Fall 2020 Seminars

HONORS PROGRAM SEMINARS Fall 2020 SKILLS DISTRIBUTION English 295C Concurrent/prior enrollment in ENGL& 101 Instructor: Jeff Klausman Time: ONLINE Writing the Personal Essay: Mining the Tradition of 2000 Years: Writers write for the love of language, the “feel” of a sentence, the perfect paragraph, the apt phrase that offers an insight that makes the ordinary world seem extraordinary (again). They write for the voice, the “sound” of the words as they move through the body and the mind. Such writing brings pleasure. In this class, we’ll study the art and technique of the personal essay—which has a tradition of perhaps 2000 years—and write some of our own, exploring the feel and effect of language choices. By the end of the class, each of us will have a small chapbook of personal essays, a greater appreciation for the beauty of language and the crafting of that language, and an understanding of what makes a personal essay both “personal” and “an essay.” We’ll read from The Art of the Personal Essay (1997) edited by Phillip Lopate, a wonderful old book, share our writing with one another, and maybe produce a living website or a podcast or two to share with friends and family. HUMANITIES DISTRIBUTION Film 295 Instructor: Melissa Tamminga Time: ONLINE The Monster in the System: Class and Capitalism in the Films of Bong Joon Ho: For many, filmmaker Bong Joon Ho first burst onto consciousness with Oscar-wins for his crowd-pleasing film, Parasite (2019), a hilarious, violent, genre-bending film that, within the wild ride, has something to say about class, income inequality, and the capitalist system that produces such savage inequity. But Bong has been making films for 20 years, and he has perpetually delighted those familiar with his work with his film-making rigor, a sly sense of fun, a taste for visceral violence, and profound meditations on the structures that surround us and often create monsters, real and symbolic. In this course, students will watch 4-5 Bong films, including The Host, Snowpiercer, and Parasite, and we will closely examine them for their themes as those reflect the “monsters” institutions create, when those institutions value power and capital over life. The class, which will meet once weekly for discussion, will include supplemental readings, and students will also keep an informal journal of their reflections and complete a final (optionally multi-modal) project. SOCIAL/BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE DISTRIBUTION Anthropology 295S Instructor: Jennifer Zovar Time: ONLINE After Collapse: Archaeology has long focused on the rise and fall of civilization, with little attention paid to the periods that follow the collapse of a major state system. In this seminar, students will have the opportunity to explore the intricacies of post-collapse society though a variety of case studies across the ancient world from the Andes to China and Rome. Our class text would be Questioning Collapse, a book of collected essays edited by Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee, and class sessions would center around student-led seminar-style discussions of the various examples. As a culminating project, each student would choose a specific example of collapse from the ancient world and research the collapse itself and what followed. We would work together as a class on a small presentation that would compare and contrast the student-selected examples and analyze what we could learn from them. In addition to considering archaeological collapse, we would also analyze portrayals of post-collapse societies in popular movies and literature as well as the implications for our own society and its future. SOCIAL/BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE DISTRIBUTION Political Science 295 Concurrent/prior enrollment in POLS& 101, POLS& 201, POLS& 202, HIST& 147, or HIST& 148 Instructor: Barry Maxwell Time: ONLINE The Election of a U.S. President: This seminar traces the history of Presidential electoral politics and mechanisms using the final months of the current Presidential campaign as a case study. Seminar will examine campaign strategy, advertising and other communication mechanisms, including the internet and social media, finances and get-out-the- vote efforts. Seminar will also include post-election analysis of what worked well and why (and what did not). 6/17/20 .

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