An introduction to narrative theory, this seminar proposes narratology as a method for reading race, including whiteness, in America. If race, according to a recent documentary series, signals the “power of an illusion,” it structures our ways of reading, distributing, and mobilizing power in the U.S. And if narrative is an “instrument of power,” as one critic puts it, it is crucial to identify the elements of narrative, combinations of which produce the readerly experience. We will read U.S. fiction and non-fiction — mostly by African American and Asian American authors — not merely as literary praxis, manifestations of narrative theory at work. We will pay attention to how they self-consciously propose their own theories of narrative.

Hawai‘i offers a complex case study of a multiethnic mélange embroiled in many layers of cultural politics. On one hand, Hawai‘i is part of the United States. On the other hand, Hawai‘i is the ancestral home of indigenous Native Hawaiian people who are engaged in a movement to recuperate some form of sovereignty and self-determination. On many hands in between are the politics of multi-ethnic “local culture,” the appropriation of Native Hawaiian signifiers in the economic development of Hawai‘i’s tourism sector, and the marginalizing of both Native Hawaiian and multi-ethnic “local” aspirations and concerns under militarization and continuing in-migration of new residents uninformed about, and socioeconomically insulated from, the cultural politics on the ground. This seminar will focus on articulating these issues, and examining a range of expressive culture in which these issues get worked out. Readings will include Okihiro, Island World; Okamura, Ethnicity and Inequality in Hawai‘i, and Silva, Aloha Betrayed; and a coursepak of additional readings.

This course is about the exciting progress in natural selection theory after Darwin. Students will read such books as: The Beak of the Finch (Jonathan Weiner), The Selfish Gene (Richard Dawkins), and The Moral Animal (Robert Wright). We will ask: Why is natural selection considered the principle guiding force of evolution? What is the evidence for natural selection? In humans? In nonhumans? What are the different kinds of selection? At what level (s) does selection act? The group? The individual? The gene? Which of these levels is most potent and why? In the life sciences, what relevance does natural selection theory have for pesticide resistance and the development of effective vaccines? In the social sciences, how has natural selection theory been invoked in psychology, economics, and anthropology? Does the notion of selfish genes have any relevance to human behavior? How can behavior be adaptive yet not have any basis in genetic differences among individuals? Why does natural selection often favor flexible as opposed to "innate" responses? What roles are played by culture, learning, development? What is the naturalistic fallacy?

The seminar examines what “development” means from a range of perspectives, including those of community members, of anthropologists, and of development professionals, in order to understand how their different attitudes, beliefs, and political concerns affect how development projects are implemented and interpreted. The anthropological analyses of specific cultural, social, economic, and political dynamics of international development projects — such as microcredit schemes, road-building projects, and global health initiatives — and the consequences of their implementation at the local level provide insights into both the intended and unintended activities associated with “development” as a set of complex social practices. Using reading and videos from anthropological studies of development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, students’ work will be evaluated through seminar participation, a short essay paper and book review, an in-class midterm exam, and a final project report.

What does capitalism have to do with your anxiety? Why do sports make grown people cry? When is boredom a political act? How is love related to globalism, intimacy to the internet? Do dogs feel nostalgia? We will examine these questions across various places in the world, and consider how emotions matter across shifting social contexts. This seminar will require intensive reading, and several writing assignments due throughout the term.

This course will focus on the various phases of Japan's encounter with the West from the 16th-century introduction of Christianity to the mid-19th century opening to Western trade and institutions, and the American occupation after WWII. We will examine the shifting representations of the West in the Japanese imagination, for example, as object of aspiration and identification, as "barbarian" enemy and rival, protective father-figure, space of erotic fantasy, and so on. In sum, what roles has "the West" played as the Other in the ongoing project of Japanese self-definition, and why?

Readings will include both contemporary fiction and cultural studies materials.

Requirements: discussions, four two-page essays, and a final paper.

This course will explore the scientific underpinnings of inorganic chemistry on society from alternative energy sources (e.g., hydrogen storage and production), to new materials (superconductors and single molecule magnets), to the role of metals in biological systems (cancer treatment/diagnosis to photosynthesis and metalloenzymes responsible for drug metabolism). The course will place particular emphasis on bioinorganic chemistry (the chemistry of the living dead).

