AHST-T 390
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.
CMLT-T 390
BECOMING MODERN: LONDON AND PARIS 1660-1870
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.
WAYS OF NOT READING
This interdisciplinary course begins with an examination of the philosopher Pierre Bayard’s provocative book, How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read. Bayard develops concepts such as the “inner library” and the “inner book” to explain differences in understanding about the books we read; and he explains why it is not always necessary, desirable, or even possible to read books. Needless to say, this is also a course about reading books, and in which we will read books and parts of books; but we’ll question what it means to read and what it means “to have read” a book or to have seen a movie. We’ll look at a number of the works Bayard discusses in his book, including Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, the movie Groundhog Day, and Soseki’s novel I Am a Cat. Then we’ll turn our attention to the history of science and ask related questions about how knowledge is arrived at and agreed upon in scientific disciplines. For this purpose we’ll read The Scientific Revolution by Steven Shapin. This course is strong on discussion, and there will be regular writing/reflection assignments. Your disciplinary background in your academic major, no matter what it is, will be helpful to you in this course.
ENG-T 390
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? 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.
THE COMMERCIAL REVOLUTION AND THE RISE OF THE NOVEL
In this class, we will examine how England responded to the crisis of identity wrought by the commercial revolution of the eighteenth century and how the literature of the time attempted to offer solutions to this crisis. In the early eighteenth century, money was quickly replacing social rank as the basis for power and prestige. As one shopkeeper of the time put it, “I can buy a gentleman, therefore I am a gentleman.” While this transformation produced a new sense of social equality, it also suggested the disturbing notion that one’s identity was based on what one owned rather than on any inherent attributes. A new luxury market promoted this consumer mentality by offering a wider array of goods than ever before and invented new techniques, such as advertisements and window displays, to make these goods appealing. One of the new luxury items that consumers purchased and used to define themselves was the novel—a form of literature that focused on workaday life and made everyday people the heroes of its plots. In doing so, the novel served as a device for analyzing the new commercial world and its effects on society. It also helped to shape, and was shaped by, attitudes towards this world. Novels will include: Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Samuel Richardson, Pamela; Tobias Smollett, Humphrey Clinker; Henry McKenzie, The Man of Feeling; and Frances Burney, Evelina. We will frame our discussions of the novels through selections from the sociologists Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu, as well as period sources by the philosophers John Locke, David Hume, and Adam Smith.
CONQUEST, PROGRESS, AND THE U.S. WEST
The story of westward movement has been told in countless ways: as conflict between advancing civilization and disappearing “savage,” as site of individual self-discovery or transformation, as a locus of unfolding national or universal Progress, or more recently, as site of struggle over issues such as immigration, race, and gender. 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 and analyze a variety of primary and secondary sources, from poetry and fiction to film and visual art, always keeping in mind the central question: how and why has the West has proven so important to ideas of human Progress and specifically of U.S. historical, political, and cultural identity?
CREATE YOUR OWN BOOK OF NARRATIVE COLLAGE
Narrative has to do with telling stories, and collage is about juxtaposing different images and ideas. The writer Donald Barthelme said, “the point of collage is that things are stuck together to create a new reality.” In this class we will collect “things”—memories, poems, photos, objects, images—and stick them together to tell stories and create new realities. We’ll study many examples of literary and visual collage as we explore new ways to tell stories. Students in this course will write poetry and prose, take photographs, collect objects, and work throughout the semester toward a final project: you will write, design, and self-publish your own book of narrative collage.
CRIMES OF FICTION
The course explores the risks and limits of originality. We’ll look at the wide range of techniques, abuses, and crimes that fall into the general category of literary and intellectual “borrowing.” From Shakespeare to science fiction, we’ll study examples along the continuum from quotation, collage, allusion, translation, imitation, parody, and the mildest kinds of unacknowledged influence, to instances of theft and fraud, including authorship hoaxes, plagiarism and other forms of what now counts as copyright infringement.
