Spring 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 16521 Jane Mt. Pleasant

AMERICAN STUDIES 1140 SEM 101

Common Ground: Education Beyond the Ivory Tower

Become a more engaged member of the Ithaca community! This course offers students a meaningful civic interaction as part of their writing experience. Specifically, Cornell students will meet at regular intervals (during the normal class time) with a class of seniors at Ithaca’s New Roots Charter School where we will engage in critical discussions about our community and social values. Considering the role of education in constituting community, we will engage such texts as those by Orwell, Barber, Freire, Ravitch, and King. Writing assignments and projects relating to local issues will draw on experiences of both classes. Ideally, students will broaden their perspectives about what constitutes community while developing a greater comprehension of textual material, as well as verbal and written skill in considering that material rhetorically.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. x-listed w/ Writ 1400 and Engl 1140 16360 FOR HS MEETINGS, ALLOW TIME TO LEAVE CAMPUS BY 1:00 PM.

ANTHROPOLOGY 1124 SEM 101

The Pop Psyche

In the last scene of HBO’s Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw relates that “the most challenging, exciting, and significant relationship of all, is the one you have with yourself.” Indeed. Within the self, Freud discovered the Id (site of basic drives), the Ego (site of rational activity), and the Super-Ego (site of moral imperatives). Interestingly, the main characters of not only Sex and the City but also South Park embody precisely these three structural positions. In this course, we will consider these protagonists not as interacting individuals, but as constituent components of an individual. In short, we will put the pop psyche on Freud’s couch and see what we can learn about ourselves in the process. The writing assignments will require students to clarify, build on, and redefine class discussions and readings.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Timothy Haupt 16532 Kurt Jordan

ANTHROPOLOGY 1139 SEM 101

Capital, Crime, and Disorder in the former USSR

This course explores capitalism, crime, and disorder in the former USSR. The Soviet Union was a giant Potemkin village—a communist paradise stretching across eleven time zones. The collapse of communism unleashed economic and political forces that quickly unraveled more than seven decades of communist development. Within a few short years, the planned economy had been replaced by “gangster” capitalism. As state institutions collapsed, they were replaced by informal institutions that could, for the right price, solve any problem. Where socialist friendship of the people once reigned, crime and disorder became facets of everyday life as the spoils of the “evil empire” were divided. This course explores both the economic processes that lie behind disorder and the images and representations they generate. Students will learn the craft of writing through class assignments: summaries, critiques, argumentative essays, and eventually a short research paper on a topic of their choice related to the themes covered in class.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Michael Bobick 16211 Hiro Miyazaki

ANTHROPOLOGY 1141 SEM 101

Television, Culture, and Society

How can we understand television as more than entertainment, leisure, or a series of detached images? We will consider the social relations and cultural processes that accompany the production, reception, and interpretation of television. Examining television within a cross-cultural perspective and exploring the concepts of nationalism, transnationalism, race, and gender, we will draw on research from social theory, anthropology, and television studies, including Benedict Anderson and Raymond Williams. Through readings, discussion, and regular writing assignments, we will analyze the ways in which television advertisements and journalism are embedded within complex social relations and historical trajectories. Readings and television programs will take us through Egypt, India, the Americas, and South Africa to understand how context informs the representational form that television takes.

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Reighan Gillam 16221 Hiro Miyazaki

ANTHROPOLOGY 1147 SEM 101

Southeast Asian Religions and "Healing Traditions"

In this course, by examining a series of ethnographic case studies, we investigate phenomena such as ritual, pilgrimage, possession, healing, monasticism, and revivalism. Our special focus will be on healing traditions as they relate to both changing health care debates (e.g., bio-medicalization vs. alternative “traditional” medicine) and religious ideas of the person. The course begins with a short survey of the major religious traditions of South Asia: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Skhism, and Islam; we examine the development of these traditions through historical and cultural perspectives. The course then turns to the modern period, considering the impact on religious ideologies and practices of colonialism, nationalism, mass mediation, and globalization. Students will reflect on the healing traditions of Indian religions through a series of short essays.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Andrew Willford 16239

ANTHROPOLOGY 1148 SEM 101

Politics, Order, and Culture

This seminar explores the foundational principles of political economy and social order. What is the relationship between political liberty, economic equality, social solidarity, and personal identity? What is the role of the individual in society and how does this shape our sense of just politics and fair markets? How does cultural difference reframe our sense of the nature of political life? And how does the recent commodification of “nation” reshape our sense of individual identity, national politics, and global economy? We will explore these questions in relation to three primary intellectual traditions: the liberal economic, the critical Marxist, and the anthropological. The goal of the course is to enhance students’ ability to think and write critically about contemporary social, economic, and political problems.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Adam T. Smith 16240

ART HISTORY 1136 SEM 101

The Marvelous Mediterranean in the Middle Ages

Monsters and marvels penetrated many spheres of Western European thought during the Middle Ages, manifesting themselves widely in material culture. In this course, we will examine the importance of those creatures that adorned architecture, manuscripts, and dreams by examining a wide range of art and architecture (Romanesque through the Renaissance), scholarly articles, and primary texts, such as those of “John of Mandeville” and Marco Polo. Additionally, we will discuss the significance of the words “monster” and “marvel” in the pseudo-sciences of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Assignments will progress from formal descriptive analysis of an object or monument to a technical and contextual investigation.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Kristen Streahle 16209 Maria Fernandez

ART HISTORY 1140 SEM 101

Picturing the Pagan Pantheon in Italian Renaissance Art

In the visual landscape of the Italian Renaissance, gods, goddesses, and heroes from classical mythology are a ubiquitous presence. They dance across canvases, adorn the interior spaces of palazzos, and frolic through books, prints, and drawings. Whether used as political symbols or as models of good (and terrible) behavior, the pagan pantheon enjoyed a special place in the imagination of artists and their patrons. We will analyze and contextualize works of art created during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by artists such as Botticelli, Mantegna, and Raphael, for patrons including Isabella d’Este and the Medici. We will utilize visual analysis, primary sources, and secondary studies in order to construct written arguments that take into consideration social, political, and historical contexts of the works in question.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Victoria Ehrlich 16222 Maria Fernandez

ASIAN STUDIES 1100 SEM 101

Fictional Fascinations: Colonial Literature from Southeast Asia

This course introduces students to academic writing through reading and writing about colonial fiction set in Southeast Asia. Known as a “crossroads of the world,” the region of Southeast Asia fascinated many famous Western writers from the late nineteeneth century into the twentieth century. The writings of these authors have constructed many of the ideas we have of the “exotic” countries of Southeast Asia, and in this class we will explore some of this fiction in conjunction with short historical readings about the specific cultural contexts they depict. In our writing assignments, we will emphasize various elements such as organization, tone, and style, that contribute to persuasive academic writing. Writings include texts by Joseph Conrad, Somerset Maugham, Graham Green, and George Orwell.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Lorranie Paterson 16210

ASIAN STUDIES 1117 SEM 101

Love, Poetry, and Revolution in Vietnamese Literature

This course examines concepts of love, poverty, and anti-colonial revolution in early modern Vietnamese fiction. We begin by examining the roots of these themes in classical Vietnamese “narrative poetry,” such as Nguyen Du’s ninteenth-century masterpiece, the “Tale of Kieu.” In discussion and frequent writing assignments, we then trace the evolution of concepts of love, hardship, and revolution as literary themes in the emergent genre of the short story, and examine how they came to dominate early Vietnamese fiction against a backdrop of the violent fall of French colonial rule.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. John Phan 16235 Keith Taylor

AFRICANA STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER 1811 SEM 101

Women Writing in Southern Africa

In this course, students will explore the works of Southern African women. We will read and respond in discussion and writing to testimonies, films, stories, songs, and many other texts that represent the voices of women in Southern Africa. In our studies, we will discover what the voices of Southern African women are and how their discourse expresses experiences in the countries of South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Mozambique.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Sarah Mkhonza 16212

AFRICANA STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER 1813 SEM 101

Pan-African Freedom Fighters In Their Own Words

This seminar will examine autobiographical writings and advocacy statements and speeches by selected freedom fighters from Black America, Africa, and the Caribbean. Through written and oral communication, students will explore the ideas, values, activities, and impact of individuals such as W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, Amy Jacques Garvey, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, African American women in the Civil Rights Movement (including Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, Angela Davis), Nelson Mandela, African women in the South African Anti-Apartheid Struggle (including Winnie Mandela, Ruth Mompati, Mavivi Manzini, Albertina Sisulu), and Bob Marley. Video and film presentations will augment reading, discussion, and writing assignments.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Locksley Edmondson 16213

AFRICANA STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER 1826 SEM 101

African American Autobiography: I Write, Therefore I Am

Autobiography occupies a crucial place in the African American literary tradition. Seen first in the slave narratives, the historical impulse towards autobiography among black Americans reflects their concern with the need to underscore the fact of their dignity in a larger culture that tried to deny them their basic humanity. Black people literally wrote themselves into existence, since the ability to write in America became indistinguishable from the ability to be taken seriously as an intelligent human being. In this course, we will read important autobiographical narratives by Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. DuBois, Maya Angelou, Audrey Lorde, Jamaica Kincaid, among others, examining how one’s experience can make powerful analytical statements that are larger than the particular life portrayed.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Elizabeth Tshele 16249

