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2013-2014 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Search
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Theatre and Dance |
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THE 304 - Studies in Drama II 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
Cross-listed as: GLS 304 . A seminar-style course in dramaturgy, focusing on a central topic in the history and theory of theatre and performance. Studies in Drama II covers topics after 1850. The course will emphasize the development of methodologies and research strategies useful for the theatre practitioner and the researcher. Past topics for this variable-content course have included Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov; Beckett’s Prose and Plays; Beckett and the Theatre of the Absurd; British Drama since World War II; and Postcolonial Theatre. May be repeated once for credit when content changes.
Prerequisite: May vary depending on topic but can include 200-level coursework in English, foreign languages, Classics, History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Anthropology, Art, Theatre or dramatic literature/criticism/theatre history.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Mease, Delmenico
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THE 310 - Studies in Dance 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
A combined seminar and practice course for advanced study of a selected topic in dance or contemporary performance that will be detailed each time the course is offered (topics are announced in the Schedule of Courses). The course will employ a variety of materials and methods for advanced research in dance as a cultural, social, historical, and artistic phenomenon. Topics could include: Dance and Technology, Community and Performance; Dancing Gender and Sexuality; and The Choreography of Political Protest. May be repeated once for credit.
Prerequisite: Any 200-level Theatre and Dance course.
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: Staff
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THE 311 - Studies in Performance 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
An advanced-level, variable-topic course that combines theoretical and historical study with practical investigation. Possible topics include adaptation and performance of literature or nonfiction and devised or community-based performance. Students will work as individuals or within groups to research, create, and present a final performance project.
Prerequisite: THE 201 , THE 202 , THE 203 , THE 210 , or THE 211 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Staff
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THE 317 - Advanced Performance 4 credits (Spring)
This variable topic course focuses on classical and contemporary modes of performance. Possible areas of emphasis include Greek, Elizabethan, French neoclassic, contemporary docudrama theatre, Asian theatre, and performance art. Course emphasis is on scene study, performance, and directing. May be repeated when content changes.
Prerequisite: THE 210 , THE 211 , THE 217 , or THE 235 .
Note: Not offered every year.
Instructor: Quintero
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THE 340 - Design for Performance II 4 credits (Fall)
An in-depth exploration of designing for the stage, with the specific area of design (scenery, lighting, costumes) announced each time the course is offered. Emphasis is on script or dance “text” analysis and the evolution of design from first reading to first performance.
Prerequisite: THE 240 .
Note: Plus-2 option available. Not offered every year.
Instructor: Thomas
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Variable Topics |
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ART 400-01 - Seminar in Art History (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
No description available at this time.
Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing in art history concentration.
Instructor: Lyon
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BIO 150-01 - Intro to Biological Inquiry W/Lab (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Microbial Pathogenesis. In this course we will investigate strategic pathogenetic microorganisms use to colonize our food and thrive inside the human body. Topics addressed will include: the biology of bacteria and viruses, factors important for biofilm formation, how microorganisms become resistant to antibiotics, and how we protect our food and ourselves from microorganisms. Students will isolate and characterize microorganisms attached to vegetables by using standard microbial and basic molecular biology techniques. Based on critical reading of the literature, students will design and carry out independent research projects, analyze and report the results in scientific papers, posters and oral presentation. The class will have two, three hour meetings per week, which combine lecture, lab, and discussion.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Hinsa Leasure
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BIO 150-01 - Intro to Biological Inquiry W/Lab (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
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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BIO 150-02 - Intro to Biological Inquiry W/Lab (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
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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BIO 150-02 & 04 - Intro to Biological Inquiry W/Lab (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
Sexy Beast. Why do animals have sex? and in such incredible variety? This course will consider the ways biologists study the causes and consequences of sex in animals at all levels – from the cellular process of meiosis, to the organismal concept of gender, to mating interactions between individuals and their evolutionary consequences. Students will learn to read and evaluate the primary literature, formulate hypotheses, and carry out independent research projects using a model organism, the bean beetle Callosobruchus maculatus. Students will communicate their results in scientific papers, posters, and oral presentations. Finally, as sexy beasts ourselves, we will consider how our human biases and social assumptions influence the questions asked and their accepted answers.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Brown
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BIO 150-03 - Intro to Biological Inquiry W/Lab (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
The Effects of Climate Change on Organisms. We will examine the effects of predicted changes in temperature, moisture and carbon dioxide levels on organismal and ecosystem function through experimental investigation. We will focus on the effects of such changes on the physiology and metabolic functioning of organisms, as well as on biogeochemical processes of ecosystems. This course will be taught in a workshop format, meeting twice a week for three hours. Class time will be devoted primarily to discussions and lab work, examining theoretical aspects of organismal and ecosystem functioning, design and implementation of lab-based experiments, and the interpretation of our results in the context of extensive ongoing climate change research.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Jacobson
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BIO 150-03 - Intro to Biological Inquiry W/Lab (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
Symmetry Breaking: Cells are not disorderly bags of molecules. On the contrary, all cells carefully distribute their contents asymmetrically in order to make certain parts of themselves distinct from other parts. Symmetry breaking is particularly evident during embryonic development when an embryo morphs from a sphere of cells into something with multiple axes (e.g. front-back). How do cells do this? Why do they spend so much energy breaking symmetry? It turns out that symmetry breaking is essential for many biological processes. In this course students will learn to use frog oocytes, eggs, and/or embryos in order to observe and explore symmetry breaking processes in living cells. Moreover, students will perform novel research related to this topic, which will involve developing a specific hypothesis, designing and performing experiments, and analyzing and sharing results.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Sandquist
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BIO 150-04 - Intro to Biological Inquiry W/Lab (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
The Language of Neurons. In this course students will actively learn how biologists study the nervous system. Specifically, students will work as neuroscientists for a semester and will attempt to learn something novel about how nerve cells communicate with one another at chemical synapses. Students will present their findings at the end of the semester via both oral and written presentations. Papers resulting from a substantial independent project will be published in the class journal, Pioneering Neuroscience: The Grinnell Journal of Neurophysiology. Students with a strong background in high school physics will benefit most from this section of Biological Inquiry.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Lindgren
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BIO 150-05 - Intro to Biological Inquiry W/Lab (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Cell Fate: Calvin or Hobbes? During the development of an embryo, how is the fate of a cell determined? How does a cell “know” it is supposed to become a nerve cell? Or part of the gut? How does it know its location within the embryo? To address these questions, we will examine the fate of cells during embryonic development, focusing primarily on the nematode, Caenorhabditis elegans. We will critically evaluate the primary literature, formulate hypotheses, carry out independent research projects using a variety of analytical tools, and report experimental results in scientific papers, posters, and oral presentations. The class is taught in a workshop format, with laboratories, discussions, and lectures integrated in each class period.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Praitis
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CSC 151-01 & 02 - Functional Problem Solving w/lab (Fall and Spring) 4 credits (Fall and Spring)
In this section of CSC 151, we will ground our study of functional problem solving in media computation. In particular, we will explore mechanisms for representing, making, and manipulating images. We will consider a variety of models of images based on pixels, basic shapes, and objects that draw. The course will be taught using a workshop style: In most class sessions, students will work collaboratively on a series of problems. Includes formal laboratory work.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Davis, Rebelsky, Weinman
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CSC 161-01 - Imperative Problem Solving & Data Structures w/lab (Fall and Spring) 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 .
