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Courses of Instruction COURSES OF INSTRUCTION FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS Man and Microbes: Disease and Plagues in Each fall every first-year student partici- History and Modern Times; selected articles from Discover, The New York Times, and pates in a First-Year Seminar, offered by a Scientific American faculty member in his or her field of expertise. The seminar topics offered 016 Art into Life The project in this course is to make an art exhibition. In this unusual each year vary, as do the faculty members exhibition, titled “Do It,” students make the teaching these courses. Examples of First- art for the exhibition using a “Do It Yourself” Year Seminar courses include the home instruction manual and exhibition kit following: compiled by artists from the United States, Europe, Asia and South America. The instructions simply establish a framework and 008 Epidemics and the Promise of a site (either gallery or home) in which the Biotechnology With each frightening new artworks can be made. In the selection and outbreak, such as SARS and Ebola, scientists execution of the artworks, students exercise warn that we are long overdue for a world- their interpretative skills; for, like a musical wide epidemic that will prove more deadly composition, each version of a work in “Do than the influenza epidemic of 1918 and the It” is meant to be a unique realization of the current AIDS epidemic. The influenza instructions. At the end of the course the epidemic of 1918 killed between 20 and 40 students publish a catalogue, host an opening million people; half the American casualties in of the exhibition, and invite the Colleges Europe were from the flu, not combat. Most community to view their work. (Isaak) viciously, the 1918 flu killed fast; there are Typical readings: Altshuler, The Avant- many accounts of people dying within 24 Garde in Exhibition: New Art in the Twentieth hours of getting sick. By comparison, SARS Century; Laar and Diepeveen, Active Sights: was far more deadly. The 1918 flu had a Art as Social Interaction; The Spirit of Art as mortality rate of 2.5 percent, while the Activism; Barrett, Criticizing Art: Understanding mortality from SARS is between 7 and 20 the Contemporary percent. Certainly the early and rather infectious flu this past winter had doctors and 017 Separate Realities Death, dreams, desire scientists bracing for another deadly epidemic. and the workings of chance: in this course But other scientists believe that we now have students explore the use of the aesthetic tools to combat epidemics and that it is likely image to delve into these dimensions of that be able to contain another global reality usually out of reach to our waking outbreak. Biotechnology provides scientists consciousness. Against a theoretical with a tremendous tool to combat diseases. background that draws from anthropological, But will biotechnology be enough to fight psychoanalytic, linguistic and aesthetic epidemics? This course explores the scientific, sources, the journey begins with tales from social, historical and moral issues surrounding antiquity, passes through the imagistic control of epidemics. (Carle) thinking of pre-scientific Renaissance physics Typical readings: Garrett, The Coming and cosmology, to arrive at two main artistic Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World Out movements of the 20th century: surrealism of Balance, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of (its genesis in France and its development as Global Public Health; Diamond, Guns, Germs, an international movement) and magic and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies; Karlen, realism (as developed mainly in Latin 67 FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS America in the last few decades). Students 028 The Ghost in the Machine This course reflect on a great variety of images from these explores through Western culture the diverse sources and media (painting, question of what it means to be human. Since literature, cinema) while analyzing their power Copernicus in the Renaissance recognized that to reveal multiple levels of experience. Along the earth circles the sun and isn’t the center of with a number of written assignments, the the universe; since Darwin recognized that course also requires a multimedia computer Homo sapiens is just one evolving species project. (Paiewonsky-Conde) among many; since Freud showed that we are Typical readings: Freud, Dreams in Folklore, not just who we seem to ourselves, the status The Themes of the Three Caskets, Belief In and nature of the human has been contested Chance and Superstition; Jung, The Soul and and reenvisioned. Is “the human” an essential Death, Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy; concept or a constructed one? Is, for example, Buchowski, The Controversy Concerning The what makes us human a matter of mind or Rationality of Magic; Apuleius, The Story of consciousness? Does the human lie in our Psyche and Love; tales from Ovid’s capacity for language or dance or tool-using? Metamorphoses and Boccaccio’s Decameron; Does it lie in behavior or individuality or Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism; paintings