AFRICANA STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER 1827 SEM 101

African Literature and Human Rights

Are human rights universal? What can African literature tell us about human rights in the region? How might human rights help us to begin to understand African issues and culture? In this course, we will read works by Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, J. M. Coetzee, Nawal L. Saadawi, Mark Mathabane, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Ishmael Beah, among others, examining how African writers have responded to human rights, often in the face of conflicting local and global notions on the subject. In addition, we will also look at African literature as an ethical project, one that raises enduring questions about humanity, the relation of the self to the other, and the possibility of human understanding across differences. We will consider the role of literature as “testimony,” or as a vehicle for bearing witness to rights abuse, and how, in this respect, storytelling helps to create popular awareness of rights violations.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Elizabeth Tshele 16250

AFRICANA STUDIES AND RESEARCH CENTER 1828 SEM 101

American Response to the Fascist Invasion of Ethiopia

Fascist Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 signaled the prelude to WWII and demise of the League of Nations. The Ethiopian army’s backbone was broken by the Italians’ use of the internationally-outlawed mustard poison gas. Undaunted, the Ethiopians resorted to country-wide guerilla resistance. American responses varied. African-Americans volunteered to fight for Ethiopia; the State Department was not too keen on that. Italian-Americans in New York demonstrated in support of Italy; African-Americans counter-demonstrated. American dock workers refused to load shipments to Italy. In NY (or DC), an Ethiopian World Federation was formed to mobilize the world’s blacks. The course explores American responses to the deadly and decisive confrontation between Africa’s sole independent country and Fascist Italy. In the end, Ethiopia prevailed.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Hailu Habtu 16251

NEUROBIOLOGY & BEHAVIOR 1220 SEM 101

Songs and Sex: The Biology of Bird Song

Animals behave in truly strange ways, and behavioral ecologists have been trying to explain these bizarre behaviors for many decades. Bird song is an area where we have made substantial progress, and figuring out how and why birds sing as they do gives us a window into the behaviors of other animals. In this class, we’ll explore the complex singing behavior of birds, the behavioral ecology theory developed around bird song, and practical applications of bird song research, including parallels to human speech learning and conservation implications. You will have the opportunity to examine areas that you find particularly interesting in greater depth, and we’ll take advantage of resources at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and in the natural areas around Cornell to fully appreciate birds’ vocalizations. We will focus on clear, concise writing with assignments modeled after the kinds of writing required of behavioral ecologists.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Emily (Becky) Cramer 16219 Sandra Vehrencamp

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.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Aaron Pelttari 16220 Michael Fontaine

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 101

Writing across Cultures: The Nobel Prize and World Literature

The Nobel Prize in Literature is the crowning achievement in a writer’s career. As an institution, the Prize shapes global literary tastes and contributes to canons of “world literature.” During this course, we will explore the aesthetic and ideological preferences, the political and economic motivations, and the controversies of the Prize. We will read texts from winners of 1982 and onwards, including García Márquez, Soyinka, Paz, Coetzee, Pamuk, Lessing, and Mueller, with an eye for the common themes which unite these diverse authors. Students will write from the perspective of the Nobel Prize Committee, as an academic researcher, as a critic, and as the prize-winning author him/herself. Our goal will be to determine just what it is that makes a Nobel Prize-winning author a winner.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Carly Kaloustian 16214 Matthew Smith

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 102

Writing across Cultures: Pain and Compassion—The Conflict in Israeli/Palestinian Literature

How are suffering and pain represented—in general and in the Middle East in particular? What inspires compassion and sympathy in us? What are the political implications of the answers to such questions? This seminar is intended to provide a glimpse into the conflict in the Middle East through literature. In our readings, we will focus on questions of suffering and compassion and the ways those are present in Hebrew and Palestinian poetry and fiction, while trying to better understand these theoretical concepts in and of themselves and their relation to writing. Therefore, we will also be reading postcolonial theories alongside selections from classic Western thought (the Bible, Aristotle, Hume, Rousseau, Burke, Nietzsche, etc). Course work will emphasize close reading and developing rigorous, argument-based essays.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Liron Mor 16215 Matthew Smith

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 103

Writing across Cultures: The Drama of Sex, Incest, and Sodomy in Early Modern France and England

Incest and sodomy, sex and masochism—while these terms may carry XXX-rated contemporary connotations today, how were such sexual practices and deviant desires understood in seventeenth-century France and England? This course investigates what it means to stage or censor sexual perversions and erotic fantasies, through critical written analysis of plays by Shakespeare, Marlowe, Racine, Corneille. How were these sexual desires coded or hidden in the plays? How can theories of queer sexuality, desire, and gender (Butler, Foucault, Sedgwick) inform our historical understanding of these practices? This course expects a high level of student engagement, through acting, visual collages, dramaturgy, and interdisciplinary work. Drawing on such early modern practices as “commonplacing” (collecting quotations), students will compose close analyses of passages as well as undertake research-based, performance-based, and comparative approaches to the history of sexuality as represented by these dramas.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Jennifer Row 16216 Matthew Smith

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 104

Writing across Cultures: Pictures of Garbage—Images of Waste in Latin American Art and Literature

Garbage is the late material evidence of human interaction with nature. All humans have a meaningful relation to garbage: either they produce the commodities that will be discarded; they buy, use, and discard such commodities; or they scavenge garbage as a living. Although trash is global, the flux of the transnational economy makes it more conspicuous in the third world. There are all sorts of different configurations of the image of waste that we are familiar with: garbage on a curb has a very different significance than a picture of garbage hanging on a museum wall. In this seminar, we will explore the image of garbage in Latin America as it is constructed in the work of photographers, filmmakers, and writers such as Vik Muniz, Marcos Prado, Clarice Lispector, Caio Fernando Abreu, among others. Written responses, reports, and essays will help you learn to use the written word to analyze visual information.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Marcela Romero-Rivera 16217 Matthew Smith

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1109 SEM 105

Writing across Cultures: The Global Muse(s)—Writing about Poetry

With its emotional depth, intellectual passion, and social relevance, short poetry constitutes the most economical and persuasive form of writing available to readers and writers. Learning how to investigate short poems and how to write about their compelling effects will enable students to develop cogent, problem-solving academic and professional writing skills. Texts will be drawn from European, Asian, African, Australian, and North and South American poems, from antiquity to contemporary modernity. These poems, powerful and culturally significant in their own right, provide topics for response essays that probe issues, articulate competing claims, and develop strong arguments.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. William Kennedy 16218

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1126 SEM 101

Comparative Arts: Film Fictions—Literary Adventures at the Movies

An aging film diva is ready for her final, grotesque close-up. An aspiring artist is sucked into the seedy world of C-List Hollywood. A marriage disintegrates on the set of an international blockbuster. These film fictions revel in both the artifice of movies as well as their overwhelming reality effect. Examining characters caught up in the desires, fantasies, and brutal truths of the film world, this seminar focuses on literary and cinematic works that go behind the screen. Reading texts by Pirandello, Fitzgerald, West, Moravia, and Didion with a self-conscious emphasis on an author-character’s relationship to the filmic image, student writing will examine the porous border between literature and cinema in a series of essays focused on the writer’s response to the elusive power of the moving image.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Paul Flaig 16224 Matthew Smith

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1126 SEM 102

Comparative Arts: Looking for Evidence—Insight and Blindness

Who determines when an event has happened and how do we know an account is true? How does the description of an event validate or distort its truth and how does an artwork transmit this effect? In this seminar, we will examine the exchange between vision and narration that takes place from Sophocles, Balzac, and James, to Sebald, Churchill, Marías, Rear Window, and Blow-Up. While the narrator-as-eyewitness is often called upon to provide insight, the truth-value of testimony can also be harnessed to subvert the power of language and revise individual and collective histories. We will explore themes of prophecy and blindness, bodily and factual evidence, narrative time, and the changes these terms are undergoing today. Writing assignments will focus on textual analysis and argumentation.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Paloma Yannakakis 16225 Matthew Smith

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1126 SEM 103

Comparative Arts: From Parallel Worlds to Multiple Worlds

The idea of parallel worlds has been fascinating to many literary audiences, enabling the imagination and fantasizing of alternative realities. The parallels, on the other hand, consist in the imaginary boundaries between worlds, which in turn provide an interesting way to look at geo-cultural mapping. This seminar will explore how the division between East and West or the 38th parallel between North and South Korea may be seen as examples of such parallels. Is it possible to conceptualize a relationship between parallel worlds, to locate the places where they intersect with one another? Are they completely incommensurable? Students will study the possibilities of parallel worlds through critical analyses of short stories by Murakami, Ch’oe’s The Square, Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour, and Wong Kar-wai’s 2046.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Yoon Oh 16226 Matthew Smith

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1133 SEM 101

Studies in Literary Theory: Theft and Creativity

Many writers (and many writing seminars) take for granted that originality is a virtue, that creativity as traditionally described remains possible and desirable, and that copyright violation is not just illegal, but morally wrong. This seminar will focus on texts that disagree, to varying degrees, with these assumptions. Students will instead consider theoretical and artistic defenses of “appropriation” as a creative process in the twentieth century in poetry, film, visual art, and critical writing. In their own writing, students will be asked to address the following questions: How can we identify creativity and originality in artworks built entirely from borrowed materials? Are these categories different? What is the difference between artistic plagiarism and copyright violation? Readings will include Walter Benjamin, Rosalind Krauss, William Carlos Williams, Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and examples of “Conceptual Writing.”

