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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
Is it possible to read and understand old texts in a new way In this seminar, everyone will get a chance to choose an intriguing book from the 16th or 17th century, and to learn how to "get inside" itby transcribing, studying, researching, editing, and encoding the text in a digital version. The goal is to produce hyper-textual editions that can be accessed online, complete with annotations, pictures, maps of the times, and other customizations: All this is to help other readers of the text understand your perspectives on the text and to relate its many layers to their own lives. You will select a text from a variety of original sources focused on the conquest and exploration of the Americas; depending on your skills and interests, the text may be written in English, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, French or Italian. You will learn the state-of-the-art techniques of text encoding, currently a growing international movement, through the project of marking up your chosen text. (Domingo Ledezma)
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3.00 Credits
Ever since Christopher Columbus crashed into the Bahamas and called its inhabitants "Indians," theCaribbean has been a place about which people have dreamed. In the "developed" world, it conjuresup idyllic images of swaying palm trees and sparkling waters, either as a vacation paradise or a home which they had to leave for political or economic reasons. In August and September it reminds us all of nature's fury. But dreams for some are often nightmares for others, be they of sugar plantations, revolts of enslaved people, U.S. flags flying, socialist revolutions, or migrants washing ashore on Florida's beaches. This seminar, through literature, documents, and historical scholarship, examines the dreams that the Caribbean has evoked and the realities that such dreams have produced in the "Greater Caribbean," which centers on the islandswhich touch the Caribbean Sea and extends to places such as Boston, New York, Miami, London, Paris and Africa. As we consider these issues, you will become a better scholar who is prepared to tackle the academic challenges Wheaton presents. (John Bezis-Selfa)
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3.00 Credits
Consciousness has been memorably described as a flashlight trying to illuminate itself. (Perhaps art is the human activity that best understands the surrounding darkness ) The edge of reason is the boundary between light and dark: the mathematics at the border between knowing and not-knowing. In this course, we'll use logic and reason to grapple with ideas and concepts that are literally beyond the reach of human imagination. Forever and a Day ?xploring different kinds of infinity Nothing Doing ?he opposite of everything is nothing; but what does it mean for something to be nothing Lower Dimensions ? solid block is three-dimensional. What about a sponge A cloud Higher Dimensions ?ll hyped-up and no place we know. M?ius bands, Klein bottles, hypercubes, and hyperspheres Imaginary Numbers ?maginary numbers! ! Logical Conclusions ?ow can we logically use logic to understand the limits of logic Sense and (Non)Sensibility ?nformation, disinformation, and codes-Tales from the cryptological The Edge of Reason is for anyone interested in understanding the mental models our minds make. While people who enjoy math are encouraged to take the course, the only prerequisites are an open mind, a big mouth and an inquiring spirit. The pay-offs are a keener analytical mind, a new way of looking at reality, a penchant for expressing the inexpressible and the ability to tolerate sleep deprivation. (Bill Goldbloom Bloch)
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3.00 Credits
The signs of global warming are all around us: melting glaciers, rising sea level, increased storm severity, and the spread of insect-born diseases. Yet debate about the need for action continues, often with an underlying assertion that scientific uncertainty is too great. In this seminar, we will analyze the scientific evidence for global warming in order to provide a framework for evaluating the extent and urgency of the issue. We will explore how scientists glean information about ancient climates from the geological record, what former climates can tell us the future, how climate has impacted civilizations in the past, the ways in which global warming has been manifested so far, and how scientists make predictions about future climate change. With a solid understanding of the physical, chemical and biological processes driving global warming, we will move on to consider broader aspects of the issue, including how the effects will be distributed across societies, what the alternatives are for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the role of developing countries in future emissions strategies, and the responsibilities of technologically advanced countries in mitigating the effects. We will investigate the interplay between science and society and consider the ways a scientific understanding of global warming can contribute to the social, economic, and political debate in the United States and abroad. This seminar is designed to help you not only understand the causes and consequences of global warming, but also assess your role as a global citizen in addressing this world-wide environmental crisis. (Jani Benoit)
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3.00 Credits
Since 9/11, Americans have asked two central questions about the Middle East and the Islamic world: Why do they hate us and What went wrong (in the Islamic world) These questions may seem innocent in nature but in reality they betray our point of view and our expectations, both of which are deeply compromised at times by the assumptions that we ourselves possess of Middle Easterners as people who are unlike us and alien from us. In this course, we will leave such assumptions behind, and instead conduct a rigorous and contextualized investigation of life in the Middle East. We will build a foundation of historical knowledge on what has occurred in the Middle East in the last hundred years that produced the situation that we have today. Along the way we will examine ordinary peoples' lives in order to understand everyday realities and diverse conditions within the region. With this achieved, we will proceed to reverse the gaze-or turn the viewing glass around-and attempt to understand how Middle Easterners perceive Americans. Students enrolling in this course are asked to leave preconceptions at the door and bring an open mind to the information that we will explore together. Our work will focus on a variety of historical and contemporary texts as well as multimedia resources. Through discussions and writing assignments, students will have a chance to improve their oral and verbal expression. They will also learn how to apply a high standard of critical analysis and scholarly rigor to all their work. This course fulfills the Beyond the West Foundation requirement. (Yuen-Gen Liang)
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3.00 Credits
Since the genesis of the first contraption that could do simple arithmetic, people have been both attracted and repelled by the idea of a "thinking machine." Artificial Intelligence captures our imagination, and machines that are capable of thought, feeling, and independent action are ubiquitous in fiction that represents high technology. Whether a portrayal speaks of something a few decades off in our own world, or something a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, the thinking machine is invariably part of the landscape. In this course, we will explore the fiction and non-fiction that has sprung up around the mythos of the thinking machine over the past century, and cast our discussions against the backdrop of some of the realities behind the Artificial Intelligence methods and techniques of today. (Lisa N. Michaud)
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3.00 Credits
?ddio, Dolce Vita" -"Goodbye to the SweLife"-says the headline on the cover of theNovember 26, 2005 issue of The Economist. Inside, a photograph on the first page shows elegant couples sitting at night at white-clothed tables in the soft lights and warm colors of an Italian piazza. Behind them, written on an awning in green script, is the name of the restaurant: Caffè Dolce Vita Ristorante. "At first blush, life in Italy still seems sweet enough," the article begins. "The countryside isstunning, the historic cities beautiful, the cultural treasures amazing, and the food and wine more wonderful than ever." By most standards, Italians are wealthy and long-lived, their families cohesive, and their town centers mostly free of the all-night drunken behavior seen in some other countries. "Yet beneath this sweet surface, many things have turned sour," Italy's slow economic growth,high cost of living, and high unemployment-especially among young people (four out of ten Italians between the ages of 30 and 35 live at home with their parents-a phenomenon that analysts attribute more to the difficulty people that age have finding work than to the legendary closeness of the Italian family. La dolce vita has disappeared in the Italy of the 21st century, the article concludes-a decline that parallels that of Venice toward the end of the 18th century. What Venice is now, The Economist says, is "little more than a tourist attraction,"however beguiling. Could this become the fate of Italy as a whole How is it that the title of a film Federico Fellini made nearly a half century ago can still evoke such a powerful image of the sweet life That the idea of la dolce vita is so widely recognized that it can serve all these years later as the governing metaphor of a detailed 16-page analysis of the economic and political state of contemporary Italy in a financial weekly read around the globe The myth of la dolce vita has beguiled visitors to Italy long before Federico Fellini used it for the title of his 1959 film. Seen through the lens of la dolce vita, Italy appears to be a land perfectly attuned to human nature and a sweet life of the senses. This is the la dolce vita that lures pilgrims to Italy where they hope to learn the art of living and the secret of happiness. Fellini's La Dolce Vita presents a different view of "the sweet life"; it is the sweetness of decay. "wanted to put the thermometer to a sick world," Fellini said, "to expose a glamorous but empty life of hedonism, consumerism, and personal destruction." The myth of la dolce vita continues to be powerful and alluring in 2006, and in our seminar we will examine the contradictions and controversies about la dolce vita presented in a number of Italian and American films and books. This seminar is part of a two- or three-course Connection Conx 23008, Italian Culture, Language and Society, which connects the First Year Seminar, Art History 102 or 202, and Italian 200. (David Vogler)
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3.00 Credits
This seminar deals with political conflict, policymaking, and social policy in post-Soviet Russia. We will briefly examine the major institutions and developments of the Soviet era, as well as the changes that led to the USSR's collapse. The seminar's main focus will be on the period since Boris Yeltsin and-more important-VladimirPutin came to power. Particular emphasis will be on five issues: attempts to transform the political system from one based on authoritarianism to one based on democratic principles; efforts to shift from a centrally planned economy to one based on market forces; the political and economic role of the Federal Security Service (FSB)-the successor to the KGB-and the military, especially in Chechnya; religious freedom and religious persecution; and social questions, such as the position of women, the crisis in public health (alcoholism, drug abuse, family relations, environmental deterioration, HIV/AIDS), crime, and issues of particular interest to young people, such as education. (David E. Powell)
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8.00 Credits
This course will use psychological perspectives to explore school programs that have had some success educating young children of varying ethnicity, race, and social class in the United States. Specific successful case studies will include Head Start, Wheaton's Elisabeth Amen Laboratory Nursery School, James Comer's school development program, and the STAR School, serving Navajo children in Arizona. Your own exploration will include eight hours of field experience. We will address developmental psychology questions, including: Can and should United States education be tuned to child development variations across ethnicity, race, and class Are there educational principles and practices that best support the development of all children in the United States What can we learn from child psychology in other countries Your own questions will also help shape our course. (Derek Price)
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3.00 Credits
Margaret Visser suggests in her book The Rituals of Dinner that table manners originated to curb our instinct to use our knives on our fellow diners rather than on our dinner. Regardless of their origins, the rituals of dinner certainly have become symbolic means for representing and even mediating controversies- both within a culture and between different cultures. Thus, literature and art from the Bible to Babette's Feast have used the setting of meals to represent social conflicts or tensions between the sexes, between old and young, competing philosophies and religious perspectives, rich and poor, the Orient and the West, and so on. Drawing upon theories from anthropology, religious studies, and psychology for "deciphering"the language of meals and their rituals, we will interpret some ancient literary and contemporary cinematic accounts of banquets. We will examine ancient texts, such as Genesis, Song of Songs, and Luke's Gospel from the Bible, the Jewish Passover Seder, and Plato's Symposium, and contemporary films, such as The Dining Room, Babette's Feast, Tampopo, Like Water for Chocolate, and My Dinner With André. Particular attention will be paid to the spiritual significance of meals and their role in shaping one's personal identity, group solidarity and relationships with transcendent or supernatural reality. (Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus)
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