LIBERAL ARTS SEMINAR
COURSE OFFERINGS
SPRING 2012
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Sections A and B: Animal Matters (Laurie
Sterling) MWF 10:00 and 11:00
Animals are inextricably intertwined with human history and culture. They figure prominently in
our folklore, language, families, food, economics, entertainment, and our science. Drawing on
the interdisciplinary field of animal studies, this seminar will examine the history and beliefs that
have shaped our complicated (and often contradictory) relationships with animals. We will also
address some of the issues and questions that such an examination provokes. Of particular
interest will be the way we talk about animals—the language, stories, and arguments that we
construct about them—and our relationship with them. We will begin interrogating the
human/animal divide: What do our language, history, and folklore tell us about our perceptions
of animals? What separates us from animals? What qualities do we share with them? We will
also explore the topics such as pet keeping; animals as food; animal protection, welfare, and
rights; and animals in sport and entertainment.
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Section C: Underground Texts in Soviet Russia (Beth
Admiraal) TT 11:00-12:15
What kind of writing goes underground in a place where total control rests with the
government? Some of it is explicitly political, but other texts are fantastical, surreal, deeply
personal, or even comical. This course examines some of the books, articles and poems that were
forced underground by the Communist Party in Soviet Russia and give us some insight into
everyday life in the Soviet Union. Readings include Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and
Margarita; Alexander Solzhenitsyn, One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich; selections from
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago; and Anna Akhmatova, various poems.
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Sections D and F: Wicked Pleasures (Regan Reitsma)
MWF 8:00 and 9:00
Say vice has its pleasures, does a morally good life have its own? Does envy, the supposed
engine of a consumerist society, have social and personal benefits? Does it have social and
personal costs? What are they? More generally, are human beings made for misbehavior and
selfishness, or do we have some capacity for empathy, fellow feeling, and fairness? Is moral
virtue positively correlated with happiness? Readings from various sources—literature
(Flannery O’Connor), moral philosophy (Plato, Nietzsche), evolutionary science (de Waal’s Our
Inner Ape), social science research (the Milgram and the Stanford Prison Experiments), and
popular magazines (The New Yorker)—will shape class discussion of the merits and demerits of
a moral life.
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Sections G and I: Myth Busters: The End of the
World and Other Weird Things (David Johnson) MWF 9:00 and 10:00
Weird things are all around us: aliens, UFOs, ghosts, ESP, psychics, mediums (who talk
to the dead), conspiracy theories (“9/11 was an inside job,” “vaccines cause autism”),
Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster—and didn’t the Mayan’s predict that the world would
end before the end of this year? But are any of these things real? Is there good reason to
believe those who claim they are true? These matters are not trivial; if the world is going
to end before the year is up, why are you in college preparing for your future? If those
who predict the end of the world are right, you have no future! In this class we will
explore, and you will learn how to think about, all manner of “weird things.” You will
likely conclude that most of them are bunk—pure myth. But you will also find out that
fact is sometimes weirder than fiction; some of the weirdest things—things you perhaps
have never even heard about—turn out to be true.
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Section J: Greed: Wealth and Ethics in Modern
America (Janet Mercincavage) TT 12:30
If “Greed” were an acronym, it might stand for Gains and Rewards on Everyone Else’s
Dime. There seems to be no end to the number of people who have recently managed to get very
wealthy at someone else’s expense. Over the last decade, anyone attentive to any form of media
could not escape the unsettling volume and varied forms of human greed exposed in activities
conducted in the normal course of daily business. This course will examine topics and issues
such as the role nature and nurture play in influencing human greediness and the rippling effect
that the actions of individual perpetrators have had on the wellbeing of relevant stakeholders
(such as citizens, family members, taxpayers, shareholders, and business enterprises). We will
look not only at the motives and actions of people driven by greed, but also, more important, at
the consequences of such illegal and immoral missteps.
CORE 100: Liberal Arts, Sections K and L: Social Networking: How Social Is It, Really?
(Anthony Grasso, CSC) 11:00 and 1:00
With the explosion of new media (Facebook, twitter, texting, etc.), we may assume that there is a
deeper sense of social bonding and community going on than there really is. Electronic
networking does bring people together faster around common issues, such a political activism,
and it has increased the speed at which knowledge and information has been accessed and
spread. But has it satisfied the average human need for ‘belonging’ which we all share? This
class will examine the pros and cons surrounding our current forms of communication, and the
cultural outlook they are creating, by focusing on topics such as: community versus isolation; the
role of the common good in how networking functions; personal privacy; appropriateness of
what gets communicated; and the depth of our interpersonal exchange or the lack thereof. Our
main texts will be, Michael Bugeja’s, Interpersonal Divide: The Search for Community in a
Technological Age (NYC: Oxford UP, 2005); articles from diverse sources such as, Charles
Derber, The Pursuit of Attention (NYC: Oxford UP, 2000); “The Common Good in American
History”; current articles from media sources; and videos. These will be closely analyzed and
discussed. Written assignments flow from the readings, and from topics related to the course
theme.
