First-Year Program
All courses in the First-Year Program are restricted to Gallatin first-year students only.
WS II: The Lure of Beauty
K10.0619 WSII, 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Christopher Trogan
Why is beauty so powerful? What attracts us to someone or something beautiful? In this course, we will begin with the most fundamental question of all: What is beauty? To explore this question, we will contemplate how artists, philosophers, psychologists, and writers have understood the term cross-culturally. We will then consider the fate of beauty in the twentieth century leading up to the present. Of critical importance is the question of how beauty fits into our lives and whether beauty is an objective feature of things or a feature determined by context. In addition to museum and gallery trips, students will compose essays and work on a research project. Texts may include works from Baudelaire, Hume, Kant, Mann, and Nancy Etcoff.
WS II: Imagining Cities
K10.0622 WSII, 4 CR MW 3:30-4:45 Stacy Pies
This course looks at the way the modern and post-modern city has been—and is being—imagined by writers, artists, urban planners, architects, philosophers, and historians. Our focus will be on concepts of the city and theories of urban experience, especially in relation to ideas about modernity. We will read, discuss and write about urban environments of the past, present, and future, including real cities like New York, Paris, and L.A., and cities dreamed up by urbanists like Paolo Soleri and Le Corbusier. We will consider the urban phenomena of the crowd, the neighborhood, notions of public and private space, and the cultural mix of the modern city. Students will conduct research projects on cities in their areas of interest. Texts may include essays by writers and philosophers Poe, Baudelaire, Barthes, and Benjamin; by urbanists Jacobs, Mumford, Mike Davis, and Matt Gandy, as well as films and photographs.
WS II: Myths and Fables in Popular Culture
K10.0639 WSII, 4 CR MW 2:00-3:15 Patricia Lennox
Myths, fables, folk tales, and fairy tales are universal, as old as storytelling and as new as the latest award-winning films. In this class we will consider how and why certain stories continue to be revised and retold. Our research will focus on old and new versions of the tales, as well as the critical discourse surrounding them. It will serve as the springboard for a series of writing assignments that culminate in a final research paper. Sources will include, but not be limited to, selections from works by: J. R.R. Tolkien, Disney, Ovid, Apuleius, Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, Angela Carter, Bruno Bettelheim, Joseph Campbell, and Jack Zipes.
WS II: Imagining Childhood
K10.0643 WSII, 4 CR TR 3:30-4:45 Mark Desiderio
There have always been children, of course, but has there always been such a thing as childhood? The historian Phillipe Aries provocatively argued that in the Middle Ages, “the idea of childhood did not exist.” In fact, it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that something like our notion of childhood began to appear in treatises on education and moral philosophy, and not until the nineteenth century that children assumed the special place in the adult imagination that they enjoy today. This course invites students to enter into questions regarding the nature of childhood and to think critically about the ways in which our conception of childhood reflects broader cultural values. Critical responses to a wide range of texts will culminate in a research paper on some aspect of the cultural construction of childhood. Texts may include writing by Locke, Blake, Freud, Alger, James, Dillard, Twain, Dickens, Postman; selections from Mother Goose, The New England Primer and The McGuffey Reader; and images of children in film, photography and advertising.
WS II: Writing Beyond Language: The Surreal, the Monstrous, and the Mystical
K10.0648 WSII, 4 CR TR 2:00-3:15 Gregory Erickson
Texts of the surreal, the monstrous, and the mystical are portrayals of experiences that, while they may be outside traditional logic, are clearly central to the human imagination. Students of these texts are presented with the fascinating but difficult project of researching, interpreting, and describing irrational mental states often said to be “beyond language.” This course will focus on writing about these texts, addressing the task of producing clear, logical prose about experiences that challenge this possibility. Through discussion, informal writing, and a series of essays we will take various approaches to understanding depictions of these experiences as well as the surrounding discourse. Writing projects will focus on description, explication, comparison, and analysis, and will culminate in a research essay. Readings will include essays in psychology (Freud), science (Hawking, Sagan), and literary and cultural theory (Haraway, Beal), as well as surrealistic poetry, mystical and devotional texts, and testimonies of paranormal encounters.
