This course introduces students to the critical analysis of Asian American women’s literary, artistic, and cultural production representing a range of genres and mediums: cultural history, autobiography, legal scholarship, stand-up comedy, short fiction, visual art, and video documentary. Topics we may explore include the following: the linkages between gender and race; the relation between memory, story, and history; femininity and the family; sex and desire; violence inside and outside of the home; mixed heritage; homophobia; and immigrant experiences. This course also emphasizes the development of students’ expository writing skills.

Course requirements: an oral presentation, several 1-2 page responses, the development of a research project (annotated bibliography and a 4-6 page paper), and a final exam.

Does what you study in school connect with your everyday life?

Each day of our lives, we move through a web of immensely complex systems. (For that matter, just being “you” or “me,” let alone “we,” is not simple.) There are academic disciplines that study every aspect of our world — from the biological processes that enable us to digest breakfast to the cultural meanings of late-night television; from the economic implications of attending (or not attending) college to the environmental consequences of walking or driving to campus. But they don’t study them all at the same time. Disciplines can be rigorous exactly because they politely decline to deal with everything. College students and college professors work hard at our studies, but we are human beings and we still have to deal with everything else too. So we tend to make a distinction between “book-learning” and “real life.”

This course is designed to be “general education” in the strongest possible sense. We will not try to gain deep knowledge of — or even get a thorough introduction to—any academic discipline (although we will take a fairly long look at the tradition of writing about everyday life in the field of cultural studies). Rather, we will move through big, varied topics--such as the brain, money, and the meaning of life — exploring the surprising things that scholars can show us about them. The course will suggest not only that school is connected with the rest of what we do, but that academic knowledge can help us to achieve a critical awareness of everyday life and thus to become more fully alive.

Students will write several short papers, take a mid-term exam, do a collaborative research project to be presented in class, and create a final term project in multiple media.

This seminar will consider the role that comedy and comedians play in contemporary American culture and politics and their influence, both direct and covert, on the ever-changing conception of American identity. We will explore the connections in style and message between current stars—Dave Chappelle, Margaret Cho, Stephen Colbert, and Chris Rock—and some of their classic predecessors (such as Buster Keaton, Bert Willams, the Marx Brothers and Will Rogers). We will also examine the work and impact of innovative, iconoclastic performers whose direct influence is still strong, such as Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, George Carlin and Whoopi Goldberg, and discuss key critical commentary on humor, comedy, and comedians.

This is a course with photography at its heart. Being in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir is the title of the professor’s upcoming book of photographs, text and collages. Students’ projects will involve photography in combination with reading, writings, film viewing and critical thinking. We will explore a wide range of photographic works such as autobiographic, documentary, and journalistic, and consider photographic meaning through discussion of photographic contexts, makers, and audiences. Attention to women and gender will be aspects of written essays as well as visual projects. Students will learn some basics of digital photography and photo printing and may be able to digitally produce individual small books. Access to a digital camera for use in this class is required.

This class is designed to provide students with a general set of reasoning strategies to enable them to craft persuasive arguments based on different sources of information. While learning these skills, students will be asked to explore the broader theme of “history and memory.” Course readings, discussions, and writing assignments will be organized around two interrelated questions: How are memories created and can they be trusted? Many professionals and intellectuals are dubious of the reliability of human memory despite the fact that we use it every day. Students will consider a range of scholarly views on this issue and be asked to take their own stance within the existing debate. Ultimately, students will push the matter to the point of scientific scrutiny as they develop individual test cases that assess the accuracy and reliability of human memory, and then organize their conclusions into a persuasive intellectual argument

A study of the books and blogs written by women and men in the U.S. military forces in Iraq. Although the seminar will necessarily discuss the political and moral issues associated with the war, the focus will be on the lived experience of the authors.

Attendance required at all classes. No students will be added to the seminar after the first class.

Corporations have emerged as the dominant governance institutions on the planet, with the largest among them reaching into virtually every country in the world and exceeding most governments in size and power. While corporations are characters in larger in stories of industrialization and capitalism, this seminar will emphasize the specific features of public corporations and their historical and contemporary relations to individuals, states, families, ethnic and racial groups, and other social actors.

• How did corporations emerge?
• How are they controlled and by whom?
• Under what circumstances do they exercise military force?
• How do we participate in them as consumers, employees, stockholders and what are the conflicts among these forms of participation?
• What rights and responsibilities do corporations have? How do we engage them as citizens?

We will examine these questions especially with reference to the greatest early joint stock corporation, the English East India Company, and today’s largest corporation, Wal-Mart.

Recent events have brought the debate about the relationship between religion and violence into the foreground of public debate. Do religions justify and cause violence or are they more appropriately seen as forces for peace and tolerance? In the context of secular modernity, religion has been represented by some as a primary cause of social division, conflict and war, whilst others have argued that this is a distortion of the ‘true’ significance of religion, which when properly followed promotes peace, harmony, goodwill and social cohesion. Coinciding with the global re-surfacing of religious violence is the work of the media that can be seen both as a key agent in transforming the public’s reception of the relationship between religion and violence, and in many ways affecting the course of national and international politics itself. This course explores theoretical and practical aspects religion and violence in the context of our contemporary secular world. The course asks why, in an era of intense globalization, there has been a proliferation of ethnic cleansing and extreme forms of political violence against civil societies. Specific themes for discussion may include but are not limited to: 9/11 and the War on Terrorism; suicide bombings and anti-Americanism; Islam Multiculturalism and secular democracy in France and Britain; Hindu/Muslim violence and the question of secularism in India; Sikhs and the Indian State.

