Freshman Writing Seminars
Every entering freshman is required to elect a Freshman Writing Seminar. These courses have a maximum enrollment of 17 freshmen and are offered by a number of departments. Designed as introductions to their respective disciplines, they emphasize the effective expression of ideas through written and oral work.
You will note that most of the Freshman Writing Seminars are offered in the fall semester. We strongly recommend that you include a Freshman Writing Seminar among your course selections for the fall term; the pre-registration form included in your packet underscores this recommendation. While you may elect more than one Freshman Writing Seminar in your first year, you may not enroll in more than two Freshman Writing Seminars per semester. Students not taking a Freshman Writing Seminar in the fall will be given priority in selecting a Freshman Writing Seminar for the spring semester. AP credit will not exempt you from the requirement. For specific department policies on AP, see Advanced Placement section in this handbook.
Specific information about the English 101 sections:
- No freshman may enroll in more than one English course in a single semester.
- English 101 may not be taken more than once.
- Students planning either to major in English or to pursue intermediate work in English are strongly encouraged to take 101 and 170 in sequence.
- Students unable to secure a place in English 101 in the first semester will be given priority during registration for English 101 in the second semester. Students who plan to take intermediate work in English but who are unable to secure a place in 101 in the fall are advised to take 101 in the spring semester.
FALL SECTIONS
Africana Studies 105a. Issues in Africana Studies
This course offers an overview of the pivotal role played by the forced migration of enslaved Africans on the development of the societies and cultures of the Caribbean region. We examine the economic, political, and social development of the region with a focus on the lasting legacy of slavery and the plantation. Among the topics covered are colonialism, race and class, ethnicity, post-colonialism, migration, trans-nationalism, popular culture, and religion.
AFRS 105.02 TR 1:30-2:45 Ms. Paravisini-Gebert
Africana Studies 160a. Books, Children, and Culture
(Same as EDUC 160) This course examines select classical works from the oral tradition and contemporary works of children’s fiction and non-fiction. The course addresses juvenile literature as a sociological phenomenon as well as a literary and artistic one (illustrative content). The course traces the socio-historical development of American children’s literature from Western and non-Western societies. Social, psychoanalytic, and educational theory provide a conceptual basis and methodological framework for the cultural analysis of fairy tale and modern fantasy in cross-cultural perspective. Socialization issues include: ideals of democracy; moral character; race and class; politicalization; and the human relationship to the natural environment.
AFRS 160.01 TR 9:00-10:15 Ms. Bickerstaff
Africana Studies 183a. Images, Objects, and African Americans
(Same as ART 183) In this interdisciplinary freshman seminar, we examine images and objects created by African Americans in the United States from the slave past to the present day. Working with an expansive conception of art, we pay close attention to the work of formally trained and non-formally trained creators in relation to their social, cultural, artistic, and historical contexts.
AFRS 183.01 WF 12:00-1:15 Ms. Collins
Art 183a. Images, Objects, and African Americans
(Same as AFRS 183) In this interdisciplinary freshman seminar, we examine images and objects created by African Americans in the United States from the slave past to the present day. Working with an expansive conception of art, we pay close attention to the work of formally trained and non-formally trained creators in relation to their social, cultural, artistic, and historical contexts.
ART 183.01 WF 12:00-1:15 Ms. Collins
Art 185a. Behind the Scenes in the Museum
Using the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center and the newly renovated Art Library as our laboratories, we explore the museum, in past and present, as both a functioning actuality and as an idea. Oral and written presentations are based upon study of original works of art in Vassar’s collection, the question of who “owns” works of art, and how terms such as value, authenticity, originality, appropriation and forgery have been defined by galleries and museums. Related themes in literature and film are also explored.
ART 185.01 TR 3:10-4:25 Ms. Kuretsky
Biology 105a. Ripped from the Headlines: Biology in the News
The need for understanding basic concepts and principles of biology is all around us, as we try to understand the latest, greatest wave of diets, the perils of global warming, the reasons why we are prescribed medications, the use of DNA in the latest court trial, or the arguments involved in the evolution vs. intelligent design debate. In this course, we examine articles related to biology in the printed media (newspapers, magazines, webpages) as a motivation to learn central biological concepts such as cell theory, the central dogma of molecular biology, cell biology, Mendelian and quantitative genetics, genetic and environmental regulation of physiology and development, and evolutionary processes. Students in the course will also learn to write about biology for the popular press as well as for scientists, and maintain a blog containing science news of interest to the Vassar community.
