Current Theme

The theme for 2022-2024 is “Sources of the Self.” The pursuit of self-knowledge and search for identity may engage us in exploration that lasts a lifetime.

Many have found the concept of a self to be misleading or illusory. Yet, as profoundly personal as our search for the self may be, this pursuit draws us into negotiation with the social, cultural, philosophical, political, and historical circumstances in which we live.

Our concern with sources of the self can be traced across a diversity of times and places, from the earliest forms of literature through to contemporary initiatives and debate, and from issues of personal identity through to matters of state. Guided by drama and discourse, travel narrative and autobiography, novel and digital archive, we will explore the manifold pathways that have been taken for the investigation or cultivation of the self, and inquire where those pathways may yet lead.

LA1: Gavin Paul (English)
LA2: Brandon Konoval (Humanities and Music)
LA3: Hasan Siddiqui (Asian Studies)
LA4: Joy Dixon (History)
LA5: Robert Crawford (Political Science)

Taylor, Sources of the Self
Sophocles, Antigone
Montaigne
Plato, Republic
Upanisads
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe
Ibn Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqzan
Shakespeare, Hamlet
Hobbes, Leviathan [selections]
Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality
Wollstonecraft, Mary: A Fiction
Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano
Shelley, Frankenstein
Marx, Early Writings
Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle
Melville, Typee
Nietzsche, Genealogy of Morality
Gandhi, Hind Swaraj
Freud, Civilization and its Discontents
Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks
Laurence, A Bird in the House
Hamid, The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Elsie Paul, Written as I Remember It

As a student, being a part of UBC Arts One is one of the best decisions I’ve made at UBC! It was such an enriching and rewarding experience that prepared me for second year and beyond!

Bianca C
Currently in History Honours Program
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