2012 Seminars

1. Analyzing the causes of pediatric obesity

In 2001, US Surgeon General David Satcher warned that obesity had reached epidemic proportions in America. Unfortunately, since then, the situation has continued to deteriorate. This course examines the complex issues involved in understanding one aspect of this epidemic, childhood obesity, at the individual and at the societal level. At one level, obesity results when energy intake is not balanced by energy expenditure. But, there are deeper causes as well that are embedded in the obesogenic environment. This seminar will go beyond simply reading and discussing this topic because an important component of this seminar will be learning how to perform basic statistical analysis of data on this topic. Students signing up for this seminar will become more comfortable using numbers to make their point. They will also be expected to do their own empirical analysis and explain that analysis to others.

Professor: Steve Erfle, IB&M
Time: 11:30 MWF

2. Ancient Democracy: A Modern View

Born in ancient Greece, democracy is the most important original contribution to humanity, literally shaping public life, personal freedom, civil rights, education and intellectual advancement ever since, therefore forming the cornerstone of our modern ‘western’ civilization. This seminar ventures an interdisciplinary investigation of ancient democracy (with special emphasis on the ancient Athenian democracy), its origins, history and evolution, rise and fall, and its diachronic legacy. This interdisciplinary survey will involve a complex multivariate approach and a challenging synthesis of diverse evidence, including the archaeological record (monuments and finds); iconographical evidence in contemporary sculpture and vase-painting; select ancient literary sources and testimonia; historical accounts and epigraphic evidence on the laws, principles, structure, organization and function of various democratic institutions, offices, and procedures. Discussions will then focus on the pathology of democracy, an analysis of its diagnostic features and diachronic values, and an evaluation of the legacy and influence of ancient democracy on the earliest modern democratic systems (USA 1776, France 1789-93, Greece 1821-1830) and the variant forms and efficiency of its modern revivals.

Professor: Christofilis Maggidis, Anthropology
Time: 11:30 MF

3. Between two worlds: Mexican Americans in United States

*This seminar has been designated as part of the Learning Community, “Immigration to the U.S.” 

Although immigrants have entered the United States from virtually every nation in the world, Mexico has long been identified in the public imagination as one of the primary sources of the economic, social, and political problems associated with mass migration. Mexican immigration has a long and complex history with many dimensions that requires a thoughtful examination to completely understand it. The basic premise of this course is that Americans of Mexican descendancy are products of both Mexican and United States cultures. Unlike other ethnic groups, Mexican Americans, mainly because of uninterrupted Mexican immigration and their close proximity to Mexico, have retained strong historical, economic, political, linguistic, and cultural ties to their ancestral homeland. This course will focus on how Mexican Americans have developed a unique character which allows them to acclimate themselves to United States society while, at the same time, enables them to understand the Mexican ethos. This course explores Chicana/o’s experiences and voices from the nineteenth century to the present through films, music, literary texts, historical documents and critical articles. We examine how Chicanas/os become aware of their realities as well as how they construct and negotiate their identity in the U.S. as a process of building their own voices. In particular, we will closely look at related issues such as migration, bilingualism, multi-national citizenship, race, ethnicity, gender and border culture.

Professor: Hector Reyes Zaga, Spanish
Time: 11:30 MWF

4. Biomedical Ethics: Cases and Quandaries

Medical treatment and research confront us with a bewildering set of questions: Is it murder if a patient dies after life sustaining treatment is withheld or withdrawn? Should doctors or family members force an unwilling patient to accept treatment? Must medical researchers tell potential test subjects about the likelihood of harm and the improbability of benefit from an experimental treatment? Should every possible treatment be used to save the life of very premature or sick newborns?

We all grapple with questions such as these during our lives, and the goal of this seminar is to help us ask them while understanding their connections to other questions, values, fears and hopes. This seminar will probe beneath the surface of cases in biomedical ethics to explore the moral complexities they raise and to develop principles and methods to help guide our thinking.

Professor: Susan Feldman, Philosophy
Time: 12:30 MWF

5. Bob Dylan’s Music and Jungian Psychology

This course deals with Bob Dylan’s Pulitzer Prize winning lyrics and music. Students explore the mysteries of Dylanesque themes and figures through the lens of C.G. Jung’s analytical psychology. Students are introduced to Jung’s distinction of positive and negative aspects of arch-types, such as the wise old man, the hero, the great mother, the devil, God, which influence the quest to become oneself rather than somebody else. Students apply Jung’s map of the soul to Dylan’s songs and compare their findings with alternative interpretations. In this process, students learn about the merits and possible limitations of the Jungian approach to the integration of knowledge as a precondition for the process of human individuation.