BIOL 105.01 MWF 10:00-10:50 Ms. Crespi
Cognitive Science 110a. The Science and Fiction of Mind
(Same as PSYC 110) Our understanding of what minds are, and of how they work, has exploded dramatically in the last half century. As in other areas of science, the more we know the harder it becomes to convey the richness and complexity of that knowledge to non-specialists. This Freshman Writing Seminar explores two different styles of writing for explaining new findings about the nature of mind to a general audience. The most direct of these styles is journalistic and explanatory, and is well represented by the work of people like Steven Pinker, Bruce Bower, Stephen J. Gould, and Ray Kurzweil. The second style is fictional. At its best, science fiction not only entertains, it stretches the reader’s mind to a view of implications and possibilities beyond what is currently known. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Greg Bear, and Richard Powers all provide excellent models of this kind of writing. During the semester we explore two or three areas of new research about how the mind works, and practice the skills of translating that knowledge into both readable description and entertaining narrative.
COGS 110.01 TR 7:00-9:00 pm Mr. Livingston
Education 160a. Books, Children, and Culture
(Same as AFRS 160) This course examines select classical works from the oral tradition and contemporary works of children’s fiction and non-fiction. The course addresses juvenile literature as a sociological phenomenon as well as a literary and artistic one (illustrative content). The course traces the socio-historical development of American children’s literature from Western and non-Western societies. Social, psychoanalytic, and educational theory provide a conceptual basis and methodological framework for the cultural analysis of fairy tale and modern fantasy in cross-cultural perspective. Socialization issues include: ideals of democracy; moral character; race and class; politicalization; and the human relationship to the natural environment.
EDUC 160.01 TR 9:00-10:15 Ms. Bickerstaff
English 101a. Early British Literature
Works to be read may include Paradise Lost, Frankenstein, Tristram Shandy, The Tempest, and Romeo and Juliet.
ENGL 101.01 MW 9:00-10:15 Mr. Amodio
English 101a. The Symbolic Quest
This course will explore the mythological and psychological origins of the quest motif and its manifestation in a variety of literary texts. Our study may include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and works by Blake, Winterson, and Zimmerman.
ENGL 101.02 WF 12:00-1:15 Ms. Darlington
English 101a. Inside Story: What’s News
This course will explore the history, theory, practice, and control of newswriting from 1475 to the present. Weekly assignments will include newsgathering, an interview, a personal profile, a historical report, an investigation, an op-ed piece, and a blog. Venues of research will include online databases, the Vassar library, and the street. The assigned readings will cover the history and ethics of news-writing, and selections from every important mode of journalistic communication.
ENGL 101.03 MW 1:30-2:45 Mr. Foster
English 101a. Let’s Start with the Police Report
Can the police report serve as a model for writing? Not necessarily. But even the police report, in its seeming refusal of adornment or subjectivity, is marked by style. And by a variety of assumptions about what is deemed a rational response, or proper speech, or right behavior. Does the same hold true for the more writerly reports on crime, let’s say by the likes of Mark Twain, Truman Capote, Zora Neale Hurston, and Elizabeth Hardwick? True Crime: An American Anthology (edited by Harold Schechter) will serve as our textbook in this course; it will be used alongside the classic composition manual, The Elements of Style (Strunk and White). The daily newspaper, in particular the cryptic notes on nation-wide crime, will provide our point of entry into a weekly exercise in writing--brief essays bright with knowledge of the capacities of the human mind.
ENGL 101.05 TR 3:10-4:25 Mr. Kumar
English 101a. Worlds of the Interior
This introduction to literary study will explore the architecture of selfhood through the historical concept of the interior, as much a model of consciousness as a material space that has become synonymous with domestic life and the rise of the middle class. Focusing mostly on narrative texts from the early history of the British bourgeoisie—the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—as well as excerpts from theory, philosophy and cultural history, this seminar will introduce freshmen to such fundamentals of literary study and expository writing as close reading, argument-formation and revision. Mind, privacy, hauntings, containment, enclosure, dreaming, home, the English manor house, interior decorating and other themes will guide our reading and discussion. Throughout, we will explore textual mediations of interiority alongside material ones.
