Approved Literary & Intellectual Traditions Courses (T 190/191/192)

AHST-T 190

HISTORY OF LANDSCAPE: FROM EDEN TO ECOLOGY
The concept of landscape is gradually superseding that of urban planning and the field of landscape urbanism is encouraging more collaborative strategies in the design and study of man-made or natural environments. This course provides a general introduction to the field of landscape studies. Drawing from history, ecology, environmental history and vernacular studies, the course will equip the students to understand the evolution of the concept of landscape and its increasing significance in today’s environment.

AHST-T 191

CMLT-T 190

REACTING TO THE PAST: REVOLUTIONS IN SCIENCE, LOVE, & POLITICS
This course explores how new discoveries in science, love, and politics shaped our modern world. We will play two Reacting to the Past games: one re-imagines the controversial discovery of the heliocentric universe and the other stages the advent of democratic politics in France. The games will be connected by an emphasis on the emergence of new kind of individual who is shaped by modern notions of love. This bridge will allow us to reflect on the contribution of women as writers and artists to this period. This course aspires to submerge students in the kind of intellectual engagement that will encourage critical thinking, interdisciplinary inquiry, and civil discourse. Students must read a significant primary source and participate in the great debates which those writings originally stirred.

A SHORT HISTORY OF LOVE
This course explores the history of romantic notions, ideals, and realities in the West. It approaches the topic from philosophical, literary, artistic, and sociological perspectives.

TRAVEL TO LONDON & PARIS
London and Paris, whose histories are intertwined, were the cultural powerhouses of eighteenth and nineteenth century Europe. Learn about the changes the two cities experienced as they grew beyond their Medieval boundaries and concepts, adapting to an increasingly industrial world. Then walk through each city and see its rich history come alive through the architecture, the monuments, and the vast cultural resources that speak volumes about the spirit and energy of the people who struggled and prospered there.

COMM-T 190

SOCIAL MEDIA: HOW TO SHARE INFORMATION, WIN FRIENDS, AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE
Social media has become a living text and continues to grow in all industries. This course will study the development of this pervasive form of communication and its place in traditional textual analysis. Students will complete a book report on Neil Postman’s book Technopoly, which traces the relation of culture to technology through philosophical and sociological lenses. Students will also complete an assignment that outlines the historical development and current best communication practices of a social media site. Throughout the course, students will analyze visual and written content within social media, as well as the larger implications of these messages in the public sphere, organizations, and within their personal lives.

ENG-T 190

CRIMES OF FICTION
This course explores the nature of originality in art, thinking, and research, partly by examining the problem of “borrowing” and “stealing.” We all know stories of plagiarism and fraud, but it’s also the case that artists commonly use materials and ideas that they take from other artists; and scholars depend on the research of other scholars. It isn’t always easy to tell what is cheating and what is creativity. To get a handle on this complex problem, we’ll identify and study examples along the continuum from quotation, collage, allusion, translation, adaptation, imitation, parody, and the milder forms of unacknowledged influence, to instances of copying, theft, and fraud, including authorship hoaxes, plagiarism, and other forms of what now counts as copyright infringement. Sometimes the borrowing occurs across disciplines – for instance, in the case of Shakespeare’s Henry V, from a work of history (Holinshed’s Chronicles) to a work of drama. In such cases, what responsibility do authors or artists have toward the “truth” of the previous work from which they borrow? At the other end of the spectrum, we might ask whether true originality is possible. When and to what extent are influence and borrowing justified, good, and even unavoidable? What authorizes these acts? You’ll write essays on some of these issues. You’ll also complete several creative assignments that engage you in decision-making involving the use of materials created by other people.

BEYOND COWBOYS AND INDIANS: THE MYTHS OF THE U.S. WEST
The story of the U.S. West has been told in countless ways: as conflict between advancing civilization and disappearing “savage,” as site of individual self-discovery or transformation, or more recently, as site of struggle over issues such as immigration and race. In this course we will ask how the West has been portrayed at different times and what functions such portrayals might serve. In examining these questions, we will read literary and historical accounts and view selected films and ask how and why the West has proven so important to understandings of U.S. history and culture.

BEYOND THE PRESS: CRITICAL VIEWS OF JACK THE RIPPER
In the fall of 1888, a mysterious killer appeared in White Chapel, England. Fear stalked through England, France and the United States, as the unknown killer, dubbed “Jack the Ripper” by the press, slit the throats of women. The mystery of Jack the Ripper has been investigated and reinvestigated since 1888, with various writers promoting clashing views on his/her identity and motivation for the crime. While the actual murders in White Chapel are fact, Jack the Ripper was created by the press. During the course, we’ll explore identity formation for both the killer and the victims, and the ethics of portraying a serial killer in the press with the subsequent victims’ exposure, whose identities were often pigeonholed into more acceptable categories, i.e., drunks and prostitutes. As we explore these issues, we’ll read press coverage, nonfiction, cultural pieces from the time period, literature and current criticism of Ripper literature and the murders, the killer and the investigation.

THE BODY IN SCIENCE FICTION
This course explores the relationship between the body, technology, and the self in science fiction. We’ll consider what means to be human when the lines between biology and machines are increasingly blurred; what re-inventions of gender, parenting, sexuality, race and even consciousness happen through technology; and to what extent we may already be living in a “post-human” age. This is a discussion course, with frequent short writing and three 4-page papers.

BORDER CROSSINGS: LEARNING TO BE AMERICAN (Honors section offered)
This course will engage the theme “Diversity and Dialogue” by encouraging students to examine social borders through literature that explores immigration, assimilation, and the experiences of people who exist “between” cultures. A major focus will be the “hybridizing” of cultures and the way literature exploring themes of immigration and assimilation expresses the blending of cultures through language and narrative structure. In this class students will read writers from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, and will study works that span the 20th century (as well as a few more recently written texts). Our readings will include poetry, short fiction, non-fiction essays, drama and novels.

