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2021 - 2022 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Search
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Variable Topics - Fall |
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BIO 150-05 - Introduction to Biological Inquiry 4 credits (Fall)
“Sex Life of Plants.” This course will explore the evolution and ecology of reproduction in flowering plants to develop your understanding of how and why plants reproduce as they do. You’ll experience biology as it is practiced, as you learn principles of adaptation, practice the scientific method, and communicate your research findings in the style of professional biologists. Activities will include reading and discussing classic and contemporary scientific literature, completing exercises on the structure and function of plant reproductive features, and conducting and reporting on research projects done in the lab, the greenhouse, and the field.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Eckhart
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ENG 120-02 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall)
In her poem “School Note” Audre Lorde writes, “and remember/ for the embattled/ there is no place/ that cannot be home/ nor is.” In this course we will be exploring the desire to belong and the contours of unbelonging across a range of literary and visual genres. Studying closely form, aesthetic innovation, as well as critical and theoretical approaches to fiction, poetry, film and visual art, we will address how narratives of belonging, diaspora, displacement, and dispossession take shape through a vast sensorium of affects in contemporary works. We will take a comparative intersectional approach, analyzing the stylistic and narrative conventions of each genre, and their relationship to historic and diachronic imaginaries of national identity, sociopolitical strife, cultural anxiety, intergenerational trauma, and collective memory. Readings will include works by Toni Morrison, Helen Oyeyemi, Ocean Vuong, Kamila Shamsie, Elizabeth Acevedo, Claudia Rankine, Tommy Pico and Tina Chang, paired with visual art and films by Julie Dash, Wendy Red Star, Simone Leigh, and Maria Magdalena Campos Pons among others.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Nikolopoulou
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ENG 121-02 - Introduction to Shakespeare 4 credits (Fall)
This course will examine a selection of Shakespeare’s work that spans his career. Applying key terms and concepts for the study of literature, we will read representative plays and consider some of the most important poems. Part of our focus will be on understanding the plays in their performative contexts, reading the texts very closely and imagining performance possibilities. Together, we will explore how original audiences may have responded to Shakespeare’s work, as well as how the poems and plays have taken hold of our contemporary imagination.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Garrison
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ENG 223-01 - The Tradition of English Literature I 4 credits (Fall)
In this discussion-heavy lecture, we sample the “greatest hits” of English literature between the 7th and 17th centuries, including the oldest English poems, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and sonnets galore, from Spenser’s to Donne’s to those of Lady Wroth. We’ll treat these timeless texts to close and distant readings both in order to identify and articulate those features that have led to their rude survival over centuries, and to gauge their value in and relevance to our present world.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Abdelkarim
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ENG 225-01 - Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures 4 credits (Fall)
Postcolonial Literature: Where Aesthetics Meets Politics. Literary critics have often employed the term postcolonial to describe the consequences of occupation during and after colonization. The rise and fall of the British Empire contributed significantly to cultural hybridity, migration, political tension, national sovereignty, and socio-economic inequity that shapes the world as we know it today. Through short lectures, extensive discussion, and intensive writing assignments, we will cover the key concepts and categories used in postcolonial theory to help us investigate the relationship between colonial experience and the content, form, and style of the literature written to understand and comment upon it. Our course will begin by examining texts such as Shakespeare’s The Tempest and Daniel Defeau’s Robinson Crusoe, as a springboard to talk about how modernist and contemporary literature emerged as a product of and response to colonization. We will draw from a range of literary genres, covering work by English, Irish, Caribbean, South Asian, African, Australian, Maori, and Middle Eastern writers.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Sutaria
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ENG 232-01 - Traditions of Ethnic American Literature 4 credits (Fall)
The Colors of Nature: Race, Place, and the Environmental Imagination. This course will examine the centrality of nature and the environment in literature by ethnic American writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. We’ll consider how writers of color bear witness to the perceived and real ways in which nature and the environment are racialized in America, redefining and expanding our notions of “nature writing.” Our inquiry will be guided by underlying questions such as: How have representations of nature, land, or the environment communicated particular ideas about race and racial categories? How have Black, Native American, Latina/o and Asian American writers explored the constructions of race and nature in their literary and cultural productions? What is the place of joy, bewilderment, and wonder in landscapes defined by environmental racism and climate crisis? We’ll turn to 20th and 21st works of fiction, prose, essays, and graphic memoir by writers such as: Louise Erdrich, bell hooks, Miné Okubo, Francisco X. Alarcón, Camille T. Dungy, Arthur Sze, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Ross Gay, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Francisco Cant , and Lauret Savoy.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Phan
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ENG 331-01 - Studies in American Prose II 4 credits (Fall)
Even the Words Have Wheels. Ableism persists despite the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990. It’s the difference that few talk about-indeed, that few think of as difference, even on the Left. This seminar will explore the life writing (poetry and memoir) of people with a broad range of disabilities. How does the physiologically distinctive body give rise to new kinds of politics and aesthetics?
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Instructor: Savarese
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ENG 332-01 - The Victorians 4 credits (Fall)
Going to Town: Urbanization and Victorian Literature. Massive and rapid migration to still-developing urban centers during the Victorian period led to decaying rural areas and catastrophically congested cities. Industrialization affected all facets of nineteenth-century life, and we’ll explore a number of them, focusing on class and gender dynamics during this period. We will read a variety of works of fiction and nonfiction including Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, and Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor. Students will submit two papers over the course of the semester, along with an annotated bibliography and regular short written responses.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 227 , orENG 228 .