Professor: Sebastian Berger, Economics
Time: 12:30 MWF

6. Chasing the Flying Car: A History of the Future

*This seminar has been designated as part of the Learning Community, “Utopia/Dystopia.” 

Americans have developed clear ideas about what the future will look like. It will contain, in no particular order, pills as food, robot servants, flying cars, and the punk hairstyles of post-apocalyptic fashion. It will bring inevitable technological and economic progress and equally inevitable civilization-wide collapse. Over the last two centuries certain specific visions of the future have taken their place as recognizable parts of American culture, influencing everything from new technologies to fashion, to social policy. In this class we will track some of these visions through a variety of historical documents, including utopian plans, environmental projections, and works of science fiction. We will investigate how Americans have come to believe particular stories about the future, and how those beliefs have changed the world they inhabit today.

Professor: Emily Pawley, History
Time: 12:30 MWF

7. Chinese Attitudes towards the Environment

This course explores the Chinese attitudes towards nature and the environment from 3000 years ago to now. This attitude has been changing, as it evolves over time and as it is influenced by the West in the 20th century. Our exploration starts from the creation myths of Pan Gu and Nu Wa, which tell us the ancient Chinese worshiped nature as their God. From there we move to the prose and poetry of the Taoist, Confucian and Zen Buddhist classics: Zhuang Zi, The Analects of Confucius, Book of Songs and Zen poetry. These formed the tradition of environmental writing in Chinese literature. In Part II, we will examine the representation of nature and the symbolic meaning of it in Chinese art and culture, in landscape painting, flower and bird painting, construction of gardens, Banzai and rocks, the aesthetics of porcelain, Feng Shui (geomantic configuration of tombs and houses) and basic theory of Chinese medicine. In these areas, nature is larger than the physical environment. It is cosmopolitan and symbolic. Yet the two are inseparable. In the third part, we will read fiction and analyze films by well-known contemporary writers and directors such as A Cheng and Zheng Yi, who depict serious environmental problems in China today: deforestation, climate change, depletion of natural resources and extinction of animal and tree species. We look at changes in people’s attitudes towards the environment and the causes of such changes. With such a long range perspective and heightened awareness about the environmental issues, maybe we can re-imagine China’s development in a more sustainable way.

Professor: Rae Yang, East Asian Studies
Time: 11:30 MF

8. Democracy in the 21st Century World

The 20th century ended on a note of democratic optimism as the number of countries with democratic governments was at an all-time high and authoritarian regimes seemed to be on the defensive. In the early 21st century, however, some of this optimism has waned. Key countries such as China have continued to resist the democratic trend, other countries such as Russia that once seemed to be moving in a democratic direction have been backsliding to authoritarianism, and, despite the promise of the Arab Spring, democracy has yet to establish deep roots in the Islamic world. Even the long-established democracies of North America and Western Europe have been plagued by problems of governance that threaten to undermine the legitimacy of the democratic idea. In this seminar, we will begin by defining democracy, discussing its advantages and disadvantages as a form of government, and exploring the factors that are most conducive to the emergence of democratic regimes. Then we will survey the status of democracy around the world. Since 2012 is a presidential election year in the U.S., we will use that as an occasion to also reflect on the health and viability of democracy in the United States.

Professor: Russ Bova, Political Science
Time: 11:30 MF

9. El Çid: Discovering the Medieval Epic Hero

In this course, we discover the epic hero, how he is made, how his feats are portrayed and passed down in historical documents, literary works, and present day media. Our study centers around the Çid, though comparisons are made to other Medieval heroes, historical and imagined. We explore what it is that draws us to the hero, what of him we see in ourselves, what draws him to those who portray heroes, and how that generates differing versions and accounts.

Professor: Abraham Quintanar, Spanish
Time: 12:30 MWF

10. Family Drama

Tolstoy said: “All happy families are alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." The family is often at the center of our history, our hopes, our dreams, and our very understanding of the world. What happens when the family unit is confronted with lies, substance abuse, illness? What happens as the family ages and children become adults, and parents become elderly? How does family define us? We will discuss these issues and more as we read plays from the modern and contemporary American theatre. As we read plays, we will discuss how the playwright works to create his meaning in the play, and what the play says about families and the individuals who make them up, and about society in general. Such plays as “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” “Fences,” “God of Carnage,” “Buried Child” and “August: Osage County” may be included.

Professor: Sha’an Chilson, English
Time: 11:30 MWF

11. Founders of Modern Discourse: Marx, Nietzsche, Freud

In this class we will examine some of the most important works by three authors who are considered the main founders of modern discourse. Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism, Nietzsche’s radical nihilism and Freud’s explorations into the collective and individual unconscious constitute the foundations upon which our contemporary visions of the world were constructed. Many philosophical, artistic and social movements originated through an intertextual dialogue (either in agreement or disagreement) with the theses put forward by these three thinkers. We will look at how these theories were (mis)appropriated throughout history and will try to determine whether or not they are still relevant in today’s world.

Professor: Tullio Pagano, French/Italian
Time: 11:30 MF

12. Getting the Boot: The Italian Experience in America

*This seminar has been designated as part of the Learning Community, “Immigration to the U.S.” 

Between 1880 and 1920, approximately 4.5 million Italians migrated to the United States in search of a better future. These immigrants descended from an extremely diverse nation without a common language or culture. This course intends to explore the multifaceted experience of Italian immigration to the United States by studying the history, culture, ethnicity and the construction of an Italian identity. What is the Italian-American identity and how is it situated in American culture and society? How does Italian immigration differ from other types of immigration to this country and how have these immigrant experiences converged? In this course, topics such as racism, stereotypes, xenophobia, myth-making, sexuality, cultural values, and language will be explored through works of literature such as Pietro Di Donato’s Christ in Concrete and Mario Puzo’s The Fortunate Pilgrim, films such as The Godfather and Big Night, media such as The Sopranos and Jersey Shore and music from artists such as Nicola Paone and Lou Monte. Students will also read texts and watch films dealing with other immigrant experiences, specifically those concerning Mexican immigration. The course will end on the subject of immigration in today’s Italy with the goal of exploring how a country known for immigration has reacted recently to the growing influx of legal and illegal immigrants to its own country.

Professor: James McMenamin, French/Italian
Time: 11:30 MWF

13. Green Music

There is a tremendous body of music that attempts, in various ways, to depict or evoke the natural world. We will listen to musical works ranging from Renaissance madrigals and birdsong imitations, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, to the works of French Impressionist and contemporary American composers, pausing in each instance to link them to contemporary and related works of art, literature, and philosophy. As we move through these historical and interdisciplinary portraits of nature, what perspectives are revealed? What is nature? Are we a part of it? What does it mean to us as a society and as individuals? Why is nature so important to the civilized world, and particularly to the imaginative lives of its artists? Can we discern, through the arts, a changing relationship between humans and the natural world? What are the historical roots of our current attitudes about wilderness, the land, environment, and how does our current preoccupation with green technology and sustainability fit into this historical picture? And, finally, how is it that music is capable of expressing these various environmental visions and attitudes?

Professor: Blake Wilson, Music
Time: 11:30 MWF

15-18. Ideas that Have Shaped the World

Why do ideas matter? What is the relationship between the individual and community? How can we define human nature? What is Justice? Are there universal moral principles? Or are our actions considered moral according to the moment and place in which we find ourselves? Explore these and other fundamental issues of humanistic inquiry through a series of compelling and influential texts. As a new initiative in Dickinson’s First-Year Seminar Program, fifteen faculty members from nine different disciplines developed this exciting course.

This year, fall 2012, five professors will join with students to read and discuss the work of authors as diverse as Homer, Plato, Augustine, Shakespeare, Labe, Nietzsche, Jefferson, Marx, DuBois, Duras, and Achebe. Faculty have focused the seminar reading list around the question, “How do the ideas of these authors – all from different cultures and eras – resonate across time and help us to understand our present experience within a global community?” Furthermore, studying carefully the work of outstanding thinkers, readers, and writers is one of the best ways to learn to read, think, and write well yourself. Because all sections of the course will read the texts simultaneously, conversations will extend beyond the classroom. The seminar also features six plenary lectures by guest speakers and Dickinson faculty on themes and issues central to the readings that students and faculty in all course sections will attend together.

Find additional information on the seminar, list of texts and faculty for 2012 on the Humanities Collective page.

15. Professor: Alyssa DeBlasio, Russian
Time: 11:30 MF

16. Professor: Mara Donaldson, Religion
Time: 11:30 MF

17. Professor: Kamaal Haque, German
Time: 11:30 MF

18. Professor Carol Ann Johnston, English
Time: 11:30 MF

20. Law & the War on Terrorism

Ten years have passed since the 9/11 attacks triggered the war on terrorism. During this decade, the United States has pursued a military strategy of defeating Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and affiliated groups. This military effort has posed new and difficult legal questions that have in turn required a reexamination of the proper balance between national security and civil liberties during wartime. Relevant policy areas include the scope of military detention, interrogation techniques, the targeting of U.S. citizens, and the use of military commissions to try terrorists charged with war crimes. Students will be introduced to a variety of perspectives on these issues and they will be engaged in independent research and analysis during the last third of the course.

Professor: Harry Pohlman, Political Science
Time: 11:30 MWF

22. Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics

The title of this seminar is a quotation typically attributed to the nineteenth century British statesman Benjamin Disraeli and later popularized in the United States by Mark Twain. While many believe that there is some truth in this statement, there is no arguing that we need statistics to help make sense of our complicated world. In this course we will learn about the persuasive power of data and how statistical evidence can be used to support both accurate and inaccurate claims. The focus will not be on learning to perform statistical analysis, but will concentrate on learning to critically evaluate statistical arguments from a layperson’s perspective.

Professor: Richard Forrester, Math/Computer Science
Time: 11:30 MWF

23. Lord of the Castle, Lady of the House

From Beowulf to Gosford Park, or “The Three Little Pigs” to Home Alone, the theme of the house under siege has been a staple of Western narrative. This seminar will examine a broad variety of literary and cinematic texts, most of them Anglo-American, with an eye to revealing what various treatments of the house-builder/house-holder/house-breaker motif might tell us about the artists who created them and the audiences for whom they were created. We’ll consider, among other things, the House as a shelter from the dangers of Nature; as a “golden world” of social elitism; as an icon of stifling traditions and attitudes; and as a nest for secret “evil.” One of our particular interests will be the way the home becomes a setting and tool for enforcing ideologies of gender. “Home” has been called “sweet” – “where the heart is.” Just how sweet the place, just how settled the heart, we’ll be exploring in classics like Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Coventry Patmore’s The Angel of the House, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day. We’ll also view and discuss films like Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, Bryan Forbes’ The Stepford Wives, and Sam Peckinpah’s Straw Dogs.

Professor: Tom Reed, English
Time: 11:30 MWF

24. Mental Illness: From Movies to Memoir

In the movie, Trainspotting, the actor, Ewan McGregor, portrays the character, Mark Renton, a young heroin addict. How accurate is the movie’s portrayal of drug addiction? What can we learn about drug addiction from watching a movie such as Trainspotting? This course will attempt to answer such questions by studying the topic of mental illness from a variety of perspectives. First, we will examine selected mental illnesses (e.g., drug addiction) from a scientific perspective, reading scholarly articles of a particular condition. Such articles will focus on the etiology, symptoms, treatment and prognosis of a particular illness. Second, we will examine mental illness from a “popular” or media account of the condition. To this end, we will read about selected mental illnesses as described in non-scholarly publications (e.g. Time Magazine) and depicted in classic movies (e.g., Psycho). Finally, we will examine mental illness from a “first-person” perspective, reading memoirs or autobiographies from people suffering from certain mental illnesses. In the end, the goal of the course is to help students recognize that our understanding of mental illness is influenced by the many ways mental illness is depicted and represented in our society.

Professor: Tony Rauhut, Psychology
Time: 12:30 MWF

25. On the Delivery of Healthcare

The historic and current contributions of medical science to the welfare of humankind are unarguably impressive. Dread diseases such as polio have all but been eradicated, major organ transplantation is considered routine, and life support systems can and do routinely maintain life in otherwise “brain dead” individuals. All of this progress has come at a cost however and amid these tremendous accomplishments lie unexamined consequences. Some of these consequences include the tremendous burden of cost and the dangerous notion of an infallible medical establishment. In this seminar, we will examine the impact of many of these lifesaving advances and the ethical challenges they present to our society. We will cover diverse topics ranging from a critical examination of how tomorrow’s health care practitioners are trained, to an evaluation of the controversial public policy of funding of health care. Readings for this course will include The Emperor of All Maladies, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Population 485 – Meeting Your Neighbors one Siren at a Time and readings from numerous professional clinical and research journals. Additionally, guest speakers and possible field trips to clinical practices, local hospitals, and rescue/ambulance services will serve to enrich our understanding of these timely issues.

