Art History |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Steven Kangas |
Requirements Met: WCult: W; Distrib: ART |
Course Title: Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and Their Modern Successors |
Description: |
According to the dictionary, the word wonder may refer to "a monumental human creation regarded with awe." We know that as early as the fifth century B.C.E. the Greek historian Herodotus identified certain monuments in the Greek world that inspired a sense of wonder. Over time other creations were acknowledged for their unsurpassed level of technological achievement and imagination, resulting in a list of "seven ancient wonders." The membership in the original list of "seven ancient wonders" was changeable, but in the the Renaissance there emerged the canonical list familiar to us today. From this list only one monument, the pyramids at Giza, remains in existence. This course will focus on the canonical "seven wonders" of the ancient world and explore, via their reconstructions, the features that made them unique in their time. We will study the cultural context from which they emerged, whether in the Near East, Egypt, or Greece, from ca. 3000 B.C.E. to ca. 200 B.C.E. More recently, a new list of "Wonders of the World" has been created that incorporates ancient as well as modern monuments. The class will also consider these newly identified "wonders" in a comparative perspective. We will try to understand why certain monuments were selected and why others did not make the list. Readings will incorporate the works of ancient authors such as Herodotus and Pliny with modern scholarly analyses. |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Jane Carroll |
Requirements Met: WCult: W; Distrib: ART |
Course Title: Albrecht Dürer and the Invention of Art |
Description: |
Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) was, arguably, the premier printmaker of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and certainly the premier artist in Germany at that time. No other artist married such a range of subject matter to such versatility in so many media. During his career, Dürer produced paintings, prints, drawings, models for craftsmen, and treatises. In his works, we discern elements of humanism, the Reformation, contemporary society, and the rising status of the artist in society. Added to these facets is Dürer as the crafty merchant who carefully engineered his ever-increasing fame. At his death, Dürer's prints were found from England to India.
This seminar will explore Dürer's art and life in the context of sixteenth-century Nuremberg and Europe. We will be reading scholarship in intellectual and religious history, as well as art history. We also will be working extensively with the excellent Dürer prints in the Hood Museum. |
Asian/Mideast Lang/Lit |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Justin Rudelson |
Requirements Met: WCult: CI; Distrib: LIT |
Course Title: Soul Loss and Madness in Asia and the Middle East |
Description: |
In Asia and the Middle East, mental illness is frequently conceptualized as soul loss, madness, or spirit possession, concepts that conflict with Western understandings of depression, insanity, and "loss of mind." This course will explore Asian and Middle Eastern writers and poets, many who suffered from mental illness, that depict soul loss, madness or spirit possession in their writings. These authors and their works include: Lu Xun (China): Madman's Diary; Qu Yuan (China—3rd. Century BC): "Escaping Sadness"; Kim So-wol (Korean): "Azaleas"; Ryunosuke Akutagawa (Japan): Rashomon; Amos Oz (Israel): Tale of Love and Darkness; Kahlil Gibran (Lebanon): "The Madman"; and Sadeq Hedayat (Iran): "The Blind Owl." Students will first compare Western depictions of mental illness in excerpts from Kay Redfield Jamison's An Unquiet Mind and William Styron's Darkness Visible, and compare it to the demon-lover possession described in Vincent Crapanzano's Tuhami—Portrait of a Moroccan. |
Biology |
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Hour: 12 Instructor: Dhanalakshmi Nair |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: TMV |
Course Title: Ethics of Cloning: A Solomon's Choice? |
Description: |
The arrival of Dolly, the first cloned mammal, heralded the first real possibility of facing human cloning in the immediate future. Ethical and moral issues were pushed to the forefront resulting in explosive controversial debates everywhere spanning from the media to our very own dinnertables. The concept of cloning is approached with both excitement and fear. Excitement is due to the potential benefits in treating genetic conditions causing diseases in humans (i.e., therapeutic cloning). Fear results from the potential of using cloning to produce human clones (i.e., reproductive cloning) that are perceived as unnatural due to their manner of origin. Is a clone a human? Does it have a soul, feelings and emotions of its own? Who should decide the constraints within which reproduction using an "artificial" method is deemed acceptable? What conditions are acceptable to warrant cloning? Thus, the word "cloning" brings up a plethora of ethical and moral issues that need to be studied from different standpoints using different disciplines. We shall discuss the possibilities and hopes that cloning brings to treatment of diseases in humans. In this course through our readings, which will include Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult, students will be encouraged to think about the ethics of science in general. We shall specifically concentrate on the ethical considerations of cloning.
