ECN1102 Florida Atlantic Site of public conversation about differences
Humanities
This is the whole prompt. The selection to incorporate is called “Making Conversation” by Kwame Anthony Appiah from his book “Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a world of strangers (2006)”.
Analyze a site of public conversation about difference in order to explore how Appiah’s concepts of conversation and cosmopolitanism apply, and to consider the potentials of conversation to help resolve differences. There are plenty of sites (both virtual and physical) for argument, disagreement, trolling, etc., but this assignment asks you to seek out a place where conversation about difference is happening, identify what that site is doing to help resolve or overcome difference, and also identify the limits that you see in this conversation site. You might consider a physical site, such as an art exhibit or event (the Human Library and Compassion Experience are both examples), a virtual site (the Empathy Museum, Humans of New York, and Ask a Muslim are all examples), or something else. Social media is a natural example that comes to mind, though we know social media technologies don’t all promote conversation, and certainly not in the same way. You might analyze a specific site within a social media platform (a specific page or social media project) that is trying to promote conversation in the hope of resolving or overcoming difference. The point of your essay to identify a site where conversation is working, or at least trying to work, and discuss what is making it work, what conversation might be able to accomplish here, as well as what its limits are.