IMAGINING KING ARTHUR IN HISTORY, CULTURE, LITERATURE, AND FILM FROM 1136-2004
The earliest traces of Arthurian legend appear in Britain in the early Middle Ages, and in the 21st century it remains the most widely known literary survivor of the medieval West. This course will pay some attention to the historical development of the legend, but it primary focus will be on the nature of four select accounts of the legend and on their complex relations with the particularly vexed historical circumstances (i.e., in three of the four cases, civil war) that provoked them. Through close examination of literary texts from the twelfth century through the twentieth, the course will explore the issue of conflict between competing ideals that lies at the heart of these accounts of the legend, and how this conflict betrays a discrepancy between ideology and historical circumstance (both within the fiction and between the fictional past and the present of its composition) that becomes manifest in the physical conflicts that the accounts narrate and that inspired them.
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.
LEADERHIP AND LITERATURE
If asked to name a great leader, the answers could be many—Gandhi, Queen Elizabeth, even Tom Brady. Great leaders come from a variety of time periods, professions, cultures, and backgrounds. Many recent news stories, including the Penn State football scandal and the David Petraeus affair, have raised new and pressing questions as to exactly how “great leadership” should be defined. But what makes a great leader great? Many works of literature have tried to answer this question by providing rich examples of dynamic, strong, or questionable leaders. Leadership theory is an exciting, multidisciplinary subject that is gaining popularity in the past few decades. This course will read many great works of literature over the past several centuries that may shed light on the nature of leadership and raise questions as to what makes a leader truly great.
LOVE AND WORK IN NINETEENTH CENTURY NOVELS
This course will examine the conditions and relationships of love and work in novels of nineteenth-century England, Russia, and probably France or Italy. George Eliot’s Middlemarch and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina will form the center of the course. We will read some works critiquing the system of labor organized by class and gender divisions, and concurrent political theory such as Marx’s Communist Manifesto; we’ll also read materials about love and domestic life involving the increasing social possibility (and occasional fact) at least for the middle class, of being able to choose a spouse and/or profession. This last choice applied mainly to men, of course, but we’ll look at the visible and invisible work women were allowed and required to do, especially in the domestic sphere. There will probably be three formal analytical papers of medium length, and students will conduct independent research. The class will operate primarily by discussion.
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.
MONSTERS OF MODERNITY
In this course, we will read some classic “monster” literature 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? By the end of the semester, I hope you will begin to see that horror films and novels are part of our culture’s responses to historically specific developments in science and technology – developments that make us reconsider what it means to be human.
MUSIC AND LITERATURE
This course is designed around the different ways in which Music and Literature haveinteracted in different eras. To better express these relations, students will focus on threedifferent modules: Poetry and Music, Prose and Music, and Drama and Music. Eachmodule has been designed with the perspective on focusing on different works, all presented from a historical point of view. The poetry unit will begin by discussing an excerpt from Aristotle’s Poetics in order to establish mimesis as a common characteristic of both arts. It will proceed to a broader discussion of the powers ascribed to music by various poets and writers throughout history, focusing on particular excerpts spanning from Ovid’s Metamorphoses through Walt Whitman; finally, it will include discussion of the “musical” aspects of the written word, including meter (rhythm), alliteration, onomatopoeia, and text painting. The poetry unit will focus primarily on musical works inspired by literary creations and the ways in which composers interpret literary texts to depict literary characters or events. The primary foci will include 1001 Arabian Nights and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade, Don Quixote and Strauss in Prose (program music). Finally, our drama unit will study discuss Oedipus Rex (Sophocles and Stravinsky), Shakespeare in Music (excerpts from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, TheTempest, and Romeo and Juliet) and will end with a more in-depth analysis relating to Shakespeare’s Othello to Verdi’s Otello.
