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Course Criteria
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1.00 Credits
We read in order to reflect and act in a complex world. Developing and refining writing skills while focusing critically on reading practices enable a conscious emphasis on how we interpret our lives and the lives of others. Our course will examine reading and writing through looking at a variety of texts (novels, poems, and essays) focused on the thematics of reading including Mary Shelley's, Frankenstein, Jane Austen's, Emma, Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, Darren Wershler-Henry's The Tapeworm Foundry, Michel de Certeau's "Walking in the City," Adrian Piper's "Passing for White, Passing for Black," selections from The Visual Culture Reader, and selected poems. These texts all provide ample space for thinking and writing about how cultural constructions shape identity, feeling, and education of the self into prevalent models for subjectivity. The course will not only address the thematics of reading in literature, but also how to read non-textual sources and concepts such as social space, gender and race. As a first-year seminar course, we will be able to spend a semester together not only reading interesting books, but also on improving critical thinking, speaking, and essay-writing skills through a series of essay and revision assignments. Sarah Willburn is visiting assistant professor of 19th century British literature and culture in the English department. Professor Willburn is completing her first book on nineteenth-century literature and popular mystical culture. Research interests also include spirit photography in the 1870s, and nineteenth-century auction houses. Areas of teaching speciality include British literature, poetics, literary theory, and gender 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
This course is an interdisciplinary investigation of the ways in which America's wars since the mid-20th century have been described and interpreted in popular culture. We will cover major wars, including WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and both Iraq Wars (1991, and 2003-present), as well as a sampling of "small wars" (Grenada, Somalia, former Yugoslavia) and covert operations (Indochina, Afghanistan during the Soviet War, Latin America). Topics reviewed through the lens of pop media will include political and anti-war components; the soldier's experience; race, class and gender issues; press coverage and war-time publicity; atrocity, morality, and rules of war; veterans and post-war adjustment questions; and artistic representation of combat and violence. Media examined will include written fiction and memoir; Hollywood movies; Broadway theater; popular music; monuments and memorials; iconic art and photography; and poetry. The aim of the course is to discern how popular works influence the way wars are justified or condemned and the ways wars are "experienced" and remembered by non-participants; and to look at the questions such works typically raise and the answers or "truths" they offer, and the factors that make them "popular." Readings, film screenings, and artwork viewings will be assigned from a variety of sources, and the seminar will include a two-day, off-campus "war game" exercise on October 10-11. Prof. Heaney is a retired attorney and Vietnam Veteran, who teaches in the History Department and Public Policy and Law Program. His particular areas of interest are American legal and military history; veterans' history; and war, law and peace issues. 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
Why, when we think of the Middle East, do we think of a far off- land with despots, deserts and harems, a land as Robin Williams croons in Disney's "Aladdin" that's "barbaric, but, hey, it's home " Is this truly the Middle East Or is there some other element at play, an element that claims to begin with fact - the Middle East as it really is, the Middle East unveiled - but by the time it is done, portrays the Middle East once again in comfortable, alluring, exotic and erotic fiction How do we account for this persistent distortion Is it willful or unintentional Is it indelibly ingrained or is it surmountable Can we ever know something like it "really is" or are we forever doomed to spin tales that tell us more about our own latent desires and hidden shortcomings than they do about the places we claim to portray And finally, what ends does this distortion serve In this seminar we will examine European and American cultural representations of the Middle East and the political and financial structures that support them from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. Through art, novels, film, music and journalism we will examine the vortex where culture, politics and money collide, where the potent brew of knowledge and power conjures illusions of dominance and impotency. The material we will use ranges from the Boris Karloff film classic "The Mummy" (1932) to The Rock's ultra-campy "The Scorpion King" (2002); from Rimsky-Korsakov's "Sheherazade" (1888) to Sting's "Desert Rose" (2000); from the romantic oil paintings of Delacroix (d.1863) to Cindy Sherman's (b.1954) garishly staged photography; and from nineteenth century travel brochures to contemporary big-money travel magazines. Finally we will look at journalistic trends across the twentieth century from the pseudo-scientific National Geographic to the bombastic Fox News Network. Each of these genres of representation will be approached as vehicles for spreading knowledge about a distant place and will be analyzed through theoretical frameworks that will encourage you to place them in their broader historical and political contexts. The seminar will include mandatory weekend film screenings and off-campus trips. 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
Clowns! Most westerners hear that word and think of a tumble of brightly-dressed, brightly-wigged, red-nosed guys in oversized shoes tumbling out of a VW bug onto the sawdust of the three-ring circus, honking, beeping and screeching. But that is only one, fairly recent representation of clown. Throughout the ages, the clown, the fool and the trickster have appeared in many guises and many settings. The Lords of Misrule were powerful figures in pre-Elizabethan morality plays. In the American Southwest the Hopi sacred kachina dances were interrupted by the wild antics of mud-smeared Chükü'wimkya clowns. In contrast, Feste, the fool in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, is urbane, witty and devastatingly perceptive. No mud or red nose for him. In this seminar, we will examine the social, sacred and dramatic functions of the clown in a variety of cultures and media. From Native American legends to Indonesian dance/drama, from Shakespeare to Fellini, we will explore the human need for the unpredictable. Many of the readings will be collected in a course packet and will include excerpts from The Book of the Hopi by Frank Waters; Bali Behind the Mask by Ana Daniel; From Ritual to Theater by Victor Turner; Aristotle's Poetics; Shakespeare's Clowns by David Wiles; E Pluribus Barnum by Bluford Adams, among other texts. We will watch Fellini's Satyricon, Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, and possibly engage in some clowning behavior ourselves. Writing will focus on analysis and comparison of the various forms and function of clown, as well as responses to the rea 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
