AMCULT 102.001	Sports Culture	This seminar examines the role of sports culture in the social and political construction of individual and collective American identities. Special attention is given to issues of power, and race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationalism. Readings and films cover contemporary and historical issues in baseball, basketball, football, boxing, and cheerleading.
AMCULT 102.002	American Culture & Globalization	American culture has circulated widely and through multiple processes; from Hollywood films, to government sponsored cultural and sports programs and military interventions, to corporate and private initiatives. By considering how American culture has interacted with nations and cultures abroad, this course introduces a wide variety of approaches to how globalization has transformed American culture, as well as the ways in which American culture has circulated globally. A primary goal is to introduce students to a wide variety of perspectives on globalization. Another is to explore multiple research methods, including on-line and traditional archival collections.
AMCULT 103.002	Interracial America	In examining the interaction between different racial groups in the U.S. from the 19th century to the present, this seminar diverges from conventional studies that focus solely on the relationship between African Americans and whites. Rather than rely on the hackneyed black-white dichotomy of U.S. race relations, we search for a broader historical model, one that includes yellow, brown, red, and ethnic white. (Meets with CAAS 104.001)
AMCULT 103.003	Mexicans in the U.S.: Unity & Diversity	What is the meaning of a racialized Mexican identity in the United States, and what are the historical challenges faced by people of Mexican descent in the United States? As an introduction to the social, economic, and political changes that influenced the day-to-day life of Mexicans/Mexican Americans, this seminar highlights the racial, class, gender, and sexual diversity within the Mexican-American community. We look at how different groups of Mexicans understood their relationships to other Americans and other Latino groups. We also consider Chicano history’s political and intellectual underpinnings as an academic discipline. (Meets with HISTORY 197.003)
ANTHRCUL 158.001	Semiotics of Comedy	Semiotics is the study of meaning. In this seminar we explore how humor is meaningful, to whom, and to what ends. We investigate the formal techniques of humor: how do comics work? When do they fail? At the same time, we ask how humor resonates with political and social struggles. Our study is not limited to comics who write or perform in the U.S. We also explore comedy (subtitled or in translation) in other places, including the former Soviet Union, India, the UK, and others.
ANTHRCUL 158.002	Cities & Communities in Films & Their Scores	This course focuses on cities and communities and asks how film scores help to evoke cinematic narratives. We watch, read about, listen to and discuss a selection of films, considering the many ways in which music and images are arranged to tell tales about symbols, cultural practices and political relations. Assignments include a short autobiography based on your personal involvement with film, a take-home midterm, and group projects organized around film genres, culminating in a final collective paper and presentation.
ANTHRCUL 158.003	Ecotourism & Trophy Hunting	This course considers the historical roots of today’s rapidly changing nature and cultural tourism industries. We review relevant theories and methods for the analysis of safari hunting, extreme adventure tourism, socially conscious and low ecological impact tourism, and participation in ritual practice. Films (streamed via CTools) and assigned readings help to instill critical reading and viewing skills. Assignments focus on practices of consumption by tourists, expectations and challenges among residents whom tourists visit, and power dynamics of tourist/local encounters.
ASIAN 251.001	Looking at Traditional China through Its Most Famous Novel: The Story of the Stone	Praised as a veritable encyclopedia of Chinese life, The Story of the Stone has mattered deeply to countless Chinese readers, some of whom read it year after year. Focusing on life within the household with females as the majority of its main characters, it reveals much about the life of women in mid-18th century China. Class debates on specific topics not only permit us to get a wider and richer view of the novel and the culture that produced it, but also help us to be more critical about our own beliefs and predilections. At the same time our aim is to relate what we see in the novel to life around us and to material we have learned in other contexts.
ASIAN 252.002	Haiku as Poetry & Philosophy	We examine the world’s briefest poem, the haiku. What does this 17-syllable poem signify? What social milieu produced it? What is its link to Zen practice and other Zen arts? Readings (in English translation) are from the master Basho and his disciples, with later poets as well as haiga (haiku paintings) providing opportunities for comparative study. The Western understandings of haiku in the Imagist movement, Ezra Pound, the beat generation, and Barthe’s Empire of Signs also are examined.