Instructor: Walker
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ENG 120-01 - Literary Analysis (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
In this course students will explore the ways in which form and figure interact with cultural assumptions. Course readings will include a variety of poems, stories, and a novel, as well as introductory essays on different methodologies of literary analysis. Assignments are geared toward learning how to turn raw encounters with literature and criticism into persuasive critical evaluations.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Andrews
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ENG 120-01 - Literary Analysis (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
In this section of Literary Analysis, you will develop the tools required to read and critique poetry and prose written in English. Besides mastering the basics of the “close reading,” you will analyze texts through the lens of critical theory to develop a rich and nuanced vocabulary for discussing literature. We will explore the notion of canon formation and consider how African American writers “signify” upon “master narratives.” Specifically, we will read works by Wanda Coleman, Gwendolyn Brooks, Edward P. Jones, Susan-Lori Parks, and C.S. Giscombe–to name a few–to understand how race and gender impact black texts, if they impact them at all.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Benjamin
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ENG 120-02 - Literary Analysis (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
An introduction to poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, this course explores the complex interplay between the world, the text, and the writer. Reading a wide range of literary genres and authors, we will be guided by big questions: What is literature? What makes a story a story, a poem a poem? What is the role of the writer? We will also attend to the pleasures of the text, the formal and stylistic particulars of specific works and their writers. Readings will include: stories by Herman Melville, Denis Johnson, Grace Paley, Junot Diaz, and Jhumpa Lahiri; a novel by Don DeLillo, which will facilitate an introduction to critical theory; a cross-section of American poetry, including Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Schuyler, Gwendolyn Brooks, Yusef Komunyakaa, C. K. Williams, John Yau, Kay Ryan, and Frederick Seidel; essays by James Baldwin, Arundhati Roy, Joan Didion, and David Foster Wallace. Graded assignments will include regular short writing assignments, a midterm, class presentations, and two papers.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Phan
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ENG 120-02 - Literary Analysis (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
This course is an introduction to methods of literary analysis for poetry, short fiction, novels, and drama. We will begin with poetry, working on developing a vocabulary for discussion and interpretation of poetry, and focusing on imagery, sound, themes, rhyme and meter, and other elements. The middle units of the course will be devoted to close readings of short fiction and one novel, Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, and we will conclude with a consideration of some of the most important elements of drama via Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Barlow
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ENG 120-03 - Literary Analysis (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
In this course, we will practice and implement several analytical methodologies for explicating texts. These texts will represent a set of unsolved literary problems, about which there is no definitive critical consensus. Together, we will establish and differentiate our critical positions through collaborative annotation, historicist research, formal analysis, and applications of theory. By the end of the semester, you will have a basic set of reliable tools for working on poetry, fiction, and film, a series of four completed implementations of a selection of these tools, and a prospectus toward an extensive research project in literary analysis.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Shanafelt
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ENG 120-03 - Literary Analysis (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
An introduction to poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction, this course explores the complex interplay between the world, the text, and the writer. Reading a wide range of literary genres and authors, we will be guided by big questions: What is literature? What makes a story a story, a poem a poem? What is the role of the writer? We will also attend to the pleasures of the text, the formal and stylistic particulars of specific works and their writers. Readings will include: stories by Herman Melville, Denis Johnson, Grace Paley, Junot Diaz, and Jhumpa Lahiri; a novel by Don DeLillo, which will facilitate an introduction to critical theory; a cross-section of American poetry, including Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Lowell, James Schuyler, Gwendolyn Brooks, Yusef Komunyakaa, C. K. Williams, John Yau, Kay Ryan, and Frederick Seidel; essays by James Baldwin, Arundhati Roy, Joan Didion, and David Foster Wallace. Graded assignments will include regular short writing assignments, a midterm, class presentations, and two papers.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Phan
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ENG 120-04 - Literary Analysis (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Students in this section will explore methods of analyzing novels, short fiction, films, and poetry. We will begin with a unit that involves reading a novel to use as a touchstone while exploring a range of critical and theoretical approaches. The course will then examine literature that embodies traditionally formal as well as experimental strategies in poetry, film, and other modes. We will discuss the ways authors craft their works, and we will develop strategies for analyzing those choices in academic papers. Graded assignments will include frequent short writing assignments and longer papers.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Simpson
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ENG 120-04 - Literary Analysis (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
In this course, we will practice and implement several analytical methodologies for explicating texts. These texts will represent a set of unsolved literary problems, about which there is no definitive critical consensus. Together, we will establish and differentiate our critical positions through collaborative annotation, historicist research, formal analysis, and applications of theory. By the end of the semester, you will have a basic set of reliable tools for working on poetry, fiction, and film, a series of four completed implementations of a selection of these tools, and a prospectus toward an extensive research project in literary analysis.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Shanafelt
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ENG 121-01 - Introduction to Shakespeare (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
This course will help students develop foundational tools for literary analysis by focusing on the poems and plays of William Shakespeare. As we read these Renaissance texts, we will consider the ways in which modern literary theory can open up new ways of exploring meaning and signification within literary works. We will also discuss Shakespeare’s status as a cultural icon, the relationship between theatrical production and the printed page, and the ways in which generic classification affects our response to particular plays.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Arner
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ENG 121-01 - Introduction to Shakespeare (Spring) 4 credits (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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ENG 121-02 - Introduction to Shakespeare (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
This course is an introduction to Shakespeare’s drama and poetry. We will read Shakespeare’s work as a way to develop the skills necessary for literary analysis: close reading, clear writing, and logical argumentation. Shakespeare’s texts did not only paint a picture of the complicated Renaissance world; they attempted to change how that world looked. His poetry and drama powerfully challenged and redefined some of the dominant orthodoxies of Renaissance English culture. We will study how Shakespeare used the sonnet form to critique the norms governing Renaissance sexuality, the comedy to challenge gender codes in English society, the history play to reveal the long history of class tensions and social injustice dividing the English nation, and the tragedy to redefine the agency of the individual “subject” in corporate institutions such as the state and the church. Our course will conclude with a meditation on how Shakespeare addressed the problem of race in the first decade of English global trade and diplomacy. In studying how Shakespeare participated in some of the most pointed cultural debates of his time, we will consider how recent critics and theorists have read Shakespearean texts to critique aspects of contemporary culture.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Lee
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ENG 210-01 - Studies in Genre (Spring) 4 credits
The Essay: Classic to Contemporary. This course considers the essay, the literary genre Montaigne made famous and modern in 1580 when he first used the term (essai: “attempt” or “trial) for his self-reflective, digressive, chatty, and informal form of writing; and which Samuel Johnson defined as “a loose sally of the mind; an irregular, undigested piece.” Ranging across historical periods, aesthetic styles, and thematic concerns, this course attempts to put forward and interpret a tradition of the essay as a genre, while also raising critical and theoretical questions about literary genre in general. Along the way, we will explore subcategories of the essay, such as the personal essay, the political essay, the travel essay, and the lyric essay; we will stop to consider how the essay both shapes and is shaped by ideas of personhood, the relation between the essayist and society, and the makings of literary style; and we will also essay our own curiosities and questions. Essayists will include Montaigne, Addison & Steele, Johnson, Hazlitt, Emerson, Thoreau, William James, Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Walter Benjamin, Susan Sontag, James Baldwin, Rachel Carson, Joan Didion, Annie Dillard, David Foster Wallace, Rebecca Solnit, Marilynne Robinson, Geoff Dyer, Eula Bliss, and John Jeremiah Sullivan. Writing assignments will be comprised of weekly reading responses and a final portfolio of revised, original essays.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; or for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Phan