RETELLING AND REINVENTING: THE (NOT SO) SUBTLE ART OF ADAPTATION
What happens when a novel becomes a movie? In the process of reimagining a text the screen writer makes numerous choices that subtly (and not so subtly) change the story. This is a class that will investigate recent reinventions of the adaption. While adaptations have traditionally tried to adhere the original text in some fundamental ways, a handful of recent adaptations use the original text more as a place of a departure than as a final destination. In order to investigate this shift in adaptation we will read some of the most successfully and most commonly adapted texts. After examining those texts we will investigate their various adaptations.
THE TROUBLE WITH BEAUTY IN FAIRY TALES
Can our unrealistic ideas about beauty be laid at the dainty feet of fairy tales? In fairy tales “beauty” is often equated with good character and “ugliness” with evil. And influential social roles in fairy tales are hardly confined to pretty princesses. Witches, Princes Charming, and Trickster heroes are also stock characters in fairy tales and have their own complicated impact on culture. This course will explore the ethical implications of the content, art, and history of fairy tales from several cultures and traditions. By exploring tales such as “The Little Mermaid” through the primary text by Hans Christian Andersen, illustrations by 19th-century artists like Edmund Dulac, and the powerfully popular Disney movie of the late 20th century, we’ll delve into the impact such tales have on society. Are they worth telling? Are they good for children? What ethical responsibilities do illustrators, fairy tale authors, and interpreters have in transmitting fairy tales? Using approaches from the disciplines of art history, literary criticism, and social history, we’ll try to find the answers. This course will focus on improving student writing and research skills. Three papers, an annotated bibliography and regular online entries on a class-focused blog will be required.
WHAT’S FOR DINNER?: EXPLORING THE MEANINGS OF FOOD IN LITERATURE, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
The rich literature on food demonstrates the power of a simple dinner menu to provoke passionate attachments and visceral aversions. Food evokes memories, shapes human interactions, affects individual identity, and impacts the structure and welfare of entire societies. Beginning with Brillat-Savarin’s famous dictum, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are,” we will examine the ways in which food speaks to every aspect of culture. We will use the literature of food to trace family dynamics and ethnic heritages, to explore the jobs people do or refuse to do, to examine individual values and community ethics, and to give us a perspective on global politics and economics. Students will build from a variety of interdisciplinary sources to write about food in a range of genres, from in-depth intellectual papers to experimental pieces such as restaurant reviews, food logs, and analyses of family recipes.
FINA-T 390
HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM
How was your city made? This introduction to vernacular architecture will investigate structures of the South Bend/Mishawaka area as individual units and as part of an urban/suburban landscape. Students will develop familiarity with the prevalent local housing types and investigate the reasons for their selection and survival. Selected readings will introduce students to the literature of the interdisciplinary discipline of vernacular studies and investigation of specific structures will develop their familiarity with field and documentation techniques.
NEEDLE AND THREAD: A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF WORLD TEXTILES
This course will analyze world textiles from the prehistoric period to the modern age. The varied needle arts will be situated within their historical, cultural, and artistic context in order to understand the role these art objects played in their societies. This course will analyze how textiles and textile production both reflected and affected their various cultures not just in terms of aesthetics but also with politics, economics, and gender construction.
HIST-T 390
Biography and Gender in World History
This course examines how individuals learn and negotiate their gender roles. Every week we will focus on depth on a pair of historical figures and study the ways that they understood themselves as men or women and how their gender shaped their experiences. The course begins with the sixteenth century New World with Hernán Cortés and Malintzin/Doña Marina and ends with the radical Islam in the twentieth century and Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin. Along the way, we will investigate the lives of other historical pairs including the nineteenth century Japanese Matsuo Taseko and Itō Hirobumi, Chinese revolutionaries Qiu Jin and Chen Duxiu, and the Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and his mistress Margherita Grassini Sarfatti.
