Special Topics Courses
TERM I
AALL 195S Contemporary Chinese Culture. Please see LIT 162ZS below. Hui
CULANTH 180S Comparative Perspectives on Mass-Killing and Genocide in the Twentieth Century. The twentieth century witnessed unprecedented instances of violence amounting to exceptionally destructive effects on ethnic religious communities or even ideological/political groups. In most cases violence and mass-killings went well beyond traditional methods of ‘chastisement’ of targeted populations and have instead been deemed by the perpetrators as a ‘final solution’ to ongoing political and social crisis. The course will aim at comparatively analyzing the making of the episodes of mass-annihilation emphasizing particularities of each case as well as similarities with the others. Taking a strictly interdisciplinary approach, the seminar is designed to address the philosophical and ideological foundations of genocide by incorporating analyses from the disciplines of anthropology, history, sociology, political science and geography. Thus, the intricate links between mass-killing and 1) ideologies of modernity, i.e. scientific discourses referring to rationalism, social Darwinism, and evolutionary theories of development, 2) colonial or nation state- formation and (3) ‘community building’ will form the focal points of inquiry. The ties between mass killing and memory-making will also be examined. Here the aim is to unravel the ways in which communal experiences of massacres are processed and woven into current, everyday lives of people as a major signifier of group identity and mark of difference. This also entails inquiring into the debates on the definition and categorization of cases of mass-killing such as pogrom, ethnocide, ethnic cleansing and genocide. The most contentious of these is, of course, genocide. Since genocide has become a marker of ultimate victimization through mass-killing, it continues to be a major arena of controversy. The seminar will also evaluate the conceptual and ethical disputes around classifying mass-killing. Turkyilmaz
CULANTH 180S Religious Expressions: Movements, Media and Anthropological Mappings. This course examines multiple expressions of religion that have developed in our contemporary moment, most notably religious socio-political movements and media representations and enactments of religion. In examining these expressions, we will scrutinize hegemonic discourses and forces that both animate and circumscribe our understandings and approaches to them. Drawing on the work of anthropologists, critical theorists, literary critics and historians, we will also explore other ways in which we can think about and address contemporary religious phenomena. Ahmad
CULANTH 180S Contemporary Chinese Culture. Please see LIT 162ZS below. Hui
EDUC 170S Education through Film. Film has been an intricate part of our society since its inception. This course will focus on the documentation and portrayal of education in film from the 1950s to present day. In our six weeks we will examine twelve films that exemplify the changes that have occurred in education throughout this period. di Bona
HISTORY 103 The Crusades, 1050-1291. There is a history of conflict between the European West and the Islamic countries of the Middle East that goes back centuries. Although this conflict has evolved over time, the crusades represent a foundational piece of this very relevant interaction. This course offers an overview of the crusades from their beginnings in the eleventh century to their height in the thirteenth, exploring the motivations behind the movement(s), determining who was involved and watching how the crusades evolved, all the while looking at how they influenced and were affected by events in Europe. Each of the major crusades as well as the Spanish Reconquista and Germanic aggression into Slavic lands is looked at in detail, and put into a broader social, political and economic context. By looking at the crusade movement, students will gain a new perspective on European life during the Middle Ages and see a nascent expansionist movement in its early developmental stages. Bell
LIT 120BS Hitchcock. This class will provide an in-depth look at the films by the man known
as “the master of suspense.” Beginning with a sampling of his British silent and sound films, we will ultimately focus on the American films from the 1950s and 1960s for which he is most famous. The class will engage a variety of interpretations and approaches to these films and will serve as a general introduction to film form and film theory. We will consider questions of sexuality and desire, the concepts of suspense and anxiety and the role of knowledge and the subject. Readings will include Hitchcock, Truffaut, Rohmer, Mulvey, Zizek and others. Baumbach
LIT 151S Literature and Human Rights. This course is about how literature and related