The discussion of the ethics of reproductive cloning would be incomplete without the discussion of issues plaguing surrogate motherhood. Surrogacy comes with its difficult choices about the rights and duties of the "birth mother," the "donor mother and/or father" and "the nurturing mother and/or father." With the boom in medical tourism, "womb for rent" has become the latest job being outsourced to developing nations, resulting in dehumanization of the process. We shall read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood as a basis for the discussion of the topic. What does the practice of renting out a womb say about a woman's body? How do we prevent the development of a dystopian society where there is absolute control over female fertility and reproduction? What does it say about the world we are living in where a woman's reproductive capacity is the only determinant for the sustenance of her family? Are developing countries going to be serving as "baby farms"?
Through this course we shall strive to formulate a better understanding of what it means to be human, what constitutes motherhood, and what happens when science is practiced for its own sake. |
Classical Studies |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Marie-Claire Beaulieu |
Requirements Met: WCult: W; Distrib: TMV |
Course Title: Ancient Geography: From Myth to Science |
Description: |
We will explore the ancient Greeks' geographical conception of the world and its evolution to gain an understanding of how they perceived themselves and their place on earth. We will start with the mythical conceptions developed in the Iliad and the Hesiodic poems in which the world (i.e., the Mediterranean basin) is surrounded by an impassable river of cosmic proportions, Oceanos. Then, we will study authors who questioned and re-examined this myth, notably Herodotus and Aristotle, as well as sailors who actually traveled on the fabled Oceanos such as Pytheas of Massalia. Lastly, we will read a parody of such narratives, Lucian's True History. Throughout the course, we will pay attention to the scientific and philosophical process whereby the geographical limits assigned to man in the mythological vision of the world are constantly pushed back by the use of reason and exploration. We will think about how this process changed man's vision of himself, from the ancient Greeks all the way down to Columbus and Galileo's revolutionary discoveries. We will read some of the milestones of scholarship in this field and engage with these scholars' ideas through in-depth class discussions, short essays, and a research paper. |
Comparative Literature |
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Hour: 11 Instructor: Olivia Holmes |
Requirements Met: WCult: W; Distrib: LIT |
Course Title: What's love got to do with It? |
Description: |
Literature of the Middle Ages is famous for two seemingly contradictory traits—great love stories, and characters without "feelings" in the modern psychological sense. What, then, are these love stories about? And how does the representation of human attachment vary across time and cultures? We'll look at some notorious medieval couples (Lancelot and Guenivere, Tristan and Iseult), some less famous (Silence the transvestite and Ebain the noble knight), and end with two archetypical "modern" literary lovers, Romeo and Juliet. These texts will afford opportunities to discuss some major questions in literary history, such as: How does language create, limit, and express ideas? What are the relationships between language and desire? Between beauty and truth? Between intimate emotions and social power? When did the "individual" emerge in the European tradition? What does love have to do with words on a page? Readings will include: Chrétien de Troyes, The Knight in the Cart; Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde; Heldris de Cornuaille, Silence: A Thirteenth-Century Romance; Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Veronika Fuechtner |
Requirements Met: WCult: CI; Distrib: INTL or LIT |
Course Title: Modernism in Europe from Paris to Prague |
Description: |
This course provides an introduction to literary modernism in Fin-de-Siècle Europe. We will focus on the question how the emergence of the modern, industrialized European city relates to new representations of the self and its environment, e.g. in Freud's essay on nerves in Vienna or Huysmans' depiction of decadence in Paris. We will read literary, philosophical and scientific texts from and about Berlin, Lisbon, London, Paris, Prague and Vienna. Themes that also inform our discussion on the city and the self are the impact of colonialism and World War I on literary modernism, shifts in representing gender and sexuality, the crisis of language and the break with more traditional forms of narration, e.g. in texts by authors like Benjamin, Kafka, Pessoa, Schnitzler, and Woolf. The course closes with an outlook on non-European modernism. |
