Spring Words Sections

MWF  - 11:30am-12:30pm

 

Out of Place: the politics and poetics of not belonging

Kabir Heimsath, Asst Prof w/Term of Anthropology

• Core 120-01 – MWF 11:30am-12:30pm
• Core 120-12 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Please see description under the 1:50pm entry further down.

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Knowledge, Power, Responsibility

Catherine Sprecher Loverti, Visiting Prof of World Languages & Literatures - German

• Core 120-02- MWF 11:30am-12:30pm

In public discourse, you often hear the expression ‘Knowledge is Power.’ Yet what does this really mean? What is knowledge, and what is its relation to power? And what are the ethical implications of this power for individuals, groups, and society at large? In this course, we will look at different forms of knowledge and how writers, film-makers, and other artists envision power, as well as the responsibility that comes with it. In some works, knowledge as power can lead to the liberation of individuals and whole groups, especially if that knowledge is forbidden (examples include Plato, Frederick Douglass, Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo, The Matrix, Black Panther). In other works, knowledge leads to a different form of power, namely a power that reaches beyond its creators and threatens to destroy them (examples include Frankenstein, The Sandman, Dr. Strangelove, Blade Runner, Oppenheimer). Throughout the semester, we will explore how knowledge leads to power, and how the individual is faced with the responsibility resulting from this power. We will investigate these ideas by studying works ranging from the Bible to Barbie.

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MWF - 1:50-2:50pm

 

Wild Writing: Creative Non-fiction on the Natural World

Phillip Barron, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Philosophy

• Core 120-03 - MWF 1:50-2:50pm

There are many ways to define the genre creative non-fiction, which, by its name sounds like a paradox. How can writing be both creative (free and open) and non-fiction (bound by the constraints of truth) at the same time? Despite the questions raised by its name, or perhaps because of them, creative non-fiction is a popular and liberating style of writing. In this course, we will read some classic examples of the genre and then focus on efforts to use creative non-fiction to write about the natural world, our relationship to it, and any responsibilities that we have to care for it. This course’s instructor teaches both creative writing and philosophy, so this course will include topics in memoir, personal identity, environmental ethics, decoloniality, Indigenous wisdom, and poetics. Writing assignments will be a blend of attention to the formal aspects of creative writing and to the research methods and documentation required to write analytically. By the end of the semester, we will offer our own definition of creative non-fiction.

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This American Language

Keith Dede, Prof of Chinese

• Core 120-13 - MWF 1:50-2:50pm

From the texts, emails, and essays we read and write to the lunch chats, lectures and dorm-room deep-dives we participate in, we spend our days swimming in language. What patterns can be discerned in this ocean of communication, and what do those patterns say about our country, our community and ourselves? In this class we will turn a scientific eye to language itself, asking such questions as, “What influences our language choices?”, “What judgments do we all make about language use?”, and, “Why do my parents put … in their texts?!”. We will discuss such issues as linguistic diversity, linguistic discrimination, language evolution, language endangerment and language revitalization. Through essays (such as Rosina Lippi-Green’s “Language Ideology and Language Prejudice”), films (such as, “The Linguists”), novels (“Erasure”), and podcasts (“Vocal Fry”), we will explore the rich diversity of language in North America with the aim of understanding some of the many issues with which it is entangled.

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The Stories That Bind Us

Kristin Fujie, Assoc Prof of English

• Core 120-06 - MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Society is held together by our need; we bind it together with legend, myth, coercion, fearing that without it we will be hurled into that void, within which, like the earth before the Word was spoken, the foundations of society are hidden. ~James Baldwin

They say a song can be a bridge, Ma. But I say it’s also the ground we stand on. And maybe we sing to keep ourselves from falling. Maybe we sing to keep ourselves. ~Ocean Vuong

