North Americans may think of the Caribbean as a vacationerÂs haven of beaches and palm trees. But the region has a long, painful, and complex historyÂand it has produced, since the middle of the 20th century, a distinguished and richly varied literature, including two winners of the Nobel Prize, Derek Walcott and V. Naipaul. This literary outpouring began in the 1930s and continues to the present day, despite the disillusioning realities of the postcolonial era. This class will introduce you to some of the best English-language Caribbean writers and to the cultural conflictsÂconcerning race, colonialism, language, and identityÂthat inform their work.
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ÂA map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, wrote Oscar Wilde. Since ancient Greece, authors have portrayed fictional utopias in order to stimulate thinking on ways to create an ideal society and to highlight the serious social problems of their own time. These utopias have offered thought-provoking visions for bettering education, government, working conditions, the standard of living, relations between the sexes, etc. We will read fictional utopias that explore these and other questions: Can society be organized to ensure a good life for all? What are the benefits and the dangers of attempts to create such a society? What essential elements of humanity must be protected at all cost from efforts to perfect society?
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In this seminar we shall read selected fiction, poems, and essays and respond to them in writing as a way of clarifying our ideas and communicating them effectively to others. Writing assignments will include response papers to the reading and three essays of varying length. Some of the authors we shall study are William Blake, Franz Kafka, Alice Munro, Marjane Satrapi, and Raymond Carver.
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Most of us like to travel or would like to travel. Some of us get to travel, and some of us have even traveled to get to the US as immigrants or as international students. But all of us can travel through travel writing. In this course, we will trace the history and development of travel writing from the records of early explorers like Marco Polo to the heyday of British travel writing in the 1930Âs by authors like Robert Byron and to the popular travel writing of today. We will also explore issues of how journeys affect the traveler as well as how they affect the places and people of travel destinations.
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In 2005 and 2007, riots broke out in major cities throughout France, revealing to the world the deep tensions and inequalities that plague French society. At the same time, in Fall 2007, a majority of the prestigious French literary prizes were awarded to writers from ÂOverseas France and French-speaking writers from outside of France, following which, in March 2008, 40 well-known writers from all over the French-speaking world wrote a manifesto calling for a Âlittérature-monde in French (a world-literature that distinguishes itself from its Anglo-Saxon counterpart). Both these sets of events reflect the challenges that French national and cultural identity has been facing since the end of world war two, challenges posed by its colonial history and immigration, feminism, the advent of a public discussion of non-normative sexual orientations, the growing importance of the European Union, and globalization. Come and explore with us, through fiction and film, various facets of France as a multicultural society in order to better understand how events such as the riots and the upheaval in the literary world come to be.
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This class will examine fiction, film, and theory produced in the past several decades by and concerning Asians in diaspora. We will begin with theoretical essays that examine theories of diaspora, particularly as it intersects with gender and sexuality, focusing on the specificities of diaspora for authors from South East Asia and South Asia. Using these theories as frameworks, the course will consider several novels, short stories, films, and websites that depict Asians no longer located in what the authors might consider their homes. Framed by critical theory about race, ethnicity, sex and gender, discussions will focus specifically on ways in which they are articulated within these texts. The first novel, Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia, will be read and discussed on blackboard before the class commences.
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In recent years historians have developed a new technique called microhistory for capturing the lives of the people who have been lost to historyÂpeasants, heretics, poor women, gays, and con-conformists of all sorts. These were the people who because of their low social status, rural origins, illiteracy, or unpopular beliefs were ignored, despised, or persecuted by the dominant society. Microhistory is a method of investigation that usually relies on the evidence from judicial trials of otherwise obscure people who found themselves in trouble with the authorities. The method gives a voice to those who otherwise left no written record of their lives. The result of these studies has been a remarkable re-evaluation of the experiences and beliefs of the common people of pre-modern Europe. Microhistory gives life to an otherwise lost world.
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This freshman seminar will examine the U.S.-Mexico border from multiple perspectives. The border is both a barrier dividing two countries and a gate that links them. The surrounding region, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of California, is also home to millions of Mexicans and Americans. Through historical narratives, film, art, and music, our course will seek to build a layered understanding of what the border has meant across time, space, and various media. We will discuss efforts to define the borderlands as a bound geographic region encompassing the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico, performance artist Guillermo Gómez-PeñaÂs claim that borders exist everywhere, and the ways in which writers have used the term to describe a wide range of phenomena. We will pay attention to the ways in which recent discussions about the U.S.-Mexico border have focused narrowly on immigration; we will also explore how artists, musicians, writers, and scholars from Mexico and the United States have used the border to engage rich inquiries about empire, human rights, labor, gender relations, cultural processes, and race and ethnicity. Approaching the U.S.-Mexico border from several disciplinary perspectives, this course will also provide an opportunity to explore the meanings, potential, and limits of interdisciplinary work.
