Sections offered SPRING 2024:

Young Adult Fiction (YAF) is all the rage these days. While roughly 3,000 Young Adult titles were published in 1997, 10,276 were published in 2012.  What’s more, YAF is being bought and read by adults as well as young adults.  The term YAF, however, was not invented until the 1960s.  That does not mean there was no fiction written for young adults before the 1960s, but it does mean it took the book trade a long time to recognize that young people, teenagers, made up a specific market at which fiction might be aimed.  In Young Adult Fiction, we will read books that have either been aimed at young adults from the 1840s until the present, or are currently taught to young adults in the United Kingdom.  We will begin with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a novel that was extremely popular with what would now be called young adult women. We will next read two novels—Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go—15- and 16-year-olds were or are supposed to read for school in the United Kingdom between the 1970s and the present. We will end the class with four recent examples of YAF: The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling.  While most of you are likely to be unfamiliar with Dimaline’s book, a climate change novel of sorts set near the Canadian border, and with Yang’s investigation of anti-Asian-American prejudice, many of you will already have read the books by Collins and Rowling, and that is why you will be teaching those two books in groups toward the end of the semester. Questions we consider will include the following:  Do Rowling and Collins feel any different when you’re asked to teach them, because teach them you will, in an academic classroom? What do books written, and sometimes taught, in different periods tell us about what authors and publishers expect teenagers to be capable of reading and enjoying?  To what extent do expectations about teenagers and adults change between the 1840s and the present?  To what extent do expectations about teenagers and adults change between the 1970s and the present?  What, if anything, are readers supposed to learn from reading Young Adult Fiction?  Is the increasing popularity and changing nature of Young Adult Fiction positive or is it alarming?

Sections offered SPRING 2024:

Young Adult Fiction (YAF) is all the rage these days. While roughly 3,000 Young Adult titles were published in 1997, 10,276 were published in 2012.  What’s more, YAF is being bought and read by adults as well as young adults.  The term YAF, however, was not invented until the 1960s.  That does not mean there was no fiction written for young adults before the 1960s, but it does mean it took the book trade a long time to recognize that young people, teenagers, made up a specific market at which fiction might be aimed.  In Young Adult Fiction, we will read books that have either been aimed at young adults from the 1840s until the present, or are currently taught to young adults in the United Kingdom.  We will begin with Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, a novel that was extremely popular with what would now be called young adult women. We will next read two novels—Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go—15- and 16-year-olds were or are supposed to read for school in the United Kingdom between the 1970s and the present. We will end the class with four recent examples of YAF: The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling.  While most of you are likely to be unfamiliar with Dimaline’s book, a climate change novel of sorts set near the Canadian border, and with Yang’s investigation of anti-Asian-American prejudice, many of you will already have read the books by Collins and Rowling, and that is why you will be teaching those two books in groups toward the end of the semester. Questions we consider will include the following:  Do Rowling and Collins feel any different when you’re asked to teach them, because teach them you will, in an academic classroom? What do books written, and sometimes taught, in different periods tell us about what authors and publishers expect teenagers to be capable of reading and enjoying?  To what extent do expectations about teenagers and adults change between the 1840s and the present?  To what extent do expectations about teenagers and adults change between the 1970s and the present?  What, if anything, are readers supposed to learn from reading Young Adult Fiction?  Is the increasing popularity and changing nature of Young Adult Fiction positive or is it alarming?

Sections offered SPRING 2024:

As experienced navigators of the image-saturated space of social media, members of Gen-Z have a sophisticated understanding of how pervasive beauty standards in our visual culture influence our self-perception. Collectively, Gen-Z has been vocal in opposing individuals or organizations that perpetuate unrealistic body standards as part of a larger struggle to shift societal standards towards a more inclusive and diverse definition of beauty.

Even as this generation is known for changing the conversation around beauty, a narrowly defined beauty norm still persists, and the multibillion-dollar beauty industry continues to thrive. The harmful effects of social media on individual and collective well being has become common knowledge, increasingly confirmed by anecdotal and empirical evidence. We’ll launch our course in this present moment to consider the possibilities of radical social and cultural change around beauty.

How might Gen-Z impact the future of beauty? Is real change possible? To begin to formulate a response to this inquiry, we will explore a host of foundational questions:

• What is a beauty standard or norm?
• How are beauty norms reflected in our society and culture?
• How do beauty standards influence our self-perception or identities?
• What is the role of media representation in establishing beauty norms?
• How did we arrive at the beauty norms we have today—what are the historical, social, and cultural contexts that have shaped American understandings of beauty?
• How are an individual’s intersecting social identities (gender, race, socioeconomic class, sexuality, ability, nationality etc.) impacted by culturally dominant standards of beauty?

Along the way, we’ll read novels and short stories, watch films and documentaries, listen to popular music, analyze the social media pages of beauty influencers and celebrities, visit the IU Art Museum, and more. Together, we’ll look closely at these cultural objects in order to dive deeper into a range of topics, including: Female Beauty; The Western Ideal of Beauty; Racialized Beauty Norms and Colonialism; Mass Media Conglomerates, Advertising Firms, and Globalization; Feminist Responses to Beauty Norms; Masculinity and Incel Culture; and Beauty as it relates to Business and Work Culture.