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Diana Hamilton 16233 Matthew Smith

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 1133 SEM 102

Studies in Literary Theory: No Gods, No Masters—Literary Ideas of Freedom

This course will focus on literary portrayals of political repression, agency, and freedom over the course of the twentieth century, as well as examine the ways in which literary creation itself allows new forms of subjectivity to emerge in modernist, postmodern, and contemporary literature. We will look at both novels and poetry in order to explore the ways in which changes in social and political conditions inform and are informed by literary experimentation and subjective transformation. Authors to include DeLillo, Kafka, Frost, Stein, Williams, and Ashbery. Writing assignments will emphasize close reading and formulating strong arguments.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Tatiana Sverjensky 16234 Matthew Smith

COMPUTER SCIENCE 1330 SEM 101

Privacy in Bits: How Digital Technology is Reshaping Privacy

Imagine being turned down for a job because a provocative photo of you was found on Facebook. Has your privacy been violated? Does it depend on how you configured your privacy settings? On who uploaded the photo? On whether the employer used sophisticated software to scour the web for data about prospective hires? In this course, we explore the complex subject of privacy in the digital age. We will study several recent controversies, examining the underlying technology as well as social, economic, political, and ethical factors. We will read a variety of sources, including Nissenbaum's Privacy in Context. The primary vehicle for exploration will be writing: you will write to reflect, to share with peers, and to organize your thoughts into a coherent viewpoint.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Michael Hay 16237 Johannes Gehrke

CITY AND REGIONAL PLANNING 1109 SEM 101

Sustainability in the City

Chicago, New York, Curitiba, Freiberg: all “green” cities and all supposedly on the cutting edge of sustainability. However, as we will learn, “sustainability” means different things to different people; a clean environment is just the start. In this class, we will explore the various environmental, economic, and social conceptions of sustainability using popular, policy, and research literature. Our readings and writings will pursue these understandings in a range of municipalities from international mega-cities to small communities. We will focus on local efforts and investigate the role of politics, power, and public participation. Through the writing assignments student will engage particular policy challenges, municipalities, and/or local strategies with an eye towards developing and expressing a critical understanding of urban sustainability.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. George Homsy 16223 John Forester

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.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Mindi Schneider 16236 Lindy Williams

DEVELOPMENT SOCIOLOGY 1205 SEM 101

The Power of Narrative: How Language Shapes our Environment

How do decisions on issues such as climate change, deforestation, and poverty get made? Rather than objective, scientific knowledge, it is often compelling narratives based on simple notions like the “balance of nature” and “sustainable development” that have most powerfully structured how we think of and respond to environment and development issues. In this course, we will explore how language, rhetoric, and storytelling are used not merely to describe reality, but also to shape it—often to serve particular interests. Using a discourse analysis approach inspired by authors like John Dryzek and Donna Haraway, we will examine several contemporary debates in the popular and policy literature. Students will critique, as well as learn to write in, various genres including policy briefs, research reports, and op-ed pieces.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Edmund Oh 16524 Charles Geisler

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 101

Writing and Sexual Politics: One Girl in All the World—Superheroines and Gendered Violence

Violence, aggression, power—these forces are typically attributed to the male heroes of popular culture. But what happens when a woman wields righteous violence, when “one girl in all the world” must save the day? In this course, we will examine a variety of texts that feature a female heroine, specifically a superheroine, and analyze issues such as gender politics and performance, the intersection of sexuality and violence, and the implications the portrayals of warrior women have for women’s equality. Drawing from narratives in comics, TV shows, movies, and novels and from superheroines such as Buffy, Nikita, and Wonder Woman, we will write critical essays that address the politics of sexuality and the aestheticization of violence.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Christopher Lirette 16227 Molly Hite

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 102

Writing and Sexual Politics: Queer Self/Representations

Michel Foucault, French philosopher and pioneer in theories of sexuality, writes, “I don't feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am.” Is the self ever reducible to a “what”? If so, what constitutes that “what”? This course will engage with theoretical and primary texts that offer conceptualizations of queer selves and will put those texts into conversation with one another. We will examine literature from all parts of the LGBTQ spectrum and will interrogate that very spectrum and the historical process of its development. Texts include Freud, Alison Bechdel, James Baldwin, and more, from philosophy to novels to popular music. Besides composing traditional analytical essays, students will work to write effectively in different voices (autobiography, reviews, etc.) and for different audiences.

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Lynne Stahl 16228 Molly Hite

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 103

Writing and Sexual Politics: All Happy Families

“All happy families resemble one another; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” If Anna Karenina’s famous opening line is to be believed, what do these happy families look like? How have different authors conceived them, and what problems or contradictions seem to plague the unhappy variety? In this course, students will analyze various representations of the family and other kinship structures in visual art and advertisements; films, such as Paris Is Burning; Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic; Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest; and other texts. With an emphasis on in-class discussion, debate, and peer editing, this course will help students to develop as critical thinkers and prose stylists as they examine those ties that bind and blister.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Lily Cui 16229 Molly Hite

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 104

Writing and Sexual Politics: What’s So Funny about Sadness? Tragic Comedy from Aristotle to the Coen Brothers

Tragicomedy has been defined as a mixture of emotions in which seriousness stimulates laughter, and pain promotes pleasure. In this course, students will explore the formal and psychological complexity of this hybrid genre while honing their essay writing skills. We will consider the identifying characteristics of tragic comedy and also its political implications: What happens when low or base subjects are elevated to tragic proportions? How might comedy operate as a coping mechanism as well as a form of ridicule and critique? Short writing assignments and essay questions will be based on readings and films that include: Aristotle’s Poetics, the “dark romances” of Shakespeare, the absurdist theatre of Beckett, the comedic pantomimes of Charlie Chaplin, and the contemporary films Fargo and Life is Beautiful.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Stephanie DeGooyer 16230 Molly Hite

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 105

Writing and Sexual Politics: The Queer South

The American South has long been associated with conservative religion, racial oppression, poverty, and homophobia. But this “backwards” region has also produced compelling, provocative works of literature. This course will specifically highlight “queer” Southern writers—those whose treatment of sexuality and gender breaks from traditional expectations. What does it mean to be a gay Southerner? Is there a link between Southern “eccentricity” and queer sexuality? Is there a connection between the Civil Rights Movement and queer liberation? Fiction, poetry, and films/TV might include Goyen’s House of Breath, Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms, poetry by Nikki Giovanni and Jericho Brown, the film Southern Comfort, and the HBO series True Blood. Students will develop their thoughts through essays that incorporate close reading and research.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Elizabeth Rogers 16231 Molly Hite

ENGLISH 1105 SEM 106

Writing and Sexual Politics: Gender, Sexuality, and the Writing of Food

This course assumes a knowledge of basic writing skills and builds on it, concentrating on how you can develop your voice while honing your analytic skills. As a focus for this, we will explore the literature of foodways—the behaviors and beliefs attached to the production, distribution, and consumption of food—to explore the ways food practices function as cultural systems that both produce and reflect identities. Focusing primarily on novels centering on food, we will examine how writers use the language of food to explore issues such as gender, sexuality, class, and race. Why might a novelist or filmmaker choose to focus on food (or a chef) in order to tell a particular tale? What can a study of food tell us about contemporary U.S. life?

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Kate McCullough 16232

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 101

Writing Across Cultures: TransAtlantic Imaginings

This course will explore the history of the African Diaspora—the dispersal of peoples of African descent throughout the world. What are the implications of forced/voluntary migrations? To explore this question, we will read works by Olaudah Equiano, Paule Marshall, Dionne Brand, and Saidiya Hartman, attempting to understand how migrations (the movements of peoples and culture) continue to inform our present world. Providing the framework for our study will be the Trans-Atlantic slave trade as well as modern accounts of “return” or “reverse migrations.” Through active participation and frequent writing assignments (e.g., short essays, a comparative essay, and a research paper), students will be challenged to articulate and support well-organized arguments that offer critical discussions of major themes and questions.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Anisha Warner 16252 Philip Lorenz

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 102

Writing Across Cultures: Travel Narratives

This first-year seminar will examine literature that connects the process of writing and the process of travel. The travel narrative will be considered as a liminal (borderline) text that teaches us how new ways of thinking are created in the in-between spaces. We will focus on movements through space and time and movements through dominant cultural narratives and ideologies. Writing assignments will pivot on critical thinking that happens in the in-between spaces and the travel that can energize students’ own writing. Our texts will include Eve Ensler’s play Necessary Targets, Jamaica Kincaid’s memoir A Small Place, John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America, and The Map as Art (a visual art anthology).

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Margo Crawford 16256

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 103

Writing Across Cultures: The Culture of the Raj

Judging from the recent spate of popular novels and movies dealing with the British rule in India, the "Raj" was a time of pageantry and color, adventure and romance. But to what extent is this image historically accurate? How did people live their lives, and how did the colonial rule affect not only Indian society and culture but also contemporary Britain? The Raj did invent many of the modern forms of spectacle and public ceremonial display, but is there anything else that survives to the present day? What do we know about “race” and nationalism, for instance, or literature and imperial ideology, and the various “cultural” ways we understand ourselves—then as much as now? Readings will draw on both literary and historical texts, and include some current films and popular fiction.

