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Home > Curriculum > Course Descriptions > Spring 2006 Newsletter
Spring 2006 Newsletter
Important Dates | CHC IT Tech Position Available | Ragen Room Dedication IMPORTANT DATES back to topFebruary 27 - March 10 February 28 - Tuesday March 15 - Wednesday March 16 - Thursday March 17 - Friday March 17 March 20 - 24 March 27 - 31 April 3 - Monday April 5 - Wednesday April 7 - Friday April 12 - Wednesday May 8 - 12 May 2 - Tuesday May 22 - June 2 May 29 - Monday June 8 - Thursday June 9 - Friday June 12 - 16 June 16 - Friday June 17 - Saturday June 26 - Monday CHC IT TECH POSITION AVAILABLE back to topThe Clark Honors College is hiring for a student tech position. This student is part of a team which provides technical assistance to students, staff, and faculty. This position provides support for Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, Windows, Mac's, printers, and other peripherals. This person should be able to train non-technical customers, provide written progress reports, and work in a self-sufficient environment. This position is a student position, for a max of 20 hours a week, and comes with high compensation. RAGEN ROOM DEDICATION back to topRenovations on Chapman 307 were completed over winter break, thanks to a generous donation from CHC alumnus Doug Ragen. The complete revamping of the space and equipment in 307 brings this classroom--one of two designated exclusively for Clark Honors College classes--into the 21st century. State-of-the-art instructional media, new lighting, flooring, paint, wainscoting, and all new furniture make this a beautiful new space in which to teach and learn. The classroom-now called the Ragen Room-will be officially dedicated on Friday, March 17 with a special dessert reception and inaugural lecture by Professor Frances Cogan. For more information about the event, watch the CHC Event Calendar. CLASS OF 2006 GRADUATION INFORMATION back to topThe following information is for ALL 2006 GRADUATES -- Winter, Spring, Summer & Fall NEW! COMMENCEMENT REGISTRATIONIf you're graduating Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall terms of 2006, you can walk in the Spring Commencement ceremony. Please submit a Commencement Registration no later than April 12 -- which also happens to be the last day to register for Spring Term classes. If you have not submitted a Commencement Registration, by the deadline, your name will not be printed in the program. If you have questions, contact . GRADUATE APPRECIATION DINNER DANCEAll 2006 graduates are invited to the Graduate Appreciation Dinner Dance on Tuesday, May 2 in the EMU Ballroom. This is a semi-formal sit-down dinner with wine and dancing. Please make sure to notify the CHC Office if you're graduating in 2006, and make sure that your UO address is correct so that you will receive your invitation in the mail. Sorry, this is for graduates only, not spouses or sweethearts.CLARK HONORS COLLEGE COMMENCEMENTAll 2006 graduates, their families, and thesis advisors are invited to attend the Clark Honors College Commencement on Friday, June 16, 2006 in the EMU Ballroom at 7:30 p.m. A reception in the Fountain Courtyard will follow. A number of awards will be presented to outstanding graduating seniors. Graduates should come to the CHC Office in May to pick up invitations. Watch the CHC website for more details. You must notify the CHC Office via the Commencement Registration if you intend to walk. DONATE YOUR CAP & GOWNGraduating students can donate their regalia to help future CHC graduates who may be unable to purchase their own. Look for a collection station at the Post-commencement Reception. COMMENCEMENT BANNER CARRIER -- Free Cap and GownEach year one CHC graduating senior is chosen to carry the Robert D. Clark Honors College banner in both the CHC and UO Spring Commencement ceremonies. As part of this honor, the college will cover the cost of the banner carrier's cap and gown. If you would like to be the banner carrier for Clark Honors College, please submit the following information to Deborah McGeehan in the CHC Office no later than Friday, April 7: your name, home address, phone number, and email address. You must graduate Spring 2006 and attend both the CHC and UO commencement ceremonies to be eligible. The banner carrier will be chosen by CHC Director Richard Kraus and will be notified at the end of April. GRADE POINT AVERAGEStudents must have at least a 3.0 grade point average in order to graduate from Clark Honors College. Students whose cumulative GPA falls below 3.0 will have two terms to raise it. If this does not occur, students may petition to remain in Clark Honors College. If you have concerns about your GPA, please contact your CHC advisor. IMPORTANT INFORMATION FOR SENIORS back to top