by social order? To explore this fundamental Ernst, Magritte, Picasso, Dali, Miro; poetry by question, students examine the boundaries of Eluard, Aragon, Desnos, Lorca, Neruda; the human: where the human meets the stories by Bombal, Borges, Cortazar, and inhuman, where it meets the more than novels by Rulfo and Fuentes human, where it meets the natural and where it meets the mechanistic. Each of these 018 Genocide and the Modern Age The 20th boundaries is still turbulently being pushed century can aptly be described as the “Age of and tested today. (Weiss, Pickett, Crenner, Genocide”—a century in which mass murder and Bernes) and mass death marked the convergence of Typical readings: Levi, Survival in modern organization, modern technology and Auschwitz; Palahniuk, Fight Club; Asimov, The human propensities for violence and Final Question; Spielberg, AI; Faulkner, The indifference to violence. Students in this Bear; Rymer, Genie: an Abused Child’s Flight course examine the history of genocide and its from Silence; Shakespeare, The Tempest; impact on culture, politics and religion. Dostoevsky, The Grand Inquisitor (Salter) Typical readings: Wiesel, Night; Hirsch, 029 Why Aren’t All Countries Rich? Why are Genocide and the Politics of Memory; Camus, The some (mainly Western) countries so rich and Plague; Gourevitch, Stories from Rwanda; others (mainly Third World) so poor? Neither Homer, The Iliad; Dobkowski, Genocide and the the “they are corrupt/lazy/ignorant” nor the Modern Age; Chang, The Rape of Nanking; “Western colonialists stole all their wealth” Balakian, Sad Days of Light; and films and stories provide an adequate answer to this other media. question. The most important factor appears to be a country’s socio-economic system. 026 The Talking Beast Anthropomorphic Since the only examples of successful ‘rich’ narratives, which feature animals with human- societies we have are capitalist ones, like attributes as characters, are routinely read capitalism appears to be the ‘winning’ socio- from early childhood onward, both economic system. This course examines the independently and as part of school curricula. major issues involved in the transition from So why are we so fascinated with this type of agricultural to rich societies, why capitalist writing? What is it about “getting inside” the societies appear to be the only ones to have animal mind and world which attracts us over made this transition and why alternatives to and over again? Students in this course read self-interest as a way to organize a successful many examples of this type of fiction in an economy have failed. (Khan) attempt to answer these questions. The Typical readings: Basu, The Economics of emphasis is on determining how authors Child Labor; Bucholz, New Ideas From Dead create a believable main character, a Economists; Kuran, Islamic Economics and the surrounding world and society, and issues in Islamic Subeconomy; Landes, Why Are We So the animals’ lives which move us as readers. Rich and They So Poor?; Olson, Why Some (Galloway) Nations Are Rich and Others Poor; O’Rouke, Eat Typical readings: Richard Adams, the Rich; Singer, One World: The Ethics of Watership Down; E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web; Globalization Dodie Smith, The Hundred and One Dalmatians; Georgii Vladimov, Faithful Ruslan; George Orwell, Animal Farm; Anna Sewell, Black Beauty 68 FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS 031 Media and Meaning: Painting, reproduce his methodology. Students analyze Photography, Documentary Film, and the a variety of Doyle’s detective stories, take Internet The question of how works of art and some local field trips to practice powers of products of culture are meaningful is a observation in natural settings, reproduce complex one. Most of us have felt deeply several of Holmes’ analytical techniques as moved, in ways that are often hard to group experiments in geology and chemistry articulate, by works of art. But why, and how? labs on campus, and visit a crime lab. Is the meaning of art in the hands of the artist, Holmes’ analytical methods and Watson’s flair a matter of personal expression? Is meaning, for reporting are used as models for writing. like some say of beauty, in the eye of the By the end of the semester, students write beholder? Is meaning a matter of cultural their own Sherlock Holmes story in Doyle’s relativity, a question of uncovering biases and style illustrating the scientific method and set assumptions? Or is meaning perhaps in the Finger Lakes region. (Curtin) determined by the material form used to Typical readings include: Doyle, Sir embody an idea or feeling? Through the study Arthur Conan, The Complete Sherlock Holmes, of painting, photography, documentary film, Hacker, D., Rules for Writers; McPhee, J., “The and the internet, this course examines various Gravel Page” in Irons in the Fire ways of thinking about meaning. In addition to reading, writing, and discussion, creative 035 The Souls of Scientists: Scientists as projects help illuminate the mysteries of Writers, Artists, Musicians, and Politicians expression, reception, and the yearning for Scientists are geeks.
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