Afr & AfrAmerican Studies |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Michael Chaney |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Picturing African American History
Description: This first-year writing seminar explores the nature of iconography and the ethics of historical illustration while introducing students to events, movements, figures, and ways of knowing significant to African American history. How are histories made visible and what does race have to do with that process in a US context? How are African American histories, in particular, visualized and how have academic experts responded to these visuals? What arguments or debates do such visuals raise regarding history, race, and representation? Students in this seminar will study poems, autobiographical narratives, and other writings by African American authors having to do with historical events alongside visual depictions of those events, from the Middle Passage to the Civil Rights Era. Through lecture, discussion, in-class observation activities, and critical reading and writing, students will learn to think analytically about the racial implications of the visual histories they encounter, questioning whether and how such texts represent Black American people. Students will write four papers, three of medium length (5 pages) and a longer final paper (8-10 pages) based upon independent research. |
No required textbooks available |
Anthropology |
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Hour: 9L Instructor: Laura Ogden |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Animals and Humans: A Beastly Experiment in Ethics, Theory, and Writing
Description: Companion animals are commonly treated as “members of the family,” and we have become increasingly concerned about the welfare of other animals, such as those used in experimental lab settings. Still, these concerns are predicated on contradictory philosophies of human/non-human difference. In this course we consider the diverse ways animals are a part of our lives—for instance, as symbols, commodities, and workers. In the process, we begin to formulate new approaches to multispecies ethics and reconsider what we mean by “human.” As a final project, students work together to produce a contemporary version of the medieval bestiary and publish it online. During the Middle Ages, bestiaries illustrated the qualities of animals (including mythic beings) in an encyclopedic fashion. In the process of writing our own bestiary, we are going to learn how to produce our own social theory–perhaps rethinking what we mean by “social” theory in the process. Consider this course an experiment in critical thinking and writing. Throughout the course, we will hone our abilities by responding to in-class writing prompts, engage in constructive peer review, and explore different forms of ethnographic writing. While the majority of the written materials for this course will come from anthropology, we will also engage materials (visual and written) from other disciplines. In addition, we are going to engage materials curated by staff at Dartmouth’s Hood Museum of Art and the Rauner Special Collections Library. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None |
Art History |
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Hour: 2 Instructor: Kristin O'Rourke |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Paris in the 19th Century
Description: This course will examine the city of Paris as the artistic capital of the nineteenth century, looking at artists and art production in the mid-late nineteenth century. We will focus on the movements that made up the category of "modern" art: Realism, Impressionism and PostImpressionism. We will contrast traditional forms of art-making with avant-garde art production and look at both high art and popular forms of expression. We will examine aspects of contemporary life that affected subject matter, style, technique, and meaning: the invention of new media (photography), urban planning and the modernization of Paris, and the political and social situation in France and Europe. The course is designed to develop your critical thinking and writing throughout the term. Assignments include visual analysis, guided research, and critical responses to the readings. We will use peer review and revisions of writing assignments to help improve your writing. This course will also encourage discussion of visual materials as well as readings, and each student will develop a powerpoint presentation and final paper based on a topic of his/her choice. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No textbook required. |
Biology |
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Hour: 9L Instructor: Brittny Calsbeek |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Politicized topics in Biology
Description: This course will explore the fact and fiction underlying politically hot topics that have biology at their core. The majority of the course will be focused on written and oral debates on topics including: climate change, genetic engineering, stem cell research, human evolution and antibiotic resistance. Students will hone their ability to think critically, to construct well-written and effective arguments, and to separate fact from fiction when controversies relating to biology arise in public forums. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No Textbook required |
Chemistry |
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Hour: 10 Instructor: Wendy Epps |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Great Failures in Science Communication and the Social Context that Shaped Them
Description: While scientific discoveries have shaped our modern world, many of the greatest discoveries fell flat in their time. The acceptance of scientific discoveries by the establishment (and general public) is highly influenced by social context, and the interplay between science and society makes for intriguing studies of science history. We will examine case studies (from Galileo’s findings to current-day medical breakthroughs) from the perspectives of the scientist, the establishment, and the general public, including both the initial communication failures and the subsequent successes that accompanied these breakthroughs. We will analyze both primary and secondary written sources, and our course design will build toward a written analysis of a current-day failure in science communication. Assignments include one short review paper and one final paper/presentation. The writing process will be iterative, and feedback will be provided via peer review and professor input. In-class writing exercises will help students hone their science-writing and peer-editing skills. |