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ENG 223-01 - The Tradition of English Lit I (Spring) 4 credits
Centuries of Revolution. This course is an introduction to the major texts and dominant issues defining the English culture of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. We will read texts from this broad historical range, by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Spenser, and Milton, as individual artistic masterpieces, but also as important interventions in the religious, political, and scientific revolutions of the time. Our understanding of the period will be defined by four central cultural issues: the rise of the idea of the English nation, the influence of Humanist rhetoric and education on English literary culture, the Protestant Reformation and the creation of the Anglican Church, and the development of the empirical scientific method. The course will conclude with an analysis of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, written in the aftermath of the tumultuous English Civil War, as the culmination of the four themes covered in the class. Throughout the course, we will focus on how literary texts decisively intervened in broad cultural debates during a time of unprecedented religious, political, and scientific upheaval. The course will be centered around class discussion and close reading of assigned texts. Our work will focus on clear writing and logical argumentation.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Arner, Lee
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ENG 224-01 - The Tradition of English Lit II (Fall) 4 credits
This course will explore the aesthetic progression of representation in British prose and poetry from the Restoration to the end of the nineteenth century, including works by Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Johnson, William Blake, Jane Austen, Emily Bront‰, and Oscar Wilde. Through these texts, we will discuss several of the major religious, economic, and moral debates of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and their relationship to the development of new literary styles and strategies by British authors. We will be particularly concerned with representations of religion, sexuality and gender, race and national identity, consumerism and money, and sentimental love, each of which undergoes substantial transformation across this period. Students will write a short analytical paper and a review of an article in literary criticism, as well as a longer research paper that will build on this earlier work. There will also be a final exam in which students will be able to demonstrate engagement with the aesthetic history outlined in the course.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 orENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Shanafelt
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ENG 225-01 - Introduction to Postcolonial Literatures (Fall) 4 credits
In this course we will study literary and theoretical responses to canonical English literature by authors from formerly colonized countries. By establishing a critical relation to traditional English literature, such responses inaugurate a new literary sensibility. Our discussions will include a consideration of terms such as ‘postcolonial,’ ‘home,’ and ‘english.’ Fiction written in English describes not only a literary and cultural tradition, but also a political response to the colonial past and the possibilities of a postcolonial future. We will explore how postcolonial fiction becomes an alternative history that questions colonial narratives. The final section of the course will focus on writers from the Asian, African, and Caribbean diaspora, who give voice to the multiple locations of “home.” Readings for the course include critical essays by postcolonial theorists such as Fernandez Retamar, and Ella Shohat, Shakespeare’s The Tempest; Aime Cesaire’s A Tempest; Things Fall Apart, by Chinua Achebe; Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea; Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy; Salman Rushdie’s East, West; The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh; and Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. We will also explore concepts such as ‘exile’ and ‘location’ in the poetry of Derek Walcott.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors,ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Kapila
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ENG 228-01 - American Literary Traditions II (Fall) 4 credits
Renaissance, Romance and Realism.This course is designed with a view toward the ways in which various 19th century American writers participate in the construction and reconstruction of national identity before and after the Civil War and into the 20th century. Is there a “proper” relationship between content and poetic form? Should novels be cast in the mode of romance or realism? How do legislative enactments and court decisions that revise the contours of citizenship and civic entitlement impact poetry and fiction? Are wilderness preservation and other environmental protections antithetical to the myth of American self-fashioning? These are just a few of the questions that will help shape our understanding of the extent to which the issues these writers address and the way they address them impact the way we understand ourselves today. This is a survey course, but we will focus primarily on seven key texts - Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (editions 1855; 1881-82); Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (U.S., 1885); Emily Dickinson’s poetry (first published collection of which appears in 1890); Frances Harper’s Iola Leroy (1892); Charles Chesnutt’s The Marrow of Tradition (1901); John Muir’s Our National Parks (1901); and Owen Wister’s The Virginian (1902). At various points in the semester, relationships of indebtedness and resistance will be fleshed out between the writers listed above and essays or short excerpts from the following: Rachel Carson, Rebecca Harding Davis, Annie Dillard, Frederick Douglass, W.E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Ellison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Allan Ginsberg, Susan Howe, William Dean Howells, Henry James, Herman Melville, Toni Morrison, Henry David Thoreau, Albion Tourgee, and Zitkala-Sa.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Andrews
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ENG 229-01 - The Tradition of African American Literature (Fall) 4 credits
Debating Black Literature. A survey of African American literature from its beginnings to the present, this course is structured around seven units that will introduce students to major debates, theories, and texts within the black literary tradition. Organized chronologically to ground students in the historical context and cultural tropes that inform much of black writing, this class will debate, among other things, the “origins” of African American literature, gendered notions of racial uplift, dialect and representation in black literature, pimp profiles in jazz poetry, and the “end,” as scholar Ken Warren asserts, of African American literature. An exciting and dynamic class that will feature student-led debates for each unit, majors and non-majors alike will benefit from a wide range of assignments geared toward fostering clear writing, persuasive speaking, and critical thinking.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non-majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Benjamin
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ENG 232-01 - Traditions of Ethnic American Literature (Spring) 4 credits
States of War: Conflict and Citizenship in Ethnic American Literature. In this survey course we will examine how American identity is made and remade in times of war, often by reanimating the discourse of American exceptionalism. Entangled in the nation’s long and continuing history of war, the writers and texts organized under Ethnic American literature represent an indispensible archive for exploring questions about American identity and democratic ideals of freedom and equality. We will read key texts in Ethnic American literature - by writers such as Jessica Hagedorn, John Okada, Simon J. Ortiz, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Maxine Hong Kingston, Yusef Komunyakaa, Anna Deveare Smith, and Sherman Alexie, amongst others - that directly or indirectly respond to the historical, political, and cultural processes leading up to and following in the aftermath of twentieth-century American wars, from U.S. colonialism and the American-Philippines War to the post-9/11 Global War on Terror. Exploring greater questions of aesthetics and politics, we will attempt to understand and appreciate how artists work with, alongside, and against recognizable national narratives such as American exceptionalism, multiculturalism, and freedom.
Prerequisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Instructor: Phan
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ENG 290-01 - Introduction to Literary Theory (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
This course is designed to introduce key concepts and issues that inform debates about the place of literature in the life of the mind. As we proceed, we will examine the shifting interrelationship between text and context that helps shape the contours of literary criticism from the classical period to our postmodern moment. This particular version of ENG 290 is grounded in an age-old question: does literature have a role to play in the regulation of a State? In Plato’s Republic, for example, poetry is exiled unless and until it can “prove her title to exist in a well-ordered state,” and in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, poetry (or its dramatic equivalent) is instrumental in exposing a “truth” that the State does not wish to express. Using the Republic and Hamlet as our interpretative framework, we will explore the “ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry” in selected readings that run the gamut from classical and renaissance philosophers and poets to more recent ground-breaking theoretical essays that focus on Hamlet in order to examine a particular critical problem. A premium will be placed on class discussion.
Prerequisite or co-requisite: ENG 120 or ENG 121 for majors; for non majors, ENG 120 or ENG 121 or any course in the study of literature in another language department.
Note: Plus-2 option available.
Instructor: Andrews
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ENG 303-01 - Chaucer (Fall) 4 credits
Chaucer and Dante. This seminar will consider Chaucer’s engagement with one of his most significant literary influences, Dante, with a focus on how these two authors respond to the religious and political controversies of their times. We will read sections of Dante’s Vita Nuova and the entirety of The Divine Comedy along with Chaucer’s major works, including The House of Fame, Troilus and Criseyde, the Legend of Good Women, and selected Canterbury Tales. Students will be required to prepare informal research presentations in addition to an abstract and annotated bibliography that will lead to a final seminar paper.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 .
Instructor: Arner
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ENG 310-01 - Studies in Shakespeare (Spring) 4 credits
Precolonialism: Shakespeare’s Global Renaissance, 1590-1623. This course will analyze a prehistory of colonialism in Shakespeare’s England. Our point of departure will be Christopher Hill’s famous description of England’s rise: “The England of 1603 was a second-class power; the Great Britain of 1714 was the greatest world power. Under James and Charles English colonisation of America was just beginning; under Anne England held a large empire in America, Asia, and Africa, and colonial questions were decisive when policy was formulated.” In this course, we will begin to map out how England’s place on the world stage began to change in Shakespeare’s time. Queen Elizabeth granted a Royal Charter founding the East India Company in 1600, and dispatched her first diplomatic emissaries to Asia from 1596-1602, during the peak of Shakespeare’s career. Throughout the 1590’s, Shakespeare and a generation of poets and playwrights began to reposition England on a broader global stage, rejecting the earlier Renaissance understanding of England as a cultural backwater because of its geographical isolation. This course will therefore study how Shakespeare participated in an effort to imagine England’s relation to the “Orient” from 1590-1623 by reading his drama, the travel writing of his contemporaries, and diplomatic communiqués written during the first decades of English global expansion. The class will develop an understanding of how the first Renaissance literary representations of the “East” defined the terms of England’s policies during its subsequent century of colonialist expansion. The course will conclude with an analysis of how a fundamental shift occurred in the seventeenth century, transforming the English imagination of Asia from a discourse of trade imbalances, to one of racial otherness that we inherit today.
A note on method: this course will use close reading in conjunction with computational methods to test experimental hypotheses against a large corpus of Renaissance texts (up to 25,000 texts). We will think about why different, or analogous, arguments emerge from the different methods. Students without the prerequisites may enroll in the class with the permission of the instructor.
Prerequisite: ENG 121 . ENG 223 and ENG 224 are strongly recommended.
Instructor: Lee
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ENG 316-01 - Studies in English Renaissance Literature (Fall) 4 credits
Early Modern Poetics and a Counterhistory of the Scientific Method. This course will study the central, and unexpected, role of early modern poetry and rhetoric in shaping the earliest articulations of the scientific method. During the Renaissance, poets and rhetoricians actively intervened in scientific debates, and natural philosophers defined their method in terms of the power, and the limits, of words. This course will focus on the poetry of Lucretius, John Donne, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton, the scientific prose of Francis Bacon, William Harvey, and Thomas Sprat, and the philosophical texts of Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, the Cambridge Platonists, and Robert Hooke. In the course, students will rethink the scientific method in the early seventeenth century as a specific response to Renaissance debates about rhetoric and language: how do words represent things, and to what extent does language either signify or distort the “report of the senses”? For all of the poets and natural philosophers studied in the course, the articulation of an empirical method involved the reimagination of how language structures human cognition and sensate experience, and how the passions aroused by rhetoric could be harnessed to productive epistemological ends. By attending to the underrecognized historical link between literature and science, we will conclude the course with a meditation on how we might productively rethink the schism between the humanities and the sciences in our society today.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 or ENG 273 .
Instructor: Lee
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ENG 325-01 - Studies in Ethnic American Literatures (Fall) 4 credits
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: Chang-Rae Lee, Maxine Hong Kingston, Richard Rodriguez, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, John Yau, Gloria Anzald£a, David Treuer, Dave Eggers, and Andrew X. Pham. In addition to a mid-term paper and final project, students will be required to write short weekly responses to the readings and participate actively in discussion. 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 329-01 - Studies in African American Literature (Spring) 4 credits
Invisibility, Hypervisibility and Misrecognition: Critical and Theoretical Perspectives in Black Women’s Literature. This course examines how black women’s literature and feminist scholarship illuminates the impasse between how black women see themselves and how they are seen. Bearers of the burden of representation and experts in the politics of respectability, black women writers and black feminist critics often address - either implicitly or explicitly - the stereotypical portrayals of black womanhood that misrecognize black women or render them invisible. To better grasp the applicability of this longstanding history within a contemporary context, we will read Kathryn Stockett’s The Help, alongside representative reviews of the novel and film, to reveal the troping of black women’s bodies, voices, and stories as a mechanism for advancing social fantasies of racial harmony. Specifically, we will: examine how Stockett, a white woman, represents black women, their voices and thoughts; delineate how her portrayals compare to the black female protagonists figured in texts by black women writers (Dorothy West, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Walker, Beah Richards, Rita Dove, and Suzan-Lori Parks, for example); and distinguish between how Skeeter views “the help,” and how black women literary scholars, historians, and cultural critics (such as Nellie McKay, Barbara Smith, Darlene Clark Hine, Nell Irvin Painter, Daphne Brooks, and Duchess Harris) view themselves and the black women they study.
Prerequisite: ENG 225 , ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 or ENG 273 .
Instructor: Benjamin
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ENG 331-01 - Studies in American Prose II (Fall) 4 credits
Neuroliterature. In a recent article in N+1, the critic Marco Roth describes the emergence of a new kind of literary work, the “neuronovel,” in which the protagonist sports an atypical brain. Whether Tourette syndrome or autism or Capgras syndrome or facial agnosia or paranoid schizophrenia, this difference, says Roth, offers the novelist an opportunity to reflect on the impact of scientific knowledge on the culture at large. Roth detects a shift from mind to brain in the province least likely to accede to a mechanistic understanding of human existence - namely, fiction - and he doesn’t view this development in entirely positive terms. In this course we will expand Roth’s term to include both memoir and poetry, and we will bring a disability studies perspective to the questions at hand. Why shouldn’t writers engage with the dominant explanatory narrative of their time? To what extent might literature constitute the ideal venue in which to work out new notions of difference? Possible critical texts include The Soul in the Brain: The Cerebral Basis of Language, Art and Belief; The Master & His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World; “Multisensory Images”; My Stroke of Insight; and “Poetry as Right-hemispheric Language.” Possible literary texts include The Echo Maker; Motherless Brooklyn; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime; Lowboy; Twitch and Shout; Songs of a Gorilla Nation; and How Can I Talk If My Lips Don’t Move?
Prerequisite: ENG 227 , ENG 228 , ENG 229 , ENG 231 , ENG 232 , or ENG 273 .
Instructor: Andrews, Savarese
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ENG 332-01 - The Victorians (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
National Fictions. Students in this seminar will read a series of nineteenth-century fictions, including “national tales,” that portray England’s relationships with Ireland, Greece, India, and other worldwide locations through romance plots and other novelistic devices. Other readings from primary and scholarly texts in Romantic and Victorian literature will help us interpret those narratives. Assignments will include blog posts, a mid-semester paper, an annotated bibliography, and a research paper.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 or ENG 225 .
