The National Endowment for the Humanities has awarded associate professor Shawn Tucker an Enduring Questions Grant to fund the development of a new interdisciplinary course, "Pride, Humility, and the Good Life," that will help students define their own concepts of pride and humility through research and analysis.
The grant of up to $25,000 will allow Tucker to create a class where students can explore issues such as ambition, arrogance, “teachability,” excellence, meekness and openness.
While the spring 2011 course will draw upon his background in the humanities, Tucker said he plans to bring in a range of scholarly perspectives to the discussion, from religion and film to literature and business.
“I didn’t think I would get it,” said Tucker, who submitted his application in September 2009. “Usually, you try once, you send it in and they reject you, but they give you lots of good feedback on the application and you try again.”
Humility and pride have been portrayed in various ways throughout history, Tucker said, and his hope is that students who enroll in the class don’t arrive hoping to have a definition provided to them.
Tucker said that when someone hears the word “humility,” one might envision a person who allows others to “walk over them.” But humility can also mean dedication to a cause greater than one’s self. “A philosopher or scientist, for example, may be more dedicated to truth, and that dedication or submission could be part of humility,” he said, “but for others humility means being servile.”
Then there’s pride.
“With pride, for some people, it means having good self-esteem,” Tucker said. “For other people, pride means arrogance that makes one ‘not teachable,’ so that one thinks there is nothing new to learn. In this case, ‘great’ self-esteem gets in the way of real growth and improvement.”
Both ideas will be related to the concept of a “good life” and what a good life means to each student.
Tucker came to Elon in 2000 and currently serves as chair of the Department of Art and Art History.
Prior to joining the faculty, he taught at Northeastern State University and, before that, at Florida State University, where he earned his doctorate in the humanities with coursework in art history, contemporary critical theory and modern British literature. Tucker earned his master’s degree from Florida State University and his bachelor’s degree at Brigham Young University.