HUMANITIES COURSES:
|
15480 |
HUM
135 WHAT IS CATHOLICISM? |
Joseph Mali |
…Th. |
4:40pm- 6:00pm |
OLIN 205 |
|
1
credit In this short course, students will learn about the fundamentals of Catholic
thought and ritual, both in terms of their historical development and
contemporary relevance. Students will study how Catholicism is different from
other forms of Christianity, such as Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy.
Questions to be addressed include: In what ways has the Catholic Church changed
over the centuries, and in what ways has it remained the same? What is
distinctive about its theology, its morality, its liturgy, its sacraments, and
its calendar? The course will pay particular attention to the relation between
Holy Scripture and Church tradition, between the authority of the magisterium
and individual conscience, and between Catholic doctrine and the literature,
art, and music it has inspired. This course will have
8 class meetings, dates to be announced. Class
size: 20
|
15614 |
HUM
325 HOW TO FORM AN OPINION |
Seth Lipsky |
…Th. |
1:30pm -3:50pm |
ARENDT CENTER |
|
4 credits The
art of writing editorials, columns and blog posts – and getting them published.
This course focuses not on what to think but on how to form an opinion and
write an essay, column or blog posting that will get past an editor and into
print. Emphasis is laid on the role of reporting and on the competitive nature
of journalism. Each class is broken into two parts. The first half is a
discussion of famous examples of opinion writing. These include “Is There a
Santa Claus?”, which was issued in the September 21, 1897, edition of the New
York Sun and is the most widely reprinted piece in all of journalism; “A Job
for the Summit,” the Wall Street Journal editorial that in June 1979 moved the
seven leaders of the industrial world to scrap their agenda for the Tokyo
Summit and focus on the plight of the Indochina refugees; “Twilight of the Kings,”
the Chicago Tribune’s editorial on the outbreak of World War I; and Jimmy Breslin’s famous column on the assassination of President
Kennedy. The second half is conducted as an editorial board meeting in which
students pitch essays and an editor reasons them out. This is the time in which
students are taught the craft of pre-meditating a strategy for getting a piece
past an editor and into print – the role of original reporting, the tactic of
writing about an event before it happens, and the value of rhetoric and style.
Assignments are made. Finished pieces are shared and discussed with the class. Class size: 15
COLLEGE
SEMINAR: THE PRACTICE OF COURAGE
While we tend to value courage—Hannah Arendt even called
it the highest political virtue—historically the concept has veered from the
noble to the dangerous. From Antigone to suicide bombers, courage has been
construed as heroic and/or dangerously solipsistic. This series of seminars
asks the question: What is the practice of courageous action in the 21st
century? Courses are open to Sophomores and Juniors
and are limited to 16 students. Students are required to attend three evening
lectures on Mondays from 6-8. There will also be dinner discussions with guest
speakers and students from other sections of the College Seminar.
|
15216 |
LIT 2281
THE PRACTICE OF COURAGE: FROM MARTYRS TO SUICIDE
BOMBERS |
Karen Sullivan |
. T .
Th . |
10:10am- 11:30am |
OLIN 204 |
ELIT |
Division:
Languages and Literature
Cross-listed: Human Rights Is it courageous to stand up for a cause in which you
believe, even to the point of dying for it? In Western history, many of the
individuals who have been most admired for their bravery are those who have
willingly accepted death for a higher purpose, whether that purpose be
intellectual (Socrates), religious (Jewish, Christian, or Muslim martyrs), or
political (Thomas Becket, Mahatma Gandhi, Bobby Sands). But what if the cause
for which the martyr wishes to sacrifice herself is
not a good cause? What if the martyr is driven, not only by a desire for
justice, but by a desire for glory or even for death? What if the martyr is
willing to sacrifice, not only his life, but the lives of other people around
him? What is the relation between martyrdom and fanaticism? In an effort to
answer these questions, we will be considering a series of historical moments
that produced martyrs, including the persecution of the early Christians, the
Battle of Karbala, the Crusades, the Protestant Reformation, the Jesuit
missions in Asia and
|
15514 |
LIT 2282 THE PRACTICE OF COURAGE: HEROISM OR HUBRIS? |
Marina
van Zuylen |
. T . Th . |
3:10 pm – 4:30 pm |
OLIN 310 |
ELIT |
Division:
Languages and Literature
Plato
distrusted literature's ability to complicate, rather than to present
straightforwardly an identifiable moral landscape. With its allegories and polyphonic voices,
its multiple narratives, its deliberate silences, literature obscures our
access to pat answers about good and evil, vice and virtue. Reading a historical account of courage or
cowardice is radically different from its being conveyed in a poem, a play, or
a novel. This class will examine how
writers have disguised and distorted a quality such as courage to convey the
multi-faceted nature of human motives and motivation. Each of our examples of courage will be read
in clashing ways. Is Antigone's heroism
a mark of hubris? Shakespeare's Cordelia's refusal to lie
stubborness? Don Quixote's idealism
insanity? Melville's Bartleby's
standing up to authority obstructionism?
