ANTHRO 490-0
( Elective ) Topics in Anthropology: The Emergence of Anthropology in Early Modern Europe
The modern discipline of anthropology, involving the systematic comparison of different and especially non-Western cultures, emerged in the last half of the 19th century. This seminar examines some of the ways in which comparative concerns reflect far older and broader currents and focuses on how Europeans have attempted to define their own civilization in comparison with "others," past and present. Readings include The Travels of John Mandeville;Acosta, Natural and Moral History of the Indies; selected essays of Montaigne; Montesquieu, Persian Letters; Hume, The Natural History of Religion; Diderot, "Supplement to Bougainville's Voyage"; and Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.
No Sections
ART HIST 359-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in 19th Century Art: Caricature
The mainstream history of the pictorial arts in 19th-century European and North American cities is dominated by the triumph of realism. Around 1850 an imagery of modern metropolitan life arose and ushered in a new preoccupation with the aesthetic properties of the art work. It was followed by more personal or symbolist forms of art for art's sake in the fin de siècle. The course examines the history of ambitious painting on both sides of the Atlantic in the 19th century, as well as a competing mode of modern urban expression, caricature, which proliferated in prints and newspapers and whose signature was legibility rather than ambiguity. The course coincides with and focuses on Comic Art: The Paris Salon in Caricature, an exhibition at the Block Museum of Art that was organized by the Getty Research Institute (www.getty.edu/news/press/exhibit/comic_art.html).
No Sections
COMP LIT 488-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Comparative Literature: Historicizing American Fiction
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was banned on publication in 1884 and dismissed by a Library Committee in Massachusetts as "the veriest trash." It has since become the single most taught piece of American literature. In this course we will examine several key American texts whose fortunes, like Huck's, have changed dramatically over time. Some of these texts have grown or shrunk in stature, some have merely been understood in radically different ways at different moments. The course will thus historicize both American literature and American literary criticism, allowing us to find evidence of particularity in seemingly "universal" fiction and tinted glasses on reputedly clear-eyed critics.
No Sections
HISTORY 492-0
( Elective ) Topics in History: Sexuality in America
People have always had sex--even the Puritans. The meaning and place of sex in people's lives, however, have varied wildly not only over time but even within cultures as the sexuality of different individuals and groups is variously valorized or condemned, restricted or compelled. In one setting, sex is bound inextricably to reproduction and family life. In another, it functions as a violent means of reproducing the social order. In others, it is valued primarily as a form of intimacy or of personal pleasure or as the source of identity itself. Sex, in other words, is not merely an erotic experience but a site where private and public, personal and political overlap, come into view, and mutually constitute one another. This course examines historical scholarship on sexuality in colonial America and in the United States. As suggested above, our questions focus on sex both as an erotic experience and as a site of regulation, resistance, and identity formation. Major topics will include the contest over sexual norms in colonial America; the relationship of sex and slavery; the shifting meanings of same-sex friendship and intimacy; prostitution and campaigns for sexual purity and social hygiene; abortion; and sex education.
No Sections
IPLS 401-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies I: Moral America: Moral Reform in American History
America is in moral crisis -- and has been for over two centuries, if we listen to moral reformers past and present. This course examines moral reform movements as a window into the relationships between church, state, and the family, and how these relationships have changed over time. Readings (tentatively) will include: Morone, Hellfire Nation: The Politics of Sin in American History; Beisel, Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America; Donovan, White Slave Crusades; and Applegate, The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher. Counts toward all three specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 401-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies I: Poverty in Anglo-American Culture
This course explores recurrent attempts to define, explain, and ameliorate urban poverty in the United States from the late-18th to late-20th centuries. Topics include changing (and unchanging) ideas about the connections between poverty and moral character, education, unemployment, gender, and ethnic/racial inheritance; the periodic emergence of poverty as a political issue; the concept of the "underworld" and "underclass"; and the shifting rhetoric of sympathy and fear. This course treats poverty in every period as a problem that is both constantly present and constantly redefined. Counts toward all three specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 401-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies I: Pursuit of Community in American Life
This course will explore the recurrent efforts of Americans to create or recreate congenial small communities. It will consider real and imaginary examples from five periods: the 17th Century, the Jacksonian era, the late 19th Century, the post-World War II era, and the recent past. Religious utopias, factory towns, suburbs, and planned or "renewed" neighborhoods will be explored. We will scrutinize the expectations, visions, complaints, and capabilities involved in American efforts to manage society and control history.
No Sections
IPLS 401-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies I: Technology and American Culture, 1790-1930
The significance of technological change has been a central topic for debate in the United States since Jefferson and Hamilton clashed over the merits of industrialization in the late 18th century. Most Americans, past and present, have focused on the "impact" of technological innovation, seeing it as an agent of progress, degradation, or some mixture of the two. This course deals instead with the reciprocal relationship between technological change and changes in American literature, art, myth, popular belief, and social custom. It is not a course about the history of machines, and it does not presume any special knowledge of machinery or science. Rather, it deals with the often subtle ways in which technology shapes and is shaped by culture. Readings will include works by Edward Bellamy, Mark Twain, and Cronon's Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. Counts toward all three specializations.
Fall 2009
EV
W
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
Kresge Hall 4335
9/23/09 - 12/2/09
Instructor:
IPLS 401-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies I: Urbanization and Urbanism: The United States in an International Context
The United States, having moved far from Jefferson's dream of an agrarian republic, is now an overwhelmingly urban nation. Only a minuscule percentage of the population still works the land. In this we are part of a planetary trend: about half the world's population now lives in cities, and the urban proportion is growing rapidly. But what IS a city? What does it mean for a nation, an economy, a culture, a place, or a person to be "urban" rather than "rural?" And how has the worldwide experience of urbanization been inflected by the peculiarities of national cultures and histories? This course will address these questions through an exploration of the U.S. experience in a western world context. As the first in the series of MALS core seminars, this course also has the goal of introducing students to key ideas and methods in historical and cultural studies, and helping students to improve critical and analytical writing and discussion abilities. Every student will play a role in guiding discussion, and each student will write two papers, one short and one long. Readings will include: Richard T. Legates and Frederic Stout (eds.), The City Reader; Richard Sennett, The Fall of Public Man; David Pinkney, Napoleon III and the Rebuilding of Paris; Christine Stansell, City of Women; and Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Counts toward the American Studies and History specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 402-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies II: Chicago and the Midwest
The purpose of this course is to explore the rise of Chicago as a city and the Midwest as a region. We will take a sociological approach that emphasizes the interdependent nature of the relationship between the city and its region and between these two and the nation and the world. We will focus on three elements: the human ecology, the social organization, and the symbolic culture of Chicago and the Midwest--past, present and future--in fact and in fiction. The ecological will stress the physical environment, its strategic location and its agriculture and other resources. Social organization will focus on key institutions such as the political machine, commercial and industrial enterprises, and various social movements. The symbolic culture will explore the development of Chicago and the Midwest identity and the rise of distinctive cultural movements and institutions.