The ancient Greeks invented comedy, and wrote some of the best ones ever — like plays about flying up to heaven on a giant dung-beetle, inventing a city in the sky, or visiting Hell to fetch back a dead poet. In the comedies of Aristophanes (c. 420 B.C.E.), women take over the state from men and organize a sex-strike to stop the war, and people even go to college to study weird things with a bizarre professor named Socrates — long before any such things were thought remotely possible (Aristophanes invented the first college, as a joke). Explore the crazy world of Greek comedy, how it made fun of real life, the gods, the politicians, and almost everything else, and how it eventually turned into sitcom. Ever wondered why we laugh, why we laugh at the things we do, and what the function of laughter is? We will study that too ...

This First-Year Writing Seminar investigates the portrayal of criminal subcultures in contemporary cinema and literature. The main purpose of the course is to improve the skills of critical analysis and academic writing. To that end, students will submit at least 25 pages of well-polished prose during the semester. Each week is organized around a “writing-theme” (e.g., diction, tone, organization, revision, etc.) and a “gangster-theme”, (e.g., intra-familial politics, omertà, old mob vs. new mob, “flipping”). Frequent topics of discussion will be characterization, plot structure, language, and communication.

Department First-Year seminar, special topics.

In this course we will bring a comparative approach to human cultures’ perennial concern with homecoming from warfare, as reflected in literature, film, and other cultural expression. We’ll ask how heroism in war translates into the triumphs and travails of reintegration into society, how the psychological toll of battle affects the soldier’s ability to return to civilian life, and how the very symbols of homecoming—friends, family, and other loved ones—may become the source of seemingly irresolvable tensions. Readings will include selections from Homer’s Odyssey, the psychologist’s Jonathan Shay’s Odysseus in America, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Ha Jin’s War Trash, and the remarkable recent collection of writings by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, Operation Homecoming. We’ll also consider cinematic versions of some of these texts.

Are traitors born, or are they created? This question was posed by Aeschines as he fought for his life before an Athenian jury more than 2,000 years ago. In this class we will explore what it meant to be a traitor in ancient Greece. Who is the traitor? How could you tell the traitor apart from the loyal citizen? Is the traitor simply the victim of a conspiracy theory? Through reading, writing, and discussion, we will consider the role traitors and conspiracy theories played in democratic Athens and what role they might play in our own society.

From Rwanda to Ireland, Sri Lanka to Lebanon, ethnically-motivated violence remains depressingly common in the world today. What is ethnicity, and when and why do conflicts over ethnic identities lead to violence? Where do such identities come from, and to what extent are they malleable rather than fixed? Multi-ethnic societies pose special challenges for democracy; indeed, some political philosophers have argued that loyalty to one’s ethnic group over one’s state will make democratic government impossible. In this course we will explore the meaning of ethnicity, its origins, and its consequences through a variety of writing genres, including personal narratives, historical analysis, anthropology, and political science.

Statistics are often maligned as a means to deceive while technically telling the truth. Yet, as we move through the information age, the sheer quantity of data available provides all writers with the opportunity to incorporate statistics in their work. In this course, we will explore the use and misuse of data and statistics. We will learn to critically evaluate statistics and quantitative data used in various types of writing: newspapers and magazines, blogs, research papers, and academic journals. In parallel, we will study methods to present data honestly and effectively in our own arguments.

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 four plays intensively, from all angles, with a special emphasis on the ways in which performance embodies 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 A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, and Othello.

Weekly assignments in addition to the readings listed below will be designed to aid this process. By the end of the term, you will have a firm sense of the varied traditions of theatrical performance in Shakespeare’s plays, a developing sense of how to identify fruitful topics for discussion, debate, research, and written analysis, and an enhanced familiarity with some of the basic research tools in literature and theater.

An introduction to narrative theory, this seminar proposes narratology as a method for reading race, including whiteness, in America. If race, according to a recent documentary series, signals the “power of an illusion,” it structures our ways of reading, distributing, and mobilizing power in the U.S. And if narrative is an “instrument of power,” as one critic puts it, it is crucial to identify the elements of narrative, combinations of which produce the readerly experience. We will read U.S. fiction and non-fiction — mostly by African American and Asian American authors — not merely as literary praxis, manifestations of narrative theory at work. We will pay attention to how they self-consciously propose their own theories of narrative.