Instructor: C. Jacobson
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ENG 337-01 - The British Novel I 4 credits (Fall)
Romance and revolution: the novel and the nation. This course will trace many rises: those of the novel, of the modern nation, of abolitionism and modern feminism, of mass print culture, of fictions about international encounter. Students will read a series of texts ranging from the eighteenth-century comic novel to contemporary British television, with an emphasis on novels and political writing from the age of the American, French, and Haitian revolutions. Readings will include texts such as Olaudah Equiano’s Interesting Narrative, William Godwin’s Caleb Williams (perhaps the first detective novel in English), Mary Wollstonecraft’s Maria; Or, The Wrongs of Woman, Jane Austen’s Persuasion, and James Corden and Ruth Jones’s BBC comedy Gavin and Stacey.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 , ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 273 .
Instructor: Simpson
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GLS 304-01 - Studies in Drama II 4 credits (Fall)
See THD 304-01 .
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HIS 100-01 - Introduction to Historical Inquiry 4 credits (Fall)
How History Works. Many history classes focus on one particular time and place in the human past, but this course provides an introduction to issues of historical causation, argumentation, and evidence by pursuing a series of questions, big and small, illustrating how historical thinking can change how we see the world. Is there really a difference between “history” and “prehistory”? When are fairy tales and folklore useful historical sources? Was the Roman emperor Caligula actually crazy, and how can we know for sure? How is being a historian like being a spy, and how can scholars understand the opinions and worldview of people who lived under brutal dictatorships or in cultures alien from our own? By pursuing questions like these, students will learn both about the forces that have shaped the past and about the ways that historians understand the world around them.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Cohn
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HIS 100-02 - Introduction to Historical Inquiry 4 credits (Fall)
Feminist Killjoys of American History surveys this nation’s past through the archetype of the Feminist Killjoy, as described by theorist Sara Ahmed: “Killjoys, misfits, trouble-makers; willful wanderers and woeful warriors: we fight for room to be as we wish; we wish for room in which we did not have to fight to be.” By centering the experiences of real and imaginal women who fought for the space to be and live as they wished, this course introduces students to the long history of women’s activism, dissent, and rebellion in the United States. As an introduction to historical inquiry, this course prioritizes the methods, theories, and scholarship of the discipline of history. Even so, by looking at the lives of individual women, representations of fictional women, and the gendered constructs that shaped the past, this course also encourages students to see the links between history, the humanities, and their own lived experiences.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Lewis
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HIS 100-03 - Introduction to Historical Inquiry 4 credits (Fall)
The Rise and Fall of New World Slavery. This course provides an introduction to issues of historical causation, argumentation, and evidence, through the lens of the foundings and practices of New World slavery, as well as the social movements that abolished the institution. After an introductory unit on historical methods, we will use our exploration of slavery as it developed in Brazil, the Caribbean, and mainland North America as a window on issues of power and exploitation, outsiders and insiders, the construction of race, the connections between freedom and slavery, the early stages of consumer-driven economics, and the promise and limitations of social reform. A central theme in the course will be the way in which “progress” and freedom depended on the enslavement of Africans.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Lacson
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HIS 284-01 - Surveillance in Modern History 4 credits (Fall)
This course examines the political, social, and cultural history of mass surveillance in America, Britain, the USSR, China, and several modern European states, looking at modern cultures of state secrecy and surveillance, the use of informers and secret agents in authoritarian regimes, the efforts of governments across the industrialized world to shape their citizens through mass information-gathering, modern cultures of state secrecy and surveillance, and technology’s growing role in the monitoring of everyday citizens by governments and corporations alike.
Prerequisite: HIS 100 or second-year standing.
Instructor: Cohn
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HIS 324-01 - Illicit Medicine 4 credits (Fall)
In the US, laws and licensing bodies have regulated medicine since the early 19th century. Looking at examples of medicinal practices and products that have been or currently are considered “illicit” permits us to see how this regulation has been shaped by broader cultural, social, and political factors. This seminar examines the histories of illicit medicines in the United States as windows into national - and sometimes global – history. Students will complete a substantial research project using a combination of primary and secondary sources.
Prerequisite: Any 200-level history course. Priority will be given to students who have taken at least one of the following: HIS 223 , ANT 210 , SOC 265 .
Instructor: Prevost
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HIS 334-01 - Decolonization 4 credits (Fall)
In the decades following the Second World War, more than a quarter of the world’s land mass and population were converted from colonies into nation states with surprising speed. But did the end of empire constitute a meaningful transformation or merely the change of a flag? And was the transfer of power as orderly as the imperial powers liked to claim? In this seminar we will explore some of the debates surrounding the timing, causality, character, and consequences of decolonization and consider how historical actors impacted and were impacted by the changing relationship of metropolitan centers and colonial peripheries. Common texts and student research projects will focus on the political, social, intellectual, and cultural dimensions of decolonization in British Africa and South Asia, as well as in Britain itself; students with relevant background may also pursue a topic related to another national/geographic context.
Prerequisite: HIS 100 and HIS 236 , HIS 261 , HIS 262 , or HIS 266 .
Instructor: Prevost
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MUS 201-01 - Intermediate Music Studies: Music, Mind, and Brain 4 credits (Fall)
This course explores the rapidly growing field of the psychology of music. What would the evolutionary origins of music be? How does music evoke emotions in listeners? How do musical behaviors emerge and mature? What are the neural underpinnings of human musicality? What underlies our perceptual and cognitive response to music structure? What are the psychological and neurological processes involved in composition, improvisation, and performance? In an attempt to answer such questions, we will examine scientific foundations of how humans perceive, understand, and create music in light of the advances in psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, philosophy, and music theory.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Cha
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MUS 203-01 - Topics in Ethnomusicology 4 credits (Fall)
Performing Difference and the Ethics of Appropriation. This 200-level class examines how wide-ranging ideas of empathy, freedom, and responsibility intersect in musical and sonic practices that specifically engage with difference. Course material integrates research in sound studies, musicology, philosophy, and anthropology. Students have autonomy to design their own case studies and select accompanying readings. In order to process the affective dimensions of performing difference, we also play music together, putting these experiences in conversation with recent scholarship across the humanities on embodied learning, cultural appropriation, projects of decolonization, and anti-racist pedagogy. What are the political possibilities and limits of performing difference? Can performance contribute to positive social change regarding questions of diversity, equity, and inclusion? In addressing these questions, we address diverse experiences from diverse perspectives.
Prerequisite: MUS 100 .
Instructor: Perman
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MUS 322-01 - Advanced Studies in Music: Baroque Improvisation 4 credits (Fall)
The art of improvisation-a vital aspect of music-making in many types of music today (e.g. jazz, North Indian classical music)-has virtually died out of Western classical music. Yet in earlier periods, the ability to improvise was an essential skill learned by every Western musician; J. S. Bach was famously able to improvise fugues for hours on end. In this course, we will study historical sources from the Baroque period (such as treatises and examples of written-out improvisation) plus the work of recent scholars and performers who have studied these sources. Students will then apply these ideas to their own performance medium. They will learn to ornament a melody in various Baroque styles, build variations over a standard harmonic pattern, realize a figured bass, and work towards improvising whole pieces. They will also complete a research paper that investigates the primary and secondary sources available for interpreting a selected piece of music.
Prerequisite: MUS 112 , and facility on any instrument (including voice). Recommended: MUS 261 , MUS 213 , MUS 324 , MUS 215 , or MUS 216 .
Instructor: Perman
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PHI 394 - Advanced Studies: Theories of Value: Liberalism 4 credits (Fall)
Liberalism & Its Limits. The issue that will drive this seminar is whether liberalism can or should be salvaged. Many have come to doubt it, pointing instead to the history of a politics of exclusion. We will first aim for a nuanced view of the trajectory of the American liberal tradition and then ask whether it is the most ideal vehicle for our aspirations to democracy and our hopes the United States’ political future.
Prerequisite: PHI 234 , PHI 235 , PHI 263 , or PHI 264 .
Instructor: Meehan
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THD 304-01 - Studies in Drama II 4 credits (Fall)
Cross-listed as: GLS 304-01 [Inactive]. Black American Theatre History. In this course, we will explore a wide-ranging variety of theatre and performance created by Black artists ranging from the early nineteenth century to now. Using the works of contemporary and historical thinkers and writers like Ibram X. Kendi, bell hooks, James Baldwin, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, we will consider circumstances and outcomes surrounding the development of Black identity and experience through theatre. We will also consider questions around privilege, class, sexuality, gender identity, religion, and ability and their intersections with race. This course investigates the nature of representation versus reality and the impacts of storytelling. Who gets to tell the story? How is power reinforced, resisted or transformed by the story being told? How is historical fact shaped by fiction?
Prerequisite: One 200-level course from any of the following departments: General Literary Studies, Philosophy, History, Religious Studies, Anthropology, English, Classics, Theatre and Dance, Spanish, German, Russian, French, Chinese, Art and Art History.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Miller
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Variable Topics- Spring |
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ANT 104-01 - Anthropological Inquiries 4 credits (Spring)
Beyond nature and culture. Are there more than five senses? Does language structure the way we perceive the world? Is there such thing as a natural catastrophe? Nature-culture distinctions are made every day by humans as we categorize others, structure our environment, and come to terms with our place among other beings. This course introduces students to anthropology and what it means to be human by critically tracking nature-culture divides across contemporary and historical human societies. Through the study of genes and epigenetics, kinship, climate change, language, and laughter, students will have an opportunity to examine what we share in common, or what might be distinct. In so doing, students will be introduced to four sub-fields of anthropology: linguistic, sociocultural, biological, and archaeology.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Sweet
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ANT 104-05 - Anthropological Inquiries 4 credits (Spring)
Human Natures. What does it mean to be human? Through hands-on investigation within the four sub-fields of anthropology–biological, cultural, linguistic, and archeology–you will seek answers to this and related questions. In doing so, you will learn the basics of each field. Together, we will investigate human cultural diversity across time and geographic space, as well as the evolution, physiology, and ecology of both Homo sapiens and the non-human primates. We will explore how views of the natural world, human nature, and who is human have varied and changed, as well as the endless feedback loops between society, the environment, and our own biology. We will address topics such as: what the kinship systems of the world can tell us in the age of 23andMe; the origin of war and the future of peace; feast and famine in the Anthropocene; and whether, and if so which, animals other than us have culture or language. The format of this course will be mostly lecture, discussion, in-class labs, and out-of-class activities.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Marshack
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BIO 150-01 - Introduction to Biological Inquiry 4 credits (Spring)
The Mighty Mitochondria. Mitochondria are frequently referred to as “the powerhouses of the cell” due to their role in oxidative metabolism and generation of ATP, but this definition limits our view of these mighty organelles. Mitochondria are key players in maintaining cellular homeostasis, production and consumption of potentially damaging molecules, and control of programmed cell death. The diverse roles of this dynamic cell organelle are significant in determining organismal health. Human diseases such as cardiovascular disorders, obesity, cancer, and neurodegenerative disorders are associated with mitochondrial dysfunction. In this course, we will use the model organism C. elegans to explore the relationship between mitochondrial function and whole animal physiology. Students will develop skills in reading primary literature, developing and testing hypotheses, and communicating their results through written articles and oral presentations.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Hershberger
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BIO 150-02 - Introduction to Biological Inquiry 4 credits (Spring)
Biological Responses to Stress. In this course, we will investigate ways that biologists seek to understand how organisms can interact with their environment and change in response to varying environmental conditions. Since microbes are excellent model systems for biological inquiry, their response to stressful environments will be emphasized. Students will formulate hypotheses regarding stress responses, design and conduct experiments to test their hypotheses, and communicate the results of their experiments. The class will have three, one hour and fifty-minute meetings per week that combine lab, lecture, and discussion.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Gregg-Jolly
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BIO 150-03 - Introduction to Biological Inquiry 4 credits (Spring)
Plant Genetics and the Environment. The physical and behavioral characteristics of living organisms are largely determined by their genetic makeup and their environment. This course is designed to allow us to ask questions about the relationship between genetics and the environment and to explore the mechanisms plants use to acclimate and adapt to changes in their environment. Using the flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana, we will examine the influence of different environmental factors on the growth and development of ‘wild-type’ and mutant individuals. Students will design and perform experiments to address questions about the effect of genetic mutation on plant responses to the environment. After careful analysis of experimental results, students will communicate their findings in various scientific forms.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: DeRidder
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ENG 120-03 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Spring)
Classic Fairy Tales and Their Remixes. Mulan, Snow White, Cinderella, Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel - who created these fairy tales, and to whom were they told? What are they about, and why have they survived to the present day? What are their hidden, secret meanings? To answer these questions, we will read and interpret several well-known tales from the collection of the Brothers Grimm, but we will also look at how they have evolved over time and media including art, theatre and film. To deepen our understanding of this evolving heritage, we will familiarize ourselves with the various interpretive approaches of historians, folklorists, psychologists, and anthropologists. Some questions we’ll discuss are: Where do the fairy tales come from and how have they been shaped by their history? How are fairy tales composed or structured? What do they seek to tell us, or what ideas and values do they represent and convey? How have they been used to entertain young and old, socialize children, unify cultures, encourage and console the needy?
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Lavan
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ENG 210-01 - Studies in Genre 4 credits (Spring)
Young Adult Literature. Who qualifies as a young adult? What is the purpose of young adult literature? In this course, we will examine these questions, read and review a diverse range of texts as well as the historical evolution of the genre. During our study of this “satellite genre” we will encounter texts that are speculative/fantastical, dystopian and historical as we explore the relationship between the texts and their societal/cultural/historical moments. Along the way, we’ll also explore issues related to canonicity and censorship.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors, for non-majors, ENG 120 , or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Lavan
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ENG 223-01 - The Tradition of English Lit I 4 credits (Spring)
Make Love, Not War. This hippie, counterculture slogan might seem to draw its power from its irreverence or to reflect a brief moment in the 1960s. However, this course will take the phrase seriously as we explore how discourses of love, sex, and gender played a profound role in discussions of peace and war in medieval and early modern England. In turn, we will trace thinking about love as a political concept and locate emergent expressions of what peace scholars term “positive peace,” a formulation that interprets peacebuilding as active work and not simply a respite from war.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Garrison
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ENG 224-01 - The Tradition of English Lit II 4 credits (Spring)
This course will offer a grounding in both major and representative British works of literature from the Restoration through the nineteenth century and may include the works of Aphra Behn, Jonathan Swift, William Wordsworth, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Christa Rossetti, Bram Stoker, among others. We will discuss the texts in the context of social changes occurring during this period, paying particular attention to gender and sexuality, the rise of the British Empire, the writers’ relationship to the natural world, and changes in literary style. There will be three points at which students will choose to take an exam or write a paper. Students must take at least one exam and write at least one paper during the course of the semester. There will also be regular written responses.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: C. Jacobson
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ENG 229-01 - The Tradition of African American Literature 4 credits (Spring)
Slavery and its Afterlives. In her book Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route (2007), Saidiya Hartman introduces the idea of slavery and its afterlives: If slavery persists as an issue in the political life of black America, it is not because of an antiquarian obsession with bygone days or the burden of a too-long memory, but because black lives are still imperiled and devalued by a racial calculus and a political arithmetic that were entrenched centuries ago. This is the afterlife of slavery–skewed life chances, limited access to health and education, premature death, incarceration, and impoverishment (6). It is these afterlives upon which we will focus in the course: The United States’ persistent clinging to inequality and the African American literary and cultural responses. We will begin in our current contemporary moment and stretch back to the foundation of the United States and transatlantic slavery. In the wake of a burgeoning output of Books, TV shows and films about slavery, we’ll ask why it seems that America is more obsessed with depictions of enslavement now than ever before. Along the way, we’ll scrutinize social media campaigns such as #NotAnotherSlaveMovie, analyze essays from Toni Morrison, Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman and more, and read novels from James Baldwin, Gayl Jones and Octavia Butler in order gain insight regarding genre, canon and culture that will carry us through the course. In all readings we will discuss the ways in which African/Negro/Black/African American writers use the written word as activism in the fight for full enfranchisement.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Lavan
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ENG 231-01 - American Literary Traditions III 4 credits (Spring)
From Silent Spring to Standing Rock: American Literature and the Environment. This course aims to provide a survey of environmental literature in the United States in the 20th and 21st centuries, with special focus on environmental justice. We will consider how writers represent, reckon with, and challenge issues of wilderness, nature, toxicity, climate change, and environmental racism. We will ask what might be the role of the “environmental imagination,” to invoke the ecocritic Lawrence Buell, in the struggle for a more equitable and ecologically just world? Authors include, among others, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, Annie Dillard, Wendell Berry, Rebecca Solnit, Barry Lopez, Arthur Sze, Jesmyn Ward, and Layli Long Soldier. In addition to ecocritical approaches to literary study, there will be opportunities to create literary journalism and personal essays, to take field notes outdoors, learning to see and read what is around us in new ways.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or third-year standing.
Instructor: Phan
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ENG 303-01 - Chaucer 4 credits (Spring)
This upper-level English course takes up the Canterbury Tales by the “father” of English literature, Geoffrey Chaucer (d.1400). In reading Chaucer’s timeless tales, we’ll sample an array of medieval genres and familiarize ourselves with the culture and politics of late medieval England. On the one hand, we’ll treat Chaucer’s pilgrims’ stories to close readings to appreciate their narrative and poetic techniques in their own right; on the other hand, we’ll situate the work within the context of the greater medieval world by touching on the author’s literary contemporaries and predecessors. In brief, we’ll examine medieval social, aesthetic, and intellectual traditions and legacies through the lens of Chaucer’s celebrated Tales. Above all, we’ll enjoy a semester’s worth of scrumptious stories!
Prerequisite: ENG 223 .
Instructor: Abdelkarim
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ENG 325-01 - Studies in Ethnic American Literatures 4 credits (Spring)
Translation Matters: The Task of the Ethnic American Writer. In this seminar, we will explore the literary, linguistic, and cultural matters of translation in ethnic American literature and examine how and why translation matters for reconceptualizing the relationship between “the ethnic” and “the American.” Drawing on the insights of translation theory, from Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator” to recent critical interventions by Lawrence Venuti, Gayatri Spivak, and Emily Apter, we will consider questions concerning the complex interplay between language, culture, and identity. Authors will likely include: Jhumpa Lahiri, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez, Gloria Anzuldua, Aleksandr Hemon, Leslie Marmon Silko, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Eduardo C. Corral, amongst others. For the final project, students will have the option of writing a longer research paper on a specific matter of translation in ethnic American literature or producing their own translation of a literary work, accompanied by a critical introduction. Students will be encouraged to read, think, and write across disciplinary boundaries, drawing on their own foreign language knowledge, academic studies, and cultural backgrounds-in short, to translate in their own terms what it means to be American, ethnic and otherwise.
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Instructor: Phan
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ENG 360-01 - Seminar in Postcolonial Literature 4 credits (Spring)
Democracy in Crisis?: Postcolonial Solidarities in a Post Cold War World. In the decades after World War II, anticolonial nationalist movements across the Global South led to the dissolution of Britain’s Empire. As the United States and the Soviet Union supplanted Britain as major world superpowers, both became locked in the Cold War competition to influence newly sovereign nations to support capitalist democracy or communism respectively. This seminar explores literary and media productions from India, Yugoslavia, Egypt, and Cuba that spoke out against cultural imperialism, nuclear armament, and human rights abuses inflicted by both superpowers. We will consider aesthetics of resistance in the form of magical realism, graphic novels, experimental radio, and avant-garde film. Understanding these histories offers insights into how we might confront the current resurgence of the right, threats to democratic freedoms, and xenophobia aimed at migrants in crisis.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 , or ENG 229 .
Instructor: Sutaria
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HIS 100-01 - Introduction to Historical Inquiry 4 credits (Spring)
The Prophet Muhammad. This course provides an introduction to issues of historical causation, argumentation, and evidence, by exploring the life and impact of the prophet Muhammad on the Arabian Peninsula and West Asia in the early seventh century. We will begin with an introduction to the study of history and historical methods. From there, we will read a variety of primary and secondary sources in order to answer the question: Who was the Prophet Muhammad?
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Saba
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HIS 100-02 - Introduction to Historical Inquiry 4 credits (Spring)
After the Great War. This course provides an introduction to issues of historical causation, argumentation, and evidence, by exploring the impact of the First World War (1914-18) on the political, social, and cultural institutions of Europe and the wider world. After introductory units on historical methods and the experience of the war, we will investigate how citizens and subjects attempted to reconstruct, reinvent, and reinterpret “a world undone.” Topics will include cultural memory and modernism; gender and the “New Woman”; the rise of Nazism; internationalism and the League of Nations; colonialism and nationalism; and the global flu pandemic.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Prevost
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HIS 336-01 - The European Metropolis 4 credits (Spring)
This seminar takes as its starting point the explosion of large cities in Europe from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Through the lens of case studies in London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin, we consider how individuals and communities grappled with the idea and the experience of the metropolis. Our investigations examine political developments, social theory, the visual and literary arts, and consumer culture as we consider themes such as community and alienation, the fluidity of the self, spectacle and entertainment, disease and criminality, race, gender, class, and sexuality. Students develop individual research projects centered in a metropolitan context(s) in or beyond Europe on any theme connected to the class.
Prerequisite: HIS 100 and HIS 236 , HIS 237 , HIS 238 , or HIS 239 .
Instructor: Maynard
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HIS 371-01 - Human Rights in Asia 4 credits (Spring)
Human Rights in Asia. Few things are more prominent in contemporary political discourse than discussions of human rights. But which ideals are included at the core of this concept and what kinds of practices give it expression? In this seminar, students will first engage with the history of human rights as a category by exploring key foundational and contemporary texts. From there, we will explore the related concept of “international human rights”, a powerful idea in our time, but also the focus of numerous controversies. We will discuss issues of international law and political interests, universal standards and cultural relativism, civil society and social norms, and the challenges of contemporary advocacy. With these twin foundations established, students will embark on a series of case studies exploring the question of human rights in various Asian contexts, such as torture and capital punishment, religious freedom, economic justice, minority rights, gender equality, and freedom of expression. Along the way students will conceive and execute a research paper on a case study of their own choosing, with ample opportunity to workshop their research and writing in the context of the seminar’s ongoing readings and discussion.
Prerequisite: Any 200 level HIS course or a course from the Core Area Requirements (Language & Culture, and History, Religion and Society) of the EAS concentration.
Instructor: Luo
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HIS 382-01 - Advanced Tutorial: Modern Classics of Historical Writing 4 credits (Spring)
This course surveys of some great works of historical scholarship. It will be useful to students who are considering graduate studies, but it is intended for all students who would like to improve their ability to write analytically and argue persuasively. The course will be taught in Oxford tutorial style, in small group meetings with the instructor, and will involve frequent short writing assignments. It will also serve as useful preparation to all advanced seminars in history. Note: this course does not satisfy research seminar requirement.