No Sections
IPLS 402-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies II: Chicago Neighborhoods and Ethnic Communities
Chicago is known both as a city of neighborhoods and as a city made up of multiple ethnic groups. This course explores both, and especially their intersection in local ethnic communities. It will look at the historical waves of immigration that built the city and compare that to current ethnic groups and the construction of today's local urban communities. We will explore issues of identity, inequality, and political economy surrounding ethnicity. Finally, we will locate these issues in the context of Chicago as a global city. Counts toward the American Studies and History specializations.
Winter 2010
EV
Tu
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
1/5/10 - 3/9/10
Instructor:
IPLS 402-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies II: Civil Society
This course explores a number of different meanings and perspectives of the once-again popular concept of "civil society." Specifically, it traces its emergence from the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment to its transplantation in America and the observations of Tocqueville. The rise of bourgeoisie society and the commercial city are studied for their impact on public life and the fate of community. Current issues of the role of voluntary associations ("faith-based charities"), their importance for maintaining democracy, and the debate over the decline of voluntary participation are explored. Philanthropic and political organizations, from religious institutions to self-help groups and local community organizing, are studied in the "third sector" of American social organization, contrasted with state and for-profit organizations. Finally, the course explores the concept of "civility" as a code of interpersonal behavior and its implications for key distinctions such as private versus public, individual versus community, and consensus versus conflict.
No Sections
IPLS 402-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies II: Suburbanization and Gentrification: Turning Cities Inside Out
Over the past half century metropolitan areas in American society have experienced dynamic changes. Two of these are the continuing explosion of suburbia where most Americans now live, and a rediscovery and transformation of central city neighborhoods by many middle class residents. Though seemingly on the surface these are unrelated if not counter trends to one another, the course will explore their interrelationships as part of the same metropolitan system. Specific topics related to the two processes will include: the historical change in the distribution of jobs, people, and housing; how the two processes are related to social class, race and ethnic, and family and gender differences; the politics and economics of these changes; the nature of social life and cultural differences in values reflected in these two changes; and the broader consequences of these changes for the future and such global issues as transportation and the environment. Chicagoland will be focused on as an exemplary case study because it is readily at hand, but our readings will include case studies of these processes as they have occurred in cities throughout the country. Counts toward the American Studies and History specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 402-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies II: Terrorism and Its Response: Security versus Civil Liberties
In the wake of 9/11 and the emergence of terrorism as a major form of political action the government has launched a "war of terror". This course is designed to explore a central dilemma of this response - the balance between civil liberties and security. The course will explore the nature and evolution of terrorism historically, policies and programs states have instituted to respond to terrorism, and the broader theoretical and social implications of violence in a civil society. The 9/11 Commission Report will be a basic starting point. Though focused primarily on the US case, the course will occasionally explore these issues comparatively, especially with the UK. Counts toward all three specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 403-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies III: A Perfect Place, A Lively Experiment: Utopia In American Culture
What is perfection in human society? Even though the history of utopias reaches back to Thomas More's Utopia of 1516, the great flourishing of experimental communities really begins in the United States. In astonishingly varied forms, from John Eliot and his Massachusetts praying towns in the 1650s to Mother Ann Lee and her New York Shaker communities of the 1780s to Julius Wayland and his Tennessee Ruskin colony in the 1880s to Jim Jones and his San Francisco Peoples Temple of the 1980s, Americans of all sorts and conditions have sought to create perfect places. The numbers of perfectionist communities grew ceaselessly: How and why did Americans so passionately seek to build communal societies? Through interpreting primary texts, examining maps and plans, and reading scholarly accounts, this seminar will explore this drive for perfection as a central theme in American culture.Counts toward all three specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 403-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies III: American Consumerism in Historical Perspective
This course investigates the development of consumerism in the United States. At once economic, political, and cultural, the system of consumerism is no natural phenomenon, but instead a historical creation rooted deep in the American past and still powerfully alive in the contemporary United States. The meanings and the practices of consumerism have changed over time. We will track these transformations and connect consumerism to questions of race, gender, class and the defining of American and even global identities. We will begin with the American Revolution by reading T.H. Breen's The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, and cover topics such as working-class consumers (Glick, A Living Wage: American Workers and the Making of Consumer Society), advertising (Jackson Lears, Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America), political economy (Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America), the 60s counterculture (Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture and the Rise of Hip Consumerism), and globalization (Peter Stearns, Consumerism in World History: The Global Transformation of Desire). Counts toward the American Studies and History specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 403-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies III: Asian Religions in Literature and Film
Since the age when the maritime explorers searched for a passage to India and a shorter route to the East, Asia has held a fascination for the West. While the West may have influenced Asia overtly through colonization and commerce, Asia has also influenced the West more subtly through art, literature and religion. This course explores Asian Religions--specifically, Hinduism and Buddhism--by examining their expression in literature and film. The two main goals of the course are: First, to examine some of the central themes of Hinduism and Buddhism and the ways that they are depicted in classical Asian texts and in some contemporary Asian films. Second, by studying Western literature and films, the course seeks to understand some of the ways that Asia and its religions have been imagined and interpreted in the West and the influences that they have had on Western thought and culture. Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 403-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies III: Cold War Hot Kitchen: Architecture, Literature, Domesticity and Emotions during the Cold War
This course investigates the role of emotions in cold war communication, both within the U.S., across the iron curtain, and within the Soviet Union. Taking as a point of departure the idea that emotions provide a means of inquiry, we will begin by looking at the ways in which historically specific emotions, or affects, were produced, relayed, and taken up in two distinct cultural settings. Using the 1959 American Exhibition in Moscow as the course's critical juggernaut, we will approach the ways in which architecture and design became connected to images, and images to emotions: What kind of emotion is called to mind by the "American Way of Life?" Particular attention will be paid to the historical period and its mechanisms of communication, particularly the introduction of TV and a re-stylized visual culture, alongside the correlative affects of suburban development. We will be interested in the gendering and racialization of affect (for example envy and lament); in the relationships between spatialization and affect; and, finally, in the reproduction of Cold War affect in contemporary media. Counts toward the History and American Studies specializations.