Readings will include Marvell, “Upon Appleton House,” Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Richardson, Pamela, Freud, “The Uncanny,” Radcliffe, A Sicilian Romance, Austen, Mansfield Park, Edgeworth, The Absentee, Brontë, Wuthering Heights, James, The Spoils of Poynton de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness, Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Wharton, Decoration of Houses.
ENGL 101.06 TR 10:30-11:45 Ms. Park
English 101a. The Instruction of Citizenship
Emma Lazarus’s celebrated poem, “The New Colossus,” identifies the Statue of Liberty as the “Mother of Exiles” welcoming the world’s “wretched” and “tempest-tost.” However, the popular definition of the United States as a “nation of immigrants” repeatedly comes into crisis when the state faces the arrival of new groups. This course examines how literature by first- and second-generation Americans brings to light conditions that either bind or divide us as communities. Where does the instruction of citizenship take place and what does it mean to be “naturalized” as an American? What do we gain or lose with assimilation? What exactly is “multiculturalism”? How does immigrant writing respond to or disrupt abstract notions of American citizenship? Authors may include Jamaica Kincaid, Sui Sin Far, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Peter Bacho, Junot Díaz, Fae Mynne Ng, Abraham Cahan, Lonny Kaneko, Piri Thomas, Edvige Giunta, Kym Ragusa and Mary Gordon.
ENGL 101.07 TR 9:00-10:15 Mr. Perez
English 101a. Queer Alphabets
A primer in gay and lesbian literature, both classic and contemporary. We will examine a range of texts, including recent coming out stories, nineteenth-century encoded texts, a silent movie from 1919 Germany, the sonnets of Shakespeare, and the love poems of Adrienne Rich. Novels will include James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance, and Carol Anshaw’s Aquamarine.
ENGL 101.08 MW 1:30-2:45 Mr. Russell
English 101a. The Criminal and the Carceral
Possibly the most cherished national value of the United States — and the principle that most swiftly enchants both native and immigrant to celebrate themselves as American citizens — is the notion of personal freedom. Yet the recent announcement by justice experts that the U.S. prison population threatens to exceed 2 million inmates suggests that there is an unsavory and desperate underside of U.S. freedom and that in the grand design of U.S. institutions lurks an imperative to confine its citizens as well as liberate them. In this course, we will engage in all the practices that lead to good writing: careful reading and comprehension, accurate summarizing and paraphrasing, scrupulous quotation and citation, judicious organization and presentation of thought. The criminal and the carceral, however, will serve as our muse. We will review philosophies of freedom and theories of crime. We will explore how social forces inspire the creation of laws. We will consider U.S. prison history and the cultural practices that have emerged from these sites of confinement. Michel Foucault, Christian Parenti, Angela Davis, and the characters of HBO’s dramatic series “OZ” will help us think out the problems of transgression and punishment.
ENGL 101.09 TR 9:00-10:15 Mr. Simpson
English 101a. Making Voices
Novels, plays, anatomies, verse, and autobiography in which some of the characters and all of the authors try to discover and create their own voices in order to imagine their distinctive works and selves. Authors read may include Austen, Shakespeare, Edward Albee, Swift, Twain, Philip Sidney, Anne Sexton, and Maya Angelou.
ENGL 101.10 TR 9:00-10:15 Mr. Weedin
ENGL 101.11 TR 4:35-5:50 Mr. Weedin
English 101a. Beneath the Apocalyptic Landscape
This course will explore characters caught in the dreamscape of violence and apocalyptic visions that is perhaps unique to the American history and culture, from slavery to skinheads to school shootings. We’ll examine the concept—coined by rock critic Greil Marcus—of Old Weird America, a folkloric history that has spawned murder ballads, the music of Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash, and a wide range of literary work, including poetry by Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams, Lucille Clifton, and Etheridge Knight; stories by Edgar Allen Poe, Joyce Carol Oates, Flannery O’Connor, Christine Schutt, and Denis Johnson. Longer works may include novels by William Faulkner, Gayle Jones, Robert Stone, William Vollmann, Hunter Thompson, and the graphic artist Lynda Barry.