No required textbooks available |
Comparative Literature |
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Hour: 3B Instructor: Michael Wyatt |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Global Traditions of Puppetry
Description: Taking its point of departure in a striking assertion by the literary critic Kennth Gross – that puppets are “ambassadors to the human race from the world of things” – this course will examine traditions of puppetry in several specific cultural contexts, and through their employment in a variety of media, and will include a visit to Dartmouth by the Figli d’Arte Cuticchio, the most important contemporary Sicilian company of puppeteers. Each of the chapters of Gross’s short book, Puppet: an Essay on Uncanny Life, will provide a critical prism through which to collectively think, talk, and write about a series of films and filmed records of puppetry performances in the United States, Italy, Japan, Germany, South Africa, and Egypt. |
No required textbooks available |
Engineering Sciences |
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Hour: 10 Instructor: Klaus Keller |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Climate Change
Description: Climate change has occurred naturally and frequently over the course of many time scales in the past. America today is engaged in a discussion of current climate change and its cause, ranging from calls for immediate action to denial. This course explores the published scientific literature on the nature and cause of climate change, potential impacts on us, and the implications for our nation's energy issues. Through readings, class discussion, and individual research, we will explore this complex problem; student writing will synthesize results from the literature to clarify the factual basis for their own understanding. Reading will include a number of published papers and selections from textbooks. Students will be required to actively participate in class by leading class discussions and actively engaging in small group activities. In addition, students will develop an annotated bibliography, write a research paper based on the research completed for the annotated bibliography, as well as write and present a pitch where they argue for a specific action relevant to the topic of their research paper. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Introduction to Modern Climate Change, Andrew Dessler, 2021, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-793872
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English |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Jeffrey Sharlet |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Investigative Memoir
Description: In this course we’ll encounter the most unreliable narrators imaginable: ourselves. In recent years, a number of popular memoirs have been exposed as deliberate fictions; frauds. Such scandals distract us from more interesting questions about the role of memory in any attempt at reconstructing the past. While contemporary critics weigh the balance of fact and fiction in modern memoir, a number of writers have turned to the methods of research—archival and secondary sources, and fieldwork—to rebuild the autobiographical genre as an investigative endeavor in which their own memories are suspects. By reading their work, we’ll consider questions of memory, history, and the documents between them; self-knowledge and self-representation; the meanings of fact in works of literature; allegory as argument; and personal stories as public narratives. We’ll approach these matters through theory and practice in short response papers and reported autobiographical prose. Our goal will be to develop both voice and wit, to learn to draw on our creative abilities in our critical writing and our critical abilities in our creative writing. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Villavicencio, Karla Cornejo. The Undocumented Americans. One World. 978-0399592683.
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home Mariner, ISBN: 978-0618871711
Hanif Abdurraquib, Go Ahead in the Rain. ISBN: 978-1-4773-1648-1
Laura Cumming. Five Days Gone. ISBN: 978-1501198717 |
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Hour: 12 Instructor: Alexander Chee |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: The Art of the Personal Essay
Description: The personal essay is a literary form we turn to in order to both express and experience a diverse, imaginative sense of everything from our past, present, and future, our politics, our aesthetics, our sciences and ourselves. While fiction and poetry acknowledge the personal record as among the sources they draw upon, the personal essay makes this more explicit, directing the reader’s attention to the use of memory, archives, interviews and research. For the personal essay, the writer is treating themselves the way they might treat any other subject they’d write about, sometimes even researching their own background the way a stranger might. Students will learn to treat themselves as an instrument for the recording of experiences, and to look for material in everything from their email draft archives and text messages to old social media posts, papers written for high school or middle school, family photos, family archives. We will look at the records we keep deliberately and the ones we make accidentally as we ask ourselves how well we know ourselves and how we can create ourselves as a character on the page. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
All texts will be provided by instructor |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Nirvana Tanoukhi |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Engaging Memes
Description: The rise of internet memes and meme culture over the past two decades is a novel development in the history of popular culture, one closely tied to the burgeoning of social media since the early 21st century. Scholarly opinions on the subject have ranged from enthusiastic optimism to bleak pessimism, depending on whether the dynamics of meme culture are thought to display social media’s perceived tendency to promote social polarization, cultural fragmentation, and political tribalism. In this class, an introduction to the range of scholarly perspectives on the internet meme as a cultural form and the memosphere as a mode of cultural exchange and communication will motivate an exploration of the process of writing, and of writing as a form of critical thinking. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
For Purchase - Ryan Milner. The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media. (2016)
Will be made available via Canvas - Essays, articles, and book chapters in meme studies.