Spring 2010
EV
Tu
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
3/30/10 - 6/1/10
Instructor:
IPLS 403-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies III: Out of the West: American Cultures from the Borderlands
In this seminar, the guiding question runs contrary to customary ways of doing cultural history: What different perspectives open up when students of American cultures begin from the borderlands? The United States has two very long borders, one north and one south, each of which has produced borderlands cultures that are both different from mainstream American culture and yet recognizably American. By pursuing important themes in these borderland cultures, this seminar aims to cast new light on American cultural history.
No Sections
IPLS 403-0
( Core Course ) Seminar in Liberal Studies III: Plato's Republic
Plato's Republic is widely regarded as the greatest work in the history of Western political thought. Its constitutive arguments and images form a substantial part of the vocabulary that thinkers have relied upon for generations as they probe such perennially important questions as: What is justice? Is the just person happy? What does it mean to be educated? What does it mean to hold a deep conviction as opposed to an opinion? How ought we to evaluate political regimes? Of what political significance is gender difference? What does it mean to be a powerful city? A free person? Of what importance are the arts in political life? This course takes a fresh look at this text and its reception today. We will read this primary text slowly and closely throughout the term, at times supplementing it with selected contemporary commentaries on its most controversial features. Since The Republic is also a literary masterpiece, we will consider the relationship between the substantive ideas expressed and the literary form; in particular, we will take up the importance of the dialogic form of composition and the figure of Socrates.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: American Culture in Global Circulation, 1776-2001
American culture has always played an important role in what we might call the global imagination. From the transatlantic culture of the Revolutionary War era to the observations of European travelers in America during the nineteenth century to American cultural imperialism overseas in the twentieth century, the story of America is as much a transnational tale as it is a narrative of one country. In this seminar, we will probe the long history of American culture in global circulation to gain a deeper understanding of America's place in the world. Readings will include foreign writers on America (Dickens, Trollope, Tocqueville, C.L.R. James, de Beauvoir, Baudrillard, and others) as well as secondary sources such as Robert Rydell and Rob Kroes, Buffalo Bill in Bologna: The Americanization of the World, 1869-1922; Sieglinde Lemke, Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism; and Reinhold Wagnleitner, Coca-colonization and the Cold War. Counts toward the History and American Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Darwin and the Victorian Crisis of Faith
This will be a graduate reading seminar on what has been called the "Victorian Crisis of Faith"--the growth of doubt in traditional Christian belief and the relationship of Darwinism to it. The great poet and cultural critic, Matthew Arnold, wrote in the late 1850s that "the sea of faith" was receding from the shores of the civilized world, and almost all educated Britons agreed with him. Many of these troubled Victorians believed that an orderly and moral society could not exist without a basis in revealed religion; hence they thought that religious doubt threatened the stability of their society. Since Darwin had published his Origin of Species in 1859, it has long been thought that Darwinian evolution was the principal cause of the decline of Christianity. And in fact, many leading Darwinians did argue for the replacement of religious authority by that of natural science. But did Darwinism itself really have such a corrosive effect on religion? Or did other factors, such as biblical scholarship, social conflict, and institutional change, play a more important role? This course will explore the fascinating and complex relationships among Darwinism, the rise of science, and religious doubt among the Victorians, in hopes of understanding the origins of the most significant cultural and intellectual transformation in modern British history. Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
Spring 2010
EV
W
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
3/31/10 - 6/2/10
Instructor:
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Darwinism and Intelligent Design
The school of creationist thinking known as "Intelligent Design" has in recent years become popular and influential in the media, in education, and in political discourse. Yet this movement, which claims to be a scientific movement, has been largely rejected by scientists and has produced no recognized scientific results. This disparity raises a number of questions that this seminar will examine closely, such as: how should we understand the popularity of a scientific movement which has been scientifically unsuccessful? Is this movement merely masquerading as a scientific movement? What is its relationship to American history and contemporary political currents? Readings for discussion will include Darwin's own thoughts about creation (in his Origin of Species), traditional arguments from design (such as those famously examined by David Hume), segments from Richard Hofstadter's classic writings on anti-intellectualism, and contemporary philosophical and scientific writings about Intelligent Design's concepts and rhetorical strategies. Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Darwinism in Philosophy and Culture
This class will explore several issues in 19th and 20th-century intellectual history surrounding Darwinism, science, and science's place inWestern culture. It will begin by examining some classic texts,such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and David Hume's Dialogues on Natural Religion, which embody and anticipate elements of Darwin's theories. Then, after reading the Origin of Species, Descent of Man, and other writings by Darwin, it will explore the lasting cultural and intellectual effects of evolutionary theory in writings by pragmatic philosophers (including William James) and the contemporary philosopher Daniel Dennett. Students taking this class will gain an understanding of the historical development of science and its place in Western culture as well as insights into the historical background of contemporary controversies surrounding evolutionary theory and bioethics. Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Film Aesthetics: Hollywood in the 1990s
The course combines aesthetic, critical and historical analysis with economic and industrial analysis to provide a broad survey of popular commercial U.S. film in the past decade. Hollywood changed decisively in the 1990s both in film aesthetics and in industrial practices. It was increasingly driven by spectacle, digital special effects, global production and marketing, the need for multiple revenue streams, a blockbuster mentality, and other trends. Hollywood dominates the global cinema scene and shapes the fantasy and imagination of the world population. The course aims to account for both individual films and the cultural context, Hollywood as a national cinema and as a global business, as a purveyor of cultural representations and a player in communications and copyright policy as well as international trade negotiations. The course concentrates on mainstream commercial entertainment cinema and considers the possibilities of art, authorship, and critical thinking within that framework. We will pay some attention to borderline or alternatives as well. Counts toward the American Studies specialization.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Gender, Race, and Politics of Reproduction
This course examines issues and controversies surrounding reproduction in the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between women's status and power in society, their role in family and social reproduction, and the intersection of race, social class, and gender in creating social understandings and policies regulating reproduction.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Globalization and Culture