ENGL 101.12 TR 12:00-1:15 Mr. Means
English 101a. Slippery Selves: Autobiography in Fiction
In this course we’ll study the often covert ways that fiction and non-fiction borrow from one another, smearing the boundaries between forms. Among the questions that we’ll consider are the benefits of drawing on personally revealing, even embarrassing material; the differences between lying and storytelling; the importance of narrative guise or impersonation; and the confidence with which we can identify truth amidst distortion and inaccuracy. Readings will include Dubliners by James Joyce, Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid, The Ghost Writer by Philip Roth, Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion, So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell, Speak Memory by Vladimir Nabokov, and shorter works by Raymond Carver, Flannery O’Connor, Grace Paley, and others.
ENGL 101.13 TR 10:30-11:45 Mr. Crawford
English 101a. Short Forms
This course will explore various (and numerous) examples of two interrelated literary forms, the prose poem and the so-called “short-short” story. We’ll examine these forms’ permutations beyond their superficial similarities of brevity, beginning our readings with the prose poem’s rise in nineteenth-century France before studying various modern and contemporary developments. We’ll practice the art of interpretation on texts that are often obscure and cryptic, and consider ideas of genre as we place these forms in dialogue with each other and with other literary forms. Readings may include texts by Baudelaire, Stein, Kafka, Hemingway, Toomer, Borges, Davis, Atwood, Edson, Simic, Oates, Mullen, Ruefle, Bouvier, and many other writers, as well as contextual materials.
ENGL 101.14 MW 1:30-2:45 Mr. Harmon
English 101a. Deception: Truths About Lies
Narratives told by someone who can’t be trusted invite readers to explore the ambiguous border between truths and lies. An author’s perceptions may differ from those of the first-person narrator—the “I”—who tells the story, and that discrepancy opens up intriguing psychological space. “Good readers read the lines, and better readers read the spaces,” the novelist John Barth has written. This section of English 101 will analyze both words and spaces—both what is said and what is unspoken or unspeakable. We’ll investigate a rogues’ gallery of unreliable narrators who bring varying degrees of mendacity, self-aggrandizement, and self-deception to the stories they tell. Authors may include Jorge Luis Borges, Julio Cortázar, Lydia Davis, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Ford Madox Ford, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jamaica Kincaid, Maxine Hong Kingston, Patrick McGrath, Vladimir Nabokov, Tim O’Brien, Michael Ondaatje, Sylvia Plath, Salman Rushdie, Charles Simic, Oscar Wilde, and Virginia Woolf. Students will write both analytical and imaginative responses to the texts.
ENGL 101.15 MW 1:30-2:45 Ms. Mark
English 101a. Citizen Girls
This course focuses on “chick lit,” a literary genre often featuring these common plot elements: a young, unmarried, middle class, white woman in an American city who finds herself isolated, disaffected, overly educated, financially overdrawn, emotionally and physically underfed, and perpetually underemployed. From Sex in the City and The Devil Wears Prada to The Nanny Diaries and Gossip Girls, many believe that chick lit represents not only the worst of American consumerism, but also participates in the continued deterioration of progressive feminist politics. Focusing on literature, as well as contemporary films, magazines, music, and television shows, we’ll examine how the conflict among women’s identities, progressive gender politics, and American citizenship gets represented within the framework of the “chick” narrative. Additionally, we’ll explore how race, sexuality, class, and geography might intersect to change the narrative concerns of traditional chick lit. In short, this class will have us think critically about contemporary women issues, bodies, and notions of citizenship as they are represented in a variety of women’s popular texts.
ENGL 101.16 MW 12:00-1:15 Ms. Dunbar
English 101a. Such, Such Were the Joys
Schools shape and discipline us into becoming citizens and subjects. Following the lead of George Orwell’s examination of his school, this course examines a variety of schools, from English and Native American boarding schools, to liberal arts colleges and African convents to expose the way that gender, race, class, and sexuality infuse our educations. Authors include Dangarembga, McCarthy, Orwell, Plato, Russell, and Woolf. Films include The Last King of Scotland, If, The Class.