Professor: Charles Zwemer, Biology
Time: 11:30 MWF

26. Picturing Health, Disease and Medicine

This seminar explores the ways in which health, disease and medicine have been depicted in art and visual culture. Starting with the nineteenth century, we will consider how a map helped solve London’s 1854 cholera outbreak by plotting patterns of water consumption. We will analyze how medicine was pictured in later nineteenth-century America through paintings such as Thomas Eakins’ The Gross Clinic (1875) and The Agnew Clinic (1889) and in medical displays on view at popular international expositions. We will also examine early twentieth-century government-sponsored health posters designed to communicate with a broad public on issues of health and hygiene. The course extends to the present day by considering recent debates in art history and disability studies on public sculptures such as the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial (1997) and Marc Quinn’s Alison Lapper Pregnant (2005).

Professor: Elizabeth Lee, Art/Art History
Time: 11:30 MF

27. Process and Invention in the Arts: The Pluralistic Nature of Creative Methods in the Digital Age

This seminar will strive to answer the question: where does a work of contemporary art come from? The class will debunk the notion of artistic genius in favor of a rigorous working process that stresses inventiveness, risk taking, and analytic thinking. The ability to fail and learn from mistakes will be emphasized. The class will be built around an active physical process of making, along with reading and writing about related topics. The role of digital technology in the current practice of contemporary art will be a central theme. Photoshop, printmaking, video, photography, painting, drawing, and sound will be among the topics investigated.

Professor: Todd Arsenault, Art/Art History
Time: 11:30 MF

28. Stand Up and Be a Man: Exploring Representations of Men, Manhood and Masculinity in Film, Literature and Art

What does mean it be to a man? Do we expect too much from men, be they brothers, fathers, friends, or ourselves? Who teaches boys to become men? How should men relate to women? How do women relate to men? How should men relate to other men? Regardless of your answers to these questions, issues surrounding what it means to be a man impact your life on a daily basis, whether you’re male, female, or transgendered. In this course we will study and question dominant and deviant notions of manhood, masculinity and maleness. We will study anthropological and sociological ideas about manhood across cultures. We will analyze, discuss and research representations of manhood in literature, art and film, and consider feminist interpretations of gender politics as well as the growing body of criticism in “men’s studies” that has arisen in along with feminist theory. From ancient mythology to today’s professional sports, videogames and films, men are frequently represented as violent, but scholars in men’s studies have advocated for more nuanced views of what it means to be a man. We will seek out these nuances, study representations of manhood from the past through to the present, and explore what it has meant and what it means today to stand up and be a man.

Professor: Ian Andrew MacDonald, French/Italian
Time: 11:30 MF

29. Sustainability and Renewable Energies

In this seminar we will take a closer look at what it ultimately means to live sustainably and to develop sustainable technologies. We will also investigate the concept of entropy and find that an understanding of entropy has fundamental implications on our individual as well as societal decisions. You will learn that it takes energy to keep entropy at a constant level and that, for example, our body would not be able to live for very long if we would not keep its entropy constant. We will also find that entropy is closely linked to energy inefficiencies, and that ultimately a sustainable society will have to rely on renewable energy sources. To this end we will do hands-on experimentation with evacuated tube solar collectors, solar concentrators, photovoltaic panels, solar air heaters, and wind turbines. As a consequence of this First-Year Seminar you should be able to save at least $100/month on the heating and air conditioning bill for the house that you will build or purchase after you graduate from Dickinson.

Professor: Hans Pfister, Dept. of Physics & Astronomy
Time: 11:30 MWF

30. Sustainability, Greening and Entrepreneurship: An Introduction to Ecopreneurship

The term ecopreneurship combines two words – ecological and entrepreneurship.
Ecopreneurship is generally defined as entrepreneurship with an emphasis on environmental sustainability. Ecopreneurs therefore are entrepreneurs who create value through innovation to achieve both environmental progress and market success. The literatures on entrepreneurship, environmental business management, and ecopreneurship will be reviewed in order to better define the ecopreneur’s role in creating environmental and economic benefit. The readings and classroom discussions will focus on specifically answering the following three questions: How does one define an ecopreneur? What factors support ecopreneurial activity and which serve as barriers? What policy frameworks would best promote a “greener” perspective among emerging and existing entrepreneurs? Beyond the classroom learning the class will be challenged, as nascent ecopreneurs, to submit a proposal to the Dickinson College Idea Fund  for consideration.