ASIAN 253.001	The Philippines: Culture & History	This seminar surveys major themes in history of the Philippines, paying particular attention to their cultural dimensions. Starting with its inception as a colony of Spain, through the American colonial period, to the post-colonial present, we draw from Philippine historiography, ethnography, literature, and popular culture to examine the cultural effects of processes such as: religious conversion and colonial encounter; revolution and nationalism; hybridity and language; regional, class, and identity formation; modernity, globalization, and migration. (Meets with HISTORY 197.007)
ASIAN 255.001	Asian Travelers	What have Asian travelers from different times and places written about the places (real and imagined) they’ve been? Reading their accounts allows us to better understand both the places and the travelers themselves. The writers are from various parts of Asia and various time periods, and their destinations include places in Asia and elsewhere. All readings are in English.
BIOLOGY 120.001	Living with Evidence	A neuroscientist leads a broad survey which critically explores scientific and religious views of life on Earth. Take this course if you want to learn the basics either about DNA and evolution or about religion and Christianity. Avoid this course if you wish to protect a more traditional outlook from criticism and scrutiny.
BIOLOGY 120.002	Living with Evidence	See BIOLOGY 120.001.
BIOPHYS 120.001	The Discovery of the DNA Double Helix & Its Hidden Mysteries	This course introduces students to biophysics and its role in the life sciences. The historical example of the discovery of the structure of DNA by Watson and Crick is discussed and re-created using modern techniques. As a highlight, the structure of a DNA crystal is determined using the synchrotron at the Argonne National Laboratory. Students compose a term paper that critically compares the historical and the modern techniques at each step of the structure determination.
CAAS 103.001	I, Too, Sing America: A Psychology of Race & Racism	See PSYCH 120.008.
CAAS 103.002	The Crisis of the African American Male	Throughout the past two decades, numerous scholars, journalists, and policy advocates have argued that African American men are in a state of crisis. That claim has been sustained through assessments of their health, employment status, incarceration rates, educational attainment, and other measures and indicators. This seminar provides a critical examination of research and research-informed commentaries that aim to document and interpret that crisis.
CAAS 103.006	Diversity, Inequality & Democracy	See PSYCH 120.008.
CAAS 104.001	Interracial America	See AMCULT 103.002.
CAAS 104.002	Gender & Black Identity in the 1960s	It is common knowledge that the fault lines of gender and sexuality were far more pronounced and prominent in Black public culture during the post-civil rights era than during the high tide of the Black freedom movement. In recognizing gender as a crucial aspect of discourses of black identity and authenticity in the art, literature, and politics of the Black freedom movement, we reexamine that assumption. We draw on secondary sources, as well as a range of primary sources, including government documents, fiction, drama, periodicals, popular music, and visual art-to explore the centrality of gender and sexuality as markers for notions of “authentic” Black identity. (Meets with HISTORY 197.001)
CLCIV 120.001	Representations of Food in Antiquity	Descriptions of food and drink abound in ancient literature. This course examines the role of food and banquets in a variety of works, from Aristophanes’ comedies to Horace’s Satires to Petronius’ Satyricon. In considering actual evidence about dining practices, our central emphasis is on the representation of food in literature. Much more than mere sustenance, food has the potential to reveal one’s origins, status, personal taste and style. In addition to bi-weekly papers, each student investigates one practical feature of ancient dining (e.g., seating, food preparation, “china”) as preparation for an authentic banquet of our own at the end of term.
CLCIV 120.002	Clubs in Antiquity	This seminar is a study of voluntary associations in Greek and Roman societies. These include religious, secular, professional, and social clubs.
CLCIV 120.003	Euripides Our Contemporary?	In this course we read the 18 surviving plays of Euripides, c. 480-405 BCE. Since Greek tragedies are short, this is not as daunting as it looks! These works are a wild mixture of pure tragedies, plays of adventure with happy endings, and miniature soap operas. Our focus is on how Euripides can be relevant for us. What can we enjoy? What can we learn from each? What elements in these plays are strange and hard to understand no matter how much we study them?
DUTCH 160.001	Colonialism & Its Aftermath	Dated as early as the 17th century, a vast body of literary works related to the East and West Indies allows us to trace the origin and development of Dutch expansion into the world, how countries were conquered, and how political systems were established. Through integrating social, political, and economic history with literary renderings and artistic representations of colonialism, students are introduced to cultural studies in general and Dutch history in particular.