SCHOLARSHIPS back to topCLARK HONORS COLLEGE SCHOLARSHIPSGenerous donors have made a number of CHC Scholarships available to Clark Honors College students. Scholarship awards are based on a variety of criteria, including academic excellence, field of study, areas of interest, gender, nationality, and financial need. The deadline for CHC Scholarship Applications is March 15, 2006. UNIVERSITY OF OREGON SCHOLARSHIPSClark Honors College students are great candidates for UO Scholarships, too! BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE!For more scholarships from organizations outside the University of Oregon, surf the web, but be wary of scholarships scams. The UO recommends FastWeb. EAT ELSEWHERE back to topYour classrooms, library and computer lab are inappropriate places to eat. We have had cases of students leaving their trash in classrooms, spilling drinks, and damaging equipment. There are older computers in the lounge (CHA 305), which will print to the lab printers, that you can use while you enjoy your lunch. The remodel of CHA 307, the woodwork in the library and the hallway, the computer lab, and recent improvements in the lounge, have all been made possible by donations from past CHC students for your benefit. If you see one of your peers eating outside of the lounge, please remind them to keep our college beautiful for current and future CHC students. STUDY ABROAD STUDENTS back to topWe want to hear from you!Please mail a postcard to the Clark Honors College Student Association, telling us where you're studying and what you've been up to. The CHCSA will put it on the bulletin board next to the new wall map in the Lounge (CHA 305) so that other students can read it. The address is:
CHCSA
Clark Honors College 1293 University of Oregon Eugene OR 97403 U.S.A. CREATIVE ARTS JOURNAL back to topSUBMISSION DEADLINE: Tuesday, February 28The submission deadline for the Creative Arts Journal is coming up on FEBRUARY 28TH, so be sure to submit! We want your work! If you have any stories, poems, photographs, articles, papers you've written (perhaps for a class), and you think they are worthy of being published -- we'd love to see them. Even videos are welcome for online submissions! Please complete a Creative Arts Journal Submission Form CHCSA FREE COAST TRIP back to topOnce again the CHCSA is heading for the coast for tidepooling, hiking, and more! This year we will be renting cabins at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology (OIMB) in Charleston, Oregon, March 3-5. The cost is FREE - group dinners will be provided Friday and Saturday, but please bring your own breakfast, lunch, and snacks. We'll be carpooling. Can you drive? We will cover your gas! Anyone interested must attend a pre-trip meeting (TBA). Space is limited to 25 students. Sign up early on the sign-up sheet on the bulletin board across from the CHC Office. CHCSA OREGON SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL back to topThe CHCSA is going to Ashland for the Oregon Shakespeare Festival on Sunday, May 7. You choose two of the following plays:
The Diary of Anne Frank, showtime 1:30 pm
Bus Stop, showtime 1:30 pm The Importance of Being Earnest, showtime 8:00 pm UP, showtime 8:00 pm You pay for one; we pay for the other. Cost is $22. Can you drive? We will cover your gas! Sign up early on the bulletin board across the hall from the CHC Office. "HIGH FIVE" ACADEMIC CIVIL WAR back to topClark Honors College is going head-to-head against the OSU Honors College in a special "High Five" Civil War Challenge. This event will be taped at the Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) Studio in Portland on April 15 and will be televised in June. Are you up for the challenge? Are you ready to defend your college? Interested students should submit a brief statement by February 28 to CHC Director Richard Kraus, explaining why they want to represent Clark Honors College in the High Five Academic Civil War. WHERE DID TUESDAY (U) AND THURSDAY (H) GO?!? back to topA week at UO now looks like this:
As CHC students, we trust that you will all quickly adapt to this new system, even though we know in our hearts that Thursday should really be theta: θ. SPRING 2006 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS back to topLITERATURE back to top
"The Good Life III" In 2006 we are almost too cynical even to ask "how should we live and what should we value?" Although we crave answers to this question no less than others have over the centuries, we face major obstacles to the asking, let alone the answering, of it. This course will explore some of these obstacles as presented, resisted, or surmounted by some of the finest writers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with special attention to a dialogue between Western and Arabic voices in literature. Texts will include the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" (John Keats), "My Last Duchess" (Robert Browning), "Dover Beach" (Matthew Arnold), "The Second Coming" (W.B. Yeats), "The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" (T.S. Eliot), "The Windhover" (Gerard Manley Hopkins), "Face Lost in the Wilderness" (Fadwa Tuqan) Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen), "In the Penal Colony," "A Hunger Artist," and "The Metamorphosis," (Franz Kafka), "Rebellion" and "The Grand Inquisitor" from The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), Beloved (Toni Morrison), "That Beautiful Undiscovered Voice" (Salwa Bakr), and Arabian Nights and Days (Naguib Mafouz). Class time will focus on discussion based on careful reading. There will be two short papers (2-5 pages), one research paper (8-10 pages), ungraded exercises and group work, both in and out of class, a mid-term, and a final exam.