Prerequisite: Two 200-level history courses.
Instructor: Cohn
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MAT 218-01 - Discrete Bridges to Advanced Mathematics 4 credits (Spring)
Elementary Number theory is one of the oldest branches of mathematics, far older than Calculus. The subject, at its most basic, asks questions about the integers. For instance, how are the prime numbers distributed among the integers? What are integer solutions to a particular polynomial equation? Which integers can be expressed as the sum of two squares? We will learn about topics such as divisibility, congruences, and quadratic reciprocity, which will help us answer questions like these. Along the way, we will discuss counting techniques and related discrete topics. Proof writing and creative problem solving will be heavily emphasized.
Prerequisite: MAT 215 .
Instructor: Mileti
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MAT 218-02 - Discrete Bridges to Advanced Mathematics 4 credits (Spring)
Graphs. A graph consists of a set of vertices and a set of edges - you can draw a graph simply by placing some dots on a page to represent vertices, and then connecting certain pairs of dots with lines to represent the edges. Graphs are useful for understanding any kind of networks - the internet itself could be viewed as a graph, with links between pages representing edges; in fact Google’s PageRank algorithm makes heavy use of ideas from graph theory. In this course, we will use graphs as a means to develop problem solving skills and to improve our ability to construct logical mathematical arguments. After beginning with basic topics including the chromatic number, planarity, trees, Euler circuits, and Hamiltonian paths, we will move on to more advanced topics in which we apply techniques from Linear Algebra, such as eigenvalues and inner products, to obtain deeper and less intuitive results about graphs.
Prerequisite: MAT 215 .
Instructor: C. French
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MAT 444-01 - Senior Seminar: Mathematical Logic 4 credits (Spring)
The study of first-order logic using the tools of mathematics, together with applications of first-order logic to mathematics itself. We will study both syntactic and semantic notions of implication, and prove the Soundness and Completeness theorems connecting these concepts. We will also explore basic model theory, such as definability, back-and-forth arguments, and the Lowenheim-Skolem theorem (together with applications to random graphs, algebraically closed fields, and nonstandard analysis). Finally, we will develop different ways to define the computable sets and functions, and end with a proof of the First Incompleteness Theorem.
Prerequisite: MAT 321 . MAT 316 highly recommended.
Instructor: Mileti
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MUS 201-01 - Intermediate Music Studies: Music, Gender and Sexuality 4 credits (Spring)
Music has been a cultural forum for producing, reproducing, circulating, and consuming ideologies of gender and sexuality. This course explores how music in Western Europe and the United States has interacted and interconnected with values and issues related to gender and sexual identities. Students will read critical texts investigating interfaces between music, gender, and sexuality from various disciplinary perspectives, listen to numerous musical examples drawn from both classical and popular traditions, engage in lively class discussions, and write a research paper on a topic of their choice. Topics include, but are not necessarily limited to, music and body, castrati, feminine and masculine music, lesbian and gay music, constructions of gender and sexuality in instrumental music, and portrayals of women in opera.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Cha
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MUS 201-02 - Intermediate Music Studies: Opera: Death, Drama, Desire. 4 credits (Spring)
Derided by some as a type of elitist torture, worshipped by others as Western culture’s greatest art form, opera has been the focus of controversy since its inception over 400 years ago. Opera has responded to these controversies in remarkable ways, proving over and again its tremendous power to express the full range of human passions and experiences. This course will view opera through the double lens of music and theatre. We will analyze what the earliest creators of opera sought to achieve through music, drama, dance, and visual spectacle, how their ideas were received and transformed by later generations, and what role opera has in society today. We will read selected dramas as literature, and develop strategies for listening that illuminate how the music expresses the drama. We will also examine aspects of opera production, including the frankly operatic interactions between composers, poets, designers, choreographers, producers, patrons, listeners, and-last but not least-singers. We will focus on works available on video, including the Metropolitan Live in HD broadcasts, and will take a field trip to hear a live opera performance, including backstage interviews with singers and directors. No musical experience necessary.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Brown
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MUS 201-03 - Intermediate Music Studies: Digital Music-Making 4 credits (Spring)
This course is intended to provide students with the skills and understanding to compose and perform music in a variety of styles using technology. Students will use the equipment available in the Electronic Music Studio, and the Ableton Live and Max for Live programs to create original musical works that combine live performance with digital materials. Exercises that explore the basic techniques used in a variety of popular musical styles (Hip-Hop, Trap Music, House Music, Dubstep, video game music, Rock Music) will serve to develop and expand the toolset available to the student. In addition to examining a wide range of interactive strategies, the course will include techniques for mastering and polishing tracks, and it will culminate in a concert of the students’ work.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Rommereim
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MUS 202-01 - Topics in American Music: Sonic Activism 4 credits (Spring)
This course explores the potential of sound and music as a mode of activism (e.g. instigating/supporting social change) through examples from across the globe and history to the current day. We consider ways of evaluating the effectiveness of sonic/musical activism and students will design, carry-out, and reflect on their own original projects. This work demands dynamic and interdisciplinary collaboration and participation (not limited to jumping, singing, and yelling).
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Oore
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MUS 203-01 - Topics in Ethnomusicology 4 credits (Spring)
Embodied Listening. When we listen, what does our body do? Our multisensory experience of sound is reflected in everyday metaphors… ‘your music moved me, touched me.’ Sound perception (not limited to “hearing”) is fundamental to many human and non-human activities. How can other ways of knowing deepen the way we listen and attend to our world?
Music schools are listening schools and have vital information to investigate and share. When we make music we share not only what we perceive, but also the actions that we aspire to hear, see, and feel. In this course we explore sound through multimodal activities to discover the interconnectedness of our sensory perceptions, and to discover what listening feels like and means in different contexts. We examine relationships among sound, power, vulnerability, boundaries, and technology.