Instructor: Simpson
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ENG 337-01 - The British Novel I (Spring) 4 credits
Enlightenment and the British Novel: Conversations between Fiction and Philosophy from Locke to Sterne. In this seminar, we will examine several masterpieces of popular British prose fiction from the Restoration through the 1760s in the intellectual context of Enlightenment philosophy. During this era, authors of popular fiction (including John Bunyan, Jonathan Swift, Eliza Haywood, Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Sarah Fielding, and Laurence Sterne), not only wrote in response to the dominant aesthetic, moral, political, and epistemological frameworks provided by contemporary philosophers, but also contributed to the development of modern philosophical argument by satirizing long-held assumptions about human nature, perception, subjectivity, morality, political economy, and the purposes of art. Some of these early novels, including Henry Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling and Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, satirize contemporary and recent philosophers by name, inviting the reader to consider ways in which realistic fiction may constitute a new method for challenging philosophy with humor and sentiment. In conversation with these extraordinary works of fiction, we will also read excerpts from works by John Locke, George Berkeley, Lord Shaftesbury, David Hume, and Adam Smith. Students will write two short analytical papers and one substantial research project.
Prerequisite: ENG 223 or ENG 224 .
Instructor: Shanafelt
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ENG 346-01 - Studies in Modern Prose (Spring) 4 credits
Cross-listed as: GLS 346-01 . James Joyce’s Ulysses. This seminar will undertake an intensive examination of James Joyce’s Ulysses. In addition to Joyce’s text, students will read some of Joyce’s sources as well as a variety of literary and critical responses to Ulysses. We will also work on creating and sharing digital resources for readers of the novel. Assignments will include blog posts, a mid-semester paper, bibliographic work, and a final project.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , or ENG 226 .
Instructor: Simpson
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ENG 360-01 - Seminar in Postcolonial Literature (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
This course explores the phenomenon of nationalism in literature from South Africa, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India. How have writers from these countries articulated a national imaginary? Now often understood to be a somewhat pejorative and outdated concept, associated with military chauvinism or aggression, nationalism marked the first wave of anti-imperial literature. We will study current critiques of this concept in postcolonial literature, and also examine the literary and historical genealogy of concepts such as “civilization,” “the primitive,” and “modernity” which are all associated with the nation. Which groups of people feel oppressed and excluded from the nation? In what ways does the concept of the nation have continuing theoretical and material significance? These are some of the questions we will study in the essays and novels of Salman Rushdie, Arundhati Roy, Mahasweta Devi, Shyam Selvadurai, Chinua Achebe, J. M Coetzee, and Nuruddin Farah. We will also read critical essays by, among others, Ben Anderson, Partha Chatterjee, and Kumkum Sangari. The objectives of the course are to explore postcolonial fiction in relation to theoretical concepts inherited from disciplines such as anthropology and history about subjects, nations, and narrative forms. We will also study the relationship between the postcolonial novel and postmodern fiction.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , ENG 226 or ENG 229 .
Instructor: Kapila
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ENG 390-01 - Literary Theory (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
Literature in Crisis, Writers on Trial. This seminar deals with various aspects of late 20th and early 21st century literary theory arranged around five crisis points: the first deals with the trials of Oscar Wilde in view of Michel Foucault’s “history of sexuality”; the second deals with the crisis of authority, identity, and historical recovery provoked by the publication of William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner; Toni Morrison’s neo-slave narrative, Beloved, will serve as a bridge to the third crisis involving Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida and the “scandal” of post-Holocaust memory; the fourth section deals with the crisis of censorship and sensibility engendered by publication of Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses; and the fifth and concluding section will focus on issues of autobiography, authenticity and gender/sex as they relate to J.T. Leroy (nom de plume of Laura Albert) and “his” novel, Sarah. Whether the result of juridical processes that pronounce sentence or of publication procedures that provoke outrage, these crises not only remind us of the inextricability of politics, ethics, and aesthetics but also recall to us the humanity of those involved, whether they be victims, defendants, prosecutors or theorists. In addition to the texts and writers noted above, readings are likely to include selections from Butler, Greenblatt, Said, and Spivak, as well as a play, Moises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (1997).
Prerequisite: Third-year or senior standing and at least one 300-level literature seminar in the English department.
Instructor: Andrews
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GLS 227-01 - Topics in German Literature in Translation: The Writers of Modern Life (Spring) 4 credits Spring
Cross-listed as: GRM 227-01 . This writing intensive course deals with how European writers make sense of the emergence of city life. A series of comparative readings about London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin by Balzac, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Dickens, D”blin, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Freud, Marx, Poe, Schnitzler, Stifter, and Zola will help us investigate how these writers construct discourses on the city that make transformations in everyday life-consumer culture, perception, social and gender norms, politics, and technology-knowable. Our reading selections will be complemented by cultural criticism that calls into question assumptions about “modernity” and its cultural centers.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Byrd
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GLS 251-01 - Theoretical Approaches to Children’s and Young Adult Literature (Spring) 4 credits Spring
Cross-listed as: HUM 251-01 .
This course takes a theoretical approach to canonical and contemporary children’s literature. Content is variable, but may include The Young Adult Problem Novel, Dystopian Fiction for the Young Adult Reader, and Constructions of Race, Slavery, Class and Gender in Children’s and Young Adult Literature.
Prerequisite: A course in English or another course in literature.
Instructor: Greene
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GLS 303-01 - Renaissance in Hamlet (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Seminar on Shakespeare’s heroic revenge tragedy Hamlet, in its Renaissance, Reformation and Elizabethan contexts. The most popular dramatic form of the periods of Elizabeth and James I, revenge tragedy reflects an age of scepticism and lost direction, expressive of the intellectual ferment and spiritual upheaval brought on by the dissolution of the medieval belief in an ordered cosmos, by the rise of urban economies, by the articulation of pragmatic approaches to the problems of political rule, by religious and political conflict in the English Renaissance, and by the emergence of competing ideas on the nature of the cosmos, the natural world and especially the character of humanity, its potential and its limitations. In Hamlet Shakespeare takes up again his great theme, the killing of a king, deliberated as the duty, the burden and the temptation of a prince bound to avenge. Complementary course resources will include selections from Renaissance ethical and political philosophy, including Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, Machiavelli’s Prince, and Montaigne, and sources such as Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy and the Frenchman Belleforest’s retelling of the old tale (Hystorie of Hamblet). Our close reading of Hamlet will complement the Theatre Department’s November production of the play. Seminar members are invited (not required) to participate in the production as actors, dramaturgs, rehearsal assistants (scene study and scansion), management or crew.
Prerequisite: HUM 102 , HUM 140 , SST 140 , or 200-level coursework in Art, Classics, English, foreign languages, History, Philosophy, Poli Sci, Religious Studies, or Theatre.
Instructor: Mease
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GLS 304-01 - Postcolonial Performance (Spring) 4 credits Spring
Cross-listed as: THE 304-01 . An exciting theatre genre developed during the last half of the twentieth century as former British colonies struggled for independence. Anglophone postcolonial drama addresses nationhood and individual identity. This course includes foundational theory, African works (some addressing apartheid), Caribbean economic neo-colonization, and Maori, Australian and Canadian Aboriginal performance. It explores Scottish and Irish nationalisms and what it means to be an immigrant to the colonizing center, London. Using films and play texts, we will focus on the ways issues are addressed in both forms and contents of this new performance.
Prerequisite: A 200-level literature course or theatre and dance course.