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Environmental Studies |
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Hour: 12 Instructor: Sarah Smith |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: The Future of Food
Description: Modern agriculture causes extensive environmental damage and is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. These environmental changes – depleted soil, extreme temperature and precipitation patterns, and increased pressure from crop pests – are in turn putting a strain on the ability of this modern agricultural system to provide nutritious food for our growing world population. While there is no one solution to this massive problem, there are many proposed technological innovations, ecologically based solutions, and consumer choices that can help mitigate some of the problems we have with our current system. In this course, we will explore these solutions as we try to envision what the Future of Food might look like. Students will read current opinion and research from the popular press and scientific literature. Assignments include a self-reflection, a journalistic piece on the results of an agriculture-related scientific study, a research paper delving deeper into a potential solution to the problems with our agricultural system, an oral presentation, and a final essay synthesizing our course material into a vision for the future of food. We will spend ample course time discussing all aspects of writing, including revising student writing and finding and evaluating source material. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No textbook required. |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Morgan Peach |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Nature-Based Solutions
Description: Nature-based solutions (NbS) leverage ecosystem processes to help us adapt to global change. Viewing NbS through the interdisciplinary lens of environmental studies and along a social-ecological-technological spectrum, we will ask: (1) What ethics and theory support NbS? (2) What is key to NbS adoption today? (3) How can NbS contribute to a just, resilient trajectory for society? In each of the three course units we will engage with diverse environmental literature, including philosophy, creative nonfiction, and scientific articles. The course will develop your understanding of entangled social-ecological problems to empower you to propose plausible NbS as the seeds of a good Anthropocene. The intent of this seminar is to develop your knowledge and skills as a student of the liberal arts. We will work to become more informed as global citizens who can assimilate knowledge, reflect, connect, synthesize, innovate, and communicate understanding in multiple modes. We will exercise our liberal arts skills in an iterative learning process. This will involve routine reading, writing, design thinking, and discussion. I will give short lectures as necessary. Throughout this process, we will explore solutions-oriented environmental actions to imagine just, sustainable futures. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No textbook required. |
Film Studies |
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Hour: 3B Instructor: John Bell |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Zombie Media: Memes, Truth, and Forgetting to Remember
Description: This course develops research and writing techniques enabling students to craft essays for the public sphere. As our starting point, we will examine what it means to live in a media culture suffused with noise that claims to be signal and develop well-supported theses investigating the implications of online digital media. More than a decade ago, the New York Times declared that “the Web means the end of forgetting.” The headline mirrors a common belief that the information era has made media immortal so music, videos, and games put online will always be perfectly stored and instantly findable. If media has been made immortal, though, it is only in the same way a zombie is immortal: falling to pieces and haphazardly lurching forward forever with no sense of direction, unthinkingly causing arbitrary damage to everything around it. Through a scaffolded series of writing experiments we will look at the claim that the internet never forgets and explore how and when it does; learn how and why societies form collective memories around media artifacts; and discuss the ways the weight of over a century of recorded media culture can be both oppressive and liberating to today’s creators. Our classroom discussions will bring together threads of ideas from many different disciplines that students will be expected to merge into persuasive writing targeting specific audiences. This course will provide the flexibility for students to pursue topics of their own interest while building on a scaffolding helping students understand the nature of researching, describing, and writing for public audiences. |
No required textbooks available |
Geography |
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Hour: 12 Instructor: Coleen Fox |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Into the Wild
Description: The US Wilderness Act of 1964 states that wilderness exists “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain.” This straightforward definition obscures the ambiguity and controversy surrounding both the idea of wilderness and its expression on the landscape. In this class, we will draw on personal narratives, scientific research, literature, and policy documents to explore the historical context and contemporary debates concerning wilderness in the US and around the world. We will investigate the idea of wilderness at a variety of scales, from the personal to the global. At the personal scale, we will focus on the transformative power of journeys into the wilderness. At the national and global scales, we will analyze the science, discourse, and politics of wilderness protection. |