CASTAWAYS
The story of an individual stranded on a tropical island, forced to rely for survival on nothing but the fruits of the earth and his or her own ingenuity, has become a foundational myth of modern society. It has been rewritten countless times over the last 300 years, from Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) to the recent Tom Hanks film Castaway (2000) to hit TV shows like Survivor and Lost. Why do we remain so fascinated with the figure of the castaway? What does it tell us about the modern individual and his or her relationship to society? What do the changes in this story, as it has been recast for audiences of different time periods, tell us about the evolution of that society (or about the way we view it)? These are the kinds of questions that we will attempt to answer as we read selections from three centuries of castaway tales.

DEALS WITH THE DEVIL, OR HOW TO SELL YOUR SOUL
This course centers on the legend of Faust, a scholar or doctor who sold his soul to the devil. His story raises ethical and spiritual questions about the proper limits of knowledge, the proper role of the scientist, and the importance and dangers of individualism. It also addresses the problem of the hidden costs that sometimes accompany the massive payoffs of technological advances. We will read several examples of Faustian stories from Western literature, and we’ll listen to musical adaptations of the story. We’ll also apply our thinking to specific examples in the history of science, such as the Faustian bargain of nuclear power.

EVERYBODY’S IRISH: UNCOVERING PLASTIC PADDYS AND “REAL” IRISHMEN
Whatever happened to the Ireland of thatch cottages, fairies, giants, wakes, and dances? “Modern” Irishmen and women have been asking this question as far back as the nineteenth century when the Irish countryside was being transformed by the introduction of the English language and culture, and most importantly, the setting down of stories told around the fireside into print. This course will explore how some of the first Irish authors in English were able to capture the tall tales and voices of the last of the traditional Irish storytellers in writing. Most of our current views of the Irish come from these early stories, but how accurate is the stereotype of the poor, drunk, short-tempered, yet lovable Paddy? We will read literature and historical accounts, as well as watch selections from films such as The Quiet Man and Darby O’Gill and the Little People, to discover the complex image of the Irishman in print and how it has been manipulated and reproduced over time to create the “real” Irish.

FRACTURED FAIRY TALE FAMILIES
Fairy tales are commonly thought of as places where happily ever after happens, but “happily ever after” often isn’t how fairy tales end, and even when they do, it’s only after pages of near-death, flight and persecution for the hero or heroine. More often than not, the very worst villainy in fairy tales happens at the hands of evil siblings and scary mothers (only sometimes stepmothers). Often, fathers are absent or passive. Indeed, fairy tale families are so fractured, so “dysfunctional,” so twisted, that one is tempted to wonder why we read these tales of family tragedy at all. That’s a question we will ponder in this course, as we explore the trouble with families in fairy tales, and why these mixed-up tribes are so appealing.

IDEAL AND HELLISH SOCIETIES
This course looks at science fiction and philosophical representations of society and politics, exploring possibilities that challenge our usual ways of thinking.

IMAGINING KING ARTHUR: IN HISTORY, CULTURE, LITERATURE AND FILM FROM 1136 TO 2001
From the very beginning, Arthurian legend has always been a fantasy posing as history. Paradoxically, this fantasy both sparkles with social, political, cultural, and religious ideals, and yet is filled with stories of personal betrayal, civil dissension, brutality, and despair. In this course, we will examine the elements of Arthurian historical fantasy as they evolve over time in engagement with their specific historical contexts. Reading literary accounts of Arthur dating from the 1130s to the 1980s, and viewing films dating from the 1930s to 2004, we will explore how the legend has been adapted to specific cultures and uses, even up to the present.

IMAGINING MONSTERS
In this course, we will read some classic “monster” literature — Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Bram Stoker’s Dracula, among other works — to investigate how monsters function in the literary imagination as touchstones for exploring the essence and the boundaries of humanity. What if monsters are scary, not because they are different from us but because they are strangely similar to us? Which is more terrifying, to be attacked by a monster or to turn into one? Does modern science risk producing monsters in the attempt to enhance the human experience, or can technology help us fight monsters that threaten us? In addition to the above novels, course readings will likely include selections from Charles Darwin, John Locke, Thomas Malthus, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Major course requirements will include regular attendance, weekly responses, and three short papers.

THE INVENTION OF MEMORY
In this course we’ll consider how traditions in literature are concerned with memory and identity, both individual and collective. We’ll attend to the ways in which memory depends on the physical world of artifacts, objects, pictures, buildings, and monuments, as well as on written records. We’ll inquire about the ethical causes and results of acts of remembering and at the consequences of forgetting, strategically or accidentally. We’ll also look at how memory’s own inventiveness can embroider or falsify an experience and how memories themselves are invented. Our readings will be drawn from the literature of the European Enlightenment through the modern periods, but we’ll also read works on the philosophy and psychology of memory. Students will write frequently in essays, response papers, and an occasional autobiographical sketch and we’ll conduct the class primarily by discussion.

LABOR AND LITERATURE
“Labor and Literature” is designed to explore the representation, cultural reproduction, and meaning of work in the United States. While work is central to conceptions of U.S. national identity, its representation is frequently contested both in cultural and in political discourse, and indeed, is often entirely unrepresented depending how “work” is conceived. This course will focus on artists, writers, and filmmakers for whom labor, the workplace, and class are the central foci of their texts. Themes the course will explore include what it means to construct a subjective identity through the lens of labor, how intersections of race, gender, and national origin contribute to concepts of a laboring subject, as well as how definitions of labor have been used to construct and contest a homogenous national identity. In addition, we’ll look at the ways individual artists and writers sought to represent work and the ways they have engaged in political and cultural movements to change how Americans experience working and viewing/being/ becoming working-class.

LEADERS AND DECIDERS
This course explores concepts of leadership with reference to great works of literature, history, and religious writing. We’ll contrast leadership with mere decision-making and assess how decisions affect leadership outcomes. By exploring traditional perceptions of heroes as leaders and contemporary theories of management, we will see how motivation, moral authority, time and place, social status, concern for ethical behavior, money and power, and other factors affect the choices of Oedipus, Antigone, and Creon from Greek tragedy; Moses and Jesus from the Bible; Shakespeare’s Hamlet; and businessmen from Edith Wharton’s Age of Innocence and Ibsen’s Doll’s House.