MWF 01:25–02:15 p.m. Satya Mohanty 16253

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 104

Writing Across Cultures: Who's Afraid of Sofia Vergara? Latinas on Film

This writing seminar will focus on Latino and Latina engagement with film and the internet. We will examine early stereotypes of Latinos from the print press and film, recent Latino/a films, and new engagements with the net (blogs, websites, etc.). In addition to viewing several films we will read Latino film criticism, history, and cultural studies.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Mary Pat Brady 16254

ENGLISH 1111 SEM 105

Writing Across Cultures: Power, Politics, and Postcolonial Literature

Some of the most acclaimed contemporary authors write from a postcolonial perspective—people like Chinua Achebe, J. M. Coetzee, and Arundhati Roy. In their writing, they explore such topics as imperialism, colonialism, race, power, oppression, community, cultural identity, and sexual politics. What are the effects of colonialism on culture and society? How does literature represent, challenge, or uphold existing structures of power? In this course, we will examine such questions by reading novels, short stories, and poems by writers from Nigeria, South Africa, India, North America, and the Caribbean. Through formal essays and informal writing exercises, students will analyze literary texts, develop complex arguments, and write clearly, accurately, and with style.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Rose Casey 16255 Philip Lorenz

ENGLISH 1127 SEM 102

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 10:10–11:00 a.m. Matthew McConnell 16259 Barbara Correll

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.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Christine Yao 16241 Ernesto Quinonez

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 102

Memoir and Memory

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Nicolette Lee 16242 Ernesto Quinonez

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 103

Memoir and Memory

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Kimberly Williams 16243 Ernesto Quinonez

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 104

Memoir and Memory

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Ben Tam 16244 Ernesto Quinonez

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 105

Memoir and Memory

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Daniel Pena 16245 Ernesto Quinonez

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 106

Memoir and Memory

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Ernesto Quinonez 16246

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 107

Memoir and Memory

MWF 01:25–02:15 p.m. Rachel Coye 16247 Ernesto Quinonez

ENGLISH 1134 SEM 108

Memoir and Memory

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Clayton Pityk 16248 Ernesto Quinonez

ENGLISH 1140 SEM 101

Common Ground: Education Beyond the Ivory Tower

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. x-listed w/ Writ 1400 and AmSt 1140 16361

FOR HS MEETINGS, ALLOW TIME TO LEAVE CAMPUS BY 1:00 P.M.

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.

MWF 08:00–08:50 a.m. John Searcy 16260 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 102

The Mystery in the Story

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Bernadette Guthrie 16261 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 103

The Mystery in the Story

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Elizabeth Blake 16262 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 104

The Mystery in the Story

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Aaron Rosenberg 16263 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1147 SEM 105

The Mystery in the Story

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Stephen Thompson 16446 Stuart Davis

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 101

American Voices: Young Female American Heroes

This course is primarily interested in first-person narratives from the perspectives of young women. We will explore issues of inherited guilt, and young women’s heroic acts of challenging traditional family structures as well as daring to tell their stories at all. Texts may include Maxine Hong Kingston’sWoman Warrior, Disney’s Mulan, Toni Morrison’s Beloved, and Kaye Gibbons’ Ellen Foster. Discussion will be based largely on close readings and supplemental articles. Most papers will be revised with the aid of the instructor and peers.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Shyla Foster 16264 Dag Woubshet

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 102

American Voices: Plotting Girls

Good Girls. Bad Girls. Mean Girls. These familiar modern stereotypes gesture toward ways that the girl has been classified and characterized in American culture and literature. Focused on the nineteenth century, this course will explore American texts about (and sometimes by) girls. Among the questions we will seek to address are: From a narratological perspective, how are girls “plotted”? How have formulations of gender, race, and age changed throughout the history of America? How do girl writers challenge traditional claims of authorship and authority? A series of critical writing assignments will explore these questions along with film screenings and library visits. Authors may include Louisa May Alcott, Harriet Jacobs, Lucy Larcom, Phillis Wheatley, and Emily Dickinson.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Jillian Spivey 16265 Dag Woubshet

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 103

American Voices: American Flow—Contemporary Poetry and Hip Hop

During no other time in history has lyricism enjoyed such widespread popularity. Rap music has risen through controversy and marginalization to become one of the dominant forms of entertainment in America. These lyrics, however, come only recently in a rich history of American verse. From Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson to contemporary poets such as John Ashbury and Jorie Graham, written poetry continues to thrive despite the evolution of media and entertainment technologies. In this course, we will look at poets from different epochs in American literature alongside rappers such as Rakim, 2pac, and Jay-Z and others, searching for what makes us so attracted to a well-wrought lyric, analyzing both forms of American verse thoughtfully and critically. We will write not only personal responses to new forms of poetry and rap music, but also blog posts concerning contemporary lyricism and formal, literary essays on the subject of poetry and hip hop.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Christopher Lirette 16266 Molly Hite

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 104

American Voices: The Western—From Indians to Apocalypse

How has the Western genre tracked (or produced) cowboys and Indians in the American imagination? In this course, we will consider how the genre emerged from early accounts of American colonization, through its popularization as pulp fiction, toward its consummation near the end of the 20th century. We might explore themes as varied as imperialism, conquest, genocide, masculinity, gender relations, nostalgia, sentimentality, and violence. Beginning with excerpts from Cabeza de Vaca and John Smith, we will continue with Louis L’Amour, on to visions of Indian apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. We will finish the semester with True Grit, the novel and films. Throughout, we will engage the texts in our own writing, playing with perspective through analytical and creative writing assignments. (Disclaimer: some of this course’s texts, especially Blood Meridian, contain explicit and graphic violence.)

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Daniel Sinykin 16273 Dag Woubshet

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 106

American Voices: The Literary Tropes of American Individualism

What does it mean to behave in an American fashion? Are there common themes across American culture from Walt Whitman’s poetry to Judd Apatow’s movies? Our survey of American literature will begin with the Transcendentalist movement (Emerson and Thoreau) and go on to include Whitman’s poetry, nineteenth century realism as well as modernist writers like William Faulkner. A persistent theme in American literature is the tension between the individual and society. But the “individual”—one of America’s most resilient inventions—is also very much shaped by the society he frequently opposes. We will study the mythologies of self in American writing and examine the literary codes and conventions that enable “American individuals” to cohere. Writing requirements will consist of weekly Blackboard responses and multi-draft essays.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Christine Suwendy 16274 Kevin Attell

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 107

American Voices: Ghostfaces—Persona in the Black Americas

Despite the importance placed on Black authenticity, many authors, visual artists, and politicians throughout the Americas have consciously constructed flexible personas to develop entire mythologies, make social and political critique, and to expand the limits of their own aesthetic practices. Building upon syncretic religions and the “Creole” methodology of hip hop and dancehall, the course will look at how folks get “bodied” from Brazil to Haiti, get “grimey” like the Wu Tang Clan and MF DOOM, and “wax Sankofa” along with Parliament Funakadelic and Sun Ra. Looking beyond simple aliases, students in their essays are expected to develop thoughtful analysis of literature, art, video games, and song lyrics as we investigate and complicate how deliberately-constructed identities instruct, influence, and disrupt notions of the “real” throughout the Americas.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Christian Howard 16275 Dag Woubshet

ENGLISH 1158 SEM 108

American Voices: Linked Stories

What makes a novel different from a group of stories? In this course, we will explore the best of both worlds: books that work as collections of individual stories, while also having the longer arc of a novel. We will discuss the effect of different linking mechanisms—shared main characters, a composite portrait of a single community—and why this type of book has exploded in popularity over the last 30 years. Over the course of the semester, you will take apart what you read and write clearly and persuasively about your response to the material, backing up your ideas with evidence from the text. Authors may include Sherwood Anderson, Tim O’Brien, Louise Erdrich, Jamaica Kincaid, and Cornell’s own Stephanie Vaughn and Junot Díaz.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Laurel Lathrop 16276 Dag Woubshet

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 08:40–09:55 a.m. Aisha Gawad 16277 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 102

Great New Books

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Nicholas Friedman 16278 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 103

Great New Books

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Jennifer Adams 16279 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 104

Great New Books

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Sally Mao 16280 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 105

Great New Books

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Charlie Green 16281

ENGLISH 1167 SEM 106

Great New Books

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Benjamin Garcia 16282 Charlie Green

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 101

Cultural Studies: Rednecks, Yokels, and Bumpkins

Whether singing mournfully in pastures or slaughtering city-folk in the dead of night, the country person has long been a charged literary figure. This course will examine modern representations of the country person alongside important literary forerunners. In addition to uncovering the social and political implications of terms such as “redneck” and “white trash,” we will investigate how this figure provokes questions concerning artistic production, the representation of space, and humankind’s relationship to the natural world. In short and long essays, students will not only analyze the texts but also consider how the environment shapes their own writing. We will engage with such characters as Milton’s gentle swain, Lycidas; Faulkner’s Bundren family; The Simpsons’ Cletus, the slack-jawed yokel; and Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Matthew Kibbee 16267 Shelley Wong

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 102

Cultural Studies: Interactive Media and Art

To what extent are all works of art interactive? How do context and experience affect interpretation? How can video games be art, and how can we better understand art's relationship to its audience by studying video games? By rigorously engaging with questions like these, this course challenges students to consider how art functions socially. Texts will be diverse, ranging from Shakespearean drama to postmodernist novels to computer games and social media, allowing students to compare and contrast the "behaviors" of different kinds of art. While examining the dynamics of interactivity through a series of papers, the course will promote a sustained reflection on how an academic essay—as itself situated between constraint and innovation, expectations and originality—exercises interactive artistry.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Noor Desai 16268 Shelley Wong

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 103

Cultural Studies: New Maps of Time—Comics as History

The recent past of the comics medium is a story of great promise and tremendous disappointment, of astonishing formal evolution and ongoing popular disdain. This course examines a handful of recent graphic novels that reflect on this history in particular ways, including works by Alison Bechdel ( Fun Home), Eddie Campbell (Fate of the Artist), and Dylan Horrocks (Hicksville). In addition, we will study shorter works by important contemporary cartoonists like Chris Ware, Lynda Barry, and Art Spiegelman, along with excerpts from earlier works in a variety of genres that inspired them such as wood cut novels, newspaper strips, and superhero narratives. Students will write critical essays about these texts and historical analyses of comics from the rare books and manuscripts collection of the Kroch Library.