No required textbooks available |
Government |
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Hour: 11 Instructor: Deborah Brooks |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Media and Politics
Description: The variety of media sources covering politics has expanded substantially in recent years: online-only news, satire-based news, social media forums such as blogs, and other types of newer media now exist alongside more traditional media sources such as newspapers and television news hours. In this seminar, we will explore how the media influences the nature of politics and political knowledge in the United States. Some of the questions we will examine include: How does the rise of new media affect the public’s understanding of politics? Are market forces pushing media outlets away from objective, in-depth, fact-based political reporting? How prevalent is partisan bias in the news media? How do journalists and politicians vie for control of the news? How powerful can the media be in anointing (or destroying) candidates? Students who are devoted to improving their paper-writing abilities are encouraged to take this class, as we will spend about half of our classroom time discussing the media and about half of our time discussing writing and associated seminar abilities. Students will write and revise two 5-6 page analytical papers during the term; additionally, a class-produced blog about the media and politics will give us the opportunity to contrast formal and informal genres of writing and argumentation. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
There are no books required for this course |
History |
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Hour: 2 Instructor: Leslie Butler |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Reading Lincoln in the Age of Twitter
Description: This class examines the way our current political and media context informs how we think about the past, specifically the presidency of Abraham Lincoln. Examining the political uses of Twitter (and social media generally) as our point of departure, we will spend the term examining the sixteenth president’s own innovative efforts at communicating with the public. Lincoln developed a sophisticated understanding of the role that public opinion played in a representative government and, both before and during his presidency, pioneered new efforts to shape that opinion. The seminar will focus on: Lincoln’s debates with Stephen A. Douglas (during the 1858 campaign for senate); his 1860 and 1864 campaigns for the presidency; and his sustained efforts to attach meanings to a devastating civil war. Throughout the term, we will pay close attention to Lincoln as a writer, as someone who considered and used words deliberately and carefully. As a First-Year Seminar, History 7 will introduce students to historical research and writing. Through close attention to primary sources (e.g. correspondence, newspapers, and speeches) and careful reading of secondary sources (journal articles and scholarly monographs), students will develop crucial academic tools as they grapple with the way Lincoln used words to articulate his own political positions, to define the position of his opponents, and to attach fresh meaning to American ideals amidst national crisis. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
1. Fred Kaplan, Biography of a Writer (Harper, 2010), ISBN-10 \u200F : \u200E 0060773367
2. Douglas Wilson, Lincoln's Sword (Vintage, 2007), ISBN-10 \u200F : \u200E 1400032636
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Hour: 9L Instructor: Stefan Link |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: The Green New Deal: A History
Description: This First-year Seminar offers a historical perspective on current discussions about a "Green New Deal" - that is, on ideas about social and economic transformations in light of climate change. What is implied by the historical reference to the New Deal of the 1930s? How did
FDR’s New Deal work, and how can we understand the desire to connect today’s problems to that earlier precedent? Writing assignments consist of an op-ed, a book review, and a profile of a historical figure. Each assignment will go through guided revision before final submission. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No required textbooks. |
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Hour: 9L Instructor: Darryl Barthe |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: 7.37: Race, Nation, and Ethnicity: Ethnogenesis and Afro-Indigeneity in the American Southeast
Description: Race, nation, and ethnicity: these words are often used in the same context, but do not mean the same thing in an historical context. This course examines the historical processes of ethnogenesis and identity formation as it has manifested among African-descended post-Columbian contact indigenous communities of the American Southeast. |
No required textbooks available |
Italian |
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Hour: 3A Instructor: Michael Wyatt |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Italian Briefs: Storytelling and Crisis in Boccaccio's Decameron