Created in London between 1871 and 1896, the comic operas of W.S. Gilbert (librettist) and Arthur Sullivan (composer) have been widely performed ever since, influencing the development of musical theater in the twentieth century. This seminar will introduce students to the Victorian context of Gilbert and Sullivan’s theatrical collaboration, and also to the longer history of performing their most popular works, including “H.M.S. Pinafore,” “The Pirates of Penzance,” “Patience,” “Princess Ida,” “Iolanthe,” and “The Mikado.” Throughout the semester we will combine historical and critical readings with close analysis of the relation between text and music, focusing especially on questions of genre and performance. We will analyze a series of performances on CD and DVD, beginning with “Topsy-Turvy” (the Oscar-winning film about the making of “The Mikado”) and leading up to a production on campus by the University of Michigan Gilbert and Sullivan Society.

Course requirements will include a series of short papers and active participation in discussion (no exams).

If you love musical theater, this seminar is for you!

In this seminar, we explore contemporary American poetry through the lens of “the personal.” That is, we read a variety of poetry from 1945 forward, working to develop a critical vocabulary with which to examine the oft-sounded claim that the difference between contemporary American poetry and modernist poetry is that the former is more “personal.” What kinds of assumptions about reading and writing does that claim foster and depend upon? What literary and historical backgrounds explain the claim and the work it describes? What accounts for the new appeal of intimate, shocking confessional poetry in the early 60s? Why was there a backlash against it? We consider the various virtues and vices associated with the idea of the personal (and with the idea of an ideally “impersonal” poetry called for by T.S. Eliot), weighing these terms’ usefulness as critical descriptors.

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.

Credit Exclusions: No credit granted to those who have completed or are enrolled in GEOSCI 284. Those with credit for GEOSCI 109 may only elect GEOSCI 148 for 2 credits.

This seminar will focus on a wide spectrum of possible interactions between people and their physical environment. Fundamental principles important to the study of environmental geology will be presented followed by readings of case histories and discussions of selected environmental problems, in particular those of anthropogenic origin. Examples of topics discussed include issues related to global warming, energy (fossil fuels, nuclear energy), water resources (impacts of excessive groundwater withdrawal, allocation of surface water rights), radioactive waste disposal, and geological aspects of environmental health.

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

Before digital technology, before the invention of the printing press, books were written, ornamented, and illuminated by hand, with unsurpassed artistry. This seminar, set in the European Middle Ages, teaches students about the ways in which human knowledge (historical, religious, literary, mythological, medical, scientific, legal) was preserved and passed down for use within a manuscript culture. By coming to know a series of spectacular manuscripts produced over the course of 1000 years, students will gain an intimate understanding of cultural shifts across the medieval centuries. One important theme will be the transformations that took place in the decades around 1200 when book production, moving out of the monasteries, came to be conducted by professionals in urban environments who prepared books for ever more varied sectors of the populace. Estimated cost of materials: $50 or less. D. 2

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)

This course examines the paradoxes that characterized early modern Japan: rule by the samurai who fought no wars, status hierarchy in which the lowest were the wealthiest, the rural structure that gave [nearly] full autonomy to the most heavily taxed population, and steaming urban cultural extravaganza amidst the stifling idealism of Confucian morality. What really went on? By focusing on the first half of the Tokugawa period (1600-1750), the course will bring alive the activities and concerns of women and men of various classes by highlighting topics such as sexualities, popular and high cultures, rural commerce, urban property relations, samurai ideology, ruling structure, and crime and punishment. Students will be evaluated on the basis of class participation and discussion, short quizzes, and a paper.

This seminar will introduce you to recent scholarship on women in China from the 19th century to the present. Having survived the Opium War and Sino-Japanese War in the 19th century, China entered the twentieth century with agitation to topple the imperial dynasty, experienced a communist revolution, and ended the century joining global capitalism. How did women live through wars, revolutions, and dramatic social, economic, political and cultural transformations? We will explore changes in diverse groups of women’s lives in China’s pursuit of modernity as well as analyze methods and frameworks used by authors in approaching their various subject matters. The course aims to enhance students’ understanding of complicated historical processes in which women and representation of women have played a central role in transformations of gender construction, family, work, cultural production, social organization, and state formation. The course will end with an examination of Chinese feminist activism today. All readings are in English, which will be supplemented with a variety of visual materials shown in class.

This course begins with the observation that history is a notable presence in contemporary British novels, These novels are not "historical fiction" in the sense of romance novels set in some bygone age, but they are also not simply set in the author's "own" time or the present. Moreover, they take history as a theme, rather than simply a setting; they explore memory, representation, gaps, contestations, and what counts as knowledge. At their best, such novels have been serious contributions to historical writing, imaginatively exploring both the complexity of the past and the ways it may haunt the present.