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Jacob Brogan 16269 Rayna Kalas

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 104

Cultural Studies: Batman’s America

“Holy exploding shark!” Many would agree that there is little “holy” about an exploding shark, but they could probably identify both that quote’s speaker and the name which usually follows such interjections. Why? This class will analyze depictions of Batman from his first appearance in 1939 to the recent films of Christopher Nolan. We will seek to explain why he has remained popular for so long, considering how the character adapts to reflect changes in American culture. Texts will not only include graphic novels such as The Dark Knight Returns and Arkham Asylum, but also the character’s appearances on television and film. Students will produce six essays during the semester, including close readings, and the opportunity to create (and analyze) their very own superhero story.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Matthew Spears 16270 Rayna Kalas

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 105

Cultural Studies: Loose Lips, Wagging Tongues—Gossip and its Socio-Cultural Significance

This course will explore the indistinct boundaries that exist between different modes of telling stories. We will survey how storytelling informs both the private and informal intimacies of gossip and the formal public institutions of literature and history. Throughout the course, we will define a “literature of gossip” broadly: from ancient Roman conceptions of fama to Chaucer’s poetry; from the literary gossip of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America to the internet’s digital culture of self-narration in the twenty-first century. Longer works will include Shakespeare’s history Richard II, Hannah Webster Foster’s first American “bestseller,” The Coquette, and Melville’s classic novella, Billy Budd. Writing assignments will focus on argument and organization; students’ development of close reading skills will facilitate stylistic grace.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Adin Lears 16271 Shelley Wong

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 106

Cultural Studies: Cute, Gutsy, Gross—Visceral Literature

The expressions “hate someone’s guts,” “listened to my gut,” and “spill your guts” are common enough, but what do they mean? This course focuses on the visceral responses associated with shock value, and how the cute, gutsy, and gross speak to the representations of and rhetorics surrounding the body. Writing exercises will analyze relationships between characters’ corporeality and how these fictional bodies fit into the literary (and other cultural) worlds. Readings may include Lara Glenum’s Maximum Gaga, Francesca Lia Block’s Girl Goddess # Nine, John Berryman’s 77 Dream Songs, and other engrossing pieces. Students will examine how the emotions evoked by the texts connect to ideas of melodrama, affect theory, feminism, queer theory, gurlesque, and disassociation of mind and body.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Megan Coe 16272 Shelley Wong

ENGLISH 1168 SEM 107

Cultural Studies: Self-Transformations—Studies and Stories

What is “self-help”? What does it mean to engage in a “self-directed” project of “self-transformation”? What happens when large groups or corporations get involved? The self-help industry has gained considerable force in the past 20-30 years. But what have literary writers had to say about it? How have they grappled with the rise of self-help languages and ideologies in American culture? We will address these questions through the short stories and plays of Denis Johnson, Raymond Carver, Lorrie Moore, and others, as well as through the critical work of Søren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, and Aldous Huxley. The course will focus on the melding of social history and cultural studies in literary analysis, and will include the opportunity to create literary work in the final project.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Orlando Lara 16358 Rayna Kalas

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 101

Short Stories

What do Minority Report, Brokeback Mountain, and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button have in common? Each began life as a short story. Uncanny yet homely, short stories bestride both the commonplace anecdotes we relate daily and the high literary tradition that values visionary moments. Short fiction can pack poetry’s punch and still ride the novel’s propulsive drive of plot. Stories make us human; they urge us to write. Although we will primarily write analytical essays about the craft (and the reading) of narrative, we will nevertheless find our creative and research abilities challenged. Texts may include works by authors such as Poe, Melville, de Maupassant, Gilman, Chopin, Hemingway, Faulkner, Steinbeck, O’Connor, O’Brien, Carver, Lawrence, Atwood, Munro, Chekhov, Joyce, Kafka, Kipling, Danticat, Lahiri.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Daniel Radus 16285 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 102

Short Stories

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Alexander Chertok 16286 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 103

Short Stories

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Jungmin Kim 16287 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 104

Short Stories

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Samuel Nam 16288 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1170 SEM 105

Short Stories

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Kristie Schlauraff 16289 David Faulkner

ENGLISH 1191 SEM 102

British Literature: The Ghost in the Machine

Consciousness is both very familiar and very strange. You probably don’t doubt that you’re conscious. But what exactly is consciousness? Is it the result of an immaterial soul somewhere within the body—a kind of “ghost in the machine”—or does the body alone do all the thinking? In this course, we’ll consider problems of self, soul, matter, and consciousness. We’ll think about what it might be like to be other “conscious” things like a bat, a talking parrot, or even a brain in a vat. We’ll read scurrilous love poetry where the body has a mind of its own, and gothic tales where consciousness is created from dead matter. Authors may include: Descartes, Hobbes, Rochester, Haywood, Sterne, Shelley, Dennett, Searle, and Borges.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Jess Keiser 16296 Andrew Galloway

ENGLISH 1270 SEM 101

Writing About Literature: Doubling, Disguise, and Deceit in Drama

Theatre is never more theatrical than when it doubles itself—in strategically paired characters, in plays about playing, in tales of vindictive intrigue, in reflections on its own dark or joyous origins. Beginning with Euripides’ The Bacchae, this course will explore such doublings and the frenzies they entail, reading comedies and tragedies by such playwrights as Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Oscar Wilde, Bertolt Brecht, Alan Ayckbourn, Jean Genet, and Suzan-Lori Parks, and viewing them, when possible, in live or filmed performance.

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Stuart Davis 16297

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: The Reading of Fiction

This course examines modern fiction, with an emphasis on the short story and novella. Students will write critical essays on authors who flourished between 1870 and the present, such as James, Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Hurston, Nabokov, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Rhys, Welty, Kafka, and Morrison. We will focus on short fiction, with the seminar culminating in the study of one or two short novels. Close, attentive, imaginative reading and writing will be central throughout.

MWF 02:30–03:20 p.m. Jeremy Braddock 16298

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, or received a "700" or better on the English Composition or CEEB tests.

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.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Kathleen Long 16283

FRENCH 1170 SEM 101

Captives of Contingency: The Politics of Literature

Is a sovereign or monarch subject to the law? Or, paradoxically, is the maker of law free from the very law he makes? Similarly, does the social and political context determine the meaning of a work of literature? Or does the meaning somehow transcend the historical moment during which the work was written? In other words, what is the role of the "absolute" in politics and literature? We will explore this question by examining sovereignty and literature within the French tradition. Ultimately, we will work on uncovering both the radical difference and peculiar similarity between politics and literature. Texts may include works by Descartes, Rousseau, Sartre, and Foucault. Writing assignments in a range of formats will focus on the students' ability to summarize and analyze the complexity of an author's argument, in the course of articulating a position of their own.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Megan Kruer 16284 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.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Bonnie Buettner 16290

GERMAN STUDIES 1109 SEM 102

From Fairy Tales to the Uncanny: Exploring the Romantic Consciousness

MWF 11:15–12:05 p.m. Andreea Mascan 16291 Douglas Brent McBride

GERMAN STUDIES 1130 SEM 101

Metropolis, Modernity, and Mass Culture

In what ways have technological innovation, industrialization, and urbanization changed the way we relate to our things, our surroundings, ourselves, and each other? This seminar will chart the highs and lows of German and Western modernization, from the rise of consumer culture and growth of cities to visions of ruin and decline. Students will develop academic writing skills through critical engagement with a variety of literary and philosophical texts from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, setting in dialogue such authors and thinkers as Marx, Raabe, Kafka, Adorno, and Sebald. Readings, class discussions, and essay topics will consider interrelated themes such as cityscapes and countrysides, art in the age of industrial technology, and the destruction of the environment.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Alexander Phillips 16299 Douglas Brent McBride

GERMAN STUDIES 1140 SEM 101

Strangers, Exiles, and Migrants

This course will focus on the interplay between strangeness, exile, and migration as existential but also social conditions. German literature provides a vast field of insight into strangeness, otherness, the motif of the decadent intellectual abroad and the intellectual in exile, homelessness, and estrangement within language. The German cinema and works by migrant authors, on the other hand, reflect in a peculiar fashion the problematics of living in a multicultural world. Students will be provided with the opportunity of delving into three dimensions of identity, while reading and writing about a variety of texts and authors—from mystics (Angelus Silesius) to twentieth-century literary icons (Rilke, Mann, Christa Wolf), from poems to prose, and cinema. The emphasis of the course will be on the improvement of analytical writing skills.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Miyako Hayakawa 16292 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 10:10–11:00 a.m. Matteo Calla 16293 Douglas Brent McBride

GERMAN STUDIES 1170 SEM 102

Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Ana Marie Andrei 16294 Douglas Brent McBride

GERMAN STUDIES 1170 SEM 103

Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

MWF 01:25–02:15 p.m. Douglas McBride 16295

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 101

Power and Politics: Justice and Human Rights in a Globalized World

What does justice mean in times of globalization? What moral duties do people in developed countries have towards needy people in poor countries? What are our obligations to future generations in terms of maintaining global economic and ecological resources? We will interrogate theories and practices of global politics by engaging the concepts of justice and human rights. Topics will range from just war, humanitarian intervention, environmental and economic stability, to global inequality. We will study theoretical texts on global justice (Pogge, Walzer), works on international economic policy and human rights (Kinley, Chua), and studies of the location of justice in post-conflict situations (Teitel, Ndulo). In frequent writing assignments, we will explore the relationship between theory and practice regarding the quest for justice in globalized politics.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Sinja Graf 16302 Isaac Kramnick

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 102

Power and Politics: The U.S. Welfare State

While programs such as Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare dominate electoral campaigns and debates in Congress, few Americans think of these programs as interconnected within the larger structure of the U.S. welfare state. This course will seek to define the U.S. welfare state, explore how it differs from other countries, and look at how it has changed over time. Students will draw on course readings and discussion to produce writing centered around answering three key questions: (1) How does the United States’ distinctive patterning of social programs shape American politics?, (2) Why are the politics surrounding the American welfare state so divisive?, and (3) What are the prospects for change in the future?