“Thereupon Ambika became terribly angry with those foes, and in her anger her countenance then became dark as ink. Out from the surface of her forehead, fierce with frown, issued suddenly Kali of terrible countenance. ”

—   Devimahatmya, Chapter 7

The prevalence of Goddess worship in South Asia has not only been parodied in Indiana Jones movies and in crime novels centering around obscure and fearsome Indian cults but, on a more serious vein, it has been the source of inspiration for Western feminist religious scholarship trying to retrieve its own Goddess traditions. It has also been the focus of psychoanalytical theories regarding Indian mothers, their male off-spring, masculinity and sexuality. In this course we are going to examine what exactly the South Asian religious tradition says about the Goddess. We are going to pose questions about the antiquity of the tradition, and its endless capacity for re-invention and renewal in contemporary religious practice and how it thrives in South Asian culture, with living women saints and goddesses. We are going to ask if the Goddess is a feminist. We might also want to ponder the paradox of South Asian Goddess veneration co-existing with the scriptural and very real social subordination of women. Through exploring these various questions we are going to follow the story of the Goddess in the South Asian religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

Credit Exclusions: No credit granted to those who have completed or are enrolled in ASTRO 102, 112, 125 or 160

This seminar course addresses a variety of topics relating to the hottest, most massive stars, including supernova explosions, glowing nebulae, and the nature of these supergiant stars. Explore the frontiers of research on how these stars affect the evolution of their host galaxies. There will also be discussion of observational techniques used to study these phenomena.

Credit Exclusions: Credit is granted for a combined total of 17 credits elected in introductory biology.

This seminar will cover the broad topic of evolution, including:

1. the history of evolutionary thought and the philosophy of evolution;
2. micro-evolution, or small adaptive changes within lineages;
3. macro-evolution, or speciation and phylogeny; and
4. special topics such as rates of evolution, diversity of life, and human evolution.

A textbook written by one of the architects of the modern synthesis of evolution will be read and discussed. The book is: What Evolution Is. Mayr, Ernst. 2001. Basic Books, i-xv + 318 pp.

Credit Exclusions: Credit is granted for a combined total of 17 credits elected in introductory biology.

How many female Nobel Prize winners in science can you name? If you find yourself struggling to name more than one, you're probably not alone. Of the 300 Nobel Prizes that have been awarded in the sciences since 1901, only 3% have gone to women. The National Academy of Sciences, which was established in 1893, currently has over 2000 members, of whom less than 5% are female.

In this course, we will examine the lives and scientific contributions of a number of women scientists, some Nobel laureates, some not. By evaluating the experiences of different individuals over the course of scientific history, we will attempt to gain perspective on the current status of women in the sciences and discuss how the contributions of women to scientific research can be further encouraged and increased.

This introductory seminar course will examine identity development and intergroup relations as we challenge ourselves to think critically about our social identities and worldviews. Social or group identities include for example, race, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. These identities are predicated upon a social structural system that advantages some groups and disadvantages others. As such, this course will also explore how inequities in our multicultural and multiethnic American society impact identity development and relationships between groups.

The riddle of the Sphinx was about the ages of man. This seminar will explore coming into youth, adulthood, and old age in the ancient world, through literary and historical sources, and through recent studies of private life in antiquity. For both Greeks and Romans, coming of age was also about making various moves between private and public spheres, and we will consider as well the public personae of certain key historical figures and notions of a fully formed character. People come of age; so too do historical cultures. “Late antiquity” corresponded with new emphases and perspectives on age which we will investigate through some of the prolific writers of the period (e.g., Augustine and Jerome). Finally we will consider the “pleasure of ruins,” the lure of antiquity’s coming of age and the modern fascination with traipsing over its decrepit remains.

Laius beats Oedipus at the crossroads; Oedipus kills his father. In many ways this image captures one of the more horrific relationships that Sophocles' extant plays provide us?that of father and son. Sexual jealousy, political rivalry, the power of a father's curse, the rage of a son's despair, these images of a truly dysfunctional family blood tie have left a legacy that is at once the stuff of psychoanalytic model and a long tradition in both literature and film that still fills us at once with fear and wonder. How can a relationship that should be so close become so estranged? How does the one who should be the most beloved become the object of hatred and scorn.

We will closely read four plays of Sophocles together, as well as view a couple of modern adaptations. In the latter part of the course we will also read one play of Euripides and one of the comic poet Aristophanes for contrast and comparison. Bi-weekly short papers and regular class participation are the requirements of this first year seminar.

This course centers on Homer’s Iliad and its paradigmatic value for military conflict in antiquity and the modern era. The course begins with a close reading of the epic, in particular the dynamic relationship between the narrowly circumscribed subject (“the anger of Achilles”) and the complex narrative that transforms this subject into an evocative and enduring account of war. The remainder of the course considers works in a variety of disciplines (e.g., tragedy, philosophy, psychology) for which the Iliad has provided access to understanding war and its call to remembrance.

