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 Plato, Kant, Baudelaire, Thomas Mann, Arthur Danto, 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: Creative Minds
K10.0630 WSII, 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Ellen Blaney

What sparks the creative mind? How is an artist’s vision developed and received? What factors determine one’s reception and reputation over time? In this course, we will examine the influences that have shaped the projects of writers, filmmakers and other creative thinkers and the ways that their work, in turn, has become influential. Our inquiry will consider the evolution of an individual’s creative vision as we study early and later works along with their critical reception. Students will write several critical essays that prepare them for a research paper on a particular artist’s development and achievement. Our inquiry may include selections from Jane Campion, Sigmund Freud, Alice Walker, and Virginia Woolf.

WS II: Truth or Fiction? Memory and Storytelling
K10.0634 WSII, 4 CR MW 12:30-1:45 Judith Greenberg

How do we shape the stories we tell ourselves about our lives? And, conversely, how do the stories we tell ourselves about our lives shape us? At the interface of what lies on the printed page and what lies within individual memory lies a process of interpretation and manipulation—the process of writing. This course will explore how memories are “written” in order to help students sharpen their own critical writing. The process of writing a series of papers over the course of the semester will serve as background for the final research paper. Readings and film will include Plato, Kurosawa, Sigmund Freud, Jorge Luis Borges, Virginia Woolf, Marguerite Duras, and Italo Calvino.

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: 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: 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: 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.

WS II: The Beat Generation
K10.0661 WSII, 4 CR R 3:30-6:10 Penny Vlagopoulos

The literary group known as the Beat Generation, which Jack Kerouac defined in terms as disparate as “inquisitive,” “beatific,” and “sympathetic,” erupted in the late 1940s, influencing innumerable readers over the years and attracting loyal adherents in each new generation. The radically innovative works produced by the Beats encouraged uniquely imaginative possibilities for life and art and thus provide a rich terrain for thinking about writing analytically. In this course, we will discuss writings by both major and lesser-known members of this group as we consider the social and political issues of the era, particularly the cold war aims of the U.S. in the 1950s and the shifting categories of race, gender, and sexuality. We will examine fiction, essays, memoirs, and poetry alongside important political documents and historical accounts. We will also watch pertinent films and listen to the jazz music that informed the larger culture of the period. Students will write a series of critical essays and creative responses about this movement and will work toward a final research project. Readings may include works by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Diane di Prima, Joyce Johnson, George Kennan, and Ann Douglas. Possible films include A Streetcar Named Desire and Rebel Without a Cause.

WSII: Writing the Environment
K10.0662 WSII, 4 CR MW 3:30-4:45 Catherine Siemann

In this class, we will look at ways of imagining and approaching the natural environment through writing. Beginning with the Romantic engagement with the natural sublime, we will examine writing about nature in its various manifestations, from travelogue to activism. Topics for reading and writing might include global warming, ecofeminism, sustainable engineering and architecture, and species extinction. Readings will include Wordsworth, Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Edward Abbey, and Al Gore, as well as other contemporary nature and environmental writing. Papers will center on description and criticial analysis, and the final research paper will be on a related topic of the student’s own choosing.

WSII: Writing about the “American Character”
K10.0663 WSII, 4 CR MW 9:30-10:45 Julie Bleha

We will examine the literary performance of the “American character” as we read works from our national literature. We use the trope of performance to begin a dialogue on the American voice, and we apply the tenets of logic and rhetoric to develop our writing on this theme. Through frequent in-class writing exercises, several short essays, and a longer research paper, we consider the following questions: How is the idea of America constructed? How does the dramatic canon represent America? What are the different American voices we read and hear? What and how does your critical writing voice add to the dialogue? Readings focus on essays on the American voice, character, and drama, and may include historical documents and works by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Gertrude Stein, William Faulkner, Tennessee Williams, John Lahr, Studs Terkel, Spalding Gray, Stephen Crane, and Suzan-Lori Parks. We will use examples from the theatre and cinema to counterpoint our readings.

