BIG IDEAS COURSES
Big Ideas courses are co-designed
by two or more faculty members with expertise in different disciplines and
engage with more than one distribution area (thereby earning credit in those two distributional areas with a single course).
Students will be limited to one Big Ideas course per semester.
17532 |
IDEA 135 Games at Work: PARTICIPATION, PROCEDURE, AND PLAY |
Ben Coonley
Keith O'Hara |
M W 1:30pm-4:30pm |
RKC
100 AVERY 333 |
MC PA |
MATC PART |
Cross-listed: Computer
Science; Film and Electronic Arts; Experimental
Humanities 8 credits This course is an intensive, interdisciplinary
investigation of games and their pervasive role in contemporary life. What
constitutes a game? Why do people play them? What makes digital
games different from non-digital games? What roles do games play in
contemporary culture? How have game-like incentive systems and other forms of
"gamification" infused non-game contexts, such as social media,
fine art, democracy, education, war, and the modern workplace? Do games and
"gamer" culture effectively preclude,
privilege, include, or exclude certain groups, identities, and worldviews?
Course readings, screenings, and mandatory game play will augment and
inform our investigation of these questions and beyond. The primary
coursework will consist of game creation using tools and methodologies from
computer science and electronic art. Students will create original games
(non-digital and digital video games), both independently and in groups.
This work will be augmented by short assignments designed to build fluency
in visual art creation and interactive game design through short exercises in
coding in Javascript, visual design
applications, and Unity, a game design application. Assignments will push
students to develop experimental and critical approaches to game
creation. This course is restricted to
students in the lower college. Students with little experience playing games
and/or a healthy skepticism about the cultural and artistic value of games
are encouraged to apply. No prerequisites. Application procedure:
Email [email protected] and [email protected] one paragraph
(no more than 100 words) explaining your interest in taking this course. Class size:
16
17531 |
IDEA 220 Performing Race and Gender: Uncle Tom's Cabin on
Page and Stage |
Donna Grover
Jean Wagner |
M W 1:30pm-3:50pm |
RKC
103 |
AA LA D+J |
AART ELIT DIFF |
Cross-listed:
American Studies; Human Rights; Literature;
Theater 6 credits “So you’re the
little lady who started the war,” Abraham Lincoln allegedly told Harriet
Beecher Stowe. He was of course referring to her best-selling novel, Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, a seminal work of 19th century American literature. It also has
been adapted many times for the theater and performed all over the United
States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will examine the important
role this work played in the birth of American theater and culture. We will
begin with a close reading of the novel, then turn our
attention to the various theatrical adaptations that were produced and toured
the United States over the years. Among the questions that will be examined
include: What role did the novel and its theatrical adaptations play in the
formation of American culture; what do its theatrical adaptations tell us about
what it means to perform “American”? What does it mean for its archetypal
characters to be portrayed by performers of different races or genders? Also,
we will look at the uses or misuses of dramatic literature as a form of popular
entertainment and as well as early American propaganda. Important to our
inquiry is the relationship between Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Blackface and the roles
race and gender played in the creation of a contemporary American culture.
Other works to be examined include Spike Lee’s movie “Bamboozled,” the
contemporary Broadway hit “Hamilton,” George C. Wolf’s musical “The Colored
Museum,” and “Funnyhouse of a Negro” by contemporary
playwright Adrienne Kennedy. Close readings, in-class discussions, film
screenings, performance projects, personal essays field trips, museum visits
and other project-based explorations of texts will round out the class. Class size: 28
17582 |
IDEA 130 Chernobyl: the meaning of Man-Made Disaster |
Jonathan Becker
Matthew Deady |
T Th 11:50am-1:10pm LAB: W
10:20am-12:10pm |
HEG
102 HEG
107 |
LS SA |
SCI SSCI |
Cross-listed: Environmental
& Urban Studies; Human Rights; Political Studies; Russian & Eurasian
Studies; Science 6 credits We will employ the Chernobyl disaster as a
case study of the environmental and human consequences of technology. In April
1986, the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine suffered a major technical
problem leading to a meltdown in the reactor core. The radiation release and
ensuing clean-up operation required the Soviet authorities to evacuate a large
local region, affecting millions of people and leaving a region which is mostly
uninhabited to this day. Chernobyl remains the worst civilian nuclear accident
in history and its aftermath offers scientific, social, and political insights.
This “big ideas” course will take an interdisciplinary approach to the meaning
of Chernobyl: it will explore the issue of nuclear power, the social and
technological aspects of the plant’s construction and operation, what led to
the accident, the authorities’ response to it, and the environmental and social
impacts on the region since that time. Laboratory sessions will focus on the
physics of nuclear power and radiation, the biological effect of radiation, and
the environmental impact of the Chernobyl accident. Parallel consideration will
be given to its implications for Soviet governance, nuclear energy and
proliferation, and the social impacts of Chernobyl and human-created nuclear
and non-nuclear disasters. Examining this event in readings, lectures, and
laboratory investigations will foster a deeper appreciation of the complex and
interconnected contexts in which such disasters must be studied in order to be
understood. The course will feature guest lectures in science, politics, human
rights and literature, speaking on issues arising from the accident.
Class size: 16