Some Northwestern students are getting two of the school’s most famous faculty members for the price of one and learning about everything from economics to biblical stories to literature in the process.
University President Morton Schapiro and literature Prof. Gary Morson teach Humanities 260, a new interdisciplinary course offered this Winter Quarter about decision-making and alternative choices modeled through economic and humanitarian perspectives.
Weinberg sophomore Carol Li said she enjoys the class structure so far and would definitely recommend the course to other students.
“I like it because you get two very different views and perspectives, and it’s kind of cool to just watch both of them argue during class,” Li said. “It’s taught by two really great professors, and you can’t pass up an opportunity to take a class with both Morty and Morson.”
Schapiro said he and Morson are still working out the details of the course. The two meet after every class to discuss the quality of assignments and class progress.
“I warned the class in the beginning that this is like a work in progress,” Schapiro said. “We are hoping that it’s not such a disaster that we have to can it. We’re hoping that we can survive the first time, and the students will learn something and enjoy it and that we’ll be much better next year.”
While the course is still in an experimental stage, students have been enjoying the debates between the two professors.
“It’s an interesting dynamic to see how both Prof. Morson and Morty Schapiro figure out how they are going to interact with each other because clearly they don’t really know how it’s going to work with each topic that presents itself,” said Lauren Manning, a Medill sophomore. “I think it’s kind of cool that while we are the guinea pigs that they are first teaching the class to, they are also learning themselves.”
Morson previously taught a class with a Russian historian at the University of Pennsylvania, setting up the lecture as an argument between historical and literary schools of thought. Schapiro and Morson have incorporated this system into their own lecture, he said.
“We set it up as a debate, and sometimes we have to manufacture the debate because we don’t really disagree,” Morson said. “(Schapiro) is impersonating the economic social science approach to human behavior … and I’m offering objections based on the psychology and the complication of human choices.”
Some of the students in the class have taken econometrics with Schapiro and already have an advanced background of the economic concepts applied in class while others students have no background in the field. Schapiro said he and Morson hope to balance the course material to keep it interesting for all students.
“I’m trying to do enough basic economics so that people who don’t have much of a foundation think, ‘That’s really interesting. I should take more econ,’ and the ones who really have taken a lot still learn something by having them review it in a different way,” Schapiro said. “We have 195 students in the class, so it’s kind of hard for me to tell if anybody is getting anything out of it.”
The course incorporates a wide range of material, from Schapiro’s articles on University admissions to stories from the Bible. The course will also analyze the ways thinking about hypothetical “alternative history” can affect decision making. After the course ends, the two plan to have dinner with the students to get their feedback, Morson said.
“The fact that we can talk about economics and philosophy and literature and religion, and it really all does fit together in so many different aspects, is really exciting and interesting,” Manning said. “We’ve talked a lot about economics, and I’m not the biggest fan of that subject matter, but it’s kind of opened my eyes to how portable economics is in so many different aspects, so I guess I appreciate that. I’m looking forward to some of the other topics that we are going to explore also.”