"Modernism/Modernity" This course explores the literatures of the 19th and 20th centuries as they move into and out of the modernist period. During the term we will read works from many countries including Germany, England, the United States, and Japan as we consider literary responses to the concept of modernity. We will pay special attention to instances of formal innovation and to the impact that literatures of different cultures had on one another. This class also contains an emphasis on research and writing. To this end we will discuss various critical approaches to literature, engage in scholarly research, and produce moderate-length research papers on one or more of the texts covered in class. There will also be a comprehensive final and occasional short assignments.
"Making Modernity" This third term of Honors College Literature requires attentive reading of both primary texts and literary criticism; it also requires, at the end of the term, the production of an original research paper. To meet the course's goals we will divide our reading of primary texts and their secondary criticism among four literary-critical modes from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries:
After reading a nineteenth-century novel (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein), we will approach modernism through poetry (T.S. Eliot) and novel (Virginia Wolfe's Orlando), then move to Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart and Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things to assess colonialism and post-colonialism. We will conclude with Tom Stoppard's Arcadia to define post-modernism and analyze its play (in both senses of the word) with prior eras' literary concerns. Requirements will include response papers, article summaries, annotated bibliographies, a class presentation, and a term paper.
"After Empire" This course is a survey of modern literature that takes as its theme the imperial project. We will therefore be reading literary responses, critiques and engagements with the colonial impulse that span initial moments of cultural contact, war and conquest, resistance and rebellion, independence and its aftermath, and the neocolonial predicament. Our study of these works will also take us through several major trends in literary historiography: historicism, negritude, modernism, social realism, magical realism, existentialism and so forth. We will read traditional works of fiction, lyric poetry, travel narratives and essays. Texts may include: Aime Cesaire’s Return to My Native Land (1939), Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958), Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1980), Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable (1940), Amitav Ghosh’s The Glass Palace (2000), Assia Djebbar’s Fantasia (1983), Tsitsi Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions (1989), Bapsi Sidhwa’s Cracking India (1981), Pepetela’s Mayombe (1971), Premchand’s Gift of a Cow (1936), Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1986). Course evaluation will be based on class participation, quizzes, a midterm paper and a final exam.
"Gender and War" This course will read different discourses on war, paying attention to the language crafted and metaphor systems used to engage in a war and justify a military campaign, as well as to define gender differences amid war. We will thus examine the connection between war and gender, observing how culturally endorsed assumptions of femininity and masculinity are reproduced or contested in the context of war. Focusing on women's role in war, we will see examples of women as mothers, providers of soldiers and supporters of the nation-state, nurses, factory workers in times of crisis, and, especially, combatants. In a diachronic and cross-cultural approach, we will read many excerpts from the Hebrew Bible, passages from the Aeneid, fragments from Sappho, WWI plays, speeches from World War II leaders and contemporary chiefs of state, and newspaper articles. Our corpus will also include many poems. Among the authors read we find: Wilfred Owens, Walt Whitman, Guillaume Apolinnaire, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Yehuda Amichai. We will cover some theoretical material about metaphor (including George Lakoff's famed Gulf War text "Metaphor and War") and about women's relation to war. We will also watch a few movies. Required Reading
HISTORY back to top
"Global Ideology, Trade, and Conflict: 1750-Present" This course will give particular attention to political-economic-social ideologies that achieved international prominence, and the competition between these ideologies. We will explore the rise of, and struggles between, republicanism, classical liberalism, democracy, capitalism, racism, colonialism, nationalism, communism, fascism, and neo-liberalism. We will use these ideologies as our primary lens of examination as we consider the rise and fall of Europe's global domination, the tension between industrialization and traditional cultures, why some ideologies (e.g., democratic capitalism) appeal to some peoples and not to others, the advent of World Wars and Cold War, and the struggles of underdeveloped countries against developed countries. This investigation will take us through political, economic, and social developments in Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, East Asia, the US, the USSR, the Middle East, and elsewhere. We will approach these questions through examining philosophy, literature, political treatises, art, and technology. Through using these sources we will explore the distinct creative forces within various cultures, develop skills of critical thinking and interpretation, learn to ask analytical questions of our sources, and recognize the broad patterns that mark global history.
