ENROLL

Adriana Estill

Elizabeth McKinsey

The history of American culture has always been shaped by a dialectic between the local and the universal, the regional and the national. The particular geography and history of the Midwest (the prairie, the plains, the old Northwest, Native Americans and white adventurers, settlers and immigrants) have shaped its livelihoods, its identities, its meanings. Focusing on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this course will explore literature, art history, and the social and cultural history of the Midwest.

Asuka Sango

This course will consist of a series of lectures on topics such as religious architecture and Buddhist meditation. In addition to the lectures, there will be related field trips.

Prerequisite: Participation in OCS Program

OCS Religion in Kyoto Program

Mihaela Czobor-Lupp

Have you just returned from Asia, Africa, Europe, or South America? This course is an excellent way to keep in touch with the culture (and, when appropriate, the language) you left behind. Relying on magazines and newspapers around the world, students will discuss common topics and themes representing a wide array of regions. You may choose to read the press in the local language, or read English-language media about your region, meeting once each week for conversational exchange. (Language of conversation is English.) S/Cr/NC

Prerequisite: Students must have participated in an off-campus study program (Carleton or non-Carleton) or instructor permission

Jake Morton

Forged in the crucible of wars fought between cultures with diametrically opposed views on politics and society, the fifth century BC witnessed arts, philosophy, and science all flourish in thrilling new ways. The two radically different Greek states of Athens and Sparta first teamed up to defeat the invading Persian empire. While this shocking victory spurred their respective cultures to new heights, their political aspirations drove them to turn on each other and fight a series of wars over control of Greece--all the while with Persia waiting in the wings. We will study these events against the backdrop of the political, intellectual, and cultural achievements of Athens, Sparta and Persia, drawing on the rich body of literature and material culture from this period.

William North, Victoria Morse

Through a range of interdisciplinary readings, guest lectures, and site visits, this course will provide students with opportunities to analyze important aspects of Italian culture and society, both past and present, as well as to examine the ways in which travelers, tourists, temporary visitors, and immigrants have experienced and coped with their Italian worlds. Topics may include transportation, cuisine, rituals and rhythms of Italian life, urbanism, religious diversity, immigration, tourism, historic preservation, and language. Class discussions and projects will offer students opportunities to reflect on their own encounters with contemporary Italian culture.

Prerequisite: Participation in OCS Rome Program

OCS Rome Program

Christine Lac

This course seeks to deepen students' knowledge of contemporary French culture through a pluridisciplinary approach, using multimedia (books, newspaper and magazine articles, videos, etc.) to generate discussion. It will also promote the practice of both oral and written French through exercises, debates, and oral presentations.

Prerequisite: French 204 or equivalent

Requires participation in OCS Program: French and Francophone Studies in Paris

Cherif Keita

Keep up your French while learning about current issues in France, as well as world issues from a French perspective. Class meets once a week for an hour. Requirements include reading specific sections of leading French newspapers, (Le Monde, Libération, etc.) on the internet, and then meeting once a week to exchange ideas over coffee with a small group of students.

Prerequisite: French 204 or equivalent

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: FREN 210.WL0 (Synonym 52397)

Tyran K Steward

This survey begins with the pre-enslavement history of African Americans in West Africa. It proceeds to the transition of the slave from an African to an African American either directly or indirectly through the institution of slavery until 1865. Special attention will be given to black female activists, organizations, and philosophies proposing solutions to the African-American and Euro-American dilemma in the antebellum period.

David Tompkins

Amna Khalid

This is an introductory survey course; no prior knowledge of South Asian History required. The goal is to familiarize students with some of the key themes and debates in the historiography of modern India. Beginning with an overview of Mughal rule in India, the main focus of the course is the colonial period. The course ends with a discussion of 1947: the hour of independence as well as the creation of two new nation-states, India and Pakistan. Topics include Oriental Despotism, colonial rule, nationalism, communalism, gender, caste and race. 