Earth Sciences |
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Hour: 3A Instructor: Gary Johnson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Course Title: Ice Age New England and the Aftermath |
Description: |
The goal of this course is to explore topics related to the geologic evolution of greater Northeastern North America, including those offshore regions of the adjoining western North Atlantic during the past several million years. To achieve this goal we will first overview some of the processes that have shaped this portion of North America in relatively recent geologic history. Relevant areas of Western Europe, Northwestern Africa, and Central and South America will also be considered in the context of this history. Modern analogs from various natural settings worldwide will be used to help explain some of the geologic and environmental relationships that we observe in New England. The past several million years of Earth's history have heralded many geophysical events, many of which have induced significant changes in continental geography and climate. These changes, in turn, have had a profound influence on the evolutionary history of plant and animal associations, their collective habitats, and the complex contributions made by those ancient communities to the plant and animal communities that we see today in New England. Similarly, this record of continuous geological change has played a significant role in influencing the character of agriculture, commerce, and transportation, the availability of mineral, energy, and water resources, and even the ecological communities that occupy this varied landscape. In this class, we will try to develop an understanding of the geological history of this portion of the North American continent and its continental shelves as well as the natural controls that constrain our own interaction with this landscape.
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Engineering Sciences |
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Hour: 12 Instructor: Keith Paulsen |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: TAS |
Course Title: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on Medical Imaging |
Description: |
Medical imaging has evolved significantly over the last 100 years and has transformed modern medical practice to the extent that very few clinical decisions are made without relying on information obtained with contemporary imaging modalities. The future of medical imaging may be even more promising as new technologies are being developed to observe the structural, functional, and molecular characteristics of tissues at finer and finer spatial scales. This first-year seminar will review the historical development of modern radiographic imaging and discuss the basic physical principles behind common approaches such as CT, Ultrasound and MRI. Contemporary issues surrounding the use of imaging to screen for disease, the costs to the health care system of routine application of advanced imaging technology, and the benefits of the information provided by medical imaging in terms of evidence-based outcomes assessment will be explored. Students will be required to read, present and discuss materials in class and write position papers articulating and/or defending particular perspectives on the historical development of medical imaging and its contemporary and/or future uses and benefits. Reading materials will consist of selections taken from text books, archival journal papers and websites. |
English |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Woon-Ping Chin |
Requirements Met: WCult: CI; Distrib: LIT |
Course Title: Buddhism in American Literature |
Description: |
This course studies the impact of Buddhist thought on American literature, with emphasis on the literature of the Beats. Its focus is on the contribution of Buddhist thought to aesthetic practice and metaphysical expression in the American literary tradition. A central question addressed in the course is the possibility, in a "First World" reading of "Third World" religious texts and in the process of cross-fertilization between "East and West," of moving beyond the impasses of Orientalism. |
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Hour: 10 Instructor: Peter Cosgrove |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: INTL or LIT |
Course Title: Culture of the Cold War |
Description: |
The Cold War permeated many aspects of world culture in the years 1945-1989. Novelists and filmmakers responded to nuclear deterrence, surveillance and counter-surveillance, domestic anxieties, and international espionage. We will encounter some examples of literary and visual expression of Cold War anxieties, from the spy novel to scenarios of nuclear apocalypse.
This is not a history course but historical data will be available and the paper topics will reflect the relatonship between history and fiction.