Professor: Dave Sarcone, IB&M
Time: 11:30 MWF

31. The 1970s: The Promise and Pitfalls of Liberation

Although the 1960s captures the American imagination as an era of democratic freedom, the 1970s promised liberation as well as exposed the limits of it. In this course, we will examine liberation as it was articulated through Black power, feminism, lesbian and gay pride, transnational peace and antiwar activism, environmentalism, and radical left- and right-wing organizations, along with various modes of expression and activism in pursuit of liberation. We will also explore major political and cultural turning points in this decade, including the rise (and fall) of disco and the origins of hip hop; the celebration of the U.S. bicentennial; racial and sexual integration on television; the ascendancy of the “Moral Majority” and the scandal known as Watergate; and the 444-day hostage crisis in Iran – all of which come back to the central theme of liberation, questioning who can achieve liberation, by what means, and at whose expense.

Professor: Stephanie Gilmore, Women’s and Gender Studies
Time: 11:30 MF

32. The Culture of Science

The fruits of science and engineering permeate our everyday lives from iPads and iPhones to the medicines that we take. How has basic scientific research informed these technological advances? Can we and should we maintain the current rate of technological and scientific progress? How are scientists viewed by US society and how does that contribute to the national dialogue on scientific funding and discoveries? In this seminar, we will examine the pursuit of scientific knowledge at both the societal level and the individual level. We will look broadly at how scientific discoveries, particularly in the fields of chemistry and biology, have impacted our modern life. We will learn about the historical role of public funding for scientific and technological advancement in the United States and discuss what is the role of the government and the public opinion in support of future scientific progress. Finally, we will consider the role of the individual in the scientific pursuit and the responsibility of scientists to communicate their discoveries to the general public.

Professor: Rebecca Connor, Chemistry
Time: 11:30 MWF

33. The Economics of Human Mating Behavior

This course will examine human mating behaviors studied in the context of evolutionary psychology and sexual selection theory. We will begin with a brief historical review of key themes in evolutionary psychology and then proceed to substantive topics, including problems of survival, mate preferences, sexual strategies (such as long-term and short-term mating strategies), parenting, jealousy, and sex differences. We will also discuss contextual issues related to mating behavior such as sex ratio. The sex ratio is typically reported for a given population in terms of the number of men per 100 women. When the sex ratio deviates significantly from 100 at ages when men and women most commonly marry, certain characteristic changes will take place in the relationships between them that will correspondingly have effects on the family and other aspects of society. We will discuss the effects of sex ratio on human mating behavior in the current college environment, as well as the impact of sex ratio on national populations and how it influences the global community as well.

Professor: Diane Brockman, Psychology
Time: 11:30 MF

34. The Evolution of a Cheeseburger

Why is our culture captivated by television shows such as Man vs Food, Bizarre Foods, and Man versus Wild? The answer may be embedded within our modern food industry which provides us with prepared, prepackaged, and predigested food. We have forgotten what food is, where it comes from, and even how to prepare it. In this course we will first explore the origins of food production (domestication of wild animals and plants) including geographic variation in the onset of food production and ultimately how this shaped human societies. Second, we will explore the modern food industry and its inevitable influence on our culture. Lastly, through hands-on field and farm experiences we will participate in producing and harvesting our own food, learn how to catch/harvest food from the wild, and how to prepare and preserve food for our consumption. Additional topics for collective study (depending on interest) may include: the advantages of cooked versus raw foods, the ethics of hunting, and why most wild animals were never domesticated.

Professor: Scott Boback, Biology
Time: 11:30 MWF

35. The Poetry of Place and Identity

Before the Internet, poetry relied on physical books, magazines, and even newspapers for distribution. Before print, poetry was a spoken art, with close affinities to song – hence rhyme and meter. In those early days, poetry by necessity had local audiences, so poets didn’t have to do much explaining about place and culture. Today, with worldwide communication quickly and widely available, locality and physical context are less central to our sense of identity. Often, the poem could have been written anywhere: You can hit “spin” on the Poetry Foundation’s poetry app and land on a poem about cartoons, the Iraq war, or the Roman empire. Yet individuals still long to identify themselves as members of specific groups, and as the particular “I” whose experiences matter, and to speak to earlier generations of writers. We’ll examine how many poets – with an emphasis on the contemporary – create a sense of place and negotiate their relationship to literary history. We’ll do lots of close readings of poems. You’ll write critical papers and a poem or two of your own. Among the likely poets: Elizabeth Bishop, Mark Doty, Robert Frost, Jorie Graham, Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, Maxine Kumin, Stanley Kunitz, Dave Smith, Natasha Trethewey, and Charles Wright.

