2015-2016 Academic Catalog

May 29, 2024

2015-2016 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

PSYC 386 - Advanced Topics in Social Development

This capstone seminar explores the concept of ‘coolness’ from a number of angles and perspectives. What does it mean to be cool? Every person has their own definition of it; most would see being cool in the attitudes you show, the products you buy, or the language that you use – ergo how you produce or construct a sense of yourself in your environment. But these are only facets of a whole mosaic of coolness: Cool is also about “cooling down” your emotions and controlling them, and, in effect, controlling yourself. The cool conduct, as literary authors in the early twenties called it, represents a new kind of damped emotionality that comes to dominate and consequently permeate interpersonal relationships and personal performance within entire societies and almost all social spheres of public and private lives in the 20th century. But how did the notion of cool emotionality come into being? How do shame or efficiency play into the concept of coolness? And when and also why did we as individuals become cool social entrepreneurs?

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically