How Readings in Seminar Affiliated With My Area Of Study

Written when I was a Senior at Saint Mary's College 2018.

I am majoring in Kinesiology with emphasis on Sport & Recreational Management. I am also minoring in Communication. Both disciplines effect how I read in Seminar, especially in the last two years. The way I read for the first two years of seminar had no relationship with my disciplines. I simply was not affiliated enough with my major or minor to consider them effecting the way I read for seminar. But in my third year, there are many instances where reading in Seminar were effected by my disciplinary lens of my major and minor.

For instance, the reading “Discourse on the Method” by Descartes, I read through my communication lens. Descartes argued that individuals were more creative when they worked individually rather than with others. “It is difficult to make things that are very finely crafted by laboring only on the works of others” (54). When I read Descartes Discourse on Method I found his argument to fit the communication theory: phenomenology. Descartes was independent; all his experiences were based on working with only himself and with no one else. I remember distinctly arguing that Descartes line of thinking fell in line with phenomenology. The Phenomenology theory is that an individual’s line of thinking is strictly based on their experiences. Descartes arguments consisted with his experiences. He branched himself away from society to learn more about life through experiences and through his journeys. Any reading in Seminar that consisted of an author claiming an argument would have me read their argument through a communication lens because the discipline of communication seeks to understand another individuals line of thinking/reasoning through theories, philosophy, and research. 

For my major, when there were readings about government, specifically on exploitation in society, I would read and discuss the relationship the reading had with the exploitation in sport. I took sport sociology last semester and learned a lot about how sport is both a healthy/unhealthy area of society. For example, I would discuss the relationship professional sports has with the Karl Marx reading “Communist Manifesto”. Although they are identifying different forms of exploitation, I would use Marx’s argument to support how exploitation is happening similarly to collegiate athletics and professional sport. My knowledge of how collegiate athletes are exploited was how I read Marx’s analysis of the proletarians. Now, of course there are distinctions between collegiate athletes and proletarians, but there is a strong argument that collegiate athletes are being exploited for their labor; which strongly relates to the proletarians of society. I related the bourgeois to the NCAA and college athletes as proletarians who are controlled and are dependent on the bourgeois in order to compete and remain eligible in their sport during their college career.   

In Seminar 104, Freud’s reading “Civilization and Its Discontents”, intersected with both my major and minor. In communication, I read many articles that were published by Freud. One of the past readings I read on Freud was his analysis on our instinct toward aggression. I also took a sport psychology course and we also discussed about Freud’s analysis on our instinct toward aggression. Specifically, his Psychodynamic theory and instinct theory. Freud’s psychodynamic theory is largely based in the unconscious (thoughts, feelings, and memories). His instinct theory claims we have an innate instinct or drive to be aggressive. When I was reading Freud’s analysis of aggression, and the relationship it has with aggression in the development of society, I identified from my disciplinary lenses that Freud argued how sport is a great way of channeling our instinctual aggression separate from society. Although Freud didn’t discuss these theories in the seminar reading (Civilization and Its Discontents), they did impact how I was reading” Civilization and Its Discontents”. 

My minor and major disciplinary lens have had impacted the way I read for Seminar. For instance, my kinesiology major forces me to analyze in a perspective of sport/business in modern society. My Communication minor has had a stronger impact on my readings for Seminar because there are many communication theories (phenomenology, sociocultural, semiotics, rhetorical, critical, psychoanalytic, etc). If I were to choose one theory I use the most when reading for Seminar I would claim critical theory, by Max Horkheimer, and phenomenology theory, by Edmund Hussel. In summary, the critical theory is oriented toward critiquing and changing society as a whole. There are many readings in Seminar, especially in Seminar 103, about how nations should govern their people or how a healthy society should function. Critical theory is critiquing the issues among the writer’s argument. For instance, I wrote an essay critiquing Hobbes argument about the sovereign state and his analysis of how society should be governed.

Although I believe I connected with critical and phenomenology theory more than the other theories, I would argue that in all the readings I have done for Seminar, I have connected to the communication theories I learned through my Communication lens. Sociocultural theory can have a relationship to analyzing Seminar readings with a critical lens. Because both sociocultural theory and critical theory analyze the development of society. Sociocultural theory analyzes how society impacts the process of individual development. When I read The Vindication Rights of Women in Seminar 103, I used my knowledge of this theory to discuss how Wollstonecraft’s argument was based on how she was impacted by society. In other words, Wollstonecraft faced oppression and was deeply impacted from being a woman in society. Therefore, her writing was strongly associated with the sociocultural theory. 

Overall, I would say my minor in communication has impacted my line of reading in Seminar more than my major in Kinesiology, because of the specific topics we discuss in Seminar. There is hardly, if any, discussion or reading about the function of sport in either society or with an individual. I argue that the Seminar department should include readings based on sport because it is one of the main components in the historical development of nations around the world; especially in the United States. I do understand that the history of sport is relatively short, but it is important to not ignore the value sport has in the development of societies, individuals, and communities.