This course invites students to explore the role of fiction and the imaginary in the definition and invention of the self. We will focus on our relation to real and imaginary others, and the interplay of desire, anxiety, and sometimes violence involved in this relation. Throughout the course we will deal with issues related to sexual, social, and ethnic identities, questioning the traditional boundaries between the natural and the artificial, the familiar and the alien, the private and the public. Readings will include texts by Virginia Woolf, Nabokov, Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Böll, and Duras, and and contemporary science fiction authors. Further examples will be drawn from art, film, and advertisement.

Evaluation will be based on class participation, an oral presentation, and three short essays. No final.

It is not by accident that some of the most influential theorists of the century have made a contribution to the detective story genre, either by analyzing it or by writing murder mysteries themselves — Julia Kristeva and Umberto Ecco are among the most famous examples — nor that the best contemporary writers have written for the genre — e.g., the latest Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk or the American Don Delillo. This course offers an interdisciplinary examination of the detective story genre. We will start with the film classic, Casablanca, uncoveringits famous literary and cinematic mysteries. Then, as background, we will explore key poststructuralist theories of the 20th century that underline and inform the fiction we will be discussing. Finally, we will examine how the texts communicate among themselves and why and how postmodern authors incorporate other texts into their own. We will thus combine the best of the two worlds: an extensive reading list full of thrilling mysteries and an introduction to the literary theory of the 20th century, dealing with issues of intertextuality, semiotics, poststructuralism, representation, globalization, postcolonialism, and psychoanalysis.

Course materials include: fiction (Umberto Ecco, Julia Kristeva, Don Dellilo, Michael Ondatjee, Orhan Pamuk, Amitav Gosh, J.L. Borges), theory (Tzvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva, Slavoj Žižek, Fredric Jameson), and film.

Evaluation will be based on a midterm paper, a final essay, a presentation on a self-designed topic, and participation in class.

Our identities, or how we think about who we are, contribute in deeply meaningful ways to our life experiences and relationships. This course will introduce students to psychological theories of identity, with a particular focus on intersecting identities. Course readings, excerpts from popular films, and self-reflection will help us to understand what it means to have an identity, and how we negotiate the multiple identities we all have. Assigned essays as well as in-class writing and discussion will challenge students to think about the significance of gender, sexuality, race, and ethnicity in forming our complex selves. The reason we are working together this term is to help you to become college-level writers. I take this task seriously, and I hope you will too! I also hope that this class will be personally meaningful for you. I hope that you will learn about yourself as a person and as a writer. Writing is a cornerstone of intellectual development; it can help us to organize our thoughts, to think analytically and critically, to present our ideas, and to understand and solve problems. Regardless of the career or life path(s) you choose, you will be required to write in various genres throughout your life, and to be able to organize your thoughts, arguments, and evaluations through writing. Those who demonstrate good writing are likely to perform well in their courses and careers, and to submit successful applications for jobs and graduate or professional school programs. Learning to write requires a lot of practice. This class is designed to give you that practice and to encourage you to approach the reading and writing processes in more critical and creative ways than you may have in the past. You will work closely with your peers and the instructor to develop your voice as a writer through a series of formal and informal writing assignments and workshops. The following text will be required for this course, and will be available at Shaman Drum Bookstore (check online first for used copies!): Lunsford, A.A. (2005). The Everyday Writer (3rd edition). Boston: Bedford/ St. Martin's Press. Additional readings will be posted on this website. Tentative film viewings for the academic term include: 'Ma Vie en Rose" '8 Mile? 'Whale Rider? 'TransAmerica? 'Y Tu Mama Tambien? 'Hable con Ella?

What does it mean to speak American? With all our social and regional diversity, "American" comprises many linguistic varieties and social identities. We will work on developing your writing skills while interrogating the relationship between language and society through readings, writing assignments, and discussions that focus on American dialects and their speakers. While much of the course content addresses spoken language, the course focuses on your writing, and will help train you to produce clear, convincing, and sophisticated prose. You will develop your voice as a writer through a series of formal and informal writing assignments and workshops.

This course looks at the history of the U.S. from the outside in. We'll focus on genres like journalism, travel narratives, and documentary film in order to consider the ways in which people experience and analyze U.S foreign policy from the outside. We'll discuss the ways 'outsider' perspectives can shed new light on both global opinion of U.S. foreign policy and American national identity. Writing assignments for the course will provide students with opportunities to explore their own relationships to national identity, critique public discourse around U.S policy, and participate in contemporary debates about the politics of internationalism and imperialism.

'Is it lack of imagination that makes us come to imagined places, not just stay home'

— the poet Elizabeth Bishop asks in 'Questions of Travel.'

Iraq, the war on terror, riots: at times, conflict seems to be everywhere. How do the accounts we read affect our perception of conflicts? How do we think and write about conflicts? This course focuses on the creation of complex, analytic, well-supported arguments that matter in academic contexts. You will develop your ability to write in different styles, recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of each and understanding the connections between an author's choice of style and readers' reactions. In doing so, you will develop strategies for organizing, revising, editing, and proofreading to improve development of ideas and appropriateness of expression.