Readings may include John Le Carre, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch, Robert Coover, The Public Burning, and John Banville, The Untouchable. Visual material will include the CNN series, The Cold War as well as The Manchurian Candidate, Dr. Strangelove, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Fail Safe, and Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three. |
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Hour: 10 Instructor: George Edmondson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: LIT |
Course Title: Shakespeare: Community, Law, and Governance |
Description: |
This seminar explores the often radical visions of community, law, and governance found in certain of Shakespeare's plays. Although due attention will be paid to the historical environment in which those plays were produced, we will be more interested in the various ways that they adapt and contest the communal, legal, and governmental discourses of their time and place. More important, we will be concerned to ask whether Shakespeare's plays contain, perhaps without knowing it, a model of cultural and political critique that can be of use to us today. |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Cynthia Huntington |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Course Title: Writing the Body, Writing the Landscape, Writing Deep Mind |
Description: |
This course will examine texts dealing with the spaces of the body, the landscape, and the contemplative mind ("deep mind.") Though these writings deal with nonrational experience they inevitably attempt to translate these experiences in intellectual and often logical terms. We will look at scientific and philosophical writings by authors such as Oliver Sacks, V.S. Ramachandran, James Hillman, Thich Nhat Hahn, as well as some poetry and lyrical essays. David Abram's The Spell of the Sensuous and Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy will help us frame our discussion about how we write about the nonrational. |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Catherine Tudish |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: LIT |
Course Title: The New American Short Story |
Description: |
This seminar will explore the growing cultural diversity of literature written in America within the past twenty years. We will be reading work by writers of African, Asian, Latin, and European descent to examine common and divergent themes and modes of expression. The stories will be considered in light of their social and historical context, the way they embrace or reject trends in popular and elite culture. Writing assignments will include close readings of various texts, as well as a research paper on a body of work by one writer. Shorter writing assignments and presentations will augment the readings throughout the course. Some or all of the following writers will be considered: Julia Alvarez, Toni Cade Bambara, Sandra Cisneros, Adam Haslett, Ha Jin, Edward P. Jones, Sana Krasikov, Vu Tran, Maile Meloy, and John Edgar Wideman. |
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Hour: 11 Instructor: Melissa Zeiger |
Requirements Met: WCult: CI; Distrib: LIT |
Course Title: Immigrant Women Writing in America |
Description: |
In responding to the obstacles facing America's immigrants—problems of dislocation, split identity, family disunity and claustrophobia, culture shock, language barriers, xenophobia, economic marginality, and racial and national oppression—women often assume special burdens and find themselves having to invent new roles. They often bring powerful bicultural perspectives to their tasks of survival and opportunity seeking, however, and are increasingly active in struggles for cultural expression and social and economic justice. At the same time they are vitally involved with the literatures of their sending countries, America, and the world. We will read such works as Akemi Kikimura's Through Harsh Winters: The Life of a Japanese Immigrant Woman; Mei Mei Berssenbrugge's Nest; Bharati Mukerjee's Darkness; Julia Alvarez's The Other Side/El Otro Lado; Jamaica Kincaid's Lucy; and Kim Chernin's In My Mother's House. |
Environmental Studies |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Terry Osborne |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: LIT |
Course Title: The Ecological Memoir |
Description: |
An important development in American environmental thought over the last generation has been the growing awareness of a deep interdependence between the natural world and our own internal "world." In American environmental literature, one result has been the evolution of something we might call the "ecological memoir"—a compelling form in which a writer's study of an external landscape or place or environment is paralleled or influenced by the study of his or her own internal landscape, or vice versa. In this course we'll explore that form from two perspectives: its theoretical underpinnings and its literary expression. Works will include Scott Momaday's The Names, Janisse Ray's Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, and Terry Tempest Williams's Refuge. The scholarly purpose of this exploration will be to understand some of the factors that influence a human being's interaction with the natural world, and to analyze the different ways those factors find expression in this kind of literary work. This will help you as you work toward the course's ultimate goal: the writing of your own ecological memoir. |
Film Studies |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Michael Bronski |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: ART |
Course Title: Specters, Spaceships, and Serial KIllers: The American Horror Film as Social Critique |
Description: |
This seminar will examine the social and political implications of the American Horror film from the 1920s to the present. While all films implicitly embody broader implications, many directors have, over the last eighty years, used the genre of the horror film as an explicit critique of prevailing social and political norms. This can be seen in James Whale's analysis of the mob mentality in relationship to the rise of fascism in the 1931 Frankenstein to Robert Wise's anti-nuclear war message in the 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still to Davis Fincher's explicit analysis of the AIDS epidemic in the 1992 Alien 3. Throughout the course we will be looking at questions such as: What are the European roots of the American horror film? How is the genre of the "horror film" defined? What is the place of the horror film, as a genre, in the Hollywood studio system? How has youth spectatorship, as well as the evolving notion of the "teenager," influenced the horror film? How have technological advances from location shooting to the invention of the "drive-in" changed the horror film? How have the political and psychological parameters of the horror film changed over the years? How has the horror film, in all of its manifestations, reflected and shaped U.S. political thought?
