First Year Seminars 2003-2004

General Education. One seminar may be used in fulfilling the General Education requirement in humanities and history. In addition, designated seminars may be used to fulfill the quantitative requirement. (See 7C under "Degree Requirements," p. 25.)

Courses

Courses were updated 5/28/03 to reflect those being offered in 2003-2004.

FYS 069. Psychology and Peace. This seminar considers the contribution of psychological concepts to the development and maintenance of world peace. The concepts are used both to analyze the conditions that have led to the current level of international tensions, and to evaluate proposals for the promotion of world peace. R. Wagner.

FYS 071. Ancient Stories to Modern Ears. Much of the literature that has survived from antiquity, including the scriptures of the world's major religious traditions, was once communicated orally. Through analysis of storytelling technique and the impact of oral delivery on hearers, the course addresses the problem of how to interpret stories from remote ages and varying ethnic and religious traditions, and how meaning has been affected in the shift from events of communication between persons to literary works. Students examine stories from Homer, Aesop, Genesis, the Gospels, Jewish Rabbinic and Hasidic sages, early Christian hermits, and the Islamic Hadith. R. Allison.

FYS 084. Anatomy of a Few Small Machines. One can treat the products of technology as "black boxes"—plain in purpose but mysterious in function. A more flexible and exciting life is available to those who look on all such devices as mere extensions of their hands and minds—who believe they could design, build, modify, and repair anything they put their hands on. This course helps students do this primarily through practice. Only common sense is required, but participants must be willing to attack any aspect of science and technology. Field trips are required. G. Clough.

FYS 135. Women in Art. Beginning in the 1970s in response to the feminist movement, the investigation of women's roles in the production of visual culture has expanded the traditional parameters of art history. Now a leading method of analysis, this approach provides exciting insights into fields ranging from Egyptian sculpture to contemporary photography. This seminar discusses women as subjects, makers, and patrons. Topics include Egyptian royal imagery, women as Renaissance subjects and painters, Venus in Renaissance marriage paintings, women as Impressionist painters and subject matter, artists and models in the twentieth century, and women in the New York art world since World War II. R. Corrie.

FYS 172. Power and Perception: Cinematic Portraits of Africa. Most Americans have "seen" Africa only through non-African eyes, coming to "know" about African society through such characters as Tarzan and such genres as the "jungle melodrama" or the "nature show." In this seminar, films from the North Atlantic are juxtaposed with ethnographic and art films made by Africans in order to examine how to "read" these cinematic texts. Related novels and ethnographic texts help to answer central questions about the politics of representation: what are the differences in how African societies are depicted and why are different issues and points of view privileged? E. Eames.

FYS 187. Hard Times: Economy and Society in the Great Depression. The Great Depression was a watershed in the experience of Americans and Europeans, bringing a transformation in many dimensions of life, such as unemployment, poverty, agriculture, unions, financial markets, and leisure. This seminar examines the Depression years, focusing on economic and social issues, and the debate about the role of government in citizens' lives. M. Oliver.

FYS 191. Friendship and Love in Ancient Greece and Rome. The ancient meanings of friendship and the ways in which friendship was distinguished from love are the subject of this course. Students read and analyze ancient theorists on friendship and love, such as Plato and Cicero, and also texts illustrating the ways in which Greek and Roman men and women formed and tested relationships within and across gender lines. The topics under discussion include: friendship as a political institution; notions of personal loyalty, obligation, and treachery; the perceived antithesis between friendship and erotic love; the policing of sexuality; friendship, love, and enmity in the definition of the self. All discussions use the twentieth-century Western world as a reference point for comparison and contrast. D. O'Higgins.

FYS 227. Montaigne. Montaigne had the unprecedented idea of focusing his one great book, The Essays (1580), on himself. Because he was so perceptive and so candid in carrying out this project, we can get to know him more intimately and more completely than any prior person. Because he had filled his head with the Greek and Latin classics, we can watch him use these ancient materials to fashion a modern self. Finally, because he was never quite content with the first form of any essay, but returned to revise and re-revise in an effort to improve his thinking and writing, we apprentices and journeymen can go to school a past master of prose composition. J. Cole.

