ENROLL

Kevin A Wolfe

What does the “post-colonial” mean? And, how does a colonized subject become decolonized? In this course we will engage the literary and theoretical production of formerly colonized subjects from parts of Africa and the Caribbean, as we seek to determine what the post-colonial imagination might look like. The emphasis will be on close readings of works which emerge from the crucible of the Black Atlantic’s “encounter” with European and American colonialism.

Held for Class of 20

Zaki Haidar

Held for Class of 20

Jessica Keating

Held for Class of 20

Debby Walser-Kuntz

Zika, Ebola, and HIV are now part of our common vocabulary. Through the study of both ancient and emerging viruses, we will explore how human behavior, globalization, and global climate change influence viral spread and evolution, and how viruses impact human populations. We will examine health disparities in the context of viral infection, the contribution of viruses to cancer therapy and the treatment of inherited diseases, and ethical issues related to viral research and treatment through readings, discussions, and your own research and writing.

Requires concurrent registraiton IN IDSC 198 Held for Class of 20

Jay Beck

This course is designed to explore the intersection between rock music and cinema. Taking a historical view of the evolution of the "rock film," this class examines the impact of rock music on the structural and formal aspects of narrative, documentary, and experimental films and videos. The scope of the class will run from the earliest rock films of the mid-1950s through contemporary examples in ten weekly subunits.

Held for Class of 20, Extra Time Required

Stephanie Cox

Held for Class of 20

Stacy Beckwith

How have Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel shaped their senses of personal and collective identity since the early twentieth century? We will explore mental pictures of the land, one's self, and others in a selection of Israeli Jewish and Palestinian short stories, novels, and films. We will also explore some of the humanistic roots of U.S. involvement in Israeli-Palestinian relations today, particularly in the realm of American initiated bi-cultural youth camps such as Seeds of Peace. Students will enrich our class focus by introducing us to perspectives on Israel/Palestine in their home countries or elsewhere. In translation.

Held for Class of 20

Kathryn L Steed

He became king at twenty, conquered the known world, and was dead before his thirty-third birthday. He has been viewed variously as a military genius, philosopher, holy king, prophet, devil, or even god. But who was Alexander III of Macedon, and what is his legacy? By examining the life and afterlife of Alexander the Great from his own time to ours, this course explores both history and the human fascination with extraordinary individuals. Among other topics, it explores Alexander’s image in different cultures, the separation of man from myth, and the contributions of different academic disciplines to understanding Alexander.

Held for Class of 20

Christopher Martin

In this course we will look at the shifting boundary between genres that share a common root in lyrical expression. From the sonnet to chart topping pop to underground rap, what it means to be American has been built from the lyric up. We will be asking many questions. How does Kendrick Lamar’s song “i” echo and update Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself”? What happens when you mash up Beyoncé and Gwendolyn Brooks? Where do slam, spoken word, and performance poetry fit in? Your answers will come in both critical and creative writing.

Held for Class of 20

Arnab Chakladar

With an emphasis on critical reading and writing in an academic context, this course will examine how contemporary writers from a range of global locations approach the question of the writing of the self and of the nation. Reading novels from both familiar and unfamiliar cultural contexts we will examine closely our practices of reading, and the cultural expectations and assumptions that underlie them.

Held for Class of 20

Pierre Hecker

Held for Class of 20

Elizabeth McKinsey

Held for Class of 20

Constance Walker

We will read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials as responses to and radical revisions of Milton's Paradise Lost.

Held for Class of 20

Kofi Owusu

How do we, how should we, respond to the autobiographical writings of public figures, private citizens, academics, or movie stars? Are there common strategies employed in these acts and processes of self-mapping? Does accuracy matter to us if we happen to find these textual self-portraits appealing? We will keep questions like these in mind as we read, discuss, and write about autobiographies and memoirs by Maya Angelou, Sidney Poitier, James McBride, Barack Obama, bell hooks, and John Hope Franklin.

Held for Class of 20

Gregory Smith

Held for Class of 20

Joel Weisberg

Science and technology have led to profound effects upon public life over the past century. This course will study the social and political impacts of scientific and technological developments on modern life. We will investigate particular cases drawn from across the sciences, such as genetics, energy production and consumption, nuclear weapons, and the information revolution. The relationship between government, the public, and the science/technology enterprise will be examined. What is, and what should be the role of the practitioners themselves?

Held for Class of 20

Paul Petzschmann

Held for Class of 20

Clint Cowan

Held for new first year student. Extra Time, Weekend Field Trips.

