Fall 2012 First-Year Writing Seminars

AMERICAN INDIAN STUDIES 1121 SEM 101

Seeing Red: American Indian (Mis)Representations

What do you picture when you hear the terms American Indian or Native American? Horses and tipis? Casinos and wealth? Kinship cultural traditions? This course will address histories and contemporary images and (mis)representations of Indians in a variety of media. Through films, photographs, comic books, advertising, and literature including works by prominent Native writers and scholars, the class will consider a range of issues including ethics, power, authenticity and identity, and the tension between self-representation and representation by non-Natives. Assignments will include informal journaling, op-ed articles, film review, and short research papers. Ample time will be devoted to in-class workshops in which students will review and edit each others’ drafts and to address questions about the writing process.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Whitney Mauer 16744 Jane Mt.Pleasant

ANTHROPOLOGY 1133 SEM 101

Food and Globalization

Although we think of globalization as a new phenomenon, history gives us many examples over the last three millennia. This course will examine the ways that foods (with or without the people that produce them) have spread throughout the world. From the spread of wine and olive oil around the Mediterranean, to the Spice Trade in the Middle Ages, to the Colombian Exchange after Columbus’ voyages, foods have traveled to new venues and created new tastes, desires, and values. This course will examine the people and ideas that moved these foods. It will contrast these historical flows with the globalization of food today and the changing ways that people across the planet eat. Writing assignments will involve comparing a variety of themes and researching the journey of food products from farm to market.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Jane Fajans 16747

ANTHROPOLOGY 1140 SEM 101

Reviving Prehistory

Prehistory left no written records, yet we wonder what prehistoric life was like. Were ancient people like us except for their clothing and tools, or radically different? What can we learn from our early ancestors? Accounts of prehistory draw on varied lines of evidence, and take various literary forms. We will explore these different kinds of stories and what each genre can tell us. Oral tradition, material culture, and ethnographic analogy can serve as sources of information for archaeological writing, popular science books, Native American studies, fiction, and documentary and feature films. Subject matter will range from archaeological texts to Vine Deloria, Jean Auel, and 10,000 BC. Students will experiment with writing in some of these genres as well as critique.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Nerissa Russell 16748

ANTHROPOLOGY 1144 SEM 101

Culture and China’s Cultural Revolution

Why did millions vow to eliminate “class enemies” and destroy all remnants of “traditional culture” in China’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76)? Why is open discussion of these events still taboo in today’s China? And what are the repercussions of this movement and its aftermath for thinking about humankind’s relationship to culture and politics? This course examines the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” as an introduction to the anthropological study of culture and politics. Readings will include excerpts from academic studies and primary documents from this era (e.g., Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung), along with recent documentary films. Class discussions and writing will address the relationship between ritual and political power, religion and the cult of personality, kinship and political identity, political violence, ethnic relations, and national history.

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Kevin Carrico 16928 Kurt Jordan

ANTHROPOLOGY 1150 SEM 101

Perspectives on the World Economy

The recent recession and financial crisis across the world have brought into sharp focus the fact that economies across the globe are highly interconnected. This course explores the historical development of an interconnected, global economy, focusing on the historical trajectory of capitalism and its attendant social relations. We will pay special attention to the development of capitalism in the non-Western world. Readings will draw from history, anthropology, and sociology; including the work of Eric Wolf, Sidney Mintz, Marx, and Immanuel Wallerstein. We will also read blogs and journal and newspaper articles. Writing assignments will clarify and build upon the reading and include reading responses, summaries, critiques, analytical and argumentative essays.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Nidhi Mahajan 16750 Kurt Jordan

ANTHROPOLOGY 1152 SEM 101

Immigrant Lives, Immigrant Voices

We frequently hear about immigration as an "issue," but rarely about the actual experiences of people as migrant workers, refugees, and asylum seekers settling and integrating into US society. Drawing on a variety of ethnographic studies, we will look at the debates surrounding such practices of integration, an experience closely tied to everyday lived realities of migrant labor, community formation, and ongoing construction of im/migrant "identity." Writing assignments will allow students to develop the ability to read closely, to analyze and construct arguments, and to incorporate qualitative research skills—in short, to engage with broader theories and concepts in the social sciences and humanities.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Tina Shrestha 16752 Kurt Jordan

ANTHROPOLOGY 1154 SEM 101

The Power of Narrative: History, Rumor, and Storytelling

What “counts” as history and who decides? In this seminar, we will focus not on questions of “what actually happened” but rather on “what is said to have happened” as well as how that account is communicated, to whom, in what context, and why. Why are some forms of narrative privileged over others in crafting histories? Does history have a particular claim to “truth”? We will address such questions through readings, discussions, and writing assignments that examine how power informs historical production. Readings will span theoretical analyses, ethnographies, and ancient historical texts, and will include work by Ricoeur and Foucault. Writing assignments based on ethnographic activities, visual analyses, and close readings will analyze shifts in historical discourse alongside the practices that produce histories.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Lesley Turnbull 16751 Kurt Jordan

ANTHROPOLOGY 1155 SEM 101

Cultures, Representation, and Power

In newspapers, on the internet, through films, or in museums we are told what to believe about other people and cultures. In this course, we will examine anthropological approaches to representation and will ask questions such as: Is objective representation possible? Who has the power to represent? Why are some forms of representation more powerful than others? We will read anthropological texts and newspaper articles, analyze video clips, and discuss a broad range of issues including race, medical sciences, feminism, migration, styles of dress, and technology. Writing assignments will include response papers to articles, films, and essays based on the students’ empirical research. Students will learn to be more aware of their subjectivity and to use it to make their writing more persuasive to others.

MWF 01:25–02:15 p.m. Inga Gruss 16753 Kurt Jordan

ANTHROPOLOGY 1156 SEM 101

Segregated Cities in the Developing World

One of the visible consequences of the rapid growth of cities in developing countries is the increasing segregation and fracturing of the urban landscape. Heavily guarded and gated communities and expensive shopping malls abruptly come to a halt, giving way to their opposite—informal economies and slum dwellings. Public spaces to mediate between these two extremes disappear, along with the “middle class” societies that negotiate the distance between them. Short essays and a research project will encourage students to take an ethnographic look at cities, including São Paulo, Mumbai, and Dakar, to meditate on quality of life, violence, insecurity, and discrepant urban practices in the arts like grafitti and pixação. We will discuss the ethnographic work of Caldeira, Appadurai, Gandy, Comaroffs, and Holston. Students will write responses in personal and critical styles to a combination of texts and lived experiences.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Bernardo Brown 16938 Kurt Jordan

ANTHROPOLOGY 1157 SEM 101

Of Spirit: Religion, Energy, and the Production of Knowledge

In this seminar, we will examine traditions as both embodied practices and systems of belief. Through the tension of the material and the immaterial we will closely consider the narrative and metaphoric grammar of belief systems and the transformative energy of embodied practices; using this method we will scrutinize the parameters of rational thought and the production of esoteric knowledge. We will read Western theorists like Bataille and deCerteau, texts from mystical traditions, from modern science, and from anthropology. Writing assignments will range from short think pieces to critiques and short research projects. The objective of the course is to hone critical thinking, reading, and writing skills and to introduce students to the application of theoretical (immaterial) models to material processes.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Courtney Work 17011 Kurt Jordan

ART HISTORY 1133 SEM 101

A Sea of Islands: Pacific Art and Identity

An exciting adventure into Pacific visual culture awaits you in this journey through “A Sea of Islands.” We explore the art of Polynesia to understand how identity is represented in art from pre-contact through globalization in Hawaii, Samoa, and New Zealand, among other locations in Oceania. We analyze a wide variety of art forms including film, performance, body adornment, and Pacific Hip Hop to determine how concerns about diaspora, indigeneity, tradition, and technology inform representations of Pacific identity created by contemporary artists. To see art on campus, we will visit the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. Assignments will develop critical skills in reading, thinking, and writing about art and identity.

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Bernida Webb-Binder 16745 Maria Fernandez

ART HISTORY 1141 SEM 101

Who Owns Culture? Propaganda, Theft, Museums, and Heritage Wars

Why do people care about art and history? And how do people use public displays of art for political purposes? These questions will frame our investigations into “heritage policy,” in which the arts’ power to represent identities has become the center of intense international debates and controversies. These issues affected propaganda in Nazi Germany and Sadaam Hussein’s Iraq, encouraged tourism in “developing” countries that commodified historic sites, led Italy to accuse major American museums of supporting the theft of valuable antiquities, and sparked violent conflicts between Cambodia and Thailand. By critiquing scholarship, films, and online media, students will engage with a range of rhetorical methods for creating convincing arguments, analyzing both textual and visual sources, and better understanding their relationship to their own “cultural heritage.”

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Emmons Hahn 16757 Maria Fernandez

ART HISTORY 1142 SEM 101

Literacy in a Digital Age

College students today are multiply literate: they read and write academic essays, emails, Facebook statuses, tweets, text messages, and blogs. But how are new forms of communication like blogging different from or similar to traditional forms like essay writing? What are their unique formal and informal conventions? How are reading and writing practices and the dynamics between writers and readers changed when text moves online? How might new digital writing tools help students become better formal writers? This course will ask students to critically consider these questions and others as we consider Literacy in the Digital Age. In addition to reading essays about digital and non-digital literacy, students will have opportunities to write in multiple genres.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Minh-Ha Pham 16758

ART HISTORY 1143 SEM 101

Living for the City: Algiers, Casablanca, Tangier

How do we engage the physical space of a city, and how are these ideas and representations built? This class will look at modern and contemporary arts that are particularly invested in engaging with a city as an actor in its own right, focusing on Algiers, Casablanca, and Tangiers as case studies. We will explore alternative representations of such topics as the war for independence in Algiers, the megacity of Casablanca, and the border in Tangier. We will look at divergent viewpoints, including films such as Battle of Algiers, critical writing by Frantz Fanon, Katarzyna Pieprzak, and Abdellah Karroum, literature by Laila Lalami, and visual representations by artists such as Yto Barrada, Hassan Darsi, Zineb Sedira, and Antoni Muntadas. Students will develop ideas on how to critically interpret representation, focusing on building arguments in writing assignments.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Holiday Powers 16759 Maria Fernandez

ASIAN STUDIES 1103 SEM 101

Japan Performs! Myth, Storytelling, and Dorama

This writing-intensive course explores Japan’s performing arts, from its origins in mytho-history, medieval war tales circulated by blind jongleurs, early modern theatrical arts, to TV melodramas and anime. While examining issues of orality, literacy, and gender, we will encounter a variety of writing styles—performed narratives, dramatic literature, and academic writing—and also view filmed performances. Students will produce different styles of writing, with a focus on literary analysis; that is, on the close reading and analysis of literature, performances, and visual media as “primary texts.”

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Janice Kanemitsu 16746

ASIAN STUDIES 1105 SEM 101

Mischievous Monks and Talking Tigers: Story and Meaning in Asian Religions

How did the crows outsmart the owls? What did the monk do when he met a hungry tigress? Why did the Monkey King terrorize the celestial palace? This course will survey the story literature (myths, fables, parables, legends, and animal tales) of various Asian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. We will investigate how these traditions utilize storytelling to create a world of meaning and belief in the reader. Writing projects will include close readings, comparative essays, opinion pieces, and creative writing. Readings will include selections from the Pancatantra, Jatakamala, Mahabharata, Zhuang zi, and Journey to the West. We will also explore how storytelling has adapted to new media by looking at examples in modern cinema, anime, and video games.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Tyson Yost 16754 Daniel Boucher

ASIAN STUDIES 1109 SEM 101

The Evolution of Writing Systems in Cosmopolitan Asia

This course examines how independent written traditions arose in East Asia from the context of a shared, cosmopolitan experience of Chinese script and literature. We begin by briefly tracing the history of writing in China from its roots in oracle bone inscriptions through its multiple systematizations, as well as the production of a “literary language.” We then turn to the local development of writing in Vietnam, Korea, and Japan, exploring the rise of vernacular traditions, at first partnering with, then replacing, Chinese script and discourse. The evolution of writing bears on many fields, from anthropology and politics to history and literature; our own writing work will develop the ability to marshal evidence in support of a cogent thesis—to understand, and ultimately join, scholarly discussions.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. John Phan 16743

ASIAN STUDIES 1127 SEM 101

Monks, Mystics, and Other Madmen

In this seminar, we will explore together both in discussion and on paper the quest among some individuals for special knowledge, a knowledge obtained by forsaking the everyday life of ordinary society, occupations, and relationships and engaging in alternative lifestyles and disciplines. We will look closely at several religious traditions, both Eastern and Western, as well as at other individuals whose journeys, though perhaps "spiritual," fall outside of traditional religion. In the process, we will want to ask about what kinds of notions of the individual and his/her relationship to the larger group are operative so as to elucidate why these free spirits have been both elevated and reviled by the worlds they left behind. Writing assignments will ask students to synthesize knowledge from different readings and build complex arguments.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Daniel Boucher 16764

