Scribner Seminar Program
Course Description

Awake, Sleeping, or Dreaming?

Instructor(s): Holley Hodgins, Psychology

How do we distinguish among the three cardinal states of consciousness: Waking, sleeping, and dreaming? How have the states of consciousness been experienced and understood in different eras and from the perspective of different disciplines? How do we know whether waking, sleeping or dreaming is closest to "reality?" Are we awake or dreaming right now? Our work together in this seminar will involve peering through the lenses of English literature, historical theoretical non-empirical psychology, and empirical psychology and neuroscience, to compare and contrast these disciplinary perspectives on states of consciousness. We will consider perspectives from William Shakespeare, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung and contemporary science. London and the surrounding area will be our classroom as we consider the construal of consciousness across eras and disciplines.