LIFE ON THE SCREEN: THE INTERNET AND CONTEMPORARY SOCIETY
We work online and play online. Some of us virtually live online. The Internet is the new town square, post office, library, and mall. It is where we check the news, pursue our interests, shop, meet our friends, and keep our diaries. But what exactly is the Internet and why do we use it? In this class we’ll look at how the Internet has changed our notions of identity and community. We’ll talk about technology, its impact on our lives, and the ways in which it helps us ask questions about the world in which we live—or prevents us from asking such questions.

LITERACY, SOCIAL MEDIA, AND ACTIVE CITIZENSHIP
The course is designed around a central question: what can close attention to literacy practices help us understand about the nature of active citizenship? We can begin by looking at a fairly stark concept of the citizen in a democratic society: Silence is this citizen’s basic mode, for largely unallied with others, in possession of no regular civic audience, skilled in no genre of public address, in possession of no reliable stream of information or of one so contested and poisoned and vexed as to be more problem than aid, and susceptible to cynicism or despair or indifference any moment that is not spent in laboring or in consuming entertainment or in tending to the beautiful or bare walled-off garden of the private life. In contrast, the course will attend to a series of episodes in which literacy and public speech help us see as well as construct an alternate model for citizenship, including small and not always successful forms of public speech as well as more successful cases.

LITERARY HAUNTINGS
In this course, we will read literary works from the seventeenth century to the present, focusing on the theme of “Literary Hauntings.” For the first half of the semester, we will read various ghost stories from around the globe and discuss the cultural characteristics of different ghosts, their attachment to specific locales, and what they mean to their respective cultural communities. For the second half of the semester, we will turn our attention to one of the most famous ghosts in the history of English literature – in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. We will not only discuss the significance of Hamlet’s ghost, but also look at some literary and film adaptations to explore how Shakespeare’s work “haunts” literary representations at different historical moments.

MEXICAN LITERATURE AND CINEMA
This class will take place on the IUSB campus and at the Instituto Cultural Oaxaca in Oaxaca, Mexico. An examination of Mexican cinema and literature will complement the course of language study and immersion experience students will also embark on. We will study film form, literary traditions, and cultural expressions as found in Mexican films, novels and short stories, and crafts. We will also pay attention to the use of language in the films and novels, and the role of translation.

THE MUTABLE BODY
An interdisciplinary course with linked sessions focusing on the 2005-2996 campus theme, this is one of three sections which will meet together on Monday evenings to listen to a different guest lecturer on a weekly topic and to participate in a question/answer discussion with the invited expert. Wednesday classes will meet with their individual section for smaller follow-up discussions and the fulfillment of assignments. Weekly topics for the course will include: computer science “virtual” bodies; literary representations of bodies in film, TV, and advertising; politics and the body; alterations of the body (like tattooing, cosmetic surgery) and their health implications; and philosophical explorations of the mind/body question. Assignments will include journal responses to guest lectures, two formal essays, and a final project (which may be creative or a research paper). Thanks to an IU New Perspectives grant, the course offers a unique opportunity for students to interact with well-known scholars in several fields.

THE OUTCAST
The image of the outcast has captured many writers’ imagination, for it raises interesting questions about the relationship between individual and society. In what ways are the outcasts different from other people? Why are they excluded/rejected by the society? Do they pose problem, harm, or danger to the society? Do they challenge/critique social conventions and traditions? How do they view their own marginalized condition? Are they seeking for social acceptance or insisting on their own isolation? By reading writers from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, we will explore the issues of social boundaries, cultural definition, individual freedom and independence, and the price paid to be assimilated or excluded in a society.

PICTURES IN WORDS
In this course (which does not address film) we will consider how writers represent the visual world. We’ll attend to a few watershed moments primarily in western culture at which visual experience became particularly important, such as the craze for the picturesque, the increasing precision of detail in descriptions of people and places in order to create a sense of realism, and the divergence of language and exact pictorial representation with the advent of impressionist painting and the invention of photography (which of course does issue in film). We’ll think about two streams of influence—science, which not only observes but tries to explain, and aesthetics—that is, the study of the creative, beautiful and pleasing—and what each dimension adds to the other. We’ll read poetry, fiction, and nonfiction that rely on observation of the natural world, but we’ll also have a glimpse of the humanly invented spaces of cities, as in a detective story, for example. The class will be conducted by discussion and there will be several medium-length analytical essays as well as short informal exercises in representing visual experience.

RISE OF MODERN CITY: LONDON & PARIS
London and Paris were the cultural powerhouses of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe. This interdisciplinary, team-taught course explores and compares the two cities between 1660 and 1870, with attention to what an American traveler can learn from first-hand investigations in the cities themselves. Professors Chaney (English) and Walker (French) will present examples from literature, art, architecture, commerce, and the artifacts of daily life to demonstrate how London and Paris grew beyond medieval boundaries and concepts and adapted to an increasingly industrial world. This period witnessed the rise of modern sensibilities, concepts, and institutions. The course has a connection to the summer overseas program (the London-Paris Program), for which it may serve as an introduction. Certainly not all student who enroll in the course will travel with us to Europe this summer; but it will be exciting for all of the students to imagine their own future journeys.

STORIES OF THE DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY (formerly The Dysfunctional Family in Literature)
The course focuses on the repetitive pattern of dysfunction in family groups from the ancient Greeks to modern writers. The class will analyze the causes of socially dysfunctional actions and the effects on family members and the surrounding society. We’ll study dysfunctional characters in literary works and film with the help of some psychological texts. We will examine the difficulty of breaking out of dysfunction and investigate ethical consequences of characters’ actions. How are the destructive consequences of dysfunctional acts treated by the authors in this course? How does modern society view such acts? Can dysfunctional acts be explained away by fate or birth? Where does responsibility reside?

SIGNED, THE LAND OF THE LONG WHITE CLOUD
New Zealand is increasingly called by its indigenous Māori name, Aotearoa, the land of the long white cloud, referring back to Māori mythology according to which the explorer Kupe and his crew discovered the North Island thanks to the long cloud that permanently hung over it. The existence of a bilingual name for a single country betrays some of the tensions at play in the emergence and establishment of New Zealand’s national identity along a binary divide between the indigenous Maori population and the Pākehā (European) settler. This course foregrounds the rise and establishment of New Zealand’s political, cultural, and literary, independence from Great Britain through the study of the distinctive stylistic traits of signature Kiwi authors and film directors of both Māori and Pākehā descent.