We will be reading and watching a wide range of materials. Students will be required to watch two films a week. The first title, Phantom of the Opera (1925), will be a class requirement and will be discussed at length in the classroom. Students will watch a film from the "supplemental" list on their own. There will be weekly class presentations on these films, and students will use these as the basis for their written work. The readings will include essays on the psychology of the horror genre, the impact of German expressionism on early American film, the rise and fall of the studio system, changes in audience reception to the horror film over the decades, and the effect of national and global political concerns on the horror film. |
French |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Vivian Kogan |
Requirements Met: WCult: CI; Distrib: ART |
Course Title: Growing Up in France: Perspectives on French Society |
Description: |
Writers and cinematographers often rely on youthful protagonists to provide a fresh perspective on their society and culture. In this course, we will study critical conflicts in French society as represented in texts and films whose protagonists are children or adolescents. Our particular emphasis will be on the way the stories and films treat vital issues in France at various temporal moments, issues such as the evolution of personal and national identity, the success or failure of the patriarchal family, and the role of religious conformity in France. Readings and films will include The Return of Martin Guerre, My Father's Glory, and Carrot Top. |
Government |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Richard Winters |
Requirements Met: WCult: W; Distrib: SOC |
Course Title: Guns! The Politics and Law of the 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution |
Description: |
No other issue in America generates quite so much political passion and journalistic ink, yet has so little accompanying academic analysis as that of "guns and the 2nd Amendment." The 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution simply states: "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Two rivalrous positions characterize the debate on the 2nd Amendment. There is a "collectivist view," well-articulated by political groups such as the Brady Campaign and Handgun Control, Inc., that the Amendment establishes only a collective, statewide right, and not an individual right to keep and bear arms. There is the rival claim, the "individualist view," most vigorously represented by the National Rifle Association and Gun Owners of America, that the Amendment establishes just such an individual right to gun ownership. The collectivist view has long been the "conventional view" of sociologists, political scientists, and most law faculty. A "revisionist view" that is more supportive of an individual's right has grown in recent years, a view that has been fueled by a number of scholars, especially so in faculties of law, economics, and history. These two views were most directly contested in Heller v. District of Columbia heard before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 18, 2008. |
History |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Allen Koop |
Requirements Met: WCult: W; Distrib: SOC |
Course Title: The Cold War |
Description: |
Now that the Cold War has ended(?), perhaps we can finally decide how and why it started and how and why it turned out as it did. This course focuses on the causes of the Cold War, then probes a few Cold War crises, and concludes with various explanations for the causes, course, and conclusion of the Cold War.
Readings will be drawn from memoirs of the participants, analyses by contemporary observers, arguments by later revisionists and their critics, corroborative novels, and recent commentaries. Students will assess the roles of evidence and argument in the writing of history. |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Naaborko Sackeyfio |
Requirements Met: WCult: NW; Distrib: INTL or SOC |
Course Title: Slavery in West Africa |
Description: |
West Africa was the first sub-Saharan region to enter into maritime contact with Europe in the 15th century, and emerged as an important area for the Atlantic slave-trade until the 19th century. This seminar will examine slavery and the slave-trade, a theme that has arguably generated the most comprehensive literature in this region. Historians have focused on many issues that include: questioning the existence of slavery in Africa prior to the Atlantic slave trade, transformations in indigenous forms of slavery as a result of the slave-trade, the nature of African agency/participation in the slave trade, abolition, European colonization and the overall impact of the trade on the development of West African societies. Through selected reading and writing assignments we will discuss and critique the classic issues historians have been concerned with that include the demographic, socio-political, and economic impact of the trade on West African Society.