Instructor: Delmenico
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GLS 346-01 - Studies in Modern Prose (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
Cross-listed as: ENG 346-01 . James Joyce’s Ulysses. This seminar will undertake an intensive examination of James Joyce’s Ulysses. In addition to Joyce’s text, students will read some of Joyce’s sources as well as a variety of literary and critical responses to Ulysses. We will also work on creating and sharing digital resources for readers of the novel. Assignments will include blog posts, a mid-semester paper, bibliographic work, and a final project.
Prerequisite: ENG 224 , ENG 225 , or ENG 226 .
Instructor: Simpson
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GRM 227-01 - Topics in German Literature in Translatiom: The Writers of Modern Life (Spring) 4 credits Spring
Cross-listed as: GLS 227-01 . This writing intensive course deals with how European writers make sense of the emergence of city life. A series of comparative readings about London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin by Balzac, Baudelaire, Benjamin, Dickens, D”blin, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Freud, Marx, Poe, Schnitzler, Stifter, and Zola will help us investigate how these writers construct discourses on the city that make transformations in everyday life-consumer culture, perception, social and gender norms, politics, and technology-knowable. Our reading selections will be complemented by cultural criticism that calls into question assumptions about “modernity” and its cultural centers.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Byrd
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HIS 100-01 - Making History (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
Europe under the Great Dictators. This course provides an introduction to issues of historical causation, argumentation, and evidence, through the lens of two of the most repressive dictators in all of world history–Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. After an introductory unit on historical methods, we will use a variety of primary and secondary texts to investigate the workings of the Nazi and Stalinist dictatorships, examining subjects like everyday life in a dictatorship, the personal role of Hitler and Stalin in determining state policy, the use of state terror and the secret police, the rise of the leader cult, the origins of the Holocaust, and the nature of Stalin’s Great Purges.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Cohn
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HIS 100-01 & 02 - Making History (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Europe in the Age of Revolutions, 1789-1917. This course provides an introduction to issues of historical causation, argumentation, and evidence through the lens of European revolutions between the late eighteenth century and the early twentieth. After introductory units on historical methods and the phenomenon of revolution itself, we examine the French Revolution, the Revolutions of 1848-49, and the Russian Revolution as both profoundly local and decidedly transnational events. We work closely with primary sources and consider the political, social, cultural, intellectual, and psychological ramifications of these dramatic ruptures for their participants and subsequent generations.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Maynard
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HIS 100-02 - Making History (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
Cold War America. This course provides an introduction to issues of historical causation, argumentation, and evidence through the lens of the American Cold War era. We will explore the cultural, social, intellectual, and political history of the United States from the 1940s through the 1980s, paying close attention to the moments in which foreign and domestic politics shaped the daily lives of Americans. We also will consider the historical methods used by scholars to conduct research and write about the past. We will work with primary and secondary sources as well as films and music in order to develop the skills necessary to analyze historical scholarship.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Lewis
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HIS 100-03 & 04 - Making History (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
The Spanish Conquest of America. This course provides an introduction to issues of historical causation, argumentation, and evidence through the lens of the first major episode of European colonization. In tandem with discussions of historical methods we will examine accounts of Spanish experiences in the Caribbean, in Mexico, and in the Andes. Using primary and secondary sources, students will learn the skills necessary to analyze historical scholarship and be introduced to the various means by which historians conduct research and write about the past.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Silva
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HIS 311-01 - Politics in Early American Republic (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Students in this seminar will discover and debate recent developments in the study of political history by focusing intensely on one of its most exciting periods, the early American republic. During the years 1789-1820, the American political system first took shape as federal and state governments established themselves, as the country experienced its first era of party conflict, and as philosophical ideas about the structures of American power and concepts such as “republicanism” and “democracy” were put to the test. The seminar will analyze traditional topics of political interest in this period such as political party formation and interaction among the “founding fathers,” and it will also explore the many ways that recent historians have broadened their view of politics to include such factors as political culture, female involvement in politics, and the politicization of everyday life. Students will write in-depth research papers on some aspect of politics in the period.
Prerequisite: HIS 100 and any 200-level American History course
Instructor: Purcell
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HIS 322-01 - Sex & Sexuality in American History (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
This seminar moves thematically across American history, from the colonial era to the present day, to explore the American sexual experience. We will identify changes, contradictions, and continuities in sexual ideals as well as the even more complicated realities of Americans’ sexual experiences. We will discuss the invention of heterosexualities, same-sex sexualities, and transgendered and transsexual bodies in American history. We also will consider the history of marriage laws, the concept of sexual citizenship, and visions of alternate sexual systems. We will look at the histories of prostitution and sex work, pornography and censorship, and sexual violence. Finally, we will explore how and why certain desires and acts were labeled “deviant” while others were touted as “normal.” The underlying premise to this course is that sex, like individuals and nations, has a history. Students will write in-depth research papers on some aspect of American sexual history.
Prerequisite: Any 100-level history course and any 200-level U.S. History course.
Instructor: Lewis
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HIS 331-01 - Making Knowledge in Early Modern Europe (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
A knowledge explosion took place in Europe between 1450 and 1700. Its powder keg was stocked with newly recovered ancient texts, with stories from Europeans’ encounters with the New World, and with the results of the observation and experimental interrogations of nature. Independent research projects will examine the effects of the media revolution-the development of print culture-which ignited and sustained the blast of this “information age” in Europe and beyond.
Prerequisite: Any 100-level history course and any 200-level European History course.
Instructor: Pollnitz
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HIS 334-01 - Decolonization (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
In the decades following the Second World War, the political status of more than a quarter of the world’s land mass and population was transformed from colonies into nation states with surprising speed and far-reaching ramifications. In this seminar we will explore some of the debates surrounding the timing, causality, character, and consequences of this phenomenon and consider how historical actors impacted and were impacted by the changing relationship of metropolitan centers and colonial peripheries. Themes will include anti-colonial nationalism; labor militancy; agrarian change; settler colonialism; migration and displacement; post-colonial identities; and the roots of global development. Common texts and student research projects will focus on the political, social, intellectual, and cultural dimensions of the end of empire 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: Any 100-level history course and HIS 235 , HIS 236 , HIS 261 , HIS 262 , or HIS 295: Cultures of Empire in the Imperial Metropolis (offered Fall 2012) or Religion & Socio-Political Change in Colonial India (offered Spring 2012)
Instructor: Prevost
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HIS 342-01 - Stalinism (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
This seminar will examine the political, social, and cultural history of the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, with a particular focus on the 1930s. The first half of the course will feature a series of common readings on topics such as the rise of Stalin’s dictatorship, the Great Terror of the 1930s, and the drive to collectivize Soviet agriculture and industrialize the economy; we’ll discuss the nature of everyday life and social identity under Stalin, look at the impact of propaganda and revolutionary ideology on the values and mindset of the population, and debate whether Stalinism represented the continuation of the revolution or a divergence from its ideals. After looking at a set of representative primary sources (such as oral histories, memoirs, and diaries), students will then produce a research paper in the second half of the semester, delving into some aspect of Soviet society and politics under Stalin.
Prerequisite: Any 100-level history course and HIS 242 or HIS 244 .
Instructor: Cohn
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HIS 377-01 - From Samurai to Soldiers: Japan At War (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
This seminar follows Japan’s military conflicts from the “opening” of the country by US gunboats in 1853 through to the country’s demobilization and disarmament at the end of WWII in 1945. During this century, Japan rapidly modernized its military, became the first Asian nation to defeat a Western power, and expanded its empire to encompass much of East and Southeast Asia. The lectures, discussions, and readings in this class will focus on the social, cultural, economic, and political impact that the phenomenon of modern military mobilization had on Japan during this pivotal period.