AFRICANA STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER 1815 SEM 101

Race Matters: Frederick Douglass to W. E. B. Du Bois

This seminar investigates matters of race in relation to society, politics, and culture. It explores main ideas and concepts in the philosophy and sociology of race. Relevant questions are: what do we mean by race? Is race a construct or is race real? Which is prior in race matters—nurture or nature? Is the primary contradiction in the society race or class? Are we in a post race era? Our exploration proceeds from Frederick Douglass’s Selected Writings and Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk. Our conversation continues with writings of other scholars such as Charles Mills, Bernard Boxill, Lucius Outlaw, Lewis Gordon, and Robert Gooding Williams.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Adeolu Ademoyo 16755

AFRICANA STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER 1819 SEM 101

Literature and Sport

In this course, we will explore the “literariness” of sports writing. By reading and writing about a number of texts, “autobiographies,” novels, historical memoirs, and short stories, we will consider how difficult it is to categorize sports writing. We will read about sports codes, such as cricket, that, by themselves introduce new modes of thinking and writing about sport. We will also read two texts about football (improperly called “soccer” in the US) that will challenge us to think about sport and literature, sport and politics, and the very form of sports writing.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Grant Farred 16756

AFRICANA STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER 1825 SEM 101

Educational Innovations in Africa and the African Diaspora

This course deals with educational innovations geared to promoting equal opportunity based on gender, race, and class, in Africa and the African Diaspora. It will focus on concrete case studies in the United States and Africa. The cases of the American case studies are Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University), Spelman College, and the Westside Preparatory School in Chicago. The African cases to be studied are science education in Nigeria, Ujamaa, and education for self-reliance in Tanzania, classroom action research in Lesotho, and OnLine learning at the University in South Africa. Students will write on different environments, stages, actors, beneficiaries, and resistance of educational innovations from the initial idea of the need for planning change to the implementation.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. N’Dri Assie-Lumumba 16925

ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONARY BIOLOGY 1640 SEM 101

Exploring Form and Function in Vertebrates

The relationship between an animal’s anatomy and its ability to perform certain tasks seems intuitive at first. However, by delving more deeply into form-function relationships, you can often find unexpected interactions and complexities that have applications for many fields such as behavior, ecology, evolution, biomedicine, engineering, and even robotics. In this seminar, you will investigate the structures involved in activities such as feeding, sensing, breathing, swimming, flying, running, and diving. You will explore form and function by writing about your own observations and the observations of historical and contemporary authors. The course will include many opportunities to see and write about interesting animal specimens through in-class activities and trips to the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Stacy Farina 16760 Irby Lovette

CLASSICS 1531 SEM 101

Greek Myth

The course will focus on the stories about the gods and heroes of the Greeks as they appear in the works of ancient Greek literature. We will read a selection from Greek authors, inquiring into the relationship between myths and cultural, religious, and political realia of the society in which they were shaped and perpetuated. Alongside the primary texts, we will read a number of recent scholarly works on the subject. We will start by discussing myths in general terms (theories, basic concepts) and will proceed toward the analysis of individual stories and cycles. This fascinating material will serve as a vehicle for improving students’ written communication skills. Assignments will include preparatory writing and six essays focusing on our readings and discussions in class.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Samuel Kurland 16761 Michael Fontaine

CLASSICS 1531 SEM 102

Greek Myth

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Carrie Fulton 16762 Michael Fontaine

CLASSICS 1537 SEM 101

Matter, Earth, and Sky: Popular Science from Antiquity to Today

For centuries authors have struggled with the challenges of scientific writing. Although effective communication about science is important for authors and readers alike, a lot of technical writing is nearly unreadable. What techniques create lasting landmarks of insight and clarity (Lucretius’s The Nature of Things, Richard Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces) which stand out against the backdrop of dull, muddled, or otherwise unsuccessful scientific writing? In this course, we will explore this question through some of popular science’s greatest successes, including verbal and visual elements, prose, and poetry, which add up to clear and accessible scientific and technical writing. Writing assignments will allow you to practice writing on topics that interest you for various audiences, including science journalism, research papers, and the popular press.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Courtney Roby 16763

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 101

Writing Across Cultures: Science and Literature

If science and literature offer competing accounts of reality, their overlap might force something to change—whether that something is science, writing, or reality itself. In this class, we will identify ways both disciplines are changed by their intersection. We will read a number of texts where science meets literature, including those by Octavia Butler, Charles Darwin, Samuel Delaney, Philip K. Dick, Sigmund Freud, and Mary Shelley. In their own writing, students will explore questions such as: What does science gain when it attempts to become literature? Why, when it becomes more “scientific,” does literature so often also become strange? How does scientific literature—and genre “science fiction” specifically—differ across cultures? How do these texts handle race, gender, sexual identity, politics, and history?

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Diana Hamilton 16765 TBA

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 102

Writing Across Cultures: Translational Americas—Reading Between the Signs

As the adage goes, translation is treason. Literary translation, in particular, is often seen as an impossible undertaking, doomed from the start to fail. This class will begin from the assumption that translation is possible and will explore the conditions of that possibility through close examination of wide-ranging materials. Most primary readings will be drawn from twentieth-century and contemporary Latin American poetry and literature, including works by César Vallejo, Haroldo de Campos, Cecilia Vicuña, and Roberto Bolaño. Students will be asked to place primary texts, along with other media, in conversation with major theoretical considerations of translation and the translator’s task. Among other emphases, writing assignments will challenge students to build clear, well-supported arguments. All required reading will be in English.

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Rebecca Kosick 16766 TBA

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 103

Writing Across Cultures: Music in Black and White—Cuba, Brazil, and the US

From jazz, to son, to bossa nova, the racial identity of music in the Americas is often a complex issue. This class will expose students to different musical genres of Cuba, Brazil, and the US and will examine the ways in which music has become racially and, in some cases, nationally identified. In addition to listening to musical repertoires, we will refer to a range of texts, including excerpts from magazines and periodicals, travelogues, poetic reflections on music, writings in ethnomusicology and music history, scholarly articles, and music biographies, in order to probe questions concerning the themes of racial and national authenticity of music. Through writing assignments, students will cultivate critical thinking skills while confronting the notion of music as racial and national property.

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Ryan Dreher 16767 TBA

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 104

Writing Across Cultures: Literature Between Languages

This course explores English-language literature in the past thirty years that incorporates vital elements of other languages. We will be looking at writers who depict the experience of immigrants adapting to new languages, those who dramatize conflicts between people who speak different languages, and those who construct new languages altogether, while keeping their work exciting for English-language readers. Students who know languages other than English are encouraged to explore non-English literature through independent projects. Authors we will study include Junot Diaz, Helen DeWitt, Brian Friel, Cathy Park Hong, Jessica Hagedorn, and Cecilia Vicuña. Writing assignments will emphasize the varied ways in which language can be used to make persuasive arguments, and also introduce students to the language of college essay composition.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Meredith Talusan 16768 TBA

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 105

Writing Across Cultures: Science Fiction

Science fiction, as Fredric Jameson said, “is the only kind of literature that can reach back and colonize the real world.” Through literature, films, and new media, this course explores the unique ways in which science fiction mediates our relationship with the world and shapes our awareness of the present. As our contemporary reality is inherently global, we will discuss and write about Anglo-American texts ranging from Frankenstein to Avatar and The Hunger Games alongside science fiction from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Students will write and maintain a group blog with individual contributions and collective interactions.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Anindita Banerjee 16769

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 106

Writing Across Cultures: Reading Poetry

Poems are puzzles, and in this class we’ll learn to figure them out. We’ll read short poems written in or translated into English, with a focus on English, American, and Russian poetry. Among the poets we’ll study may be Herbert, Keats, Hardy, Larkin, Dickinson, Frost, W. C. Williams, C. Porter, L. Hughes, K. Ryan, M. Jackson, Nabokov, Pushkin, Lermontov, and Akhmatova. Proceeding from journal entries to analytical essays, we’ll learn to account for our responses to poems in clear and concise language.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Nancy Pollak 16770

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 107

Writing Across Cultures: Crimes of Writing in the Americas

In this course, we will examine scenes throughout the Americas where the act of writing appears to transgress the law, as well as novels and stories in the noir genre that take crime as their subject matter. Towards the end of the semester we will turn to the case of copyright and the Internet’s role in recent debates about writing and human rights in Cuba. Students will hone their writing skills and reflect on the process of composition by asking: What constitutes a “criminal” act of writing? When and how does plagiarism become literature? What is the relationship between writing and property? How does writing’s legal and aesthetic status change as it moves away from paper and out into the street or onto the web?

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Thomas McEnaney 16771

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1133 SEM 101

Studies in Literary Theory: At the Limits of Language—Ecstasy, the Sublime, Difference

Why do words sometimes fail us? How do we write what must not be thought or what cannot be known? This seminar traces a series of conversations on the limits and inadequacies of language in and across religion, philosophy, literature, and the arts. Topics range from Judeo-Christian theology, early modern mysticism, and eighteenth-century aesthetics to the legitimation crisis of language and reason in twentieth-century thought. Students will develop academic writing and close reading skills through critical engagement with a wide variety of challenging texts. These include poetry (Rumi, Hölderlin, Mistral), prose fiction (Kafka, Borges), and excerpts from works of criticism and philosophy (Horace, Kant, Benjamin, and Derrida among others) as well as examples from the visual arts.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Daniel (Bret) Leraul 16772 TBA

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1133 SEM 102

Studies in Literary Theory: Literature, Thought, Reality

What can literature teach us about the nature of truth and reality? This course will investigate this question from a number of angles, ranging from problems concerning consciousness and “the ghost in the machine,” to how literature imagines radical alternatives to social reality. We will look at a variety of different methods of approaching these questions, including experimental modernist novels, nature poetry, anarchist writing, and philosophy of mind. Authors to include Faulkner, Beckett, Frost, Kant, Ryle, Marx, and Bakunin. Writing assignments will focus on developing close reading skills and formulating strong arguments.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Tatiana Sverjensky 16773 TBA

CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING 1109 SEM 101

Whose Heritage Is It?

Colonial Williamsburg, Chaco Canyon, Taj Mahal, and Machu Picchu: all cultural heritage sites, all carrying different meaning for different people. Why and how? This seminar will look at cases like these from across the world and explore ideas of how cultural heritage is perceived differently not only geographically but within the same cultures as well. We will begin with a general exploration of concepts of cultural heritage, trying to identify how different people interpret heritage using popular, policy, and research literature. Subsequent weeks will feature case-specific readings and visual material that will bring to light thought-provoking issues. Students will write personal essays investigating various aspects and issues of cultural heritage and heritage tourism to form arguments for coherent and incisive discussions.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Ashima Krishna 16776 John Forester

CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING 1109 SEM 102

Inequality: Causes and Consequences

Politicians, policymakers, and pundits all debate economic inequality. The Occupy Movement took to the streets to fight it. But virtually every question about inequality—both in the United States and the world—is contested. How large is inequality? Is it growing or shrinking? Where did it come from? Perhaps most importantly, how big of a problem is it really? Economists have long believed that moderate levels of inequality are beneficial, because it gives people the motivation to improve themselves. More recent data, however, suggests that national and global levels of inequality are deeply troubling, and might undermine social and political institutions. We will examine inequality from multiple angles, and delve into its implications in both the United States and internationally. We will examine inequality's possible causes—ranging from technological advancement, increased immigration, foreign trade, and the deregulation of the financial sector—and discuss their costs and benefits. Students are expected to think clearly and critically about the topic, to recognize that not all inequality is a sign of unfairness, and to participate in seminar discussions.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Michael Manville 16777

DEVELOPMENT SOCIOLOGY 1204 SEM 101

China in Transition

China is in the midst of profound economic, environmental, and social transformation. How are these changes experienced differently by different groups of people? Are transitions of this kind ever complete, or are they better understood as highly complex and contested processes? In this seminar, we will explore these and other questions about contemporary China, using sociological theories and methods of analysis. We will read narrative and ethnographic pieces such as Leslie T. Chang’s Factory Girls, investigative journalism such as When a Billion Chinese Jump by Jonathan Watts, and articles and reports from writers both inside and outside of China. Writing assignments will include responses to readings, personal narratives, argumentative essays, and a final research project that interrogates relationships between the transitions we explore in the seminar.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Mindi Schneider 16778 Phil McMichael

EARTH AND ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES 1420 SEM 101

Sustainable Earth, Energy, and Environmental Systems

Can we save the planet and satisfy the world’s increasing demand for energy? Do scientists agree that climate change is real and is caused by humans? In this course, we will explore such questions and investigate sustainable solutions to current challenges associated with energy and the environment. Readings will include popular science texts by Bill McKibben and Richard Heinberg; and newspaper, magazine, and scientific journal articles. Assignments will help students develop skills needed to write clear, concise, and substantive pieces that include blog posts, newspaper and magazine articles, scientific/engineering reports, and a capstone research paper.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Deborah Sills 17148 Charles Greene

Students are required to attend the Sustainable Earth, Energy, and Environmental Systems speaker series, held every other Monday 7:30-9:00 p.m. Choose another writing seminar if your schedule conflicts with the speaker series sessions.

