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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Art has always had a shifting, complicated relationship to the general public. In today's world, contemporary art is sometimes regarded as a detached, self-reflexive, and elite mystery reserved for in-the-know connoisseurs and aspiring scene-makers. Yet there are many points of entry for meaningful dialogue about the art, the artists, and the audience that comprise the world of contemporary art. This seminar will explore the critical and cultural contexts that can help foster this conversation. It will include visits to local museums, galleries, and artists' studios, and culminate in a tour of the Progressive Art Collection. The goal of the seminar is to inspire a genuine interest in contemporary art and provide students with the tools required to think, speak, and write more clearly about it. Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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3.00 Credits
Images and texts shape rather than merely reflect the world and its geopolitical structures. Novels, films, and myths make significant contributions to the varied ways that people make sense of continents, nations, and other (often too conveniently used) geopolitical categories such and the East and West. After considering the ways in which the European continent has been imagined over the centuries, we will explore texts and films that have contributed to the invention of East Central Europe and the Balkans and continue to shape our understanding of the eastern parts of Europe. The class will include analyses of current news coverage of this area to unpack representations disseminated by the media and to reflect on the forces that aim to shape our understanding of geopolitical entities. Ultimately, the course hopes to address geopolitical assumptions, evaluate cultural contexts, and help you think critically about the constructed nature of geopolitical categories. Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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3.00 Credits
Since the Darwinian revolution of the mid-nineteenth century, the relationship between humans and animals has become an increasingly significant area of inquiry in fields as diverse as literature, the fine arts, anthropology, evolutionary theory, the biological sciences and philosophy. In this course, we will explore the way humans have sought to understand and explain the animal, beginning with several contemporary ethical debates surrounding animal treatment. Such works will lead us to a range of related social and institutional places and practices, such as the zoo, the insane asylum, biometrics, the treatment of women, and the concentration camp. At the same time, we will examine the way artists, writers and filmmakers explore the human/animal divide through painting (Franz Marc, Marc Chagall and Max Ernst), literature (Franz Kafka, D. H. Lawrence and Rainer Marie Rilke), and cinema, through representations of a donkey (Bresson, Au hasard Balthazar), a fly (Cronenberg, The Fly), a Great White shark (Spielberg, Jaws) and a grizzly bear (Herzog, The Grizzly Man). We will end with J.M.Coetzee's The Lives of Animals, which moves seamlessly between moral philosophy and literature, tying together a wide variety of concerns and themes raised throughout the semester. Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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3.00 Credits
In this seminar, we will investigate how popular culture reflects and shapes our understanding of the past. In the process, we will explore the interplay between history, popular culture, and collective memory. Examples of the questions we will ponder throughout the semester are: What is popular culture and how does it shape and reshape our grasp of history? Is there a difference between collective memory, historical memory, and "plain" history? Any number of possible case studies could help us answer these questions. We may look at how successive generations of Japanese anime writers have reinterpreted the nature of the Pacific War; how movies and television shows have influenced or reflected changing understandings of the Roman Empire; or how "The Simpsons" has asserted a coherent historical interpretation of the 1980s in the United States. What we read and discuss in the seminar will depend on the research topics you propose; you may choose a particular historical event, personage, or controversy, or a specific pop cultural medium Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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3.00 Credits
Taking a historical approach, this course will examine the relationship between the evolution of social and medical attitudes toward mental illness and fictional representations of madness in literature. Beginning with the early modern period, students will compare period sociological and medical narratives on mental illness to fiction works with representations of madness. In so doing, students will consider how the interactive dynamics of art and science contribute to cultural and social thought. Specific areas of inquiry will include: the development of psychology and its effect on societal perceptions of mental illness; cultural developments that occurred in response to changing perceptions of mental illness over the centuries; and the use of representational structures and narrative conventions in understanding and communicating the experience of mental illness. Other interrogations will include the imaginative function of mental illness in literature (e.g., melancholy's role in creativity); the cultural myths in iconography of mental illness in different historical periods; and ethical dilemmas regarding mental illness as reflected in both medical and literary narratives. Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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3.00 Credits