'Times of terror are times of heroism.'

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

All cultures have heroes, those who transcend human moral and physical limits to commit acts of courage for some greater good. Heroes emerge as extraordinary in times of adversity and struggle. They are often controversial figures. In this course we will read philosophy, myth, poetry, and comix. We will watch movies and TV episodes and identify hero protagonists. We will think critically about what characterizes heroes, she-roes, superheroes, and anti-heroes: what social spaces they are allowed to occupy? With insight, compassion, and tightly honed skills, we will use these themes to write (question, argue, convince, reflect) about core questions: Do we live in a time of terror? Who are our heroes? This course focuses on the creation of complex, analytic, well-supported arguments that matter in academic contexts. Students work closely with their peers and the instructor to develop their written prose. Readings cover a variety of different genres and academic disciplines. We will work together as writers to investigate the difference between opinion and argument, between description and analysis. You will learn appropriate citation practices, as well as to recognize and use several different rhetorical styles. You will learn to respond critically to texts, how to synthesize what you read in order to support your own assertions.

William Shakespeare was not only the author of some of the most beautiful and brilliant love poetry in the English language but also an original and powerful thinker about the nature of love. In this seminar, we will focus on his Sonnets — love poems addressed to both male and female lovers. We will also consider a few of his many plays, such as OTHELLO and ANTONY & CLEOPATRA, that yield particular insights into love, desire, marriage, and sexuality, along with some of the scholarship on them. Shakespeare's work is fascinating both for what it has to tell us about the possibilities and impossibilities of love and for its controversial position in debates over the history of sexuality.

How did we learn to read? What enhanced or inhibited that learning? How is our interpretation now shaped by our identity and background? We address these questions self-reflectively by tutoring area school children and by writing about our own reading and community experiences. Assignments incorporate related research (i.e., on bilingual education) and “literacy narratives” (in which writers such as Frederick Douglass, Mary Antin, Zitkala-Sa, and Richard Rodriguez describe their early reading/writing experiences). Evaluation will be based on class participation, several in-class and out-of-class responses, and several formal paper assignments (including an eight-page research paper). Rough drafting and peer review are integral to this course.

This course introduces students to the critical analysis of Asian American women’s literary, artistic, and cultural production representing a range of genres and mediums: cultural history, autobiography, legal scholarship, stand-up comedy, short fiction, visual art, and video documentary. Topics we may explore include the following: the linkages between gender and race; the relation between memory, story, and history; femininity and the family; sex and desire; violence inside and outside of the home; mixed heritage; homophobia; and immigrant experiences. This course also emphasizes the development of students’ expository writing skills.

Course requirements: an oral presentation, several 1-2 page responses, the development of a research project (annotated bibliography and a 4-6 page paper), and a final exam.

Shakespeare wrote for a particular kind of theater in a complex and challenging time. Sometimes praised as a poet of the stage, he was also one of the most gifted, original, and provocative masters of stagecraft and the possibilities of performance. In this LSA Honors Seminar, we will be studying six plays intensively, from all angles, with a special emphasis on the ways in which performance can embody meaning. We will use whatever resources available — our own rough versions of scenes as well as whatever filmed or live performances are at hand — to analyze, discuss, and learn from the plays we study, which will be Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear. There will be regular short writing assignments, two medium-length essays of six or seven pages, and one research project in which each student will learn how to envision past and distant performances that one can’t travel in space or time to see oneself. Books will be on order at Shaman Drum Bookshop.

Stewardship of the Earth is not a new ideal. American Indians have long fostered the belief that humans are merely caretakers of the environment. Over time, industrialized society has made attempts to carry forward this tradition. In the 1970's, when the modern environmental movement was born, our country enacted sweeping environmental laws. In the decades since, however, our commitment to environmental protection has waned. This course will explore the human connection to the environment and the evolution of American attitudes toward the natural world as reflected in environmental literature. Using language to understand our connection to the world around us, we will examine our relationship with nature in various works of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and film. In addition to exploring environmental literature and film, students will 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 our attempts to reconcile our ambivalent attitudes toward nature, this course will help us define our place in the natural world.

Required texts/authors may include:

• Edward Abbey Desert Solitaire
• Diane Ackerman The Whale by Moonlight
• Rachel Carson Silent Spring
• Ralph Waldo Emerson Selected Essays
• Ted Kerasote The Return of the Wild
• Donald Knowler The Falconer of Central Park
• Craig Lesley Winterkill
• Aldo Leopold Sand County Almanac
• Ellen Meloy Eating Stone
• Scott Momaday The Man Made of Words
• Gary Snyder The Practice of the Wild
• Jack Turner The Abstract Wild

In English. Identity has drawn often on diverse notions of "possession," from Antiquity's belief in demonic inspiration to the exorcisms of Christian Europe, and on to modern films' fascination with the "other within." Competing with economic notions of possession, the phenomenon of demonic possession appears in a range of philosophical and artistic works and culminates in the modern ideal of identity as self-possession. Readings from demonologies, accounts of exorcism, excerpts from Plutarch, Calvin, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Descartes, and Milton, and the films The Return of Martin Guerre (1982), Dead Ringers (1988), Vertigo (1958), Angel Heart (1987), and Memento (2000). Four essays, two quizzes, two exams, and a visit to special collections to examine original editions of the works read.