"The Spaces of Modernity: Introduction to Modern History" In this, the third and final segment of our introductory history sequence, we will examine questions of modernity and modernization from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. We will be especially attentive to the changing spaces of modern life, city and country, indoors and outdoors, masculine and feminine, public and private. Students in this class will write papers that address these subjects. We will also concentrate on methods and practices of historical research. Texts include: Samuel Johnson, Journey to the Western Islands; Friedrich Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England; Baudelaire, Paris Spleen; Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture.
"Revolutions in the 'Modern' World" Before the "Dual Revolution," that is, the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and French Revolution of 1789, the term "revolution" was generally used to mean "the moving round in an orbit or circular course" characteristic of heavenly bodies. Even the English Revolution of 1688 and to a significant degree the U.S. anti-colonial revolt of 1775 were carried out with the intent of returning to, or restoring, a(n imagined) previous state of affairs. In the wake of the Dual Revolution, however, "revolution" came to mean "a turning over," an "upheaval," that gives rise to something qualitatively new. This course will focus on the various kinds of revolutions (political-legal, socio-economic, anti-colonial, feminist) that have occurred since 1789. The first half of this course will focus: first on the fundamental transformation of European society by the French and Industrial Revolutions; second, on the augmentation of European military might by the latter and the partitioning of virtually the entire world into European colonies. Beneath its formidable façade in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European society at its zenith was rent by deep class, gender, and racial faultlines that led to left (communist)- and right (fascist)-wing revolutions and to the collapse of "civilization" into the barbarism of the second Thirty-Years War (more commonly known as World Wars I and II). Europe's self-destruction and the emergence of the U.S. and Soviet Union as "superpowers" will be the third theme of the first half of the course. The second half will focus anti-colonial revolutions in Africa, the Middle East and Asia that imbricated the Cold-War superpowers. The concluding week of the quarter will focus on the state of the world since the fall of the Soviet Union and East Block in 1989. Readings include: Henrik Ibsen, A Doll House, Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness, and selected readings from Rosa Luxemburg, W.E.B. DuBois, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Kwame Nkruhma, Chinua Achebe, Julius Nyrere, Nelson Mandela, V.I. Lenin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong; Documents from the U.S. Women's movements. Writing Assignments: 3-4 page review of a book to be used for your research paper; 10-12 page research paper; final exam.