Prerequisite: Any 100-level history course and any 200-level East Asian History course.
Instructor: Mayo
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HUM 251-01 - Theoretical Approaches to Children’s and Young Adult Literature (Spring) 4 credits Spring
Cross-listed as: GLS 251-01 . This course takes a theoretical approach to canonical and contemporary children’s literature. Content is variable, but may include The Young Adult Problem Novel, Dystopian Fiction for the Young Adult Reader, and Constructions of Race, Slavery, Class and Gender in Children’s and Young Adult Literature.
Prerequisite: A course in English or another course in literature.
Instructor: Greene
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HUM 365-01 - Studies in Film Theory (Spring) 4 credits Spring
Domestic Cinema–Feminist Film Criticism and Practice. This seminar is deeply interdisciplinary, engaging with several fields of inquiry. Specifically, we will study in detail three principle areas of research-film theory & history, feminism, and human geography. The central focus throughout will be the ways space, particularly domestic space, shapes constructions and embodiments of gender, race, nationality, and sexuality. While such investigations will familiarize students with both the theories of human geography and even some knowledge of architectural history, it will also demand in-depth study of a range of feminist knowledge. We will read in detail about the history of second wave feminism and its engagement with other theoretical methodologies, such as Marxism, psychoanalysis, postmodernism, postcolonialism, critical race studies, literary and cultural theory. We will engage these complex feminist topics through the academic discipline of film studies, in which feminist film theory specifically has played a central role in its history. The course begins by addressing representations of women in dominant cinema; however, we will spend most of the semester engaging with films by women, and the many forms global women’s cinema has taken over the years. Textbooks for the course are–Film and Theory: An Anthology; Feminist Film Theorists; Women’s Pictures: Feminism and Cinema; and Gender, Identity, & Place: Understanding Feminist Geographies. Representative directors include Deepa Mehta, Ulrike Ottinger, Ousmene Sembene, Maya Deren, Alfred Hitchcock, Todd Haynes, Tracey Moffat, Stanley Kubrick, Chantal Akerman, Mika Ninagawa, among others.
Prerequisite: Third-year standing and HUM 185 .
Instructor: Geller
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MAT 444-01 - Senior Seminar (Spring) 4 credits Spring
Bayesian Statistical Analysis. The debate between classical (or “frequentist”) statisticians and “Bayesian” statisticians has produced controversy, and sometimes surprising levels of animosity, for decades. Recent advances in computing have revolutionized statistical practice by making it easy to obtain Bayesian solutions to complicated problems, which has helped bring the two camps much closer together. This course will introduce the differences between classical and Bayesian methods, and some of the history behind the great statistical schism. Students will learn the basics of Bayesian analysis with an emphasis on showing how Bayesian methods have revolutionized the use of statistics in fields such as medicine, environmental studies, political science, and genetics. We will also explore advanced topics, such as hierarchical models and meta-analysis, which are particularly well suited to a Bayesian approach.
Prerequisite: MAT 335 , or MAT 209 with permission of instructor.
Instructor: Jonkman
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MUS 201-01 - Topics in Music & Culture: Music and Mind (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
This course explores the rapidly growing field of music perception and cognition. In light of the advances in cognitive science and music theory, we will examine perceptual and cognitive foundations of how humans perceive, understand, and create music. Topics to be covered include evolutionary origins of music, music and emotion, musical learning and development, music and the brain, the perception and cognition of music structure, and the processes involved in composition, improvisation, and performance. (Each participant in this course shall lead a discussion on a topic of her or his choice, probably related to the paper/presentation required at the end of the semester.)
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Cha
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MUS 201-02 - Topics in Music & Culture: Music in Religious Experience (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
This course explores the numerous roles that music plays in various religious, spiritual, and cosmological contexts around the world. During the course of the semester, students will explore how music shapes, informs, and maintains normative social and epistemological orders in disparate religious practices. Students will examine the role music plays in ritual experience and its role in triggering altered states of consciousness such as trance, spirit possession, and ecstasy. The course will also address the ways in which anthropology, ethnomusicology, and other disciplines have approached the relationship between music and the divine in human experience.
Prerequisite: None.
Instructor: Perman
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MUS 322-01 - Advanced Studies in Music History and Literature: Mozart’s Operas (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
In this course, we will examine the five comic operas of Mozart’s maturity – The Abduction from the Seraglio, The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi fan tutte, and The Magic Flute – along with his two outstanding opere serie Idomeneo and La Clemenza di Tito, and come to appreciate their significance: as musical, literary, and dramatic works and in social, political, and historical contexts.
Prerequisite: MUS 112 and either MUS 261 or MUS 262 .
Instructor: E. Gaub
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POL 320-01 - Applied Policy Analysis (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Cross-listed as: PST 320-01 . Community and Household Food Security. This seminar examines threats to well-being that arise when access to healthy, affordable food is disrupted. How do we define and study these concerns? What roles do markets, governments, and interest groups play in creating or ameliorating problems? The focus is on US domestic policy, but some topics in other developed and developing countries will be included. Readings come from a range of disciplines, including public health and nutrition studies of well-being; political and economic explanations for food hardship; and the history and politics of domestic food programs and anti-hunger advocacy. Core elements of the seminar include learning how policies and programs can be evaluated and if that information influences policy making. The course will build on prior course work in policy studies or political science.
Prerequisite: Prerequisites for PST-320: PST 220 . Prerequisites for POL-320: POL 216 , POL 239 , POL 222 , POL 250 , or PST 220 .
Instructor: Lyons, Hess
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PST 320-01 - Applied Policy Analysis (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Community and Household Food Security. This seminar examines threats to well-being that arise when access to healthy, affordable food is disrupted. How do we define and study these concerns? What roles do markets, governments, and interest groups play in creating or ameliorating problems? The focus is on US domestic policy, but some topics in other developed and developing countries will be included. Readings come from a range of disciplines, including public health and nutrition studies of well-being; political and economic explanations for food hardship; and the history and politics of domestic food programs and anti-hunger advocacy. Core elements of the seminar include learning how policies and programs can be evaluated and if that information influences policy making. The course will build on prior course work in policy studies or political science.
Prerequisite: Prerequisites for PST-320: PST 220 . Prerequisites for POL-320: POL 216 , POL 239 , POL 222 , POL 250 , or PST 220 .
Instructor: Lyons, Hess
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REL 111-01 - Mapping the Realm of Religion (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
“Religion in “America”. This course will provide an introduction to the academic study of religion by focusing on religious traditions in “America.” Students will gain knowledge about the history and development of some of the major religious traditions in the United States. Students will also develop the critical skills to analyze perspectives, issues of representation, and interest as religions as well as “America” are studied as sites of contestation over meaning, identity, and purpose.
Prerequisite: None.
Note: First or second-year standing.
Instructor: Rietz
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REL 394-01 - Advanced Topics: Applying Religious Studies (Spring) 4 credits Spring
This seminar is intended to create the context of a scholarly community in which participants explore how the study of religion may be applied to a variety of different phenomena. As a construct of the scholar, the category of religion may be applied as a lens to a variety of phenomena, including that which is commonly not considered to be religious.
Prerequisite: REL 311 .