FYS 234. The U.S. Relocation Camps in World War II. During World War II, the United States government interned over 110,000 American citizens of Japanese descent and resident Japanese in "relocation camps" far away from their homes. This course studies the history of Asian immigration to the United States; the political, social, and economic conditions of the United States prior to internment; the relocation camps themselves; and the politics of redress leading to the presidential apology over the wartime "mistake" a half century later. A. Hirai.

FYS 244. (Un/Nu)clear Fallout: Nuclear Fission Technologies and Environmental Human Health. After the bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, atomic fission technologies were a part of modern culture. Were humans prepared for the environmental and human health effects of atomic fission? If they were not prepared, was it due to ignorance, hubris, deliberate indifference, or some other factor or combination of factors? In this seminar students study the environmental and human health effects of atomic fission technologies, and the people who made decisions about these effects, beginning with the earliest experiments and continuing through present-day controversies surrounding the disposal of radioactive material. R. Austin.

FYS 247. Growing into Japaneseness: Childhood and Adolescence in Japanese Society and Culture. How do people come to experience themselves as being of a particular nationality, and how do they come to define that nationality as they do? How is this related to the process of their becoming men and women? This seminar explores these questions by looking at the experience of one group of people in one particular contemporary society: children in Japan. The course considers in particular the roles of education and mass culture in the process of coming to adulthood. Texts include historical and social scientific analyses as well as fiction and comics. All readings and discussion are in English. M. Wender.

FYS 251. Spectacles of Blood: Roman Gladiators and Christian Martyrs. This course considers the sociology of violence in the ancient world by exploring the question, "Why did Romans like to watch people die?" Students trace the history of gladiatorial games from their origins as Etruscan funeral rites to their culmination in violent spectacles of death routinely enjoyed by Romans of every segment of society in the early empire. In the second half of the course, students trace the phenomenon of martyrdom in the early Christian Church and the reasons why Christian martyrs might embrace a violent, public death in the arena. Assigned readings are drawn from English translations of primary sources and selected secondary readings. M. Imber.

FYS 255. The Psychology of Influence. Much of human behavior is directed toward influencing others. The field of social psychology has systematically investigated the nature of people's influence on one another. This course uses social psychological theory and research to examine the phenomenon of how people influence one another. Topics to which social psychological theory and research are applied include the Holocaust, advertising, pseudoscience, health prevention programs, cults, eyewitness identifications, and prejudice. A. Bradfield.

FYS 261. "Ain't I a Woman": Reading and Writing a Women's Life. Drawn from a speech given at the Women's Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1852, the words of Sojourner Truth, "ain't I a woman," still ring forth to remind women of their right to explore, to claim, and to express their own realities. This course invites students to examine classic and contemporary writings that have awakened and sustained women, young and older, in their search for a unique place in the world and in their attempts to move beyond the conventions defined for them. Students approach the course material from the perspective of what autobiography, biography, memoirs, and fiction have in common, what is being said, and what has been left unsaid. As students read a representative selection of twentieth-century writing, they may come closer to being able to write their own lives. M. Makris.

FYS 271. Into the Woods: Rewriting Walden. On 4 July 1845, Henry David Thoreau declared his independence and moved to a shack in the woods near Walden Pond. Since 1845, many individuals have repeated his experiment, in one form or another. This course examines a number of these Thoreauvian experiments and their historical context. Why do these individuals take to the woods? What do they find there? What do their experiences say about American culture and society? In seeking answers to these questions, students read a variety of literary, historical, and autobiographical texts. G. Lexow.

FYS 274. Physics in the Twentieth Century. An introduction to great twentieth-century discoveries in physics, including the wave-particle duality of light and matter, quantum effects, special relativity, nuclear physics, and elementary particles. Laboratory experiments such as the photoelectric effect and electron diffraction are incorporated into the seminar. This seminar can substitute for Physics 108 and is designed for students who had a strong background in high school physics. J. Pribram.

FYS 276. Mathematics and War. From Archimedes, who designed ingenious devices to help defend Syracuse against a siege by the Romans in the third century B.C.E., to John von Neumann and many others who worked on the Manhattan Project in World War II, mathematicians have played an important role in supporting their country's war effort. In this course students explore what happens when mathematical thinking is applied to situations of conflict. Can mathematical understanding help us to fight wars more effectively? Could mathematical models help us prevent wars? Students investigate and critically assess the power and the limitations of applying mathematical techniques to study war and peace. B. Shulman.