Professor: Adrienne Su, English
Time: 11:30 MWF

36. The Politicization of Science

How do the politics of the day influence scientific discovery and how does scientific discovery shape the politics of the day? Should scientific inquiry be conceived of and executed in a vacuum insulated from influences of the political arena? How does science shape political discourse? These are some of the fundamental questions that will be addressed through the examination of historical and contemporary case studies including: 1) the birth of the modern environmental movement in the United States, 2) the teaching of evolution of public high schools, and 3) climate change.

Professor: Peter Sak, Earth Science
Time: 11:30 MWF

37. Transforming Lives: Social Justice Leaders of the 19th and early 20th Centuries

*This seminar has been designated as part of the Learning Community, “Social Justice.” 

This course will explore the lives, writings and activism of a range of 19th and early 20th century U.S. social justice leaders who were also serious intellectuals in their own right. Drawing from personal narratives, biographies and original writings we will focus on 19th century and 20th century suffrage activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony; Dorothy Day and Peter Maurin, socialists from the early 20th century who started the Catholic Worker Movement; and W. E. B. DuBois, the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard and one of the founders of the National Association to Advance Colored People (the NAACP). We will explore what propelled them to become social justice activists, the ways that their ideas and tactics changed over the course of their lives, and the influence that their work had on the lives of others. Toward the end of the semester you will have an opportunity to research a social justice activist of your own choosing. This seminar will include field trips to the College Farm and to local social justice organizations to see and compare the work of contemporary activists to that of these 19th and 20th century Americans.

Professor: Amy Farrell, American Studies
Time: 11:30 MF

38. Utopias, Dystopias, and Engineering “Progress”

*This seminar has been designated as part of the Learning Community, “Utopia/Dystopia.” 

For thousands of years humans have been thinking about and proposing “fixes” for their troubled social relations. Our course will focus on some of the proposed solutions. Course materials will range from philosophical approaches like Plato’s Republic and Marx’s and Engel’s Communist Manifesto to real life implementation by Robert Owen and intentional communities today. Literature has also explored these themes in trying to describe utopias, like Thomas More’s Utopia, and to warn against the (un)intended consequences of trying to engineer society inorganically, as in Zamyatin’s We and Huxley’s Brave New World. Films, such as Blade Runner, provide a cinematic vision of such a future. These dreams of progress or perfection have not ceased. Scientists are daily manipulating the genomes of plants and animals in the hopes of improving our daily lives. But in their quest to engineer the perfect ear of corn, for example, are scientists creating a frightening world with such a lack of biodiversity that it threatens our actual extinction…a fate that dystopian writers like Zamyatin and Huxley could not even imagine?

Professor: Karl Qualls, History
Time: 12:30 MWF

40. Watched: Surveillance and Society

We live in a world pervaded by technologies for observing and recording. Some are easy to see—like the bar codes on the back of nearly every item for sale—though others orbit the earth hundreds of miles up. While advocates for these technologies tout the efficiency and security that extensive surveillance can produce, critics worry about the erosion of privacy and civil liberties that have often accompanied new techniques of watching. Using readings from history and the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies, this course examines how scientists, governments and businesses have used information and communications technologies (ICTs) from the telegraph to the internet. Starting with an exploration of the ways that students are monitored around campus, we’ll go on to debate some of the most pressing issues of our time: how can ecological monitoring help mitigate human impacts on nature? How should open societies respond to the threat of terrorist attacks, and how does surveillance affect political life? Should companies be able to track our most intimate behaviors? Who should be trusted with powerful technologies for observation, and what kinds of checks should be imposed on those powers? Students will engage with these questions in writing and in oral presentations, learning how to think critically about passionate issues.

Professor: Roger Turner, History
Time: 11:30 MWF

41. What is science?

This seminar is intended for students who are and who are not “into” science. Science is all around us. How we understand our health and our environment is influenced by science. Science makes possible the new technologies that appear year after year.