Instructor: Rietz
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RUS 389-01 - Advanced Russian Seminar (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita will be the focus of this seminar. Each class will be devoted to discussion of several chapters: their literary and political themes, as well as intertextual connections and cultural allusions. Towards the end of semester students will also read critical works about the novel in Russian. Conducted in Russian.
Prerequisite: RUS 313 .
Instructor: Vishevsky
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RUS 389-01 - Advanced Russian Seminar (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
This seminar examines contemporary Russian detective novels. In particular, it covers their development as a genre and their place in the new Russia’s literary landscape. Among the writers examined are Boris Akunin and Oksana Robski.. Conducted in Russian.
Prerequisite: RUS 313 .
Instructor: Greene
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SOC 390-01 - Advanced Studies in Sociology: Global Feminism (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
This course explores a range of contemporary women’s issues from the perspective of transnational feminism. Through the lens of sociology, we will examine women’s human rights, gendered law, cultural differences, religious fundamentalism, economic globalization, women’s role in the military, and the legacies of colonialism. Topics to be addressed include the ways that feminisms have emerged, the issues that have galvanized women across national and regional borders, the politics of generalizing across-culturally about women’s interest and demands, the ways that feminism has related historically to nationalism and imperialism, and the role that feminist agendas might play in addressing current global concerns. Course materials to be drawn from five regions of feminist experience: American, European, African, South American and Asian. Students will be challenged to analyze current events in terms of emergent theories of gender development within women’s transnational space around the world and to formulate new approaches to feminist interpretation and activism.
Prerequisite: any 200-level Sociology course and third-year standing
Instructor: Scott
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SPN 320-01 - Cultures of Spanish Speaking World (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
Examines diverse cultures of the Spanish-speaking world, including Latin America, Spain and US. May focus on one or multiple regions. Possible topics include: food cultures, immigration, visual cultures. May use academic articles, film, literary texts, music. Taught in Spanish. Variable content. May be repeated for credit when content changes.
Prerequisite: SPN 285 .
Instructor: Staff
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SPN 320-01 - Cultures of the Spanish-Speaking World (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Latin@s in the US: Issues for Social Change. This is an interdisciplinary course that brings awareness about issues that Latin@s face in the US and creates the cultural awareness needed to work effectively with them. Class discussions focus on the fields of health, law, immigration, education, and the economy. Within a cultural context, students also learn specialized vocabulary that is useful in professional settings. Experts in different fields share with students their professional and cultural experiences working with this population. Taught in Spanish.
Prerequisite: SPN 285 .
Instructor: Valentin
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THE 303-01 - Renaissance in Hamlet (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Seminar on Shakespeare’s heroic revenge tragedy Hamlet, in its Renaissance, Reformation and Elizabethan contexts. The most popular dramatic form of the periods of Elizabeth and James I, revenge tragedy reflects an age of scepticism and lost direction, expressive of the intellectual ferment and spiritual upheaval brought on by the dissolution of the medieval belief in an ordered cosmos, by the rise of urban economies, by the articulation of pragmatic approaches to the problems of political rule, by religious and political conflict in the English Renaissance, and by the emergence of competing ideas on the nature of the cosmos, the natural world and especially the character of humanity, its potential and its limitations. In Hamlet Shakespeare takes up again his great theme, the killing of a king, deliberated as the duty, the burden and the temptation of a prince bound to avenge. Complementary course resources will include selections from Renaissance ethical and political philosophy, including Castiglione’s Book of the Courtier, Machiavelli’s Prince, and Montaigne, and sources such as Thomas Kyd’s Spanish Tragedy and the Frenchman Belleforest’s retelling of the old tale (Hystorie of Hamblet). Our close reading of Hamlet will complement the Theatre Department’s November production of the play. Seminar members are invited (not required) to participate in the production as actors, dramaturgs, rehearsal assistants (scene study and scansion), management or crew.
Prerequisite: HUM 102 , HUM 140 or 200-level coursework in Art, Classics, English, foreign languages, History, Philosophy, Poli-Sci, Religious Studies or Theatre.
Instructor: Mease
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THE 304-01 - Postcolonial Performance (Spring) 4 credits (Spring)
Cross-listed as: GLS 304-01 . An exciting theatre genre developed during the last half of the twentieth century as former British colonies struggled for independence. Anglophone postcolonial drama addresses nationhood and individual identity. This course includes foundational theory, African works (some addressing apartheid), Caribbean economic neo-colonization, and Maori, Australian and Canadian Aboriginal performance. It explores Scottish and Irish nationalisms and what it means to be an immigrant to the colonizing center, London. Using films and play texts, we will focus on the ways issues are addressed in both forms and contents of this new performance.
Prerequisite: A 200-level literature course or theatre and dance.
Instructor: Delmenico
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THE 310-01 - Studies in Dance (Fall) 4 credits (Fall)
Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice. We will examine the histories and theories of dance as a vehicle for revealing and resisting oppression and injustice both through intentionally choreographed work and as part of broader social movements that engage diverse communities in wider struggles for justice. Further, we will investigate particular methodologies and case studies where dance is used as an arts-based research method of civic engagement.
Prerequisite: Any 200-level Theatre and Dance course.
Instructor: Miller
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European Studies |
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WES 297 - Guided Reading Project 2 credits (Fall or Spring)
To be taken in the semester preceding that in which the student will take the 397 course, this project is designed as preparation for Senior Independent Study. The student may request to work with any instructor currently teaching in the program who will also be teaching on the Grinnell campus during the following semester.
Instructor: Staff
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WES 397 - Senior Independent Study 4 credits (Fall or Spring)
The subject must be arranged with a faculty adviser (preferably the instructor of the Guided Reading Project 297, above) before the end of the semester preceding the independent study. The study should result in either a substantial essay (about 25–30 pages) or a creative accomplishment such as a photographic essay, film, dramatic production, paintings, etc. of similar magnitude. The latter will require some written explication as well. Occasional colloquia consisting of all students and faculty engaged in these projects will be held to exchange ideas and methods.
Instructor: Staff
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Writing Laboratory |
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EDU 150 - Teaching Writing 2 credits (Fall or Spring)
Cross-listed as: WRT 150 Students in Writing 150 will gain both theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience as they serve as writing mentors for
college courses or teach writing as volunteers in other contexts (e.g., prison programs, school, peer tutoring). They will read about theories of teaching writing, practice skills of tutoring, running workshops and facilitating peer review, observe the teaching of writing in several contexts, and engage in a discourse (both oral and written)about the teaching and learning of writing skills.
Prerequisite: None.
S/D/F only
Instructor: Staff
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WRT 101 - Basic Principles of 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 Lab to apply those basic principles to their assigned writing in other courses.
Prerequisite: None.
S/D/F only
Instructor: Staff
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WRT 102 - Advanced Principles of Writing 2 credits (Fall and Spring)
Using both small group sessions and individual Writing Lab appointments, this course focuses on the interrelationships among purpose, audience, and genre. 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 150 - Teaching Writing 2 credits (Fall or Spring)
Cross-listed as: EDU 150 . Students in Writing 150 will gain both theoretical knowledge and hands-on experience as they serve as writing mentors for college courses or teach writing as volunteers in other contexts (e.g., prison programs, schools, peer tutoring). They will read about theories of teaching writing, practice skills of tutoring, running workshops and facilitating peer review, observe the teaching of writing in several contexts, and engage in discourse (both oral and written) about the teaching and learning of writing skills.
Prerequisite: None.
S/D/F only
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