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Course Criteria
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3.00 Credits
M. Darby This course argues that, far from merely ornamenting language, metaphor is essential to thought. As a deeply engrained habit of mind - so deeply engrained that native speakers are seldom aware of its power - metaphor offers fundamental access to the characteristic thinking of any culture. To study metaphor is to understand not only patterns of making meaning in the arts, but also underlying imaginative mental structures. In proposing such a central intellectual place for metaphor, the theoretical perspective of the course draws on the work of 20th-century linguists who challenge traditional views of metaphor dating from Aristotle. Course readings include theoretical works on metaphor, theoretical and historical works on femininity in modern Anglo-American culture, and a case study of the metapho r the hothouse flowe r from 19th-century Britain. Students undertake an advanced research project in which they analyze a specific ideology of femininity in its immediate cultural context through a linguistic or experiential metaphor in the discipline or across the multiple disciplines of their major(s). The course includes a trip to a heated glasshouse during winter.
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3.00 Credits
K. Baptiste In the past several decades, the merging of civil rights and environmental concerns has generated the environmental justice movement. This course critically engages the movement at a global level by studying its histories, the terms and concepts that have evolved from the movement, the theoretical and political implications of the movement, and the struggles of people who are shaping it. The course introduces and critically analyzes environmental justice, described as a form of distributive justice: achieving equity and fairness in the distribution of environmental burdens and environmental benefits. Students examine the procedures and ways in which environmental policies are instituted, as well as the roles of various agencies and organizations in establishing international laws and policies. Students develop intensive research projects of theory and practice in global environmental justice.
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3.00 Credits
K. Harpp, N. Ries Mustard gas, airpower, submarines, A-bombs, Agent Orange, landmines, terror wars, "Star Wars": weapons technology profoundly shaped the science, politics, and culture of the last century. This course explores the myriad effects of the production, deployment, and use of weapons. Specifically, the course considers how the horizons of science and technology have been shaped by the quest for ever-more-powerful or -sophisticated weaponry; how the creation of new weapons changes the nature of war and peace; how new weapons may impact lives and the planet; terror as a weapon, and scientific and social responses to it; the role of media images in the public consciousness of weaponry and war; and impacts of the global arms trade. While critically theorizing the social, environmental, and philosophical impacts of war over the past century, the course also examines the place of global ethics in discussions about weapons and war. This course is crosslisted a s PEAC 322.
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3.00 Credits
B. Hoopes This course explores public opinion in the United Kingdom and the United States as it pertains to aspects of biotechnology and compares it to that found in other nations. How science policy is formed in the governmental systems is also considered. The course focuses on three aspects of biotechnology that are current controversies: human genetic testing, genetically modified foods, and the use of stem cells and cloning of mammals. Students are expected to use an interdisciplinary approach to explore how similar responses are found for these uses of technology in different nations and examine differences in the history and cultures that could produce differences in public response. Differences between the governmental systems are also explored to understand how public opinion impacts science policy for these nations. Students write a major interdisciplinary paper examining one particular similarity or difference between the societal characteristics of a nation of their choice and either the United States or the United Kingdom and how this factor impacts societal attitudes toward a chosen aspect of biotechnology.
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3.00 Credits
L. Rojas The 20th century witnessed a spiraling in the production, publication, appreciation, and criticism of Latin American women's works. Understanding those works demands that readers and critics move across borders: national borders, genre borders, linguistic borders, and media borders. The course focuses on three paradigmatic examples: MarÃa Luisa Bombal, Claribel AlegrÃa, and Frida Kahlo. Specifically, the course examines how Bombal and Kahlo appropriated surrealism, transformed it, and shap ed surreali ty into an experience of globalization radically different from technological, economic, or political globalizations. Through AlegrÃa's poetry, the course considers a new level of engagement with society in literature. In the process, students analyze and evaluate the very methodology that all their core courses employ, that is, interdisciplinary analys
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3.00 Credits
T. Byrnes, C. Vecsey Religion and politics, separately and together, are two of the central elements of human community. This interdisciplinary course invites students to examine the interrelationship between religion and politics in the contemporary world through close reading of The New York Times. Built upon the foundation of scholarly readings on religion and politics and the disciplinary interests of the professors, the bulk of classroom discussion targets the coverage of religion and politics in The New York Times. An extensive interdisciplinary research project requires each student to compare the journalistic discipline of the Times to that of another major U.S. newspaper and to scholarly literature. Close, critical reading in the leading newspaper of the Unites States regarding the intersection of these two crucial aspects of human life provides students with a unique and timely opportunity to reflect on how life is being lived and communities are being formed today, both in the United States and, arguably, around the world.