STORIES OF IMMIGRATION AND INTEGRATION
Immigrants and African Americans are both outsiders and insiders in America. The authors we will study in this course have written about their lives in ways that are both movingly personal and absolutely public and political. These life stories tell of the individual’s relationship with the American culture. Ethnicity, race, gender, class and sexuality are all varieties of categorization that affect these individuals. In this class we are studying literature as well as history. We will evaluate these texts as works of the imagination as well as documents that tell the story of a particular historical moment. Local and national speakers will also be a major part of this class. This course links a history section with an English literature section of T190.

TRAVEL LITERATURE AND THE POLITICS OF DESCRIPTION
We will investigate how travel narratives produce different kinds of truths ¬about nature, about other cultures, and even about ourselves. As travelers over the last four-hundred years put into writing their numerous observations, they employed different strategies for describing what they saw. Some described the world scientifically while others described it artistically; some wrote journals and letters while others wrote fiction and poetry. Instead of reading travel literature as narratives that simply reveal ‘truths’ about the world that these travelers saw, we will think about how writers struggled to represent their observations by employing strategies of description from various intellectual traditions. We will read, among other texts, Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, selections from Captain Cook’s Journals, and selections from Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. We will think about these primary texts through supplemental readings about scientific observation, artistic description, ethnography, and cultural studies. Towards the end of the semester, we will also look at some travel brochures and pamphlets to discuss how our own travels might be built upon expectations of what we will see and experience at certain tourist destinations.

THE WAR FILM AND NOVEL
This class will focus on difficult dialogues at their breaking point, violent conflict. We will identify partisanship in war films and novels and interrogate the difference between perspectives and propaganda. We will also examine the representation of race, sexuality, and gender in the war film and novel, a genre traditionally considered “male.” In addition to bravado and violence, the war film and novel are also associated with high emotion. Touching upon the history, social context, and demographics of the participants, this class will explore the complicated project of representing warfare. Films may include The Thin Red Line and Battle of Algiers; novels may include For Rouenna.

WALKING-EXPLORING THE WORLD ONE STEP AT A TIME
In this class, we will take the mundane, everyday activity of walking–putting one foot in front of the other–and explore its ramifications for making meaning in the world. Over time, walking has functioned as pilgrimage, protest, escape, distraction, punishment, meditation, procrastination, as an avenue for regaining health, as a means of personal transformation, and as a form of salvation. We will use readings about walking and experiences of walking as tools for literary and cultural analysis and as the basis for creative inspiration. We will study the history and intellectual tradition of walking and the varying ways it has been perceived in literature, film, art, and photography. Finally, we will consider how walking influences the ways in which we inhabit our campus and our communities, how it informs our sense of space and time, our identities, perspectives, and capacity for self-reflection.

WHAT IS PROGRESS?
In this course, we will investigate the ways that the concept of Progress has developed over the past few centuries. Beginning with supposedly universal Enlightenment beliefs in the power of rationality, science, and reason, this concept has also been developed and applied in specific contexts for various ends.

WHAT IT MEANS TO WORK IN THE MOVIES
For most Americans, work is an integral part of our lives. It both helps to identify who we are and what we “do,” but, more basically, it also takes up a large amount of our time. We work a lot. You might not think so, however, if you used movies to understand the role of work in American lives. In most films, work is a passing mention of a “cool” career (which, perhaps, affords the protagonist the expensive vacation/dinners/social activities the fuel the action of the film) or a montage of assorted degrading drudgeries. Some films, however, do address work in more meaningful ways, and those are some of the films will be studying in this course. To help us place the films into a meaningful context, we will read some theories of work and its importance in our lives. To help us discuss the films with complexity, we will read about how to interpret, discuss, and write about films in an academic way. But most of all, we will watch and discuss movies, looking for the arguments they make about when work is valuable, how much control we have over our work lives, and what kinds of actions (if any) the films support.

WOMAN IN REFRIGERATORS AND BEYOND: A FEMINIST APPROACH TO READING COMIC BOOKS
In this class we will, in a very broad sense, look at the way women are portrayed in comic books. The semester will be split between reading books by male writers like Alan Moore and the Luna Brothers, and female writers like Jodi Picoult and Gail Simone. We’ll draw most of our theoretical framework from feminist film studies, and we’ll be watching a few (non-comic) films, like Hitchcock’s “Vertigo”, to help us see how to give a feminist reading to a visual text, which, in many ways, is exactly what comic books are.

WHY SCHOOL? THE PURPOSE AND POTENTIAL OF EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES
In his 2012 State of the Union Address, President Obama challenged every state to require its students to stay in school until age 18, and he has repeatedly stressed the importance of college. But why? What is accomplished in our school systems, both K-12 and beyond? What do we think successful education, meaningful learning, and excellent teaching really are, and why are they important? In this course we will examine the underlying purposes – and possibilities – of education in the United States. We will focus on the historical and contemporary ideas and functions that have driven public education in the U.S., including the relationship among education, democracy, and justice. We will draw from perspectives in literature, film, philosophy, sociology, history, and cultural studies in order to better understand how these seemingly straightforward concepts and practices are actually quite complex and heavily debated. This is an interactive course where we will learn to critically assess the institutions of education, examine our own assumptions about and experiences with education, and articulate a vision for what education can provide.

BAD MOTHERS
In literature, mothers are often portrayed as loving, selfless, sacrificial angels in the house. What about those bad mothers—those who do not take care of their children, those who leave their home, those who have troubled relationships with their family members? Are they wicked, victimized, or rebelling? How could we view mothers as people rather than as symbol, type, or category? By reading historical and cultural writings as well as literature from a variety of racial and ethnic backgrounds, we will examine the gender norms for “good mothers” in specific historical and cultural contexts and explore sociopolitical, ideological, and cultural reasons for “bad mothers.” Therefore, this course will explore how mothers are inscribed in various discourses, how they represent or challenge traditional values and morals, how they reconcile their sexuality, freedom, and individuality with their familial obligations, and how the “good/bad mothers” could be redefined.

