The 5 Best Classes at IWU
I decided to make this list sometime last year, after taking two really great classes in the same semester. This post is meant to both encourage professors for creating great classes and to help underclassmen make smart scheduling decisions!
Criteria: All these classes have to have changed my epistemology (my view of Truth) in one way or another, in order to qualify. I’ve taken many other really great classes at IWU — these are just my favorites!
These are in order, because it’s more fun that way.
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Honorable mention: Creative Nonfiction, Mary Brown. You are never the subject. Technically Annie Dillard taught me this, but it was in this class that I learned it. Even when you’re writing about yourself, you cannot be the subject. If you are, you’re writing a journal entry — and no one will care to read it.
Honorable mention: World Civilization, Mark Smith. This class changed my view of sin. Smith often inserted theology into his lectures. One thing he taught was how in order to have a big view of Grace — and Grace IS big! — you must have a big view of sin. I loved that. If you belittle sin, you belittle Grace.
5. Prose Style, Paul Allison. Prose changed my view of the reader-writer relationship. We spent a third of the semester studying Classic Style, a type of writing where the author assumes everything he’s saying is Truth. He approaches his work in such a way. This called into question how I view Truth in how I write. What is my position as a writer? Do I believe what I’m saying is Truth? Am I writing solely reflexively — everything comes back to me? This not only changed how I write, but how I read.
4. Contemporary Literature, Mary Brown. This class taught me how good writing can teach you to empathize. Reading about someone living a completely different life than you live, can teach you how to relate. I will never live like Rabbit Angstrom, John Updike’s sex-hungry character — but I will always know people like him. I will always need to find common ground with people with different morals than me.
3. Communication Theory, Greg Fiebig. Really, these last three tie for first place. I love these theories. I am a theoretical thinker, so this may show my bias. There is a theory for everything worthwhile. Whenever Nate and I are in a fight, I whip out the ol’ Comm Theory book and reread Relational Dialectics or the Face Negotiation theories. I will keep this book forever.
2. Media and Society, Mark Perry. Media and Society taught me the word epistemology (lol) and how the media shapes it. Since taking this class sophomore year, I’ve had so many conversations about this — especially the book we read in it, Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death. The primary medium of a society (ours being TV and the Internet) shapes how we view truth. We need to see to believe. We believe everything must be entertaining — including religion and school.
1. The History of the Christian and Muslim Encounter, Lisa Toland. This class changed my view of the Middle East. I took this class after I went to Iraq, and it may have even done more for my perception of the country. I learned from Toland and the texts we read the context of Sept. 11, the Iraq War, and there are sour relationships between us and the rest of the world. I learned how Christians and Muslims did get along well in the Byzantine Empire (you know, before the Crusades). AND I learned about the Muslim faith — I know why I don’t believe in Islam, but I still admire and respect the Muslim faith.
May 1, 2012