Credit Exclusions: Those with credit for GEOSCI 114 may only elect GEOSCI 142 for 2 credits.

This seminar starts from stellar evolution and the formation of the elements in stars, and ends at the formation of terrestrial planets from these elements and their early evolution (especially the Earth). Students learn cosmochemical and geochemical concepts and methods and apply them to several theme topics. Though factual knowledge is an important part of the course, emphasis is on how scientists study and solve problems and how science progresses using historical examples.

Credit Exclusions: No credit granted to those who have completed three of GEOSCI 105, 107, and 205. Those with credit for one of GEOSCI 105 and 107 may only elect GEOSCI 146 for two credits. Those with credit for GEOSCI 205, or both GEOSCI 105 and 107, may only elect GEOSCI 146 for one credit.

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.

The course involves three hours of weekly meeting time and selected reading material. No background in Earth science is necessary. Evaluation is based on class participation, three exams, a series of student presentations on selected topics and written essays on the same subject.

Credit Exclusions: Those with credit for GEOSCI 107 or 205 may only elect GEOSCI 147 for 2 credits. Those who have credit for both GEOSCI 107 and 205 may only elect 147 for 1 credit.

This first-year seminar examines the geologic origin, as well as economic and societal impact of natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, floods, tsunamis, climate change, and meteorite impacts through lectures, discussion, student presentations, and research projects.

Geological observations have had a profound impact on our understanding of the origin and evolution of life on Earth. This course seeks to provide the broad historical and conceptual background required to critique geological and evolutionary theory. We will begin by considering the nature of scientific inquiry and the substantial pre-Darwinian history of geological thought. We will then explore early concepts and controversies concerning the geologic history of life and their importance for Darwin's theory of natural selection. Many other keystone geological controversies, including the age of the earth, plate tectonics, and asteroid impacts will be addressed in the context of our understanding of the history of life on earth. Finally, we will discuss modern questions in evolutionary biology and geology, particularly with respect to their potential social significance.

Survey of oceanography and the resources of the ocean. Consideration of conflicts arising from overexploitation and competing uses of the ocean and its resources.

Drawing on mainly modern and contemporary art and curatorial practices, as well as films and textual sources, this seminar looks at the varied ways in which art and artifacts have been collected and displayed. The first part of the course, ‘Museums and Museums without Walls,’ is an introductory, chronological account of the rise and development of the museum in its different manifestations. Part Two, ‘Culture Industries’ focuses on rituals of collecting and on some of the ways in which these have been theorized. We also look at the various ways in which, in today’s visually-orientated world, art (and culture more broadly) is administered and packaged, bought and sold. Part Three, ‘Alternate Currents’, considers a range of counter-cultural and grassroots involvements with the display and dissemination of art. In this seminar, and as far as is practicable, we will identify and explore a small number of relevant artworld spaces, projects and practices in and around Ann Arbor. Teaching is by way of short lectures, case-study work, and discussion. Throughout the course, and as a way of engaging actively with the materials and ideas being explored, we will also work in a practical way with various approaches to collecting and archiving. Assessment takes the form of a midterm test, an individual or group seminar presentation, and an end of academic term research project/essay based on a collection or images, objects and/or ideas of particular interest to you. This could take the form of a small catalogue or publication. A course reader will be available in electronic form via Mirlyn/C-tools.

Image: Carsten Höller, Test Site, 2006, Tate Modern, London.

IV. 4

From smallpox to AIDS, dramatic disease outbreaks both shaped and were shaped by American culture. This course explores how medicine and culture intersected to influence the causes, experiences of, and responses to epidemics in America; and it uses epidemics to illuminate the history of American society from colonization to the present. Lectures introduce new topics and summarize discussions. Discussions will explore past perceptions and compare past and present; we will not discuss the present apart from the past. Readings (four to five hours weekly) include modern histories, plus old newspapers, films, and medical journals. Written assignments are two five-page book review papers, a short weekly journal, and an individual research project with parts due throughout the term. They will introduce you to the medical, graduate, and undergraduate libraries. Readings available only for purchase cost about $30; other required readings available on reserve or for purchase cost about $160 more. Course Pack available at Dollar Bill.

Assigned Books:

• Crosby, Columbian Exchange (Greenwood)
• Rosenberg, Cholera Years (Chicago)
• De Kruif, Microbe Hunters
• Barry, The Great Influenza (Viking)
• Oshinsky, Polio(Oxford)
• Garrett, The Coming Plague (Penguin)

What kinds of relationships exist among myth, fiction, imagination, and history, especially for a central African location like the Congo whose history has known so much creativity, myth-making, and violence?

This course will consider how novelists, painters, comic artists, filmmakers, and historians have imagined the Congo and such iconic historical figures as King Leopold, Patrice Lumumba, and Mobutu. Beginning with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, we will examine outsiders' narratives about this central African (post-)colony, and also analyze various sources, including Congolese tales, epics, sculptures, paintings, memoirs, and novels, to question Euroamerican representations, interrogate cliches, and see how Congolese themselves imagine, write, and remember history.

