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IUB Honors Courses Indiana University Bloomington

HON-H 233 – Creating Documentary Films

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Sections offered SPRING 2023:

#35403

RON OSGOOD

TuTh 9:45am-12:15pm
First Eight Weeks

LI 048

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

 

NO PRIOR EXPERIENCE IS NECESSARY.

Learn how documentary films are planned and produced. Samples of exemplary documentary films will be screened, with follow-up activities based on story techniques and content. Tutorials and hands-on activities prepare you to begin the research and development of a story about your family’s history.

HON-H 238 – American Cinema of the 1970s: Hollywood’s Most Adventurous Decade

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Sections offered SPRING 2023:

#5124

CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON

TuTh 4:30 PM–7:00 PM
Second Eight Weeks

HU 108

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd S&H credit; COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

 

Between 1967 and 1979 a number of extraordinary factors converged to produce an uncommonly adventurous era in the history of American film. The end of movie censorship, the decline of the Hollywood studio system, economic changes in the film industry, and demographic shifts among audiences, filmmakers, and critics created an unprecedented opportunity for a new type of Hollywood movie. An unusually large number of films from this period have become recognized as classics of the American cinema — including The Godfather, Chinatown, Taxi Driver, Five Easy Pieces, The Graduate, Nashville, and Apocalypse Now  – while many others are considered to represent the pinnacle of their particular genres – including Bonnie and Clyde, Klute, and McCabe and Mrs. Miller. These were major works of art in continuous dialogue with the political, social, personal, and philosophical issues of their tumultuous times.

The films of this period reflected the era’s social and political upheavals: the civil rights movement, the domestic consequences of the Vietnam war, the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, the end of the long postwar economic boom, the saga of the Nixon Administration and Watergate. Hollywood films, in this brief, exceptional moment, embraced a new aesthetic and a new approach to storytelling, creating self-consciously gritty, character-driven explorations of moral and narrative ambiguity. Although the emergence of blockbuster hits like Jaws and Star Wars in the second half of the 1970s largely ended the Hollywood studios’ embrace of more challenging films, filmmakers in this decade showed that it was possible to combine commercial entertainment with serious explorations of politics, society, and personal relationships.

Students in this course are not expected to have any prior experience in film criticism or history – just an interest in learning to think critically about movies and American culture. The goal of this course is to introduce students to the relationship between movies, culture and society by focusing on American films of the 1970s, and through these films, to trace a path through the history of American culture during one of the most fertile periods in the history of American media. The readings, screenings, assignments, and classroom activities in this course are intended to help students develop competence in critical thinking about movies, culture and society — as demonstrated through exams and short essays — and advanced skill in the writing of critical analysis and reasoned arguments — as demonstrated in formal papers. In addition to our regular classroom meetings, students will be required to view each of the assigned movies online. We will then discuss and analyze each movie in class.

HON-H 226 – The Films of the Coen Brothers

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Sections offered SPRING 2023:

#6885

CHRISTOPHER ANDERSON

MW 4:30 PM–7:00 PM
Second Eight Weeks

HU 111

CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

 

This course on media authorship will explore the movies of Joel and Ethan Coen, the Academy-Award winning filmmakers responsible for such classic American movies as No Country for Old Men, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski, along with a dozen more critically acclaimed movies made since they broke onto the scene with Blood Simple, their stylish, shocking 1984 debut. Working as collaborators for more than three decades, the Coen brothers have written, produced, and directed a series of strikingly original independent movies that have earned them a reputation as among the most compelling filmmakers in the history of modern American cinema. Combining a deeply ironic wit with a dark sensibility, the Coen brothers pay tribute to classic movie genres, while casting a wary eye on American ideals and the history of American popular culture. They are still among the most highly regarded filmmakers in America: their latest movie collaboration, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, debuted on Netflix and received three Academy Award nominations in 2019.

The goal of this course is to introduce students to the study of movies and American culture by focusing on the concept of media authorship, which will shed light on the creative process in the American motion picture industry. By looking at the movies of these uncompromising, independent-minded filmmakers, we will trace an idiosyncratic path through the history of American cinema from the late 20th century to the present. The readings, screenings, assignments, and discussions for this course are intended to help students develop competence in critical thinking and analysis, as demonstrated through two exams, and advanced skill in the writing of reasoned critical arguments, as demonstrated in two essays.  Students are not required to have any prior experience in film criticism or history, just an interest in learning to think critically about movies and American culture.

During the course, we will view many of the movies directed by the Coen brothers, and students will be expected to view the movies online. We will then discuss and analyze each movie in class.