cultural forms have played a crucial role in establishing the meaning of human rights and of enriching our understanding of what it means to be a human being entitled to freedom, life and liberty. We will study literature as an ethical and political project, one that raises enduring questions about the uniqueness of the human being, the relation of the self to the other and the possibility of human understanding across cultural, ethnic, racial and national boundaries. Through fiction we will reflect on the ethical challenges presented to the modern world by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) that recognized the “inherent dignity and the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” and asserted that all human beings “are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” We will read works that have helped define and redefine the meaning of human rights. In addition to the classics such as Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, we will study more recent narratives on human rights, including Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Athol Fugard’s Master Harold and the Boys and Ariel Dorfman’s Death and the Maiden. Oruc
LIT 151S Monsters, Cyborgs and Robots: The Technological Inhuman in Literature and
Film. From Frankenstein’s ‘monster’ to the Terminator, figures of the technological inhuman have long fascinated and terrorized the cultural imagination. In this course, we will interrogate the varied ways in which the term ‘human’ has been defined in relation to one of its excluded others: the technological inhuman. Why do these monstrous figures of technology fascinate us so? Is it that they are so far from what we know to be human, or so close? In what ways do these figures of the technological inhuman bear the specter of the human, and vice versa? What does it mean to be human, and how do we delineate this often fluid, always heavily charged term? In this course we will attend to the human and its other through both philosophical theories on the human as well as fictional representations of these ‘monstrous’ figures of technology in literature and film. By existing within this interdisciplinary intersection of philosophy and literature and film, we will explore the interconnected questions of the human, subjectivity, the other and technology. This course will read philosophical texts that closely inquire into questions of the human (including works by Rene Descartes, Diana Fuss, and Jean-Francois Lyotard) alongside works of literature and film that attend to the fluid yet rigid boundary between the human and its technological other (including Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and Alex Proyas’ 2004 film I, Robot). Alongside these philosophical and fictional texts, this course will introduce the disciplinary discourses of literary studies and film studies. The goal of this course is twofold: students will explore questions of the human and its monstrous technological others, while also introducing the theoretical and methodological apparatuses of literary and film analysis. Rhee
LIT 162ZS Contemporary Chinese Culture. The starting point of this course is that the
making of modern China is not so much a national project as it is an international enterprise. Thus to understand the making of modern China we need to study the cultural texts (both literary and cinematic) produced in mainland China as well as examine texts formulated in Hong Kong and Taiwan (which constitute Greater China) and Chinese diaspora (e.g., Chinese in Singapore and Malaysia). In addition we need to study how Chinese Americans and British Chinese contribute to the making of Chinese modernity by using the ethnic studies model in American Studies and the postcolonial studies model in English studies. This leads to important questions regarding the politics of knowledge production. While Hong Kong was a British colony and is now part of China, to what extent should we consider Hong Kong writing as postcolonial writing (English studies) or as Chinese writing (Chinese studies)? While Taiwan was a Japanese colony and is now occupying an ambiguous position in Chinese and international politics, to what extent should we consider Taiwanese writing as postcolonial writing (Japanese studies), Chinese writing (Chinese studies) or as world literature (English studies)? While in some ways Chinese Americans and British Chinese share similar diasporic experience, why should we study the former in ethnic studies in American studies and the latter in Anglophone postcolonial studies in English studies? When they examine the making of Chinese modernity as an academic object of study, do they not ask similar questions and share similar methodologies? To what extent can we bring these two academic discourses into constructive dialogue so as to deepen our understanding of the making of modern China? The underlying question of this course is that the notion of Chinese modernity (as well as Chinese-ness as a cultural identity) as highly heterogeneous and indeterminate is in part constituted by the American academic division of labor. That is to say, we can only understand the making of Chinese modernity through a comparative framework (i.e., to compare how Chinese modernity is studied and examined in various disciplines) and through an interdisciplinary approach. Therefore, this course asks questions about the questions we ask. Hui