Description: This course will entail a close, critically informed, reading of each of the ten tales that make up Day Two of Giovanni Boccaccio’s mid-fourteenth-century Decameron. Each of these single stories will be considered within the wider frame of the collection’s 100 stories, told over two weeks by a group of ten college-age narrators – seven women and three men – who flee the city of Florence to escape the epidemic that came to be known as the Black Plague. This devastating event that spread like wildfire throughout Eurasia between 1346 and 1353 will be understood as both the occasion that prompted Boccaccio’s collection as well as its interpretive key. The Decameron creates a fictional world that posits a clear before and after, an in-between space of experimentation and risk-taking that reimagines the social, political, economic, and cultural codes of late medieval Italy. As a text that constantly probes its own architecture, thematics, and context, the Decameron serves as an especially fitting vehicle for a seminar focused on deepening the skills of analysis and writing. |
No required textbooks available |
Middle Eastern Studies |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Ezzedine Fishere |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: America and the Middle East
Description: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine heightened the challenges facing America’s leadership in many ways, among them its hegemonic control of global energy markets. Together with the emergence of China as a global (hostile?) power, it renewed the debate about the place of the Middle East in American strategy. After a decade of partial disengagement, culminating in a full withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the American president flew to Saudi Arabia and recommitted the United States to the security of its oil producing allies. Democracy advocates accused the administration of sacrificing American values at the altar of oil and “special interest.” The administration – and its supporters – scoffed at the criticism, asking rhetorically if there was an alternative. A similar dynamic plays itself out in US handling of Israeli-Palestinian conflict, its relations with Tunisia, Egypt, and Turkey, as well as its attitude vis-à-vis Iran. This course teaches students how to read various types of “texts” that form Middle East scholarship. This includes primary sources in addition to the traditional secondary sources, whether peer-reviewed texts or “policy reports.” Students will also watch and review films about American role in the Middle East. |
No required textbooks available |
Psychological & Brain Sciences |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Richard Granger |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: 7.02: Brain Evolution
Description: What’s in a human brain, and how did it get there? How are brains built via genetic and developmental mechanisms? What makes one brain different from another, between species and within species? What makes populations different from each other? Who are our ancestors, and what was their evolutionary path to us? How did human brains get to their enormous size? How do brains differ from other organs? What mechanisms are at play over evolutionary time? The course will entail studying and writing about scientific findings in the field as well as controversies. There will be four writing assignments, and an in-class presentation, each reporting on aspects of articles in the scientific literature. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Principles of Brain Evolution, Edition 1, Sinauer Press, by G. Striedter
ISBN-13: 978-0878938209
Approximate Cost via Amazon: $113 (new hardcover)/$40.48 (used)/$34 (rent)
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Spanish |
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Hour: 2 Instructor: Paul Carranza |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Don Quixote and Cognitive Theories of Literature
Description: Don Quixote is the story of a man who loses his mind by reading literature. This course will use Cervantes’ masterpiece to examine theories of the human mind and how it engages with literature. We will read selections of both Part I and Part II of Don Quixote together with critical works about it. The study of Cervantes’ novel will allow us to learn about the exciting field of cognitive literary studies. We will devote special attention to learning about theory of mind—the ability of readers and literary characters to attribute emotions to others—necessary to literature and life. We will also examine cognitive approaches to film by analyzing adaptations of Don Quixote such as Terry Gilliam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. All readings and lectures will be in English. |
No required textbooks available |
Theater |
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Hour: 11 Instructor: Mara Sabinson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
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, 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. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
none |
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Hour: 2 Instructor: Mara Sabinson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
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, 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. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None |
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality |
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Hour: 10 Instructor: Douglas Moody |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: He, She or It: Reconstructing Gender in Science Fiction