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Abraham Lincoln is remembered as one of the greatest heroes of American history. But what do we really know about Lincoln, and how do we know it? In this course we will explore Lincoln's life and writings, and we will also look at how people have understood Lincoln since his death. We will focus on Lincoln's biography, his stance on slavery and emancipation, and his understanding of presidential power in wartime. We will also ask what we can learn about the United States from representations of Lincoln in monuments, music, and films. We will visit the Chicago History Museum and, if schedules permit, Lincoln sites in Springfield, Illinois.
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Community organizing entered national discussion as never before during the 2008 presidential election, thanks to President ObamaÂs early training and work in the field. But what exactly is community organizing? How did it start, and why have generations of Americans turned to it as a tool for achieving change? And how have critics assessed it? This course examines the origins and evolution of community organizing from its first beginnings at the opening of the twentieth century to the present, and invites students to draw their own conclusions, from the sources, about its contributions and limitations as a tool of active democracy. We will examine the lives and writings of three leaders in the field (Jane Addams, Saul Alinsky, and Ella Baker) and then explore important examples of their ideas in action. Chicago was the home of both Addams and Alinsky and it has been a leading site in the development of community organizing for over a century, so the course will also acquaint new students with local history and invite them to research Chicago community organizations. The course carries a rewarding but demanding reading load.
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This seminar will examine: a) the bases of power underpinning the projection of hegemony in international affairs; b) the ways in which, in various circumstances and on varying issues, power may be more usefully applied; c) historical examples of the exercise of hegemony by European powers and the United States in Vietnam and the Middle East, and its consequences, and d) the role of the media in interpreting U.S. foreign policy and international affairs. In the last two to three weeks of the course we will focus upon issues that the class decides it would like to explore.
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As a mode, comedy can be critical, affirmative, adaptive, or all three. It shows both a societyÂs limitations and how they can be negotiated and lived within; it can point out the forces and actions that fracture societies, but can also be tolerant of the ways in which societies open themselves to change. It can suggest flexibility, practicality, acceptance, contingency, or it can police norms and reject deviations from it. At its most narrow, comedy can be brutally exclusive, punishing and rejecting those who do not conform to a societyÂs demands. At its most open, though, comedy promises that there is place for everyone within a society. Comedy shows that each community discovers tensions between its desires and its rules, what it demands and expects and forbids, and that the art of living within a society is the tempering of these competing demands in ways that do not destroy either the group or those within it. Perhaps most interestingly to us, comedy as a mode supplies us with the idea that a society can be transformed for the better rather than either being simply accepted or rejected.
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As a mode, comedy can be critical, affirmative, adaptive, or all three. It shows both a societyÂs limitations and how they can be negotiated and lived within; it can point out the forces and actions that fracture societies, but can also be tolerant of the ways in which societies open themselves to change. It can suggest flexibility, practicality, acceptance, contingency, or it can police norms and reject deviations from it. At its most narrow, comedy can be brutally exclusive, punishing and rejecting those who do not conform to a societyÂs demands. At its most open, though, comedy promises that there is place for everyone within a society. Comedy shows that each community discovers tensions between its desires and its rules, what it demands and expects and forbids, and that the art of living within a society is the tempering of these competing demands in ways that do not destroy either the group or those within it. Perhaps most interestingly to us, comedy as a mode supplies us with the idea that a society can be transformed for the better rather than either being simply accepted or rejected.
Score: 6.603603 Details | Listing | Web page
As a mode, comedy can be critical, affirmative, adaptive, or all three. It shows both a societyÂs limitations and how they can be negotiated and lived within; it can point out the forces and actions that fracture societies, but can also be tolerant of the ways in which societies open themselves to change. It can suggest flexibility, practicality, acceptance, contingency, or it can police norms and reject deviations from it. At its most narrow, comedy can be brutally exclusive, punishing and rejecting those who do not conform to a societyÂs demands. At its most open, though, comedy promises that there is place for everyone within a society. Comedy shows that each community discovers tensions between its desires and its rules, what it demands and expects and forbids, and that the art of living within a society is the tempering of these competing demands in ways that do not destroy either the group or those within it. Perhaps most interestingly to us, comedy as a mode supplies us with the idea that a society can be transformed for the better rather than either being simply accepted or rejected.
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How do young children achieve the remarkable feat of learning to speak and learning to understand the speech of others? How do families, schools, and communities help shape childrenÂs development as speakers and listeners, and eventually their development as readers and writers? How does learning a language (or more than one language) interact with learning to think, learning to imagine, and developing a sense of identity? We will begin exploring these questions by reading and discussing Charles YangÂs recent book, The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World. We will also sample firsthand the topics, methods, and forms of argument characteristic of current scientific research on childrenÂs language development by reviewing studies published in such journals as Child Development, Cognition, and Journal of Child Language. We will then extend our exploration by considering how children learn to read and write, and by reflecting on the role of language in childrenÂs development of cultural and individual identity.