MUSIC 120 American Popular Music. Count Basie, Captain Beefheart, Coldplay; blackface minstrelsy, the Beatles, boy bands; Ma Rainey, Motown and Metallica – these are just a few of the fascinating characters in America’s popular music history. We’ll study these and many others as we delve into issues of musical style and artistic expression in the social, cultural and political contexts of popular music in the U.S. from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. This course is designed for the non-specialist, so musical elements and terminology will be presented in a user-friendly manner throughout the course. We’ll answer questions both big (what was music’s role in the counter cultures of the 1960s?) and small (what instrument is making that sound?) as we gain an understanding of the roles popular music has played in American history and culture. Smith
PSY 170IS Human Development in Literature. Literature is rich in human development
theory and principles. This course will utilize current popular fiction and biographies to illustrate important theories in human development. Through this literature, the theories and principles will come to life and be more easily understood and remembered. In addition, students will gain the ability to assimilate theory into their everyday observations. Through the reading and discussing of these books, students will practice application and analysis, rather than memorization of theory and principles. For example, About a Boy deals with multigenerational individual development with realism and humor, while Tuesdays with Morrie explores the process of dying. Readings may include About a Boy, Ramona the Pest, Shiloh, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, Sign of the Beaver, It's Not About theBike, A Year by the Sea, Walk Two Moons and Hannah's Gift. Maxson
PSY 170RS Intimate Relationships and Dating: Theories and Research. This course
focuses on romantic relationships and will provide students with a general overview of research and theory based on classic and contemporary findings from the social psychological literature. We will study how individuals think about and behave in interpersonal relationships. Topics covered include issues such as jealousy, factors affecting breakups, how partners can bring about the best or worst in each other, factors that influence attraction and dating, the difference between loving and liking and a research-based discussion of modern dating trends such as 'hooking up'. More generally, students will learn about the development of romantic relationships, individual differences that affect how people function in relationships and typical patterns of conflict in relationships. The scientific study of relationships is fascinating and certainly one that readily applies to our lives. Estrada
RELIGION 185S Religious Expressions: Movements, Media and Anthropological
Mappings. Please see CULANTH 180S above. Ahmad
THEATRST 149S Dramatic Improvisation. Improvisation is a vital tool for all careers
and relationships. Through inquiry into the technique and freedom of working without a set script one develops the ability to read situations and other people. This course is ideal for business people and artists alike – anyone with the need to express himself or herself with honesty and assurance. No acting experience is necessary. O’Berski
THEATRST 149S Voice, Speech and Communication. The sounds of your voice send
out volumes of information to others about: the kind of person you are, where you come from, your emotional state, your desires, and your fears, strengths and weaknesses. On stage AND off, vocal power and agility are needed not only to be heard but to create character and be understood. We will rediscover the voice as a physical gesture, as strong and clear as a run or the swing of a fist. Pitch, volume, tone, diction and dialect will be explored. Marks
WOMENST 150S Love, Etc: The Use and Abuse of Emotions. In this course we will
examine the ways emotions – love, in particular – are used in constructions of gender and sexual difference. We will begin by focusing on a selection of theoretical texts addressing the topic of love in its different instantiations and from different perspectives (psychoanalytical, sociological, Marxist, etc). Possible texts and authors include Audrey Lorde, The Uses of the Erotic; Teresa de Lauretis, The Practice of Love; Martha Nussbaum, selections from Upheavals of Thought; Luce Irigaray, selections from An Ethics of Sexual Difference; Elizabeth Grosz, Love’s Labours Lost: Marxism and Feminism, as well as texts from the wages for housework debates. With an increased awareness of the complexity and subtleties of these issues, we will, in the second part of the class, shift our attention to a series of fictional texts written by women, in an effort to understand how literature can disseminate feminist ideas and to what effect (the novels were all published after 1960). Possible titles include Penelope Mortimer, The Pumpkin Eater; Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve; Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil; Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry; A.S.Byatt, Babel Tower; Helen Simpson, Hey yeah right get a life. Stan