ENGL 101.17 TR 10:30-11:45 Ms. Robertson
English 101a. Walt Disney: Texts and Adaptations
This course explores just a few of the many significant adaptations of major texts of English literature that were adapted for cinema audiences by the filmmaker Walt Disney (1900-1966). Representative works to be read and written upon are likely to include Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows, R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island, and T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone. Some of the possible topics addressed by participants in the course will include: the relevance and/or significance of Disney’s own biographical history with reference to his studio’s adaptations of traditional or well-known works; the possible reconciliation of the early, positive reaction of “intellectuals” and other “academic” critics to Disney’s films with the later (and every-increasing) mid-century, aesthetic disapproval of the studio’s output; and, more generally, the different kinds of interpretive skills and aesthetic standards that we bring as readers to films based on well-known or typically familiar literary texts.
ENGL 101.18 TR 12:00-1:15 Mr. Mack
ENGL 101.19 TR 1:30-2:45 Mr. Mack
English 101a. Evidence and the Literary Imagination
Evidence: a whorl fingerprint visible in a dust of carbon powder, mud caked into a shoe’s tread, a newly painted wall—smudged. From Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes to the crack team of CBS’s television hit CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, the detectives of popular representation gather and, ultimately, explain evidence—expert powers of observation allow them to glean the solution to which all “clues” have led. This course will consider representations of evidence (details, objects, documents meant to prove something), turning first to literary and popular texts that authorize its reading by characters who are “professionals,” then considering texts that make radical demands on readers to interpret evidence for ourselves, often pushing us to seek solutions to crimes when none are forthcoming within the text. We will ask: Who may interpret evidence, and do those interpretations reinforce or challenge the social contexts from which they emerge? As the course progresses, we will write several essays and engage in in-class presentations and discussions that require sophisticated arguments built on our own careful use of evidence drawn both from analysis of primary course texts and works of literary theory and critical scholarship. Ultimately, you should be developing skills of analysis and argument—and imagination—that will serve you well in all Vassar College courses. Course texts may include: Paul Auster’s City of Glass, Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, selections from Arthur Conan Doyle’s: Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, and Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone, among others.
ENGL 101.20 TR 4:35-5:50 Ms. Rumbarger
English 184a. New Voices, Old Stories, New Immigrant Jewish Writers
(Same as JWST 184) American History is, in some ways, the story of immigrants, and one of the first immigrant groups to publish their stories were Jews, particularly those from Eastern Europe. American Jewish writers established the immigrant literary scene that today has become multifaceted and multicultural. In this class, we read the newest, most popular young writers to emerge from the recent Eastern European Jewish diaspora, and compare them to their classic forerunners. We examine the themes of assimilation, religious awakening, and responses to the Holocaust by members of the Second and Third Generation. New texts include Gary Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, and Lara Vapnyar’s There Are Jews in My House; older voices include those of Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth, and Anzia Yezierska.
ENGL 184.01 MW 9:00-10:15 Ms. Friedman
French 183a. Fashion and Modernity
In this course we consider the intersection of fashion and modernity in France in a historical and cultural context from the end of the Old Regime to the early twentieth century. While the term fashion often implies surface, frivolity, and deception, in this course we analyze fashion in relation to some of the most important themes of modernity — social mobility, colonialism, industrialization, consumerism, and mass culture, for example — and place the discourses of fashion in a social context. By reading literature in conjunction with a study of historical documents and objects, fashion plates and other illustrations, and classic works of fashion theory, we explore how fashion can be used as a crucial prism through which to understand French culture. The course is taught in English. All works are read in translation.
FREN 183.01 TR 3:10-4:25 Ms. Hiner
German 101a. Vampires, Lunatics, and Cyborgs: Exploring the Uncanny Recesses of the Romantic Consciousness
From the fairytales of the Brothers Grimm to E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Nutcracker and the King of Mice, German Romanticism has populated the modern imagination with a multitude of uncanny creations. This course examines the evolution of figures such as vampires, witches, golems, mad scientists, and cyborgs through German culture from their origins in the nineteenth century to their afterlife in the present, including film. In addition, we pursue their reception and development outside of Germany, for instance in Disney’s versions of Grimms’ tales and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. Readings and discussions in English.
GERM 101.01 MW 12:00-1:15 Mr. Schreiber
History 116a. “The Dark Ages” c. 400 - 900
(Same as MRST 116) This course examines a rich variety of sources that illuminate the unfortunately named “dark ages,” showing moments of both conflict and synthesis that arose from the meeting of Classical, Christian, and “barbarian” cultures.