THE BIRTH OF EUROPE
This course will introduce students to a period of history that was, until recently, commonly referred to as the “Dark Ages.” We will use historical, literary, and archaeological evidence from a variety of early medieval cultures to shed light on what was actually a time of exciting changes, a period which saw the transformation of the Mediterranean-centered Roman world and the rise of vibrant new cultures throughout Europe and the East. Topics we will examine include the “barbarization” of the Roman world, the Carolingian Renaissance, the role of women in early medieval societies, the rise of Islam, and the political, economic, and spiritual reordering of the medieval world during the ninth and tenth centuries. In the course of our explorations we will meet martyrs and missionaries, pagan warlords, Carolingian princesses and Viking raiders, and follow the development of early medieval culture up to the eve of the first millennium.
THE CIA: HISTORY, MYTH, AND CONTROVERSY
The central theme for this course will be the nature of the CIA and how Americans have come to think about it since its inception in 1947. The first section of the course will frame our main focus with a series of straight-forward histories and critiques of the Agency. Such questions as its origins, its more notorious covert actions, key individuals, battles within the U.S. government, and its overall role in the cold war and post-cold war world will be analyzed here. Once we have examined this history, the more fanciful, crazed, and conspiratorial visions of the CIA will be considered. These offer, of course, a vivid contrast with the more staid academic accounts. This segment of the course will include journalistic accounts, films, novels, and popular cultural texts. We will explore why such a disjunction between the history record and the realm of fantasy regarding the CIA pervades American culture to this day.
THE GREAT WAR, 1914-1918
The Great War of 1914-1918 remade the world. Monarchs were deposed. Empires dissolved. New nations emerged. Millions perished in “hurricanes of steel.” World War I stands as the portal to a century of mass ideologies, and paved the way for the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the rise of fascism, and the transformation of European societies. This class will investigate the experiences of those who lived and died in the first total war.
JAPAN THROUGH LITERATURE AND FILM
A study of Japanese history and society through films and literary works (in translation) as primary sources. A discussion and writing intensive course. Themes include samurai, the townspeople of the Tokugawa period, the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese Empire and wars (including the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki), women in film, Japanese youth /students, the image of the “salary man” and “anime” of the postwar period. A research paper and two solidly analytical papers required.
THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH (also Race, War, Genocide: The Nazis in Europe and the World, 1933 – 1945)
In the National Socialist period, Germans unleashed a wave of violence across Europe. Led by an explicitly scientific racism, National Socialist leaders gassed millions of Jews, annihilated the leadership of Poland, carried out a race-war against Russia, and worked millions of other Europeans to death in slave camps. It can serve as a warning to all wealthy democratic nations of what might happen when the vast powers in modern society are oriented towards destruction. Over the course of the semester students will consider two central questions:
What accounts for the breakdown in German democracy?
To what extent are all Germans responsible for the crimes of the National Socialist state?
STUDY ABROAD: HISTORY, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY IN MEXICO
This course revolves around a Study Abroad Program in Oaxaca, Mexico during Summer Session II. While students will study the Spanish language and gain credit for that experience, this course focuses on the study of Mexican history, culture, and society from its indigenous origins, through its colonial conquest and its revolutionary transformations, to the present. Though most of the writing assignments will involve the methods used in the historical discipline, this course is highly interdisciplinary. Mexico itself will serve as a learning laboratory and one of the final writing projects will be to use the historical information they gain in classes to engage in a sociological analysis of their experiences and observations of Mexican society and culture.
VICTORIA’S SECRETS: SEX AND SOCIETY IN GREAT BRITAIN AND EMPIRE
This class examines the seamy underbelly of British society in the long nineteenth century (1789-1914). We will study Victorian ideas about prostitution, philanthropy, childbirth, pornography, homosexuality, religion, eugenics, and race. British men and women grappled with the findings of Darwin on evolution, ways to deal with the sprawling, crime-ridden urban metropolis, and the terrible suffering of the working poor. This period, when the British Empire was at the height of its power, played an important role in shaping modern ideas about gender roles, the proper relationship between the individual and the state, and a modern understanding of privacy. Readings for the course will include works of history, gender studies, anthropology, and literary criticism; in addition we will study primary sources like newspaper accounts, cartoons, paintings, and excerpts from novels. Students will take advantage of a new resource acquired for the library, the Digital Times of London.
US CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
This course will consider the major civil rights movements of the 20th century with an emphasis on issues of equality, equal protection, and the meaning of American freedom in the 1960s-1970s. We will explore the social movement context of the rights movements of African Americans, Women, Mexican Americans, Native Americans and others. These various civil rights efforts will be considered separately across the semester, yet will be discussed in comparative perspective. Assignments will include a mid-semester exam, short writing assignments, and a final research paper.
CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS: SPANISH and NATIVES IN THE CONQUEST OF LATIN AMERICA
This course will be a reading- and discussion-based seminar. It will introduce students to some of the pre-Columbian societies, especially those of Meso-America. The main focus of the course will be the subsequent conflict between the European, particularly Spanish and indigenous societies and the conquest of the latter by the former. Students will engage in an analysis of several primary documents as well as secondary sources in order to understand how various native peoples perceived the Spanish and vice versa. How did they understand or misunderstand each other? What are the different ways in which they perceived the battles and events of conquest? How did what were initially rather friendly encounters (in most cases) come to such a violent end? Students will especially acquire an in-depth look at the conquest itself through the eyes and words of some conquerors who wrote about their experiences (such as Hernán Cortés) as well as surviving accounts that offer the perspective of various native groups (such as the Aztec Florentine Codex). Important secondary works by scholars will help students place the primary sources in context and analyze them.
WORLD WAR II IN EAST ASIA
This course provides a comprehensive examination of the Sino-Japanese War of 1937-45 and the Asia-Pacific War of 1941-45, focusing on political and military history, cultural and social developments, as well as connections to the global Second World War. Themes include imperialism and revolution, diplomacy and international politics, refugees and relief, resistance and collaboration, labor and economy, wartime literature and arts, as well as postwar history and memory.
HPSC-T 390
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
This course examines how science and religion have influenced and interacted with each other from ancient times to the present day. Topics will include ancient Greek and early Christian attitudes toward nature, science and the Church in the Middle Ages, the Copernican Revolution, Galileo and the Church, Christianity and the mechanical/Newtonian worldview, the rise of modern geology and paleontology, the Darwinian revolution and creationism, and the impact of contemporary physics on theology.
JOUR-T 390
MEDIA LAW
The purpose of this course is to explore the idea of freedom of speech through historical and theoretical examina-tions of case laws and media regulations. By mainly focusing on the First Amendment theories as a theoretical framework, the course develops understanding of free speech rights and their roles in democratic governance. The present course also values the examination of free speech rights outside of the US. For instance, the idea of free speech in the East, such as in Japan and China, as well as the Middle Eastern nations may be examined focusing on the thought behind freedom of speech, such as religion, ethics, popular culture and gender.
MUS-T 390
MUSIC AND LITERATURE
This course is designed around the different ways in which Music and Literature haveinteracted in different eras. To better express these relations, students will focus on threedifferent modules: Poetry and Music, Prose and Music, and Drama and Music. Eachmodule has been designed with the perspective on focusing on different works, all presented from a historical point of view. The poetry unit will begin by discussing an excerpt from Aristotle’s Poetics in order to establish mimesis as a common characteristic of both arts. It will proceed to a broader discussion of the powers ascribed to music by various poets and writers throughout history, focusing on particular excerpts spanning from Ovid’s Metamorphoses through Walt Whitman; finally, it will include discussion of the “musical” aspects of the written word, including meter (rhythm), alliteration, onomatopoeia, and text painting. The poetry unit will focus primarily on musical works inspired by literary creations and the ways in which composers interpret literary texts to depict literary characters or events. The primary foci will include 1001 Arabian Nights and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherezade, Don Quixote and Strauss in Prose (program music). Finally, our drama unit will study discuss Oedipus Rex (Sophocles and Stravinsky), Shakespeare in Music (excerpts from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, TheTempest, and Romeo and Juliet) and will end with a more in-depth analysis relating to Shakespeare’s Othello to Verdi’s Otello.
