First-Year Courses in RC CoreConsult the new Course Guide at: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/cg_subjectlist/0,2030,8,00.html?show=20&termArray=f_04_1510&cgtype=ug This page was created at 12:59 PM on Wed, May 5, 2004. Fall Academic Term, 2004 (September 7 - December 23)Most seats in RC courses are reserved for RC students. RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionInstructor(s):Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. No Description Provided. Contact the Department.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 001 — Daemons, Princes and Saints: Views of Love Across the Disciplines.Instructor(s): David Burkam (dtburkam@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. The minute I heard my first love story [From The Essential Rumi.] The notion of love — romantic, sacred, or profane — has long captured the critical minds and creative talents of authors, artists, psychologists, biologists, and self-help gurus. In this seminar, we will sample from the wide range of personal and academic responses to this essentially-human emotion. Among the views of love we may explore are (1) the troubadours & courtly love, (2) the theme of the demon lover, (3) love in myth and fairy tales, (4) sacred love and union with the Divine, (5) eastern views of love, (6) gay & lesbian love from myth and contemporary sources, (7) the psychological and biological foundations of love. Course readings will be selected from a wide variety of sources in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. We will read parts of Denis de Rougemont's now-classic historical book, Love in the Western World, and John Haule's updated perspective in Pilgrimage of the Heart. We will read short stories by Olive Schreiner, Shirley Jackson, Simeon Solomon, and O. Henry, and the poetry of Rumi and Omar Khyam. We'll read love letters and novels (May Sarton's The Small Room and C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces). We'll look at two "advice books" from the 1940s: How to Get Along with Girls, and How to Get Along with Boys. Selections from Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of Love and Arthur Janov's The Biology of Love will introduce us to the "science of love." Finally, we will glimpse at how psychologists and sociologists monitor our love-behavior with such social science research articles as: (a) Love on the Internet: Involvement and Misrepresentation in Cyberspace vs. Realspace; (b) Choosing a Mate in Television Dating Games: The Influence of Setting, Culture, and Gender; (c) Dating Experiences of Bullies in Early Adolescence.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 002 — Culture and Politics in Brazil.Instructor(s): Sueann Caulfield (scaul@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. Brazil is known internationally for its rich multi-ethnic cultural production. In this course, we will explore a few of the elements of Brazilian culture that are most evident to outsiders such as samba music, carnival, and the martial arts form, capoeira, as well as the ways these relate to issues such as working class politics, democratization, and family and sexuality. We will take both an academic and a hands-on approach to these issues. Students will analyze scholarly and other writing on the history and social meanings of different forms of cultural production, and attend a performance, film, or a workshop by Brazilian visiting artists. Short written assignments will be completed for each activity. In addition to class activities, each student will choose an element of Brazilian culture to research over the course of the academic term and will present the results at the end of the academic term, both in writing and as an individual or group performance or oral presentation.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 003 — Philosophy.Instructor(s): Carl Cohen (ccohen@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This seminar is designed to explore a wide range of challenging intellectual materials, extending from the classical works of Kant and Marx to current controversies, and from philosophical autobiography and drama to social science and law. We will read a different book each week, write about it, and discuss it thoroughly. Many short papers will be written by each student; these papers will serve as the focal points of our seminar meetings. The reading and writing demands on each student will be very substantial. A two-fold purpose will guide our study of each work: first, to clarify and grasp the theoretical issues it presents, and second, to search for the pleasure, intellectual and aesthetic, it may provide.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 005 — Creative Composition and the Neuropsychology of Language.Instructor(s): Jeffrey Evans (jeevans@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. A priority of first year seminar is expository writing, the writing you commonly are asked to do in college. Besides writing a lot, in this seminar writing is also our topic. In particular we will ask: What creative processes are at work when we compose that make writing effective, that allow us to communicate what we mean? How can strategies such as pacing our work, keeping a journal, working with peers, help us think and write more creatively and more effectively? How can knowledge of classical formulas for effectiveness in language (rhetoric, logic) help us to be more creative? To approach these central questions, we will also need to ask more fundamental ones: How do words form in our minds? What are the links between writing, reading, speaking, and thinking? How do details of our lives affect the flow of thought? To further illuminate our central interest in the creative process and effectiveness in writing, we will also ask how the brain is involved in the composing and communication of meaning. Is there a left brain for language and a right brain for non-language processes? How do verbal and nonverbal mental processes interact? How might brain substrates for logic and emotion interact in the creative process? Selections from the following sources will likely be included on our reading list. Since this is a new course, the list is meant to be merely suggestive:
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 006 — Love and Lovers in the Performing Arts and Literature in the Nineteenth Century.Instructor(s): Beth Genné (genne@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This seminar will examine the theme of love and courtship in selected examples of literature, dance, opera, and painting in the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century was marked not only by revolutionary changes in society but by artistic revolution. By the beginning of the twentieth century the conventions of style and subject matter of virtually every major art form had been radically altered, as "romantic" ideas and ideals began to be replaced by a new and supposedly more hard-edged and realistic view of the world. This was especially true of one of the major themes of European art: the relationship between men and women as portrayed in books, the performing arts and the visual arts. These changes have had a radical impact on our understanding of the "love" relationship even in our own time. Specific works to be considered this academic term may include the ballets Giselle, La Sylphide, Swan Lake and others, the opera Carmen, novels by Emily Brontë, Gustave Flaubert, Émile Zola, Edith Wharton and paintings by Eduard Manet, Berthe Morisot and other Impressionist artists. Our course for the most part will concentrate on works produced in France, but there will be a brief incursion into English and American arts. There will be a number of short papers and a seminar report at the end of the academic term.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 008 — On Listening to Holocaust Survivors.Instructor(s): Henry Greenspan (hgreensp@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. Drawing on the perspectives of history and psychology, this course will explore the experiences of survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. We shall attempt to understand not only some of what survivors endured within the destruction but also in their lives since the Holocaust — their lives specifically as survivors. A special emphasis throughout will be on investigating, and developing, our capacity to listen to survivors. Because survivors use the same words we do, yet have experienced realities totally alien to most of us, we shall continually return to ways we may think we understand survivors yet not actually do so. Aware of these pitfalls, we shall practice understanding better. The aspects of survivors' experience on which we shall especially focus include: massive psychological trauma; desolation and destruction of identity; the roles of shame, guilt, grief and rage in the aftermath; the need to "bear witness;" the impact of images of survivors in popular culture; the role of Holocaust memorials, museums, and testimony projects; survivors' experiences re-creating family, community, and faith. While the primary emphasis will be on survivors, there will also be classes devoted to perpetrators, bystanders, and resisters during the Holocaust. Writing assignments for this seminar will include both journal writing and interpretive essays. Theatre and visual art will also play a role. On occasion, we will be joined by survivors and thus have the chance to talk with them directly. There will be a good many evening films as well, so no student should register for this seminar who would not be free to view films on Monday evening between 7:00 and 9:30 p.m. Reading will include selections from Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust; Elie Wiesel, Night; Primo Levi's Survival in Auschwitz and The Drowned and the Saved; Charlotte Delbo, None of Us Will Return; Jean Amery, At the Mind's Limits; Isabella Leitner, Fragments of Isabella; Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men; Art Spiegelman, Maus; and a number of excerpts from survivors' audio and video testimony.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 009 — The Self, the Other, and the Self as Other in Text, Image and Performance.Instructor(s): Janet Hegman Shier (jshie@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. The self is a matter of personal experience; both as subject and as object. We play a role in shaping the self as the "I" and we respond to the self as "me", the object. We draw from our memories to imagine and create, and we draw from our imagination to recall memories. In this course, we will focus on issues of identity, involving the self and the other in text, image, and performance. Through readings, writing assignments, discussions, interviews, and theater and art assignments we will explore, study, write about, fictionalize, and perform the self and the other, and we will make discoveries about the curious intersection of the