A basic introduction to Congolese history and to historical thinking and method.

This course will explore the history of modern Scotland, especially the history of the twentieth century to the present, through a range of readings and other materials. Scotland is often presented in popular culture through a series of stereotyped images, often involving sheep and sheep byproducts, or allegedly emblematic moments, typically involving uprisings and oppression. We will try to expand our understanding of Scotland to include its modernity, its internal differences, its urbanity, its relations to other places, and its failure to comply with clichés.

Particular emphasis will be placed on the ways in which writers, filmmakers, and even musicians have represented modern Scotland, although we will read a series of works of historical scholarship and political argument to help us understand the contexts in which such cultural works have been created. This course will also offer opportunities for students to explore particular interests within the broad framework, e.g., the rise and fall and rise of Scottish nationalism, language debates, the politics of land ownership, Scotland in Hollywood film, what's particularly Scottish about Scottish social problems, North Sea oil and gas, Scotland in the post-imperial era, or the works of particular Scottish writers or artists.

NO background in British or Scottish history or literature is assumed, and students from all majors are welcomed.

There will be an optional 2-week trip to Scotland at the end of the course, involving travel to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Highlands.

Nomads are wanderers who are never away from home. The open sky is their backyard; the tent is a house which travels wherever they do. The nomadic way of life, rather than something exotic and on the margins of “civilization,” strikes a deep chord within the human condition. Some of the most enduring peoples and cultures are nomadic. This seminar will take up the lives and landscapes of nomads in Africa and western Asia. We will consider both the long histories of nomadism and the survival of nomads in the modern world, as well as the pressures of ecological change, urbanization, and “development” on the nomad’s freedom and autonomy. The gypsies represent a special case of a nomadic people who have crossed continents, languages, cultures, and faiths – from India to the U.S. – without losing a sense of their unique identity. Camels, tents, and gypsy violins will all be part of the seminar’s caravan.

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.

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.

It is often noted that there is a great deal of moral disagreement. Different communities, in different times and places, have different judgments and feelings about what is morally right and what is morally fundamental. Some have taken this diversity of moral views as undermining belief in moral objectivity, since, as J.L. Mackie said,

"feelings may well change with changing conditions, but a judgment about objective fact should be everywhere the same."

This course will examine and evaluate this line of thought. We will start with some historical readings, then discuss some recent anthropologists' accounts of moral diversity. Next we'll focus on the question of moral objectivity and whether it can be plausibly maintained in the face of such diversity. Finally, we will consider what one ought to do: does widespread disagreement lend support to a principle of tolerance? How much tolerance is required, and in what circumstances?

We will begin with Socrates’ conception of philosophy as the attempt to live on the basis of rationally justified principles. Actions are rationally justified, he suggests, if they are appropriately guided by a proper conception of the good life. But what is the good life? We will examine four candidates: the life of pleasure, the life of virtue, the meaningful life, and a life that combines each of these in an appropriate blend. Readings will include Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Cicero, Epictetus, Julien de La Mettrie, J.S. Mill, H.A. Pritchard, Sigmund Freud, Robert Nozick, L.W. Sumner, and Susan Wolf.

We will examine answers given by philosophers through the ages and in contemporary times to fundamental questions such as the existence of God, death and immortality, the nature of right and wrong, and what constitutes art and beauty. This is a discussion-based course where each student will be asked to give an oral presentation on assigned articles. Additional course requirements will include writing short discussion papers, a midterm, and a final exam.

The course examines the conceptual foundations underlying our current scientific understanding of the origin and evolution of the universe. The subject is viewed through four astrophysical windows: the universe as a whole; galaxies; stars; and planets. We explore how these various settings provide the essential ingredients for the genesis of life. Finally we examine the evolution of scientific thought that enabled humans to develop an understanding of the universe around them.

This three-credit freshman seminar in psychology is focused on the study of traumatic stress and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. Using readings, lectures, clinical case presentations, films, and class discussions, we cover the history, etiology, theories, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of traumatic stress at different ages across the lifespan. Following the developmental psychopathology model, research on relevant risk and protective factors associated with traumatic stress is also presented. The course begins with discussion of a range of traumatic events and definitions of trauma symptoms and responses. Next, theoretical frameworks useful for understanding traumatic stress reactions are introduced, including theories that cover social learning, social cognition, evolution, neuropsychology, and psychodynamic models. In addition, assessment, diagnosis, and the evidence for best intervention practices in treating traumatic stress are examined. Each week a didactic presentation is followed by a clinical case presentation, a film, and/or an invited speaker. Class activities, assignments and discussion center on assessing, explaining and diagnosing traumatic stress in films and readings. Full preparation and participation in discussion is expected at each class with questions given in advance. There will be weekly, required short essays responding to questions based on the reading and applied to in-class presentations or films. The final paper (approximately 10 pages) requires students to apply course concepts to a character in a novel (to be selected) by 1) identifying traumatic events, 2) diagnosing traumatic stress reactions, 2) evaluating both risk and protective features, 4) proposing a treatment plan, and 5) outlining a plan for evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention.

