Courses of Instruction

V COURSES OF INSTRUCTION The most up-to-date information about the curriculum is found in the course listings on departmental websites: https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/departments or at: https://www.amherst.edu/academiclife/registar/ac_catalog Courses of Instruction OURSES are open to all students, subject only to the restrictions specified Cin the individual descriptions. Senior Honors courses, usually open only to candidates for the degree with Honors, are numbered 77 and 78, and Special Topics courses are numbered 97 and 98. All courses, unless otherwise marked, are full courses. The course numbers of double courses and half courses are followed by D or H. SPECIAL TOPICS COURSES Departments may offer a semester course known as Special Topics in which a student or a group of students study or read widely in a field of special interest. It is understood that this course will not duplicate any other course regularly offered in the curriculum and that the student will work in this course as inde- pendently as the director thinks possible. Before the time of registration, the student who arranges to take a Special Topics course should consult the instructor in that particular field, who will direct the student’s work; they will decide the title to be reported, the nature of the examination or term paper, and will discuss the preparation of a bibliogra- phy and a plan of coherent study. All students must obtain final approval of the Department before registration. Two Special Topics courses may not be taken concurrently except with the prior approval of the Student’s Class Dean. FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS: THE LIBERAL STUDIES CURRICULUM During 2009-10, Faculty members in groups of one or more will teach 26 First- Year Seminars. Every first-year student must take one of these courses during the fall semester. They are open only to Amherst College first-year students. 01. The Value of Nature. Our impact on the environment has been large, and in recent decades the pace of change has clearly accelerated. Many species face ex- tinction, forests are disappearing, and toxic wastes and emissions accumulate. The prospect of a general environmental calamity seems all too real. This sense of crisis has spurred intense and wide-ranging debate over what our proper relationship to nature should be. This debate will be the focus of the seminar. Among the questions we shall explore will be: What obligations, if any, do we have to non-human animals, to living organisms like trees, to ecosystems as a whole, and to future generations of humans? Do animals have rights we ought to respect? Is nature intrinsically valuable or merely a bundle of utilities for our benefit? Is there even a stable notion of “what is natural” that can be deployed in a workable environmental ethic? We will investigate these and related questions with readings drawn from literature, philosophy, the social sciences and ecology. Fall semester. Professor Dizard. 81 AMHERST COLLEGE 02. Genes, Genomes and Society. The sequencing of the human genome ranks as one of the most significant scientific achievements of the last century. How might we ensure that scientific progress is matched by society’s ability to use that knowledge for human betterment? Although the scientific ramifications of the genomic revolution are just beginning to be explored, major implications are already apparent in such diverse fields as philosophy, medicine and law. The course will begin with a primer on genetics and molecular biology, but quickly move to consider some of the philosophical, ethical and very practical societal concerns raised by recent genetic discoveries. We will consider such issues as the origin of humans and of human races (and are there such?); the use and potential misuse of DNA fingerprinting by governmental agencies; whether genetic information should be protected from scrutiny by insurance companies or employers; the ability of parents to screen potential offspring for a range of diseases; the creation of genetically altered plants and animals; and human gene therapy. Fall semester. Professors Goutte, O’Hara, and Ratner. 03. Evolution and Intellectual Revolution. The centerpiece of this course is Darwin and his book On the Origin of Species. Like all revolutionary ideas, Dar- win’s theory did not appear out of nowhere and did not settle matters once and for all; therefore the course will explore the scientific context in which this work appeared and Darwin’s own intellectual background. It will then consider the great book itself to see what exactly Darwin had to say and how he went about saying it. Pigeons will come up. Then extracts from the writings from Darwin’s contemporaries will be used to look at the scientific, social, and theological re- sponses to Darwin’s theory. Finally, a few of the major issues that still reverber- ate today will be considered. Fall semester. Professor Williamson. 04. The Rule of Law. All political systems must operate according to the “rule of law” if they are to be deemed legitimate. This statement has assumed the quality of a truism: we hear it repeated by the President of the United States, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, and the President of the Interna- tional Criminal Court. At the same time, though, that everyone seems to agree that the “rule of law” is a good thing, no one seems able to say for sure what the “rule of law” is. What, then, do we mean by the “rule of law”? What does it mean to speak of government limited by law? What are these limits, where do they come from, and how are they enforced? What role does the “rule of law” play in legitimating structures of governance? Does the “rule of law” imply any particular relationship between legality and morality? We will hazard answers to these questions through a close reading of works of theorists such as John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, H.L.A. Hart and Lon Fuller. In addition, we will examine the arguments of these theorists as they help us think through pressing legal challenges of our age, such as defining the limits of executive power in the “war against terror.” Fall semester. Professor Douglas. 05. Drugs in History. This course examines the changing ways that human be- ings have used psychoactive drugs and societies have controlled that use. After examining drug use in historical and cross-cultural perspectives and studying the physiological and psychological effects of different drugs, we look at the ways in which contemporary societies both encourage and repress drug use. 82 FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS We address the drug war, the disease model of drug addiction, the prolifera- tion of prescription drugs, the images of drug use in popular culture, America’s complicated history of alcohol control, and international drug trafficking and its implications for American foreign policy. Readings include Huxley’s Brave New World, Kramer’s Listening to Prozac and Bromell’s Tomorrow Never Knows; films includeDrugstore Cowboy and Traffic. Fall semester. Professors Couvares and Hunt. 06. From Martin Luther King, Jr., to Barack Obama. The election of Barack Obama has raised many questions, among them these: How much and in what ways has the place of race in American public life changed since the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s? Did the 2008 presidential campaign show how far we have come in escaping old racial loyalties and animosities or did it make clear how much they endure? How and to what extent has the Obama presidency carried forward the legacy of the civil rights movement in general and Martin Luther King, Jr., in particular. In what ways are issues of race entangled with those of religion in the United States—and how much has this changed in the last fifty years? What was the role of the black churches in the civil rights movement and what is the political role of those churches today? How has the place of Islam in African American religious life—and in American religious life generally—changed since the mid-twentieth century and what difference does that make for American politics? What is the relation, both past and present, between political activism tied to African American religious groups and the political mobilization of such other religious groups as evangelical Protestants? What is the relation between grassroots protest move- ments and electoral politics in effecting social change in the United States? How do the media shape the ways in which both race and religion appear—and disappear—in American public life? In exploring these questions, this course will take as its point of departure a comparison of the public careers of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Barack Obama. We will examine their life histories, the development of their political and religious ideas, and their rhetorical strategies as writers and speakers. We will investigate the ways in which each—as any African American leader must do—positions himself both within black America and within American public life generally. We will note their relations to black allies and rivals and the strategies of each in forming wider coalitions—and the connection of these coalitions to electoral politics. The course will also attempt to place both King and Obama in a wider historical context, in part by examining some of the major trends and landmark events occurring in the period between King’s assassina- tion and Obama’s election, e.g., the establishing of the King national holiday and the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson. Fall semester. Professor Wills. 07. Romanticism and the Enlightenment. The late eighteenth century is often characterized as the Age of Enlightenment, a time when educated men and women were confident that human reason was sufficient to understand the laws of nature, to improve society’s institutions, and to produce works of the imagination surpassing those of previous generations (and rivaling those of classical antiquity).

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