HIST 116.01 TR 10:30-11:45 Ms. Bisaha
History 160a. American Moments: Readings in U.S. History
This course explores pivotal moments in American history from the late colonial era to the late 20th century.
HIST 160.01 TR 9:00-10:15 Mr. Merrell
History 161a. History, Narrative, Fiction: Telling Stories on America’s Frontier
Course participants read an array of narratives, conduct research, and practice writing, as we explore key episodes in the history of the Western United States between the 1830s and the 1930s.
HIST 161.01 MW 1:30-2:45 Ms. Edwards
History 188a. America in the World 1945-Present
This course explores the emergence of the modern United States from a transnational approach that emphasizes the nation’s increasing connection to global forces, including war, social unrest, civil rights, human rights, poverty, environmentalism, and cross-national borrowing.
HIST 188.01 MW 9:00-10:15 Mr. Brigham
Italian 177a. Italy and the Modern Self: Malady, Masks and Madness
This course analyzes different definitions of illness, or malady, indifference, and madness in the works of Italian authors of the early 20th century. Frequently employed as metaphors for the condition of the artist and intellectual in modern society, these ideas contribute to redefine the notion of self in a country increasingly concerned with progress and modernization while still looking to the past in search of a national identity. Masquerading and acting easily become analogies for a divided self and for the loss of certainties characterizing the human condition in the context of modernity. Readings by Luigi Pirandello, Italo Svevo, Alberto Moravia, and others.
ITAL 177.01 TR 12:00-1:15 Ms. Bondavalli
Jewish Studies 101a. Jewish Identities / Jewish Politics
Are “the Jews” white people of East European origin, or Arabic-, Mahrathi-, and Amharic-speaking people of color from the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa? Are Jewish politics conservative and affirming of the status quo, or progressive and prophetically-charged? Are Jewish gender roles and attitudes towards sex suburban and patriarchal, or queer and radical? This course is a multidisciplinary introduction to the extraordinary diversity of the Jewish people and Jewish culture, and to the ways history, geography, gender, religious status, race, and class are factors in the construction of Jewish identity, in interaction with surrounding cultures. We study primary sources such as the Hebrew Bible and Talmud and mid- rash in their historical contexts, as well as art and literature produced by and about Jews.
JWST 101.01 MW 1:30-2:45 Mr. Epstein
Jewish Studies 184a. New Voices, Old Stories, New Immigrant Jewish Writers
(Same as ENGL 184) American History is, in some ways, the story of immigrants, and one of the first immigrant groups to publish their stories were Jews, particularly those from Eastern Europe. American Jewish writers established the immigrant literary scene that today has become multifaceted and multicultural. In this class, we read the newest, most popular young writers to emerge from the recent Eastern European Jewish diaspora, and compare them to their classic forerunners. We examine the themes of assimilation, religious awakening, and responses to the Holocaust by members of the Second and Third Generation. New texts include Gary Shteyngart’s The Russian Debutante’s Handbook, Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything is Illuminated, and Lara Vapnyar’s There Are Jews in My House; older voices include those of Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth, and Anzia Yezierska.
JWST 184.01 MW 9:00-10:15 Ms. Friedman
Mathematics 142a. Statistical Sleuthing: Personal and Public Policy Decision-Making in a World of Numbers
The world inundates us with numbers and pictures intended to persuade us towards certain beliefs about our health, public policy, or even which brand of product to buy. How can we make informed decisions in this context? The goal of this course is for us to become statistical sleuths who critically read and summarize a piece of statistical evidence. We read articles from a variety of sources, while using basic statistical principles to guide us. Course format: mixture of discussion and lecture, with regular reading and writing assignments.
MATH 142.01 MWF 1:00-1:50 Ms. An
Medieval and Renaissance Studies 116a. “The Dark Ages” c. 400 – 900
(Same as HIST 116) This course examines a rich variety of sources that illuminate the unfortunately named “dark ages,” showing moments of both conflict and synthesis that arose from the meeting of Classical, Christian, and “barbarian” cultures.
MRST 116.01 TR 10:30-11:45 Ms. Bisaha
Philosophy 106a. Philosophy and Contemporary Issues
Philosophical investigation of a range of positions on current issues such as abortion, pornography, affirmative action, gay rights, distributive justice, animal rights, and freedom of speech.
