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Course Criteria
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1.00 Credits
If you love books, you may have asked: Why do books look the way they do How do we read them How do books influence human experience Does the form of books shape their message How do certain books become sacred This seminar will consider these questions as we study the history of the book and reading from antiquity to the present. We will meet regularly in the Watkinson Library, Trinity's splendid rare book collection, where we will use rare books to explore the nature of reading, ancient and medieval book production, the printing revolution, illustration, preservation, and sacred texts. We will also consider the future of the book in our digital age. Excursions to the National Yiddish Book Center, the MIT New Media Lab, a private press, and other rare book collections are planned. 1.00 units, Seminar
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3.00 Credits
Trash is everywhere - under our sinks, in our streets, in overflowing landfills on the outskirts of cities. Yet we do not often think carefully about the cultural meanings of trash, let alone its political economy. How can we think about trash as "matter out of place" What does our trash tell us about ourselves What do our ideas about trash tell us about our relationships with others This course focuses on trash as object and idea to investigate issues of consumption, identity, power and inequality. We will investigate trash vocabularies, trajectories and controversies: why do we "talk trash" or say that someone is "trashy" Who takes out the trash Why have some states and countries began importing trash Who decides where toxic and radioactive waste is disposed of Readings will include social histories, news stories and ethnographies. The class will conduct a research project on trash in the city of Hartford. This course has a community learning component. 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
A need to further the cause of social justice, or a voyeuristic fascination with the other -- what is it that draws artists and writers into places, and towards lives, that often seem fraught with darkness and despair In this class we will take a multi-genre approach to this and other related questions, examining work by poets, essayists, photographers, and filmmakers in order to get at why so much of American art and letters from the second half of the 20th century finds, not only its home, but also a difficult beauty, in settings that seem to fall far short of the utopian. Whether considering Philip Levine's poems about Detroit autoworkers, Joan Didion's essays on California in the 60s, Mark Singer's documentary work about people living in tunnels under New York City, or Diane Arbus's photographs of marginalized characters in the same city, we will attempt to better understand why these artists and writers have chosen to tell their particular stories and how we might respond imaginatively and appropriately to those stories as writers and thinker 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
When you think of the religion of the Roman empire, you probably think about Jupiter or Zeus and the traditional gods of the mythology you may have studied in high school. But the historical Roman empire was a fervent kettle of religious diversity - traditional "pagans", cults of the emperors, Jews of many varieties, Christians, and even more exotic beliefs like Manichaeism, Mandaeism, and Zoroastrianism. Religious practices ranged from worship in ways any contemporary would recognize through animal sacrifice, divination, and magical ceremonies to asceticism. Contrary to many preconceptions about the Roman world, women often played central and powerful roles in religious practice, and sometimes even offered spiritual leadership. Through reading a wide variety of primary sources, including the Bible, ancient treatises, and newly discovered letters and documents, we will explore some of the extraordinary variety of religious experience in the Roman empire between about 100 and 500 CE. 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
We will look at how various kinds of writers-philosophers, politicians, poets, and psychologists---have written about wars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on those who write from an anti-war standpoint. We will consider a range of different wars, reading authors as diverse as Virginia Woolf, George Orwell, Ishmael Beah, Barbara Ehrenreich, and others, looking at political, psychological, and literary answers to the following kinds of questions: What makes people participate in wars How do people resist war What effect does war have on individuals and on nations What rhetorical strategies are used to promote war and peace How can we foster peace Answers to these questions vary from one war to the next; in studying particular wars, we will reflect on how our study of past wars can illuminate present ones, from a literary/rhetorical as well as a political standpoint. 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
Although nations have always spied on each other (and on their own citizens), twentieth-century literature has shown a particular interest in espionage. In this seminar, we will examine the way spies -- as defenders or subverters of society, as masters of surveillance, as conspirators and keepers of secrets -- have assumed a key place in the modern consciousness. We will consider the rise of the spy novel, as both a high literary and popular genre (Kipling, Conrad, Greene, Le Carre). In addition, we will look at the way espionage has been used as a metaphor for larger social and artistic issues (Auden, Hollander). We will examine the copious non-fiction on this subject (Orwell and others), and the enduring popularity of the cloak-and-dagger in mass culture (movies and television). 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
The Salem Witchcraft trials in colonial America continue to haunt American society as exemplified in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible that serves as a metaphor for the McCarthy era of the 1950's. This seminar will focus on witchcraft in colonial America and will take into account the history of European continental and English witchcraft experiences as an intellectual background for the colonial American trials. We will explore how and why the trials came about and how to account for the size and scope of the persecution and their eventual end. We will utilize the writings of recent historians from Chadwick Hansen to Mary Beth Norton to interpret the period and the events in Salem. We will also compare and contrast the 1692 witch hunt in Stamford, Connecticut to determine why it never reached the level of "hysteria" of the Salem trial 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
The uniqueness of historical sites in Israel will be illuminated through an examination of selected passages from ancient and modern texts. These texts include The Hebrew Bible, The New Testament, The Koran and medieval and modern literature. Students will gain greater appreciation of their readings though use of technology in class and in their assignments. 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
Contemporary academic thought has come a long way from the view that reason and emotion exist in separate realms, and that we therefore must "put our feelings aside" in order to think clearly. Theorists and artists across many disciplines are interested in how emotion and reason necessarily interact with each other, and in this seminar we will explore many views of this interaction. What does it really mean--philosophically, psychologically, or even biologically---to say that thinking and feeling work together What is the role of emotion in the life ofthe mind What uses might "emotional intelligence" have in academic work How can reason help us come to terms with our feelings, and how can emotions help us think and write more clearly We will engage in an interdisciplinary exploration of these and related questions. Our readings will include Virginia Woolf, Martha Nussbaum, Antonio Damasio, and various others in literature, philosophy, education, psychology, neuroscience, and religion. In examining each author's perspective on the relationship between thought and feeling, we will explore the overall question of the nature of self and consciousness. Students will complete frequent informal and formal writing assigments designed to help them both understand the readings deeply and explore and develop their own ideas about the topic. 1.00 units, Seminar
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3.00 Credits
In response to the events of September 11, 2001 both the President and Congress undertook initiatives designed to strengthen national security and assist law enforcement agencies in preventing future terrorist attacks on the United States. President Bush issued a military order establishing military tribunals, which will function outside of the civilian and military court systems, and Congress passed the USA Patriot Act. Almost immediately civil libertarians and other concerned citizens challenged these actions, fearful that the civil liberties of Americans would be compromised. The debate between those who believe the new measures are necessary to maintain national security and those who view these measures as a genuine threat to our long tradition of civil liberties continues to command public attention. The tension between national security concerns and the protection of civil liberties by our Bill of Rights can be traced back to the very earliest days of the Republic. This seminar will place the current controversy in its historical context as we explore other moments in America's past when national security needs have collided with civil liberties. We will examine controversies surrounding the Alien and Sedition Acts; Lincoln's action to suspend the writ of habeas corpus during the Civil War; the trials of political dissidents during World War I; and the arrest and trials of suspected communists in the McCarthy era. We will also consider issues like flag desecration and draft card burning during the period of the Vietnam war as well as the most recent actions taken by President Bush and Congress. 1.00 units, Seminar
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