Readings will include a combination of articles and major texts that include David Northrup, The Atlantic Slave Trade (2002), Paul Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery 2nd ed. (2000); John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World; (1998) Randy Sparks, The Two Princes of Calabar (2004), Frederick Cooper et al, Beyond Slavery, (2000). |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Walter Simons |
Requirements Met: WCult: W; Distrib: TMV |
Course Title: Eco's Echoes: The Middle Ages in Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose" and "Baudolino" |
Description: |
The Middle Ages continue to serve as the scenic background for both our fantasies and our horrors. A world of sword and sorcery for some, of plague and slaughter for others, medieval Europe seems to provide endless inspiration for sweeping sagas which may tell us more about our own times than about the past. However, exceptions to that rule do exist. Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose is not only a spirited and exciting murder mystery, but also one of the most sensitive and accurate portrayals of fourteenth-century Europe ever written. Using the book (1980) and the film (1987) as our starting point, we will explore friar William of Baskerville's true identity, the secret of Aristotle's success, and the powerful appeal of fra Dolcino's heresy. We will also compare the novel to Eco's more recent Baudolino (2002), in which he revisited medieval culture. |
Linguistics |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: James Stanford |
Requirements Met: WCult: CI; Distrib: SOC |
Course Title: Language, Dialect, and Cross-Cultural Understanding |
Description: |
Think about the word y'all. Who uses this word? Why do they use it? Is it a "good" word? As important links to ethnicity, regional identity, and group solidarity, language differences play essential roles in cross-cultural contact. After all, each of us uses language all the time; it permeates our thought processes, our attitudes, and even our actions. Moreover, every community has its own established patterns of language use, social roles, and other sociolinguistic expectations. For example, a slight shift in vowel pronunciation or a particular choice of a word can sometimes signal ethnic distinctions or awaken intense stereotypes and other attitudes. Naturally, in an era of globalization and increasing contact between diverse societies around the world, interaction between different language communities can easily lead to misunderstanding, so cross-cultural insights and sociolinguistic perspectives are crucial.
This course explores such sociolinguistic patterns in a wide range of groups, with an emphasis on minority communities and minority/majority communities in contact. With the goal of deepening our cross-cultural understanding, we will explore sociolinguistic patterns among (1) diverse groups in the U.S., such as African American and Mexican American communities, the Muskogee people of Oklahoma, the Lumbee of North Carolina, a group of European American "nerd girls" in high school, and (2) communities around the world, including the Maori of New Zealand, the Kaluli of Papua New Guinea, clan-based societies in China and the Amazon, and many others. In this way, we'll not only gain insights about those communities but also about our own communities and human nature as a whole. |
Mathematics |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Andrea Kremer |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: TAS |
Course Title: Hazardous Data: Uncovering the Truth and Analyzing the Consequences |
Description: |
Unfortunately, many numbers, charts, and graphs routinely used in publications fictionalize the truth. Yet, these very same numerical misrepresentations form the rationale for economic, political, and social policies. Furthermore, misleading statistics often form the basis for personal "informed" decisions.
This course will examine the misconceptions that often are embedded in the data published in the health care field. Students will learn epidemiologic methods and analytical techniques to differentiate numerical fact from fiction. Then students will apply these techniques to communicate effectively how and why numbers can misrepresent a purported relationship. The intricacies and fallacies of study designs, the strategies of sampling methods, the application of statistical tests, the validity of statistical predictions, the role of confounding factors, the requirements for proving causality, and the criteria for accurately graphing data are some areas that will be examined.
Selected readings will be distributed in class; they include articles about conflicts of interest that influence health care policy, clinical decision making, medical care ethics, and health care reform. The required texts will present an overview of epidemiological concepts and the role of social epidemiology in evaluating current public health issues.
A background in statistics is not a prerequisite for this course. |
Native American Studies |
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Hour: 9L Instructor: Mishuana Goeman |
Requirements Met: WCult: CI; Distrib: TMV |
Course Title: Native Land and Literatures |
Description: |
How does the narration of place begin the movement for decolonization of Native Land and Communities? In the course of ten weeks we will explore the possibilities of postcolonial moments in rethinking relationships to space; the class will address various issues of geography and sovereignty of particular importance to indigenous communities as it is reflected in contemporary creative works. Trips to Rauner special collections and the Hood will use first hand material to examine questions of organizing of settler space and learn to read Native Cultural Production which resist those practices. The relationship between recognition, multi-cultural practices, race, gender, and nation will be explicated through an examination of films, visual work, short stories, poems, novels and government documents. The class will address how early indigenous and western concepts of space appear in cultural production, are contested, and are rewritten into current narratives. By using analytical tools in exploring metaphor, poetic structures, and genres, we will engage with the methods Native writers employ in their work to map out spaces of their own making. The links between different periods of spatial restructuring and spatial othering will be explored in these textual moments. Student work will culminate in a research project that examines a creative text that engages with settler state practices of place making.