ENG-T 191

HEROES IN ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL WORLD LITERATURE
Three boys without a father: one finds a sword in a stone, one is given a light saber, and one is chosen by a wand. All become heroes. The significance of these and many other similarities among such tales of heroes—as well as of their important differences—is the topic of this course. The focus, in particular, will be on heroic legends from the ancient and medieval eras, ranging across time and space from 4000 years ago in Mesopotamia (Gilgamesh), to 2500 years ago in India (the life of the Buddha), to 500 years ago in England (Sir Thomas Malory’s account of King Arthur). Throughout, we will reflect on apparent continuities among these stories as well as the vast differences in culture that they carry, and we will think about the cultural functions of heroic legends in general. And, yes, we will also talk about how the Star Wars and Harry Potter sagas fit into the long tradition of heroic literature.

JOURNEYS IN WORLD LITERATURE BEFORE 1700
Starting with fairy tales, the course explores the different uses of the theme of the journey in a wide-ranging set of ancient and medieval texts from around the world. Three perspectives from which to analyze and discuss the texts will be cognitive science, the structural analysis of folk tales and fairy tales, and Freudianism. The second and third approaches will be based upon critical readings included in Tatar’s collection of fairy tales. The approach through cognitive science will be carried out by working through Mark Turner’s The Literary Mind: The Origins of Thought and Language. The three perspectives will provide students specific entries into the literary texts, helping both to uncover significant but not always transparent similarities among texts and to explore the implications of differences that stand out against those similarities.

ENG-T 192

LITERATURE AND THE VISIBLE WORLD
This course will consider the presentation of visual experience in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. We’ll attend to a few critical points at which visual experience, of people and places, is central to the writer and the form in which he or she is writing. We’ll think about two streams of influence—science, which not only observes but tries to explain— and aesthetics—that is, the study of the creative, beautiful, and pleasing—and what each dimension adds to the other. We’ll read works that rely on observation of the natural world, but we’ll also have a glimpse of the humanly invented spaces of cities. Readings will probably include works by Tracy Chevalier, Charles Darwin, Thomas Hardy, Franz Kafka, Jun’ichiro Tanizaki, haiku poets, Yoko Ogawa, and Italo Calvino. The format for the class will be discussion with occasional short lectures on historical periods. There will be two medium-length analytical essays and numerous reading response papers.

THE QUEST MYTH IN WORLD LITERATURE AFTER 1700
The course will investigate the myth of the heroic quest in Western and non-Western literature from the Renaissance to the modern era. The story of the hero’s quest is central to all myth. The mythic quest for the Holy Grail will serve as the starting point. The Grail quest delineates the hero’s journey toward self and cosmic integration. In the novels and plays included in the course, we will follow the hero’s journey toward self-discovery and social redemption or failure and examine the ways in which the archetypal quest myth is transformed by the individual storytellers. In addition, through the hero’s quest, which is at once personal, national and cultural, we will investigate differences between Western and non-Western literature. Secondary texts will focus on comparative mythology.

FINA-T 190

THE MUTABLE BODY – Honors
An interdisciplinary course with linked sessions focusing on the 2005-2996 campus theme, this is one of three sections which will meet together on Monday evenings to listen to a different guest lecturer on a weekly topic and to participate in a question/answer discussion with the invited expert. Wednesday classes will meet with their individual section for smaller follow-up discussions and the fulfillment of assignments. Weekly topics for the course will include: computer science “virtual” bodies; literary representations of bodies in film, TV, and advertising; politics and the body; alterations of the body (like tattooing, cosmetic surgery) and their health implications; and philosophical explorations of the mind/body question. Assignments will include journal responses to guest lectures, two formal essays, and a final project (which may be creative or a research paper).

ONE-HUNDRED YEARS OF RUSSIAN ART AND CULTURE
Russian and Soviet Art will introduce students to the major modern art movements of Russia and the early Soviet Union, from 19th century realism to early 20th century modern art developments and then to the post revolutionary decline of avant-garde art and the emergence of Socialist Realism. The art will be analyzed within the historical and social contexts of late Russian and early Soviet periods. The political milieu of Russian and Soviet art will be critiqued for its influence on and its influence by the development of the various modern art movements. In addition, the cultural context of the art will be examined for how it affected the production of art and how the art itself affected the larger cultural context.

HIST-T 190

AMERICAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
Autobiographies or memoirs are interdisciplinary by nature, combining history and literature in real life stories, artistically rendered. This class will consider the question: is this “fact or fiction?” Students will read writers coming from different class, race and gender positions in 17th to 20th century America. Class discussion, critical thinking, and writing skills will be emphasized.

BIOGRAPHY AND GENDER IN EUROPEAN HISTORY
In this course, we will examine how individuals learn and negotiate their gender roles. Every week we will focus in depth on a pair of historical figures and study the ways that they understood themselves as men or women and the ways that their gender shaped their roles and their experiences. We will draw on interdisciplinary approaches in particular history, political science, anthropology, and gender and literary studies.

COLD WAR CULTURES
From the dropping of the Atomic Bomb in 1945 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, from fallout shelters to the impact of rock and roll, this course will consider the variety of ways the cold war shaped the world and in particular American society. In addition to traditional histories that explain the political, diplomatic, and military aspects of the conflict, we will also examine how the popular culture of the time understood this ongoing struggle.

FIRST ENCOUNTERS IN THE NEW WORLD
The era from 1492 to 1572 is often referred to as the Age of Discovery, whereby Europeans first “discovered” the Americas. Yet millions of indigenous peoples already inhabited these lands, particularly in Mexico, and Central and South America. These first encounters between Europeans and indigenous peoples and the subsequent conquest of the latter constitute one of the most momentous events in world history. This course will focus on an examination of some of the indigenous societies in the Americas prior to 1492, some of the expeditions of Europeans as they traveled to and through the Americas, and the fascinating first encounters of peoples who were previously unknown to each other. Students will be introduced to these cultures and peoples through the eyes and words of the conquerors and conquered themselves. We will bring this era to life as we read accounts written by Christopher Columbus as he set foot in the Caribbean islands, Juan Ponce de León in Florida, and Hernán Cortés and Bernal Díaz del Castillo as they interacted with, and subsequently conquered, the Aztecs. We will also read some of the few sources that survive that are written from the viewpoint of the conquered, such as the Mayan Chilam Balam and the Aztec Florentine Codex. Through these documents in particular students will analyze and gain an understanding of the fateful initial perceptions of each other and the subsequent clash and conquest of civilizations.