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 101

Writing and Sexual Politics: The Films of Stanley Kubric

One of the most compelling and controversial American filmmakers, Stanley Kubrick produced a diverse and provocative body of work. This course will trace several themes that run throughout his films, including madness, war and violence (and particularly sexual violence), the struggle to define and conceptualize masculinity, the ethics of technology, and the relationship of the individual to state power. Six (or about half) of Kubrick’s films will comprise the bulk of the “reading” for the course, though I will also provide supplementary film reviews and scholarly criticism. Writing will largely take the form of close analyses of the films. Short exercises will ask you, for example, to dissect a single shot or scene, and longer papers will take up more sustained analyses of whole films.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Nicholas Roth 16780 Ellis Hanson

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 102

Writing and Sexual Politics: Sluts, Spinsters, Drag Queens

What do sluts, spinsters, and drag queens have in common? They expose the excesses and deviations in the spectrum of human sexuality, thereby drawing attention to the dubious status of what is concerned to be “normal.” Students will learn how to analyze, discuss, and write about a wide range of cultural objects from an eighteenth-century epistolary novel to the musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch to a Japanese-Canadian graphic novel to the reality show, RuPaul’s Drag Race. We will also explore how cultural critics and philosophers have addressed questions of gender and sexuality. Learning how to think critically is imperative and what will be emphasized is that writing is a form of thinking.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Christine Yao 16781 Ellis Hanson

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 103

Writing and Sexual Politics: Love Stories

“Am I in love?—Yes, since I’m waiting,” writes Roland Barthes. A central paradox of love is that while love conventionally denotes a union of two persons, that union is often experienced as a gap, as something deferred in time. Love is at once a togetherness and a distance, and this enigma has remained a favorite theme in all kinds of literature. In this course, we will read a number of texts that deal with different types of love in works by Shakespeare, Emily Brontë, and other authors: first love, unrequited love, lost love, “Platonic” love, God’s love (agape) as well as intergenerational love. Note that this is a writing-intensive seminar; assignments will include at least six final essays and one class presentation.

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Ben Tam 16782 Ellis Hanson

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 104

Writing and Sexual Politics: Singles, Loners, Spinsters

From glamorous single ladies and eligible bachelors to loners and sad spinsters, characters in literature and film appear to be longing to find their “other half,” someone who will “make their life complete”... But are they really? What if they're not? This course is concerned with the often reviled but always fascinating figures of single women and men, their fictional adventures and metamorphoses. Our readings will include tales of horror, stories of renunciation, coming-of-age narratives, poetry, and song. We will explore these texts in discussions and in a broad range of writing assignments, which will include short responses, creative writing, exercises in collaborative writing and editing, and multi-draft essays.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Kamila Janiszewska 16783 Ellis Hanson

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 105

Writing and Sexual Politics:The Erotics and Politics of Food

A daily necessity and a sensual indulgence, food has long been a potent and polarizing figure in political and aesthetic debates. In Plato’s Symposium, the setting for a philosophical discussion of love is the most decadent of feasts. And the language of desire permeates the political arguments of such contemporary writers as Michael Pollan and Alice Waters who argue for the extraordinary qualities of everyday meals. This course will investigate the language of food, including cookbooks, novels, and memoirs by such writers as Alice B. Toklas, M. F. K. Fisher, and Isabel Allende. Writing assignments will include recipes and informal blog posts as well as multi-draft essays, all designed to hone close reading skills and encourage the development of complex theses and cohesive arguments.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Elizabeth Blake 16784 Ellis Hanson

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 106

Writing and Sexual Politics: The Figure of the Witch

Magic, pointy hats, broomsticks, and black cats: simply a few images people think of when they hear the word Witch. Literature, film, and popular culture are all replete with these images. And even in our modern era, full of scientific rationalism, witchcraft still fascinates us. In this course, we will examine the figure of the witch, asking what we can learn about our cultural norms, history, and ourselves by studying the role of witchcraft more closely. We will pay special attention to what witchcraft reveals about the intersections of fiction, religion, politics, and gender. Through a cumulative set of writing assignments over the course of the semester, students will compose an extended research project on the figure of the witch.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Brant Torres 16785 Ellis Hanson

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 101

Writing Across Cultures: Natives and Strangers

Belonging and not belonging. Inclusion and exclusion. Familiarity and estrangement. How does the US order its social relations? How does a society construct and enforce social, political, psychological, and economic boundaries? How do these boundaries operate in daily life? How does our society determine who is a “native” and who is a “stranger”? What are some of the ways through which people are included and excluded (for example, by way of race, gender, class, sexual or religious orientation, or able-bodiedness)? How are people’s lives affected by such determinations? We’ll be reading a number of twentieth-century American authors who grapple with these issues in their writing (including, possibly, Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, Saul Bellow, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, and Gwendolyn Brooks).

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Shelley Wong 16787 Elizabeth Anker

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 102

Writing Across Cultures: Cartel Literature

What is cartel literature and where does it come from? Who is allowed to write it and what happens when it becomes dangerous to write it? How can cartel literature help us think about gender, race, and class systems in the larger superstructure of globalization? We’ll begin to answer these questions by engaging such texts as Lost City Radio by Daniel Alarcon, excerpts of 2666 by Roberto Bolaño, Murder City by Charles Bowden, as well as various photo essays and articles from Mexico, El Salvador, the US, Libya, Lebanon, and China. Students are expected to build on key concepts and themes throughout the course. Essays will be critical in nature and there will be one creative project toward the end of the semester.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Daniel Pena 16788 Elizabeth Anker

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 103

Writing Across Cultures: The Animal in Contemporary Fiction

This class focuses on the role and place of animals within fiction. As we read such texts as Yann Martell’s Life of Pi, J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace, and Barbara Gowdy’s White Bone, we will examine the various ways in which relations between animals and humans are imagined, and we will consider how these relations affect or broaden our understanding of community. Writing assignments will include both analytic and creative engagements with these texts, and will encourage a rethinking of how the animal can be read.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Nicolette Lee 16789 Elizabeth Anker

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 104

Writing Across Cultures: Metamorphosis, Identity, and Change

A convict assures his parole board that he’s “not the man he used to be.” We sometimes tell friends that we’re not “feeling like ourselves.” These phrases suggest that we are capable of becoming something other than what we currently are, and they raise a pressing question: are we defined by who we are, who we were, or who we are becoming? In this course, we’ll talk about various types of identity categories, including gender, race, religion, and species, and how they are influenced by notions of transformation. The course will cover texts as diverse as Ovid’s Metamorphosesand HBO’s series True Blood, and students will be encouraged to approach writing itself as a process of transformation.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Bernadette Guthrie 16790 Elizabeth Anker

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 105

Writing Across Cultures: Consumable Corpses

“Meat is like pornography,” says Melinda Vadas, “before it was someone’s fun, it was someone’s life.” In our rapidly globalizing world—where illegal foods become black market delicacies, and video games spark romantic realities—what pleasures and dangers lie in consuming the unfamiliar? In this seminar, we will map out global intersections of consumption; from the titillating literature that paved the way for the transatlantic slave trade, to tours of murder sites; from cookbooks to hip hop; from capitalism to zombies. Following discarded bodies as they are digested and reanimated, we will consider “corpses” not just as dead organisms but also as entire mythologies of race, technology, politics, sexuality, and play. Essays, blogs, and analytical responses will provide innovative outlets for our analysis.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Christian Howard 16791 Elizabeth Anker

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 106

Writing Across Cultures: Underworlds and Afterlives

How can we speak with the dead? What does it mean to be part of an underworld? Many works of literature take up precisely these questions, attempting to speak to and out of the places of death. We’ll begin by looking at how Homer and Dante imagine journeys to the underworld. And we’ll continue to explore, across different cultures and across history, the possible relationships between death and “subcultures” or “undergrounds.” By considering poetry, novels, stories, and films, we'll discover how art itself can have an afterlife, drawing us out of our daily moment and into an underworld. These issues will be starting points for response papers and longer essays. The course will develop critical vocabularies and methodologies for writing about literary and cultural phenomena.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Aaron Rosenberg 16792 Elizabeth Anker

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 107

Writing Across Cultures: Literature of the Arab Spring

What does “the Arab Spring” even mean? Should we be using the same ubiquitous term to describe the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya as the ouster of Mubarak in Egypt? What instigated these political movements? In this class, we will examine the literature of some of the Arab countries included in the term “Arab Spring” to contextualize and humanize these complicated political movements. We’ll read novels such as Yacoubian Buildingand In the Country of Men as well as other short stories, poems, and essays. We will also continue to read current news articles and analysis. Through informal and creative writing assignments as well as persuasive essays, students will develop their own unique interpretations of both Arab literature and Arab politics.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Aisha Gawad 16793 Elizabeth Anker

ENGLISH 1127 SEM 101

Shakespeare from Stage to Screen

Shakespeare has been more popular than any other dramatist—or screenwriter—for more than four hundred years. He is the most quoted poet in the English language, and his dramatic works are the most frequently performed and filmed. What accounts for this enduring appeal? What about the plays has made them at once so permanent and so adaptable? This class will give students the opportunity to work closely with a few of Shakespeare's plays: a total of four or five over the course of the semester. We will look to the playtexts themselves as material and inspiration for the extensive writing we will do. But we will also consult films and performances, even trying out some performance in the classroom.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Matthew Ritger 16794 Philip Lorenz

ENGLISH 1127 SEM 102

Shakespeare from Stage to Screen

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Kaylin Myers 16795 Philip Lorenz

ENGLISH 1127 SEM 103

Shakespeare from Stage to Screen

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Molly Katz 16796 Philip Lorenz

ENGLISH 1127 SEM 104

Shakespeare from Stage to Screen

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Shilo McGiff 16797 Philip Lorenz

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 101

Memoir and Memory

In this course, we’ll read memoirs and examine how authors construct their public, written selves. We'll consider how an author's self-presentation affects how we interpret the experiences, insights, and knowledge presented in each text; we'll also consider how the writing's style affects how we understand the author's personality and motives. Readings may include Tobias Wolff's This Boy's Life, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, and Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City; we may also read some poems. Together, and writing frequent essays, we'll explore why and how people write about themselves—for self-exploration, political or social change, purely to practice a form of art, or other reasons—and we'll investigate how writing shapes lived experience.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Michaela Brangan 16798 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 102

Memoir and Memory

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Ruoji Tang 16799 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 103

Memoir and Memory

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Nancy Quintanilla 16800 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 104

Memoir and Memory

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Kenneth Morrison 16801 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 105

Memoir and Memory

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Clayton Pityk 16802 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 101

The Mystery in the Story

What makes a story, and what makes it a mystery story? In this course, we'll study and write about the nature of narratives, taking the classic mystery tale written by such writers as Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Raymond Chandler as typical of intricately plotted stories of suspense and disclosure that have been written and filmed in many genres: Greek tragedy, horror tales by Poe and Shirley Jackson, psychological thrillers by Ruth Rendell and Patricia Highsmith, neo-noir films such as Memento and Fight Club, and postmodern mystery parodies such as those of Paul Auster and Jorge Luis Borges. We'll look at the way they hold together, the desire and fear that drive them, and the secrets they tell-or try to keep hidden.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Laurel Lathrop 16803 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 102

The Mystery in the Story

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Christopher Drangle 16804 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 103

The Mystery in the Story

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Lauren Schenkman 16805 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 104

The Mystery in the Story

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Adam Price 16806 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 105

The Mystery in the Story

tell-or try to keep hidden.

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Claire Whitenack 16807 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 106

The Mystery in the Story

tell-or try to keep hidden.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. David Aichenbaum 16808 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 101

American Voices: Indians in/as American Literature

What role did Native peoples play in shaping American literature? How does that literature reflect—or reject—their influence? To answer these questions, this course will explore both Euroamerican- and Native-authored texts from the colonial period through the nineteenth century. We will examine how these literatures both contest and create one another through their portrayals of Native history, identity, tradition, land, and sovereignty. Throughout, we will engage with the claim that Native peoples were not mere subjects in American literature; their writings were a constitutive element of that literary heritage. Brief readings and extensive discussions will inform response papers and analytical essays. Students will be introduced to new authors—Apess, Jemison, Schoolcraft—and to new ways of reading familiar ones like Franklin, Melville, and Hawthorne.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Daniel Radus 16809 Kevin Attell

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 102

American Voices: New York Stories

Truman Capote wrote, “I love New York, even though it isn't mine, the way something has to be, a tree or a street or a house, something, anyway, that belongs to me because I belong to it." With a reputation for being a rich cultural hub, New York City is constantly being evaluated in essays, novels, short stories, films, and music. What makes this city so complicated and engrossing? How has New York become an ever-changing myth? This course will discuss literary works by E. B. White, Colum McCann, Joan Didion, as well as films by Woody Allen. Class will be discussion-based and assignments will focus on close-reading analysis of our texts.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Rachel Coye 16810 Kevin Attell

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 103

American Voices: New Asian-American Narratives

In this course, we will look at a variety of newer, less “canonical” Asian-American voices. We will engage questions of race, representation, and diaspora as we investigate the complexities of contemporary Asian-American narratives in literature. Students will also have the opportunity to analyze the landscape of Asian-American representation (or its absence) in media and in the public sphere. Possible texts include: Blood and Soap by Linh Dinh, Migritude by Shaijla Patel, and selected stories and poems by Nam Le, Jennifer Chang, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others. Students will develop their analytical and argumentative writing skills, drafting and revising 5–6 critical essays that will be based on both the literary texts and the media element of the course.

