Spring 2020 Course Descriptions 1 Name Subject Course Description Note: Titles in purple are LS Courses, while those in blue are GLS Courses. “History of the Universe” presents the astronomical phenomena of the Universe in the context of physical science and examines Newton’s laws governing force and motion, Kepler’s laws of Motion, the role of electromagnetism in nature, the atomic structure of matter, the Adams-Jones, HISTORY OF THE birth and death of stars, our milky way galaxy, the Double Dark Theory, the Big Bang and the ultimate question; does life exist around Gerceida Eloise UNIVERSE other star systems? Each of these topics will be discussed in the context of current issues in planetary and space sciences (Lecture + Lab = 4 credits). Cultural Foundations III focuses on the world’s great traditions in literature, music, the visual and performing arts from the Enlightenment through Modernity. It familiarizes students with the impact of the colonial and post-colonial eras on global developments in culture. This particular course covers the following regions of the world: --The Indian Sub-Continent before and after the British colonial regime. --Germany at the end of World War II and after the Fall of the Berlin Wall. --Vichy France under Marechal Petain and the Fate of French Jews. --Algeria, the struggle for Independence and the departure of the French colonial regime. -- Apartheid in South Africa and its Struggle for Independence.The goal of this course is to achieve a broad understanding of the contemporary politics, history, and culture of the above regions of the world that experienced one form or the other of division, partition, marginalization and Almeida, Rochelle CULTURAL migration—mostly as a result of war or the politics of decolonization. To enable us to examine the manner in which history and politics J FOUNDATIONS III led to the creation of works of art in a variety of media, we will study such literary works as Cracking India by Bapsi Sidhwa (and Earth 1947, its film adaptation), Anthony Doer’s All The Light You Cannot See, Bob Fosse’s Cabaret, Sarah’s Key by filmmaker Gilles Paquet- Brenner, starring Kristin Scott- Thomas) based on the novel of the same name by Tatiana de Rosnay, The Battle of Algiers by milestone filmmaker Gillo Pontecorvo, the novel Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and a 2008 cinematic adaptation of the novel, directed by Steve Jacobs. We will also examine contemporary visual arts through the work of Pablo Picasso (especially Guernica) and Marc Chagall. This course will take the pattern of brief lectures at each class that will introduce the historical and sociological contexts for the prescribed works. This will be followed by a detailed textual and visual discussion of the works under consideration. Where possible and relevant, we will intersperse this pattern of classes with the slides of works of visual art followed by a class discussion. The goal of this course is to achieve a broad understanding of the contemporary politics, history, and culture of the Indian sub-continent (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka). Using a variety of literary texts, the dynamic relationship between tradition and modernity in the countries of South Asia will be examined. This course will take the pattern of lectures at each class that will introduce the historical Almeida, Rochelle SOUTH ASIAN and sociological contexts for the prescribed texts. This will be followed by a detailed discussion of the texts under consideration. Where J CULTURES possible and relevant, we will intersperse this pattern of classes with the viewing of films, video cassettes, news-clips, etc. Students are strongly urged to watch at least some of the films from the list below, in their own time, to enhance their understanding of the contemporary state of the Indian sub-continent. The second part of Cultural Foundations will expose students to major figures in the history of literature, art and architecture from the Renaissance to early Romanticism. Centered around the theme of radical freedom, the course will compare different creative trends that revolutionized the standards and possibilities of artistic representation. At odds with tradition, the figures and artworks under examination revealed new techniques and approaches to voice a new creative language coherent with the spirit of the times. Through the study of St. John of the Cross, Caravaggio, Michelangelo, the architects of the Alhambra and the Taj Mahal, Shakespeare, Rembrandt and Baudelaire, the course will reconstruct how the scope of their artistic innovation transformed our aesthetic sensibility and Alvarado-Diaz, CULTURAL imagination. What is the relationship between artist and the creative medium? How did political contexts and social attitudes affect Alheli De Maria FOUNDATIONS II artistic production? What is the relationship between art and power? How did artists shape our perception of power, historical events and foreign cultures? What struggles did artist face in negotiating their freedom and resisting censorship? These