ENROLL

Peter J Balaam

"O City / Behold me! Incarnate me as I have incarnated you!" An investigation of the burgeoning metropolitan city where the young Walter Whitman became a poet in the 1850s. Combining historical inquiry into the lives of nineteenth-century citizens of Brooklyn and Manhattan with analysis of Whitman’s varied journalistic writings and utterly original poetry, we will reconstruct how Whitman found his muse and his distinctively modern subject in the geography, demographics, markets, politics, and erotics of New York.

Held for new first year students

Peter J Balaam

Prerequisite: One English Foundations course and one prior 6 credit English course

Not open to first year students.

Lin S Winton

This course will enhance students' quantitative skills and provide opportunities to apply those skills to authentic problems. Topics covered will vary depending on students in the class; possible topics include unit conversions, significant figures and estimation, exponents, logarithms, algebra, geometry, probability, and statistics. We will explore how these skills are relevant in contexts ranging from making personal finance decisions to understanding medical research reports.

Prerequisite: Interdisciplinary Studies 099, Undergraduate Bridge Experience

Instructor Permission, 1st five week

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri

This course aims to introduce students to the Qur’an as the sacred text of Islam. It assumes no background in Islamic Studies nor does it introduce students to the religion of Islam. Rather it familiarizes students with one of the most widely read, dynamic, and influential texts in human history. Topics in the course include the history of the Qur’an and its codex, the Qur’an’s literary style and structure, its references to other religions, its commentarial tradition, and its roles and significance in Muslims’ devotional, social, and political lives.

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri

Sufism broadly refers to a complex of devotional, literary, ethical, theological, and mystical traditions in Islam. More specifically, it refers to the activities associated with institutionalized master-disciple relationships, which define the paths through which Muslims have sought experiential knowledge of God. In both the broad and narrow sense of Sufism, love has been a prominent means of Sufi self-representation. In this course, we will explore the ideas and practices semantically associated with love in the Sufi tradition and analyze the ways in which these ideas and practices have both shaped and been shaped by individual lives, religious institutions, and socio-cultural contexts.