MWF 01:25–02:15 p.m. Sally Mao 16811 Kevin Attell

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 104

American Voices: Gods, Ghosts, and Heroes from Asian Folklore

Whereas Eurocentric texts often salute the giants of Europe’s cultural canon (Homer, Shakespeare, etc.), Asian Anglophone writers have access to the canons of both Europe and Asia. We’ll observe characters of dual heritage coping with historical injustices and present-day realities by drawing upon Asian tales and traditions; examine how diaspora affects interactions between first- and second-generation immigrant characters; investigate whether course texts preserve or subvert ancient stories and values; and appraise whether canons and folklores are static or ever-expanding, elitist or populist. In contemplating the effects that authors’ choices have upon us, we’ll learn to consider the effects that our writing decisions have upon our readers, and to value clarity, coherence, and precision. Texts include novels by Amy Tan, Frank Chin, and Monique Truong.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Jungmin Kim 16812 Kevin Attell

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 105

American Voices: Paranoid Fictions

This course aims to define paranoia in a literary and historical context, focusing largely on novels, short stories, film, television, and other media from the 19th and 20th centuries. Potential works include Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno, selections from Kafka and Borges, Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, Paul Auster’s City of Glass, The Manchurian Candidate (1962), The Big Lebowski, episodes of The Twilight Zone, and various pieces of wartime propaganda. Using these texts, we will investigate and write critically on patterns of suspicion, the problematics of “knowing,” and the disintegration of selfhood as they appear as phenomena in recent literary history.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Nicholas Friedman 16813 Kevin Attell

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 106

American Voices: Literature and Ecology

This class will explore the rise of ecological thought in the last century and a half, investigating how cultural concepts of “nature”—in art, in popular discourse, and in environmental activism—have been conceived and reconceived. In a historical arc that begins with Darwin and ends with Monsanto, the materials for this class will range from poetry and nonfiction to journalism and film. Whether we are doing research in historical archives or drawing on environmental issues from today, this class in argumentative writing and critical thinking will focus on how our writing both conceives and re-conceives, presents and re-presents the lived landscapes of our environment.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Avery Slater 16814 Kevin Attell

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 107

American Voices: Jefferson’s America—Revisioning the Nation

We will examine the political, literary, and historical dynamics of early US nation building. We will stress the perspectives of those ordinarily excluded: women, Native Americans, slaves and free blacks, the poor and working classes, and non-Christians. Possible readings include Thomas Jefferson; Thomas Paine; John Adams; Gary Nash’s The Unknown American Revolution; the letters of Abigail Adams; the autobiography of John Marrant; the narrative of Olaudah Equiano; the writings of American Indians especially Native women’s petitions; and the cultural production of Phillis Wheatley and Benjamin Banneker. Writing will consist of short responses. Students will then revise and expand one of these into a longer essay of 7-8 pages. There will also be short, in-class writing assignments. Students will share their writing in class.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Laura Donaldson 16815

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 101

Great New Books

Great literature in English goes back several centuries, but some of it is being written right now. What are the great new books, and how do we know? What issues arise, and why? What role do reviews, prizes, book clubs, and movie adaptations play in establishing the appeal and prestige of new literature? These are some of the questions we'll explore as we read, discuss, and write critical essays about several of the most acclaimed books published in the last twenty years. Our readings will include works in a range of genres, from novels and memoirs to poetry and graphic novels.

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Stevie Edwards 16816 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 102

Great New Books

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Emma Perry 16817 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 103

Great New Books

MWF 01:25–02:15 p.m. Alexander Chertok 16818 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 104

Great New Books

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Emily Rials 16819 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 105

Great New Books

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Charlie Green 16820

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 106

Great New Books

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Charlie Green 16821

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 107

Great New Books

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Benjamin Garcia 16822 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 101

Cultural Studies: The Doctor Is In

On the hit TV show House, the misanthropic physician tells his staff “treating illnesses is why we became doctors. Treating patients is what makes most doctors miserable.” In this course, we will look at how doctors and patients analyze and write about medical treatment. Texts may include William Carlos Williams’s “The Doctor Stories,” James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small, and excerpts from Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creatures by Olivia Judson. We will view selected episodes of House and Grey’s Anatomy, and will examine podcasts and newspaper articles related to medicine. While we will primarily write analytical essays, assignments may include more creative endeavors such as writing an advice column entry and creating a podcast.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Kristie Schlauraff 16823 George Hutchinson

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 102

Cultural Studies: What Is an Author?

How do we imagine or understand the individuals behind the books we read, and what kind of relationship can we have with them? In this course, we will examine many conceptions of authorship, from anonymous bard to individual genius to creative collaborator. We will also look at how critics, philosophers, and writers have dramatized the author-reader relationship, with an eye toward the tendency to depict the author as tyrannical, detached, or artificial. This course will promote writing as a method of active reading: by considering these issues through a series of academic papers, students will be able to reflect on how literary study can create a space for uniting reading and writing. Readings may include works by Wordsworth, Barthes, Foucault, Woolf, Calvino, and D. F. Wallace.

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Stephen Thompson 16824 George Hutchinson

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 103

Cultural Studies: Zombies!

The Zombie virus is spreading! Zombie film and literature is becoming increasingly mainstream, and this course will revel in this popular pandemic. Beginning with the roots of zombie myth in Haitian voodoo, we will explore the zombie's development into the infectious, hyperviolent ghouls of George Romero films and beyond. We will read the zombie novel World War Z, short stories, parts of The Walking Dead graphic novel, and of course several films including Night of, Dawn, and Shaun of the Dead. Writing assignments will range from formal academic essays to oral presentations and at least one short story. Participation in (and writing about) the Humans v. Zombies campus-wide game will also be encouraged. High tolerance for violence will be vital: come prepared for gore!

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Matthew McConnell 16825 George Hutchinson

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 104

Cultural Studies: It Is Black In Outer Space

Come explore the grim dystopias, zombie apocalypses, and celestial creature worlds of science fiction. This writing seminar will look at science fiction through the lens of African-American media and discourse. Texts will include fiction (Octavia Butler’s Kindred and Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren), poetry (Tracey K. Smith’s Life on Mars), and film (Attack the Block). Our exploration and critique of these materials—through class debates, writing assignments, and creative projects—will center on race. What is Afrofuturism? In what ways do extraterrestrial "others" raise the issue of diaspora? How does science fiction reflect, comment on, and shape questions of internationalism in this world? We will critique and answer these questions through journals entries, formal essays, and even creative projects.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Kimberly Williams 16826 George Hutchinson

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 105

Cultural Studies: Dark Humor

What’s so funny about death, war, and existential despair? Dark humor gives a comic treatment to morbid or taboo concepts, from cannibalism to the destruction of the human race. In this course, we’ll look at examples of dark humor from many periods and genres—including works by Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, Flannery O’Connor, Kurt Vonnegut, and David Foster Wallace, movies such as Dr. Strangelove and Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life, and the stand-up comedy of Richard Pryor. In a series of argumentative essays, students will analyze these works, exploring questions such as how dark humor differs from “nondark” humor, and to what extent it allows authors to provide cultural commentary that would be impossible through more serious means.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. John Searcy 16827 George Hutchinson

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 106

Cultural Studies: The Politics and Pleasures of Television

Why should television be considered a worthy object of academic study? Conversely, how can we think about television in complex ways without treating it as just another object of academic study? This course analyzes television through the methodology of cultural studies and popular culture. We look not only at specific television programs in terms of their textual qualities but also at the realms of production, distribution, and reception. Why do so many of us watch so much television, even when it's not considered “good” TV? And with what effects on the US political, economic, and cultural landscapes?

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Jane Juffer 16828

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 101

Short Stories

What is the difference between an anecdote and a short story or a memoir and a short story? How does the short story separate itself from the prose poem, the myth, or the parable? What can a short story do that no other art form can do, including cinematic narrative? This course will focus on the reading and analysis of short stories derived from a range of cultures and time periods, with some emphasis on English-language stories, particularly those from the North American continent. Writers may include but not be limited to: Tobias Wolff, Alice Munroe, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Willa Cather, Edgar Alan Poe, Nikolai Gogol, Eudora Welty, Louise Erdrich, Haruki Murakami, Denis Johnson, Margaret Atwood, Donald Barthelme, Flannery O'Connor, Edith Wharton, Raymond Carver, Joyce Carol Oates, and Anton Chekhov. There will be a research component and some workshop discussion of student work.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Danielle Morgan 16829 Stephanie Vaughn

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 102

Short Stories

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Lena Krian 16830 Stephanie Vaughn

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 103

Short Stories

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Caroline Zeilenga 16831 Stephanie Vaughn

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 104

Short Stories

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Mandy Gutmann 16832 Stephanie Vaughn

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 105

Short Stories

MWF 01:25–02:15 p.m. David Faulkner 16833

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 106

Short Stories

MWF 02:30–03:20 p.m. Samuel Nam 16834 Stephanie Vaughn

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 107

Short Stories

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Alex (Lauren) Harmon 16835 Stephanie Vaughn

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 108

Short Stories

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Stephanie Vaughn 16836

ENGLISH 1191 SEM 101

British Literature: Meaningful Lyrics—From Odes to Indie Rock

If rock and roll derives much of its power from rejecting stale traditions, then it may seem to have nothing to do with old volumes of poetry withering away on dusty shelves. Yet there are many ways in which the history of poetry foreshadows and informs the most progressive pop music. What happens when we read Shakespeare’s gender-bending sonnets next to David Bowie’s androgynous glam rock or Percy Shelley’s anarchic rallying cries next to those of punk rock? This class will examine recurrent poetic techniques and themes while paying attention to the ways in which pop music both draws on and reshapes them. We will focus on developing critical reading and listening skills to craft new arguments through extensive and varied writing practice.

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Ryan Dirks 16838 Elisha Cohn

ENGLISH 1191 SEM 102

British Literature: Vindicating the Villain—Literature’s Exoneration Project

Judas. Grendel. Dracula. These are some of literature’s most infamous villains. While viewing these characters as evil-doers seems to be a

cut-and-dried issue, some modern authors have begun composing parallel texts designed to redeem even the most damnable characters in literary history. Indeed, while John Gardner encourages readers to view Grendel as an adolescent experiencing existential crisis, Andrew Lloyd Weber presents Judas as a tragic hero striving to preserve his people. In this class, we will explore British Literature through the scope of "Flipped Perspective" as we revisit classic tales of good and evil from non-traditional viewpoints. Writing exercises will include analytical and creative essays and in-class assignments. Proposed texts include: Neil Gaiman’s Bay Wolf, Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Jesus Christ Superstar, and Fred Saberhagen’s The Dracula Tape.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Katie Compton 16839 Elisha Cohn

ENGLISH 1191 SEM 103

British Literature: Rolling in the Isles

“There are limits to my comedy,” says David Brent of The Office, unintentionally drawing a laugh. “Rolling in the Isles” will bear out this would-be funnyman’s sentiment, demonstrating the “limits” of British comedy as well as its scope and ambition. The writers and performers we discuss experiment with form and genre, take aim at sacred cows, and satirize the conventions of art, politics, and the everyday social world. Through close engagement with texts such as Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Noel Coward’s Private Lives, and selections from radio, sketch comedy, sitcoms, and stand-up, students will explore how formal conventions and social and political concerns interact in British comedies. Writing exercises will include analytical essays, journal entries, and creative assignments.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Lily Cui 16840 Elisha Cohn

ENGLISH 1191 SEM 104

British Literature: Self, Nation, and Empire

What is the relationship between “self,” “nation,” and “empire”? This course will approach the British novel from the perspective of writers who have a thorny, complex relationship to Britain: James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, E. M. Forster, and Salman Rushdie. How does British imperialism shape the way other people and places are represented in the English literary imagination? And how does that literary imagination in turn complicate the politics of British imperialism? Through various kinds of writing assignments—from weekly Blackboard responses to multi-draft analytical essays—we will seek to understand how the novel form accommodates differences in personal and national identity.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Christine Suwendy 16841 Elisha Cohn

ENGLISH 1191 SEM 105

British Literature: Growing up Modern

Is it true that “human character changed” in the early twentieth century, as Virginia Woolf famously claimed? What do the stories a society tells about childhood, youth, and education reveal about its collective fantasies, fears, and desires? In this course, we will read late-nineteenth and early twentieth-century narratives about youth and education (with a particular focus on experimental British prose fiction) for what they can tell us about life in a period of startling technological change, political upheaval, and war. We will also develop our analytical and expressive skills by composing short responses and polished critical essays. Our readings may include texts by Woolf, Oscar Wilde, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Joseph Conrad, and Jean Rhys, among others.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Benjamin McCormick 16842 Elisha Cohn

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 101

Writing About Literature: The 9/11 Novel

Where were you on 9/11? How has American culture remembered 9/11 as an event? And, more importantly, how can literature help us investigate its residues within contemporary culture and politics? This course examines the afterlives of 9/11 through the emerging genre of the “9/11 novel.” Along the way, we will ask a series of questions about 9/11, while at the same time exploring the traffic between aesthetics and politics. How can narrative literature reckon with experiences of trauma and loss? What are the stakes of aesthetically depicting terror? How do contemporary novels imagine the post-9/11 geopolitical landscape? Must 9/11 be understood as world altering, or does literature instead contest its exemplarity? Writers will include Foer, DeLillo, Hamid, Moore, and McCann.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Elizabeth Anker 16845

First-year students may enroll only if they have taken one First-Year Writing Seminar, scored a “4” or “5” on the Princeton AP examination, received a “700” or better on the English Composition or CEEB tests, or received a “7” on the IB English Lit exam.