"Empire" This rendition of the third segment of the world history sequence will use the concept of empire to analyze the development of the modern world over the last two hundred and fifty years. The formal empires of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries set many of the boundaries of the contemporary world. Between the land-based empires of China, Russia, the Ottomans, Austro-Hungary, the United States and the seaborne empires of the French, Dutch, British, Portuguese, and Spanish, nearly the entire globe was carved into pieces. The legacies of this imperial framework are still very evident in today's world. Using the past as our experimental laboratory, our class will consider what empire means and debate whether it is really a sufficient framework to understand the last two centuries or so, starting from about 1750. Many of the most important "isms" of the modern world-nationalism and communism, among others-gathered strength as reactions to imperial tendencies, while the industrial revolution morphed into a tool of empire. Our approach to empire will incorporate both the high politics of empire and the experiences of individuals living with those policies. We will look at different forms of empire, colonialism, and imperialism-studying formal and informal empires; the internal consolidation of nations; cultural, economic, and ecological imperialism; and notions of the civilizing mission. We will finish with a focus on the transformation of the formal empires into postcolonial societies, accompanied by increasing globalization. A major focus of the class will be the production of a work of original research among primary sources, using the questions and concepts raised in class to investigate any imperial topic of your choice in greater detail. This paper will be 10-15 pages, and students should expect several preparatory assignments along the way. To further prepare for writing this paper, historical approaches and method will often form part of our class discussion. Other assignments will include two short essays in the first half of the term and occasional response writing on the reading throughout the quarter. There is no midterm or final exam, but students should expect in-class quizzes, and to write a concluding short essay at the end of the course. Already ordered at the bookstore: Empire: A Very Short Introduction (Stephen Howe); World History in Brief (Peter Stearns); the play Death and the King's Horseman (Wole Soyinka); other texts TBA. SCIENCE back to top
HONORS COLLEGE SCIENCE "Freshwater Ecology" This course is designed to give students an introduction to applied and theoretical aspects of freshwater ecology. The principles and concepts will be applicable to a wide range of environmental and ecological concerns and will contribute to a broad understanding of the physical and biological world. Lectures will cover topics from global climate patterns to estuary processes. Labs and mandatory field trips will give students hands-on experience. Grades will be determined by weekly quizzes, writing assignments, field trip reports, final papers, and class participation. COLLOQUIA back to top
"Literature of Skepticism" This course will examine the skeptical response as portrayed in literature to a variety of beliefs, not just religion. You will learn to distinguish skepticism from the more common nihilism, and see how lack of a critical attitude often leads to disaster in a variety of works. The aim of the class is to try to understand why so many authors evoke skepticism as the only viable manner in which to view a world which offers belief in orthodoxy in place of fact. Works studied will include two plays, The Women of Troy (Euripides) and Oleanna (Mamet), three novels, Elmer Gantry (Lewis), The Truth about Lauren Jones (Lurie), Black Robe (Moore), one picaresque, Candide (Voltaire), one novella, The Mysterious Stranger (Twain), and two poets, Omar Kháyyam and Dorothy Parker. Two 4-6 page critical papers will be required and voluntary 10-12 minute oral report on an outside work may substitute for the final. Those not doing an oral report will have a take-home essay final. WARNING: Anyone deeply attached to the following orthodoxies will find this class uncomfortable; take note: Christianity, Islam, Feminism, Higher Education, Romanticism about indigenous peoples, and an orderly universe. True believers should be wary.
"The Nineteenth-Century Novel of Initiation" This course will center on the intensive study of a selection of American and European novels about young people entering the adult world of the nineteenth century. Four or five texts will be chosen from among the following authors: Austen, Stendhal, Charlotte Brontë, Dickens, Dostoevsky, James, Chopin, and Alain-Fournier. The course will be conducted in a discussion format and participants will be asked to write a series of short interpretive essays on the reading assignments.
HC ARTS & LETTERS COLLOQUIUM "Social Realism" This course will examine the genre of fiction categorized as ‘social realism.’ This fiction, largely committed to an analysis of the translation of material reality to the page, as well as the actualization of a certain political program, raises serious question about the role of art in society, the job of the artist, and the nature of ‘reality.’ How, for example, might we characterize the relationship between literature and politics, and, more specifically, between literary representation and the ‘facts’ of social life? The reading for this course will be theoretical (literary criticism, philosophy) and fictional (novels*, some short stories). Some of the texts we will consider: excerpts from Emile Zola’s The Naturalist Novel, Naturalism in the Theater and other essays, excerpts from Georg Lukacs’ Essays on Realism and The Theory of the Novel, Zola’s L’assommoir, Premchand’s Godan [The Gift of the Cow], Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie, Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchable, Dicken’s Oliver Twist. Course evaluation will be based on critical analysis of the texts in class, an oral presentation and a final research paper. * These novels are often very large and very depressing - beware.
