains of Mental Illness in West Africa.”
A description of the treatment of mental illness in parts of Africa.
·
NPR
article concerned with the city of Geel, in Belgium, where people with
schizophrenia are taken in by the town’s residents.
Identity:
“The
Neuroscience of Immortality: Mileposts on a Long, Uncharted Road.” Amy Harmon.
New York Times, 9/12/2015. “Will
You Ever be able to Upload your Brain?” Kenneth Miller. New
York Times, 10/10/2015.
On Consciousness
·
Anil Seth, “How
Does Your Brain Construct Your Conscious Reality?” (17 minute TED).
·
“Why We
Need to Study Consciousness,” Kenneth Shinozuka. In Scientific
American.
On Perception
·
“The Neuroscience of
Perception,” Anil Seth. (5 minutes,
discusses the connection between the way the brain processes perception and
storytelling.)
On Illnesses
·
Tourette Syndrome: Described by young people. From ‘Imi, a video about a young man with
Tourette Syndrome who sings on The Voice. Hichki (trailer), a film about a young woman with
Tourette Syndrome who wants to be a teacher.
Based on a true story. (With thanks to Prena.)
·
Interviews with people
suffering from schizophrenia. Reducing the stigma of
schizophrenia.
·
A Ted
Talk by Rosie King on what it’s like to be autistic. Another by Temple
Grandin.
·
The
Beach family, on an invisible disability.
On the Neuro-System
·
The
limbic system via the Khan Academy. (Including a mnemonic involving a
hippopotamus).
·
A YouTube video describing neuroanatomy (12 minutes) by “Anatomy
Zone.” Part 2 (8½ minutes). Another YouTube from MIT showing the parts of an
actual brain.
·
The
parietal and occipital lobes. In “The Man Who Mistook
His Wife for a Hat,” Dr. P’s strange agnosia (inability to interpret and
process sensations) was caused by progressive damage to his occipital lobe.
·
Cross-section
of the brain
showing the basal ganglia, thalamus, hippocampus, amygdala, and
hypothalamus.
·
Midbrain.
·
Neurotransmitters:
Dopamine.
·
Temporal lobe functions.
Art & Neuroscience
·
Alva Noë, “How
Art Reveals the Limits of Neuroscience.” Chronicle
of Higher Education, Sept. 8, 2015.
Memory
·
Nova episode, “Memory
Hackers.”
·
Feats of memory – Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory: Jake. More on Jake. Sixty Minutes More from James McGaugh
on HSAM. Story
on Jake Hausler from 2019, when he was a high school sophomore.
·
Deficits of memory: Video of a man (and his family) suffering
from retrograde
amnesia. Brief lecture on H. M., the most famous
example of a man suffering from the condition. Brief description of the career
of Brenda
Milner, at 103, the person most responsible for creating the field of
neuropsychology and an expert on memory.
Alan Alda’s story about EP, another famous person
suffering from retrograde amnesia. Documentary on Clive Wearing. The
Man with the Seven Second Memory. Clive Wearing. More on Clive Wearing.
·
A useful “Where Are Memories Stored?” video on memory, focusing on the famous
patient, HM.
·
A very brief video
from Johns Hopkins that explains how scientists can turn brain functions into
numbers to help them diagnose and treat diseases of the brain.
· The
case of James Leininger, who appears to have remembered an earlier life as James
Huston, a WWII pilot.
·
“Borges & Memory: Encounters with the
Human Brain,” Rodrigo Quian Quiroga. Also related to
“Funes the Memorious.”
·
Acquired savant syndrome: “When
Brain Damage Unlocks the Genius Within,” and in Scientific
American, an article on how a person might “Instantly
Blossom into a Savant.” “Brains
are different in people with highly superior autobiographical memory,” Science Daily, July 30, 2012. Sciencerely,
How a
Baseball Injury Made A Genius (Savant Syndrome)
· “How the Brain Works: the
Brain’s Memory,” by Jonathon Leonard.
· “Your Brain and You:
Learning and Memory.”
· Janet
Malcolm, “Six
Glimpses of the Past: On Photography & Memory.” In The
New Yorker.
Oliver Sacks
·
Ted
Talk on hallucinations – a
nice introduction to Oliver Sacks.
·
PBS Newshour 1989 profile of Oliver Sacks.
·
Eulogies
for Oliver Sacks: July 9,
1933-August 30, 2015: Washington Post;
New York Times;
The Guardian;
The Los Angeles Times
·
Peter
Brook, The Man Who. A play based on The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat. Performed by Duke
University students.
·
Vincent
Canby theatre
review of The Man Who. March 15, 1995, New York Times.
“The Yellow
Wallpaper”
·
“Why
I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
·
A brief discussion of the story from a medical point of view: “Literature &
the History of Neuroscience,” Mary Harrington.
·
Anne Stiles on “The Rest Cure: 1873-1925.”
·
Film of “The Yellow
Wallpaper” via IMBd. Approximately 20 minutes.
·
“How Doth the
Little Busy Bee,” by Isaac Watts. A
poem alluded to in the story.
Just for Fun
·
Pilobolus Dance Company video.
