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Electives: Fall 2006
H306 Native America / Swann / W 9-12
H307 Playwriting and Theater Practicum / Th 6-9
H321 The Novel: James Joyce's Ulysses / Weir / M 6-9
H323 Presence of Poetry / Swann / T 11-12, Th 9-11
H327 History of Cinema 1895 - 1945 / Hoberman / T 6-9, W 6-8
H441 Shifting Territories - Censorship in Modern Society / Ashford/Siemann / M 6-9
H356 Issues in Contemporary Fiction / Sayres / W 6-9
H373 Seminar in the Humanities: The Realist Aesthetic in Art and Literature
/ Bartelik / M 11-12, T 4-6
H385 Issues in Contemporary Philosophy: Self Knowledge / Richardson / M 9-11, W 11-12
S308 Public Policy / Griffin / M 9-11, W 11-12
S321 The American Presidency / Kim / W 6-9
S334 Microeconomics / Sarich / T 6-9
S335 Science and Technology in the long Eighteenth Century (1687-1839)
/ Lowengard / M 9-11, W 11-12
S337 The American Foreign Policy in the Age of Terrorism / Siegel / W 3-6
S358 Topics in Social History: Food / Buckley / M 9-11, W 11-12
S362 Popular Culture / Stange / M 6-9
S369 Psychoanalytic Theory / Waxenberg / T 11-12, Th 9-11
S371 Women and Men: Power and Politics / Grossman / T 9-12
S375 Art and Politics in Latin America / Schultz / M 12-1, W 9-11
H306 Native America
Brian Swann
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.
H307 Playwriting and Theater Practicum
Kate Bell
This course will introduce students to two disciplines essential to creating theater: acting and playwriting. To help guide the beginning of their practice in these disciplines, students will read and critique contemporary and master works, write plays of their own, perform monologues and scenes written by master playwrights, and bring the work of their peers alive through in-class readings and a final staged reading performance open to the Cooper Union community. At the conclusion of the course, students will have a portfolio of dramatic writing that will include (minimum) an in-class journal, a monologue, a one-page play, and a ten-minute play. Other writing for the course will include a review of a theatrical performance, critiques of peers’ plays, and a final self-evaluation.
H321 The Novel: James Joyce's Ulysses
David Weir
The title of James Joyce's Ulysses raises a number of issues about the meaning and method of the text: by naming his novel about an Irish Everyman after the Latin version of the Greek hero Odysseus, Joyce sets up a complex web of cultural and political references that ramify throughout the work. He also asks us to participate in some kind of creative process by producing our own meanings through allusive association with the words of the text. Reading the title Ulysses by substituting one name for another-in this case Leopold Bloom (and then asking ourselves how Bloom is "like" Ulysses)-is somehow less productive than situating Bloom "between" Greek Odysseus and Roman Ulysses and asking ourselves, for example, how the intercultural condition of the character (an Irish Jew) reflects the process whereby one tradition is overwritten by another. Just as Virgil overwrites The Odyssey as The Aeneid and Dante overwrites both as The Inferno, so Joyce overwrites all three as Ulysses. Moreover, as an Irish author with British citizenship, Joyce's overwriting of prior traditions is fraught with political meaning, just as the title Ulysses is-by suggesting an analogy between the Roman subjugation of Greek culture and the British subjugation of Irish culture. The purpose of this course, then, is to help students learn to read Joyce's Ulysses by paying close attention to the text itself and by making strategic associations to the cultural contexts that inform the novel. Along the way, we will ask ourselves such questions as these: What adjustments does the reader have to make to the practice of "normal" reading in order to understand and appreciate the novel? What makes Ulysses different from novels written before it? What makes it a modernist work? Or a proto-postmodernist work? What is the relationship of tradition and experimentation in the novel? And so on. Students should purchase the edition of Ulysses edited by Hans Walter Gabler and read the first chapter for the first class meeting.
Course requirements: regular, punctual attendance; class participation; one essay, five to eight pages; one research paper, twelve to fifteen pages; and a minimum of one imperial pint of Guinness.
H323 Presence of Poetry
Brian Swann
This will be a class in which the center of attention is the Poem itself. We will concentrate on modern English and American poetry. The common text will be The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, 2nd Edition, Edited by Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair (Norton, 1988), but students are encouraged to look into other anthologies, and into studies such as Stanley Burnshaw, The Poem Itself, William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity, and Martin Heidegger Poetry, Language, Thought.
H327 History of Cinema
J. Hoberman
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.
H441 Shifting Territories - Censorship in Modern Society
Doug Ashford & Catherine Siemann
Censorship in Contemporary Society. The focus of this course is to examine the restriction on free expression in various formats and media, both in the United States and throughout the world. The impact of censorship on artistic, scientific, and political thought is profound, limiting creative possibilites and skewing our perception of reality. Looking at examples from the visual arts, literature, and other relevant cultural phenomena, including public spaces and scientific discourse, students will interrogate theoretical and legal approaches to censorship, examining its rationales and the strategies used in its opposition. The course will culminate in an exhibition, mounted by the students in conjunction with the faculty sponsors, exploring examples of censorship and educating the community on its impact. Number of hours of lecture/seminar and/or studio meetings: 3 hours
H356 Issues in Contemporary Fiction
Sohnya Sayres
There will likely be a new topic each time this course is given. Sometimes we will concentrate on genre concerns, such as satiric fiction or science fiction, sometimes on thematic issues, such as a sense of history, or question of perspectives; sometimes we will give precedence to a sensibility such as postmodernism, sometimes to a critical approach – deconstructive, semiotic, sociological. Each time, the works chosen will be important, controversial, and delightful, and in each case, appreciation of their artfulness will be our chief aim. This semester's topic: autobiography/fiction.