What is globalization? Did it start three decades ago or 5000 years ago? And whatever it is that changed within the global economy starting in 1973, what does this mean to art, literature, and the individual subject? Have ways of knowing themselves changed in the past three decades? This seminar introduces a series of terms, theories, and cultural texts that address these questions. Surveying writing from transnational cultural studies, anthropology, diaspora studies, literary theory, and economics, we will try to come to an understanding of the cultural forms and forms of culture during the past three decades. What is the place of literature and more traditional forms of cultural production (e.g. film) in a world of blogging, TXT messaging and YouTube? Students interested in postcolonial and diaspora studies will be able to pursue and develop their interests here: The global flow of peoples, finances and cultural representations are in deep relation; the breakdown of the colonial system in the post-WWII period was a catalyst for both processes. We will address the relationship of globalization to the breakdown of empires (traditionally understood), and consider the moment of globalization as the successor to the postcolonial. Our discussions will be animated by several works of literature and film, with a focus on works from the U.S., Middle East and South Asia, and their diasporas. These texts not only help to define the period itself, but also activate questions of the local within the transnational, the status of the subject, and the meaning of the local within globalization. Readings will include work by literary and cultural theorists such as Appadurai, Hardt & Negri, Lee & LiPuma, Ong, Poster, etc.; literary texts by authors such as William S. Burroughs, Richard Powers, Jhumpa Lahiri, Arundhati Roy, Laila Lalami, and Alaa Al Aswany; and films from Iranian, Arab, Bollywood and Hollywood cinemas, by directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Laila Marrakchi, Mira Nair, and Nabil Ayouch.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Greco-Roman Myths & American Culture
How have the Greek and Roman myths influenced American culture, particularly literature and the arts? How did Americans reinterpret the myths to work for the New World? What changes took place in Americans' attitudes to classical mythology between the 19th and 20th centuries? Why the continued fascination with classical myths in such popular culture phenomena as advertising, TV series, and Disney films? The course explores the influence of ancient Greek and Roman mythology on American literature, art, architecture, and popular culture. We will study how classical myths have entered America from colonial times to the present, discussing literary retellings and allusions to the myths to examine how they illustrate the process of establishing American culture and reflect American attitudes towards the Old World, as well as mirror changes in interpretation of the myths-from Transcendental neoplatonism to the anthropological and psychological theories of the twentieth century (Frazer and Freud in particular). The class will also view and analyze examples of classically-inspired art, architecture, and popular culture (comics, TV series, fashion, advertising) to gain an understanding of the endurance and transformations of the classical tradition in America. Counts toward the American Studies specialization and the American Literature specialization in MALit.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Historical Approaches to "The" Modern Global City
This class engages the "spatial turn" in the humanities and social sciences by examining influential arguments about cities as fundamental to the modernist progress or retrogression of society in the 19th, 20th, and early 21st centuries. According to many influential social science and literary manifestoes, urban development provides the quintessence of national and greater civilizational progress - or regress. We will start by considering how the theoretical literature on "urban space" can complement and transform "urban history" and examine paradigmatic Euro-American conceptions of "the modern city." We will then explore how notions of modern urbanism have had a very different effect and reception in Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Counts toward the History specialization.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: History of Environmental Thought
This will be a seminar on the history of environmental thought in the Western world from the Biblical age to the present. (Most of the reading will deal with the modern period.) Hence it will not be a course on the history of the environment itself, but rather on the most influential ideas and attitudes about the natural environment. The readings will be drawn from a wide range of fields of thought--religious, philosophical, scientific, economic, and ethical. They will cover the evolution of environmental ideas from Old Testament attitudes towards creation, to the mechanistic views of "The Great Chain of Being", the exploitative assumptions of early industrial capitalism, the reverential natural theology and Romantic pantheism of the 18th and 19th centuries, the evolutionism (and early ecologism) of Darwin, the conservationism of the late-19th and early 20th centuries, and finally the concerns about economic growth and the ecological awareness of the late-20th century. The purpose of the course will be to help seminar members gain a sense of the intellectual roots of our current environmental predicament--and possible ways out. Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Intellectual Issues in Media, Technology, and Society
Issues covered in this course include the contentious debate over who does, and does not, constitute an intellectual in the realm of mass culture; visions and projects to intellectualize mass audiences (or to "massify" intellectualism); and comparative analysis at a global level. The course will be organized around themes and ideas which have motivated intellectuals to think about and act upon mass culture, and the historical development of the scholarly literature in this area. Counts toward the History specialization.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Islam and Revolution in the Middle East
This course is an interdisciplinary and comparative approach to the recent history of the Middle East. Tracing the rise of modern states to the late nineteenth century, we will discuss the impact of western economic and political ascendancy on social, economic, and intellectual developments in the Ottoman empire, Egypt, and Iran. We will then examine the role of religion and religious elites (/ulema/) as well as liberal secular ideas and westernized intellectuals in social and political movements in both countries. The rise of secular nation states after WWI and their shortcomings will be our next focus. Finally, we will compare the rise and success of oppositional movements in these countries: the 1950's nationalist movements in Turkey, Iran, and Egypt as well as the Islamic movements in the Middle East. We will conclude the class by studying the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and offering a critical assessment of the future of Islamism and democracy in the Middle East. Counts toward the History specialization. Please note this class will start at 6:30.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Living the Progressive Life
The flourishing of governmental initiatives to improve the quality and justice of American life in the period 1895-1920 was the work of a number of remarkable men and women. This course will examine the lives of several of them as revealed through three kinds of documents -- in their biographies, as matters of historical record, and as they adapted their own lives for rhetorical purposes in their autobiographies. Several memoirs - including Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (1913), Jane Addams's Twenty Years at Hull House (1910), and Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery (1901) - will serve as the focus of the course. We will explore the substance of their individual historical accomplishments - in presidential politics, child labor reform, and improving the economic and social status of African Americans - , their own representation of these same events both as literature and rhetoric, and the treatments biographers have given them. The underlying question to be addressed is a core question of the humanities: what are the different ways we can understand the nature of human experience? Counts toward the History and American Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Philosophy & Politics in 20th Century