HON-H 233 – Young Adult Fiction

Posted on by brigphil

Sections offered SPRING 2023:

#6872
#7600

GARETH EVANS

MW 11:30 AM–12:45 PM
MW 3:00 PM–4:15 PM

HU 108
HU 108

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

 

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 unlikely to be unfamiliar with Dimaline’s book, a climate change novel of sorts set near the Canadian border, or with Yang’s investigation of anti-Asian-American prejudice, many of you will already have read the books by Collins and Rowling. 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?

HON-H 234 – Climate Change Fiction

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Sections offered SPRING 2023:

#10758

GARETH EVANS

TuTh 11:30 AM–12:45 PM

HU 111

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

 

Climate change is unquestionably the largest issue of the 21st-century. The issue is so large, in fact, that many people flee when it is named. Climate change is a difficult topic, and I’m not sure, to be honest, how effectively we’ll deal with that topic in my class. What we’re going to do, however, is read novels, essays, and a report that asks us to consider climate change. We will read excerpts from the Fourth National Climate Assessment, published in 2019 and thus already out of date (NCA). NCA is a representative climate pathway, and it makes predictions about what will happen at differing rates of climate change. Of the novels we read, only The Ministry for the Future takes up such a challenge, and we’ll measure its power—if that’s the word—against that of the report. Like The Ministry for the Future, Gun Island also has a global setting, while The Marrow Thieves is set in Canada, and Salvage the Bones takes place in Louisiana immediately before Hurricane Katrina. Kari Marie Norgaard’s essay discusses climate denial, while Ghosh’s “Stories” asks if it’s possible to write a realist novel about climate change.  One goal of the class is to think about what difference, if any, the semester’s reading makes to your attitude to climate change. 

SLAV-T 241 – Central and East European Immigration and Ethnic Identity in the U.S.

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Sections offered SPRING 2023:

#8474

JEFFREY HOLDEMAN

MW 4:45 PM–6:00 PM

LH 025

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd S&H credit; COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit; COLL (CASE) Diversity in U.S. credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

 

The United States has been called “the great American melting pot”—a hodge-podge of the peoples of the world—and some foreign visitors contend that it has no discernible culture or identity of its own.  Is America a fondue of uniform taste and consistency?  A mixed salad of various, separate components?  A stew of blended but identifiable ingredients which has a flavor all its own?

In the largest wave of immigration to the U.S.—from the 1880s until 1914—tens of millions of people arrived from Central and Eastern Europe.  Over the course of the 20th century, they were joined by millions more.  This course will focus on the peoples from the areas of modern-day Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Romania, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, and Montenegro, as well as stateless groups like Ashkenazi Jews, Carpathian Rusyns, Sorbs, Tatars, and Roma.

In this course we will explore ways in which one’s ethnic culture and identity (traditional and contemporary, from one’s homeland and in one’s new environment) can manifest themselves in art, music, food, clothing, language, social structure, religion, worldview, etc.  We will do this through posing a series of questions: What do people arrive with beyond their physical baggage?  What do they choose to keep and discard from their native or heritage culture?  How do they choose to “perform” or display this for themselves, to each other, and to outsiders?  What benefits and costs come from maintaining a foreign ethnic identity in the U.S.?

Students will learn and discuss core concepts from a variety of fields, things such as language maintenance and shift; boundary construction and negotiation; material culture; generation gap; regional variation; endogamy and exogamy; and acculturation, assimilation, and transculturation.  At the core will be the concept of identity and the many forms it can take.  Students will also learn basic techniques of urban fieldwork and research in order to carry out interviews and projects later in the semester.  All of these will come together in the process of trying to answer what it means to be “ethnic” in America.

The course will consist of at-home readings and writing assignments, in-class discussions and group work, essay tests, films, and optional fieldtrips, and it will culminate in the presentation of multimedia course projects based on an ethnic community from our target region in a U.S. locale and time period chosen by the student.  Readings and discussions will expose students to a variety of disciplines and approaches, such as those from ethnography, sociology, history, psychology, sociolinguistics, and ethnomusicology.

HON-H 240 – Violence: Biological, Psychological, Ethical, and Political Dimensions

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Sections offered SPRING 2023:

#33908

RICHARD GUNDERMAN

W 4:55 PM–7:25 PM

HU 217

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd S&H credit; COLL (CASE) S&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

 

Violence is one of the most fundamental and perplexing features of human existence, widely prevalent in the foundational texts of civilizations and throughout recorded history. In this course, we will attempt to gain insights into the roles of violence in our lives by examining it through biological, psychological, ethical, and political lenses. How can a deeper understanding of the roots of violence help us to prevent it and respond appropriately when it arises?