H373 Seminar in the Humanities: The Realist Aesthetic in Art and Literature
Marek Bartelik
The class will examine realism in the US, Europe, Russia and other parts of the world as a multidisciplinary phenomenon and "method," focusing on the visual arts, literature, photography, and film, and spanning the period between the early nineteenth century and the present. It will present realism as both an aesthetic and an ideology. The class will investigate the meaning of "the truthful representation of life" and "the vanishing of reality," relating those phenomena to a number of texts. The class will also analyze the meaning of ideology, censorship, and irony in the context of art praxis and dissemination of art. Additional attention will be paid to the place of the Other viewed as a challenge to the political, ethnic, and cultural heterogeneity of the mainstream society. In-class discussions will be framed around readings of primary sources, critical texts, and fiction writings dealing with realism.
H385 Issues in Contemporary Philosophy: Self Knowledge
Robert Richardson
Self-knowledge is knowledge of one's own mental states. Most philosophers agree that self-knowledge is importantly different from knowledge of the world external to oneself, including others' mental states. They disagree, however, about exactly what distinguishes self-knowledge from knowledge generally, which disagreement follows from the competing accounts they offer about how one acquires self-knowledge. This course examines these accounts in detail and evaluates each on the basis of what it entails regarding the scope of mental content, the nature of mind, and the status of personal identity.
S308 Public Policy
Anne Griffin
This course will begin with an introduction to and general analysis of the policy process. How is policy made? How do demands arise? How well does policy, once formulated, meet perceived needs. How do factors such as funding, bureaucracy and competition with the political system affect the "success" of public policy? After examining a number of issues of national significance, each student will undertake a detailed study of an issue of both professional and political importance, and will present a policy analysis of the case in both oral and written format. Case presentations in previous semesters have included such diverse issues as the location of interstate highways, genetic engineering, funding for the arts, and historic preservation.
S321 The American Presidency
James Kim
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.
S334 Microeconomics
John Sarich
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.
S335 Science & Technology in the long Eighteenth Century (1687-1839)
Sarah Lowengard
This course will examine the changing roles of science and technology in the West during the 18th and early 19th centuries. We will use a case-study approach to consider such topics as: color in theories (light and optics) and color in practice (painting, dyeing and glassmaking); geology mineralogy and the development of ceramics industries in Europe; the invention, use (and misuse) of the natural history classifications; automation and automatons: Vaucanson's duck, Jacquard's loom, Babbage's Difference Engine.
Throughout the semester we will consider such questions as: How do definitions of "science" and "technology" change in painting, a pot, or clothing? How did one become a scientist in the 18th and 19th century? Hoe does the concept of an industrial revolution enhance or inhibit interpretations of technological change? What is the nature of scientific progress? What is the nature of technological progress?
S337 The American Foreign Policy in the Age of Terrorism
Fred Siegel
The twentieth century has been defined by a series of challenges to Western liberalism. Earlier challenges came from fascism and communism. The most recent challenge has come from Islamists and terrorist movements on the one hand and the European Union on the other. This course will look at American foreign policy since the collapse of Communism.
S358 Topics in Social History: Food
Peter Buckley
This course presents a social history of food from the Renaissance to the Present. It will employ two methods; the first uses labor and ecological history to begin an investigation of the ways various food stuffs-sugar, coffee, corn, chocolate, rice and the humble potato-transformed European habits of consumption as well as changing the nature of labor in the colonies. The second track is more anthropological and cultural in focus. We will look at what food "means" and has meant to people in various settings, how, for instance, eating has been ritualized in dinners and feasts and how it has been placed in the changing economy of desire. Students will be required to complete three projects: the development of a joint bibliography of food history, a research paper on one particular food material not covered in the readings, and one paper on a food custom or folkway.
S362 Popular Culture
Maren Stange
This course studies popular culture in a primarily twentieth-century context. Using both creative and theoretical texts, it considers developments in contemporary popular culture including the rise of mass media and consumerism, the elaboration of pop-cultural theory, and the trend toward multiculturalism. We will sharpen our critical perspective on our cultural surroundings by questioning boundaries between the popular and other cultural categories, notions of creativity in the high and popular arts, and the bases of our own preferences.
S369 Introduction to Psychoanalytic Theory
Deborah Waxenberg
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.
S371 Women and Men: Power and Politics
Atina Grossmann
The course offers an introduction to women's and gender studies, and to feminist theory. Students will engage in an interdisciplinary examination of the ways in which gender (that is, femininity and masculinity) has been constructed by visual media, literature, political theory, and social, political, and economic institutions; the historical bases for these constructions, and the activism that challenges some of these gender constructs. We will pay particular attention to the interlocking of gender with other forms of hierarchy, including race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality, that are constructed in culture. We will read "classic" texts and current scholarship in works of literature, film, history, social science, postmodern and queer theory.
S375 Art and Politics in Latin America
Kirsten Schultz
This course provides a survey of specific moments in Latin America's 20th century history in which artistic projects and political projects have been intensely connected. The goals of the course are 1) to identify the ways in which Latin Americans have defined the relationships between art and politics as well as the tensions in these definitions; 2) to explore the ways in which Latin Americans have defined the aesthetic dimensions of politics itself; and 3) to examine the ways in which artists have participated in the critical construction of political identities. Readings will focus on the visual arts and architecture but also include discussions of the literary arts.