Description: Speculative or "science" fiction has often been the domain of male writers, however, a number of feminist writers of speculative fiction have created alternative worlds and explored social issues in their fiction in order to challenge concepts of gender, genetics, sexuality, and the seeming intractability of patriarchal societies. In this class we will explore these worlds of resistance, which confront our current conceptions of gender as we boldly go where no person has gone before. Some of our primary readings include: Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, Donna Haraway, Ursula LeGuin, Marge Piercy, and Joanna Russ. The students will read, view, discuss, critique, and conduct research on both fiction and non-fiction texts, as well as consider science fiction films and television programs. There will be three "analytical papers," which are based on the literature, critical essays, films, and television programs we will discuss and analyze, and at the end of the term the students will write one extensive (12 – 15 page) final paper that is research-based. We will have regular writing workshops during the term, in which most of the class time will be used to discuss the writing process and drafts of the students' papers, and during these group work activities the students and I will often share strategies about the writing process and research strategies. There will often be peer review exercises during the writing workshops and I expect that the students' papers will go through a process of prewriting, writing, and revising before they submit the final versions of their papers. Students will archive all of the drafts of their papers and final versions of their papers in an web-based portfolio. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin (ISBN-13: 978-0441478125);
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (ISBN-13: 978-0525435006)
Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale
Random House, 2017
ISBN-13: 978-1784873189
LeGuin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness, 50th Anniversary edition
ISBN-13: \u200E978-0441478125 |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Klaus Milich |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Masculinities Go In Between
Description: This course will elaborate on how notions of men, manhood, manliness, and masculinity have changed in response to economic, demographic, social, cultural, and territorial transformations. We will discuss aspects such as the formation of manhood in America, constructions of the racialized male body, the functions of male femininity and female masculinity in the reconsideration of gender, and follow the debate on male violence in hip-hop culture. Designed as a First Year Seminar, however, we will not only focus on “what masculinity is,” but simultaneously scrutinize the strategies of scholarship in the development of masculinity studies. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
none |
Writing Program |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Rachel Obbard |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Technology and Sport at the Crossroads
Description: "Technology and Sports at the Crossroads" is a First-year Seminar that engages students in in-depth study of this complex, interdisciplinary topic through reading, research, discussion, and composition. In this course, we will examine why some innovations in science and technology create controversy, try to answer some of the important questions about the use of technology in sport that transcend individual sports, and examine who is contributing to and shaping the public discourse about these topics. We will read and discuss scientific (peer-reviewed) papers and scholarly essays on engineering, ethics and the philosophy of sport and each student will do extensive research and writing on a specific topic. Coursework will include short informal writing pieces, an annotated bibliography, a presentation on their topic, and two major essays: a literature review paper on the applied science or engineering behind a specific sports technology, and a scholarly essay that examines the intersection of that technology with sport and society. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None |
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Hour: 3B Instructor: Rachel Obbard |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None |
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Hour: 11 Instructor: Colleen Lannon |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: The Female Detective
Description: Detective fiction is generally considered a conservative genre. It addresses doubt and uncertainty (Who committed the crime? Why? Will she or he strike again?) and once the crime is solved, it replaces that doubt with certainty and assurance; the status quo is reinstated. What happens, then, when the historically male sleuth is replaced by a female detective? What possibilities are opened by it? Is the status quo reinforced or challenged? This course will examine the female detective alongside her masculine counterpart, starting with the early days of Sherlock Holmes’s "sisters" and then proceeding through American hard-boiled fiction and selections from the golden age of British crime fiction. Finally, we will examine the new wave of female detective fiction that began in the ‘70s and ‘80s as well as the emergence of the sub-genre of queer/lesbian detection in the 1990s. Readings will include selections from authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dashiell Hammett, Sue Grafton, and Katherine V. Forrest. Formal assignments will include three essays and an in-class presentation. In addition, there will be daily informal writing assignments that reinforce concepts introduced in class. Throughout the course, a strong emphasis will be placed on writing as a process involving multiple drafts and collaborative feedback. The overall goal of the course is to help students develop the intellectual abilities they need to succeed in an academic environment. This includes sharpening their critical reading and thinking skills; understanding the elements of argument and how to shape a persuasive essay; learning how to engage with the work of other scholars; writing effective prose; and revising for clarity. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Grafton, Sue. A is for Alibi. St. Martin's Griffin, 2005. ISBN: 978- 0312353810.