PHIL 106.02 MW 1:30-2:45 Mr. Kelly
Political Science 170a. Political Theory
An introduction to the nature, types, and problems of political theory. The core of the readings consists of selections from what are considered classic works in the field. The course emphasizes the relevance of these ideas to current political developments and scholarship.
POLI 170.01 TR 9:00-10:15 Ms. Gregory
Psychology 110a. . The Science and Fiction of Mind
(Same as COGS 110) Our understanding of what minds are, and of how they work, has exploded dramatically in the last half century. As in other areas of science, the more we know the harder it becomes to convey the richness and complexity of that knowledge to non-specialists. This Freshman Writing Seminar explores two different styles of writing for explaining new findings about the nature of mind to a general audience. The most direct of these styles is journalistic and explanatory, and is well represented by the work of people like Steven Pinker, Bruce Bower, Stephen J. Gould, and Ray Kurzweil. The second style is fictional. At its best, science fiction not only entertains, it stretches the reader’s mind to a view of implications and possibilities beyond what is currently known. Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Greg Bear, and Richard Powers all provide excellent models of this kind of writing. During the semester we explore two or three areas of new research about how the mind works, and practice the skills of translating that knowledge into both readable description and entertaining narrative.
COGS 110.01 TR 7:00-9:00 pm Mr. Livingston
Sociology 182a. What Do You Mean by Globalization?
Globalization is a buzz word used in many forums, including popular culture, academic disciplines, political institutions, and social movements. Using a sociological lens, this course examines the multiple voices and actors that make up the conversations and processes we refer to as “globalization.” How can we make sense of globalization? Can globalization as a framework help us make sense of the social world?
SOCI 182.01 MR 3:10-4:25 Ms. Carruyo
SPRING SECTIONS
American Culture 181b. Writing Lives
This course looks at the problem of representing American experience, one’s own or someone else’s, in the biographical/autobiographical mode. Biographer Richard Holmes writes, “I conclude that no biography is ever definitive, because that is not the nature of such journeys, nor of the human heart which is their territory.” We look at the points of departure for writing American lives, whether investigating a writer’s own autobiography, or an author’s engagement with someone else’s narrative of failure or triumph, departure or arrival. What motivates a person to tell his or her life story, or to investigate someone else’s? What claims about the significance of that story are made, or taken up by the story’s readers? Like all Freshman Writing Seminars, this course stresses the development of analytical thinking, clarity of expression, and originality. Toward these ends, students write and rewrite several short papers, with the benefit of feedback from me and from your peers. Some of the assignments are autobiographical in nature, some more strictly literary-critical. This course also introduces you to basic library and research skills, as you prepare written and oral presentations on the life of an American figure.
AMCL 181.51 MW 12:00-1:15 Ms. Carter
Art 184b. A Different Way of Seeing: The Art of Native North America
Drawing on the collections of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, this course addresses issues regarding the acquisition and exhibition of Native American art. During the first part of the semester, we develop an awareness of these issues through study of key case studies. Investigation of this topic focuses on skills of critical evaluation and verbal/written exposition. In the second half of the semester, the students participate in creating an on-line virtual exhibition of Native art.
ART 184.51 MW 1:30-2:45 Ms. Lucic.
Astronomy 150b. Life in the Universe
An introduction to the possibility of life beyond Earth is presented from an astronomical point of view. The course reviews stellar and planetary formation and evolution, star properties and planetary atmospheres necessary for a habitable world, possibilities for other life in our solar system, detection of extrasolar planets, the SETI project, and the Drake equation.
Prerequisite: High school physics and calculus.
ASTR 150.51 TR 1:30-2:45 Ms. Sheffield
Chinese/Japanese 120b. Introduction to Chinese and Japanese Literature
This course introduces some of the major works of Chinese and Japanese literature, including philosophical works, novels, and films. Thematically, the course is organized around the way that major intellectual trends influence one another in particular texts. We see how Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist values and concepts resonate in a variety of literary genres in two rich cultures that have deeply influenced one another. From the Chinese tradition, we examine the love story, Dream of the Red Chamber; the war novel Three Kingdoms; the erotic novel, Carnal Prayer Mat; and the macabre short stories of Bu Songling. From the Japanese tradition, we read the classic novel, The Tale of Genji and the haiku poetry of Basho. At the end of the course, we examine the interaction of modernity and classic thought in the films Hero by Zhang Yimou and Rashomon by Kurosawa, in Yukio Mishima’s controversial novella, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, and in the short stories of Lu Xun. Requirements include brief weekly reaction papers and several papers of medium length, emphasizing the development of basic skills in writing about literary and cultural topics and texts. All readings and discussions are in English.