This is a course in intellectual history that will examine the complex relationships between philosophy and politics in the 20th century. It will examine texts by American and European philosophers in three main periods (pre-World War II, the cold war, and 1968 and after) in light of dominant political and social trends. Areas covered will include (roughly in order) positivism and scientific philosophy;American pragmatism; liberalism and the attack on Marxism and socialism; the rise of existentialism; the1960s and the "New Left"; and the late century popularity of postmodern philosophers (mainly Foucault). This course will require a heavy reading load (sometimes 100 pages a week or more). Students taking this course should increase their knowledge of philosophy and gain an appreciation for the sometimes enigmatic relationships between philosophy and institutions such as anticommunism, commerce, education, and entertainment.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Religion, Bioethics and Public Life
This seminar will explore the topic of how a variety of religions approach the issues and problems of bioethics. We will examine the issue of epistemic stance, of truth claims, and of how normative policies are created amidst serious controversy. We will explore the nature of the relationship between religion and public policy, and study how religious traditions and moral philosophy shape our view of issues as "bioethical controversies" in the first place. This seminar will look at both classic dilemmas in modern medicine and how the discipline of bioethics has emerged to reflect upon such dilemmas, with particular attention to the role that theology and religious studies have played in such reflection. We will use a case based method to study how different failth traditions describe and defend differences in moral choices in contemporary bioethics and how such different traditions both collide and cohere over such topics as embryo research, health care reform, how to treat the terminally ill, and issues in genomic research.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Socrates in American Popular Culture
The story of Socrates (or parts of that story as it has been differently told and retold) has been deliberately used, starting in antiquity and for centuries, by a striking diversity of authors (philosophers, critics, dramatists), visual artists, composers and political actors working in a range of cultural traditions, genres and media, to convey their own meanings in compact and affecting ways. This class aims to engage students in an examination of one slice of this phenomenon--the presence of Socrates in 20th and 21st century American popular media. How and why has this icon of Greek antiquity on occasion worked as a vital symbol in contemporary American culture? Does familiarity with this material help us look at the ancient sources in fresh ways?
This class will proceed by introducing students to the main ancient sources for the story of Socrates and identifying the variety of ideas this material attaches to this figure (e.g., a distinctive method of inquiry; a peculiar philosophy of love; a 'gadfly' conception of citizenship; victim of injustice; henpecked husband; impractical and/or subversive intellectual; possessor of a peculiar appearance; and practitioner an uncommon kind of courage). We will consider the controversy over whether a distinct "historical Socrates" can be reconstructed from various ancient representations with their conflicting details and views of his character, attending chiefly to the portraits of Socrates in Aristophanes, Xenophon and Plato. We will then look at some scholarship on selected high-profile appropriations of Socrates in later periods before we focus our attention on a body of late 20th and early 21st century adaptations of the story of Socrates in American popular culture. These sources are drawn from radio, television, Broadway stage, film, comedy, popular political discourse and art. For example, we will discuss the identification of Socrates with democratic resistance during WWII proposed by John Steinbeck's The Moon is Down, the commentary on McCarthyism and the Cold War embedded in a 1953 TV show and 1954 Broadway play dramatizing Socrates' life and death, Martin Luther King's invocation of Socrates in Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the deployment of Socrates in the comedy of Woody Allen and Steve Martin, and the account of ethical struggles in Water Mosely's recent fiction featuring the character Socrates Fortlow, and more. Counts toward all three specializations.
Fall 2009
EV
Tu
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
Annenberg Hall 101
9/22/09 - 11/24/09
Instructor:
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: The Birth of Democracy in Ancient Greece
Most governments today are--or want to be considered--democracies: governments where "the people rule." In this course we shall discover the origins of democratic government in archaic and Classical Greece: from the power of Homeric assemblies to the development of anti-aristocratic popular tyrannies (the origin of tyranny), the Greek invention of written law and the written constitution, the unique mixed government of ancient Sparta ("the 300"), the triumph of Greek "sages" over warring clans, the development of democratic political institutions and ideologies (freedom, equality, free speech, the right to privacy) in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, followed by the harsh criticisms leveled against democracy by potent conservative intellectuals including Thucydides and Plato. Finally, we shall compare the first Greek democracies with US government, and ponder the impact on the "Founding Fathers" of Athenian democratic criticisms. This course promises an exciting run through some of the most important political, intellectual, and literary developments of the Western world. Readings will include selections from Homer, Hesiod, Greek lyric poetry, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Thucydides, and Plato. Classes will be run in a discussion-oriented format; no prior knowledge of ancient Greece is required. Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: The Classical Tradition in American Culture
How have the ancient Greeks and Romans influenced American culture? How did Americans reinterpret classical antiquity to work for the New World? What changes took place in Americans' attitudes to classical antiquity between the 18th and 20th centuries? Why the continued fascination with "the glory that was Greece and the grandeur that was Rome" in such popular culture phenomena as advertising, TV series, and Disney films? This course explores the influence of ancient Greek and Roman civilization on American politics, literature, art, architecture, and popular culture. We will study how classical antiquity has influenced America from colonial times to the present, discussing the metamorphoses of the classical into the American-from the Founding Fathers establishing a republic based on that of ancient Rome to the popularity of Hercules as TV hero, from the Victorian fascination with classical sculpture to the use of Venus de Milo in beer commercials. The class will view and analyze examples of classically-inspired art, architecture, and popular culture (comics, TV series, fashion, advertising) to gain an understanding of the endurance and transformations of the classical tradition in America. Counts toward the American Studies and History specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Theories of the Moving Image
What makes cinema different from, for example, theatre, painting, or literature? Its ability to "capture reality"? Its ability to transform reality through that capturing? Its ability to manipulate time and space? Thinkers have debated the specificity of the medium since its invention at the turn of the last century. Today, they are still debating it, but with renewed vigor as video and digital technologies threaten film's obsolescence. The "death of cinema" seems to be a consistent theme in critical writing about film these days. Yet, if we look closely, variations on this theme have been in film theory from the beginning. (Maybe cinema has always been dying.) This course selects particular topics in contemporary media theory and then traces them through classical texts in film theory. Specifically, it reads classical theory in light of present concerns about the nature of the photographic image, embodied spectatorship, and the relationship between stillness and movement in cinema. Under the premise that we can learn more about contemporary theory by returning to its roots, this course presents a selective overview of classical and contemporary theories that speak to each other about the cinematic image, movement, and, of course, death. We will read from the works of, among others, Jean Epstein, Walter Benjamin, Siegfried Kracauer, Sergei Eisenstein, Andre Bazin, Roland Barthes, Gilles Deleuze, Laura Mulvey, Mary Ann Doane, and David Rodowick. We'll also look at such films as Menilmontant, Battleship Potemkin, Voyage to Italy, La Jetee, Psycho, and Taste of Cherry.