Sections offered SPRING 2024:

HON-H 212 prerequisite:  completion of the English composition requirement

Class subtitle:  Liberalism and Conservatism; Art, Society, and the State

This course is about various streams of social and political thought from the mid-eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century, along with changes in painting, poetry, and music from the romantic period through modernism. Of particular interest are the interrelationships between political thought and the arts: Are all judgments about the arts purely subjective? Should the state or a cultural elite try to guide society in its cultural practices? Is art autonomous, or inseparable, from moral and political considerations? Do artists have a moral duty to address the political issues of the day? Is it right to sacrifice the welfare of the general population in the pursuit of artistic excellence by, and for, the few? These are important contemporary questions, but, as we will see, they are not new questions.

In addition to examples from the arts, we will read and discuss brief selections from Hume, Kant, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Burke, Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Dickens, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Ayer, Oakeshott and Keynes. Through these authors, we get a sense of the origins and key principles of liberal and conservative thought, and their influence, or perhaps distance, from liberalism and conservatism in our contemporary world. We will also consider the fate of the arts under totalitarianism, with readings by Hannah Arendt, Czeslaw Milosz, and George Orwell, the music of Dmitri Shostakovich, and the poetry of Anna Akhmatova.

Sections offered SPRING 2024:

HON-H 212 prerequisite:  completion of the English composition requirement

Class subtitle:  Living the Grateful Life

What does it mean to be grateful? And how can we live more grateful lives? Many people believe in the benefits of gratitude yet struggle with being grateful. This course will address philosophical, scientific, and practical perspectives on gratitude.  You will learn how philosophers have defined gratitude, how gratitude is expressed differently across culture, what causes gratitude, as well as the latest scientific research on gratitude. This class will also include a practical component in which you will engage in activities to cultivate gratitude in your life.

*Above class meets during the Thirteen Week Session (01/29/2024 – 05/03/2024)

Sections offered SPRING 2024:

HON-H 212 prerequisite:  completion of the English composition requirement

Class subtitle:  Skepticism and Belief

Skepticism is usually understood as the position according to which most or all of our beliefs fall short of knowledge. This view of our epistemic condition has played a highly significant role in the history of ideas, with historical authors’ having advocated a variety of views about its aims and scope. For Sextus Empiricus, skepticism is a way of life that provides a sure route to tranquility. For René Descartes, it is a methodological device by which we can cleanse ourselves of unfounded beliefs. The first part of this course considers many of the most influential discussions of skepticism in the Western canon, focusing on the question: what can we know?  Some varieties skepticism are narrower in their scope, taking aim only at specific kinds of belief. In the second part of this course, we will consider what is often called _religious skepticism_. This form of skepticism maintains that all or most forms of religious belief cannot be justified. We will read works by authors such as David Hume and Voltaire that aim to support religious skepticism. But we will also consider authors such as Augustine and Blaise Pascal who attempt to establish the reasonableness of religious belief in the face of skeptical doubts. We will engage with perspectives from philosophy, theology, and literature.

Sections offered SPRING 2024:

HON-H 211 prerequisite:  completion of the English composition requirement

“Rhetoric & Democracy: Taking Appearances Seriously”

We often assume that the most effective communication is clear, direct, and unambiguous. This is particularly true for the communication that happens in public, and therefore helps us to govern ourselves in a democracy. We tend to believe that public discourse should function as a transparent window that reveals the truth. For example, politicians almost always make some version of a promise to communicate in a way that is open and sincere, and they almost always accuse their opponents of hiding something.

But what if it is more complicated than that? What if it is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to communicate in the way that we believe that we should? What if the clarity and transparency to which we aspire actually are illusions? And what if we’re actually better off because we can’t achieve this ideal form of communication?

In this course we will explore these questions, and others. We will read about duality, duplicity, honesty, deception, role-playing, and authenticity, in works ranging from those produced by the ancient Greeks to those written by contemporary theorists. And we will examine case studies to determine if what we believe to be true about democratic discourse actually is true.

Student will write several papers of varying lengths, in which they both analyze the readings themselves and use the readings to analyze contemporary US public culture.

Sections offered SPRING 2024:

HON-H 211 prerequisite:  completion of the English composition requirement

Topic:  KINGSHIP:  ANARCHY VS. TYRANNY

In this course we will read ten great imaginative explorations of the central problem of government—to achieve the correct balance between individual freedom and governmental authority.  Beginning with GILGAMESH, the story of a great Middle Eastern tyrant whose hubris leads him to search for the cure for death, and ending with Milton’s Paradise Lost, the story of Satan’s revolutionary struggle to free his angels from God’s tyranny, we will watch the balance of power shift between Tyranny (too much government) and Anarchy (too little government).  In the final, creative paper, which the whole class will read and discuss in a workshop, each student will adopt the voice of a character from one or more of the texts we’ve read who, in a fictional dramatic context narrated from his or her point of view, will discuss and illustrate his/her theory of government.

Sections offered SPRING 2024:

HON-H 211 prerequisite:  completion of the English composition requirement

Topic:  KINGSHIP:  ANARCHY VS. TYRANNY

In this course we will read ten great imaginative explorations of the central problem of government—to achieve the correct balance between individual freedom and governmental authority.  Beginning with GILGAMESH, the story of a great Middle Eastern tyrant whose hubris leads him to search for the cure for death, and ending with Milton’s Paradise Lost, the story of Satan’s revolutionary struggle to free his angels from God’s tyranny, we will watch the balance of power shift between Tyranny (too much government) and Anarchy (too little government).  In the final, creative paper, which the whole class will read and discuss in a workshop, each student will adopt the voice of a character from one or more of the texts we’ve read who, in a fictional dramatic context narrated from his or her point of view, will discuss and illustrate his/her theory of government.