WS II: Image as Argument: Writing About Photography
K10.0649 WSII, 4 CR MW 11:00-12:15 Rebecca Wisor
In Three Guineas, Virginia Woolf refers to photographs as “statement[s] of fact addressed to the eye.” Because of their unique claim to realistic representation, photographs are a potent form of polemic at work in our everyday world. In this class, students will use writings by Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, and John Berger, along with examples from the media, as the basis for their own writing exploring the rhetorical function of photographs, the ethical dimension of photography, and the kinds of cultural work that photography performs. Of particular interest will be the function of photography in times of war. Students will write several analytical essays and a final research paper relating to the theme of the course.
WS II: Culture: Conflict and Controversies
K10.0650 WSII, 4 CR MW 4:55-6:10 Karen Hornick
This course provokes the kinds of questions Gallatin students encounter when writing papers for interdisciplinary seminars: How do I enter into debates over basic questions that have plagued writers for centuries? When can I draw upon my own resources and when is it necessary to incorporate secondary sources into my papers? How do I organize and conduct a research project—and then organize my final paper around an original thesis? Class readings and writing assignments will revolve around significant texts that consider culture and the arts in relation to society and politics. We’ll explore and write about classic and contemporary texts addressing questions such as: What is the relation between cultural change and political change? What role do nature and culture play in education? Is art more politically effective when it’s realistic? What is an “author” or “artist”? Is there a difference between “high” art and “low”? We’ll study authors including Plato, Freud, Marx, Thoreau, and Sontag.
WS II: Coming Home: Contemporary Narratives of Return
K10.0652 WSII, 4 CR TR 11:00-12:15 Jennifer Lemberg
The enormous and often violent upheavals of the twentieth century have led to massive shifts in human populations through immigration and displacement, experiences that have come to be central to contemporary narratives. In particular, the theme of returning to places from which one’s family or ethnic group originated has emerged as an important topic in recent literature and theory. In this course, contemporary depictions of going home in the aftermath of personal upheavals and major historical events will serve as the impetus for the development of critical reading, writing, and research skills. Through exploratory writing and formal assignments culminating in a research paper, we will interrogate the notion of “home” and consider the possible meanings of return. Our close readings and essays will consider how the concept of home encompasses spaces known briefly or well, deeply familiar or merely imagined, and how our understanding of home reflects our ideas about personal and collective identities. We will read essays, memoir, and fiction by authors who may include Erdrich, Hoffman, Kogawa, Naipaul, Offutt, Satrapi, and Silko, among others.
WS II: Locating the Underground
K10.0653 WSII, 4 CR R 3:30-6:10 Penny Vlagopoulos
What does it mean when a group of people form a movement that is underground? Writers and mythmakers have figured the subterranean space symbolically for centuries, but its meaning has shifted in the twentieth century to imply some mode of separation from the mainstream that culminates in social, cultural, or political resistance. In this course, we will examine essays, literary works, and films that depict underground movements and those that contest such a classification. Students will use these texts to write a series of critical essays that will locate and analyze the elements that produce this category. Does the underground necessitate protest? Is it always attached to the aboveground, or can it sustain some kind of autonomy? Can it effect change from below, and if not, does it efface its subversive potential once it surfaces? We will consider these and other questions as students work toward a final research project. Readings may include works by Richard Wright, Jack Kerouac, Thomas Frank, Jennifer Toth, and Luis Alberto Urrea. Possible films include Style Wars and The Weather Underground.
WS II: Writing About the American South
K10.0654 WSII, 4 CR MW 2:00-3:15 Stephen Wetta
In this class we will read and write about the influence of the south, through its musical, literary and religious styles, on American culture at large. Students will write and revise several papers leading to a longer research project. Topics will include southern musical idioms such as blues, jazz, country, rock and roll, and soul; the powerful right-wing evangelism of Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson; the regional literary genius of William Faulkner, Ralph Ellison, Flannery O’Connor, Ishmael Reed, Zora Neale Hurston and Charles Chesnutt; and the populist politics of George Wallace (later refined by Reagan, Clinton and the Bushes), with its grasp of blue-collar values and suburban anxieties. Readings may include selections from Jefferson’s Notes on Virginia, the essay collection I’ll Take My Stand, H. L. Mencken’s “The Sahara of the Bozarts,” and brief samples from fiction writers and poets.