REPRESENTATIONS OF GENDER & SEXUALITY IN MUSIC
From its beginnings, music has provided an important lens through which to view contemporary attitudes and issues of gender and sexuality. This class provides an introduction to the topic of gender and sexuality in music by examining pieces of music and related scholarly writings that address notions of masculinity, femininity, transexuality, promiscuity, and gay and lesbian identity. We will explore a wide variety of genres, styles, and historical eras: from the hypersexualized world of the 16th-century Italian Madrigal to Hedwig and the Angry Inch, from the rise and fall of the castrato performer to Madonna. We will also strive to develop a deeper understanding of how our own musical experiences, views, and behaviors have been shaped by our own identities and the musical environments they inhabit.
HISTORY OF JAZZ
In this course, students will study the basic styles, musical conventions, important works, and major figures of jazz; identify and discuss key aspects of jazz, using appropriate language and vocabulary; trace the history of jazz, from its origins to present day; examine the cultural, social, political, and economic contexts that affected the evolution of jazz; as well as examine the complex relationship and interactions the evolution of jazz has had with the musical and cultural conventions of Africa, Latin America, Europe, and Asia.
PHIL-T 390
ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY
In the context of the history of environmental philosophy, this campus theme course explores specific recent problems in which questions of environmental justice are at issue. Primary sources will include novels and documentaries, as well as philosophical and other thoughtful analyses. A major focus will be mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. We’ll discuss the environmental justice issues involved in resource extraction in impoverished areas. The course addresses questions about how human beings, as natural creatures themselves, ought to live in nature, how their treatment of each other both affects and is affected by their understandings of nature and its value, and how what we understand as the natural environment depends a great deal on cultural background. Students will have the opportunity to meet two of the authors we will be reading.
GOD, SPACE, AND TIME
This course offers an interdisciplinary investigation into metaphysical questions that arise around the concepts of God, space, and time. We will be investigating these topics through readings from philosophers, scientists, theologians, and writers of literature. The course will involve getting clear on the concepts of God, space, and time (how they are different and how they are interrelated). Then we will review arguments for and against the existence of each. We may also look into some specific questions about the nature of each, such as the following: Does God exist in time? Are space and time separate, or do they exist as one unified entity? Might there be more than three dimensions of space? Do the past and future exist? Is time travel possible?
INTRODUCTION TO MEDICAL ETHICS
This is an introductory course in medical ethics, with a focus on the importance of narrative (both biographical and fictional) for understanding and navigating medicine’s engagement with illness and suffering. Over the last two decades, several philosophers have argued that due to our nature as temporal creatures, many aspects of morality can only be captured in narrative, with its ability to convey various actors’ perspectives and the connections between actions or events. This dependence on narrative is especially true in medicine. Patients grapple with the meaning of illness by telling their stories, often needing to find ways to re‐narrate the trajectory of their lives. So too, the reasons that a medical decision appears morally compelling or ambiguous to a patient or provider are often only evident when those decisions are placed in the context of his/her life story, including his/her worldview and morally formative experiences. In addition, qualities of character (virtues and vices) are best displayed narratively. For example, we best understand the virtue of humility as we see that virtue displayed over the course of a life that embodies that humility; it is then that we are positioned to understand how that quality of character might inform specific questions in medical ethics.