Are Camus' The Plague and Saramago's Blindness
allegories of courage or narratives of the absurd?
Class size: 16
|
15029 |
CLAS 228 THE PRACTICE OF COURAGE: MILITARY & CIVILIAN
COURAGE |
William Mullen |
M . W . . |
1:30pm-2:50pm |
RKC 200 |
HUM |
Division:
Languages and Literature
he courage of warriors is an unending theme. So is the courage shown by civilians who
resist oppression and speak out to power. This section of “The Practice of Courage”
will put the two kinds of courage in dialogue with each other, using plays,
speeches, poetry, biography and films, in a scope from ancient
|
15373 |
PS 269 THE PRACTICE OF COURAGE: Self-Thinking AND Political CouragE FROM ANTIGONE TO EDWARD
SNOWDEN |
Roger
Berkowitz |
M . W . . |
1:30pm-2:50pm |
|
HUM |
Division:
Social Studies
Cross-listed: Human
Rights, Philosophy
An anonymous protestor in a white shirt faced down tanks in Tiananmen Square
and halted a massacre. Rosa Parks would not get up and launched the civil
rights movement. And Wendy Davis would not sit down and helped galvanize
women’s advocates across the country. What makes some people dare to speak truth
to power and resist injustice while others cooperate in oppression or evil?
Political courage comes not from a superhuman morality but flows from internal
strength. Only those who know themselves and love themselves can risk
themselves, secure in the belief that what they do is right and just.
Courageous actors are self-thinkers who have the courage to be who they are
even when ‘who they are’ is dangerous for the status quo. But how are we to
understand and nurture the genesis of spiritual and moral courage in the face
of a world increasingly beset by impersonal and bureaucratic systems of evil?
Where can we find the courage to be advocates for good in world where all the
incentives lead us to turn quietly away?
MODERN
LITERACIES COURSES
Modern Literacies courses are designed to introduce
students from all disciplines to forms of analysis and modes of thinking that
represent, process, and convey information. These approaches to information
increasingly mediate our experience of the world, and might include coding,
statistical analysis, visual data analysis, and the analysis of geographic or
spatial information. Two Modern Literacies courses will be offered each spring,
each for two credits. Students may take as many Modern Literacies courses as
they wish. Courses are intended for all students.
|
15581 |
ML 101 Data Visualization |
Keith O'Hara |
. T . Th . |
10:10am- 11:30am |
RKC 100 |
N/A |
2
credits Datasets,
and their graphical manifestations, are a common mode of argument and
persuasion in modern daily life. This class will challenge students to
critically engage with the rhetorical function of information visualization.
This criticism (i.e. reading) will be complemented and reinforced by creating
new visualizations (i.e. writing), a process that is part science, part design
and part art. In this short course, students will use a variety of
computational platforms including pencil and paper, spreadsheets, software
visualization toolkits, and their own small programs to bring datasets to
graphical life. The pitfalls and advantages of various methods of presenting
numeric, geographic and textual datasets will be constructed and deconstructed.
No prerequisites. The course meets twice
a week during the last seven weeks of the semester. This Modern Literacy course does not satisfy the MATC distribution
requirement. Class size: 20
|
15582 |
ML 102 Uncertainty and Variation |
John Cullinan |
M . W . . |
3:10pm-4:30pm |
RKC 200 |
N/A |
2
credits This
is a non-technical introduction to the ideas of statistics and how they are
used and portrayed in politics, science, economics, and the media. This course will center around
readings that convey the big ideas of the subject with no mathematical
prerequisites. By focusing on real-world
case studies, we will learn to critique the use and misuse of statistics in
everyday life. The course meets twice a
week during the first seven weeks of the semester. This Modern Literacy course
does not satisfy the MATC distribution requirement. Class
size: 18