HON-H 303 – How to Translate Anything

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Sections offered SPRING 2023:

#13713

RUSSELL VALENTINO

MW 11:30 AM–12:45 PM

GA 0003

CLASS NOTES: COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

 

How to Translate Anything is a hands-on introductory course for anyone interested in the practice of translation. Participants in the class will get the chance to translate a variety of short texts from a language or languages of their choice into English. Together we will also explore translation resources, including online dictionaries, computer-assisted translation tools, publication venues, business aspects, and the history and theory of translation.

Because translation depends on adequate comprehension of other languages and cultures, participants should have good reading skills in at least one language other than English. Because translation is also a form of writing, students should come expecting to produce their translations in high-quality English versions. This means we’ll be discussing how to edit one’s own and other people’s work, challenges associated with specific languages, and principles of effective writing in general.

There are no required textbooks. All readings will be provided in pdfs or through links to online resources.

The instructor for this class, Russell Scott Valentino, is a professor in the Department of Slavic and East European Languages and Cultures. His translations, from multiple languages, have been published by The New York Times, Yale University Press, The Harvard Review, Reaktion Books, Northwestern University Press, Archipelago Books, and more. He is a former Editor-in-Chief at The Iowa Review and former President of the American Literary Translators Association.

HON-H 211 – Visions of Heaven and Hell

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Sections offered Spring 2023:

#3984
#5789

RICHARD CECIL

MW 1:15 PM–2:30 PM
MW 3:00 PM–4:15 PM

HU 108
HU 111

CLASS NOTES: COLL Intensive Writing section; IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

Beginning with Homer’s vivid depictions of the Greek gods in heaven in The Iliad and of the shades of the human dead in Hades in The Odyssey, progressing through Dante’s medieval Catholic vision of the afterlife of the damned and the saved in The Divine Comedy, and ending with Milton’s great dramatization of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve in Paradise Lost, we will read, in chronological order, a series of great books which go beyond earthly
experience. Each of these masterpieces presents us with a great example of creative imagination at work in literature.

Written work in the course will consist of 3 three-five-page critical papers plus a 6-10 page creative paper–a short visionary account of the author’s visit to heaven or hell.

Course texts:

The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Aeneid, The Divine Comedy (Inferno,
Purgatorio, Paradisio), Paradise Lost.

 

HON-H 234 – Gender/Race/Culture/Narrative

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Sections offered SPRING 2023:

#31354

MARGARET GRAY

TuTh 11:30 AM–12:45 PM

BH 336

CLASS NOTES: IUB GenEd A&H credit; COLL (CASE) A&H Breadth of Inquiry credit

Class meets In Person. For more information visit https://covid.iu.edu/learning-modes/index.html

 

This course explores the tangled questions that inform gendered, racial and cultural relationships as expressed within a range of modern novels in French, all authored by women. Our narratives will include the part-narrative, part-epistolary 1900 fiction of Marguerite Vallette-Eymery — who took as her pen name “Rachilde.” Her hybrid novel The Juggler studies the daring effort of an iconoclastic Creole widow to carve an identity within the stifling bourgeois norms and conventions of turn-of-the-century Paris. From the French Antilles and the racial and cultural context to which Eliante longs to return, we will travel to Belgium with Jacqueline Harpman’s novel Orlanda (1996) and the subtle, contemporary dystopia of a young woman’s journey to awareness of her confinement within the roles of successful professor and beloved companion. Written as a riposte to the conformist ending of Virginia Woolf’s romp through gendered convention in her 1928 novel, Orlando, Harpman’s narrative engages fantasy to oppose gendered norms through the conflict opposing two halves of a single person : the timid, feminine Aline and her outrageous masculine double, Orlanda. Fred Vargas’s Seeking Whom He May Devour takes us to a corner of rugged, rural France, and a climate of suspicion and superstition, where we will pursue the entwined narratives of a young African man and a young French woman composer/plumber/truck-driver as they negotiate cultural hostility motivated by racial and gendered prejudice. Just as the text overturns certain assumptions (among them, the assumption that its author is a man), it also overturns literary as well as sociocultural conventions. Selected scenes from the novel’s film adaptation will be consulted to test, contest and/or expand our reading. How to Cook One’s Husband African Style (2000) by Cameroonian immigrant to Paris Calixthe Beyala, pursues similar questions of racial and gendered identity within a contemporary Paris as its protagonist struggles to reconcile her traditionalist African past with a cosmopolitan present filled with false solutions. Across these various narratives and their differing geographies, we will be constantly attentive to the formal choices made by our fictions as they explore gendered, racial and cultural tensions. Student performance will be evaluated on the basis of a range of activities, including active class participation ; an oral presentation ; a midterm essay exam or analytical paper; and a final exercise consisting of a choice between an essay exam or an analytical paper. A final creative piece in dialogue with one of our novels (a “long-lost” chapter? An epilogue?) will be accepted pending permission of the professor.

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