In this course we will immerse ourselves in works of literature (novels, short stories, personal essays) that explore how stories bind us. In its most literal sense, to bind means to tie up, but also to tie together (e.g. binding a book); it can furthermore mean to bandage a wound or place under obligation. That stories can restrain and imprison but also connect, unite, and heal creates a paradox that lies at the heart of this class and the texts we’ll encounter. I think you’ll find our writers at once captivating and highly self-reflexive; they compel us to get caught up in their stories, but also to step back and reflect on how those stories work—how the narratives that their characters tell about themselves and each other bind them (and us!) in conflicted, transformative, and sometimes heart-breaking ways. Longer works include Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous , Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go , and Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me . We will also read shorter works by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, James Baldwin, Leslie Marmon Silko, Maxine Hong Kingston, and/or Jhumpa Lahiri. I want students to know in advance that course readings could include difficult material related to domestic violence, sexual assault, racism, mental illness, and addiction. You are warmly encouraged to reach out to me with questions.

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People, Paleography, and the Past: Analyzing the Slavery Archive

Nancy Gallman, Asst Prof of History

• Core 120-08 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

The sources we use to study the history of slavery in North America exist in multiple forms and archives. Written and unwritten narratives, diaries, newspapers, legal codes, trial transcripts, ledgers, material culture, visual art, music–all found in archives, libraries, museums, family papers, and memories. How do we discover and recover these materials? How do we analyze them to understand their origins, their purpose, and their significance? How do we interpret them to answer questions about the institution of slavery, the experience of slavery, and the end of slavery? Do the voices of the enslaved speak in these records? How do we use the slavery archive to work through the silences and fathom the realities of their lives? What are the stakes of this kind of research?

In this course, we will address these questions by exploring major themes in the history of slavery and annotating the world’s largest document collection on this topic, Slavery & Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive. This database contains over five million pages of archival material from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries written in multiple languages, including Spanish, English, and French. With a combination of collaborative research, discussion, and writing, students will develop skills in paleography (deciphering handwritten historical manuscripts) and historical analysis to examine the archive’s role in the study of enslaved peoples and the people who enslaved them.

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Out of Place: the politics and poetics of not belonging

Kabir Heimsath, Asst Prof w/Term of Anthropology

• Core 120-01 – MWF 11:30am-12:30pm
• Core 120-12 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

This course engages with the question place; and what does it mean to be out of place? We explore broad concepts such as identity, globalization, gender, education, and racial perception with a hybrid approach that intentionally crosses boundaries of literature, sociology, anthropology and media studies. Class material will include fiction, memoir, film, art, material objects and digital media in addition to more conventional academic texts. The course includes some historical introduction, but is focused on contemporary real-life experiences. Students are encouraged to use theoretical concepts and methodological approaches suggested by anthropology and culture studies, and urged to work on specific topics of personal interest to them.

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The Art of War

Bob Mandel, Prof of and Marc Messina Chair of International Affairs

• Core 120-09 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

This course covers the historical, strategic, and moral dimensions of war in order to give entering students an understanding of the most important challenge faced by humankind. The central questions revolve around the nature, purpose, and limits of warfare. The approach has students study conceptual insights largely through reading about the actual experience of warfare, viewed through the eyes of participants or direct observers. The emphasis is on interdisciplinary readings interpreting patterns across culture and time. Views of diverse groups, both powerful and oppressed, are fully represented. Students ponder and analyze the fundamental controversies surrounding organized armed international violence throughout the ages.

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Suspense / Horror / Paranoia

Michael Mirabile, Asst Prof w/Term of English

• Core 120-04 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

This course will be devoted to examining varieties of fear from a number of distinct but related perspectives: cultural, psychological, historical, and social. Special attention is given to how these fears correspond to genre categories in literature and film: namely, the thriller, the Gothic or horror story, and the conspiratorial narrative (often cited as an example of a general “paranoid style”). Does the mechanism of suspense change over time? Do objects of horror also change? Why do collective expressions of suspicion and paranoia undergo periodic renewals, such as during the Cold War era in the United States? Our goal in this course will be to look closely at shifts in perspective and at the contexts within which are found powerful inducements to anxiety. Our primary materials for analysis and discussion will be twentieth-century films and works of literature. Authors may include Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson, Daphne du Maurier, and Richard Matheson. Film directors may include David Cronenberg, Jordan Peele, Steven Spielberg, and Ridley Scott.

