Electives: Fall 2005

H306 Native America / Swann / T 11-12, TH 9-11
H316 United States Cultural History / Stange / M 6-9
H321 The Novel: Monstrous Appetites: Flavours of Victorian England / Hyman / T 6-9
H327 History of Cinema / Hoberman / W 6-9, TH 6-8
H343 Modernist Tradition: Decadence and Modernity / Weir / M 6-9
H353 Public Speaking: Contemporary Issues / Swann / W 9-12
H361 Modern Philosophy: Language and the Mind / Richardson / M 9-11, W 11-12
H364 Avant-Garde African Literature / Wylie / M 9-11, W 11-12
H373 Seminar in Humanities (Topic for Fall 2005: .Classics, Fakes, Rediscoveries, Restorations, the Love of Ruins..) / Barth/Gurstein / T 6-9
H374 Contemporary Culture and Criticism / Sayres / W 6-9
S321 American Presidency / Kim / W 6-9
S332 Politics and Collective Memory / Griffin / M 9-11, W 11-12
S334 Microeconomics / Sarich / T 6-9
S345 R.G. Brown Seminar (Topic for Fall 2005: .Technology and Urbanism in a Global Age.) / Del Cerro / T 11-12, TH 9-11
S348 Global Cities / Satler / T 3-6
S349 American Cities / Siegel / M 9-11, W 11-12
S420 Environmentalism in the Urban Context / Buckley / W 6-9
S369 Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory / Waxenberg / T 11-12, TH 9-11

H306 Native America

In order to understand the present situation of Native Americans, we start the course with readings in history, politics, law (Deloria & Lytel.s American Indians, American Justice), then we move on to Josephy.s Now That the Buffalo.s Gone, a study of today.s Indians. To flesh out and extend readings we will watch a number of videos. The rest of the semester will be devoted to Native American literatures, both oral (Swann, Coming to Light) and contemporary poetry, fiction and autobiography: Talking Leaves, ed. Leslie (stories), Harper.s Anthology of 20th Century Native American Poetry, ed. Niatum, and I Tell You Now (Swann and Krupat). We will also be touching on other aspects of Indian culture (music, dance, art, etc, and watching film and video. Two five-page papers are required.

This course traces the development over time of .America. as place, idea, nation, and culture. It is concerned to trace the emergence and contours of a widely-shared, if indeterminate and contested, sense of American identity and culture by studying several enduring forces and themes in its formation. These include the encounters of Europeans and Indians, the institution of slavery, the West in myth and reality, modernization and metropolitan life, and the United States in global culture.

This course is interested in the question of monstrous appetites (and appetites for monstrosity) in their many literal and figurative guises, manifestations and effects, as they are revealed and displayed in Victorian fiction. We will look to constructions (and fragmentations) of the body; to the roles of gender and sexuality; to the notion of humanness, the question of race, and the idea of the foreigner; to questions of addiction and intoxication, to notions of class, to issues of technology and science; and to the question of hunger, among others. Primary texts for this course include Anne Bronte.s Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Wilkie Collins. The Law and the Lady, Charles Dickens. Little Dorrit, R.L. Stevenson.s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and H.G. Wells. The Island of Dr. Moreau. We will also look to nineteenth-century recipe books, household guides, medical and health texts, and other short works, as well as to theoretical and historical work on the body, hunger, satiation and addiction.

Course requirements include one five-page paper and one fifteen-page paper on topics to be decided on by students in consultation with the professor, as well as preparatory, response and journal writing. Students will also be required to discuss their work with their peers in formal presentations.

This course surveys the history of the motion picture, along with some of the discourses it inspired, from the nickelodeon period through the late 20th century, considering avant-garde, documentary, and commercial films, with particular emphasis on the movie as urban entertainment and expression of modernity. Important figures include D.W. Griffith, Fritz Lang, Dziga Vertov, Leni Riefenstahl, Orson Wells, Maya Deren, Alfred Hitchcock, Stan Brakhage, and Jean-Luc Godard. The theory of film spectatorship developed by the surrealists will be given particular attention.