This course will use novels to think about how British history has been represented through fiction and to explore broader themes. The goal is not to judge fiction against "real" history but to consider how fiction can present history and be about history, how fiction may produce historical knowledge and what kinds of historical knowledge novels may presume. What kinds of history get represented? How do authors show relations between different histories? What are the risks of fiction as a mode of writing history? What kinds of historical forces does fiction have a hard time with? What does it do especially well? Does fiction always "domesticate" history, making it a story of individuals and emotions? What techniques of writing have authors explored to capture the difference, the strangeness of the past? We may also consider film versions of some texts.

No previous knowledge of British history is required, and we will read a range of works that address different areas of British history, within and beyond the British isles, with most works dealing with modern history.

The Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692 holds a special fascination for scholars, students, and the general public. But the Salem story is not the same for everyone. Indeed, what happened in Salem in 1692 eluded easy explanation for participants and observers three hundred years ago and remains intensely controversial today. This seminar asks two basic questions: why did early New Englanders come to have such a difficult time agreeing about what they were witnessing in Salem, and what accounts for the ongoing attraction to and disputes about these events over the past three centuries? Separating history from myth is part of our task in this course, but as important, we will sort out key points of contention in both the past and the present. In coming to terms with our subject, we will look at

1. how New England beliefs followed from but shifted somewhat as they traveled from early modern Europe to New England;
2. where Salem fit in seventeenth-century witchcraft beliefs and prosecutions and elite and popular fears about women as witches;
3. what accounts for the continuing attention to witches after the trials were over; and
4. when and how the witch became a mainstay of fairy tales, children’s fiction, Walt Disney films, political cartoons, and other forms of modern popular and political culture?

Required readings and films begin with Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, turn next to historical documents and interpretations, and finally, end with the new Witches of Eastwick television production and other recent witch representations in contemporary American media.

In October 2009, the Second Synod of Roman Catholic African Bishops, meeting in Rome, took as its theme “Peace, Reconciliation, and Justice in Africa.” The Christian churches of Africa — Protestant, Evangelical, Independent African, as well as Catholic — are among the fastest growing in the world today. Their work and their self-definition are increasingly inseparable from the challenges African societies confront as a result of rapid urbanization, climate change, economic crisis, and violent struggles for political power and control of valuable resources. This seminar will consider where the churches in Africa, or their members, have intervened in the political realm in the cause of justice, and where they have elected to stand to the side. We will focus on particuar opportunities taken or not taken for intervention in South Africa, Congo, and Rwanda, on the role of women religious in the work of peace and justice, and on theological and pastoral debates concerning the ‘mission’ of African Christianity across the 20th century.

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.

In recent years research about human language has more and more often found its way into the pages of Science and Nature, the world's two leading weekly journals of general science. This is a significant change in how human language is being investigated. Some of the topics covered include brain imaging, the study of language disorders, connections between paleobotany and the history of language families, and the application to historical linguistics of algorithms developed for inferring genetic phylogeny.

By studying selected language-related reports from these journals, this seminar will examine this development and what it means for traditional boundaries dividing natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Teams of 2 or 3 students will be asked to investigate selected topics and present them clearly to the rest of the class. Visits will also be invited from UM faculty doing research at these disciplinary boundaries.

Credit Exclusions: No credit granted to those who have completed a 200- (or higher) level mathematics course (except for MATH 385 and 485)

Designed for non-science concentrators and students with no intended concentration who want to learn how to think mathematically without having to take calculus first. Students are introduced to the ideas of Number Theory through lectures and experimentation by using software to investigate numerical phenomena, and to make conjectures that they try to prove.

Science fiction and philosophy are deeply linked through their common use of "thought experiments." Our main goal will be to motivate and explore philosophical questions by appeal to thought experiments from important works of science fiction. We will read the novels Hyperion (Dan Simmons), The Ophiuchi Hotline (John Varley), and Manifold Time (Stephen Baxter), as well as a number of shorter works. Philosophical topics to be covered include skepticism about knowledge, anthropic reasoning, and personal identity, as well as ethical topics surrounding religious belief, cloning and human genetic engineering. Students will have the option to write a short piece of science fiction in fulfillment of the final essay requirement.

This course examines moral dimensions of the University and its faculty, students, and staff in their roles as citizens of an academic community. Our goal is to help students think about how to approach participation in this community and develop their deliberative competencies by questioning academic life and the University from moral and social standpoints. We will organize our inquiries into three domains: academic integrity; the University as an academic community; the University’s moral obligations as an institution.