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Sections M and N: Hey! Watch Your Language! (James
Wallace) MWF 10:00 and 12:00
In this seminar we’ll explore ways in which the English language is used to convey information,
express emotion, influence opinion, and provide entertainment. We’ll examine the power of
language in advertising, politics, and the media and look at how language shapes and
manipulates our perceptions and values. We’ll look at several topics of current interest including
political correctness, hate speech, censorship, and whether English should be declared the
official language of the United States. We’ll consider gender differences in language; listen to
dialects; look at prejudicial language, slang, and cursing; and examine the variety of English that
shows up in text messages and on line. Readings will include classic and contemporary essays
and arguments about the nature and use of language and one novel, Apex Hides the Hurt, by
Colson Whitehead.
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Sections O and P: Unruly Women and Iron Men (Megan
Lloyd) TT 9:30 and 11:00
This course investigates the strong female in literature, history and society and explores the
attitudes and anxieties about power that smart, assertive women generate. It also examines the
iron man, the patriarchal male, the metrosexual and asks, “Are men and women really that
different from one another?”
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Sections Q and R: Peace and Social Justice: What are
the Alternatives to Violence? (Noreen O’Connor) MWF 12:00 and 1:00
The peace sign is so popular today as a fashion symbol, we can find it on everything from
expensive designer jewelry to complete dorm bedroom sets. But if everyone-- large nations to
simple individuals-- claims to want peace, why is there so little of it? Why is violence routinely
used as the way to settle conflicts, whether across an ocean or across the living room? And one
more question: what do we really know about the alternatives to violence?
Students in this course will consider a variety of voices and ideas about nonviolent means of
solving human problems. Students examine the theory and practice of nonviolent social change
and explore the ideas of Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Mohandas K. Gandhi, and
Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day, Charles Chaplin, and more. We will read essays, poems,
stories and reports, consider and analyze plays, films, and art to study nonviolence. This course
is for those who are intellectually brave, spiritually alive, socially engaged, and lovers of longshots.
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Section S: Horses and Their Humans: From Black
Beauty to Barbaro (Anne Massey) MWF 12:00
From Black Beauty to Barbaro the horse has captured hearts and imaginations. The ruse of the
Trojan horse helped to fell an army. Don Quijote’s beloved Rocinante carried him to battle
against a host of imaginary foes. Horses were instrumental in the Spanish conquests in the New
World. Robert E. Lee commanded the Confederates from his vantage point atop Traveler.
Seabiscuit eased the ache of a nation torn by the economic trauma of the Great Depression.
Today the equine industry has a $102 billion impact on the US economy. This course will
explore the horse through the lenses of historical accounts, literature, and articles on the use and
abuse of horses in the 21st century equine industry. Readings will include Laura Hillenbrand’s
Seabiscuit: An American Legend, excerpts from Alois Podhajsky’s My Dancing White Horses,
short stories, poetry, and articles.
CORE 100: Liberal Arts Seminar, Section T: Mapping the Ghetto: The Venetian Ghetto in
History and Memory (Daniel Clasby) TT 2:00
In this course we will "map" the use of the word ghetto in a world history context. This course is
multidisciplinary in design and incorporates a wide variety of scholarship, including academic
surveys, Shakespeare's the Merchant of Venice, Renaissance poetry written by Venetian Jewish
women, and postcolonial fiction. From the academic vantage point of urban culture and
architecture, art history, Italian and Jewish literature and history we will study the ways in which
Venice and its Jewish community, which had its organizational beginnings in the Ghetto, is a
microcosm of European and world history. We will shift focus in the second half of the course
and examine how the idea of the ghetto has been used and abused in more contemporary times.
We'll look at the ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe and compare them to the use of the word to
describe areas where poverty persists and opportunity is all but lost for marginalized people,
especially in a global context. We'll also examine the expropriation of the word in various
contexts and look to see whether ghettoization must always describe a persecuted existence of
confinement and powerlessness or if, as in the case of modern hip-hop music, it can be used to
empower someone and to criticize the social condition and the politics of a nation, as well as
signify community and identity.