This course explores the relation of decadence to modernity in fin de sihcle French, British, and American culture, with some attention given to subsequent theoretical formulations and popular responses. Throughout, decadence will be understood in cultural terms as a paradoxical mixture of refinement and corruption, located historically in the transitional period between romanticism and modernism. The transitional, in-between status of decadence involves many paradoxes, not the least of which is the dual allegiance of decadent artists and writers to both avant-garde culture and reactionary politics. This double approach to decadence will inform our reading of the so-called bible of decadence, Joris-Karl Huysmans.s A Rebours, the seminal work that defined decadence for a generation, as well as two later works that make the meaning of decadence even more problematic: Mirbeau.s Le Jardin des supplices (Torture Garden) and Andre Gide.s L.Immoraliste. The French tradition will form the background to our reading of British works by Walter Pater, Oscar Wilde, and Aubrey Beardsley. The course will conclude with a discussion of American decadence by asking whether a culture that celebrates decline and corruption can exist at all in a nation founded on the twin pillars of puritanism and capitalism. The American context will also serve as occasion to examine a famous theoretical assertion imputed to Theodor Adorno: .Decadence is the highest form of critique..

Course requirements: Regular attendance; two short papers (5 pages); one long paper (10 pages); one absinthe tasting.

Speaking well in public is something every citizen should be able to do. This course will be devoted to developing skills in persuasive and expository speech-making, extemporaneous, written, and memorized. Students will be expected to hand in outlines, complete with bibliographies of materials used in the speech, and a copy of the speech itself. At least one of the three speeches will be taped, and students will complete a critique sheet for each speech given. The subject matter is contemporary social issues (e.g. the environment, equality, ethics, culture and society, the media, science and technology, and so on). Students will learn how to research a speech, and deliver it effectively; how to marshal and present arguments, use language effectively, speak clearly and eloquently.

This course will be an extended consideration of the nature of intentionality. In philosophical terms, intentionality is the property possessed by a phenomenon, however construed, such that it is "about" something other than itself. The two principal classes of intentional phenomena are thoughts and sentences. In a very broad sense, one to be refined in this course, when we think, we think about something. And when we speak, truly so, we speak about something. By contrast, my desk, also an existing phenomenon, is not about anything. By classes, then, there are several questions, we will ask: 1) which of these, mind or language, is primary, both in the logical and chronological sense; 2) what relations of dependence exist between them; 3) is intentionality exactly the same property in each; and 4) is intentionality an essential or defining property of either?

The readings for the course are already well-suited to its form because many prominent epistemologists are also philosophers of mind, and vice versa. Some of the authors under consideration will be: Aristotle, Armstrong, Carnap, Chomsky, Churchland, Davidson, Descartes, Fodor, Hobbes, Hume, Kant, Kim, Putnam, Quine, Rorty, and Russell.

Avant Garde African Literature will cover the most adventurous writing of the past twenty years. Beginning with the major elegies of Leopold Senghor, and concluding with experimental novels from Ghana and Congo/Brazzaville, this course will reveal how symbols, esoteric philosophy, dating from before the Christian era, ancient religious rituals, and twentieth century ethnology have converged to open new aesthetic possibilities.

Why do particular works of art endure so that they speak to us as if they were made specifically for us? Why do others, long forgotten or neglected, suddenly appear anew to a later generation? And why do still others, once regarded as transcendent, become trapped in their own time so that they stop speaking to later generations? If a work of art is beautiful, what difference does it make if it turns out to be a fake? When did people first begin to regard ruins as pleasing? What are we seeing when we are in the presence of a building that was built in the Renaissance but completely restored four hundred years later? By studying particular works of art and disputes that erupted about them at particular moments in time, this seminar seeks to shed light on these and related aesthetic phenomena, with special emphasis on the ways that strictly aesthetic concerns come into conflict with moral, political, historical, and economic considerations.

The first part of the course will focus on the ideas of the timeless classic and aesthetic autonomy; a variety of writings from Sir Joshua Reynolds in the eighteenth century through Roger Fry in the twentieth century will be explored. The second section will focus on the idea of the fake; essays by modern philosophers and art historians as well as celebrated controversies B e.g., the Van Meergeren forgeries of Vermeer and the aesthetic status of works like Warhol.s Brillo Boxes B will be examined. The next section will look at the phenomenon of the rediscovery B how was it possible for an artist like Piero della Francesca, who is so beloved today, to be almost completely neglected until the twentieth century? The following section will examine the ideas of ruins and restorations; John Ruskin.s efforts to halt nineteenth-century restoration projects and more recent controversies concerning restoration, such as the Sistine Chapel, will be studied. The final part of the course will explore the nature of translation and finally, contemporary disputes about early music and authenticity.

Cultural criticism is a way of looking at everyday life so that we flush out our working philosophy or ethos. The delight of this work is that the object of study is very close-around us-in our cuisine, in our body sense, in our city .scapes,. in the media, in the way we speak. In this course we look at theorists and their key ideas, such as episteme, deconstruction, logocentrism, the .other,. while learning to practice the art of critique of our contemporary world.