WOMENST 150S Body Politics. The “body politic” has historically been a central metaphor in political theory, and yet the body itself remains underspecified as a source of political theory and practice. The course will begin with a brief review of the “body politic” metaphor, especially its instantiation in liberal political theory, to grasp the centrality of our assumptions about a “body politic” for our understandings of key ethical and political terms, such as reason, rights, freedom, equality, difference, political community, nation, political economy, etc. We will pay special attention to how the body figures into—or more often remains absent from—many of these articulations. With this foundation in canonical political theory, we will take up selections in feminist theory, queer theory and radical democratic theory to explore alternative imaginations and practices of ethics and politics that begin with the body. Grattan
WOMENST 150S Bodies of Evidence: Forensic Fictions. How is crime imagined? What is the evidence? This will be a CSI-style investigation of our contemporary fascination with DNA, bodies, crime and knowledge. Using a broad variety of media including crime novels, contemporary television dramas, current fiction, forensic science primers and the age-old fascination with celebrity trials, we will trace an understanding of the kinds of narratives we use to talk about missing bodies, pieces of evidence and what we see at the crime scene. We will unearth how the concept of ‘evidence’ came into such popularity and what kind of impact it has registered. Our texts will provide clues to help us uncover the rules of the game – who is allowed to go missing, under what circumstances, how they are ‘found’, and the narrative of the resulting legal case. What happens in these texts when no actual body is found? We will determine what we mean when we say the “the scene of the crime,” why there is a difference between bodies and corpses, how subjectivity plays a role in what we assume is entirely neutral science, and how the female body occupies and performs a very specific role in this genre. What is it that we understand to be evidence, and what does forensics presume about understanding or knowing the body? What is the difference between a mug shot and a wanted poster? There seems to be an overwhelming public investment in the writing of crime narratives; this class will investigate why this genre has such resonance for our understanding of how our culture works and why crime fiction was so inextricably tied to the rise of mass media. If it has to do with genre, suspense and fear of the unknown element, how does DNA change the stakes of that discussion? DNA seems to be the answer to many questions of crime these days – what is the question that requires such a culturally constructed certainty? What might DNA not answer, and why might that be an interesting question? We will be looking at a variety of media and contexts, including forensic technologies, classic crime fiction, gumshoe detectives, film noir, serial killers, ‘mass’ disasters and contemporary discourses of celebrity crime scenes. We will read classic and contemporary fiction where crime or evidence plays a starring role – including Edgar Allan Poe, Susan Glaspell, Truman Capote, Patricia Cornwell and Sherlock Holmes. We’ll watch a variety of films and television programs, including Gattaca, Silence of the Lambs, Memento, In Cold Blood, CSI, Alias, and Medium. We will also do some reading on the science of forensics, DNA analysis and photographing crime scenes. Our current investment in evidence centers around a specific cultural anxiety about the status of the body. What does DNA allow us to understand about the body’s contextualization, and how does DNA allow a new vocabulary about the body to be circulated? At what cost? How has crime fiction – one of the most popular genres, no doubt – adapted to include this piece of evidence, or is it simply the latest version of a series of technologies used to police, corral, capture and condemn various kinds of subjects? DNA and its use in solving crimes has been tied to the very new understanding of how our bodies work and can be read, made legible and reduced to biological certainty. This has very deep effects in terms of our understanding of gender, race, sexuality, ethnicity and identity. Barnett