But there are ongoing, important debates about how much attention we should pay to science, and about whether or not particular concepts, facts, and methods are scientific. At the core of these debates is the question of what science is and what it is not. Unlike typical science courses, this seminar is about what historians, journalists, novelists, philosophers, poets, politicians, scientists, sociologists, theologians, and others have to say about the nature of science. From these diverse views, students will be guided to develop their own answer to the question: What is science?

Professor: Brian Pedersen, Biology and Environmental Studies
Time: 11:30 MWF

42. Sites of Memory: Reclaiming Indigenous Histories

*This seminar has been designated as part of the Learning Community, “Social Justice.” 

 Du Bois argued that the state of historical memory may be defined as the state of cultural struggle; of contested truths, of moments, events, and texts in history that thresh out rival versions of the past which can in turn be put to the service of the present. Whose history is represented and how? This course will explore various sites of memory, including the Carlisle Industrial Indian School and the reclaiming of Native American histories. Students will be actively involved in the fall 2012 Symposium: "Carlisle, PA: Site of Indigenous Histories, Memories, and Reclamations." The course will use readings, films, and fieldtrips to explore both “official” histories and counter-narratives that have emerged around important historical events, places, and people. Readings may include, Silencing the Past: The Power and Production of History by M. Rolph-Trouillot; Decolonizing Methodologies by Linda Tuhiwai Smith; essays by Benjamin Rush; and non-fiction, fiction, and poetry written by Native American and non-native scholars, artists, and activists who will be participating in the symposium.

Professor: Susan Rose, Sociology
Time: 11:30 MF

43. School Desegregation in the U.S.: Its History and Implications

This course will examine the history of school desegregation in the United States and will explore the wide-ranging implications of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The course will begin with an analysis of the segregated public school system that existed in the first half of the twentieth century, a system sanctioned by the “separate but equal” doctrine upheld in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), and will consider the factors that led to the Court’s eventual reversal. Drawing from legal documents, memoirs, case studies, documentary films, and coverage in the popular press, we will examine desegregation from multiple perspectives including those of black teachers, principals, students, parents, Civil Rights activists, political figures, and organizations such as the NAACP and the White Citizens’ Council. In addition to exploring the implications of desegregation for individual students such as the Little Rock Nine, we will consider issues of busing, school closings, teacher transfers, and white flight. Finally, we will consider the extent to which the goals of school integration and equity have been achieved in American society today.

Professor: Sarah Bair, Education
Time: 12:30 MWF 

44.  Mediated Realities 

 Most people would say they want to know the truth about the world -- to know fact from fiction, genuine from fake, real from imaginary. But it isn’t that easy. On the one hand, we are constantly targeted by groups seeking to shape, or “mediate” our view of reality to serve their own social, ideological or economic purposes – using powerful techniques to exploit our most deeply held, often invisible, wishes, weaknesses and prejudices to get us to behave in certain ways. Truman Burbank and the millions of fans of “The Truman Show,” would certainly understand that. At the same time, new technologies are making the line between the real and the imaginary, never very well defined, increasingly unclear, as Thomas Anderson, also known as Neo, came to understand in “The Matrix.” In this seminar, we will explore these issues by examining some of the lenses through which our reality is filtered -- including the advertising industry, political propaganda, the news media, social networks and “virtual” realities. Underlying all this are important questions about how we wish to live as individuals and as members of a free society – and to what extent we can hope to ever know what is real and what is not.   

Professor:  Richard Lewis, Interdisciplinary 
Time:  11:30 MF 

 45. Representing Haiti

Through readings of “noir” fiction, this seminar will introduce you to the harsh realities of Haitian life and simultaneously challenge you to  think beyond the stereotypes of Haiti.  Based on Edwidge Danticat’s anthology haiti noir, our course will address recurring Haitian themes such as corruption, kidnapping, voudou, history, diaspora, exploitation by foreign countries and companies, and the pitfalls of foreign aid. “Noir” fiction, by definition, involves crime and detection in a grim urban setting, featuring petty, amoral criminals permeated by a feeling of disillusionment, pessimism and despair. Our close examination of Haitian "noir" will allow us to ask how this literary genre has been adapted to the Haitian context, and what specific insights "noir" offers us as critical readers to understand contemporary Haiti.  

Professor: Linda Brindeau, French and Italian
Time: 11:30 MF