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 102

Writing About Literature: Banned Books

In this writing seminar, we will read and respond to literary works that have been banned at various points in history and in different cultures. We will read them for sheer enjoyment and interpretation, but we’ll also talk about the reasons, sometimes quite surprising, for their suppression and look for common threads between them in the way they challenge political or social authority. Readings will include Aristophanes’ play Lysistrata, Lillian Hellman’s play The Children’s Hour, Voltaire’s Candide, Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Kate Chopin’s The Awakening, Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl, and poems by Walt Whitman, Charles Baudelaire, Anna Akhmatova, and Allen Ginsberg.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. George Hutchinson 16846

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 103

Writing About Literature: Dear Diary

Do you have a diary? Are diaries always meant to be private, or do we sometimes assume that someone else is reading? In this course, we will read several diaries that were written as private reflection, as fictional autobiography, and as public memoir. We will explore each for common themes, such as the diary as a confessional space. We will also examine common diary-writing strategies, like the self-reflexive or informal tone. We will ask how the diary is different than the autobiography. We will also explore how and why diaries become important sources of historical information, such as The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank. Authors include Harriet Jacobs, Benjamin Franklin, Michelle Serros, and Leslie Arfin.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Ella Diaz 16847

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 104

Writing About Literature: Who’s Afraid of Theater?

The media’s continuing attacks on Hollywood film and television are not new: long ago Plato warned against theater when he criticized dramatic imitation. In this seminar, we will examine some representative moments in the history of “anti-theatrical" debates, asking such questions as: How is imitation related to personal and national identity? How does theater compete with family, religion, and education in forming moral character and citizenship? Why do questions of sexual and social transgression become associated with drama? We will pair our study of plays with some anti-theatrical criticism: e.g., Sophocles's Oedipus the King with Plato’s Republic; Shakespeare’s Tempest with contemporary Puritan attacks on theater; Moliere’s The Misanthrope with Rousseau’s Letter to M. D'Alembert; Brecht’s The Threepenny Opera with his own writings on theater.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Neil Saccamano 16848

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 105

Writing About Literature: The Autobiography of Someone Else

The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas was written not by Toklas but by her partner Gertrude Stein, and with her title, Stein mischievously invoked an old conceit in novel writing: this story is not fiction, it is the first-person “true life” of someone else. In this class, we will focus on first-person texts from several centuries and genres in which the purportedly auto-biographical “I” and the figure of the author slip in and out of alignment, honing critical reading and writing skills as we untangle the ways stories, poems, and pictures produce and trouble personal identity. Readings from Montaigne, Aphra Behn, Anna Deveare Smith, Wordsworth, Kafka, Nabokov, and Ann Carson, with self-portraiture from Cindy Sherman, and Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Amanda Goldstein 16849

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 106

Writing About Literature: The Question of Tragedy

The word “tragedy” is used almost daily by the media to describe devastating or catastrophic events. But what does the term actually mean? Does it refer to the particular form of drama Aristotle thought was designed to produce pity and fear? Is there still a connection between our “modern” use of the term “tragedy” and classical theater theory? What exactly is “tragic” drama? Why, for example, did Shakespeare not call Hamlet a tragedy but a “tragicall historie”? What is the relationship between tragedy and history? The course explores these and other questions of tragedy through careful, close readings, discussions, and, above all, critical writings about paradigmatic tragedies of the Western tradition, including plays by Sophocles, Euripides, Shakespeare, Lorca, and Miller.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Philip Lorenz 16850

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 107

Writing About Literature: Modern Fiction

This course examines modern fiction, with an emphasis on short stories—and a few longer ones—published in the past one hundred years. Authors may include Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Franz Kafka, Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabokov, Flannery O’Connor, Toni Cade Bambara, Gabriel Garcia Márquez, Grace Paley, and Beth Nugent. The last unit of the semester will explore different critical approaches to Joseph Conrad’s novella The Secret Sharer. The seminar combines detailed, imaginative analysis of fiction with intensive writing and revisions of critical essays.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Fredric Bogel 16851

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 108

Writing About Literature: The Secret Lives of Poems

In this class, we’ll study the subtle ways and means of contemporary poems in order to describe, interpret, discuss, and write about them. Where does contemporary poetry come from? How did it evolve? What are the avowed or disavowed affinities and ancestors of particular contemporary modes? We’ll consider the poems’ technical strategies as well as their content. How is a poem made? What is at stake? While our focus will be on several volumes of contemporary poetry, our understanding will be couched in the deeper historical and aesthetic context provided by an anthology of twentieth-century poetry. Students will write and share descriptive, interpretive essays and perhaps compose a poem or two as a means of engaging with the craft.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Alice Fulton 16852

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 109

Writing About Literature: Mrs. Dalloway in Stories, Novels, and Film

This course explores the origins and influences of a great novel, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (1922). We begin from stories that Woolf wrote before she decided to incorporate some characters and episodes into a single novel. We then move to a close reading of Mrs. Dalloway and view a 1997 film version to think about how screenwriters and director decided to transform a written work into something visual and aural. A major recent novel written in homage to Mrs. Dalloway, Michael Cunningham’s The Hours (1998), plays with some of the Dalloway characters and makes a character of Virginia Woolf herself. After reading this novel, we view the award-winning 2002 film version, comparing it with the various texts and films we have studied.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Molly Hite 16853

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 110

Writing About Literature: Slang and Everyday Poetry

Beginning college students often suspect poetry of being an elitist, obscure, insufferably high-minded style of expression. This course demolishes this misinformed picture of poetry while teaching the essential skills for writing strong, engaging, and persuasive expository and analytic prose. Poems use the same words and many of the same verbal patterns we use to ask directions, compile a grocery list, tease friends, cheer a team, curse, plead, celebrate, or seduce. How do poems lay over these everyday usages patterns that heighten the expressive force of common speech? The seminar looks at the power of slang and other non-standard language in poems, stories, plays, and in the prose of our own and others’ critical writings. Readings from Emily Dickinson, Stephen Crane, David Mamet, John Ashbery, others.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Debra Fried 16854

FRENCH 1108 SEM 101

Monstrous Forms: Wild Men and Wicked Women

Monstrosity is a means of marking off and isolating the "unacceptable" other, that which threatens us, often for reasons that we cannot explain. Throughout time, women, people of other races and nations, various species of animals, have all been designated as monstrous. This course will explore the gendering of monstrosity: why is it that monstrous men are described as "wild," as if their monstrosity is natural, while monstrous women are most frequently described as "wicked," as if their monstrosity is a moral failing? We will focus on texts about "wild men" and witches: Yvain by Chrétien de Troyes, Beowulf, Grendel by John Gardner, Ambroise Paré's On Monsters and Marvels, and selected episodes of the X-files.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Kathleen Long 16786

FRENCH 1111 SEM 101

Railroad Trips: A Ticket to Write

The French railroad system—and its literary representation—differs in singular ways from the American rail network. In the (translated) works of French writers such as Zola, Gide, and Maupassant, the class will explore the aesthetics of trains, from the industrializing nineteenth century to the contemporary Parisian subway. What are the stylistic differences between a literal railroad trip and an intimately figurative journey? How does a locomotive, a train station, or a railway junction redefine time, space, landscape, and subjectivity? What can be said about the connection between machines, humans, and literature? The course is intended to develop students' ability to practice close reading, to articulate personal arguments, and to write structured analyses.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Morgane Cadieu 16861 Kathleen Long

FRENCH 1113 SEM 101

Deceit, Desire, and the Dynamics of Self

How do we form our conceptions of self, and how might storytelling—through fantasy, through fiction, through film—provide insights into the ways in which we construct our identities? What does it mean for the self to “come into being” in a fictional text? Through an investigation of “autofiction” (autobiographical fiction) and avant-garde cinema, we will discuss the fictionalized representation of “selves,” questions of “authenticity” and desire, and the role of memory in our imaginary (self) representations. Readings may include works by Proust, Montaigne, Rousseau, Ben Jelloun, Sarraute, and Duras, critical and philosophical texts, and films by Varda, Resnais, Dulac, Truffaut, and Buñuel. Writing assignments will encourage students to question, analyze, and think critically about literature and cinema.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Emily Kane 16843 Kathleen Long

GERMAN STUDIES 1109 SEM 101

From Fairy Tales to the Uncanny: Exploring the Romantic Consciousness

How did bawdy tales of peasants using magic to climb the social ladder get transformed into moral lessons for children? The answer lies in Romanticism and its appropriation of the imagination as a force for social transformation. As Romantics edited older tales for juvenile consumption they wrote new ones for adults. This new fiction created the matrix for modern pop genres like fantasy, science-fiction, murder mysteries, and gothic horror. To understand this paradigm shift in modern culture, we will read, discuss, and write about a variety of texts the Romantics collected, composed, or inspired, including poetry and film, in addition to classic fairy tales and academic scholarship.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Alexander Phillips 16844 Douglas Brent McBride

GERMAN STUDIES 1110 SEM 101

Thinking about Laughing: Comedians and the Comic Form

Why do we laugh, and what do we laugh at? This seminar introduces canonical theories of comedy (Kierkegaard, Freud, Bergson) as well as comic works of art and literature from the Enlightenment to the present (Daumier, Kleist, Heine, Kafka, Chaplin, The Onion). We will approach this discourse by distinguishing among the various comic phenomena—humor, irony, and satire—that these works address. In so doing, we will learn to recognize the relationship between distinct aesthetic forms and the political or philosophical content each work contains (the object of its humor). Close analytic attention will be paid to the formal aspects of the texts and students will be given the opportunity to creatively emulate the styles encountered.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Ari Linden 16837 Douglas Brent McBride

GERMAN STUDIES 1116 SEM 101

Writing Modern Women

Female pop icons may enjoy popularity today, but until recently women who wrote or performed were marginalized as “others” by patriarchal discourse. This course frames various modes of female production from letters and diaries of nineteenth-century female travelers (Ida Pfeiffer) or writings by famous hosts of literary salons (Rahel Varnhagen), through artifacts and performances of “new women” (Hannah Hoech, Valeska Gert) to texts by activists and poets (Audre Lorde, May Ayim) and feminist directors and performers (Pina Bausch). Through essays, diaries, interactive exercises, and peer reviews, students will improve their writing and oral skills while acquiring tools for reflecting critically on questions of otherness, gender, performance, female discourse, and representation in modern culture.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Arina Rotaru 16862 Douglas Brent McBride

GERMAN STUDIES 1170 SEM 101

Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

A basic understanding of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud is a prerequisite for participating in critical debates in the humanities and social sciences. Our seminar will explore key terms in the revolutionary models of critical analysis these thinkers pioneered: historical materialism, post-metaphysical philosophy, psychoanalysis. This will mean articulating points of contrast as well as convergence. Discussions and writing exercises will focus on texts that created the discursive framework for critiquing society and culture today. Our method will proceed from the premise that critical reading, thinking, and writing are inseparable moments in the same operation of critique. The question that guides that method will be: Do alternative ways of thinking exist in opposition to the ones we view as natural, inevitable, or universal?

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Nathan Taylor 16864 Douglas Brent McBride

GERMAN STUDIES 1170 SEM 102

Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Johannes Wankhammer 16865 Douglas Brent McBride

GERMAN STUDIES 1170 SEM 103

Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Douglas McBride 16866

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 101

Power and Politics: Utopia

Utopias are imaginary visions that paint an idealistic picture of what that society might be. In some cases ("dystopias"), these visions are forbidding predictions of what society will become. In this course, we will read widely, devouring both utopias and dystopias, in search of the fundamental principles that shape societies. As we discuss these readings, you will be asked to design a utopian society, choosing how you would structure power, arrange economic production, create architectural forms and their spatial connections, harness and exploit technology, ensure compatibility with the natural environment, socialize the young, and incorporate religious belief. When you are finished constructing your utopian vision, we will ask you to explain how we might create that society, given where we are now.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Richard Bensel 16855

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 102

Power and Politics: The Presidency and Popular Culture—Election 2012

In contemporary America, citizens are likely to encounter the presidency less often in traditional institutional venues than in popular media forms: television series, movies, works of visual or literary art, comedic impersonations, even Broadway shows. This seminar will focus on the postmodern slippage between presidential “fictions” and presidential political reality by reading an array of popular texts (films like The American President or JFK, biographies like Dutch, or literature like Libra) in relation to critical writings in cultural and media studies. Did the precedent of a raced president on 24 or The West Wing enable a 2008 Obama victory? Targeting close and critical reading, our writing assignments will question the political implications of this apparent slippage between presidential fact and fiction. Specific assignments will address “election 2012.”