THE HEALTH OF NATIONS: POVERTY, PROGRESS, THE BODY, AND THE BODY POLITIC IN MODERN LATIN AMERICA
This course will consider the questions of nation-building and development in Latin America by using an interdisciplinary approach that focuses on the social, cultural, and moral dimensions of these processes in the late 19th and 20th centuries. As the nations of Latin America became more urban and “modern” many elites were increasingly preoccupied about the poor and problems such as vagrancy, prostitution, and the spread of diseases such as leprosy and syphilis. They often used metaphors of the body to refer to what they perceived as a degenerating organism in which the individual cells of the social body were deteriorating. In order to build their nations many elites, including medical doctors, felt a dire need to address these moral and physical “ills.” In this course, we will examine historical ideas about poverty, disease, citizenship, and nation as well as the public health campaigns, moral reforms, charity, and welfare programs that were implemented in various Latin American countries in order to achieve national progress. This course will be based on discussions of the reading material and lectures.

THE HOLOCAUST
In the National Socialist period, Germans unleashed a wave of violence across Europe that ultimately resulted in the death of fifty to seventy million people. Led by an explicitly scientific racism, National Socialist leaders gassed millions of Jews, annihilated the leadership of Poland, carried out a race‐war against Russians, and worked millions of other Europeans to death in slave camps. This class explores the mechanisms of the Holocaust, the lines between perpetrators and resisters, and stories of the National Socialist victims.

HUMANS AND THE ENVIRONMENT
This course focuses on the history of Environmental movements in the U.S. from the nineteenth century to the present, within the context of the relationship of humans and the environment over a long sweep of time, from the first cultivation of agriculture to the present. We explore, in an interdisciplinary way, the great humanistic traditions of inquiry regarding ideas of nature. The strongest interdisciplinary tie is between literature and history. Writers on nature such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rachel Carson, and Barbara Kingsolver will be among the works analyzed. Guest speakers active in local sustainability activities and organizations will be invited to discuss their work. Field trips such as hikes at Rum Village park and walks to the St. Joseph river on the IU South Bend campus. These field trips are followed by class discussion and journal writing. The course finishes with each student writing a brief research paper on an environmentalist or an environmental group and making a Powerpoint presentation to the class. Writing intensive, discussion-focused.

INDIANS OF GREAT LAKES – Topic Pending
The Great Lakes in North America are part of a vast region in which Native peoples have dwelled from time immemorial, spanning the eras of big-game hunters, moundbuilders, all the way through the early-modern period, contact with whites, then on to the present. Throughout these periods indigenous peoples from various cultures have traditionally interacted in many ways, including trade, diplomacy, warfare, intermarriage, religious gatherings & prophetic movements, cultivating, hunting, gathering, fishing, trapping, and participating in a growing symbiotic system of exchange. As a nexus of crossroads, due to the several lakes and five portages that cross a continental divide, travel throughout the region of the southern Great Lakes has been heavy, from ancient times to the present. When whites first entered the region of the eastern Great Lakes in the early seventeenth century, the stakes were immediately raised, in terms of intensifying tribal rivalries, the escalating fur trade, and warfare becoming much more thorough and deadly, as compared to those aspects of Native life prior to European arrival. As Euro-American culture increased and flourished in the region, Native peoples began to deal with resident fur traders, soldiers, missionaries, and travelers of other sorts in multiple ways. What were the implications of this permanent presence of whites and the Natives’ heightened contact with them? What choices did Native peoples strategically make in order to deal with these challenges to their cultures and ways of life? Students will discover the answers in this course.

JAPANESE AESTHETICS & THOUGHT
This course explores Japanese culture through the analysis of literary and film sources. It will focus on Japanese world-views, aesthetics, human relations, and specific customs, including food and etiquette.

THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT: FROM THE FATHER OF HIS COUNTRY TO HONEST ABE
This is a course on the development, growth, and changes seen in the American presidency in the formative years of the American republic. We will begin with the formation of the office of the president of the United States in the Constitution and George Washington’s first presidency, and continue up to and including the presidency of Abraham Lincoln during the difficult years of the Civil War.

PAST AND PRESENT THROUGH CHINESE HISTORY AND ARCHITECTURE (Approved. Description to come.)

PHILADELPHIA: REVOLUTION TO REPUBLIC
This course will examine Philadelphia’s place in the American Revolution and the formation of the American republic. Many historians believe Philadelphia should be considered as the primary example of a revolutionary city in early America. Through the use of primary and secondary sources, students will examine the role of Philadelphia from 1600-1860. These works will focus on the areas of race, religion, government and politics and maritime economy as these were major issues facing the United States as it moved from Revolution to Republic.

RACE, CLASS, AND IDENTITY IN LATIN AMERICAN HISTORY
In this course, we will examine the interplay of race, class, and identity as national identities were being formed in the countries of Latin America in the 19th and 20th centuries. We will consider how the concepts of race and class were defined (influenced in part by Social Darwinism) and how the people of mixed race in Latin America were often viewed by the primarily white elite as “obstacles” to progress. Of prime importance then, is the study of historical ideas about and connections between poverty, class, race, and nation. We will also consider some of the conflicts and riots that unfolded. The course is interdisciplinary and will be based primarily on discussions of the reading material. Students will also complete several short writing assignments.

REACTING TO THE PAST: DARWIN
After background on Charles Darwin’s idea on science and evolution as well as the nineteenth century British world in which he lived, students in this class will become actors in a debate before the British Royal Society. Students will take sides on the question: should Darwin be awarded the Copley medal for his achievements? Much of the class will focus on student presentations and class debates on the Copley medal as well as related questions around religion and science. For more information on this “Reacting to the Past” class see this website: http://www.darwingame.org/

RELIGIOUS PILGRIMAGE: PIETY AND PLEASURE
We will examine pilgrimage in the Middle Ages as a religious ritual within the context of the monotheistic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. We’ll ask why medieval people undertook long, unsafe journeys to visit the tomb of a saint or a Sufi; what they believed or hoped to receive as a reward for their journey, etc. In addition to spiritual gain, medieval pilgrims to Jerusalem, Mecca or Santiago de Compostela in Spain also enriched their lives by coming in contact with different cultures. Thus, we will also examine the cultural diffusion that resulted from this form of travel. Our interdisciplinary approach will combine literature, music and art. Students will sharpen their critical thinking skills through careful reading and written interpretation of primary and secondary sources.