The large body of works by Stephen Sondheim and Andrew Lloyd Webber, today's leading Broadway composer/lyricists, explore - from often divergent historical, sociological, cultural, and even anthropomorphic viewpoints, - critical corners of the human condition. In this seminar we will examine, in depth, three works by Sondheim (Sweeney Todd, Sunday in the Park with George, and Into the Woods) and three by Lloyd Webber (Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, and Cats) to discover and appreciate not only the broad themes but also the suave subtleties of the words, music, and visual production that coalesce in the realization of these remarkable works. We will also, as is practicable, attend performances. 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
Recent global and national news have once again shown that one of the pressing challenges for the 21st century is accommodating society's ever-increasing need for energy. The first half of the semester will be devoted to readings and discussion of the current and alternative sources of energy from the point of view of the science and technology, reserves, economic considerations, environmental impact, government mandates and global choices. Some field trips are anticipated. The second half of the semester will be devoted to student investigations of some "over the counter" commercially available products. Students, working in pairs, will select a product, consult the literature, design the analysis procedure, conduct the experiments and report the results in the form of written and in class oral report 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
Ernest Hemingway entitled the memoirs of his sojourn in Paris a "moveable feast". This seminar will explore the enduring fascination of the "city of lights" through major moments of its urban, political and cultural history. We will examine the dramatic changes that Paris's cityscape has undergone from its birth on the tiny le de la Cité to its radical transformation by Haussmann in the 1860's and its contemporary visage full of contrasts, where the modernist Eiffel tower looms over the 17th century H tel des Invalides and IM Pei's glass pyramid sparkles in the Louvre courtyard. Through fiction and non-fiction texts, visual and musical works, we will study how Paris has inspired artists, painters, writers and film makers: Balzac, Baudelaire, Zola, Renoir, Proust, Delaunay, Hemingway, Stein among others. In conclusion, we will assess Paris's contemporary status as an emblem of modernity. This is a seminar for students who would like to enter into the study of Paris, France and Europe in preparation for study abroad and a lifetime of informed travel. Students successfully completing the First-Year Seminar on Paris will have priority for places in the Trinity College Paris Program in their Sophomore or Junio 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
This course explores the urban experience in Italy from the rise of city-states and communes in the eleventh century to the growth of cities in the modern period. For thousands of years cities have been the defining feature of the peninsula, shaping the land around them. They have also borne the imprint of many unique topographies-the meander of a river, the rise of hills, and the fluxing sea yielding to stone, line, and the built shape. Through an urban lens, it is possible to discern the diversity of Italian civilization and its deeper common strands. Historical sources, literature, art, photography, film, and virtual tools like Google Earth will be a fundamental part of the class: you will be asked to read, observe, examine, and think critically about all the material. I aim to move beyond the familiar image of Italy, taking you to cities of the past, like powerful seafaring Amalfi on the Mediterranean. We will also look at how ancient forms became the inheritance of contemporary cities. The twenty-first century overlaps the worn fabric of the past. The class ends in the present day, looking at Naples, circa 2009. We see the city in Roberto's Saviano's Gomorra, a strikingly original novel on organized crime and globalization. Grounded in history, the course is taught from a lifetime of personal experience 1.00 units, Seminar
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3.00 Credits
In this Seminar we will explore the genre of crime fiction beginning with its origins in the nineteenth-century, through the development of hard-boiled and film noir narratives, to contemporary crime literature. We will investigate crime literature as an expression of popular culture as well as a reaction to a given society's response to the transgression of law, order, and social codes. Throughout the course we will see how different societies define and react to crime and criminals in the context of the genre. Other sub-topics in the readings for the course include aesthetics and crime, scripting crime, crimes of the state and crimes against the land. We will study works from a variety of cultural contexts (e.g. France, the United States, Argentina) including texts by Edgar Allen Poe, Conan-Doyle, Borges, Sue Grafton, and films such as The Maltese Falcon, Chinatown, and Plein Soleil (Purple Noon). Karen Humphreys teaches courses in French language, literature, and culture at Trinity. Her research focuses on transgression and gender in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century French culture. 1.00 units, Seminar
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1.00 Credits
To many people, the American musical theatre has over-nurtured the boy-meets-girl-and-sings-about-it stereotype, oblivious to contemporaneous political, sociological, and intellectual trends. While some works could be thus described, many others have dealt forcefully with ideas and concepts. This seminar will examine eleven works that feature the difficulties of characters and groups who don't fit into or who openly reject prevailing societal norms. Eight of these shows are from the traditional repertoire (West Side Story, Show Boat, A Chorus Line, Assassins, The King & I, Falsettoland, Ragtime, and Sunday in the Park With George), while three are currently in their initial Broadway runs (Wicked, Rent, and Hairspray). We will study the music, lyrics, script, and production style of each show as well as explore how the sense of "otherness" is presented and developed. We will also take a class trip to New York City to attend a Broadway musical, perhaps one of the three current shows mentioned above. Only first-year students are eligible to enroll in this class. 1.00 units, Seminar
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