WSII: Justice and Contested Categories: Race, Class, Gender
K10.0655 WSII, 4 CR MW 3:30-4:45 Catherine Siemann
This course will examine law and justice issues specifically surrounding women, minorities, and members of non-privileged classes. Topics for reading and writing might include the history of women’s property rights, women’s suffrage, maternal surrogacy, civil rights movement issues (school desegregation, voting rights), immigration, equal access to justice, and the rebuilding of New Orleans after Katrina. Readings may include historical, literary, journalistic and theoretical works by Patricia Williams, Frantz Fanon, Virginia Woolf, Cynthia Ozick, Susan Glaspell, and Judge Leon Higginbotham. Papers will center on description, analysis, and literary criticism, and the final research paper will be on a related topic of the student’s own choosing.
WSII: Memory and Memorials
K10.0656 WSII, 4 CR TR 9:30-10:45 Alison Perry
Debates about how best to honor 9/11 victims while rebuilding Ground Zero highlight the importance of architecture and geography as ways of remembering. In this course we read and write about the memorials various cultures and nations create to remember significant past events and historical figures. We explore both smaller monuments like statues and larger memorial sites such as Ground Zero or Gettysburg. We also consider literature and popular culture as repositories of memory. Readings by Marita Sturken, Dori Laub, Shoshana Felman and Ron Eyerman may be included. Students will write shorter critical essays about memorials and a research essay based on a particular memorial site.
WSII: The Culture of Sports
K10.0657 WSII, 4 CR MW 12:30-1:45 Pamela Burger
What role do sports play in contemporary culture? This course examines how different “sports writers,” including sociologists, journalists, essayists and novelists, describe and interpret the athletic experience. One primary area of inquiry will concern the ways sports can determine individual and group identities. How do sporting events provide spectacle, community, or even religious experience? To what extent do issues of race and gender shape our understanding of the athletic ideal? As part of our investigation, we will examine historical competition, from the ancient Olympics to the World Cup. Readings may include works by Roland Barthes, David Foster Wallace, Pamela Colloff, Malcolm Gladwell, Leslie Heywood, and Bernard Malamud. Brief analytic writings throughout the semester will lead to a final research paper on the topic.
WSII: Emotion and Thought
K10.0658 WSII, 4 CR TR 4:55-6:10 James Hatch
Emotion is difficult to describe and more difficult to account for. In writing a series of essays on emotion, we’ll explicate, contrast, and analyze different views of emotion and examine some of the problems emotion has raised for philosophers, scientists, and artists. In writing these essays, we’ll look at the big questions involved, such as: Is emotion a hindrance to thinking or is it a form of thought? Is emotion part of our human uniqueness, or is it part of our indelible animal nature? Our essays will prepare us for a final research paper on one “school of thought” about emotion or on one of the issues raised by the course. We will read short excerpts from various philosophers, scientists, and writers such as Freud, Sartre, Silvan Tomkins, Darwin, Camus, and Tolstoy.
WSII: Writing Ethnicity
K10.0659 WSII, 4 CR MW 4:55-6:10 Jaime Cleland
In this course, we will consider, through formal and informal writing assignments, the special challenges of reading and writing ethnicity. Members of minority groups often deal with the pressures of writing as a minority group member and must consider the different expectations of “insider” and “outsider” audiences. Yet, these writers are also individuals affected by forces other than their ethnic identifications: gender, class, historical events, family and friends, the media, and personal experiences. Above all, they are writers who creatively reshape the world around them transforming it into literature. In writing assignments—online discussion board responses, in-class writing, short essays—that will culminate in a research paper, we will address the meaning and responsibilities of ethnicity. Readings may include Richard Rodriguez, Maxine Hong Kingston, Eva Hoffman, Dalton Conley, and others. Our own texts will also be a major subject of discussion through in-class workshops.
WSII: Self-Representation in Writing
K10.0660 WSII, 4 CR MW 12:30-1:45 Megan Obourn
This class looks at intersections between the personal essay, autobiography, social/political writing, as well as visual art forms that address issues of social and personal representation. We will engage in depth with questions of self-reflexivity, representation of the self and the other, identity, voice (who speaks how and for whom), authenticity, and cultural (dis)placement. Readings will include essays by Virginia Woolf, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, Ralph Ellison, and Patricia Williams. Additionally, we will look at how social reportage, ethnography and autoethnography, semi-autobiographical fiction, travel writing, and literary criticism connect the personal to the social. Students will write one personally-oriented social essay at the beginning of the term, experiment with incorporating similar issues into other genres over the course of the semester, and return to one of these topics for the final research paper.