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Alexis Walker 16303 Suzanne Mettler

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 103

Power and Politics: The Politics of Battlestar Galactica

Can we learn from political science fiction? In this course, students will write on and analyze themes in political theory through the medium of popular science fiction, based on the world and narrative of the television series, Battlestar Galactica. Topics will range from the basic–justice, human rights and political authority–to the advanced, including inquiries into emergency politics, jurisprudence after genocide, and the role of spirituality in contemporary politics. “Reading material” will include both episodes of the show, as well as current periodicals and short selections from canonical political philosophy. Throughout the course students should develop skills in writing on current events, popular culture, and finding political theory in our everyday forms of entertainment. “So say we all!”

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Nolan Bennett 16304 Diane Rubenstein

GOVERNMENT 1101 SEM 104

Power and Politics: Drug Wars

Today, the international community approaches a near consensus in the global legal prohibition against certain drugs. The U.S. funds a global war against drugs. However, the efficacy of this war against drugs remains the subject of hot debate. As Mexico pursues the capture of drug kingpins, criminal violence accelerates. Within communities in the U.S. and abroad, local norms and distrust of police, as well as economic incentives, have undermined the enforcement of drug prohibition. Of course, this particular episode of violence and drug prohibition has precedent. The prohibition of local practices has long been a nexus of legal, criminal, and political violence. In this class, students will be asked how understanding local practices can inform an analysis of global politics of drug wars. Writing assignments are designed to engage students in dialogue about social questions that touch their lives directly.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Noelle Brigden 16305 Richard Bensel

HISTORY 1128 SEM 101

Women and Black Nationalism in the United States

Although often overlooked, Black women have played an important role in the development and practice of Black Nationalism in the United States. Through an examination of Black Nationalist women throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this course will explore the history of such women, paying particular attention to the unique position they held and the challenges they faced as women. Additionally, students will be challenged to explore and write about the ways in which feminist and/or Womanist perspectives complimented and/or complicated Black women’s interpretations and expressions of Black Nationalism. Ultimately, this course offers a more gender-balanced lens into the study of Black Nationalism in the United States.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Candace Katungi 16309 Margaret Washington

HISTORY 1140 SEM 101

Humanitarian Aid in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

What do a Nebraskan farmer, a Guatemalan Red Cross nurse, and Bill Gates have in common? They all increase the global community’s ability to respond to the tragic aftermath of disasters and wars. In this course, students will learn about the history of and theory behind humanitarian aid through the use of case studies from around the world: Herbert Hoover’s relief mission to Europe during World War I, attempts to ameliorate suffering of Nazi victims, NATO intervention in Kosovo, and international responses to the Haiti Earthquake. Readings emphasize the historical and contemporary debate about humanitarian relief. They include The New Yorker articles, diaries, eyewitness accounts, and popular nonfiction. Writing assignments will teach students how to use primary and secondary sources to write well-supported, persuasive arguments.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Julie Jacoby 16300 Isabel Hull

HISTORY 1143 SEM 101

The Devil’s Excrement: Oil, Development, and the State in Latin American History

The 1973 Oil Crisis was an economic windfall for OPEC countries. Yet, two years later, Juan Pablo Perez Alfonso, one of OPEC’s founders, declared that oil was not “black gold,” but rather “the devil’s excrement,” bringing corruption and debt. Why would he characterize a profitable natural resource in such a way? This course addresses that question by comparing the social, political, ecological, and economic effects of petroleum in Mexico and Venezuela—two of Latin America’s largest oil producers. Readings include foreign oil company reports, political essays demanding nationalization, descriptions of the 1973 oil crisis, and economic analyses of the subsequent debt problems of the 1980s. Writing assignments include short essays analyzing assigned readings and a substantial final research paper.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Rebecca Tally 16313 Raymond Craib

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 16301 Aaron Sachs

HISTORY 1153 SEM 101

Speaking Truth to Power: The Black Prophetic Voice in America

Everywhere we look in the United States we see concrete examples of the Black prophetic voice. This “voice” is one of socio-political accountability that has its origins in the expressive culture of transplanted Africans. Enslaved Africans were anything but passive captives. From the speeches and sermons of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to the hip-hop artistry of Kanye West, we find variations on the theme of liberation and evidence of the Black prophetic voice. To comprehend the origins and development of the Black prophetic voice, one must first understand the religious history of African Americans. Through a series of writing assignments, readings, and class discussions, students will investigate how African Americans have historically employed Christianity as a vessel of protest and empowerment.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Vernon Mitchell 16308 Robert Harris

HISTORY 1250 SEM 101

Conceived in Liberty: War and Emancipation

This course examines the American Civil War through the lens of African-Americans in the north and south and through the vision of white radicals who had challenged slavery for a generation. Together, they became the movement that fomented a revolution and changed America forever. Through class discussions and writing assignments, we will read the speeches and other writings of black and white radicals and we will examine the slaves' response to the Civil War; we will examine the changing goals of the war; and we will analyze Abraham Lincoln's leadership.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Margaret Washington 16306

HISTORY 1270 SEM 101

The United States in the 1960s and the 1970s

In this course, we will explore the dramatic cultural, economic, and social upheavals in U.S. society during the 1960s and 1970s. We will primarily focus on the dynamic interactions between formal politics, the state, the economy, and the era’s mass movements on the right and the left. We will explore the history and legacy of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements, the Vietnam War, deindustrialization, “white flight,” the War on Poverty, the War on Crime, Watergate, the “rise of the right,” the women’s movements, the gay rights movement, and organizing by other ethnic and racial groups. In writing assignments, students will analyze films, speeches, music, and news footage from the era and connect these sources to the course's broader historical themes.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Julilly Kohler-Hausmann 16307

HORTICULTURAL SCIENCES 1160 SEM 101

Nature Writing

Today more than ever we need individuals who not only enjoy or study nature, but also can write effectively about it so that others will know what they know, and feel what they feel. We will begin by "reading like a writer" as we examine the work of others, from Thoreau and Whitman, to Edward Abbey and Wendell Berry, to emerging new voices in this genre. Initial writing assignments will focus on contrasting author techniques (e.g., essay structure, style, voice) in relation to thesis and audience. Nature writing is more than a desk job, and in the spirit of getting "out there," we will have at least two field trips and associated writing assignments. By end of semester, students will research, write, and revise two in-depth essays on topics of personal interest, one in the "celebrating (or confronting) nature" tradition, the other in the "natural history," "popular science," or "environmental" category.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. David Wolfe 16314

LINGUISTICS 1100 SEM 101

Language, Thought, and Reality: Words and Pictures

This class explores the collaboration of language and image to create meanings at multiple levels. We will discuss and write about popular culture—caricatures, comics, advertising, and puzzles—along with high culture artifacts like paintings, illuminated manuscripts, and ideographic scripts, examining the interplay and analogies between understanding language and interpreting images. We will discuss phenomena that cut across words and pictures: both may represent reality. A sentence may be true or false—can the same be said of a picture? Both language and visual representation are governed by conventions, and would be impossible without them. Information may be foregrounded and backgrounded in both channels, and can be ambiguous, contradictory, nonsensical, or self-referential.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Dorit Abusch 16316

LINGUISTICS 1100 SEM 102

Language, Thought, and Reality: Biological Foundations of Language

What is so special about the human brain that only it, and no other animal brain, can create language? To consider this question, we will examine the current state of knowledge about the biological substrate for all aspects of language, including the most up-to-date research on phonetics, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. We will look at the heated debates in the research on child language development, aphasia, and brain imaging technology. Students will learn how to read scientific texts about language critically, as they write about these in essays, including reviews, critiques, and research proposals.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Kyle Grove 16319 Wayles Browne

LINGUISTICS 1100 SEM 103

Language, Thought, and Reality: Language and Gender

A significant number of our daily interactions are accomplished through language and experienced through the lens of gender. Through readings, discussion, and critcal writing assignments, we will examine the connection between language and gender. How does gender shape our communications, how our words are perceived, and how we perceive the language used by others? What type of language do we use to talk about gender? To consider these questions, we will draw on the academic literatures of both gender studies and linguistics, as well as primary sources from the media for examples of “talking about gender.” We will also examine the psychological literature on the results of experiments on gender and language use and cognition.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Sarah Courtney 16320 Wayles Browne

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1101 SEM 101

Aspects of Medieval Culture: The Way Life Was or Outright Lies? Medieval History Writing

Story-telling is an important part of writing history, but can it go too far? This course will consider the ways in which any writer crafts his or her content, particularly looking at this process in medieval histories. We will also consider how ideas about history influenced society. Some readings will be selections from Herodotus, known as the father of both history and lies, Bede, the Song of Roland, and Gisli’s Saga. Students will write analytical essays based on these works as well as writing short “histories” from their own lives.