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3.00 Credits
C. Baldwin, R. Garland, F. von Muench Individuals, communities, and nations remember and celebrate their origins as defining moments of their own identity. Our memories are intimately connected to our sense of self and our aspirations for the future: where we come from (or think we come from) partly determines who we are and where we want to go. This course examines the connection between collective memory and cultural identity. How do communities imagine, interpret and invent their own origins What kind of stories do they tell about them, what ceremonies do they use to remember and re-enact them, and what moral lessons do they draw from them How can foundation myths be appropriated and contested for different political or cultural ends, and what ethical implications do such appropriations raise The course explores these questions while considering how founding myths and commemorative rituals shape and manipulate cultural identities, and how the social makeup and moral values of a community influence what the community chooses to remember and celebrate. Students use a variety of interdisciplinary methods to examine the origins or religions, nations, states, and educational institutions in cultures from antiquity to the present day, in Europe and America. Sources include literary texts, music, paintings, and buildings, as well as celebratory rituals. Finally the course studies the origins of Colgate University itself and considers the uses our community makes of its founding myth of "thirteen men with thirteen dollars and thirteen prayers" that is invoked every year at Founders' Day Convocation.
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3.00 Credits
W. Peck The discovery of the antiquity of the Earth is one of geology's fundamental contributions to science. In the late 18th and 19th centuries new findings about the depth of Earth's geologic history and fossil record came into contact with deeply held religious and cultural understandings of creation and the place of man in the universe. Recognition of the Earth's vast age set the stage for Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and ties directly to our understanding of how old fossil-bearing rocks are and how long evolution has had to operate. More recently, controversy over climate change has provoked similar questions: how long has our present climate lasted, and what has been the scale of climate change in the past The idea of an old Earth is still seen as controversial by many who still successfully argue against deep time in attempts to influence public policy. Knowledge of the Earth's vast age has reached past scientific controversy and influenced all aspects of life, including religion, poetry, art, and architecture. This course explores the changing cultural and scientific views of the age of the Earth, with a focus on the lines of evidence used to determine Earth's age using primary sourc
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3.00 Credits
M. Calo, E. Kraly This course considers some of the challenges facing the arts and cultural institutions in the contemporary world. A series of case studies are used to raise questions about the range of issues that confront practitioners and presenters in the arts as they operate in an increasingly technological, commercial, and global society. The course seeks both to inform students about the broad category of creative activity that comprises (and complicates) current definitions of the arts, and to cultivate a critical perspective on the issues they face. It also examines the extent to which aesthetic ideals and expressive goals are often mediated by the practical reality of things such as the need to accommodate, develop and sustain audiences; to demonstrate economic viability and social value; and to navigate the moral and ethical questions raised by the presumption that cultural property can be "owned."
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3.00 Credits
P. Richards, M. Stephens This seminar explores the construction of national and transnational identities in communities of African descent throughout the Americas, expanding the meaning of "African American" to include the black Americas more broadly. Together these diasporic communities share the legacy of the Atlantic slave trade (between Africa, the Americas, and Europe), but also, in the present, a relationship based on the continuous diversification of the African American community by West Indian and African immigrants and cultural influences. To explore an interdisciplinary range of questions in sociology, history, and the study of literature, the course will include several different bodies of literature, including political pamphlets, sermons, newspapers, novels, slave and travel narratives, biographies, and histories. Primary readings include works by Olaudah Equiano, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Pauline Hopkins, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Imamu Baraka, pbell hooks, Cornell West, and Edwidge Danticat.
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