Hands-on exploration is paired with theoretical understanding as students engage in processes of artistic creation, collaboration, presentation, self-reflection, and peer feedback, alongside lectures, readings, and critical research. The student will be guided to find their own original ways of perceiving and participating in a creative world, and to honestly recognize their intentions, fears, and the historical and social roles inherited and resisted in such processes.
A strong desire to explore the topic is requisite. Individuals with any dis/ability, and from any artistic tradition, discipline, and type of experience and/or lack of education, are welcome and encouraged to enroll.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Oore
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MUS 322-01 - Advanced Studies in Music: Men, Women, & Pianos 4 credits (Spring)
Focusing on the piano, this course offers a social history of the last 250 years that resonates globally. The piano’s history sheds light on many aspects of Western society during this period including capitalism, the Industrial Revolution, gender roles, and social class. In addition to discussing important examples of music for the piano and the lives and careers of significant pianists from a variety of genres, we will examine how the instrument itself evolved, its role in the Ivory Trade in Africa, and its recent popularity in China, Japan, and Korea.
Prerequisite: Second-year standing.
Instructor: Gaub
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REL 394-01 - Advanced Topics: Putting Religious Studies to Work 4 credits (Spring)
This course provides an opportunity for students to reflect on their previous theoretical and methodological work over their undergraduate career by putting it into practice. Students will be responsible to plan and carry out their own advanced research project from the start to the end of the term on a topic of their own choosing. Along the way students will need to make choices about and present their individual theoretical commitments, specific methodology, professional possibilities, and how best to present themselves and their semester-long work. Class sessions will alternate between group discussions and presentations, mentored project meetings and research time.
Prerequisite: REL 311 .
Instructor: T. Dobe
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RUS 389-01 - Advanced Russian Seminar 4 credits (Spring)
Issues of Diversity in Today’s Russia. The seminar addresses questions of race and ethnicity in modern Russian literature and culture. We will examine the depiction of Russia’s non-Slavic communities in contemporary Russian literature and artistic and media outlets. This will include news broadcasts, talk shows, podcasts and film. Emphasis will be placed on developing writing skills in Russian. Conducted in Russian.
Prerequisite: RUS 313 .
Instructor: Greene
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SOC 295-05 - Special Topic: Animals and Society 4 credits (Spring Term 2)
Examines the role of non-human animals in human society. Investigates the social construction of the human/animal boundary. Challenges ideas that animals are neither thinking nor feeling. Examines the many ways humans rely on animals. Considers the link between animal cruelty and other violence. Explores the moral status of animals.
Prerequisite: SOC 111 .
Instructor: Snook
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SPN 320-01 - Cultures of the Spanish-Speaking World 4 credits
The Worlds and Cultures of Afro-Latin Americans: This interdisciplinary course will explore the historical roots of the current realities of exclusion, invisibility, and inequity of Afro populations in Latin America. It will also examine some of the vital contributions that Afro descendent communities to Latin America and the strategies they have developed for survival and resistance to racism and oppression. The course will draw upon research from anthropology, Afro-Latin American Studies, Gender Women and Sexuality studies, history, literature, music, and sociology.
Prerequisite: SPN 285 .
Instructor: Benoist
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THD 211-01 - Performance Studies Survey 4 credits (Spring)
Race in Motion: Diaspora, Diplomacy, and Moving Bodies. As an embodied cultural practice, performance is a social process through which categories of race and ethnicity are both constructed and destabilized. This course explores dance and performance as complex sites of cultural negotiation, contestation, and exchange. Examining the movement of bodies and ideas across borders, we will question slippages between Western and non-Western traditions to address histories of nationalism, immigration, conquest, and diplomacy. Engaging current scholarship in the field of performance studies, this course introduces a diversity of methodologies and foregrounds interdisciplinary approaches to performance research. Through an examination of Eurocentric notions of ‘the global,’ we will complicate dominant narratives in dance history and question structures of power that have shaped the development of contemporary performance. Course readings integrate frameworks for addressing the afterlives and ongoing implications of cultural imperialism, colonialism, appropriation, and state control of dance and performance - as it migrates, assimilates, diverges, and protests - as a way to regulate expressions of race, class, gender, and nationality.
Prerequisite: Any 100-level Theatre and Dance course.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Mercer
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Variable Topics - Fall and Spring |
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ANT 104-02, 03 & 04 - Anthropological Inquiries 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
Family. This course examines the social institution and symbolic meaning of family from an anthropological perspective. First, we examine how our early human ancestors and primate relatives form and perform “family.” Subsequently, we analyze how family, gender roles, sexuality and child-rearing practices vary cross-culturally and historically. In particular, we consider how recent developments in reproductive technology, cloning, adoptions, and same-sex marriage are reshaping the way we understand relatedness. Finally, we explore notions of “belonging” by looking at the relationship between family, race and nation.
Prerequisite: None.
Note: Fall - section 03
Spring - section 02 & 04
Instructor: Kulstad
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ANT 104-03 & 04 - Anthropological Inquiries 4 credits (Fall & Spring)
Human Migrations. How has migration shaped human history? This class introduces students to the four subfields of anthropology (linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, archaeology, and biological anthropology) by exploring human mobility from our origins as humans to the present-day. We will look at evidence of movement and gene flow in early modern humans, investigate the benefits of nomadic hunting and gathering over agriculture and sedentism, explore how language and material culture can help us trace ancient migrations, and examine the contemporary lives of transnational migrants who move between their homeland and another country. The class format will include lectures, discussion, and in-class labs.
Prerequisite: None.