WOMENST 150S The Nation in Feminist Fiction. In this course we will study a global collection of feminist fiction that thematizes the centrality of gender to ideas of what a “nation” is. In particular we will examine the complex and often problematic linkages that postcolonial women’s literature draws among feminism, racism, nationalism and imperialism. We will work closely on the following texts: Ama Ata Aidoo, Our Sister Killjoy (1977, Ghana); Isabel Allende, The House of the Spirits (1982, Chile); Assia Djebar, Fantasia: An Algerian Cavalcade (1985, Algeria); Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987, USA); and Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things (1997, India). Each of these acclaimed works revisits and re-evaluates the traditional sites of national memory and inherited history. Through imaginative recuperation and recodification, they aim at the creation of new ways of imagining national belonging by invoking the domains of difference embedded within the nation. In each context, we will focus on how feminist authorship and storytelling is engaged with how dominant national narratives are woven through patriarchal forms of desire that circulate around female sexuality and power and how women’s political agency as historical subjects is regulated through specific, limited notions of citizenship. Oruc
WOMENST 150S Feminist/Womanist Theologies, Culture and Quotidian Issues. This course seeks to explore the many ways feminist and womanist theologies contribute to and complicate key ethical debates in Women’s Studies and to consider the ways such theologies might lead to deeper moral reflection and earnest consideration of civic involvement based on an ethic of care. Course materials selected are organized thematically (SXL, domestic and reproductive labor, transnational mothering, identity and self-image) and all demand ethical decision-making on either the part of the individual or the community. Human trafficking, domestic and reproductive labor, multiculturalism, sexual ethics and transnational mothering are among the topics this course endeavors to examine, all with an eye toward how these debates are framed by secular feminists, how they are portrayed in novels, film, poetry and religious texts and how these issues might be better negotiated by listening to the voices of feminist and womanist theologians. Broyles
WOMENST 150S Cultural Politics, Sexuality and U.S. Mass Media. Things have changed, or so it would seem, in regards to the depiction of homosexuality on U.S. television. While never absent, the pattern of representation has gone from complete stigmatization and condemnation (e.g., the 1967 CBS news special The Homosexuals where the special guests – hiding behind potted plants – were shown as symptomatic of urban dangers while ‘sympathetically’ rendered as deeply tormented by their affliction) to a limited acceptance where LGBT characters increasingly appear as "familiar visitors and even regular characters" (Gross, 2001, p. 257) in late 1990s/early 2000s programming. As sociologist Suzanna Danuta Walters (2001) notes, the rise in visibility of LGBT persons in U.S. mass media, especially television, serves multiple and often competing interests. These include (1) furthering the mainstreaming objectives of the prominent pro-gay advocacy groups, (2) satisfying television programmers looking for queer characters to make their shows more youth-appealing (Becker, 2001), and (3) providing a political target for the Right, who have made gay visibility the predominant “culture war” of the late 1990s and early 2000s (often using the figure of “the child” as a rallying point, for example, in the controversies over the Teletubbies character Tinky Winky and TV programs Ellen, Dawson’s Creek, and Postcards from Buster, the film Brokeback Mountain, the murder of gay college student Matthew Shepard, and the 2004 presidential debate where mention of Mary Cheney’s sexuality itself launched a debate about decency and the publicity of lesbianism). This course will examine how and why issues of sexual citizenship are being negotiated in U.S. mass media in the present moment, focusing on how these representations inform, participate in and depict political debates and social reality. Kachgal
WOMENST 150S Real Women: From Documentary Film to Reality TV. The goal of this course is to provide students with a range of theories useful for critical analysis of gender in nonfiction visual culture. The course begins with second wave feminist notions of gender and the cultural representation of women. We cover early feminist film theories about the Hollywood dream machine and narrative cinema and later feminist theoretical explorations about ‘reality’ in documentary film. Finally, we’ll take on Reality TV (possibly with the FOX network series When Women Rule the World) and new digital technologies of the visual. Student group projects will explore new digital technologies of the visual, including YouTube and Facebook. We will be keenly attuned to the deceptions of “realism” and the work of ideology in the realm of nonfiction. But we will be equally curious to examine the ways that images and stories of “real” women do historical and political work, both radical and conservative. Warren
Term II
