Courses of Instruction First-Year Seminars

V COURSES OF INSTRUCTION FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS Courses of Instruction OURSES are open to all students, subject only to the restrictions specified in Cthe 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 inter- est. 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 Top- ics 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 bibliography 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 2008-09, Faculty members in groups of one or more will teach 24 First- Year Seminars. Every first-year students must take one of these courses during the first 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 extinction, 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 ecosys- tems 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 util- ities 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 sci- ences and ecology. Fall semester. Professor Moore. 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 79 AMHERST COLLEGE 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 Bishop and O’Hara. 03. Russian Literature at the Frontier: Encounters with Eurasia. From medieval times to the present, Russians have defined themselves as positioned between Western and Eastern cultural traditions, claiming for themselves a unique role in an historic “clash of civilizations.” This course closely examines influential rep- resentations, in literature and film, of Russia’s encounter with the peoples on the southern and eastern borders of Imperial, Soviet, and contemporary Russia. Beginning with the depiction of pagan “others” in the ancient monastic chron- icles and narrative poetry of early Russia’s Orthodox civilization, the course will focus on the secular literature of Imperial Russia, reading attentively the texts that shaped popular conceptions of the “natives” with whom Russians bat- tled, traded, and incorporated into their own sense of a non-Western identity. We shall examine the long history of Russian “Orientalism” in poems, stories, and films that powerfully imposed or challenged racial stereotypes of the tribal peoples of the Caucasus and Central Asia. And we shall follow the development in more recent times of the ideology of “Eurasianism,” which proclaims Russia to be the historic center of an emerging civilization that blends the races and cul- tures of East and West. Inevitably, the course will pause occasionally to consider comparisons and contrasts with the North American encounter with the indige- nous peoples on its borders. Works to be studied include Russian literary clas- sics by Pushkin, Lermontov, Gogol, and Tolstoy as well as more recent Soviet and post-Soviet depictions of Russia’s “inner Asia” in film and writing. All readings in translation with special assignments for any students who read Russian. Fall semester. Professor D. Peterson. 04. Berlin, Metropolis. “Willkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome!” to Berlin, Europe’s youngest metropolis. Virtually exploding in the early 1900s into a creative and influential urban center, the new Berlin reacted to the political challenges of impe- rialism, war, revolution, and inflation with wit, sarcasm, and radical politics— the perfect proving ground for those seeking personal freedom and political change, including artists, amateurs, reformers, and revolutionaries. We will trace the beginnings and flowering of urban modernism in Berlin public life, architecture, the fine arts and theater, up to the Nazi virulent attacks on modern art and urban lifestyles as “degenerate” in 1933. Course materials focus on the changes from pre-modern to urban metropolis, including such topics as alternative ways of life in the social and cultural spaces of the city; the celebration of the exotic; new concepts of sexuality and the body; ethnicity and difference; and the ill-fated German-Jewish symbiosis. Readings and viewings include novels, films, essays, design, architecture, theater, cabaret, jazz, and montage in the arts. Fall semester. Professor Brandes. 80 FIRST-YEAR SEMINARS 05. Drugs in History, Society and Culture. This course examines the changing ways that human beings have used psychoactive drugs and societies have con- trolled that use. After examining drug use in historical and cross-cultural per- spectives 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. We address the drug war, the disease model of drug addiction, the proliferation of prescription drugs, the images of drug use in popular culture, and America’s complicated history of alcohol control. Readings include Huxley’s Brave New World, Kramer’s Listening to Prozac and Bromell’s Tomorrow Never Knows; films include Drugstore Cowboy and Traffic. Fall semester. Professor Couvares. 06. From Martin Luther King, Jr., to Barack Obama. The presidential cam- paign 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? Has Senator Obama’s candidacy shown how far we have come in escaping old racial loyalties and ani- mosities or has it made clear how much they endure? 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 Ameri- can 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 evan- gelical Protestants? What is the relation between grassroots movements 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 disap- pear—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 assassination and Obama’s candidacy, e.g., the establishing of the King national holiday and the presidential campaigns of Jesse Jackson.

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