Elena C McGrath

What are the origins of the vibrant indigenous rights movements that have changed politics across Latin America today? Is there something that makes current struggles different from struggles of the past? In order to answer these questions, this course asks you to think about history differently: can we imagine history as something other than a line of progress? Can political struggles be the same if the language that describes them changes? This class will explore alternative conceptions of history, agency, and change as we examine the ways indigenous people have engaged states in Latin America since the nineteenth century.

Thabiti Willis

Susannah Ottaway

A 2-credit course in which students work with faculty oversight to complete a variety of public history projects with community partners. Students will work on a research project requiring them to identify and analyze primary sources, draw conclusions from the primary source research, and share their research with the appropriate audience in an appropriate form. We meet once a week at Carleton to ensure students maintain professional standards and strong relationships in their work. Potential projects include educational programming, historical society archival work, and a variety of local history opportunities. 

Extra Time Required

William North

Through site visits, on-site projects, and readings, this course explores the ways in which individuals and communities attempted to give physical and visual form to their religious beliefs and political ambitions through their use of materials, iconography, topography, and architecture. We will also examine how the material legacies of imperial Rome, Byzantium, and early Christianity served as both resources for and constraints on the political, cultural, and religious evolution of the Italian peninsula and especially Rome and its environs from late antiquity through the twelfth century. Among the principal themes will be the development of the cult of saints, the development of the papal power and authority, Christianization, reform, pilgrimage, and monasticism.

OCS Rome Program

George Vrtis

Victoria Morse

This course will explore the lived experience of the city of Rome in the twelfth-sixteenth centuries. Students will study buildings, urban forms, surviving artifacts, and textual and other visual evidence to understand how politics, power, and religion (both Christianity and Judaism) mapped onto city spaces. How did urban challenges and opportunities shape daily life? How did the memory of the past influence the present? How did the rural world affect the city and vice versa? Students will work on projects closely tied to the urban fabric.

Prerequisite: Enrollment in OCS program

OCS Rome Program

Annette Igra

Susannah Ottaway

David Tompkins

Seungjoo Yoon

Chosen as the inaugural course to launch Carleton’s new Ott Family Lectureship in History and Economics, this course includes the extended participation of three separate Ott Family Lecturers' visits. Together, we will explore comparative dimensions of Chinese economic history from the sixteenth century to the present, examine classical and recent scholarship on Chinese economic development, global movement of capital and labor, origins of Chinese capitalism, “world-system” theories, agrarian “involution,” arguments about East Asia’s economic divergence from Europe, and market reforms with “Chinese characteristics.” Christopher Isett (University of Minnesota) will explain how economic historians apply history methods and approaches. Yingjia Tian (Wesleyan) will share his business history case study on 1950’s Shanghai electric companies. Brent Irvin '94 (Tencent Corporation/China) will discuss the state of the business world in contemporary China. Each Ott Family Lecturer will also present a public talk for the class, campus, and wider community; public talk attendance is a required component of this course.

Extra Time Required

Amna Khalid

Austin Mason

How do new methods of digital humanities and collaborative public history change our understanding of space and place? This hands-on research seminar will seek answers through a deep mapping of the long history of Northfield, Minnesota, before and after its most well-known era of the late nineteenth-century. Deep mapping is as much archaeology as it is cartography, plumbing the depths of a particular place to explore its diversity through time. Students will be introduced to major theories of space and place as well as their application through technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), 3D modeling, and video game engines. We will mount a major research project working with the National Register of Historic Places, in collaboration with specialists in public history and community partners.

Adeeb Khalid

Through readings in primary sources in translation, we will discuss the major intellectual and cultural movements that have influenced Muslim thinkers from the nineteenth century on. Topics include modernism, nationalism, socialism, and fundamentalism.

Prerequisite: At least one prior course in the history of the Middle East or Central Asia or Islam

Not open to first year students. First year students should register in HIST 267.

Thabiti Willis

This course deepens understanding of the causes, manifestations, and implications of warfare in modern Africa by highlighting African perspectives on colonialism's legacies. Drawing from cases in South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Algeria, and Sudan, the course questions whether Britain's policy of indirect rule, France's direct rule, and South Africa's apartheid rule were variants of despotism and how colonial rule shaped possibilities of resistance, reform, and repression. Students also will learn how different historical actors participated in and experienced war as well as produce an original research paper that thoughtfully uses primary and secondary resources. 