CLST 180 Dirty, Sexy Money: Economic Theory and Practice in Ancient Greece. This course surveys the economic history of the Greek world from the Archaic period (6th century B.C.E.) through Alexander the Great (d. 323 B.C.E.). We will read and discuss relevant documents in translation from literary sources (e.g., Homer; Aristotle’s discussion of price), inscriptions (e.g., Athenian tax laws), coins and beyond. Group projects will investigate topics of interest such as maritime insurance, commercial sex and inheritance. The course will be of interest to students of history, economics, sociology and the ancient world. Cline
ENGLISH 173S Gluttons, Lechers & Prodigals: Excess in Renaissance and Contemporary Literature. Can there really be too much of a good thing? This seminar aims not just to answer that question but to interrogate the assumptions that go into it: what exactly does “excess” mean, and how can we understand excessive behavior in the context of exhortations to temperance and experiences of scarcity? First we will read Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and selected episodes of Sex and the City as commentaries on the Petrarchan lyric tradition, foregrounding a discussion of intersubjectivity, gender and representation and the political fallout of transgressive or excessive love. Next, we will sweep from Montaigne’s essay Of Cannibals to Michael Pollan’s recent blockbuster The Omnivore’s Dilemma, troubling categories of the edible and inedible as part of larger discussions of social conflict, distinctions of kind and matrices of health. Finally, we will explore the desire for wealth in action, studying economies of excess from Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice to Ousmane Sembène’s film Mandabi (The Money Order). Eklund
LIT 132S Contemporary Fashion: Object, Idea, Image. This course focuses on
contemporary fashion. The two main points of intersection will be the interface of fashion history and theory in relation to contemporary practice. We will analyze the collections, exhibitions and individual works by designers such as Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen, Yohji Yamamoto, Martin Margiela, Boudicca, and John Galliano. This course has four main units as it explores fashion as image, object and idea. First, we will view and interpret the fashion ‘spectacle’ (the scene of the catwalk) and contemporary fashion photography images as visual expressions of collective desires and anxieties of consumer culture, characteristic of late capitalism. Second, we will contextualize the fashion media scene as one of many aspects of ‘new media practice.’ Third, we will discuss fashion as an important feature of materialist culture. Finally, we will acknowledge the diverse cultural and social histories that inform the aesthetic principles (or ideologies) of individual designers or design teams. Arinaz
LIT 150S Fictions of the Sixties. This course is designed to offer an overview of the 1960s in the U.S. and western Europe, to familiarize students with famous novels published during the period and to introduce the theoretical debates that animated linguists, anthropologists, literary theorists, philosophers and psychoanalysts as the decade wore on and afterwards. Of interest will be the question of “theory” itself, invented in the 1960s to supplant traditional philosophy and other discourses, as well as the still debatable “postmodernism” at various levels of conceptualization. We will start by setting the sixties in perspective with the help of Gunter Grass’s fascinatingly idiosyncratic account of the twentieth century (My Century, 1999) and proceed possibly with Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962), Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962), Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange (1962), B. S. Johnson’s Albert Angelo (1964), Philippe Sollers’s Drama (1965), V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men (1967) and John Fowles’s The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969). Our discussion of these novels will bring to the forefront various themes and topics such as gender, colonialism, critique of traditional psychology, ethical behavior and the relationship to the past, as well as issues pertaining to the formal aspects these novels display (formal experimentation, impersonality, self-reflexivity, etc.). Stan
LIT 151S Dystopias in Fiction and Film. From Brave New World and 1984 to The