Note: Fall - section 04
Spring - section 03
Instructor: Ng
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CSC 151-01, 02, & 03 - Functional Problem Solving (Digital Humanities) 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
Digital Humanities. In this section of CSC 151, we will ground our study of functional problem solving in approaches related to the digital humanities, investigating ways in which computing changes the ways in which people write and analyze texts. In particular, we will examine models of documents, develop dynamic narratives, and design algorithms and visualizations that help us explore and analyze corpora and individual texts. The course employs a workshop format: In most class sessions, students will collaborate on a variety of problems. Includes formal laboratory work.
Prerequisite: None.
Note: Sections 01, 02, 03 offered both fall and spring
Instructor: Johnson, Osera, Rebelsky
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CSC 161-01 & 02 - Imperative Problem and Data Structures (Robots) 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
This section of CSC 161 will utilize robotics as an application domain in studying imperative problem solving, data representation, and memory management. Additional topics will include assertions and invariants, data abstraction, linked data structures, an introduction to the GNU/Linux operating system, and programming the low-level, imperative language C. The course will utilize a workshop style in which students will frequently work collaboratively on a series of problems. Includes formal laboratory work.
Prerequisite: CSC 151 .
Note: Sections 01 and 02 offered both fall and spring.
Instructor: Curtsinger, Eliott, Weinman
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ENG 120-01 & 02 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
Globalization and Modernity in Anglophone World Literature. What, exactly, is literature? What determines if it is good? How can we engage its richness with rigor and joy? Through our study of post-1900 prose, poetry, plays, radio programs, and film, this course will introduce you to techniques for literary analysis and master the tools needed to craft well-argued written critiques. In turn, we will work with supplemental materials such as book reviews, critical essays, interviews, newspapers, and digital sources to situate literary texts in their cultural, economic, and socio-historical context. Part of this exploration will involve a foray into the field of literary theory which examines how currents in political, social, and philosophical thought alter the way writers perceive their worlds and in turn affect the style of writing they use to represent it. We will consider work by E. M. Forster, Langston Hughes, Charlie Chaplin, Virginia Woolf, Sergei Eisenstein, Mulk Raj Anand, Una Marson, Wole Soyinka, Catherine Mansfield, Lu Xun, Bertolt Brecht, and Naguib Mahfouz.
Prerequisite: None.
Note: Section 01 - fall
Section 01 & 02 - spring
Instructor: Sutaria
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ENG 120-03 & 04 - Literary Analysis 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
This course introduces students to analytical reading, thinking, and writing. We will begin by looking at critical and theoretical approaches to a single novel (E. Bronte’s Wuthering Heights) and then turn to short fiction, poetry, and drama (Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night), building on what we have learned while focusing on genre-specific vocabulary and strategies of interpretation. Graded assignments will include short writing assignments and three papers.
Prerequisite: None.
Note: Section 03 - fall
Section 04 - spring
Instructor: C. Jacobson
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ENG 121-01 - Introduction to Shakespeare 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
Students in this course will develop the skills of close reading, critical writing, and literary analysis. Assigned texts will come mainly from the poetry and dramatic works of William Shakespeare, and the course will use the readings to emphasize specific elements of Shakespeare’s art and context. For example, we will begin by reading Shakespeare’s sonnets to attend carefully to their language and technique, and later units will emphasize the interplay among tragedy, comedy, and history; the construction of race and gender on the Renaissance stage; critical and theoretical tools for analyzing Shakespeare; and Shakespeare’s legacies.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Simpson
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Writing Laboratory |
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WRT 101 - Basic Principles of College Writing 1 credits (Fall and Spring)
In this course students attend a series of weekly workshops on the basics of academic composition as well as individual appointments in the Writing, Reading, and Speaking Center to apply those basic principles to their assigned writing in other courses.
Prerequisite: None.
Note: Half-semester deadlines apply. S/D/F only
Instructor: Staff
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WRT 102 - Advanced Principles of College Writing 2 credits (Fall and Spring)
Using both small group sessions and individual Writing, Reading, and Speaking Center appointments, this course focuses on writing as a tool of analysis and critical thinking. Some required writing and revision.
Prerequisite: WRT 101
S/D/F only
Instructor: Staff
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WRT 120 - Oral Communication Skills 2 credits (Spring)
Students will present a series of persuasive and informational speeches to a variety of audiences, receiving feedback from both instructor and classmates. Some reading and class preparation required.
Prerequisite: None.
S/D/F only
Instructor: Staff
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WRT 301 - Teaching and Tutoring Writing 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
Cross-listed as: EDU 301 . In this course, we will study and discuss theories of writing, revising, teaching, and tutoring; learn practical strategies for effective commenting on drafts and conferencing with writers from a variety of disciplines and backgrounds; identify and investigate intriguing questions and scholarly debates related to writing, teaching, and tutoring; present the results of that research both orally and in writing; examine and reflect on our own experiences as writers, tutors, and learners.
Prerequisite: Second-year standing or completion of 200-level writing intensive course.
Instructor: Turk
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Science, Medicine, and Society |
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SMS 150 - Introduction to Science, Medicine, Technology and Society 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
This interdisciplinary course examines the rise of modern science, technology and medicine, situating these fields in their larger social and political contexts. Using various case studies students will explore how knowledge and expertise are constructed; how particular norms, institutions, and practices shape this process; how important controversies and debates are managed; why certain tools, practices or ideas ultimately “win out”, and finally; how these treatments have impacted the broader society.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Guenther
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SMS 154 - Evolution of Technology 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Cross-listed as: DST 154 . This course examines the historical evolution of technology and its impact on society. We will explore the complex forces that drive the process of invention and innovation; the centrality of design in shaping the particular form and impact of technologies; how technological change has challenged or reinforced traditional structures of power; and finally, how our understanding of the past can guide our attempts to grapple with the revolutionary digital technologies emerging today.
Prerequisite: None.
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: Staff
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