ROUTE 66: A HISTORY (Credit not allowed for this T 190 and HIST-A 221 with same topic.)
Route 66: This great American Highway, built in the 1920s, went from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Monica, California. It was featured in John Steinbeck’s novel, The Grapes of Wrath as well as the 1946 song, “(Get Your Kicks) on Route 66.” Many artists including the Rolling Stones and Depeche Mode have sung about Route 66. The road has also appeared in movies and television shows. This interdisciplinary history course will explore the history of this American icon through books, films and music.

STUDY ABROAD: DICTATORSHIP & RESISTANCE IN BERLIN & PRAGUE
The short twentieth century (1918‐1989) in Central Europe has been a century of war, dictatorship, devastation, and revolution. This course will allow you to develop a new understanding of this period through personal encounters with two cities: Berlin & Prague. You will study the history, read the literature, analyze the culture, and experience living in two of the most important cities in Central Europe. You will see the bullet holes that still exist on Berlin buildings, walk in the streets with the former Berlin wall marked on the ground, visit Prague’s city center, where activists marched in 1968 and 1989, experience Prague’s Wenceslas Square where Prague’s citizens resisted Nazi and Communist tanks, and learn about the Holocaust by studying at Berlin’s Holocaust museum, touring the cemetery and synagogues in Prague’s Jewish Ghetto, and taking a day‐trip from Prague to the concentration camp Theresienstadt. You will view images of dictatorship and resistance in film, photography, and avant‐garde art, and these examples will guide you in the creation of a book of collage that artistically communicates the varieties of your experience abroad.

U.S. ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENTS
Explores, in an interdisciplinary way, the great humanistic traditions of inquiry regarding ideas of nature. We will trace the history of the environmental movement in the U.S. from the late nineteenth century to the present.

MUS-T 190

EXPLORING MUSICAL GENRES: CLASSICAL MUSIC & BEYOND
This course explores the elements and performing media of music using live music, recorded music, and video. The role of music in society at different times in history in both Western and non-Western culture will be examined. Students will be expected to attend classical music concerts, and to develop the listening skills needed to write critically about their concert experience and other music experienced in the course.

EXPLORING MUSICAL GENRES-LATIN AMERICAN MUSIC
This course provides an introduction to selected musical genres and traditions in Latin America and the Caribbean. The course integrates an examination of musical material, such as instruments, components of musical style and performance, with a consideration of historical development of the various music cultures covered throughout the semester. Material will be presented through class lectures, readings, and listening assignments. No previous musical knowledge or ability is required.

EXPLORING MUSICAL GENRES: MUSIC IN AFRICAN SOCIAL LIFE
On the continent of Africa, music plays a vital part in the social lives of its people, marking rites of passage, the change of seasons, and special ceremonies, signaling the entrance of royalty, recounting the family lineage of chiefs, galvanizing political protest, and uniting the spirits of ancestors with the living. Students will interact with African music both as a living art and as an intellectual tradition by reading, listening to, watching, and interpreting scholarly material that examines the links between African music and a broad spectrum of humanistic issues such as: identity (race, class, gender, age, ethnicity), morality/ethics, the dynamic between tradition/modernity, emotions, knowledge, metaphysics (spirituality/belief/religion), aesthetics, politics/civics(nationalism), creativity, artistic ownership, representation(of music and musical experience), etc.

EXPLORING MUSICAL GENRES: MUSIC IN THE BIG APPLE
This course, open to non-music and music majors, will use the city of New York as a focal point to trace the development of three styles of music: classical, jazz, and rock/pop. From an interdisciplinary perspective, the course will begin with an overview of the social history of the city and how this lay the groundwork for an international cultural capital. Composers and reformers will be the central topic, but the course will also touch on NYC architecture, history, and politics.

EXPLORING MUSICAL GENRES: OPERA
This course will explore the history of opera from its inception in the musical; aesthetic, and philosophical tenets of the late European Renaissance, through the baroque and classical periods of music history. A brief introduction to the early history and formation of the operatic genre will be followed by extensive viewing of complete operas and opera scenes from each of the historical periods covered in this survey. Various readings and student participation in class discussion will be an integral part of the course and its assessment.

EXPLORING MUSICAL GENRES: THE PASTORAL
In this course, the “Pastoral” refers to representations of the rural life in Western literature, visual art, and especially in music. We will study the ways in which the idealized and idyllic mythology and imagery of the Pastoral relate to social ideas about communal organization and governance, authentic versus inauthentic environments, ecological movements of various kinds: escape from versus immersion into reality, etc. We’ll begin with the poems of Theocritus and Virgil that first defined the topic. We will then examine the use of the topic in the late Renaissance and early Baroque, looking carefully at the first great opera, L’Orfeo by Monteverdi. After a lingering glance at Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons, we’ll investigate Romanticism’s flirtation with nature and the sublime, using Beethoven and Schubert as musical figures. We’ll conclude with pastoral works from the modern and postmodern eras.

HISTORY OF ROCK AND ROLL
This course explores history of rock and roll, from its roots in American jazz and blues in the early twentieth century, to its most contemporary manifestations. The method for studying rock and roll in this course is to examine it as a logical result of American societal trends and cultural mores of the era. As such, Music T-190; The History of Rock and Roll is as much a look at American society and its values as it is a music course. The ability to read music is not required. A term paper and two examinations (mid-term and final) are the course evaluators. Students need not have any formal training in music to benefit from this course.

SURVEY – AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSICS
In this course we will explore several genres (styles) of African American musics, dating from 1600s to present. For each genre discussed, we will examine the context and history of its development, the overarching musical features/performance styles, and key innovators and performers.. We also will consider the impact of various cultural, political, and social developments within and without the United States, including slavery, the Great Migrations, and the Azusa Street revivals on the African American musical landscape. Central to this discussion are the issues of gender, race, religion, migration, diaspora, and nationalism.