MWF 12:20–01:10 p.m. Corinna Matlis 16310 Oren Falk

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1101 SEM 102

Aspects of Medieval Culture: Questioning Spanish Medieval Art, 700–1492

Understanding different religious and cultural perspectives is not just a modern issue. Jews, Christians, and Muslims coexisted for eight hundred years in Spain (with varying degrees of success). This course will introduce students to the visual culture of all three confessional groups, starting with the Visigothic period and ending with Ferdinand and Isabel. Students will learn to use observation, description, and historical context to more fully understand how coexistence among religious groups is reflected in both architecture (like the Mosque of Cordoba and Toledan synagogues) and objects (such as manuscripts or altarpieces). Writing assignments will initially center on formal and comparative analysis (including a field trip to the Johnson Museum!) and then on the readings.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Jessica Streit 16311 Ross Brann

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1101 SEM 103

Aspects of Medieval Culture: Go to Hell—Sin and Suffering in the Middle Ages

In this course, we shall examine the medieval Christian concepts of sin, punishment, and redemption, and focus on the ways medieval people tried to avoid eternal damnation. On one hand, we will study the theological components of sin and salvation and, on the other, how sin was generally understood and remedied in medieval society. Our discussions will include topics such as Original Sin, the Seven Deadly Sins, atonement theory, the power of dark emotions, confession, saints, demons, torture, and injurious self-discipline. Readings will be drawn from sources such as the Bible, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and selections from medieval theological works, prayer books, sermon-stories, and saints' lives. Assignments will include a combination of long and short essays and weekly responses to the material.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Amanda Mita 16312 Duane Corpis

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1102 SEM 101

Literature of Chivalry: Monsters, Heroes, and Other Worlds: An Introduction to Medieval Identity

What is the relationship between “monster” and “hero”? We will be exploring this question as we read in translation some of the central texts of English and Continental medieval literature. Among the texts we will read are Beowulf, modern responses such as John Gardner’s Grendel and Neil Gaiman’s Monarch of the Glen, and chivalric romances from the anonymous Gawain and the Green Knight to Chrétien’s Yvain. All of these texts involve other worlds, whether natural or supernatural, and all of them concern heroes whose humanity is, in one way or another, questionable. We will also be concerned with the modern reception of these texts in film and explore our own modern expectations and understanding of the heroic other. Through class discussion, writing exercises, and formal papers, students will strengthen their writing and critical reasoning.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Danielle Wu 16321 Thomas Hill

MEDIEVAL STUDIES 1103 SEM 101

Legends, Fantasy, and Vision: Transformative Fictions—Medieval Heroes and their Afterlife

“And why should people listen to you?” Prince John asks Robin Hood in Mel Brooks’ Men in Tights. “Because,” he replies, “unlike other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English accent.” Some of the most famous characters of the medieval world continue to live and walk among us. Robin Hood, King Arthur, and Beowulf feature in stories across the centuries, but never in quite the same way. In addition to their role in the Middle Ages, medieval heroes and villains are a long-lasting source of modern fiction and fantasy. From Grendel to Neil Gaiman, Robin Hood to Firefly, we will investigate what makes these characters enduring, and how stories about them change and respond to their times. Writing assignments will be creative as well as expository.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Marybeth Matlack 16315 Samantha Zacher

MUSIC 1701 SEM 101

Sound, Sense, and Ideas: Music in and on the Internet

How have music communities and practices changed since music became something shared and created on the internet? We will look at new musical genres born “on” the internet, and trace the history of internet communities and distribution from newsgroups through mp3.com, napster, social media, and internet radio. We will read and write about copyright and copyleft (including works by Lawrence Lessig, DJ Spooky, Paul Théberge, Jonathan Sterne, and Michael Ayers), and learn how to analyze legal texts, peer-reviewed literature, and blog posts concerning issues such as the DMCA and filesharing. Writing assignments will develop your fluency in doing literature reviews, research prospectuses, and structured book reviews, and will help you find your own writing “voice” and hone your skills in developing and supporting theses.

MW 02:55–04:10 p.m. Eliot Bates 16322

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 16325 Eliot Bates

MUSIC 1701 SEM 103

Sound, Sense, and Ideas: Music and Meaning in Sacred Contexts

From the very beginnings of religion, music has played an important role. Though many theologians and philosophers found this role a positive one, some have dissented, even trying to exile music entirely from the religious experience. By studying the past two thousand years, especially the periods when the rule of the church had the force of law, we will learn something about the very nature of music and its ability to meaningfully communicate. Over the course of four large units—the ancient Christian world, the Reformation, England and Germany in the Eighteenth Century, and World Religions—students will engage both primary and secondary sources. Through six written assignments, in several forms, students will critically respond to both the readings and the music.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Evan Cortens 16326 Eliot Bates

NEAR EASTERN STUDIES 1950 SEM 101

Many New Testaments: Early Christian Texts, Manuscripts, and their Arguments

People often think of the New Testament as a book about Jesus and the early Christian church: in fact, it is a collection of biographies, letters, and prophecies by many different authors, all writing with different voices and displaying different ideas about God, Jesus, and other religious topics. Additionally, the earliest editions of these writings were not uniform books printed on paper, but hand-written copies produced on papyrus or animal hides by scribes who often made minor (and sometimes major!) changes to their texts when producing new copies. This course will examine the historical issues faced in the academic study of the earliest Christian texts, and will illustrate that we as modern writers can learn much about writing persuasively and creatively by looking at ancient Christian books.

MWF 10:10–11:00 a.m. Adam Bursi 16328 Kim Haines-Eitzen

PHILOSOPHY 1110 SEM 101

Philosophy in Practice: Toleration

Our society values toleration. For example, we say that a person should be allowed to worship freely and without penalty, even when her religious beliefs are mistaken. But how is toleration justifiable? Moreover, we think that toleration should be limited: we wouldn’t allow human sacrifice, for instance. But where should the limits be drawn? Should we censor hate speech and pornography? Should we allow minority groups to restrict their children’s education? In our seminar, we’ll examine a number of prominent philosophical theories of toleration, such as those of John Locke and John Stuart Mill. Then we’ll ask whether these theories illumine our social and political controversies. Students will write short, analytical essays. This will help them to practice explaining and criticizing complicated arguments.

TR 02:55 - 04:10 p.m. John-Paul Erdel 16317 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1110 SEM 102

Philosophy in Practice: The Ethics of Eating Animals

Human beings have the peculiar status of being animals who think they are superior to other animals. And maybe we are superior in some ways. Does it follow that we can treat other animals however we want? In particular, are we allowed to raise and eat other animals for food? And if so, can we do that however we like? This course will survey some of the most important and interesting challenges to the practice of eating meat. We will explore how these issues are impacted by animal welfare, animal rights, health and human needs, environmental effects, and also business and politics. Writing assignments will focus on formulating and evaluating arguments both for and against eating animals.

MW 07:30–08:45 p.m. Andrew Alwood 16318 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1111 SEM 101

Philosophical Problems: Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Incredulous Stares

In this course, we will investigate some of the most thought-provoking puzzles and arguments that philosophy has to offer. In doing so, we will be faced with questions such as: Am I rational? Can consciousness be scientifically explained? Does the existence of evil prove that God cannot exist? We will even be confronted with an argument that is intended to establish that we, its readers, do not exist. This course is designed to teach clear, cogent writing by fostering the ability to think clearly about difficult and intriguing issues. To do this we will read a wide variety of largely contemporary sources. There will also be several different types of writing assignments such as formal papers, analyses, and perhaps even dialogues.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Stephen Mahaffey 16330 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1111 SEM 102

Philosophical Problems: Dreams, Simulations, and Virtual Worlds

Is it immoral to kill someone in a dream or virtual world? If you could choose between a life hooked to a computer feeding you pleasant experiences and an unpleasant life in the real world, which would you choose, and why? How likely is it that you’re in a dream, simulation, or virtual world right now? In this class, we’ll tackle these and related questions. We’ll read papers for a popular audience by leading contemporary philosophers and some classic works by Plato, Descartes, and others. We’ll also engage with films such as The Matrix and Inception, and games like Second Life. You’ll be asked to write careful summaries of the arguments we read, critically assessing the arguments for weaknesses, and responding with constructive solutions of your own.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Jonathan Vance 16331 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1111 SEM 103

Philosophical Problems: Generation and Destruction—Introduction to Metaphysics

Most of us believe that change exists; that babies are born, that trees grow, and that planes fly in the sky. However, the existence of change has long been doubted by certain metaphysicians. Some deny that any kind of change exists. Other deny that certain kinds of change like motion exist. These denials seem radical; surely babies are born, trees do grow, and planes really do fly in the sky. Nevertheless, the arguments that change does not exist are powerful. Our goal in this course is to understand and assess these arguments. 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.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Scott O’Connor 16333 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1112 SEM 101

Philosophical Conversations: Does Art Make (Philosophical) Sense?