FYS 278. Hell's Fire. The idea of hell and damnation plays a crucial role throughout much of Western culture. It provides a dark shadow of religious belief and evocative imagery to continually evolving concepts of divine justice, sin and its commensurate punishment, and the end of time. This seminar undertakes an archeology of knowledge regarding the history and practice of hell and damnation. Students investigate philosophical and religious writings, great works of literature such as Dante's Inferno and Goethe's Faust, and view representations of hell in the arts and film. The seminar concludes by posing the question: Do hell and damnation, now secularized and this worldly, continue to live on in the modern period, as in Auschwitz and the Gulag. D. Sweet.

FYS 280. Confucius: Faith and Transgression. This course introduces students to a set of values and a way of life often understood to be at the core of East Asian civilizations. Confucius' teachings began spreading as early as the sixth century B.C.E., first in China and then in other parts of East Asia. For much of the past two millennia, the Confucian canon provided a compelling if not always universal foundation for spiritual and cultural development, social institutions, and state government in China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. This course begins with the very basic question of what it means to be a Confucian, and then proceeds to explore the Confucian commitment to ethics, culture, politics, and society, and the canon's sometimes controversial relationship with commerce, nature, and womanhood. All materials are presented in English. J. Zou.

FYS 281. Globalization through Numbers. Globalization is an increasingly familiar term, but there is little consensus about what exactly the phenomenon means, and how we should go about studying it. Globalization has been blamed for increased income inequality in poor countries, praised for making us all, on average, better off, and accused of rendering the state powerless by turning the globe into a "McWorld." This course introduces students to the pros and cons of globalization and research methods to evaluate these competing claims. Students learn how to collect, process, evaluate, and incorporate numerical data into their research. Á. Ásgeirsdóttir.

FYS 282. Issues in Oceanography. Even though the ocean covers nearly three-quarters of the earth's surface, we know less about many aspects of the ocean than we know about the backside of the moon. Yet the ocean is an important source of food and mineral resources, it supports diverse ecosystems, and ocean processes are critically important in determining short and long term climate change. This course examines current topics in oceanography through reading, writing, discussion, and occasional field trips. The issues explored include fishing, deep-sea mining, marine pollution, coral bleaching, coastal development and erosion, El Nino, and climate change. W. Ambrose.

FYS 283. Bodies in Pain. Few subjects so reveal the limits of human understanding as the experience of pain. For one experiencing pain, few things seem more certain; yet for one hearing about another's pain, few things seem more difficult to describe, to share, or to confirm. Bodies in pain thus raise difficult, consequential questions about the nature of vulnerability and credibility. This seminar examines questions of knowledge and embodiment, through intensive study of literary, philosophical, and ethnographic accounts of suffering. Students devote particular attention to the racial, sexual, and economic politics of pain, using source material ranging from nineteenth-century literature to contemporary medical policy. R. Herzig.

FYS 284. Burning Our Planet. From the first campfires of the Paleolithic people several hundred thousand years ago to the invention of the modern internal combustion engine in the twentieth century, fire has played a key role in human cultural, economic, and technological development. The deliberate use of fire, however, has resulted in major modification of the planet's environment, including widespread changes in the landscape, a loss of biodiversity, and global warming. This course examines the history of and relationship between humans and fire, and the impact of fire on the planetary environment. B. Johnson.

FYS 285. The Love Lyric and Society. Poetry has been used to express love throughout the ages. But is love a form of ideology? Could love poems sustain traditional power relations? This course examines love sonnets written in the age of Shakespeare from two points of view: the celebration of individualistic expression and aesthetic brilliance central to formalism, and the analysis of lyric and society important to historical approaches. Writers include William Shakespeare, Mary Wroth, Louise Labe, John Donne, and Thomas Wyatt. C. Malcolmson.