No Sections
IPLS 405-0
( Elective ) Topics in Liberal Studies: Work and Its Meaning in American History 1680-2000
This seminar takes up three large themes in United States history. The first is the paradoxical emergence of wage labor in a society that was part free, part enslaved. The second is the formation of a working class in the second half of the 19th century and the subsequent development of middle-class careers in the early decades of the 20th century. The third is the transition from industrial to service work in the second half of the 20th century. The meanings of work in American culture are emphasized throughout the course
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Changing Views of Nature
In this course we will consider how our attitudes toward "nature" have shaped and continue to influence society from various perspectives ranging from economic and technological to sociological, architectural, etc. We will explore how our notions about nature over the last 200 years influenced the development of cities, the modification of the landscape, the extraction of resources and creation of industries and markets, the patterns of settlement, and ideas of progress. We will look at the historical factors that have caused marked change in our regard of nature and think about what role nature will play in future development. Counts toward the American Studies and History specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Crime Fictions: Film, Literature, and Modernity
Numerous critics, from Walter Benjamin and Siegfried Kracauer to contemporary film scholars like Tom Gunning, have identified the detective story as the genre in which modernity and its visual regimes are both exposed and de-familiarized. This course will explore how the detective story (and the figures around which it is organized) developed in the century of the moving image, influencing the way in which we think about the past and configure personal as well as collective histories. While paying attention to different media (from documentary photography to hard-boiled fiction), we will concentrate on films that have marked a turning point in the alliance between cinema and crime, starting with early cinema and arriving at postmodern examples like Blade Runner. Along the way, we will focus on those moments of rupture or subversion in which the rules of the genre are "undone" and our received notions of history, memory, and truth undermined. We will read text from the fields of film history and theory, visual studies, and new media.
Spring 2010
EV
Th
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
4/1/10 - 6/3/10
Instructor:
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Energy and the Environment
This course will explore the relationships between energy supply, use and consequence to society, past, present and future. We will consider energy use in pre-industrial societies and then the role played by fossil fuels in the emergence of industrial societies. We will pay special attention to petroleum and how it has transformed modern society. We will discuss the consequences of fossil fuel use on the environment and the feasibility of alternatives such as nuclear energy, biofuels, and renewable energy. Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Galileo in Science, History and Culture
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was one of the "giants" on whose shoulders the great Isaac Newton stood. Galileo not only helped create revolutionary devices like the telescope but the possibility of mathematical natural science itself. As one of history's great free thinkers, he helped define relations between science and religion that have been volatile and debated ever since. Standing at the intersection of antiquity and modernity, Galileo has always meant many different things to different people. To this day, he remains an icon for scientists, philosophers, historians, atheists, believers, playwrights, songwriters, feminists, and novelists.
This course will survey scholarship and writings about Galileo in order to both learn about science's most famous heretic and, specifically, to apply and evaluate different theories about historiography, the writing of history. With Galileo as a case study, we will equip ourselves to ask, To what extent can we reliably recover facts and knowledge about the past, and to what extent do we (or must we) project our own values and interests back in time? Are historical figures like Galileo best understood as constructions that evolve and change or do they have objective, perhaps even scientific, knowability? Readings will include some of Galileo's scientific texts, studies of his famous trail in Rome, writings about Galileo by historians and philosophers, and various texts about historiography and the philosophical analysis of historical knowledge. Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
Fall 2009
CH
M
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
Wieboldt Hall 409
9/28/09 - 11/30/09
Instructor:
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Greek Tragedy, Greek Comedy
Readings and discussions of the great works of Greek drama, as literature and in their social, historical, and intellectual contexts in classical Athens. We shall read in translation the most celebrated works of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, and some lesser known plays including a satyr play. We shall explore various contemporary approaches to these plays, also considering the merits and demerits of well-known concepts (the tragic hero, the tragic flaw). Major themes include democracy, war, the sophists and Socrates, the gods, and the evolving status of women in ancient Athens.Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Introduction to Cultural Analysis
This course introduces students to interdisciplinary cultural analysis through an intellectual history of critical theorists and thinkers. It both contextualizes cultural theorists from Marx to Said and also explores how their ideas can be applied, in new ways, to the study of culture, society, and politics. Students read excerpts from Marx, Weber, Freud, Gramsci, Benjamin, Raymond Williams, Barthes, Stuart Hall, Foucault, Geertz, Butler, and Said as well as secondary materials that both contextualize and utilize the ideas of these critical theorists. The writings of these thinkers can be difficult at times, but grappling with their work provides us with a powerful set of tools for individual and collective intellectual inquiry. Through close reading, seminar discussion, presentations, an online discussion board, short reviews, and a longer essay, students and instructor will take hold of the tools these thinkers have left us to work to deepen and develop our own skills of critical analysis. Counts toward all three specializations.