Handmaid’s Tale, the twentieth-century has produced a slew of horrific visions of the future. This course examines the genre of dystopia with a view to understanding its common traits, ideological valences and historical specificity. Although the term “dystopia” predates 1900, dystopia became a recognizable literary genre during the early twentieth century and has not lost its hold on our imagination in the twenty-first, as evidenced by recent films such as The Island, V for Vendetta and Children of Men. Cautionary tales, social criticism and thought experiments, these stories about terrifying futures generally tell us more about the conditions in which they are made than about any anticipated future. While hopefully not prophetic, they deserve our attention as registers of social fears and anxieties. Rather than determine the single form of a generic dystopia, the course will focus much more on the differences between dystopian texts and contexts. Over the term we will examine how different authors adapt and adjust generic traits to respond to different socio-political circumstances and concerns, and how this adjustment is re-inscribed back into the genre. As a way of focusing our reading and selecting specific dystopian texts, special attention will be given to questions of gender, the importance or non-importance of sexual difference and the role and fate of reproduction in dystopian fictions. To reinforce this emphasis on historical and social context the course is divided into four units, organized chronologically. These units include: 1) taking a look at two of the most famous dystopias from the early twentieth century (Zamyatin’s We and Huxley’s Brave New World); 2) focusing upon one utopian/dystopian fiction (Le Guin’s The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia); 3) examining a graphic novel (Moore’s and Lloyd’s V for Vendetta), a novel (Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale) and a film (Brazil) all clustered around Orwell’s big year; and 4) concluding with a look at two recent films (V for Vendetta and Children of Men). Ruch
MUSIC 120 Rock & Role: Theories of Performance in Popular Music. What do we demand of a good pop performer? What makes for a powerful show? How is it that one singer can seem sincere and “real” but another trite and rehearsed? When does emotion become excessive, sappy, campy or embarrassing? Why is it that, despite so many advances in recording, fans still flock to see artists perform live? This course surveys theories of pop performance as advanced by key journalists, pop scholars and bloggers, including Lester Bangs, Jessica Hopper, Simon Frith, Ann Powers, Robert Christgau and Phil Auslander, among others. To think through these readings, we will draw on case studies from glam rock, hardcore punk, dance pop and local cover bands. Wood
POLSCI 199C Politics at the Border. This course examines the definition, policing and crossing of both geopolitical and ideological boundaries, as well as the interaction between geographic and ideological border practices. We will begin with a survey of theoretical readings drawn from ancient, pre-modern, modern and postmodern sources (including, among others: Thucydides, Cicero, Thomas More, John Locke, Simone Weil, Derrida, Anzaldua). The latter part of the course will employ academic texts, news articles and documentary film to look concretely at immigration debates and border practices in contemporary settings such as the U.S., Latin America, Europe and Israel/Palestine. Students will explore how politics requires attention to borders and boundaries, as well as how and under what circumstances border definition, policing and crossing either constrain or enable human freedom. Rice
PSY 170LS Psychology of Stereotypes & Prejudice. Within the field of psychology, there is
a wide range of perspectives on the nature and causes of prejudice. There is also considerable debate surrounding the different methods for defining, measuring and performing research on stereotypes, prejudice and discrimination. This course will introduce students to the major cognitive and social psychological theories that help to explain why people rely on and reinforce cultural stereotypes, develop prejudicial attitudes and behave in ways that negatively impact members of other social groups, as well as how these phenomena can be reduced. Hall
RELIGION 185S The Qur’an Over Time. This course will offer an introduction to the
Qur’an (Koran), the central text of Islam and one of the most widely read texts in all of human history. This study of the Qur’an will engage the history of Islam as well as the use of the Qur’an in Muslim ritual. Students will explore interpretations of the Qur’an from medieval to modern times, from Rumi to Osama bin Laden. Wilson
THEATRST 149S Dramatic Improvisation. Improvisation is a vital tool for all careers
and relationships. Through inquiry into the technique and freedom of working without a set script one develops the ability to read situations and other people. This course is ideal for business people and artists alike – anyone with the need to express himself or herself with honesty and assurance. No acting experience is necessary. O’Berski
THEATRST 149S Voice, Speech and Communication. The sounds of your voice send
volumes of information to others about: the kind of person you are, where you come from, your emotional state, your desires and your fears, strengths and weaknesses. On stage AND off, vocal power and agility is needed not only to be heard but to create character and be understood. We will rediscover the voice as a physical gesture, as strong and clear as a run or the swing of a fist. Pitch, volume, tone, diction and dialect will be explored. Marks