FYS 287. Music and Metaphor: The Sounds in African American Literature. While African American musical traditions command attention on stages across the world, they have a unique home in African American literature. This course explores folk, sacred, blues, jazz and hip hop music as aesthetic and sociopolitical resources for African American authors. Course text include poetry, drama, fiction, criticism, and theory. Authors may include Sterling Plumpp, Toni Morrison, Jayne Cortez, Albert Murray, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Larry Neal, and Ralph Ellison. K. Ruffin.

FYS 288. Luck and the Moral Life. Our lives are deeply subject to luck. Many human needs are subject to fate yet are necessary not only to a good life, but to a morally virtuous life as well. This course explores the relationship between luck and morality, beginning with the metaphysical problem of free will. Then, turning to Aristotle's virtue ethics, students examine the role friendship plays in the moral life and the way it protects us from bad luck. Finally, they look at Kant's attempt to make morality "safe" from luck alongside Euripides' Hecuba, which dramatically highlights the issue of whether virtue can ever be immune from misfortune. S. Stark.

FYS 289. The Life Story of the Buddha. The Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, also known as Sakyamuni, is famed as the founder of the Buddhist religion. Though he lived in Northern India about 2,500 years ago, most of what we know about him consists of legends that were developed by Buddhists over the centuries. This course examines these legends, with an eye on the factors that led to their evolution, and the ways in which changing conceptions of the Buddha reflect developments in Buddhist thought. At the same time, it serves as a basic introduction to the fundamental teachings and practices of Buddhism. J. Strong.

FYS 290. Controversies in Criminal Policy. Does the death penalty deter anyone? Do prisons rehabilitate? Should criminal offenders be "out" after "three strikes"? Should the names of registered sex offenders be made public? Should the laws of self-defense be modified to include certain forms of domestic homicide? Is anything accomplished by treating some juvenile offenders as adults? Ought the police be permitted to "profile" suspects on the basis of race? These and other questions reflect some of the issues about crime control which are debated in the criminal justice system, in the news media, and among segments of the general public. This seminar focuses on the ways by which such issues are framed, the persons and interests involved in their debate, and the effects on crime and the criminal justice system of such debate and its resolution. S. Sylvester.

FYS 291. The Computer, the Book and Beyond. The hypertexts enabled by the computer age are the latest incarnation of the technology of writing. We could argue, as many literary theorists do, that writing has always already involved technology of one kind or another. Using examples from medieval manuscript culture and from early modern print culture, this course interrogates the relation between technology and writing. After exploring the reading and writing practices permitted and promoted by pre-print and print cultures, the course turns its attention to hypermedia. The move from tactile to digital, from material to virtual textuality involves an engagement of the theories of interpretation that are reconfiguring the contemporary field of literary studies. M. Hanrahan.

FYS 292. Growing Up Perfect. Every one of us wonders what we would be like if we realized our full potential, and every society struggles to describe the royal road to human perfection. From Aristotle's "reflective intelligence" to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter, the library shelves bulge with examples and advice. In this course, students read classic guides of self-improvement from 2,000 years of global culture—Roman, Chinese, American, and European—looking for the cultural supermodel that makes a bestseller, or moves a society. D. Grafflin.

FYS 293. Mephisto: Film, Novel, Screenplay. This seminar studies the astounding motion picture Mephisto directed by a Hungarian film director Istvan Szabo. The film—a study of evil temptation in Nazi Germany—was an Oscar Award winner for Best Foreign Film and won the Cannes Film Festival Prize for Best Screenplay. Students read the original novel written by Klaus Mann, son of Thomas Mann, and compare it with the film by using the screenplay to analyze the various aspects of narrative and enunciation background to the film, detailed character study of the main role and analysis of the acting profession. K. Vecsey.

FYS 294. Race and Its Representations. Despite contemporary rhetoric of “colorblindness,” the discourse of race is both obvious in public affairs and subtly embedded in ostensibly neutral social phenomena. This course studies the historical formation of racial categories—especially in the United States—and explores some theoretical literature on race. Students examine how representations of race in film, art, and literature act in the production of different identities; how to uncover hidden forms of racial expression; and how gender, sexuality, and class interact with race. The class asks whether “colorblindness” is indeed a perspective for which we should strive as a society or whether we can achieve an enlightened humanism without erasing racial specificity with its ethical and political imperatives. S. Houchins.