Forrest, Katherine V. Murder at the Nightwood Bar. Spinsters Ink, 2011. ISBN: 978-1935226673.
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Hour: 10 Instructor: Ellen Rockmore |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Free Speech on College Campus
Description: Who is allowed to say what on college campuses? This is the question this course seeks to answer. We will look at the philosophical foundations of the right to free speech and why it is considered essential to liberty and democracy. We will also read well known Supreme Court opinions defining the legal parameters of the first amendment, particularly as it pertains to “hate speech.” We will then turn to the specific forum of the university, where values such as equality, inclusion, and pedagogy may sometimes come into tension with the value of free speech. We will read arguments both for and against limiting the free speech rights of students and faculty. The course will survey the history of attempts to regulate speech on campuses, including early 20th century disputes between university benefactors and professors, the hate speech codes of the 1980’s, as well as present controversies over free speech on college campuses. Students will discuss and write about contemporary conflicts, such as protests over invited speakers, or Donald Trump's recently issued Executive Order on Combating AntiSemitism. Assignments will include written responses to readings, written analyses of contemporary problems, and arguments for or against disciplinary action in hypothetical -- or actual -- cases. Some writing assignments will be done in stages, with opportunities for feedback and revisions. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None |
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Hour: 12 Instructor: Ann Bumpus |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Contemporary Ethical Issues
Description: Do you wish you had a better grasp on the arguments for and against the death penalty? Drug legality? Physician-assisted suicide? In this course we will study two or three currently contentious moral issues. Assigned content will include academic papers, articles from the popular press, films, and documentaries. Class time will be devoted to discussion, debate, argument-analysis, and peer review of written work. Students will be assigned at least two argumentative essays, several reading reactions, argument reconstructions, and a final presentation. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Rebecca Clark |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Mad Women
Description: What makes a mad woman? And why are we always hiding her in the attic? In this course, students will hone their writing and discussion skills as they visit with some of the great mad women of literature, film, and popular culture: from ancient Greek tragedy’s most infamous filicidal mother to “hysterical” teens committed the psychiatric ward; from the Gothic novel’s mad woman in the attic, to the postmodern manic pixie dream girl; and all the crazed crones and manic monstresses in between. Students will critically read and write their way through a fittingly eccentric collection of texts spanning the genres of fiction, poetry, memoir, and essay in order to examine how madness, broadly construed, has been and continues to be diagnosed, treated, and narrated across time, place, and discipline. Throughout, will think about the ways in which gender, sex, race, and disability impact and are impacted by narratives of monstrosity, mania, hysteria, and rage. In this writing course, students will produce approximately 32 pages of written work through a gradual process of drafting, editing, reviewing, and revising. We will work on reading critically, posing analytical questions, crafting and supporting well-reasoned arguments, and developing research skills. The course will culminate in an original research paper. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Barnes, Djuna. Nightwood. Any edition.
Morrison, Toni. Sula. Any edition.
Wang, Esme Weijun. The Collected Schizophrenias. Any edition.
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Christopher Drain |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Anthropogenesis
Description: In this seminar we will deal with the question of human origins (i.e., "anthropogenesis"). In staking out this investigation, we follow late philosopher Bernard Stiegler and Soviet psychologist L.S. Vygotsky in positing the following proposition: Homo sapiens is interesting only insofar as it leaves the bounds of purely biological determination. In other words, we are cultural-historical animals, and our specific development relies on the mediating role of cultural devices and cognitive scaffolds. But what exactly are these devices and scaffolds? And how do they function not only in relation to the quantitative amplification of prehuman capacities but also their qualitative transformation? In formulating answers to these questions, we will look to work from philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and cognitive science, while also considering insights from literary theorists, psychoanalysts, and classicists. As a writing seminar, we will critically examine the rhetorical structure of our texts and workshop analytic and argumentative compositions to learn the contours of academic prose in an interdisciplinary context. Shorter written assignments will scaffold the development of a research paper. Students should expect to draw on peer and instructor feedback throughout the term. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Freud, S. Totem and Taboo. W.W. Norton & Co., 1990. ISBN: 978-0393001433.