WOMENST 150S Sex, Self and Others in Postcolonial Contexts. This course focuses on the role of sex and sexuality in characters’ understandings of themselves and others, and on the way authors’ representations and readers’ perceptions make use of sex and sexuality. How do sexual experiences and feelings contribute to identity? How do they form a sense of connection to and/or distinction from others? In reading novels, plays, short stories and poems by authors from places once part of the British Empire—India, Pakistan, South Africa, Tanzania, Antigua, Sri Lanka, Ireland and England itself—we will be able to think about how sexuality is tied up with representations of cultural difference and national identity in postcolonial literature. We will also discuss more general issues such as plot, structure, style, genre, literary techniques, setting, etc., along with whatever you find striking, problematic or interesting in the texts. Westerman
WOMENST 150S Hard-Boiled Gender: The Sexual Politics of Film Noir. Whether we
call it a genre, a historical movement or a visual style, film noir is consistently fascinating. Referring to a group of films made primarily in the decade or so after World War II, noir films frequently addressed (in the narrative terms of the thriller) questions about the instability of gender as a regulation of sexualities and social identities in American culture. This course will examine film noir both for their representations of masculinity and femininity in a historical context while considering what the narrativizations of sexual difference efface. How do the aesthetic and narrative codes of noir represent male and female characters in worlds shown to be limited by, even trapped in, social worlds that are psychologically and spatially gendered? How do the gender plots of original-cycle noir function as “cover stories” of other ideological and historical conflicts—including those related to class, race and ethnicity, as well as the urban experience and modernity? What lessons might these representations offer to the present? Finally, pushing the boundaries of the noir concept, we will reconsider its categorical presuppositions: does noir have a politics? is it an ideologically ambiguous aesthetic form or potentially critical cinema? Keeton
WOMENST 150S Gender, Science and Nature. The fundamental question of humanity and its traditional place in opposition to the animal is central to this course and spawns other ideas, including a reworking of the culture/nature binary within the context of evolutionary theory. In other words, science has produced a way of understanding and classifying the world through evolutionary theory and the implications of this narrative are far-reaching. On the one hand, evolution brings us closer to the animal world as it argues that we have common ancestors with living animals. On the other, science continually attempts to maintain the sacred divide between human and animal. Some biological scientists view animals as beings without depth, language or social complexity. In turn, many humanists and social scientists have either not examined these issues or accepted the divide between humans and the natural world. This class presumes that language and its creations of power within a complex society become defining regimes. Language is often viewed as the pinnacle of evolutionary progress and unique to humans, while simultaneously language choices perpetuate the perception of separation between humans and nature. We will examine the projections of gender and social complexity on our closest living relatives, the other primates. Some of the questions we will address include: does sex always serve a reproductive function in the wild? do non-humans also form complex societies on par with humans? what do these animals tell us about both humanity and gender? The class will review the animal behavior literature on non-humans of homosexuality and other non-reproductive sexual activity, advanced cognition and language skills and social complexity. Simultaneously, the class will review feminist and other critiques of the meaning of these patterns to the notions of humanity and gender. This course will also address the historical construction of the human evolutionary past addressing such issues as the myths of paleoanthropology. This course will tackle the questions of how humanity invented a separation with nature: how did language and culture evolve and what can the non-human world reveal about this evolutionary pathway? Science, both historically and contemporarily, often argues that phenomena such as the sexual division of labor are an essential adaptation of our species. Some of the questions stemming from this line of inquiry include: how is the examination of our evolutionary past shaped by our present day notion of what is “natural” for humans? when and how do we separate humanity from the rest of the animal world and why? how do these ideas about our evolutionary pathway effect our current ideas about gender boundaries and the human/animal boundary? Barrickman