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Diane Rubenstein 16856

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 103

Power and Politics: Social Policy and Inequality in the United States and Europe

In this seminar, we will write about the different social policies and kinds of inequality (social, economic, and political) in the United States and Europe. We will study the following questions: what explains variation in the generosity of social policy across countries? What explains inequality in these areas? Why do Western Europe and the United States have different types of economic systems, and what are the consequences of such differences? We will also discuss more contemporary debates (such as the recent health care reforms and European labor reforms). Through the required essays, students will develop critical thinking skills and the ability to create their own arguments about current policy debates and political science.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Alexander Kuo 16857

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 104

Power and Politics: Mobilizing for Rights—The Politics of LGBT Activism in the European Union

How has the multi-level framework of the European Union (EU) facilitated the mobilization of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) peoples? And has mobilization led to change? This course is designed to gain leverage on these questions by surveying an eclectic literature on transnational politics. The goal of the course is to develop writing skills through topics and materials that provide an introduction to political science, by better understanding social and legal change related to LGBT politics across European states. On the topic of EU LGBT activism, different struggles speak to different audiences; accordingly, students will be exposed to various writing styles, from position papers meant for policy-minded audiences, to creative narrations meant to frame controversial social issues so they resonate with society at large.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Phillip Ayoub 16858 Peter Katzenstein

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 105

Power and Politics: The Politics of Oil and Gas

As average crude oil prices have tripled over the last decade, rising to above $100 per barrel during 2011, the oil industry has become a political priority among importing and exporting countries alike. This course offers students an introduction to the oil industry, focusing on political topics related to crude oil production. Such topics include: OPEC; consequences of oil production for political and economic development; links between oil and conflict; state-owned oil companies; and the US natural gas boom. Combining theoretical and practical issues, the course draws on writings from academic, business, and policy sources. Critically engaging with these different sources, students complete the course with the ability to discuss these topics in a variety of styles suitable for different professional audiences.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Nicole Weygandt 16859 Kevin Morrison

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 106

Power and Politics: How to Run and Win Political Campaigns

What does it take to successfully run for office or manage a campaign? This course will teach you the nuts and bolts of political campaigns in America. You will learn what a candidate needs to consider before deciding to run, how to develop campaign strategy, how to target and persuade voters, how to fundraise, how to use media, how to manage staff and the candidate, and how to run an Election Day operation. Drawing on readings from political scientists, campaign consultants like James Carville and Dick Morris, and classical strategists like Sun Tzu, you will discover the art and science of campaigning, while improving your research and writing by producing documents—like op-eds, district research, and a campaign plan—that a campaign manager actually uses.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Mallory SoRelle 16860 Michael Jones-Correa

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 107

Power and Politics: The Politics of Poverty and Development in Latin America

In Guns, Germs, and Steel, the researcher Jared Diamond attempts to answer the question posed by his New Guinean friend, Yali: why were the Europeans able to dominate his people militarily and leave them behind economically? This introductory course will explore that question and many others as we investigate the origins and persistence of poverty in Latin America, consider different meanings of “development,” and compare the development process unfolding in Latin America with other regions of the world. We will use material drawn from the natural and social sciences, development organizations, journalism, and film. Writing assignments will help students form critical perspectives on leading debates within the field of development studies, identify and pursue poverty-related questions of personal interest, and consider specific strategies for intervention.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Don Leonard 17150 Nic van de Walle

HUMAN DEVELOPMENT 1140 SEM 101

The Art of Aging

What does it mean to say we have truly lived? What are our beliefs about aging? We will look at research in scientific studies and popular forms of literature with the hopes of understanding our fears, as well as recognizing our greatest life lessons in living a life well lived. The choices you make now will impact your mid-to-late life experiences. We will examine current research in clinical gerontology, life span development, narrative psychology, memory, ageism, mental health, elder abuse, and positive psychology. We will write about the theories associated with research through in-class free-writing, personal reflection papers, and formal essays. (Popular authors include: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Hemingway, Sarton, Gandhi, and Shakespeare.)

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Charlotte Sweeney 16728 Steve Ceci

HISTORY 1133 SEM 101

Mongrel America: Miscegenation, Passing, and the Myth of Racial Purity

Racial divisions have served as potent tools for consolidating power, upholding unjust practices, and shaping the American historical imagination. Whether in the form of slavery, segregation, extralegal violence, or the one-drop rule, the insistence on preserving racial distinctions reflects a desire among some Americans to cling to a myth of racial purity. Despite persistent efforts to enforce these boundaries, other Americans have consistently blurred, transgressed, and undermined these seemingly rigid racial categories. Drawing on texts by Thomas Jefferson, Nella Larsen, James Baldwin, and others, this class will explore and write about the quixotic desire for white racial purity, the reality of “amalgamation,” and the relationship between the two. Ultimately, students will analyze the impact of “Mongrel America” on the ways in which Americans understand citizenship and their history.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Mari Crabtree 16867 Nick Salvatore

HISTORY 1145 SEM 101

Concrete and Chaos: Nature and Cultural Resistance in the United States

From country music to punk rock, Thomas Jefferson to Al Gore, Walden to The Omnivore’s Dilemma, “nature” has been near the heart of American discussions of Progress. Though we usually think of Progress in terms of technology, capitalism, and liberal democracy, Americans’ conception of the natural has yielded powerful counter-images of the good life. Through writing, photography, film, and music that asks, in Thoreau’s words, “Who are we? Where are we?,” we will explore the culture of resistance that grew (and grows) from American environmental thinking. By analyzing form as well as content, how one writes as well as what one says, and by incorporating these findings into our own work, we will learn to craft writing that is both artful and academically rigorous.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Daegan Miller 16868 Aaron Sachs

HISTORY 1147 SEM 101

American Beauty (?): Exploring Ideas about Nature and Place

What is nature? Wilderness? What makes something “natural” or “wild”? In this course, we will wrestle with ideas about nature and the place of people in it, in the context of the American past—and present. The frontier experience, national parks, historic and modern debates about environmental questions: these are just a few of the topics we will discuss. We will examine first-hand accounts, photographs, fiction, historical writing, and environmental journalism as we craft personal and analytical essays. Readings may include selections by Muir, Dillard, Leopold, London, Lopez, and McPhee, as well as pieces written by a range of environmental historians. The authors and actors we will encounter will challenge us to think and write critically about our own relationships to nature and place.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Amy Kohout 16993 aaron Sachs

HISTORY 1160 SEM 101

Fires, Tornados, and Earthquakes: Oh My! Disasters in the US

What constitutes a disaster? Are all disasters “natural,” even the ones bearing that title? How have the ways in which people and governments have responded to these times of crisis changed over the course of US history? We will discuss these and other questions as we consider calamities in the context of US history. The course will include written assignments based on readings and class discussion. Readings may include parts of Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, Rebecca Solnit’s A Paradise Built in Hell, and John Barry’s Rising Tide, as well as scholarly articles and essays. Other readings will be culled from primary sources, as we look at media coverage and survivor recollections.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Catherine Biba 16869 Derek Chang

HISTORY 1280 SEM 101

History and the City: The Twentieth Century in Berlin

1989 witnessed a dramatic series of events ushering in the unification of Germany with Berlin once again its capital. In this course, we will view Germany’s turbulent twentieth-century history through the lens of Berlin’s urban geography. How and why do certain sites resonate in collective memory, while others remain visible but forgotten? We will approach this question through a range of sources including photographs, literature, film, memorial sites, and public spaces such as Libeskind’s Jewish Museum and the Berlin Wall. Readings include works by Kracauer, Sebald, Benjamin, Jünger, and Speer. Through writing assignments based on course materials and visits to the Johnson Museum, we will develop a sensitivity to historical contingency in the development of urban space and an acuity for dealing with visual sources.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Franz Hofer 16871 n/a

HISTORY 1402 SEM 101

Global Islam

In this course, we will examine Islam as a global phenomenon, both historically and in the contemporary world. We will spend time on the genesis of Islam in the Middle East, but then we will move across the Muslim world—to Africa, Turkey, Iran, Central-, East-, and Southeast Asia—to see how Islam looks across global boundaries. Through reading, class discussions, and frequent writing, students will try to flesh out the diversity of Islam within the central message of this world religion.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Eric Tagliacozzo 16870

LINGUISTICS 1100 SEM 101

Language, Thought, and Reality: Translation and Writing

Translation from foreign language sharpens the skills that are required for good writing of any kind: a clear grasp of the objectives of a text, an understanding of one's audience, and the ability to control a consistent style without mechanical imitation. This is not a course in translation. Instead, it explores the traditions and techniques of fine translation to improve English writing skills. Special attention will be paid to translations which attempt to make chronologically- or culturally-remote texts accessible to contemporary readers. Readings include samples of machine (computer) translation, the literary translations of Ezra Pound and Robert Lowell, and alternate translations of the Tale of Genji. Writing assignments that include close textual and cultural analysis and a translation exercise will also incorporate research into the problems of translation. No knowledge of a foreign language is required.

MWF 01:25–02:15 p.m. Cara Di Girolamo 16740 Michael Weiss

LINGUISTICS 1100 SEM 102

Language, Thought, and Reality: Testing the Language Instinct

When children first acquire language, in all its complexity, they do so with such ease and effortlessness that it seems they are pre-programmed for it, as an instinct. Linguists are discovering common properties throughout the world’s languages; perhaps the universals are due to a common biology. In this seminar, we will examine the issues surrounding the debate on language innateness. We will focus on the contrast between taught and untaught knowledge of language. How do children learn to speak? How are languages similar to and different from each other? Do other animals have language? Do some people speak more “grammatically” than others? Readings will include Steven Pinker’s 1994 bestsellerThe Language Instinct. Students will write a series of short papers and a longer paper.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Esra Kesici 16741 Michael Weiss

LINGUISTICS 1100 SEM 103

Language, Thought, and Reality: The Death of Language

What does it mean for a language to be endangered or to go extinct? In this course, we will explore the causes and ramifications of language endangerment, seeking to understand both what is lost and what–if anything–is gained. We will discuss the interplay of language with nationalism, statehood, and politics, as well as issues such as the globalization of English, language as a vehicle for culture, linguistic prejudices, language revival programs, etc. This course will touch on languages and dialects around the world, including Modern Hebrew (Israel), Mayan (Mexico), Bunong (Vietnam), and Ebonics (United States). Students will also learn basic principles of linguistics.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Becky Butler 16742 Michael Weiss

LINGUISTICS 1100 SEM 104

Language, Thought, and Reality: English Outside the Box

Do grammar books know all the answers about English? Some do acknowledge regional dialects and others identity-based varieties, but most ignore the many context-specific "grammars" we all recognize. What features mark sports announcer talk, flight attendant style, in-group talk, and news headlines? What happens when we choose words for their age, shape, or origin? Can and should a sentence have multiple meanings? Students will read extracts from famous figures in history and from linguists and others who think about language, and will make their own linguistic observations. Writing assignments will include language data you have collected, explanations of your findings about your own data, persuasive opinion pieces, and pieces using language under extra constraints.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Steven Ikier 17163 Michael Weiss

MATHEMATICS 1890 SEM 101

Certainty and Ambiguity: Exploring Mathematical Concepts Through Writing

Ever wonder how a line can fill a square and how we can count infinities? In this course, we consider these and other mathematical notions. We analyze and practice writing as a means to learning mathematics. We read outstanding texts about the nature of mathematics, such as (but not limited to) Reuben Hersh’sThe Mathematical Experience, William Byers’s How Mathematicians Think, and Ivars Peterson’s Mathematical Tourist. We also debate the merits of the research into how mathematicians think and what they do in their profession; occasionally we will invite Cornell faculty to join in our discussions and share their experience of mathematical practice. The assignments will concern well-known mathematical concepts, as well as the relationship between mathematics and language, literature, art, music, and nature.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Mircea Pitici 16991 Maria Terrell

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1101 SEM 101

Aspects of Medieval Culture: Reading in the Middle and Digital Ages

In an age of “new media,” the ways we read, and interact with, texts seem to be undergoing rapid changes and deep transformations. In such an environment, what can we gain from considering “really old media,” like medieval manuscripts? A lot! This course will survey the history of how people made, read, and used texts from the early Middle Ages through the Reformation. Drawing on Cornell’s Rare Book and Manuscript Collections, scholarly essays, and our collective experiences with digital media, we will strive to think and write about old books and old documents in new ways. Writing assignments will include formal descriptive analyses of medieval manuscripts and comparative analyses of medieval and modern modes of reading.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Joel Anderson 16876 Oren Falk

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1101 SEM 102

Aspects of Medieval Culture: Rioters, Rebels, and Outlaws—Popular Politics in the Middle Ages

In 1320, Scotland’s Declaration of Arbroath let Europe know that “It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom—for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.” When can we hear the voices of rioters and rebels? What rhetorical strategies define the outlaw against the freedom fighter? In the Middle Ages, as today, rebels and outlaws both challenged and defined their times. We will see that some, like William Wallace, died for their cause; others, like Hrafnkell Freysgotha, rose to power. Still others, like Robin Hood, lived their lives on the fringes of society. Through the chronicles, sagas, and ballads which preserve their struggles, we will seek to understand their place in history and imagination down to the present day. Writing assignments, ranging from reading responses and critical analyses to news reports and creative projects, will focus on questions of audience, argument, and bias.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Marybeth Matlack 16877 Duane Corpis

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1101 SEM 103

Aspects of Medieval Culture: Brains and Booze—Writings from and about Medieval Students

Where there are students, one often finds shoddy philosophy, booze, and bawdy poetry. This course will wander through some of the texts, especially the bawdy and casual poetry, produced in medieval educational contexts including Charlemagne’s court, eleventh-century cathedral schools, and the early universities. Themes that will be discussed include the social interactions between students and masters, students and townspeople, and between students themselves. The academic subjects our medieval counterparts studied will appear, but what the students did in their free time will overshadow (and influence) our discussions of the medieval version of hitting the books. Modern students enrolled in this course will write in analytical, creative, and personal styles.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Corinna Matlis 16878 Rachel Weil

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1101 SEM 104

Aspects of Medieval Culture: Saints at War—Battling the Devil in the Middle Ages

Spiritual struggles, in which the heroic Christian fights supernatural devils or human aggressors in order to maintain faith, are common in stories about saints in the Middle Ages. These clashes, which range from beguiling temptation to verbal abuse, and are combatted by saintly steadfastness and miraculous agency, help make these stories worth analyzing as literary and cultural documents rather than simply moral lessons. This class will examine a broad range of medieval saints' lives, from the late Roman Empire’s “lives” of St. Perpetua and St. Antony, through later accounts to Chaucer's period and beyond. Class discussions will seek to draw out major themes and historic issues in order to develop the skills for writing informal responses, close readings, and critical essays.