In general, this course seeks to apply theories and concepts from political science to the American executive branch. It will examine (among other things) the theoretical basis of executive power, the relationship between the executive and other branches of government, and the strategies of the candidates during an election period.

The notion of a collective memory is frequently invoked, but it is examined far less often. Yet a common public memory often plays an essential role in establishing national and social identitites, justifying public and communal institutions, representing past reality, and influencing political decisions. Although it often arises spontaneously, it is perhaps more frequently the product of official, authoritative efforts to control public sentiment. There has been a growing interest in collective memory in recent years as today.s scholars seek to revisit the cataclysm of World War II and to examine the construction of public memory in its aftermath; there have also been efforts to recall and identify some of the communities destroyed by these events.

This course will consider some of the theoretical understandings of collective memory and also focus on examples of the roles it has played in recent political history. Special attention will be paid to the function of a common memory in shaping the politics of identity.

This course presents an overview of the principles of economics B scarcity and choice; supply and demand; output and price. It utilizes marginal analysis as well as theories of the firm. It considers the market system in terms of both its virtues and vices. It focuses especially on the distribution of income and the labor market of the United States but also includes a section on the stock and bond markets. In addition, it covers the role of government in the economy.

Investigations of the relationships between technology and urbanism are on the cutting edge of social research today. This seminar will explore the foundations of a .splintering urbanism. by focusing on contemporary urban research, mainly in the United States and Europe. Students will acquire an understanding of the role of technology and political economy in the shaping and development of cities, as well as a critical outlook on the main challenges facing professionals involved in planning cities and regions. Some of the topics covered will include: Technology and Society; The Information Technology Revolution; Global Cities; The New Urban Economy: Technology and Productivity, E-business, Globalization; The Digital Divide in a Global Perspective; The Informational City; Architecture, Technology and Cities.

This course will be approached as a research seminar in which students will have the opportunity to develop their own individual research interests under the guidance of the instructor. Students will write one long research paper and a number of short critical essays based on the readings. Class presentations and discussions will be the norm in this seminar.

The overriding goal of this course is to define and then apply the one outcome of current economic, social and cultural forcesBglobal cities.. By examining current premier global cities B New York, London, and Tokyo B we will consider specific and general factors that contribute to the rise of global cities, and then consider how such cities impact other city-types B existing and emerging. Among the forces underpinning globalization which we will consider are: shifts from industrial to informational based economics, new technology B especially telecommunications, and new immigration. These in turn impact urban design/morphology and urban life. The latter frames the second interest of study for this course B the impact of global cities and globalization on our daily lives and interactions. Here, we will consider, among other questions: whether globalization is bringing us closer together or driving us further apart; whether it promotes greater diversity or homogenizes us in cultural and normative outcomes. Thus our exploration will utilize macro and microscopic vantage points to unravel the complexities of global processes in urban terrains.

Mayor Fiorello Laguardia, Governor Al Smith, and master builder Robert Moses were the architects of modern New York. They built a city which not only iucorporated the children of America.s vast turn of the century immigration, but also created the political and social ethos that made New York the capital of the world after the devastation of World War II. The class will begin with these giants and then follow the history of the city and its cultural, racial, and economic upheavals through the second half of the last century down to the present.

Conventional approaches to the city study the development of urban form and the use of urban space from a political, economic or cultural perspective. Nature is usually absent. Recently, the work of environmental activists and scholars has produced a new urbanism in which the city form and function is intimately connected with natural processes. This rethinking of the city opens up several new possibilities for teaching human-environment interaction. In particular, it provides an opportunity to use the immediate and everyday environment of the city as a site for identifying and analyzing the hidden geography of raw materials, energy and waste flows that make possible the experience of urban life. This course addresses three central issues: (1) identification of the material and ecological processes that make city form and function possible; (2) interpretation of the city as a constellation of economic institutions and social practices that transform nature over different temporal and spatial scales; and (3) the examination of the environmental and health impacts stemming from a city.s role in production and consumption. Assignments will include .response. papers to the readings, a six page bibliographic paper on a particular urban ecological problem and group presentations of ecological design projects based on local, site-specific work.

This course is intended to introduce students to forms of psychoanalytic thinking and theory making. We will trace the development of psychoanalytic ideas beginning with foundational texts by Freud, Ferenczi, and Klein, proceeding to our responses to classical theory from Horney, Winnicott, and Lacan, among others. In our discussions, attention will be paid to ways different theorists conceptualize and invoke psychoanalysis as a theory of mind, research tool, therapeutic process, and utopian vision.