William Rodney Herring's Courses

You think me the child of my circumstances: I make my circumstance.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson, "The Transcendentalist"

This course will question whether the individual can indeed be the creator of his or her circumstance or whether circumstances control the individual. In the movie Collateral, Vincent (Tom Cruise) suggests the latter to Max (Jamie Foxx) when he says, "You're out of options, Max. Just take comfort in knowing you never had a choice."

Or does some combination of the two positions make more sense? Movies, books, songs, and essays often simply assume one image or the other, or some blend of the two. The course will further question how such rhetoric builds on or argues in favor of some version of the individual.

We will ask: Do we ever have options? Can we make choices about what we do? Can we be considered responsible for our actions? How are our views of ourselves as individuals and our views about our responsibilities shaped by our rhetoric, by the things we say about ourselves?