ENGLISH 125.001	Radical Softwares: The Aspirations of Video in the 1960s & 1970s	With the camcorder’s release in 1965, American video artists championed the new medium’s potential to create a “participatory democracy.” In this course, we investigate the claims for video as a radically democratic medium and interrogate the societal, political, and artistic local contexts that fueled these aspirations. How was video constructed as a response to television, and what implications did this approach have for underrepresented segments of the population? By examining artists’ videos, scholarly and popular articles, memoirs, technical handbooks, and poetry, students develop the skills needed to read critically, interpret visual material, and craft written arguments.
ENGLISH 140.003	“Know Thyself” and Other Difficult Maxims	Our culture has taught us that one of the qualities that make us human is our ability to use the three elements of the old medieval curriculum: grammar, logic, and rhetoric. We also have been told that an important product of any culture is its written records, especially its literature, which is usually a key to that culture’s beliefs. This course uses literature to explore such assumptions, not with the aim of endorsing them but rather of interrogating them. We start by trying to identify our own unspoken assumptions, how we think, how we learn, where our values come from, whether they are testable, and most especially whether we know how to deploy grammar, logic, and rhetoric to communicate our findings about these matters to others.
ENGLISH 140.004	The Sincerest Form	Through close analysis of twelve examples of recent American prose, this course looks at the nature and technique of contemporary short fiction from the reader-writer’s point-of-view. It is based on the article of faith that imitation is not merely the sincerest form of flattery, but also a good way to grow. Written work consists of exercises in imitation as we try to enter the style and specific rhetoric of the examples at hand. Authors include Andrea Barrett, John Barth, Charles Baxter, Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Ford, Jamaica Kincaid, and Flannery O’Connor. Additional reading are drawn from The Best American Short Stories (ed. Stephen King), 2008.
ENVIRON 139.003	Environmental Literature	This seminar explores the human connection to the environment and the evolution of American attitudes toward the natural world as reflected in environmental literature. Understanding our connection to the world through the use of language enables us to examine our relationship with nature in various works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film. In addition to exploring environmental literature and film, students complete a social service requirement that benefits the health of the environment or furthers understanding of environmental issues. By fostering a greater appreciation for our connection to the environment and attempting to reconcile our ambivalent attitudes toward nature, this seminar helps us define our place in the natural world.
ENVIRON 139.020	Environment, Religions, Spirituality & Sustainability	This interdisciplinary seminar inquires into the fundamental changes occurring in the natural environment (including humans) and in human social systems and culture to explore the question: To what extent, in what ways, and why are current trends in human impacts on the environment and social relations sustainable or unsustainable? The major contrasting responses offer differing scenarios of the future in terms of their visions, strategies, and examples of practices to be pursued. Religions to be considered include those of Native Americans and other indigenous peoples as well as world religions, e.g. Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Agnostics and atheists are welcome.
GEOSCI 146.001	Plate Tectonics	Two hundred million years ago the Earth’s continents were joined together to form one gigantic super-continent, called Pangea. Plate tectonic forces broke Pangea apart and caused the continents to drift. We study the evidence for plate tectonics and the large-scale dynamics of the Earth’s interior that is responsible for mountain building, earthquakes faulting, volcanic eruptions, changes in Earth’s magnetic field and much more.
GEOSCI 147.001	Natural Hazards	This seminar explores natural geological hazards such as floods, tsunamis, earthquakes, explosive volcanic eruptions, landslides, meteorite impacts, and catastrophic results of climate change, with an emphasis influenced by current events. Students are expected to be active participants in reading, discussions, oral presentations, and written reports.
GEOSCI 148.001	Environmental Geology	This seminar examines the interactions between people and their physical environment through case histories and discussions of selected environmental problems including natural hazards, water resources, nuclear waste disposal and geologic aspects of environmental health.
GEOSCI 154.001	Ocean Resources	The oceans provide many resources, such as food, recreation, energy, and minerals. We consider the scientific principles behind these resources, as well as the conflicts that arise because of their utilization (the ocean as food resources vs. overfishing; development of beaches and marinas vs. preservation of wetlands, etc.). Students lead discussions on weekly topics, with one written paper and one written exam required.