WSII: Language and the Political
K10.0664 WSII, 4 CR TR 2:00-3:15 Andrew Libby

Can language affect politics? How have writers and activists sought to change society through changing language? How is rhetoric used politically, in essays, oratory, propaganda, and poetry? We will read arguments about the relationship of language and the political, examine political rhetoric, and look at literary works. We will write about rhetoric’s power to form and criticize political movements, such as movements for civil rights, rights for women, human rights, workers’ rights, and animal rights. We will explore how language participates in our ideas about rights, ethics, political action, and social justice. In the course of our inquiries, students will write three papers and one longer project, in which students research an area of social justice vital to them. Our sources may include passages from Plato, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Paine, Karl Marx, Mohandas Mahatma Gandhi, Hannah Arendt, Judith Butler, Martin Luther King, Jr., Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Spike Lee, and Ursula LeGuin.

WSII: Food Culture and Food Writing
K10.0665 WSII, 4 CR TR 3:30-4:45 Scott Korb

We love food and it haunts us. We indulge in it and abstain from it. It makes us sick and it heals us. We worry over where it comes from and serve it during our religious rituals. We pay a fortune for it and we give it away. Its preparation is a science and an art. Through a consideration of a variety of food writing—from primary sources, cookbooks, newspapers, magazines, and journals—this course asks students to consider the many, often contradictory, roles food has played, and continues to play, in culture. Through a process of writing, workshopping, and the all-important rewriting, students will have their own hand in the kitchen of the essay writer. Readings include essays by David Foster Wallace, M.F.K. Fisher, John McPhee, Ruth Reichl, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, and Michael Pollan.

WSII: Rooms of Our Own: Writing about Home
K10.0666 WSII, 4 CR TR 3:30-4:45 Cori Gabbard

In “East Coker,” T.S. Eliot writes, “Home is where one starts from.” Here, “home” refers to a place that is private rather than public and associated with family rather than with the broader community. In this course, we will examine the relationship between the private and public realms through an exploration of the spaces in which we live. Thinking about, say, a cottage in the woods or a “room with a view,” we will attempt to answer the following questions: To what extent is home a private place? What are the boundaries between private life and public life? To what extent do notions of domesticity remain consistent over time? What relationship exists between “domestic” as it refers to the “home, house, or household” and “domestic” as it refers to “one’s own country or nation”? Texts to be discussed may include works by E.M. Forster, Virginia Woolf, Carol Rumens, Tom Stoppard, Kazuo Ishiguro and Carol Ann Duffy. We may also consider this theme through other media, such as posters, diaries and letters. Students will write three short essays and a longer research paper.

WSII: Reflecting on Illness and Disease
K10.0667 WSII, 4 CR MW 11:00-12:15 Annette Snape

From the bubonic plague to AIDS, illness has captured the imagination of writers, artists, and other thinkers for centuries. Pestilence and contagion, whether individual or epidemic, of the body or of the mind, have long inspired fear and continue to do so today, despite the progress of modern medicine. How has societal dis/ease with disease affected its representation? As a weakness of character, a weakness in the body politic? Is the verbal and visual depiction of illness an act of containment, resistance, revision, or censure? In this course we will explore a range of interdisciplinary texts, including literature, drama and film, and psychoanalysis, to examine the many ways illness has been constructed as a reflection of or response to social norms, moral codes, historical events, and cultural conventions. Students will write several critical essays and a research paper on a particular representation of disease and its reception. Our inquiry may include texts by Sigmund Freud, Henry James, Jamaica Kincaid, Tony Kushner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Susan Sontag, Vincent van Gogh, and Virginia Woolf.

WSII: The Colonized Imagination
K10.0668 WSII, 4 CR TR 9:30-10:45 Irwin Leopando

This course will examine the enduring cultural and psychological legacy of colonialism. We will consider texts in a wide range of genres, including fiction, essays, socio-political analysis, and critical theory. We will also “read” the practices and narratives of our everyday lives to explore how the dynamics of colonialism might be occurring in subtle and unrecognized ways. Along with close analysis of texts, the class will emphasize the practice of writing as a continuous process of reflection, invention, and revision. The class aims to introduce students to scholarly research as well as highlight the ethos, rhetoric, and conventions of academic/critical discourse. Three short essays and a final research paper are required. Readings may include works by Joseph Conrad, Albert Memmi, Frantz Fanon, Paulo Freire, Salman Rushdie, Chinua Achebe, Jamaica Kincaid, and Arundhati  Roy.