two. In order to better understand and appreciate what goes into making or cultivating self, reflecting the self, and performing the self, we will fictionalize autobiographical stories and explore the self through media which lend themselves towards interpreting the "self's" place. We will ask what happens to the self when routines are broken or challenged (through illness, travel, war, life-altering events)? Of critical importance will be a number of theater and arts workshops, in which participants will model the self vs the other by experimenting directly with what it means to be both actor and audience, what it means to "wear a mask" of the other . What are implications of representing oneself or acting (as the other)? The theater exercises will be a laboratory for observation and experimentation, drawing clues from Brecht's theories of alienation effect and historicising, and also drawing from Boal (Theater of the Oppressed and Image Theater ) to explore how much of what we do is culturally defined, how much is personally defined and how to "break" with routine to effect change. Overall, the theater and arts workshops will inform participants about the very nature of the self as active agent and reflective being. Our inquiry will lead us to consider the capacity of the self to be like a secret that is on permanent display. The inquiry itself will take us to old and new sites of self. Readings in this course will likely come from Gogol, Nietzsche, Jung, Hesse, Kafka, Brecht, and others. Participants in this course are expected to participate actively in all aspects of the course: theater exercises, arts assignments, portfolio development, and written work. As a final project, each student will evaluate work from the academic term and will develop one fictionalized story to include in a class book of text and image (original painting, drawing, collage, photography). As an alternative to working with text and image, students may develop a piece for performance, which they will present to the class.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 010 — Comparative Literature, Human Physiology: Literature and Disease.Instructor(s): Erica Paslick (ekp@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. The feverish pulse, exotic passion and heightened sensibility, associated with certain infectious diseases, have held a wide-spread fascination for Western literature. In this seminar we will study the contextual role and the cultural effect of diseases like TB, Cholera, Plague, Ebola, AIDS and others. We will read a number of representative works of fiction and drama by Pratolini, Gide, Camus, Dumas, Mann, Epson and supplement our reading with opera, film and recent documentaries. Participants will be asked to contribute to the breadth and scope of the seminar by preparing one course-related presentation, geared to their own interest or vocational goal. These projects may range from the artistic to the clinical and will be presented in conference style toward the end of the term. Frequent shorter writing assignments on either text related or creative topics will form the basis of class discussions.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 011 — Visual Media, Emergent Culture, and Individual Inquiry.Instructor(s): Barbra Morris (barbra@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. This seminar combines cultural and media studies in our current technology-thick environment. During the academic term, we investigate and compare content and form in photography, television, cinema, and, of course, print; all the while, you are writing (and often revising) papers to refine your own expressive, analytic, and research capabilities. Papers and oral class presentations aim to clarify and extend individual impressions, ideas, and intuitions about multi-layered meanings of media messages that constantly compete for our attention. Together, we decipher and reconsider verbal and visual content, genuinely working as a lively community of active scholars, all the while re-examining and questioning our own and each others' responses, prior knowledge, and perspectives.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.
Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 012 — Nietzsche: Philosopher of Nihilism and Psychologist of the Fascist Personality.Instructor(s): Frederick Peters (fgpeters@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. In the history of Western thought and culture, Nietzsche remains one of the most original, courageous and discomforting thinkers. As the father of 19th century nihilism and 20th century existentialism, he proclaimed: "God is dead. We have murdered him," and then proceeded to uncover a vision of existence as purposeless, empty, and incomprehensible. With his corrosive skepticism, he undermined all traditional and unquestioned absolutes and values: bourgeois morality, science and reason, Christianity, democracy, etc. — all viewed as fraudulent attempts to mask a void, a nothingness yawning beneath man's daily life. But Nietzsche not only diagnosed the pathology and decadence of modern civilization, his philosophy also contained a visionary and prophetic impulse designed to lead man beyond the despair, triviality, and meaninglessness of contemporary life. A new form of purely secular redemption would be achieved by the self-affirming "individual" driven by the "Will to Power" to create a personal meaning in a meaningless world. Readings: Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Beyond Good and Evil, The Anti-Christ, Hitler, My Struggle (Mein Kampf — selections) and other Nazi intellectuals; and the constitution of the United States.