Tomasello, M. A Natural History of Human Thinking. Harvard University Press, 2018 reprint edition. ISBN: 978-0674986831.
All other readings available online.
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Christopher Drain |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Anthropogenesis
Description: In this seminar we will deal with the question of human origins (i.e., "anthropogenesis"). In staking out this investigation, we follow late philosopher Bernard Stiegler and Soviet psychologist L.S. Vygotsky in positing the following proposition: Homo sapiens is interesting only insofar as it leaves the bounds of purely biological determination. In other words, we are cultural-historical animals, and our specific development relies on the mediating role of cultural devices and cognitive scaffolds. But what exactly are these devices and scaffolds? And how do they function not only in relation to the quantitative amplification of prehuman capacities but also their qualitative transformation? In formulating answers to these questions, we will look to work from philosophy, psychology, anthropology, and cognitive science, while also considering insights from literary theorists, psychoanalysts, and classicists. As a writing seminar, we will critically examine the rhetorical structure of our texts and workshop analytic and argumentative compositions to learn the contours of academic prose in an interdisciplinary context. Shorter written assignments will scaffold the development of a research paper. Students should expect to draw on peer and instructor feedback throughout the term. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Freud, S. Totem and Taboo. W.W. Norton & Co., 1990. ISBN: 978-0393001433.
Tomasello, M. A Natural History of Human Thinking. Harvard University Press, 2018 reprint edition. ISBN: 978-0674986831.
All other readings available online.
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Clara Lewis |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Reading and Writing True Crime
Description: The genre of true crime is wildly popular. Enjoying its sensational narratives for entertainment purposes, however, raises difficult questions. What are the implications for justice when podcasters, documentarians, and tabloids weigh in on high profile cases? How do new visual and social technologies impact the genre? What does our cultural fascination with violence reveal about our society? This seminar offers a critical introduction to the practice of reading and writing true crime. We aim to extend the boundaries of the genre by considering underrepresented harms and unconventional stories. We begin with theory from harm studies and critical criminology that contextualizes the state’s role in defining what constitutes crime. Then we embark on an extended period of self-directed research complimented by shared readings that illustrate the potential of the true crime genre to reveal social harms. By the end of the term, you will complete a significant independent study that culminates in either an original true crime narrative or a critique of an existing true crime story. Ahead of your final project, you’ll practice a number of real-world short forms, including pitches, proposals, and reviews. You will also experiment with ways of writing-without-writing and pre-writing designed to level-up your skills, build confidence, and cut the stress and procrastination out of your process. End the term by presenting your work to friends in the creepiest room in the library! |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Cullen, Dave. Columbine. Twelve, 2009.
Walker, Jess. Ruby Ridge: The Truth and Tragedy of the Randy Weaver Family. Harper Perennial, 2002. ISBN: 006000794X.
Capote, Truman In Cold Blood. Vintage, 1994. ISBN: 0679745580.
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Hour: 3A Instructor: Leigh York |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Seriality in Popular Culture
Description: The popularity and ubiquity of serial storytelling are evident today in the proliferation of television programs, web series, film sequels, podcasts, comic books, and transmedia programming. This course traces the development of serial storytelling from the serialized novel in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to television and digital storytelling in the twenty-first. We will examine the ways that stories unfold over time in different serial media; in the process, we will explore the shifting roles of author and audience, the ways changes in technology and media have shaped narrative content, and the ways that serial forms have influenced our historical consciousness and cultural discourse. The course readings will introduce a range of conceptual frameworks for analyzing popular culture, drawing from cultural and media studies. Writing assignments will include two short formal essays focused on textual and contextual analysis as well as a longer research project on a popular serial text of your choosing. Through these assignments you will learn to apply your critical reading and viewing skills to popular culture and to use theoretical frameworks and scholarly research to inform, enhance, and complicate your analyses of popular texts. |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None |
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