Grades are based on the short essays (50%), the final paper (30%), and class discussion and preparation (20%).

This introductory seminar course will examine identity development and intergroup relations as we challenge ourselves to think critically about our social identities and worldviews. Social or group identities include for example, race, ethnicity, social class, gender, sexual orientation, and religion. These identities are predicated upon a social structural system that advantages some groups and disadvantages others. As such, this course will also explore how inequities in our multicultural and multiethnic American society impact identity development and relationships between groups.

Artists, craftspeople, and cultural knowledge-makers have been instrumental but not acknowledged as creators of social change through the practice of “everyday politics”. This seminar will explore several types of creative activities, especially those that involve both visual and narrative materials (pictures and stories). We will study how those activities have produced social change, especially among disadvantaged or stigmatized groups (like youth, persons with brain disorders, prisoners, the elderly, people with HIV/AIDS) in the United States and South Africa. Students will themselves develop the skills to combine creative materials with narrative writing to produce social change.

This course will explore how gender influences construction of the self and how we understand our own and others' emotions. Taught from a social justice perspective, this class will explore psychologically, socially and morally complex issues surrounding gender identity, transsexualism, sexual orientation, and relationships. Students will examine their own beliefs and experiences as well as become familiar with basic controversies in this area.

Both utopia (describing an imaginary ideal society) and dystopia (describing an imaginary evil society) have captured the imagination of numerous generations of readers. This course investigates the history of these exciting genres across national boundaries through critical writing and reading. It traces the evolution of the genres from the works of antiquity and the Renaissance, through the nineteenth century and the development of Socialist rationalist utopia, to the great age of dystopia, and up to postmodern parodic novels. It explores how English, Russian, American, Czech, Polish, and other utopias/dystopias respond to key socio-political developments in the world, and how they react to various cultural movements (e.g., Romanticism, the Avant-Garde, Postmodernism), as well as how they take on various aspects of fantasy and science fiction. Authors will include Thomas More, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Evgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Karel Čapek, Stanisław Lem, Thomas Pynchon, and Vladimir Voinovich. Select Anglo-American, German, and Russian movies will be shown.

Our modern world emerged in four major transitions:

• a Demographic Transition, from high to low birth and death rates;
• an Industrial Transition, from agrarian to manufacturing economies;
• an Urban Transition, from rural to urban living; and
• an Age transition, from a ”traditional” age structure through a “younging” to an “aging” of the population.

These transitions have also brought a massive impact on our global environment. This first-Year seminar will consider all aspects of these transitions and their environmental impact. There will be a special writing project. Students will work in small teams of 2-3, preparing a comparative analysis of two countries. Usually these will be “developing countries.” Students will learn how to measure all aspects of these transitions with quantitative data, and then link those quantitative analyses with historical and institutional processes. The grade will be based on the paper; there will be no examinations. The papers will be done in three installments, following the three major parts of the course: quantitative country comparisons, historical processes, and modern institutional processes. In the first few weeks of the course, students will go over quantitative measures of the transitions. They will prepare a one page statistical table showing the past half century of the transitions in their two countries and will write a one or two page description of those transitions. This will identify a problem to be addressed in the rest of the paper. The first installment will be submitted and reported in class on the fourth week of class. Within one week, students will be given detailed written comments on their first installments. The second installment will be due, and reported in class, on the 10th week of class. This will contain a revision of the first installment and a review of the history of the two countries, showing how that history is linked to the current transitions. Again, within a week the students will receive detailed comments on the revised first and new second installments. The third installment will examine some specific aspect of the modern transitions, showing how human ecological forces (geography and political-social-cultural institutions) impact the environment and what policies can be developed to mitigate the environmental impact. As before, the third installment will include revisions of the first two and a linking to the final installment. This will be due and reported in class in the last class session. All materials will be available on Course Tools.

Emphasizes problem solving and modeling related to games, gambling and coincidences, touching on many fundamental ideas in discrete probability, finite Markov chains, dynamic programming and game theory.

This seminar will focus on how people listen to music and music's impact on communities of people who listen to it. In the first weeks of the course students will learn how to listen to music and explore the interaction of different elements of music, such as rhythm, melody, and harmony. As we begin to listen to a wider range of music, we will explore the impact of music in cases such as the Paris riot of 1913 following the performance of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" or the reaction of King George to the "Hallelujah Chorus" at the conclusion of Handel's "Messiah." We will consider the impact of popular music, religious music and the band as examples of how music has reached out into all types of communities. Students will attend three musical events and write reviews of each based on concepts explored in class. The professor will present and perform numerous examples of music on the piano, there will be invited soloists and chamber ensembles, and students who wish may share their musical talents in class.

What were the social, economic, geopolitical and personal psychological conditions in 1943 that would result in an 18-year old freshman leaving college and going off to spend the next three years fighting with the U.S. Army in Europe and liberating Dachau? What led up to 1943 and how did this series of historical events become a part of the life of American youth and continue to affect that generation's (your grandparents) behavior after World War II and through today? What do we know from 30 years of research on the nature of obedience that resulted in both self-sacrifice and the Holocaust? These questions will be explored using the resources of historical works, novels, films, and personal documents. Each student will interview a member of that generation, preferably a grandparent or surrogate, with armed services experience during the war and write a psycho-history of their subject's experiences and its consequences for their lives and times.

