COURSE DESCRIPTIONS WINTERMESTER 2013/14
COURSE NO: 2303-001
DAY & TIME: MTWRF 8.00-11.45 AM
COURSE TITLE:
INSTRUCTOR:
This course assumes that good poetry doesn’t necessarily need to draw from a (boring) past. Fine,
engaging poetry may also find its material in what we all already (think we) know. For this reason,
all of the poems we will read this session appeal in some manner to popular (some might call it low,
but not us) culture in order to say something, if not new, then hopefully useful. So, we will read fine
poems about Superman, Godzilla, Barbie, cartoon characters, all with an eye to discovering what
these poems share with the poetic tradition without having to repeat that tradition verbatim.
Texts: Universal Monsters, Brian Dietrich; Kinky, Denise Duhamel; Monster Zero, Jay Snodgrass;
Hurdy Gurdy, Tim Seibles; various works available in class or online
COURSE NO: 2303-002
DAY & TIME: MTWRF 1.00-4.45 PM
COURSE TITLE: AYN RAND: FICTION AND/AS PHILOSOPHY
INSTRUCTOR: PORTER, KEVIN
Ayn Rand, who was born in Russia in 1905 and who emigrated to the United States in 1926, is easily
the most recognizable philosopher of the twentieth century—that is, if one recognizes her as a
philosopher in the first place; for no other intellectual in the twentieth century has aroused so
passionate and acrimonious a debate about whether her work is “worthy” of being called
“philosophy” (with Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger standing as a distant second and third).
The lingering controversy surrounding her legacy since her death in 1982 is perhaps befitting
someone whose fictional heroes were often as uncompromising and idealistic—and repugnant,
depending upon one’s point of view—as their author. In this course, we will critically engage Rand’s
major fictional texts, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). Drawing upon the work
of political commentators, we will also consider whether—or to what extent—Rand’s prophetic
vision of the political, cultural, economic, and moral dissolution of the United States in Atlas
Shrugged is taking place before our very eyes.
COURSE NO: 2303-003
DAY & TIME: MTWRF 1.00-4.45 PM
COURSE TITLE: ENVIRONMENTAL LIT & FILM
INSTRUCTOR: ALAIMO, STACY
This course will introduce you to some of the most important environmental issues of the 21st
century, via an exciting array of recent literature and films. The course will cover a range of topics,
questions, and issues in the environmental humanities, with a focus on American literature and
film. Cultural, historical, philosophical, ethical, and political contexts and questions will be
discussed, along with careful analyses and interpretations of the literature and the films. The
literature will include novels, autobiography, science fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The films will
include animation, documentary, and activist films. The class features the following topics:
Indigeneity and Environmental Justice; Toxins, Science, and the “Ordinary Expert”; Climate
Change; and Genetic Engineering, Extinction, and Biodiversity. Students will take 3 exams, plus a
final exam.