ENROLL

Shaohua Guo

Shaohua Guo

Prerequisite: Chinese 206 or equivalent

Chico L Zimmerman

What are the “rules” of friendship? Would you do anything for a friend? Anything? The ancient Romans were no strangers to the often paradoxical demands of friendship and love. The goal for Intermediate Latin Prose and Poetry is to gain experience in the three major modes of Latin expression most often encountered “in the wild”—prose, poetry, and inscriptions—while exploring the notion of friendship. By combining all three modes into this one course, we hope both to create a suitable closure to the language sequence and to provide a reasonable foundation for further exploration of Roman literature and culture.

Prerequisite: Latin 103 with a grade of at least C- or placement

Barbara Allen

This course will focus on the major theories of political communication in election advertising and political news contexts. Our case studies will focus on recent U.S., French, and UK elections. We compare the legal and cultural contexts of election news coverage and advertising in these countries and analyze media effects on voter perceptions using political psychology studies based on research in the U.S., UK, and EU.

Mihaela Czobor-Lupp

Ideological fanaticism is on the rise today. Individuals prefer the incantation of slogans and clichés to autonomous thinking, moderation, and care for the diversity and complexity of circumstances and of human beings. The results are the inability to converse across differences and the tendency to ostracize and exclude others in the name of tribal and populist nationalism, as well as of racism. Hannah Arendt called totalitarianism this form of ideological hypnosis, which characterizes not only totalitarian political regimes, but can also colonize liberal-democracies. In this class we will read some of the works of Arendt to better understand the power of imagination to enhance critical and independent thinking and resist totalitarianism.

Annette M Nierobisz

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, a series of cultural messages quickly materialized in U.S. society. Statements such as, “we’re all in this together” and “the silver linings of coronavirus,” emphasized unity and gratitude while existing socio-political and generational divides were reinforced with “it’s a hoax” and “young people are spreading the virus.” What do these messages reveal about ourselves and society? This A&I seminar introduces students to the formal discipline of sociology through deconstructing rhetorical responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We seek to understand why these cultural messages are problematic using an intellectual perspective that emphasizes “the social construction of reality.”

Held for new First Year Students