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Bill and Monica: A "Classic" Affair?
Oglethorpe Students to Decide
Atlanta - As part of Oglethorpe University’s Fresh Focus
Program, associate professor of political science Dr. Joseph
Knippenberg, 14 Oglethorpe freshmen and five student mentors are
examining "Love, Sex and Politics: From Aristophanes to President
Clinton." In this Fresh Focus section, Dr. Knippenberg and his
students attempt to get behind the titillating headlines and
salacious surface of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal by investigating
the relationship between the deepest human longings and political
life. The class attempts to do so by coming to grips with some high
points in the long tradition of serious reflection on the connection
(or lack thereof) between Eros and politics, a tradition that goes
back at least as far as Plato and Aristophanes.
The Fresh Focus class will examine Aristophanes’ comic classic
Ecclesiazusae, which presents politics as for the most part an
extension of human erotic interests. From there, the class will turn
to Machiavelli’s comic accounts of love and sex in his plays
Mandragola and Clizia. In those plays, Machiavelli treats love and
sex as essentially private, and unserious, as opposed to the serious
enterprise of politics, which is connected with the pursuit of power
and glory. Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra offers a sort of
counterpoint to Machiavelli’s presentation, reviving the claims of
love to be a worthy competitor of political life at its best and
highest.
From these more theoretical considerations, the class will get a
historical perspective on current events by reading Gail Collins’
Scorpion Tongues: Gossip, Celebrity, and American Politics. In
addition, each class session includes a discussion of the latest
events in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.
Fresh Focus is a class required of all first-year students at
Oglethorpe University and is a small group activity also involving
selected volunteer student mentors and faculty. Students select a
class from among numerous topics with experiential and interactive
as well as academic features.
Oglethorpe University is an independent, highly selective,
coeducational liberal arts university located in Atlanta.
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