NATURE AND MODERNITY
Modern science and the technology and industry it has made possible have transformed our understanding of nature and human nature and the way we humans live in and relate to nature. Discussion topics will include the 17th-century conception of nature as machine-like; the idea that nature has no value until transformed by human labor; the connection of both of these ideas to the natural-resource-intense, mechanized processes of production of the industrial revolution; criticisms of industrialization for separating humans from nature and for eliminating meaningful labor; the Romantic/Transcendentalist idea of nature as a spiritual resource for humans, rather than an object to be manipulated and exploited; the Darwinian conception of evolving biological nature; and the effect of Darwin’s theory on our understanding of human nature. In addition to readings on these topics, students will do research projects that look at related contemporary issues, such as biotechnology and industrial agriculture. Readings in the course will include selections from Francis Bacon, Rene Descartes, John Locke, Adam Smith, Thomas Carlyle, Henry David Thoreau, Karl Marx, John Muir, Wendell Berry, William Paley, Charles Darwin, and others.
SPAN-T 390
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.
TEL-T 390
COMMUNICATION LAW, ETHICS, AND THE PUBLIC INTEREST
The purpose of this course is four-hold: [1] to explore the idea of freedom of speech through historical and theoretical examinations of U.S. case laws, media regulations and landmark Supreme Court decisions, [2] to explore the idea of media ethics through historical and theoretical examinations of controversial representations and media genres in the U.S. media history, and [3] to intersect these examinations of media law and ethics in order to develop the theoretical debate that defines meanings and the role of public interest in society, and [4] to explore how the contemporary media industry can best serve the welfare of the public. The course develops an understanding of free speech rights, while ethical considerations of the responsibility of the mass media industry are argued as public interest and welfare. The overall task of this course is to discuss new and/or justifiable approaches to challenge and negotiate the theoretical question that speech laws create an ethical dilemma in society when certain types of speech, such as hate speech and sexual speech, could be found disruptive to welfare of the public.
TELEVISION AND CULTURAL CRITICISM
This course focuses on prime time television shows to discuss the cultural and social impact of the medium as a whole and its relationship with culture. Specific programs serve as examples of the historical rise of broadcast television, the development of television narration, the evolution of television genres, the chly, we will confront the critical methods that have been applied to the medium over the past 20 years: semiotics, genre study, ideological criticism, cultural studies, and so on.
THTR-T 390
LGBT THEATER POST-STONEWALL
This course introduces students to LGBT theatre and its history, focusing on plays and musicals written after the 1969 Stonewall Uprising. The course looks at important works in the cannon placing them in their historical context. Discussion focused, this writing intensive course will explore the connections and various perspectives in the works presented.
WGS-T 390
NEEDLE AND THREAD: A CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF WORLD TEXTILES
This course will analyze world textiles from the prehistoric period to the modern age. The varied needle arts will be situated within their historical, cultural, and artistic context in order to understand the role these art objects played in their societies. This course will analyze how textiles and textile production both reflected and affected their various cultures not just in terms of aesthetics but also with politics, economics, and gender construction.
WOMEN & SUSTAINABILITY
This course is designed to consider the connection between “woman” and “nature” as linked categories – conceptually, sociologically, politically, and biologically – and to build from this premise the examine the historical roots and contemporary iterations of feminist and environmental movements. Broadly, the course moves historically, in order to introduce students to 19th century conversations about American environmentalism and connections to the first wave of the American women’s feminist movement. We look at Silent Spring in a similar light, as it helps harken the “second wave” of both the environmental and feminist movements of the later 1960s and 70s. And, finally, we consider the more current Green/Sustainability approaches to health, environmental justice, and food culture.
WOMEN IN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
This class will explore significant social movements from the 19th through the 21st Century. Unlike a course in sociology, which tend to look at social movements from a structural and organizational perspective, this course will use the lens of gender as an analytical framework to explore the humanistic tradition that is inherent in social conflict. We will examine social movements that clearly and objectively centered interests that
affected women, such as the abolitionist movement to end slavery, the suffrage movement for women’s right to vote, and the fight for reproductive choices. We will also look at other significant social movements that women had key roles in developing, articulating, or advancing, but their voices were either submerged or marginalized, such as was the case in the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. In still others, women played clear roles in defining and shaping the movement, such as in the Gay Liberation Movement and Black Lives Matter Movement, but their contributions were at times overshadowed by men’s voices and activity.