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Identity and Belonging

Brittney Peake, Inst in Academic English Studies

• Core 120-14 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

In this course, we will explore the complexity of identity and how authenticity and intentionality help cultivate belonging. We will adopt a systems approach, focusing on the interconnections between identity and social position, as well as navigating belonging in relation to place, practices of true belonging, and the shifts in thoughts and behaviors that foster collective leadership.

We will immerse ourselves in various works of literature— including a memoir, short stories, and poetry— that connect to the course themes, along with essays and books focused on personal development and community empowerment. Longer works will include Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart: A Memoir, Kali Fajardo-Anstine’s Sabrina & Corina, Brené Brown’s Braving the Wilderness: The Quest for True Belonging and the Courage to Stand Alone, and Shawn A. Ginwright’s The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves. We will also engage with shorter pieces by Beverly Daniel Tatum, David Sedaris, Kai Chang Thom, and Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Throughout the course, you will be encouraged to reflect on your own identities and your processes for cultivating belonging both within yourself and in your relationships with others.

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Satire

Will Pritchard, Assoc Prof of English

• Core 120-07 - MWF 1:50-2:50pm

A satire is a work of imagination which makes an attack on some aspect of real life. Satirists use humorous exaggeration to ridicule and perhaps to reform the “knaves and fools” that populate the world. This class will examine satiric works in many genres (poem, novel, play, film, meme) and from many periods (ancient Rome, 18th-century Europe, 20th- and 21st-century UK and USA). We will also read some theoretical work on satire. Our main effort will be to identify and to meet the demands – intellectual, aesthetic and ethical demands – that these particular satiric texts make on us as readers, viewers and humans.

Warning: satire can be offensive, sometimes deliberately so. You will likely encounter, within these satiric texts, language and attitudes of which you disapprove.

Possible authors include Jonathan Swift, Voltaire, Edith Wharton, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, George Schuyler, Dorothy Parker, Larissa FastHorse and Bernadine Evaristo.

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How Societies Remember - Reyes

Mitch Reyes, Prof of Rhetoric and Media Studies

• Core 120-11 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

How do societies remember (and forget) their traumatic pasts? How do cultures establish their collective identities? How do they remember their origins and publicly share important turning points in their history? How are collective memories transformed over time? How do new versions of the past emerge and challenge the status quo? What are the roles of memorials and museums? How are wars commemorated? These are just some of the questions that will animate discussion in this course. We will explore how different cultures symbolically reconstruct traumatic historical events such as the Holocaust, institutionalized slavery, and Apartheid. We will study the motives behind such symbolic reconstructions, asking questions such as, “Who gets to be remembered,” “How are they remembered,” and “Who gets to do the remembering?” As such, the class will deal intensively with issues of power and oppression, identity politics, and trauma.

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Insiders/Outsiders: Belonging and Alienation in Literature and in Life

Molly Robinson, Assoc Prof of French

• Core 120-15 – MWF 1:50-2:50pm

Many of the joys and hurts of human life revolve around the need for belonging. In recent years, we have become more aware of the ways in which systemic power and privilege are based in long-standing cultural norms that classify some people as “insiders” and others as “outsiders.” Although usually unspoken and sometimes even unconscious, these norms teach us from an early age that certain opportunities (education, suffrage, power, and leadership for example) are appropriate and expected for certain groups of people, but inappropriate and unexpected for others. When these lines are crossed, discomfort, resistance, and even violence can emerge. Whether the groups of people are defined by gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religious affiliation, or some other category, humankind tends to divide and define itself along lines of belonging and exclusion. In this course, we will read a selection of works showing different facets of the insider / outsider dynamic, gaining a broader and more informed understanding of its historical and intersectional resonances. Work to be read include Harriet Jacob’s Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Oscar Wilde’s De Profundis, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time, Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, Ta Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me, George Saunders’ Lincoln in the Bardo, Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts, and more.