Laurence Cooper, Alan Rubenstein

Laurence Cooper, Alan Rubenstein

Jake Morton

In 186 BC stories of wild and debauched secret religious rites being celebrated under cover of night sparked panic in Rome, which led to a brutal state suppression of the cult. Was this a crackdown on impious behavior or political oppression? Over the course of the term we will translate three sources of evidence to determine what actually happened: the Roman historian Livy's scintillating and outrageous account of this conspiracy; works by the Roman comedic playwright Plautus that might have shaped Livy's storytelling; and the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus, a detailed inscription found in southern Italy discussing the new laws Rome passed to suppress the cult.

Silvia Lopez

This colloquium will explore specific issues or works in Latin American Studies through discussion of a common reading, public presentation, project, and/or performance that constitute the annual Latin American Forum. Students will be required to attend two meetings during the term to discuss the common reading or other material and must attend, without exception. All events of the Forum which take place during fourth week of spring term (on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning). A short integrative essay or report will be required at the end of the term. Intended as capstone for the Latin American Studies minor.

Ahoo Najafian

This course engages with the pleasures and pains of love both for the Divine and human as imagined by authors under the influence of Persianate Culture. We will look at different sources including autobiographies, letters, poems, and novels produced from the tenth century to present day. We will read the texts in English translation and focus on themes like forbidden love, celebration of carnal pleasures and lust, homo-eroticism, mystical love, and love for God, religious figures, and nation. The texts are accompanied by secondary sources that expand on some literary and philosophical issues related to the concept of love.

Megan E Sarno

Women’s music is everyone’s music. Women have filled almost every role in music activities public and private, as both businesspeople and creators. In this course, students will use feminist critical perspectives to understand how women have been marginalized and celebrated in music history. We will analyze the work of such women as Hildegaard von Bingen, Catherine the Great, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelssohn, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Germaine Tailleferre, Caroline Shaw, Meredith Monk, and Julia Wolfe. Additionally, we will consider how women and gender has been represented in music, in both stereotyped and more nuanced ways.

Prerequisite: Previous classroom course in Music department or instructor permission; not open to students who have taken Music 100 Women and Classical Music

Anna Moltchanova

Allison Murphy

Are human beings radically individual and atomic by nature, political animals, or something else? However we answer that question, what difference does it make for our understanding of the ways in which larger political communities come into existence and are maintained? In this course we will explore these and related questions while reading two of the most foundational works in political theory, Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’s Leviathan, as well as several contemporary pieces influenced by these thinkers.

Anna Moltchanova

Prerequisite: 100-level Philosophy course or instructor permission

Daniel Groll

How should we live? This is the fundamental question for the study of ethics. This course looks at classic and contemporary answers to the fundamental question from Socrates to Kant to modern day thinkers. Along the way, we consider slightly (but only slightly) more tractable questions such as: What reason is there to be moral? Is there such a thing as moral knowledge (and if so, how do we get it)? What are the fundamental principles of right and wrong (if there are any at all)? Is morality objective?

Douglas B Marshall

An introduction to the philosophy of mathematics focusing on the history and development of mathematical proofs. The course is organized around three central questions: i. What is the relationship between a mathematical proof and our knowledge of the theorem that it proves? ii. Do some mathematical proofs go beyond establishing the truth of their theorems and actually explain why the theorems are true? iii. How has our mathematical knowledge grown throughout history? We will first address these questions by reading and discussing Imre Lakatos's book Proofs and Refutations. We will continue with readings drawn from classic and contemporary sources in the history and philosophy of mathematics. This course has no formal prerequisites, though it does presuppose a willingness to read, assess, and write about mathematical proofs.  