This seminar provides an introduction to modern political science. We will grapple with puzzles like this one: Why are Americans participating less and less in the civic life of their communities? Hold on. Are Americans participating less and less in the civic life of their communities? How would we know? How would we begin to try to answer such a question? Our discussions will emphasize the importance of disciplined critical thinking about social problems. We will do our best to distinguish between evidence and argument, on the one hand, and mere opinion, on the other, and in that way, move closer towards thinking like a (good) political scientist.

This course considers alternative versions of citizenship and the different assumptions and expectations about politics and political life associated with these models. After an initial survey of some exemplary texts and positions drawn from the Western political tradition, we will turn our attention to a more detailed exploration of particular themes, including: how one learns to be a citizen; the significance of “difference” to citizenly ideals and practices; artistic creation and/as political action (or: the artist as citizen-activist?).

Prereq: Honors Program Students or permission of instructor

This seminar will focus on twinship. Throughout historical time, and across many cultures, twins have been the source of much fascination. In literature, they have served as a metaphor to explore identity, good vs. evil, multiple life options, symmetry, and soul mates, and in science, they have been used to disentangle genetic and environmental influences on health and behavior. In order to gain an understanding of the experience, influences, and impact of twinship, we will examine literature and films that have used twins, interview twins, parents, siblings, and spouses of twins, and consider theory and research on the biology and psychology of twins, and on changes related to the recent increased incidence of twinning. A class web site will be integral to the course. Students will be expected to participate actively in both class and web site discussions, as well as to keep up with weekly reading and written assignments. In addition, there will be two group projects and a final exam. The number of points accumulated on these various options will determine final grades.

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 Freshman 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 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. Students will also create their own text, downloading CT materials and adding their papers. The grade will be based on the paper, the text, and class participation; 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 in the fourth week of class. Within two days, 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 two days students will receive detailed comments on the revised first and new second installments. The third installment will examine some specific current 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 reported in class in the last full week of the course, April 13 and 15, and will be due on the last day of class, April 20. All materials will be available on Course Tools.

Through this course you will learn some of the fundamentals of sociological theory, analysis, methods, and research through studying children and childhood. We will ask what does it mean to be a child in the contemporary United States? How are children’s lives shaped by the social worlds that they live in? How do children as social actors shape the worlds in which they live? We will pay particular attention throughout the course to how race, class, and gender shape experiences of childhood. We will look at children’s media, schools, families, and friendships and ask questions like: How do children create their own social worlds and peer cultures? How does corporate consumer culture shape childhood? How is children’s free time (playing, watching tv, sports involvement) shaped by class? Is daycare good for children or harmful? How do preschoolers learn about race and racism? Assignments will include readings in the sociology of childhood and several short writing assignments analyzing aspects of children’s social contexts, children’s culture, and the construction of social problems around childhood.

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.

This seminar enables students to deepen their understanding of the personal and situational forces that help and hinder them in their relationships with each other. Live, interactive experiences are conducted and discussed in class. We also consider ways to transform our social-psychological insights into constructive actions for handling the challenges and difficulties that inevitably arise.

Since the day she was married to the French dauphin, Marie Antoinette has been represented in every imaginable medium, including official portraits, fashion plates, pornography, caricature, newspapers, trial briefs, memoirs, biographies, and films. In this seminar we will draw on feminist scholarship in history, art history, literature, and film studies to consider the power of these representations to shape public discourse and the many meanings the figure of the queen has been made to bear from the eighteenth century to the present. This course is a freshman seminar in the humanities open only to first-year students.

This seminar will introduce you to recent scholarship on women in China from the 19th century to the present. Having survived the Opium War and Sino-Japanese War in the 19th century, China entered the twentieth century with agitation to topple the imperial dynasty, experienced a communist revolution, and ended the century joining global capitalism. How did women live through wars, revolutions, and dramatic social, economic, political and cultural transformations? We will explore changes in diverse groups of women’s lives in China’s pursuit of modernity as well as analyze methods and frameworks used by authors in approaching their various subject matters. The course aims to enhance students’ understanding of complicated historical processes in which women and representation of women have played a central role in transformations of gender construction, family, work, cultural production, social organization, and state formation. The course will end with an examination of Chinese feminist activism today. All readings are in English, which will be supplemented with a variety of visual materials shown in class.