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 013 — Medicine and Health: East and West.Instructor(s): Barbara Sloat (bsloat@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. In this seminar, we will examine Western understandings of health and disease in the light of other cultural traditions of health and healing. We will study the concepts, assumptions, and methodologies that underlie modern western biomedicine and science, and consider their implications for practioners and patients. We will spend an equal amount of time examining the complex, centuries-old medical systems of Tibet and India. How and to what extent can we gain an understanding of these classical Asian approaches to health and healthcare that seem so different from our own? Can these traditions inform one another? Will current revolutions in fields such as molecular genetics, immunology, and psychoneuroimmunology serve to further separate or help integrate modern and age-old understandings of health and self? The very views we hold of ourselves as humans are profoundly influenced by what happens in the realms of western science and medicine. This seminar proposes that a study of the human and structural aspects of alternate medical traditions will not only inform us, it will also allow us to explore the larger cultural myths that help define our modern worldview. Articles, essays, books, films, and guest speakers will form the rich bases for our discussions and writing. Readings will include a Course pack of essential readings available at the beginning of the term, and selections from several books, all available in paperback: The Limits of Medicine, E.S. Golub; Why We Get Sick, R.M. Nesse & G.C. Williams; The Lost Art of Healing, B. Lowen; In Search of the Medicine Buddha, D. Crow; Ayurveda, The Science of Self-healing, V. Lad, and others. Writing assignments will consist of weekly short papers (with an emphasis on revision), frequent commentary papers, and a longer project and presentation at the end of the term.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 014 — Theater in Ann Arbor.Instructor(s): Martin W. Walsh (narenlob@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Credits: (4). Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. An introduction to Drama study at the Residential College through the theatre offerings in and around Ann Arbor in Fall semester 2004. The class will study beforehand select plays, attend performances of these plays (on an average of one every two weeks), and through discussion and writing substantially critique the productions seen. Visits from actors, directors, designers, and dramaturges will also be a regular feature of the class. Writing assignments will range from traditional academic background research and criticism of the texts; to interviews with the local threatre artists involved; to reports on our own exploratory scenework; to detailed critiques of the productions focusing on the act of interpretation, the complex process of moving a play "from page to stage". Plays will be selected from the offerings of :
Through individual playgoing and reporting on these and other theatrical offerings, which will supplement the central, class-wide assignments, it is hoped that we will be able to achieve an overview of the scope and achievements of our local theatre community.
RCCORE 100. First Year Seminar.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 016.Instructor(s):Prerequisites & Distribution: SWC Writing Assessment. Only first-year students, including those with sophomore standing, may pre-register for First-Year Seminars. All others need permission of instructor. (4). (Introductory Composition). May not be repeated for credit. Laboratory fee may be required. Lab Fee: Laboratory fee may be required. Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. No Description Provided. Contact the Department.
RCCORE 105. Logic and Language.Written and Verbal ExpressionSection 001.Instructor(s): Carl Cohen (ccohen@umich.edu)Prerequisites & Distribution: (4). (MSA). (BS). May not be repeated for credit. Credits: (4). Course Homepage: No homepage submitted. Argument is the focus of this course, both in symbols and in language. We deal with the forms of arguments, the application of them, what makes them valid or invalid, weak or strong. We do this in two concurrent ways, microcosmically and macro-cosmically. Microcosmically, we examine the structure of arguments, what makes them tick. In the deductive sphere we deal with the relations of truth and validity to develop the logic of propositions, and enter the logic of quantification. In the inductive sphere, we deal with argument by analogy, and causal analysis, and with elementary probability theory. Macro-cosmically, we do the analysis of real arguments in controversial contexts, as they are presented in classical and contemporary philosophical writing: ethical arguments (in Plato); political arguments (in J.S. Mill); and legal arguments as they appear in Supreme Court decisions. In all cases, both substance and form are grist for our mill.
Consult the new Course Guide at: http://www.lsa.umich.edu/lsa/cg_subjectlist/0,2030,8,00.html?show=20&termArray=f_04_1510&cgtype=ug This page was created at 12:59 PM on Wed, May 5, 2004.
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