CHJA 120.51 TR 3:10-4:25 Mr. Van Norden
Classics 181b. Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt
A famous historian once wrote, “The true history of Antony and Cleopatra will probably never be known; it is buried too deep beneath the version of the victors.” This course examines the life and times of Egypt’s most famous queen, who was both a Hellenistic monarch, last of a dynasty founded by a companion of Alexander the Great, and a goddess incarnate, Pharaoh of one of the world’s oldest civilizations. However, the ways in which Cleopatra has been depicted over the centuries since her death are equally intriguing, and the course considers versions of Cleopatra from the Romans, who saw her as a foreign queen who tried to steal their empire, to Shakespeare, Shaw, film, and television to explore how different societies have created their own image of this bewitching figure.
CLAS 181.51 MW 12:00-1:15 Mr. Lott
English 101b. The Fire This Time: Hip Hop and Critical Citizenship
The American mainstream has a voracious appetite for various forms of subcultural black expression. Though varied, Black American cultural expression is often anchored in rhetorical battles or verbal jousts that place one character against another. From sorrow songs to blues, black music has always been a primary means of cultural expression and survival for African Americans, particularly during difficult social periods and transition. Black Americans have used music and particularly rhythmic verse to resist, express and signify citizenship or belonging. Nowhere is this more evident than in hip hop culture generally and hip hop music specifically. One could argue that hip hop music, at its best, attempts to reveal and complicate ideas of citizenship while demystifying private and contested public American space. As Tricia Rose writes in Black Noise, “Hip Hop combines the improvisational elements of jazz with the narrative sense of place in the blues; it has the oratory power of the black preacher and the emotional vulnerability of Southern soul music.” The result is a new vibrant American text that deserves exploration.
This course is a comprehensive Freshman Writing Seminar that thoughtfully approaches hip hop as a meaningful, critical and ever-changing post-modern text. In addition to looking at some established hip hop rivalries and forming a complete hip hop timeline that begins in the belly of slave ships, we will look at hip hop as the epitome of metafictional post-modernity. We will explore the connection between hip hop and West African chants, southern African American sorrow songs, gospel texts, blues texts, funk texts, punk texts, rock texts, and the texts from the Harlem Renaissance. One of the aims of the course is to encourage students and listeners to treat hip hop music as neither disposable commodity, nor cool art form, but as literary text, complete with hefty subtext and pointed democratic signifiers.
ENGL 101.51 TR 9:00-10:15 Mr. Laymon
English 101b. A Room of One’s Own
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf notes that “we think back through our mothers if we are women.” In this course, we take Woolf at her word: we will begin with A Room of One’s Own and then “think back” through the literary mothers that Woolf cites as central to the tradition of women’s writing in Britain. Readings may include works by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Christina Rossetti and George Eliot as well as critical essays that elaborate upon and challenge Woolf’s ideas.
ENGL 101.52 TR 10:30-11:45 Ms. Zlotnick
English 101b. Love, Death and the Gift of Art
Unlike a commodity, according to Lewis Hyde, a gift must always be kept in motion: “The gift gets steeped in the fluids of its own passage.” In this course we will study texts, drawn from a variety of cultures, periods, and genres, in which images of gift exchange play a vital role. We will explore the complex connections between human frailty, vulnerability, and mortality on the one hand and conceptions of love, beauty, and art on the other. Readings will include plays by Shakespeare, poems and letters by Keats, a memoir by Eli Wiesel, gift theory by Lewis Hyde, and novels by Helen Garner, Alex Miller, and Nicole Krauss.
ENGL 101.53 TR 9:00-10:15 Mr. Sharp
Russian Studies 171b. Russia and the Short Story
In this course we read and discuss a number of classic short stories in English by such Russian masters of the genre as Gogol, Turgenev, Chekhov, Babel, and Olesha.
RUSS 171.51 MW 12:00-1:15 Mr. Klimoff