Clint Cowan

Held for new first year student. Extra Time, Weekend Field Trips.

Sigi Leonhard

How do we define humans? How are we, for example, different from intelligent machines? This seminar focuses on beings who push the limits of what it means to be human, such as monsters, robots, and cyborgs. Through a discussion of works by German authors and filmmakers, alongside influential texts from other traditions (ranging from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner), we will explore how these stories react to changing notions of humanity in the face of rapid technological and scientific progress. All readings, discussion, and coursework will be in English.

Held for Class of 20, In translation

David Tompkins

This course examines the often fraught, complicated relationship between music and politics from the mid-nineteenth century through the mid-twentieth. Our field of inquiry will include all of Europe, but will particularly focus on Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. We will look at several composers and their legacies in considerable detail, including Beethoven, Wagner, and Shostakovich. While much of our attention will be devoted to "high" or "serious" music, we will explore developments in popular music as well.

Held for Class of 20

Harry M Williams

This seminar introduces students to historiography of slavery in antebellum America. Debates over slavery are important to Americans generally and to historians of the American South in particular. The topic illuminates our understanding of human bondage through emphasis on the development of skills in historical analysis, writing, and oral argumentation. Major readings from the early twentieth century to the present engage the problem of methodology, relations between masters and slaves, the slave community, gendered work, and expressive culture. A mixture of short assignments and response papers and a final essay is required.

Held for Class of 20

Thabiti Willis

This course explores how Africans have remembered and retold their own history in the colonial and post-colonial contexts (nineteenth-twenty-first centuries). Students will examine memories of origin, the slave trade, conversion, and colonialism as well as of personal and communal triumphs and tragedies. Both long-standing historical texts like praise-names and rituals and modern texts like journals, court records, and letters will be explored. What is the relationship between the historical medium and the memory? Drawing from select cases in West, East and South Africa, students will come to understand the rich and varied history of Africa's creative expression. 

Held for Class of 20

Austin Mason

Why did barbarians invade? Traders trade? Pilgrims travel? Vikings raid? Medieval Europe is sometimes caricatured as a world of small villages and strong traditions that saw little change between the cultural high-water marks of Rome and the Renaissance. In fact, this was a period of dynamic innovation, during which Europeans met many familiar challenges—environmental change, religious and cultural conflict, social and political competition—by traveling or migrating to seek new opportunities. This course will examine mobility and migration in northern Europe, and students will be introduced to diverse methodological approaches to their study by exploring historical and literary sources, archaeological evidence and scientific techniques involving DNA and isotopic analyses.

Held for Class of 20

Victoria Morse

In the 1340s, the Black Death swept through the Middle East and Europe, killing up to a third of the population in some areas. How can we understand what this catastrophe meant for the people who lived and died at the time? In this seminar, we will examine the Black Death (primarily in Europe) from a range of perspectives and disciplines and through a range of sources. We will seek to understand the biological and environmental causes of the disease, therapies, and the experience of illness, but also the effects of the mortality on economic, social, religious, and cultural life.

Held for Class of 20

Brendan LaRocque

This seminar will examine the wide array of nationalist movements which struggled for independence from colonial rule in South Asia. Most prominent among these was the anti-colonial struggle led by Mohandas K. Gandhi. In this course we will examine the historical forces and the people which comprised these socio-political movements, in an effort to understand the complex and intriguing ways in which Gandhi's movement intersected, combined, and conflicted with other nationalist trends. Topics including the role of political violence and non-violence, conceptions of masculinity and femininity, caste, class, and race will also form part of our material.

Held for Class of 20

Neil Lutsky

This interdisciplinary course addresses one of the signal features of contemporary academic, professional, public, and personal life: a reliance on information and arguments involving numbers. We will examine how numbers are used and misused in verbal, statistical, and graphical form in discussions of world events, health, science, and social issues. Students will also apply quantitative reasoning skills to assist community organizations.

Held for Class of 20

Anita Chikkatur

From Starbucks' failed "Race together" initiative to debates about Rachel Dolezal's racial identity to the Black Lives Matter movement, it is clear that race still matters in America. These incidents also demonstrate the difficulties of having discussions about race, especially across racial lines. Drawing on texts from multiple disciplines, this course will examine the history of racial categories with a particular emphasis on how race matters in higher education. This course will also incorporate readings and activities that will help students develop further their skills to have productive discussions about race, especially in the context of a small residential college. 