Winter 2010
CH
W
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
1/6/10 - 3/10/10
Instructor:
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Monty Python and Philosophy
This course examines closely the philosophical content within the work of the popular British comedy troupe Monty Python. Using both original sources and the book Monty Python and Philosophy, the course will examine the central philosophical themes and questions belonging to existentialism,logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion and other schools of philosophy that appear throughout Monty Python's work (mainly, the television program Monty Python's Flying Circus and its feature films, The Holy Grail, The Life of Brian, and The Meaning of Life). What exactly is an argument? Is there some particular "meaning" that life has for us? What does it mean to conceive of religious prophets as ordinary, everydaypeople (whose parents continually nag them)? The fact that these and other problems are raised in Monty Python's work suggests larger, cultural and perhaps sociological questions that the course will also consider: What does this fascination with philosophical themes in the work of a comedy troupe tell us about the status of intellectualism in our culture. Is Monty Python merely poking fun at philosophers such as Socrates and Jean-Paul Sartre, or do the jokes in fact promote attention to traditional philosophical questions (an intention suggested, at least, by member John Cleese's subsequent work promoting the American Philosophical Association)? From the beginning, this seminar will require and assume familiarity withthe main works of Monty Python and class time will not be used to watch or listen to Monty Python performances. Students are therefore encouraged to purchase or rent DVDs, videotapes, or screenplays and scripts (available inbook form, and often on the internet) before the seminar starts. Counts toward the Religious & Ethical Studies specialization.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Primitivism and Modernism
In 1984, the Museum of Modern Art in New York organized a show, "Primitivism' in 20th Century Art: Affinities of the Tribal and the Modern," that caused enormous controversy. Critics charged the curators with promoting an idea of western cultural superiority and racial insensitivity towards non-western societies. Foremost among the criticism was the assertion that the exhibition did not explore the vexed relationship between the "modern" and the "primitive." This course examines these two categories and the complex ways in which they are related. Through literature, art, dance, music, ethnography, and cultural criticism, this interdisciplinary course seeks to explore how and why "primitivism," as an aesthetics and an ideology, is an integral part of modernist texts and works of art. Some questions we ask are: How and why is the primitive a marker of the modern? Why did modernist artists and thinkers turn to the primitive? What kinds of social and political statements were these artists making? What value were they placing upon the primitive? Why is it that we can neither celebrate primitivism as innovative and revolutionary (as some avant-garde theorists contend) nor simply dismiss it as imperialist? In the end, through careful analysis of twentieth-century works, we hope to achieve a better understanding of both the primitive and the modern and the ways in which they are inextricably tied. Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Religions in Global Perspectives
Both historically and in modern times, Religion has played an important role in shaping our world. Although in the last century some people predicted that religion would decline as science and secularism advanced, religion has continued to be a vital force in the twenty-first century. In political campaigns, in military conflicts and in what have been called "clashes of civilizations," religion represents a significant factor in our world. With globalization and increasing cultural diversity it seems more important than ever to understand not only our own religion but also those of others. This course explores the phenomenon of religion in our world today and has two major components. It focuses on both the theory and the practice of the major World Religions. First, we will examine the theories of religion that have been advanced by thinkers in the humanities and social sciences to explain the meaning of religion. These theories, developed by scholars such as William James, Emile Durkheim, C.G. Jung and others, have provided the foundation for the academic study of religion. Second, we will devote most of the course to an exploration of two of the families of the world's religions: The Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam-; and the Dharmic religions - Hinduism, and Buddhism. The goal is to understand the meaning of these religions and their place in the world. How do these religions interact with each other and how have they addressed the challenges of modernity? Counts toward the Religious & Ethical Studies specialization.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Sex, Love, Marriage, and Babies: American Family Life, 1850-2000
This course explores the changing meanings attached to sexuality and marriage in industrializing and post-industrial American society. We will explore both the social and economic conditions that led to the changing relationship between sexuality, procreation, and marriage, as well as the moral reform movements that responded to these changes. Of particular interest will be what happened to social understandings and expectations of manhood and womanhood when married partners separated from procreation in the years after the Civil War, when romantic love became sexualized in the late 19th century, when the sexual revolution separated sex from marriage in the 1960s and 1970s, and as "hooking up" culture separates sex from love. Counts toward all three specializations.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: Socrates In and Out of Athens
We all know that democracy requires free speech. But why? And precisely what do we mean by speech that is "free"? In this course we will consider these questions in the context of the first Western experiment in democracy, ancient Athens, and the life (and death) of its most celebrated "free speaker," Socrates. This context will bring to the fore the importance of "frankness" as a characteristic of free speech, as well as the place of such things as truth, opinion, reason, and passion in democratic deliberations. We will pay attention to why Socrates considered himself a model citizen not just a philosopher and we will seek to appreciate how strange and irritating Socrates appeared to his contemporaries. In addition, we will consider some examples of how the memory of Socrates has entered popular discourse about free speech in the US. For this last project we will examine an episode of the 1953 TV show, "You Are There," Martin Luther King's "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and Cornel West's recent Democracy Matters, and the controversial Trial of Socrates by I.F. Stone. The three books to purchase are: PLATO, Complete Works , edited by John M. Cooper, associate editor D. S. Hutchinson, 1997,(0-87220-349-2); Cornel West, Democacy Matters; I.F. Stone, The Trial of Socrates.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: tba
TBA.