Issues of human sexuality and gender are explored from many perspectives including historical, cross-cultural, religious, and physiological. All people are sexual throughout their lives, although the expression of our sex and gender is one of the most diverse and controversial areas in personal and public arenas. The diversities of biological sex, gender identity, gender roles, sexual orientation, sexual identity, and sexual behavior and the interplay among them are presented and reinforced through readings, exercises, videos, guest speakers, and weekly written assignments. We will discuss sexual difficulties such as infertility, STDs, sexual dysfunction, and sexual victimization along with prevention and treatment strategies. We will examine social and political issues such as civil rights for sexual minorities, sex and the law, date rape, pornography, the impact of AIDS, public and private morality. Issues especially relevant for students are explored, including choice of sexual partners and behaviors, the influence of drugs, alcohol, and smoking on sexual function and sexual decision-making, sexual values and religious attitudes toward sex, and the wide range of possible lifestyles from celibacy to polyamory to paraphilias. The course requires access to the Internet, and uses a variety of Web-based resources and communication modes, as well as a textbook and readings from various journals. Weekly short papers and a semester project are required. Opportunities for help with developing presentation skills are available.

This service-learning course explores the dynamics of formal and informal education in urban settings through traditional coursework integrated with personal reflection and community involvement. We will study the effects of social history and culture on the social identity of children and youth. For example, how have community members helped to create and support positive roles for children and youth. Students will work closely with members of the community and program staff to document cultural beliefs and practices that shape social identity and expectations. This course is intended for students with an interest in teaching, or urban and community studies, or both.

Although medications have long been the primary means to treat disease in Western society, only in recent years has their use evoked widespread interest beyond the health care professionals who work with them and the individual patients who consume them. This seminar will describe and evaluate key issues that have raised the visibility of medication use in recent years. Areas that will be addressed include drug development and regulation, the economics and financing of medication benefit programs, medication taking behaviors, and programs to achieve proper medication use. The role of the pharmacist in managing that use, including culturally competent care, will be addressed.

Examples of specific issues that may be used to illustrate the course topics include direct-to-consumer advertising of medications, the balance between patient confidentiality and health professionals' need to know, insurer payment for "life style drugs" such as Viagra^® for impotence and Rogaine^® for baldness, and clinical controversies such as the use of hormone replacement therapy in menopausal women. Course readings will be selected from the clinical, professional, and lay literature and serve as the basis for class discussion and written assignments. One of the desired outcomes of this course is to develop in students the ability to critically analyze differing perspectives that affect how medications are used.

This is a course with photography at its heart. Being in Pictures: An Intimate Photo Memoir is the title of the professor’s upcoming book of photographs, text and collages. Students’ projects will involve photography in combination with reading, writings, film viewing and critical thinking. We will explore a wide range of photographic works such as autobiographic, documentary, and journalistic, and consider photographic meaning through discussion of photographic contexts, makers, and audiences. Attention to women and gender will be aspects of written essays as well as visual projects. Students will learn some basics of digital photography and photo printing and may be able to digitally produce individual small books. Access to a digital camera for use in this class is required.

“Thereupon Ambika became terribly angry with those foes, and in her anger her countenance then became dark as ink. Out from the surface of her forehead, fierce with frown, issued suddenly Kali of terrible countenance. ”

—   Devimahatmya, Chapter 7

The prevalence of Goddess worship in South Asia has not only been parodied in Indiana Jones movies and in crime novels centering around obscure and fearsome Indian cults but, on a more serious vein, it has been the source of inspiration for Western feminist religious scholarship trying to retrieve its own Goddess traditions. It has also been the focus of psychoanalytical theories regarding Indian mothers, their male off-spring, masculinity and sexuality. In this course we are going to examine what exactly the South Asian religious tradition says about the Goddess. We are going to pose questions about the antiquity of the tradition, and its endless capacity for re-invention and renewal in contemporary religious practice and how it thrives in South Asian culture, with living women saints and goddesses. We are going to ask if the Goddess is a feminist. We might also want to ponder the paradox of South Asian Goddess veneration co-existing with the scriptural and very real social subordination of women. Through exploring these various questions we are going to follow the story of the Goddess in the South Asian religious traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

This first-year seminar will explore the trans/formations of genders in twentieth-century transnational capitalism. Our goals are twofold: to understand the ways in which the relationship between capitalism and gender have been theorized on the one hand, and to grapple with the changing historical nature of this relationship on the other hand. Course readings will examine the relationship between patriarchy and capitalism as historically contingent and will address the historical development of household technologies and the domestic consumer goods industry in the process of "international housewifization" with early commodity capitalism and industrialization, during WWII, and in the post-war period; the "new international division of labor" and how women are differently located in production and consumption along the global assembly line; and the role of gender in "sweatshop" labor and activism. Does capitalism need patriarchy, and how has this refracted through colonialism, imperialism, and neo-colonialism in the global arena? How are subjects being gendered by global capitalism in varied transnational locals? How does the pervasive consumerism of an advertising in advanced capitalism work to re/produce us as compliant workers, eager consumers, and in binary genders?