Held for new first year students

Aaron Swoboda

The world is awash in data. How can we make sense of it all? Businesses, scientists, and academics of all backgrounds are increasingly relying on visualization to better understand and communicate about data. This course serves as an introduction to the theory and practice of data visualization. Students will learn the design principles common to effective visual displays of data and how to overcome the most prevalent mistakes made by practitioners. We will spend considerable time in the computer lab working to collect, analyze, and communicate about multiple datasets throughout the term.

Held for Class of 20

Cherlon Ussery

Held for Class of 20

Andy Flory

Bob Dylan’s music has a captivating relationship with the “American spirit.” This course will look at select periods of Dylan’s career to investigate the manner in which he has engaged themes of nationalism, protest, romanticism, and religion. We will use close listening of commercial recordings and live performance analysis to investigate Dylan’s music, and read both primary sources and academic writings that speak to the ephemeral nature of his musical output. Using methods from both musicology and American Studies, students will engage with fundamental questions concerning national identity from the early 1960s to the present.

Held for Class of 20

Jason Decker

Held for Class of 20

Daniel Groll

Everyone has a family of one kind or another. Whether you love them, hate them, or both at the same time, your family has played a huge role in making you the person you are. That fact raises all kinds of interesting philosophical questions such as: what limits should there be on how parents shape their kids' lives and values? Are there demands of justice that are in tension with the way families are "normally" constituted? What duties do parents have to their children and vice versa? And what makes a person someone else's parent or child in the first place--genetics, commitment, convention? This course will explore all these questions and more.

Held for Class of 20

Frank T. McNally, Ph.D.

An introduction to both physics and fitness that seeks to pair two seemingly disparate topics. Study work and energy with free weights, springs with resistance bands, fluids in the pool, power generation with stationary bikes, and more. Classes include lectures and workouts, so get ready to think on your feet! No experience with either subject required.

Held for Class of 20

Barbara Allen

How can we understand the campaigns and results of the 2016 American elections? This course examines (1) the electoral role of parties, candidates and interest groups (2) prior "midterm" elections in U.S. history and (3) voting trends and policy results from the 2008, 2010 and 2012 elections. Students will analyze the activities and results from the 2016 General Election looking at trends in news coverage, political advertising, campaigns and candidate communication and public opinion.

Held for Class of 20, Extra Time Required

Noah Salomon

The Muslim prophet Muhammad has been the object of both curious fascination and vociferous debate from the era in which he lived until today. This course will examine both Muhammad’s life in Arabia in the sixth and seventh centuries and his global afterlife: that is, how and why Muhammad has become both a source of inspiration and consternation for billions around the world. Through careful attention to the various genres in which this life has been remembered and reactivated within the Islamic tradition, we will spend a portion of the term inhabiting an alternative scholarly tradition, which nevertheless will come to shed light on the limits and possibilities of our own processes of inquiry and critical thinking. Though looking at the life of the Prophet Muhammad as an object of debate, we will come to hone our own self-awareness of the rhetorical strategies we employ in argument-making, examining the role of contemporary historical and political contexts on how we construe truth.

Held for Class of 20

Kristin Bloomer

From its beginnings, Christianity has been concerned with the making of new persons and worlds: the creation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It has also maintained a tight relationship to power, empire, and the making of modernity. In this course we will investigate this relationship within the context of colonial projects in the Americas, Africa, India, and the Pacific. We will trace the making of modern selves from Columbus to the abolition (and remainders) of slavery, and from the arrival of Cook in the Sandwich Islands to the journals of missionaries and the contemporary fight for Hawaiian sovereignty.

Held for Class of 20

Michael McNally

The American landscape has shaped and has been shaped by the religious imaginations, beliefs, and practices of diverse inhabitants. This course explores the variety of  ways of imagining relationships between land, community, and the sacred, and how religious traditions have been inscribed on land itself. Indigenous and Latino/a traditions will be considered, as will  Euro-American traditions ranging from Puritans, Mormons, immigrant farmers, utopian communities, and Deep Ecologists.

Held for Class of 20

Liz Raleigh

Are Asian Americans forever foreigners or honorary whites? This class introduces you to the sociological research on Asian Americans. We begin by a brief introduction of U.S. immigration history and sociological theories about assimilation and racial stratification. Paying particular attention to how scholars ask questions and evaluate evidence, we will cover research on racial and ethnic identity, educational stratification, mass media images, interracial marriage, multiracials, transracial adoption, and the viability of an Asian American panethnic identity. The course will examine the similarities and differences among Asian Americans relative to other minority groups when applicable.

Held for Class of 20