are some of the questions that we will discuss throughout the semester. The identity of the artist as visionary and provocateur, a master of shock value, will be at the center of our conversations. The study of art as text and historical evidence will offer opportunities to reflect on the heritage of human creation throughout the ages and its ongoing power as an instrument of moral reflection and social awareness. Connections to current art trends will highlight the persistence of the power of art and its pertinence in our global age. Spring 2020 Course Descriptions 2 Name Subject Course Description Note: Titles in purple are LS Courses, while those in blue are GLS Courses. The second part of Social Foundations will explore the philosophical representations of moral and political conflict at the individual and collective level. Moving chronologically, the course will expose students to selections from the major writings in theology and political theory. Using a global comparative approach, Social Foundations II will engage in critical analysis of primary documentation by the great minds of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment eras. Through close reading, active discussion and connection to current affairs, students will learn and reflect on the legacies of the selected authors and their pertinence in global political affairs today. The first theme in the course will be the method to knowledge and the conflict between theology and scientific method. How have humans know the world historically? What is Alvarado-Diaz, SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS the role of the divine in our pursuit of the truth? Can there be a sustainable relationship Alheli De Maria II between belief and reason, devotion and philosophy, intuition and method? The second theme will address the evolution of cultural relativism and the politics of the ‘civilized versus savage’ debate. What are the standards of civilization? How are definitions of civilizations connected to the birth and the expansion of colonial empires, early capitalism and systems of social and economic inequality? Finally, the third theme will explore the relationship between philosophy and the birth of social movements. How was philosophy a foundation in the formation of social resistance and revolutions? What was the connection between philosophy and freedom and how is it still a pertinent force today? Authors in the course include: Al Ghazali, Aquinas, Las Casas, Descartes, Rousseau, Toussaint L’Ouverture and Sojourner Truth, among others. This course focuses on texts from across the globe from the seventh through the seventeenth centuries that reflect and respond to humans’ attempts to describe the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge and will attend to the role that power played in the formulation of those descriptions. We begin by examining the inception of Islam in the seventh century and it subsequent spread across three continents. We will examine interactions among the three Abrahamic faiths, focusing in particular on the Islamic role in the transmission and elaboration of Greek philosophy. We then examine the impact of the rise of Islam in what was previously the Sassanian (Persian) Empire, focusing on the intellectual impact of the fusion of Islamic and Persian norms of conduct on religion, philosophy, and politics and the claims to knowledge made in writing about them. We will focus on the growth of state authority that accompanied these changes and compare them to later, but comparable changes in Europe, reading European humanist texts closely—Christine de Pizan’s SOCIAL FOUNDATIONS The City of Ladies and Machiavelli’s The Prince—that tackle the problem of how best to arrange societies and comparing them to earlier Ames, Rob L. II Islamic writing on the same themes. We will next study the growth of early modern empires by comparing the growth of the Timurid empires in Central and South Asia in the fourteenth through sixteenth centuries with European expansion into the Americas. In this unit, we will attend closely to the ethical questions raised by the growth of these empires and the claims to knowledge involved in those questions. We will ask, for example, how the Americas were constituted as an object of knowledge in texts dealing with the violence of Spain’s imperial expansion into the Americas, which alarmed some European intellectuals, whose works we will study. We will focus on the philosophical and political debates that arose in response to these conquests, and the varieties of knowledge claims they authorized. The course concludes with an examination of the role that questions of knowledge and certainty played in the beginning of modern Western political theory by studying Hobbesian social contract theory as a response to questions raised by the Protestant reformation. Spring 2020 Course Descriptions 3 Name Subject Course Description Note: Titles in purple are LS Courses, while those in blue are GLS Courses. Writing II introduces students to advanced reading, writing, and critical thinking.