How do our beliefs shape who we are? How do they shape how we tell others who we are? What can fiction tell us about our beliefs and about ourselves? This seminar will explore how authors reflect their beliefs through their writing--how fiction becomes a form of self expression, particularly of worldview, even when that is not the intent. Students will analyze 20th century fiction and the religious, cultural or psychological texts which influenced that fiction. Students will also be encouraged to think about how their own writing is influenced by belief systems, and to explore how our convictions cannot help but affect our writing and the way we understand our minds, our live, our inner selves. Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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3.00 Credits
In this seminar, we will look at how a diverse number of African writers have responded, in both form and content, to three periods in Africa's literary history: the 1960s, or the decolonization period, which produced nationalist literature; the 1970s and 1980s, or the neocolonial period, which produced revolutionary novels; and the 1990s through the present, a period producing literature that contends with globalization. In an attempt to answer the riddle of what makes an African novel African, we shall grapple with fundamental questions concerning the origin of the novel; how it came to Africa; African literary traditions; and the language of the African novel. We will also use African literature to explore universal questions about politics and literature: What is a protest novel? What is the role of the writer and of art in society? The goal of the seminar is to increase your appreciation of African literature and literature in general, and at the same time sharpen your analytical, critical, oral and written skills. You will be expected to lead discussions, engage in peer critiques and, through scholarly essays, engage African literature. Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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3.00 Credits
Throughout history, from Pompeii to Abu Ghraib, images of war have captivated, inspired, shocked, and repulsed viewing audiences. As historical reflection, propaganda, documentation, a call-to-arms, a plea for peace, and/or personal creative expression, many of these images are fraught with controversy, questions of intentionality, integrity, and multiple agendas. From Pollaiuolo to Ken Burns, this course will examine how artists have confronted large-scale human conflict over the centuries in paintings, sculptures, and prints, photographs and film as a way to consider the cultural and historical effect of war images within and outside the original context in which they were produced. Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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3.00 Credits
This course explores the period of European history from 1400 to 1600. Is this period better understood as the Renaissance, the "rebirth" of Antiquity, or the Early Modern Period, the emergence of a world that leads directly to our own? We will look at the period and its famous figures from two different perspectives: Machiavelli in a bio-intro and in his work, The Prince; Luther as history's first best-selling author (the importance of the printing press) and in John Osborne's play; Elizabeth I in a short biography and a recent "Hollywood" bio-pic; Galileo in the historic accounts and in Bertolt Brecht's play; Joan of Arc in a short biography and Bernard Shaw's play; and Hamlet, the play and the character, in text and performance. Do the two different representations present two different people (characterizations) or a unified composite that we understand in greater depth? Do Shaw, Brecht, and Osborne depict three figures from the period to understand better the person, the history, or the 20th Century/Modernity? Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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3.00 Credits
For many the world over AMERICA is a dream, a powerful myth, whether imagined through TV and movies, metaphors such as The Gold Mountain, or as symbolized by the Statue of Liberty. Following those visions may lead to success or disenchantment or both. Through fiction, memoir, films, and photographs we will explore the experience of immigrants: the tensions, generational conflicts, and difficulties with communication and culture their families undergo. We will examine expressions of those varied and complex experiences, especially how language represents them. We will also look at the significance of language itself--think about what and how words mean, and the difficulties of linguistic and cultural translation. Students will share their reactions to what we read and see in class discussion and also in writing informally, even (if they wish) personally. Formal requirements: two shorter analytical papers and a longer paper using sources and possibly interviews, also to be presented in oral reports. There will be conferences on papers and revision. Prereq: Passing letter grade in a 100 level first year seminar in USFS, FSSY, FSCC, FSNA, FSSO or FSCS. Prereq or Coreq: FSTS 100
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