MWF 08:00–08:50 a.m. Ruth Mullett 16879 Andrew Galloway

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1101 SEM 105

Aspects of Medieval Culture: Rise of the Rus—Hólmgarðr, Byzantium, and Kiev

The origin of the early states in Eastern Europe has been a topic of hot debate, politically and intellectually, and scholars have faced exile for holding the “wrong opinion.” In this course, we will explore these early days and try to understand the enigmatic and controversial inhabitants, known as the Rus—the root of our modern word Russia. We will read texts that span Europe and the Middle East—from Iceland to Persia—and also discuss emerging archeological evidence (now more freely available after the fall of the U.S.S.R.) and how this evidence enhances or alters our understanding of these texts. Additionally we will explore how the Rus’ identity has changed into the modern era: as a political tool of nations to modern blockbuster films. Assignments will focus on written products touching on themes relevant to the Rus: history vs. literature, translation, political propaganda, etc., and will culminate in a longer research project. We will learn to use Cornell’s extensive library resources and learn how to construct a focused and clear argument.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Russell (Xan) Stepp 16880 Shawkat Toorawa

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1101 SEM 106

Aspects of Medieval Culture: Beyond Spanish Mudéjar Architecture

For decades, the mudéjar architectural style, loosely defined as “Islamic-looking Christian or Jewish art,” has fascinated visitors to Spain. And why not? Great ornamental swaths of carved stucco vegetation, teeming with curling vines and nary a Virgin in sight, do not spring to mind when we envision a Christian convent. Initially, this course introduces students to the major mudéjar monuments, seeking to explain why a Christian or Jewish patron would choose an Islamic aesthetic. Later, it considers other buildings or objects showing clear ties to Spanish Islamic art, yet somehow not typically included in the mudéjar category. In doing so, students will learn to critically assess both the art itself and also the lenses through which we, as viewers and scholars, interpret it.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Jessica Streit 16929 Ross Brann

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1102 SEM 101

Literature of Chivalry: Feasting and Fighting in the World of Arthur

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Arthur refuses to begin the feast until he hears “Of some adventurous thing an uncouth tale” (93), whereupon the Green Knight promptly enters and dares someone to decapitate him. High-spirited battles and boisterous revelry are among the enduring characteristics of the Arthurian medieval romances. As we trace the development of Arthurian legends from the Welsh tale How Culhwch won Olwen to Chretien’s Knight of the Cart and selections of Malory’s Morte D’Arthur, we will examine how feasting and fighting often go hand-in-hand. We will also consider how each text transmutes the culture and concerns of its environment and whether we can speak of a continuous Arthurian tradition or several. Through class discussion, writing exercises, and formal papers, students will strengthen their writing and critical reasoning.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Danielle Wu 16881 Andrew Hicks

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1103 SEM 101

Legends, Fantasy, and Vision: From Utopia to Dystopia—Medieval Fantasies and Modern Hells

“It was a bright cold day in April and the clocks were striking 13.” George Orwell’s 1984, one of the best-known works of dystopian literature, is just one addition to a long tradition of writing about the perfect society. Beginning with selections from Cicero’s De Republica and moving through such medieval utopian works as Dante’s Paradiso and the Rule of St. Benedict, we will grapple with presentations of the ideal society. With this foundation, we will move into more modern dystopian literature, such as Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We and Scott Phillip’s Rut. Formal writing assignments, including creative writing and peer-review, as well as class discussion will strengthen students’ critical thinking and writing abilities.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Hannah Byland 16872 Andrew Hicks

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1103 SEM 102

Legends, Fantasy, and Vision: There and Back Again—The Medieval Origins of Tolkien’s Quest

J. R. R. Tolkien tops many lists as the greatest author of the twentieth century, a distinction that often dwarfs his role as a long-time professor of Anglo-Saxon literature at Oxford. This class will explore how Tolkien’s interest in and scholarship on medieval literature and languages informed his fiction writing. Readings will include selections from The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, as well as some of his shorter works and essays. These texts will be read alongside important medieval works such as selections of Old English poetry, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Old Norse poetry and sagas, and the Finnish Kalevala. This course will hone students’ writing and analytic skills through class discussion, writing exercises, and formal papers.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Rae Grabowski 16873 Andy Galloway

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1103 SEM 103

Legends, Fantasy, and Vision: Introduction to Oral Tradition and Literature

Literature as usually defined and studied consists of a canon of “authorized” texts—texts written by specific authors and then made public (”published”) in a fixed form. An alternative tradition of literature, however, is “oral”/“traditional” literature, texts such as ballads and folktales which were disseminated orally and which change from performance to performance. This course will serve as an introduction to “oral”/“traditional” literary forms, concentrating on English and Scots ballads and folktales, but giving some attention to literary authors such as Malory and Tolkien who either write in a traditional mode or who imitate “traditional”/“oral” literature in their fictions.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Thomas Hill 16874

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1103 SEM 104

Legends, Fantasy, and Vision: Demons and the Divine in the Christian Desert

The image of the desert has long been burned into the minds of Christian authors. From the earliest Scripture, the desert has been constructed as a space where the fantastical—even the supernatural—was commonplace, a landscape inhabited by demons but also the divine. In this seminar, we will examine the diverse representations of “desert” in late antique and early medieval Christian literature by setting these texts in conversation with contemporary works of art—literary, cinematic, pictorial—in an effort to understand how we as moderns have inherited this notion of the desert. Just what do the Desert Fathers have to do with Desert Storm? What does Jerome have in common with Georgia O’Keefe? Assignments will include informal responses and critical essays.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Zachary Yuzwa 16875 Eric Rebillard

MUSIC 1701 SEM 101

Sound, Sense, and Ideas: Music as Counterculture

How do people use music to make political or ideological statements? What is the relationship between culture and personal identity? The history of twentieth-century music is full of shifting allegiances, re-appropriations, and radical breaks, but what changes did they effect, and how did these changes come about? This course examines the role of radicalism and subversion in twentieth-century music and culture. We will explore concepts like “avant-garde” and “counterculture,” asking how they relate to mainstream society. You will learn how to structure and write essays, developing your ability to argue persuasively and think critically about a range of sources, including manifestos, letters, interviews, autobiographies, cultural criticism, fiction, and music itself.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Caroline Waight 16882 TBA

MUSIC 1701 SEM 102

Sound, Sense, and Ideas: Noise, Nonsense, and Nothingness

How and why are some sounds designated as noise? Noise is often defined negatively—not music, not speech, and not desirable. We will develop accounts of noise that are more attuned to what noise actually is, what it does in our world, and how it makes us feel. By rethinking noise, we will arrive at fresh understandings of our built, natural, and social environments. Writing assignments will ask you to respond both to various examples of noise, such as in urban, rural, and aesthetic contexts, and to a range of readings, including fiction, cultural criticism, legal documents, and philosophical reflections. You will develop your ability to write in styles suitable for journalism, comic books, personal letters, political statements, and the academic study of art and music.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Samuel Dwinell 16992 Ben Piekut

NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 1963 SEM 101

Things the Prophets Never Told You: Archaeology and the Religion of Ancient Israel

A casual reading of the Hebrew Scriptures might lead one to believe that the normative religion of the Israelites was that spelled out in the Torah and Prophets. However, a more critical appraisal of the Biblical texts, along with an analysis of extra-Biblical texts and archaeological materials, demonstrates that the Israelites were often closer to their pagan neighbors than to modern Judaism or Christianity. Students will explore these similarities and differences in their essays. Topics may include cult prostitution, magic, funerary rites, temple ritual, and Hebrew mythology. Readings will be from the Hebrew Bible, translations of extra-Biblical texts, articles on archaeology, and modern synthetic treatments of the Israelite cult.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Jeff Zorn 16883

NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 1977 SEM 101

If a Wife is Seized by La’bum Disease: Family, Love, and Society in Ancient Babylonia

Marriage, family, and sexual relations (less so, love) are a common theme in Babylonian law, literature, and historical memory. In this class, we will explore one ancient society through the lens of marriage, paying particular attention to what it tells us about women and men in the formation of kinship and family identities, and how male-female relationships were enshrined in cultic practice (including sacred marriage). We will explore these themes by writing and discussing a number of ancient texts translated into English, such as the Code of Hammurabi, the descent of Inanna into the Underworld, Assyrian letters between husbands and wives, love poetry, and incantations and rituals to ease childbirth.

MWF 02:30–03:20 p.m. Jonathan Tenney 16884

NATURAL RESOURCES 1200 SEM 101

Environmental Risks in Our Backyards: Communication and Ethics

Whether it’s the threat of intensive gas, oil, or coal extraction in your hometown, or the worldwide effects of global climate change, environmental risks always foster heated political, economic, and social discussions. How do people decide which risks to combat and which to ignore? In this course, we’ll study public discourse about environmental risks. We’ll read classics like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring alongside contemporary books, journals, and newspaper articles. Music and video clips supplement our reading. Your writing will mirror styles used in discourse on environmental risks: journalistic articles, persuasive arguments, and policy briefs/technical reports will fill your portfolio. In the course’s second half, we’ll pursue an in-depth case study of natural gas development through hydraulic fracturing, THE major environmental issue in Cornell’s backyard today.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Darrick Evensen 16885 Rich Stedman

PHILOSOPHY 1110 SEM 101

Philosophical Problems: Managing Life and Death—Contemporary Issues in Biomedical Ethics

Human beings are unique in their ability to exercise control over matters of life and death. This ability presents us with some difficult ethical questions. Is abortion morally wrong? What about manipulating genes so that our babies are smarter, prettier, or stronger? What should we think about euthanasia, suicide, surrogacy contracts, and human cloning? In this course, we will read and critically evaluate some of the most influential writers on these and related topics with an eye to mastering the skill of critical, argumentative writing.

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Jordan Thomson 16886 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1110 SEM 102

Philosophical Problems: Politics and Human Nature

What is human nature? Are we born to be selfish or kind? To desire certain things? How could we ever know? Assumptions about human nature play a significant role in ethical, economic, and political discourse, and touch our lives on a daily basis. They justify our social, political, and economic world-views, including those relating to capitalism and democracy. In this course, we will examine theories of human nature from antiquity to the present day. We will also explore the impact of these conceptions on our everyday lives through investigating and critiquing contemporary news media and political rhetoric. Authors to be studied include Plato, Thucydides, Hobbes, Kant, Marx, Nietzsche, Foucault, Rorty, and Pinker. Course assignments will include weekly short writing exercises and a series of six papers, spread over the length of the semester, which focus on specific course themes.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Colin McLear 16887 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1111 SEM 101

Philosophical Problems: The (Ir)Rationality of Religious Belief

Is belief in God ever rational? We will seek to answer this question by critically examining some recent and not-so-recent philosophical arguments about the rationality of religious belief. Related topics include the nature of faith, the relationship of religious belief to other kinds of belief (e.g., scientific, perceptual), and the relevance of wide-spread religious disagreement in the world to the rationality of religious belief. A central goal of this course is to develop the ability to write philosophy well—that is, the ability to provide clear, reasoned argument which successfully communicates the thoughts of the author. But such writing is often a by-product of engaged and critical reading. So not just writing well but reading well will be a central theme in this course.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Nathaniel Bulthuis 16889 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1111 SEM 102

Philosophical Problems: The Philosophy and Science of a Mind-Boggling World

Physicist Arthur Eddington claimed that there are two sorts of tables: tables we all know, and physicists’ tables that are not so much solid as nearly all empty space. What are things really like? What are you really like? If we’re physical beings governed by physical laws, how can we have free will? Or are we not all physical? Can there be non-physical things? In this course, we’ll consider these and other questions about everyday things that we take for granted. We’ll consider writing from scientists, philosophers, and fiction authors. Through writing and editing short papers, you’ll learn to assess complex arguments, to produce clear arguments of your own, and to carefully edit your work—skills useful in any discipline.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Ian McKay 16890 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1111 SEM 103