Does art make rational sense? Philosophers often think not. Despite the prevalence of music, movies, books, and art quite generally, it is maddeningly difficult to understand the nature of our involvement with art. What is art? Why are we emotionally affected by it? What are we doing when we evaluate it? Does art have any function? This class will examine the answers philosophers and critics have given to these questions. Among those considered are some of the most profound and influential thinkers in history: Plato, Aristotle, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant. Emphasis will be on developing 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 16323 Andrew Chignell

PHILOSOPHY 1112 SEM 102

Philosophical Conversations: What is Real?

Is life just a dream? Is there any way we can tell? Or are we just like the people plugged into the Matrix? This class will examine these (and related) questions. Readings will be drawn from classic texts by Plato, Descartes, Kant, Berkeley, Hume, and others. Assignments will ask students to explain and to critically respond to the main arguments in the readings. By grappling with the ideas of great philosophers, students will improve their ability to write clearly and persuasively.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Adam Bendorf 16324 Andrew Chignell

PSYCHOLOGY 1120 SEM 101

The Psychology of Consumerism—Does Buying Make us Unhappy?

This course will examine the link between consumerism and psychological health. Among the questions we will be exploring are: Does placing importance on material goods lead to depression and anxiety? Do experiential purchases make us happier than material purchases? Why do people pay to feel sad or scared (e.g., sad/scary movies/books)? What kinds of consumer situations lead to higher satisfaction? Readings for the course will come from psychology, marketing, and economic journals, as well as popular press articles (e.g., The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Economist). Part of the aim of this course will involve re-evaluating the assumed psychological consequences of consumer behaviors that we are all familiar with. The readings lead to a base of knowledge that will allow students to come up with their own ideas for a theoretical review paper for their final assignment.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Jun Fukukura 16334 Melissa Ferguson

PSYCHOLOGY 1140 SEM 101

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 16327 James Cutting

ROMANCE STUDIES 1103 SEM 101

Perspectives on Macho Madness

Machismo is a phenomenon that still affects Latin American culture. From dictators down to the intimate, domestic environment, machismo has played a powerful role in determining human actions and defining relationships. In this course, we will examine how questions of political power, class, and familial relationships are affected by machismo. We will focus particularly on how Latin American writers have responded to this issue. Works we will study include: Laura Restropo’s Delirium, Clarice Lispector’s The Hour of the Star, Junot Diaz' The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and a selection of writings by authors from The Oxford Book of Latin American Short Stories. All of our literary discussions will provide a “spring board" for paper topics and arguments.

TR 01:25–02:40 p.m. Tamra Fallman 16335

ROMANCE STUDIES 1104 SEM 101

In the Face of Brutality

Writers in Spain and Latin America have always engaged with complex political and social issues. In this course, we will focus on how novels have addressed themes such as personal responsibility, the nature of truth, and the survival of the human condition amidst political instability and repression. Specifically, we will examine how humans cope in the face of brutality, whether through complicity, resistance, humor, or madness. Works to be studied include: Javier Cercas’ The Soldiers of Salamis, Junot Díaz’ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Laura Restrepo’s Delirium and Roberto Bolaño’s By Night in Chile. We will also do a screening of Guillermo Del Toro’s film Pan’s Labyrinth. Students will write brief essays on a particular aspect of their choosing from the readings culminating in a research paper due at the semester's end.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Tamra Fallman 16634

ROMANCE STUDIES 1104 SEM 102

In the Face of Brutality

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Tamra Fallman 16635

ROMANCE STUDIES 1112 SEM 101

The Divine Comedy: Ethics of the Afterlife.

This course proposes to explore Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy as an ethical document designed not merely to describe “the state of souls after death,” but as a means of instructing its readers about the way to behave in the world while they are yet alive. In constructing his panoramic journey through the Christian afterlife, Dante also creates a moral universe in which his readers find themselves implicated, by turns exhorted and condemned. Students will read the poem in translation, and will discuss its rhetoric in both analytic and personal essays. By dissecting the strategies Dante employs to shape our perceptions of his universe, students will be able to evaluate the surprising complexity of its ethical convictions.

MWF 09:05–09:55 a.m. Joel Pastor 16576 William Kennedy

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? Does your report have special value compared with that of a bystander? Is your on-the-spot report more reliable than testimony you give months or years later? We will address these and related questions through discussion and analytic writing about the legendary Edward R. Murrow’s radio broadcasts during the bombing of London in World War II; diaries kept by Jewish children hiding from the Nazis; and a report smuggled out of a Soviet labor camp for women political prisoners. We will also examine documentary film footage; oral testimony of Holocaust and Soviet camp survivors; and recent reports from Human Rights Watch, newspapers, and the Internet.

TR 11:40–12:55 p.m. Sidney Orlov 16332

SOCIOLOGY 1100 SEM 101

Property, Social Order, and the Law

In contemporary popular culture, “law” is often associated with social “order.” This simple observation provokes the following fundamental questions: what is “law,” and how exactly does it relate to social order? In this course, we will explore these questions by focusing on a particular “socio-legal institution”: property. Drawing on historical insights from Ancient Greece and Rome, we will study the work of social theorists who have thought deeply about the connections among law, property, and social order. Through a series of essays and in-class discussions, students will be asked to articulate and defend an argument about the nature of law and its relationship to social order. In their final papers, students will be asked to apply this argument to a contemporary problem in U.S. socio-economic policy, paying particular attention to the role(s) played by property.

TR 02:55–04:10 p.m. Laura Ford 16338 Richard Swedberg

SPANISH 1107 SEM 101

Music in Film and Fiction

Jazz, salsa, tango: how do novels, movies, and society interpret these and other musical forms? How can a novel include the sound of music? How do novels and films describe the musician? How do novels and films represent creativity, both musical and literary? And what role does modern society give to music and musicians? We will engage such questions in an exploration of Spanish and Latin American fiction, movies, and music. Through reading, listening, lively discussion, and regular writing assignments, students will explore the role of music in Hispanic novels, cinema, and society, examining form and language in order to engage with broader issues.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Aurelie Vialette 16339

SPANISH 1110 SEM 101

Guts, Ghosts, and Glory: The Writing of the Spanish Civil War

Is history written exclusively by the winners? Not in the case of the Spanish Civil War, the country’s 1936–39 clash between fascism and republicanism. From Pablo Picasso’s Guernica to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia to Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labryinth, the most well-known and critically-acclaimed works about this conflict are largely sympathetic to the leftist forces who ultimately suffered defeat. By engaging with a variety of textual genres and visual media represented by the above examples, we’ll explore how the Spanish Civil War has been “written” by both the vanquished and the victors, in Spain and elsewhere. Through formal essays and informal exercises, we’ll hone our own writing skills as we analyze how our source materials (de)construct boundaries between truth/fiction, history/myth, and heroism/villainy.

TR 08:40–09:55 a.m. Emily Eaton 16341 Tamra Fallman

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 09:05–09:55 a.m. Aydin Akyurtlu 16348 Trevor Pinch

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY STUDIES 1126 SEM 101

Science and Society: Histories at Sea

The ocean is a place of mystery and fascination. It has been the medium for colonial expansion; the home of mythical creatures; the object of scientific study; and the site of adventure, exploration, piracy, and lawlessness. In this course, we will dive deep into the many meanings and representations of the ocean, covering historical, contemporary, and fictional examples including: the mutiny on the Bounty, Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, Craig Venter’s Global Ocean Sampling Expedition, and Moby Dick. By viewing the ocean as both the setting for and a character in various narratives, we will explore how the ocean has been configured in different times and places as a cultural space of knowledge, power, and wonderment. Writing will form a central means by which students come to think about the materials taught and readings assigned.

MW 08:40–09:55 a.m. Emma Zuroski 16349 Suman Seth

SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY STUDIES 1126 SEM 102

Science and Society: Food Ethics, Medicine, and the Environment

The popular media typically covers one of three topics in science and technology: food safety (“Egyptian seeds linked to E. coli outbreak in Germany”), medical discoveries (“Vaccines protect even the youngest of babies!”), or environmental impacts (“Scientists Project Path of Radiation Plume”). Why these three? Are these topics different from other, less covered issues of science and technology? Students will investigate the roles food ethics, medicine, and the environment play in their lives, their communities, and their nations through readings from a wide variety of social groups. Such groups, including popular media, governments, online communities, and nongovernmental organizations have exhibited the power to influence policies and practices in these fields. Students will learn not only how such groups have the power to affect change but also how to wield it themselves through writing.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Kathryn de Ridder-Vignone 16350 Michael Lynch

THEATRE, FILM & DANCE 1243 SEM 101

Freakshow

Freakshows are spectacular displays in which one group of people—the public—calls another “other,” “outsider,” or “freak.” Freakshows are thus literal and metaphorical stages for cultural debates over what’s “normal” or even what’s “human.” In this seminar, we will read and discuss plays that illustrate the historical circumstances and human consequences of displaying exceptional bodies as a form of show business. Students will learn how to analyze plays and how to write persuasive essays in support of their interpretations, while exploring concepts such as fascination, disgust, identity, agency, and commerce. Dramatic texts will include mainstream plays such as The Elephant Man as well as contemporary works like Bat Boy: The Musical.

TR 10:10–11:25 a.m. Clare Hane 16351 Sabine Haenni

THEATRE, FILM & DANCE 1244 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 16340 Sabine Haenni