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Psychological & Brain Sciences |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: John Pfister |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: SOC |
Course Title: Science, Pseudoscience, and Thinking Critically About Human Behavior |
Description: |
Despite little, no, or even contrary evidence, a large number of pseudoscientific and otherwise dubious psychological practices and areas of study have caught the public's attention during the last two decades (Lilienfeld, Lohr, & Morier, 2001). Claims of such things as recovered memories, facilitated communication, extrasensory perception, alien abduction, communication with the deceased, homeopathic remedies, and New Age psychotherapies have gained increasing popularity in the mass media and among the general public. Why do such beliefs persist, and how do we evaluate new claims in science? This course will give students the tools to make their own decisions regarding what would constitute sufficient evidence for belief. Statistical and methodological arguments will be emphasized. Readings will include selections from Michael Shermer's Why People Believe in Weird Things, Terrence Hines's Pseudoscience and the Paranormal, Rupert Sheldrake's The Sense of Being Stared At, Keith Stanovich's How To Think Straight about Psychology, and Flim-Flam, by James Randi. In addition, students will draw from original journal articles and the popular press to build their own library for skeptical analysis. |
Sociology |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Melissa Herman |
Requirements Met: WCult: CI; Distrib: INTL or SOC |
Course Title: Multi-Racial Identity Development |
Description: |
In the 1970's, one in 100 of the children was born in the United States had parents who were not of the same race. Now, thirty years later, that ratio is one in nineteen. What are the social, historical, and biological meanings of the term multi-racial? What are the challenges and benefits associated with belonging to more than one race group? How do multi-racial youth negotiate the path to developing a healthy identity differently than mono-racial youth? We will consider how schools, families, peer groups, and neighborhoods influence the development of biracial adolescents.
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Theater |
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Hour: 11 Instructor: Mara Sabinson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: ART |
Course Title: Theater for Social Change |
Description: |
This course will trace particular developments in American and Western European Theater from the First World War through the present. Artists and theater groups under consideration will be those whose work has focused on contemporary social conditions and the potential of performance to effect social change. In addition, students will experiment with developing scripts and performances based on current events. Readings will include selections from the writings of Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht, The Federal Theatre Project, Harold Pinter, Augusto Boal, August Wilson, etc., as well as newspapers, news magazines, and other media sources. In addition to creative and critical writing, students will be assigned one major research project. Emphasis will be on class participation.
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Hour: 2 Instructor: Mara Sabinson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: ART |
Course Title: Theater for Social Change |
Description: |
This course will trace particular developments in American and Western European Theater from the First World War through the present. Artists and theater groups under consideration will be those whose work has focused on contemporary social conditions and the potential of performance to effect social change. In addition, students will experiment with developing scripts and performances based on current events. Readings will include selections from the writings of Erwin Piscator, Bertolt Brecht, The Federal Theatre Project, Harold Pinter, Augusto Boal, August Wilson, etc., as well as newspapers, news magazines, and other media sources. In addition to creative and critical writing, students will be assigned one major research project. Emphasis will be on class participation.
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Women's and Gender Studies |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Laura Conkey |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: SOC |
Course Title: Women, Gender, and Science |
Description: |
Women have played a small role in western science, and their gradual inclusion influences what we know and how we know it. We explore what science is, and how "what we know" has been affected by societal ideas, past and present. Evaluating scientific critiques ranging from Kuhn and Berry to feminists such as Fox Keller and Haraway, we ask: how many women are in science, what are the obstacles, and has feminist critique changed science? Our work will include evaluation of data concerning women's participation in science, visits with feminists and scientists, and discussion of at least one film.
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