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In this seminar, we will explore some of the ways that language is used to construct, negotiate, present, and/or conceal sexual identity and orientation. We will examine the language of sexual minority groups, focusing on the language of and about gay men and lesbians. Some of the topics to be covered include gender vs. sexuality vs. sex, the meaning and use of Âreclaimed epithets (e.g. dyke and queer), on-line presentation of sexuality, menÂs voices and the perception of sexual identity, and cross-cultural constructions of sexuality.
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Recent popular works by prominent scientists and intellectuals have renewed interest in atheism, broadly construed as the absence of belief in deities. In this seminar we will evaluate, compare and contrast four significant contributions in this direction by mathematician John Allen Paulos, biologist Richard Dawkins, neuroscientist Sam Harris and journalist Christopher Hitchens.
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TIME TRAVEL: SCIENCE OR SCIENCE FICTION? In the past century, our understanding of the nature of time has changed drastically. With the advent of EinsteinÂs theory of Relativity in the first two decades of the twentieth century came the realization that time travel to the future is a definite possibility, given sufficient advances in technology. Is it possible, though, for a person to travel backwards in time? Surprisingly, the laws of physics as we currently understand them do not necessarily rule this out! Do those laws, however, correspond to our universe? Join me for an exploration of the physics of time as formulated by Newton, Einstein, Hawking, and others.
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This seminar is designed to develop critical reading and writing skills in the social sciences and to apply these skills to the investigation, inquiry, deliberation and analysis of the position of the United States in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The most immediate question concerns the failure of the Ânation-building project in both countries that was described early in this process as a major goal in both wars. This course will examine the shift away from these and other goals, the formulation of new goals, and seek explanations for these changes. Students will produce four analytical essays through the course of the term, to correspond roughly to the four books that form the core of the readings. These essays will help students to understand the position that the US finds itself now. The objective of these essays also includes helping to familiarize students with the process of reading and synthesizing complex arguments, of taking informed positions, and in formulating oneÂs own argument.
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Game playing as entertainment now rivals movies in popularity. With popularity, the number and types of games has increased. The course will explore the different ways in which game-playing contexts provides situations for learning about human cognition, cognitive science and even cognitive neuroscience.
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Lots of people have beliefs that other people think are just plain weird. Why do people have these beliefs? WeÂll look at Âweird beliefs within our culture as well as some cross-cultural examples, and try to understand what leads people to develop and maintain these beliefs. Another issue is that one personÂs Âweird belief may be another personÂs firmly held conviction. From this perspective, weÂll also try to understand which beliefs are rational. Among the topics we may cover are: witchcraft, alien abduction, ESP and phenomena in parapsychology, ghosts, evolution vs. creationism, repressed memories of abuse, multiple personality disorder, and spirit possession. Students will learn to use a wide variety of academic and not-so-academic resources (including empirical research articles, ethnographic descriptions, philosophical arguments, popular press books, and documentary films) to explore the bases for these beliefs and practices.
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Does life have any meaning? Are you psychologically healthier if you believe your life has meaning? Humans are the only animals aware of their own inevitable deaths. How does this affect the way we live our lives? How do we cope with knowing that we wonÂt live forever? Why do we feel so lonely, so often? This seminar focusing on existential psychology will give you a forum to explore these types of questions. It will provide an in-depth overview of the relationship between existentialism and psychology, from both philosophical and empirical perspectives. Students will be challenged to wrestle with the intersection of psychological theory and the Âgivens of existence (death, meaninglessness, isolation, freedom/responsibility) proposed by existentialists and to discover how confronting these givens influences individual and group psychology.
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In this course we will explore some of the sociolinguistic issues (that is connections between language and society) in various Slavic speaking countries and areas (such as, the former Yugoslavia, Russia, the former Soviet Union, Upper and Lower Sorbian, which are Slavic languages spoken in Germany, etc.). Issues to be examined include: language policies, minority language rights, language vs. dialect, status and corpus of language, language planning, language and identity, language and nationalism. As the final paper for this course, students will work on any geopolitical area in the world (except for Slavic) and examine the sociolinguistic issues particular to that reason. Some previous papers, for example, have looked at the role of Japanese in Korea; Koreans in Japan and language discrimination issues; the languages of South Africa; the status of African-American Vernacular English (or Black English) in the US and the controversy surrounding it in the 1990s in the Oakland, CA school district; Celtic in Ireland; the revival of Hebrew as the official language of Israel; languages rights in the EU; Kurdish language discrimination in Turkey; etc.
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This freshman seminar is designed to expose incoming students to certain of the basic approaches that historians and sociologists take to understanding historical memory. In particular, we examine how reputations are constructed by the public and by historians, and how scandals (including contemporary ones) come to be understood. Our primary focus for this course will be American examples, but the historical range will be broad, covering 1700-present.
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The seminar will look at the study of youth in the U.S. from a sociological perspective. We will look at the origins of various life stages such as teenager and Âtween and the cultural, historical, economical and political factors that lead to their emergence. We will also look at the experience of being a teenager over the last several decades as well as considering how teenagers/adolescents make the transition to adulthood.
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