Philosophical Problems: The Philosophy of Time

Time seems mundane, regular, and non-mysterious. You use clocks. You do so reliably. But what exactly is time? Could it stop? Could time flow backwards? Is time travel possible? Why is time important? Both Ancient Greek philosophers, like Plato and Aristotle, and metaphysicians living today have tried to answer these questions. However, no consensus has been reached. In this course, our goal is to understand the deep puzzles about the nature of time and the various attempted solutions to these puzzles. At its best, philosophical writing is controlled, clear, and maximally effective in communicating the thoughts of the author. Writing assignments will focus on developing these virtues through clearly explicating, and carefully assessing the arguments presented in the readings.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Scott O’Connor 16891 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1111 SEM 104

Philosophical Problems: Of God, Men, and Morality

This course deals with philosophical attempts at answering various questions about morality (and related issues) that are widely discussed by philosophers and non-philosophers alike. Examples include: Does morality depend on the existence of God? And do we have good reasons for believing that God exists in the first place? Or is morality a matter of varying social conventions? What is the relationship between morality and self-interest? Is the morally good life the best life for one to live? Writing assignments will ask students to explain and critically respond to the arguments presented in the readings, which will be drawn from both classic and contemporary texts. The assignments will help students improve their ability to write in a clear, organized, and persuasive way.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Andrea Viggiano 16892 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1111 SEM 105

Philosophical Problems:The Virtues

What does it mean to be a good person? According to some philosophers, a good person is a virtuous person—someone who possesses moral virtues like courage, honesty, and charity. What are these virtues, exactly? And why would we want to be virtuous in the first place? We will consider these questions through readings from contemporary philosophical discussion, as well as classic texts from Plato, Aristotle, and Thomas Aquinas. Writing assignments will focus on analyzing and evaluating the arguments of others, as well as clearly and carefully formulating arguments of your own.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. David Zettel 16893 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1111 SEM 106

Philosophical Problems: Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Incredulous Stares

As a discipline, philosophy is famous for addressing problems that transcend and challenge our commonsensical view of the world. This course is an introduction to that tradition. Our aim is to carefully investigate some of the most intellectually stimulating (and outrageous) puzzles and arguments that philosophy has to offer. For instance, we'll consider questions such as: Am I rational? Can consciousness be scientifically explained? Does the existence of evil prove that God cannot exist? This course is designed to teach clear, cogent writing by first fostering the ability to think clearly about challenging and intriguing issues. To do this, we'll read a variety of largely contemporary sources. There will be several different types of writing assignments: e.g., formal papers, analyses and reading responses.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Stephen Mahaffey 16961 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1112 SEM 101

Philosophical Conversations: The Paradoxes of Socrates

No one can harm a good man. No one does evil except out of ignorance. The unexamined life is not worth living. These are some of the famous “doctrines” of the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. To ancient eyes these doctrines seemed strange, paradoxical, and even perverse; they seem to contemporary eyes no less so. How did Socrates interpret these doctrines? Are these interpretations plausible? How did he argue for them? Are these arguments persuasive? This course will develop and discuss answers to these and related questions. The focus will be on Socrates as he is portrayed in dialogues written by his greatest student, Plato. Writing assignments will develop the skills of precision and clarity of expression as well as those of analysis and argument.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Clifford Roberts 16888 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1112 SEM 102

God, Death, Morality, and the Meaning of Life

Does God exist? If not, is everything permitted? What are we morally obligated to do (if anything)? Should we donate money to help the distant poor? Is it OK to eat animals? Anyway, what’s the point of it all? What is the meaning of life? This class will examine these and related questions. Readings will be drawn from classic texts by Plato, Hume, Russell, Singer, and others. Assignments will ask students to explain and to critically respond to the main arguments in the readings. By grappling with the work of great philosophers, students will improve their ability to write clearly and persuasively

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Adam Bendorf 16960 Andrew Chignell

PERFORMING & MEDIA ARTS 1104 SEM 101

Acting Out: Drama, Theatre, and Psychoanalysis

In a letter of 1897, Sigmund Freud describes a theatre of petrified spectators, riveted by what is transpiring before them onstage. Explaining the cause of their terror, he writes, “Everyone in the audience was once a budding Oedipus in fantasy, and each recoils in horror from the dream fulfillment here transplanted into reality.” This first mention of what Freud will later term the “Oedipus complex” evokes the central themes of this seminar: the relationship between theatre and psychoanalysis, and the relationship between written drama and the theatrical event. Alongside dramatic works by Sophocles, Shakespeare, de Sade, and Beckett, students will be introduced to fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis in Freud, Lacan, and others. Course work will emphasize close reading, and developing clear, effective argumentative writing.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Andrew Bielski 16894 Sara Warner

PERFORMING & MEDIA ARTS 1106 SEM 101

Divas

What makes a diva a Diva? How has the concept of what constitutes a Diva changed over time? Why does the Diva have such a popular appeal? What kind of political/social impact does the Diva have on the public sphere? This course examines performances of such Divas as Josephine Baker, Maria Callas, Judy Garland, Liza Minelli, Madonna, Dolly Parton, Lady Gaga, and Beyonce alongside critical and theoretical texts concerning celebrity and fandom. Analyzing play texts, narrative films, and performance/music videos will help students develop the particular skills required to write about performance. With an emphasis on in-class discussion and peer editing, this class will foster and enhance each student’s ability to produce coherent, concise, persuasive prose in the form of critical arguments.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Stephen Low 16896 Sara Warner

PERFORMING & MEDIA ARTS 1107 SEM 101

Theatre of the Absurd

Dramatic absurdity is not merely nonsense or silliness, says Martin Esslin: “Absurd is that which is devoid of purpose...Cut off from his religious, metaphysical, and transcendental roots, man is lost; all his actions become senseless, absurd, useless.” This course traces the development and legacy of absurd drama—with all its humor, violence, and horror—tying the works of Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, and others, to philosophical and aesthetic movements of the early to mid-twentieth century. With an emphasis on in-class discussion and peer editing, this course helps students develop the particular skills required to write about performance while fostering the ability to produce coherent, concise, persuasive prose in the form of critical arguments.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Teresa Knight 16898 Sara Warner

PERFORMING & MEDIA ARTS 1108 SEM 101

Drama Down Under: Theatre of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific

If it’s not about kangaroos, surfing, and beer, what makes an Aussie play “Australian”? Do plays from New Zealand all look like The Lord of The Rings? This course will look at plays from Australia, New Zealand, and some Oceanic islands and ask how theatre engages with, shapes, and reflects the culture that produces it. We will consider what it means to stage a resistance to colonization, how plays challenge or reinscribe notions of national identity, and how beautiful but remote landscapes generate drama. We will explore a range of texts from a comedy about an island paradise, to a drama about a generation of stolen Aboriginal children. Writing assignments will require close reading of plays (and films) coupled with comparative, creative, and analytical writing.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Aoise Stratford 16897 Sara Warner

PERFORMING & MEDIA ARTS 1109 SEM 101

People, Plays, and Politics: The Federal Theatre Project

From 1935 to 1939, the Federal Theatre Project, as part of the Works Progress Administration, provided employment for American performing arts professionals left jobless by the Great Depression. In this course, we will learn about the people, the plays, and the politics of the Federal Theatre Project. Topics will include the Federal Theatre of the Air, the Negro Theatre Project, and the Federal Theatre Project’s relationship to other WPA units such as the Federal Writers’ Project and the Federal Art Project. We will read and discuss primary sources, including plays from the Federal Theatre Project, and students will write papers examining these plays in their historical context.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Clare Hane 16895 Sara Warner

PSYCHOLOGY 1140 SEM 101

Perception, Cognition, and Development: Multiscale Cognition—Introduction to the Brain, Networks, and Complex Systems

How do minds emerge from the firing of simple neurons? What does the magnitude of wartime casualties have in common with Netflix’s business plan? Why does a roadmap mimic the structure of the brainstem? This course will explore how the structural properties of the human brain are found in our creations, including music, business, and technology. To start, we’ll explore how cognitive systems operate within and outside of our skull. Evidence from ant colonies and corporations will highlight how distributed systems can make complex decisions without the need for complete information. Readings from technology and economics will show how distributed systems can create predictable statistical patterns. Students will have ample time to synthesize findings from disparate fields into several writing assignments for popular and academic audiences.

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Jordan DeLong 16900 James Cutting

PSYCHOLOGY 1140 SEM 102

Perception Cognition Development: The Power of Story-Telling—Cognitive Accounts

We communicate through stories. It is not only narratives and movies; we construct stories around gossip, news, or a simple phone call. Anthropologists claim that stories are—cross-culturally—fundamental to our lives. Cognitive scientists claim that the human mind is a literary mind that comprehends the environment through stories. What aspects of our cognitive system make the story so irresistible? What in the composition of a narrative is so compelling that we can’t give up before finding its resolution? Through close reading and writing, the students in this class will get acquainted with cognitive accounts for our ability to detect story patterns in practically any chain of events. Writing assignments will apply cognitive theories to excerpts from literary and film narratives discussed in class.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Catalina Iricinschi 16901 James Cutting

SOCIETY FOR THE HUMANITIES 1110 SEM 101

Reporting from Hell

When you’re being bombed, hunted down or otherwise persecuted, can you objectively report on what’s happening? Is your on-the-spot report on hell superior to testimony you give years later? Is an eyewitness report superior to that of an historian? Is a filmed report superior to a written one? We will address these and related questions through analytic discussion and writing about the legendary Edward R. Murrow's radio broadcasts during the Blitz of London in World War II, written accounts by Jewish children trapped in the Holocaust, and a report smuggled out of a Soviet labor camp for women political prisoners. We will also examine documentary films, oral testimony of Holocaust and Soviet camp survivors, and (if time permits) Internet reports on some recent hells.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Sidney Orlov 16905

SOCIETY FOR THE HUMANITIES 1130 SEM 101

Propaganda

How does propaganda work? Does it necessarily involve lies? Is it compatible with humor? What is its curious relationship to religion? We will explore these and other questions in the context of World War II propaganda for domestic consumption in Soviet Russia, the United States, and Nazi Germany. Our wide-ranging course materials will include propaganda posters; speeches by Stalin; Life magazine advertisements; cartoons by Walt Disney and Dr. Seuss; films from Frank Capra's famous series Why We Fight; propaganda advice from Hitler and his Minister for Propaganda; and Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will—sometimes called the greatest propaganda film ever made. Our essays will be analytic.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Sidney Orlov 16907

SPANISH 1111 SEM 101

Transatlantic Revolutions

Beginning in sixteenth-century Castile with what some scholars have christened "a first modern revolution," this course will span two worlds and four centuries in an attempt to more firmly grasp the import of the ideas of "revolution" for pre-twentieth-century Spain and Latin America. Modern revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic depend upon the uses and abuses of specific, fundamental concepts such as "utopia," "community," and "the people" as well as specific genres of writing such as the manifesto. This course will explore and question the tumultuous lineage of these terms as they were used by and against rebels and revolutionaries. Writing assignments will develop the ability to think about various genres together including political philosophy, theater, history, painting, manifestos, journalism, and short stories. Readings may include Machiavelli and Marx, Cervantes and Goya, Túpac Amaru II, and Martí, among others.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Bécquer Medak-Seguín 16904 Kathleen Long

SPANISH 1113 SEM 101

Latin American Wastelands

The image of the wasteland is very prominent in contemporary Latin American literature and visual arts. The land, a central notion to the construction of national identities, is supposed to be a nurturing context for its people to grow and prosper. But what happens when this totemic mother-figure is turned into a pile of wreckage at the hands of historical forces? The fantasy of the Latin American land as a place of natural exuberance is challenged by images of landfills, eroded terrains, dried up rivers, makeshift shanty towns, and encampments of displaced communities. In this class, we will explore the intricate relationship between these dystopian places and the peasants and workers who live in and off of them. We will engage the work of artists and writers such as Augusto Roa Bastos, Juan Rulfo, Sebastião Salgado, and Roberto Bolaño. Written responses, reports, and formal essays will hone your writing skills to analyze literary and visual information.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Marcela Romero Rivera 16939 Kathleen Long

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY STUDIES 1123 SEM 101

Technology and Society: A Cultural History of Television

How do you watch television? Are television viewers passive consumers of or active participants in mass culture? What kind of mass culture has television fostered? What is the role of television in modern politics, and how is this role changing due to the Internet? In this course, students will consider the technology of television through the lenses of cultural studies and the sociology of technology. Assigned readings include works in a wide variety of disciplines from authors including Marshall McLuhan, Raymond Williams, and David Foster Wallace. The breadth of fields will allow students to experiment with a number of writing styles by interpreting cultural and sociological theories through reflections on their personal TV habits and analysis of famous and favorite shows.

MWF 02:30–03:20 p.m. Aydin Akyurtlu 16909 Trevor Pinch

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY STUDIES 1126 SEM 101

Science and Society Topics: Illness and Medicine in Social Context

What does it mean to be diagnosed with a disease? What is it like to live with one? While the medical profession treats diseases as biological facts, diseases can also be understood as complicated, uncomfortable, and culturally-embedded experiences. Through engagement with work in a variety of disciplines—including Sylvia Plath’s literary account of a psychiatric hospital in The Bell Jar, Peter Conrad’s sociological work on medicalization, and anthropologist Margaret Lock’s cross-cultural analysis of menopause—students will examine the place of society and experience in medical practice. Class-based writing activities and polished essays will allow students to explore what these different perspectives can teach us about medicine and health, and what new insights we might gain by considering them together.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Danya Glabau 16906 Rachel Prentice