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Professor James Fredal's 591 Senior Honors Seminar class on "bullshit" was so successful the students didn't want it to end.
"On the last day of class, some of them said it's too bad we can't keep doing this," said Professor Fredal. So he designed a study group with accompanying Carmen site with the goal of revising student papers written during the course for submission to the English Department's online journal Harlot: A Revealing Look at the Art of Persuasion. Called the Taurascatic Study Group, students and professor met several times during the spring quarter to work on revisions and discuss issues regarding "bullshit."
"I got the idea from analytical philosopher Harry Frankfort's essay 'On Bullshit,'" said Professor Fredal. "Frankfort treats the term 'bullshit' as if it was a traditional academic term. He says we really need to define this term 'bullshit.' It's all around us and no one seems to like it and no one can do anything about it, and part of the reason is that we don't really know what it is."
"I thought it would be an interesting way to teach students about rhetoric that was more contemporary, more interesting. They had to work on defining a concept, figuring out what its boundaries are and how it relates to other concepts-all for a term that really hasn't been defined in a body of scholarship."
Graduating senior English major Julian Condo became interested in the class after using his powers of persuasion at a job at a university call center. "There's a lot to learn about how people sell themselves, present themselves, how presentations work in all different ways. It's a big part of American culture."
Because there isn't a lot of scholarship on "bullshit," the field is wide open for exploration and contributions made by students. The group has discussed possibilities for an essay anthology, among other projects. For now, participating students will spend the summer revising their papers with the goal of submitting them to Harlot in the fall.