Summer 2010
Off Campus
Days: TBA
7:00 - 9:30 PM
Sec. 50
6/21/10 - 8/19/10
Instructor:
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: The Comedic Mode: Theory and Film
This course is devoted to understanding the various aspects of the comedic mode, especially as it manifests itself in cinema and more recently on television. The class will read several theorists and philosophers who sought to identify the basis of comedy, humor and laughter. In addition, readings will focus on different types of comedy such as silent film comedy, verbal comedy, romantic comedy, screwball comedy, ethnic humor, black humor, as well as ironic and parodic approaches to these sub-genres. The course will utilize a cultural studies approach, meaning that films will be analyzed in terms of the socio-political and historical environment from which they emerged. Students will discuss the ideas in the theoretical readings and then to apply these notions to individual film texts, noting how these theories do and do not function in the context of cinema. In addition, readings will include critical essays of the individual films, focusing on each work as a unique creation.Class screenings will cover the entire history of film comedy, beginning in the silent era, moving through early sound production and ending with recent television programming. Films will include the great comic performers, as well as the great comic directors. Counts toward the History specialization. Please note this course will begin at 6:30pm instead of 7pm, and will run three hours in order to screen films during class time.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: The Rise of Painting: Renaissance and Baroque Art in Northern Europe
The major masters of Northern European Renaissance and Baroque art include the Flemish painters Jan van Eyck, Rogier van der Weyden, Hieronymus Bosch, Pieter Bruegel, and Pieter Paul Rubens; the German printmaker and painter Albrecht Dürer; and Frans Hals, Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer and other "stars" of the Dutch Golden Age. This course offers an introduction to these and other artists, and simultaneously offers an account of the emergence in the 15th and 16th centuries north of the Alps of pre-modern forms of artistic production. Our point of departure is in medieval genres and media such as the illuminated manuscript, devotional and liturgical furnishings and images, and lavish tapestries commissioned for court settings. The late medieval artisan, who often worked anonymously, gave way in the course of the fifteenth century to a more self-conscious modern artist. By the end of the sixteenth century, the major modern genres of painting (still life, portrait, landscape, narrative picture) had emerged; and in the seventeenth century painters self-consciously signed their own works and the master Rembrandt produced an astonishing number of self-portraits. The rise of painting is a phenomenon we take for granted and whose complex roots this course will attempt to uncover, while also offering an introduction to the major artists of the Northern Renaissance and Baroque eras.
No Sections
IPLS 492-0
( Elective ) Special Topics in Liberal Studies: The Sixties in America: From Memory to History
"If you remember the sixties, you weren't there," a famous saying goes. Yet, as shorthand not only for a decade, but also for a whole set of events in American life (civil rights, the counterculture, the New Left, the war in Southeast Asia, the rise of conservatism, the dawn of postmodernity), "the sixties" continues to haunt the culture of the contemporary United States. It continually returns in political discourse, analyses of popular culture, and even debates about economic policy. The memory of the sixties is still very much with us. But increasingly, the sixties is becoming history too, examined through primary sources by scholars who may or may not have lived through the time period. Caught in an unfixed space between memory and history, the study of the sixties provides us with an opportunity to consider how history gets constructed and contested, how the way we tell the story about the past affects our collective sense of the present. In this course, we will investigate primary documents such as political tracts, essays, novels, poetry, art, film, and music in order to take stock of subjects such as race, class, gender, sexuality, nationalism, transnationalism, popular culture, and politics in the sixties. We will also draw upon the latest scholarship to grapple with the evolving history of this decade. Students will complete readings, viewings, and listening assignments; write short interpretative reviews of materials; participate in discussions; and develop one longer essay on a particular aspect of the sixties. Counts toward the American Studies and History specializations.
No Sections
PHIL 420-0
( Elective ) Studies in Ancient Philosophy: The 5th Century Enlightenment
This course will examine the intellectual and cultural revolution that occurred in Greece, particularly Athens, during the course of the Fifth Century B.C.. So many new developments in art, culture, philosophy, and science occurred in this century, that one might be tempted to call it a sort of "renaissance". But that word would miss the mark: it signifies a renewal, rediscovery, rebirth. What occurred in fifth-century Athens was not a repetition, but the original: the great flowering of human culture that the Europeans of the late medieval period hoped to re-enact. This is the period of the great tragedians, as well as the first historians. This period saw the rise of professional rhetoricians, and the parallel rise of the original management consultants, a.k.a. Sophists, who promised to teach a universal science of success in all affairs public and private. Literary criticism begins now, as do debates about constitutional form and legal responsibility. Traditional religious beliefs are subjected to new scrutiny, in plays, poetry, and history. In science, there are new trends in astronomy and cosmology associated with the Presocratic philosophers, while in medicine the first treatises on practice and theory are written by the school of Hippocrates.We will read original sources (in translation) from a wide variety of genres and intellectual streams. These will include selections from the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes as well as selections from the historians Herodotus and Thucydides. We will read many lesser-known authors such as Antiphon, Critias, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, and the anonymous authors of the Derveni papyrus and "Dissoi Logoi". Our aim throughout will be to gain a broader understanding of texts and individuals sometimes studied in isolation, and to see to what extent the Fifth Century presents us with a unified phenomenon, an intellectual movement or epoch that can be studied as a whole. In particular, this course will explore the intellectual antecedents of the great Greek Philosophers of the Fourth century--Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics--in the century before Philosophy was a recognized discipline.
No Sections
PHIL 465-0
( Elective ) Seminar in Social and Political Theory: The Philosopher's Gaze
What do philosophers see when they look at the world around them? What do they see looking at other persons, at other living beings, and at themselves? What makes vision so important in philosophical thought? How do different philosophers understand and represent our capacity to see? Through such questions the seminar explores the ethical, moral, and political dimensions of sight and its visions, taking up along the way such issues as freedom, alienation, responsibility, justice, violence, utopian dreams, the will to power of the modern subject, and objectivity as paradigm of knowledge, truth, and reality. A variety of philosophers, from Plato and Descartes to Nietzsche and Heidegger, are read.
No Sections
RELIGION 472-0
( Elective ) Studies in the Literature of Religion
Asia has long held a fascination for the West. While the West may have influenced Asia overtly through colonization and commerce, Asia has also influenced the West more subtly through art and literature. From the writings of Emerson and Thoreau in the 19th century to the Dalai Lama today, Asian religions have influenced the West in profound ways. This course explores Asian religions--specifically, Hinduism and Buddhism--as expressed in literature and film. Students study literature and films from Asia as well as Western literature and films that express Western interpretations of these traditions. The two main goals are to examine some of the central themes of Hinduism and Buddhism in classical Asian texts and some contemporary Asian films and understand some of the ways Asia and its religions have been imagined and interpreted in the West and influenced Western thought and culture. Readings include "Song of God," Bhagavad Gita, The Life of the Buddha, and Forster's A Passage to India. Films include The Mahabharata and Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East? Counts toward the History and Religious & Ethical Studies specializations.