HISTART 194.001	Good Stories: Narrative Art in Japan	This class explores various exemplars of Japanese narrative art, ranging from 12th-century Genji scrolls to modern animation, with special emphasis on illustrated texts. We survey the history of visual storytelling in Japan from the 7th to 21st centuries, emphasizing close visual and textual analysis. Lively class discussions explore a range of issues concerning narrative in Japan, including visual modes of storytelling in the scroll format, concepts of literary and pictorial genres in the pre-modern period, and the functions of picture scrolls as tools of persuasion, repositories for nostalgic visions of the classical past, vehicles for the mythologization of religious institutes, and stages for satiric representation.
HISTORY 196.002	Love & Friendship in Chinese Culture	This class mixes history, literature, and sociology. The purpose of the class is twofold: first, to introduce a number of selected texts on family, friendship, and love in Chinese culture; second to provide a broad conceptual framework on self and society in traditional and contemporary China. I have organized the classes each week around specific selected topics and have assigned a variety of literary as well as social science texts. We are interested in these texts less as artistic achievements and more as guides to Chinese values and to the function of literature in Chinese culture. This class assumes no prior knowledge of Chinese culture.
HISTORY 197.001	Gender & Black Identity in the 1960s	See CAAS 104.002.
HISTORY 197.002	Writing Violence	In a world in which violence seems endemic—from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to “militia” violence in the Darfur region of Somalia and genocide in Rwanda—this course examines the ability of history, as a discipline, to represent violence. While examining a number of historical cases of mass violence, our focus is on the Partition of India in 1947, an event in which approximately twelve million people migrated, one million people were killed, and scores of women were victims of sexual violence. We use both primary and secondary sources to explore how history contends with this and similar cases of violence. (Restricted to LSA Honors)
HISTORY 197.003	Mexicans in the U.S.: Unity & Diversity	See AMCULT 103.003.
HISTORY 197.004	United States Environmental History	Global warming and climate change! Energy shortages! An impending water crisis! Genetically altered foods! Natural disasters! Cloned animal products! The relationship between human beings and the non-human world have never seemed so urgent or troubled as they do today. Each of these crises—and many others—has a history behind it. We examine not simply historical documents, but also landscapes, maps, rivers, city streets, works of art, climate studies, demography, animal population studies, legal decisions, and more. Our focus is on the United States, taking as our primary case study our own back yard—the City of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan.
HISTORY 197.005	Right, Left & Center: The Ideologies of Modernity	This class explores the ideological traditions of the modern world by reading classic texts from a range of authors across the political spectrum. The goal is to understand the history behind labels like liberalism, conservatism, socialism, fascism, environmentalism, feminism, and more. At the same time, we use contemporary media to study how these old “isms” are being used today.
HISTORY 197.007	The Philippines: Culture & History	See ASIAN 253.001.
HISTORY 197.008	The Invention of Judaism & Christianity	See JUDAIC 150.001.
ITALIAN 250.001	Boccaccio	This class focuses on a reading of Boccaccio’s Decameron, sometimes described as a “dirty” book set against a backdrop of disaster, but which claims to be the record of 100 tales told by ten young men and women during three weeks at the height of the Black Plague in Florence in 1348. We address the plague itself, the mercantile and banking boom it interrupted, the crucial importance of rhetorical skill in society, the ambitions of lowbrow literature in tension with the elite pretensions of nascent humanism, and Boccaccio’s anxiety between the model of Dante and that of Petrarch.
JUDAIC 150.001	The Invention of Judaism & Christianity	How “Jewish” were Jesus and his followers and what difference does it make? Narratives about the beginnings of Christianity and Judaism, their complicated relationship, and how and when they emerged as distinct categories are often more about our present day assumptions than about the complexities of ancient history. In addition to drawing upon scholarly and primary sources, we view and analyze recent and 20th century films that feature narratives about Jewish-Christian beginnings. (Meets with HISTORY 197.008)
LING 102.001	Deciphering Ancient Languages	Much of our current knowledge of early civilizations is due to the deciphering of ancient scripts and languages, which requires an understanding of how scripts and languages work as well as a bit of luck. This course examines successful decipherments of the past (e.g., of Egyptian and of languages written in cuneiform scripts), recent breakthroughs (e.g., in deciphering Mesoamerican languages), and cases that remain unsolved. Hands-on exercises are based on real examples.
LING 102.002	The Pronunciation of English	In this course we discuss linguistic theories and techniques in analyzing pronunciation, using English as the primary example. We shall also compare English with other languages and discuss how to evaluate “foreign accents” objectively, using computer instruments. There is no prerequisite for this course.
LING 102.003	<