MUSIC IN CHICAGO
Chicago, famous for its music, provides a home to the world-class Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Lyric Opera, and a vibrant jazz, blues and folk music scene. This course will examine the cauldron of socio-political, racial, and cultural factors, specific to Chicago, that enabled all of these diverse styles of music to flourish. Styles such as doowop, gospel and hip hop will also be discussed. The course, open to non-music and music majors, will take an interdisciplinary perspective that will familiarize students with the musical heritage, urban development, and history of Chicago.

PHIL-T 190

HEROES, SAINTS, AND SINNERS
Both philosophy and literature attempt to understand human experience and our place in the world. Philosophy does so by questioning, analyzing and reflecting; literature through an exercise of the imagination. But are there insights that are available only to philosophy or only to literature? This course will make use of a selection of powerful literary classics to explore a variety of philosophical themes, including: the nature of the divine, conceptions of good and evil, the nature and limits of human knowledge, problems of freewill, and conceptions of love and human beauty.

INTRO TO EXISTENTIALISM
What is the self? Is it the social identity that we forge by performing roles on the stage of public life, or is it something more subjective (the inner power of free choice), or something deeper and more embodied (an inner core of instinctual or creative spontaneity), or something higher (a spiritual center within us)? What does it mean to be one’s “true” or “authentic” self? What does it mean to live a life that is free, that fulfills human potentials, or that courageously faces the realities of the human condition? What role do others play in our attempts to enact or give expression to self? What role does religion play? These are among the questions we will discuss in this introductory course on existentialism. The approach is interdisciplinary. We not only discuss concepts of existentialism as set forth in classic texts of philosophy; we also apply these concepts to characters and situations depicted in literary works exemplifying existential themes.

PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE FICTION
This class examines various philosophical issues as they arise in science fiction novels, short stories, films, and television series. Students will read or view ·works in science fiction accompanied by complementary philosophical selections (both classic and contemporary). Topics to be discussed may include: (a) the limits of knowledge and the relationship between appearance and reality; (b) the nature of the mind, intelligence, and consciousness; (c) the logical puzzles that arise when imagining time travel; (d) personal identity; and (e) ethical issues involving technology, particularly biotechnology, along with those arising from social and political structures.

REACTING TO THE PAST: SOCRATES, GALILEO, DARWIN
This course gives students an in-depth understanding of several historical episodes using “reactive” role-playing games. Each of the three sections of the class centers on a revolution in human thinking. First, we will examine the birth of democracy in ancient Greece. Debates in the Athenian Assembly over the desirability of democratic rule, the extent of power, and the need for preserving traditions will be reenacted; special attention will be given to Plato’s Republic and the trial of Socrates. Next, we will examine the debates over the sun-centered theory of Copernicus, which eventually replaced ancient views that regarded the earth as the center of creation. Galileo’s trial for publicly advocating Copernicanism, and his condemnation by the Catholic Church, provides the main focus for this section of the course. Finally, we will examine the debates in the Royal Society of Great Britain over Darwin’s The Origin of Species in the 1860s. Controversies over the relation between religion and science, faith and reason, and the nature and scope of scientific thinking that occurred then still reverberate today in our own culture.

PSY-T 190

REACTING TO THE PAST: DEMOCRACY, CONFLICT, & EQUALITY
Overview: This course aspires to submerge students in the kind of intellectual engagement which will encourage critical thinking, interdisciplinary inquiry, and civil discourse. The course will consist of two re-acting games in which students must read a significant primary source and participate in the great debates which those writings originally stirred.

The game The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 BC by Mark C. Carnes and Josiah Ober, occurs at the end of the Peloponnesian War immediately after the downfall of the Thirty Tyrants and continues through the trial of Socrates. The students are assigned specific roles and factions to deal with such essential questions as the consequences of free speech, the responsibilities of citizenship, and the maintenance of cultural traditions. Students need a thorough understanding of Plato’s Republic in order to adequately play out their roles.
The second game, Patriots, Loyalists, and Revolution in New York City, 1775-76 by William Offutt, asks students to critically examine the intellectual, political and social issues involved in New York’s participation in the American Revolution. In addition to deciding whether to join the revolution or not, factions debate the roles of women, slaves, and laborers in colonial society, using Locke’s Second Treatise of Government and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense as a basis for their arguments.

SPAN-T 190

MEXICAN CULTURE AND SOCIETY
This course provides a thematic presentation of vital artistic, literary, architectural, musical, political, religious and historical movements within Mexico spanning from pre-Columbian to contemporary times. This course is designed for students who wish to further their understanding of Mexican cultural and historical developments through a combination of primary resources, academic readings, and with an option for in-country experience.

STUDY ABROAD COSTA RICA – COSTA RICAN CULTURE AND SOCIETY
Centered on the study of eco-social lifeways, this study abroad course provides a thematic presentation of lived experience and a people’s relationship with the land. Artistic, literary, political, religions, musical and historical content are complemented by the required excursions and service learning components. This course is designed for students who wish to further their understanding of Costa Rican cultural and historical developments through a combination of primary resources, academic readings, and with an option for in country and service-learning experience.

THTR-T 190

STRUCTURE & ANALYSIS OF DRAMA
Explores, in an interdisciplinary way, one of the great humanistic traditions of inquiry regarding one of the following themes: ideas of self, ideas of truth, ideas of beauty, ideas of community, ideas of nature, ideas of conflict. Writing intensive, discussion-focused.

WGS- T 190

REACTING TO THE PAST: SEX WARS AND SOCIAL CHANGE
This course provides an overview of the history of women in the United States, but it also includes complementary material from throughout North America from pre-Revolutionary times to the present. Although we will take a broad and essentially chronological approach, this is not simply the “same old story” with a different emphasis. We will reexamine some familiar historical events from a different perspective, but we will also focus on issues vital to the female experience (such as sexuality, reproduction, body image, gender construction, uncompensated labor, and domestic violence) that often get overlooked. We will use primary texts to anchor our understandings of the arguments of the moment, and secondary texts to help us frame these concepts analytically.