Douglas B Marshall

Mihaela Czobor-Lupp

Laurence Cooper

Cross-listed with POSC 350. Nietzsche understood himself to be living at a moment of great endings: the exhaustion of modernity, the self-undermining of rationalism, the self-overcoming of morality--in short, stunningly, the "death of God." He regarded these endings as an unprecedented disaster for humanity but also as an unprecedented opportunity, and he pointed the way to a new ideal and a new culture that would be life-affirming and life-enhancing. This course will center on close study of Beyond Good and Evil, perhaps Nietzsche's most beautiful book and probably his most political one. Selections from some of his other books will also be assigned. 

Laurence Cooper

Cross-listed with POSC 256. Nietzsche understood himself to be living at a moment of great endings: the exhaustion of modernity, the self-undermining of rationalism, the self-overcoming of morality in short, and most stunningly, the "death of God." Nietzsche both foresaw and tried to accelerate these endings. But he also tried to bring about a new beginning, a culture that he believed would be life-affirming and life-enhancing. In this course we will engage in a close study of Beyond Good and Evil, perhaps Nietzsche's most beautiful book and probably his most political one. Selections from some of his other books will also be assigned.

Cross-listed with POSC 256

Mihaela Czobor-Lupp

Noah Salomon

How can we best understand the role of religion in the world today, and how should we interpret the meaning of religious traditions -- their texts and practices -- in history and culture? This class takes an exciting tour through selected themes and puzzles related to the fascinating and diverse expressions of religion throughout the world. From politics and pop culture, to religious philosophies and spiritual practices, to rituals, scriptures, gender, religious authority, and more, students will explore how these issues emerge in a variety of religions, places, and historical moments in the U.S. and across the globe.

Daniel M Picus

This course provides an overview of Judaism as a religion, exploring its history, modes of expression, and characteristic polarities as they have emerged in various times and places. The contours of classical Jewish life and thought are explored, as well as the crises, challenges, and choices confronting Jews and Judaism today. Our uniting theme will be the question of defining Jewishness: who gets to claim an identity as a Jew, and who has (and has had) the authority to decide who is and is not Jewish?

Michael McNally

Lori Pearson

Sonja Anderson

How does power flow and concentrate within the Catholic Church? What are the gendered aspects of the structure, history, and theology of Catholicism? Through a combination of readings, discussions, and conversations with living figures, students will develop the ability to critically and empathetically interpret issues of gender, sexuality, and power in the Catholic Church, especially as these issues appear in official Vatican texts. Topics include: God, suffering, sacraments, salvation, damnation, celibacy, homosexuality, the family, saints, the ordination of women as priests, feminist theologies, canon law, the censuring of “heretical” theologians, Catholic hospital policy, and the clerical sex abuse crisis.

Asuka Sango

Students will do directed readings in order to design and conduct independent research and fieldwork projects that are related to Religion 279 but will require them to do an in-depth study of particular site(s).

Prerequisite: Participation in OCS Religion in Kyoto program

Extra Time Required

Asuka Sango

An introduction to the major religious traditions of Japan such as Shintō and Buddhism from earliest times to the present, focusing on pilgrimage and sacred space. Course material is drawn from a variety of primary sources in translation, as well as from Japanese films, anthropological accounts, historical studies, and other works of secondary scholarship. Students will go on field trips in and near Kyōto.

Prerequisite: Participation in OCS Religion in Kyoto program

OCS Religion in Kyoto Program, Extra Time Required

Michael McNally

Diane Nemec Ignashev

Prerequisite: Acceptance in Russian OCS Program

Participation in Carleton OCS Language & Culture in Russia program

Meera Sehgal

Sophomore Priority.

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: WGST 110.WL0 (Synonym 52416)

Candace Moore

This course will read representations of racial, gender, and sexual minorities in popular culture through the lenses of feminist, critical race, postcolonial, and queer theories. Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in the late 1980s to describe an approach to oppression that considered how structures of power act multiply on individuals based upon their interlocking racial, class, gender, sexual, and other identities. “Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Popular Culture” takes up the charge of intersectional analysis—rejecting essentialist theories of difference while exploring pluralities—to interpret diversity (or lack thereof) in film, television, and digital media.

Prerequisite: Women's and Gender Studies 110 or 112 or Cinema and Media Studies 110 or instructor consent