Substitution: This topic may be taken as a substitute for HC 421. Please ask your CHC Advisor to authorize this substitution in your student file. HC IDENTITIES COLLOQUIUM "Communities, Homelands, Exiles: Exploring Multiculturalism in Contemporary British Fiction" In this course we'll focus on multiculturalism in contemporary Britain via a selection of 20th century novels, screenplays and poetry. Questions of exile, immigration, the creation of ethnic and religious communities, and of home and family will be addressed in terms of the readings. Readings will include: Caryl Phillips' anthology Extravagant Strangers and his recent novel A Distant Shore; Hanif Kureishi's The Black Album and his screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette; Jean Rhys' Voyage in the Dark; Zadie Smith's White Teeth; Andrea Levy's Small Island; Monica Ali's Brick Lane; Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses; Samuel Selvon's Lonely Londoners. We'll also view a number of films: Hanif Kureishi's "My Beautiful Laundrette" and "My Son the Fanatic," Stephen Frears' "Dirty Pretty Things," Meera Syal's "Bhaji at the Beach" and Mike Leigh's "Secrets and Lies."
Substitution: This topic may be taken as a substitute for HC 431. Please ask your CHC Advisor to authorize this substitution in your student file. HC IDENTITIES COLLOQUIUM "Focault and His Interlocutors" This course examines the work of the philosopher Michel Foucault (1926-84) in intellectual and cultural context. Foucault is one of the most widely read and controversial philosophers of our time. Though conceptually difficult, his works have attracted great popular interest, and they are frequently read outside of the university. Until his death from AIDS in 1984, he wrote and lectured extensively on history, psychology, medicine, and sexuality, among other subjects. In this course, we will take a roughly chronological approach to Foucault and his interlocutors, beginning with Foucault's early work on conceptions of normality and abnormality in science, medicine, and psychology, moving on to his work in the history of knowledge, sexuality, government, and ethics. Foucault preferred not to speak of himself. But toward the end of his life and especially after his death, Foucault's biography became the subject of great public and academic interest. In the final part of this course, we will scrutinize the emergence of a discourse on Foucault and we will aim to understand it with the assistance of Foucault's own analytic tools. This course will involve difficult and lengthy reading but it presupposes no previous training in philosophy or history and students in the natural and the social sciences are particularly encouraged to enroll. Participants in this colloquium will write weekly short papers and a final paper of 15-20 pages. Students should come to the first class having read the short article "Foucault" by Maurice Florence on electronic reserve at the main library. (Find this article by searching under instructor "Rosenberg".)
"Conquest and Cultural Representation in the New World" Tzvetan Todorov in The Conquest of America explored the paradoxical beliefs of the Dominican friar Diego Duran, who devoted himselt to writing a comprehensive study of Aztec religion, and to the total extirpation of this religion in the cause of converting the Indians to Christianity: "What seemed to Duran the greatest infamy-relgious syncretism -- characterized his own outlook." Duran was from a family of conversos, former Jews, and he was fascinated by a religion and culture which he believed to be diabolical and false. His encyclopedic writings have contributed vastly to our knowledge of what he sought to destroy. This course is committed to understanding this paradox in colonial exploration literature and ethnographic writings about Native Americans. Conquerors, explorers, and missionaries were fascinated by many aspects Native societies, and sometimes sought to learn from and imitate them, but at the same time were determined to defeat them. In order to give the class a broad comparative scope -- in terms of region, religion, language and culture-I divide it into three units: Brazil during the 1550s, Canada around 1700, and Mexico in the sixteenth century. Each features key texts by authors committed to a variety of colonial projects: military conquest (Diaz and Cortés), missionary evangelization (Duran), religious exile (de Léry), libertine freedom (Lahontan), or the simple survival of a captive prisoner of war (Staden). Not only are both Catholic and Protestant writers included, but we see how the accounts of Native American primitives and their reputed cannibalism contributed to polemics over the holy sacraments during the Reformation. The Huguenot Jean de Léry implied that Tupi rituals of cannibalism resembled the doctrine of transubstantiation embraced by Catholics, and that nonetheless the custom reflected not savagery but a sense of honor and a theory of just war.
"African Masks and Meaning" In this course, you will develop a special appreciation for the ways in which the rich and varied sculptural forms of Africa are related to the cycle of life, politics, religion and ritual, the economic sphere, and the domains of play and entertainment. In the process, you will acquire a working knowledge of the continent's diverse regional and ethnic styles.
"Re-Visions of the Earth" Taking clues from earthquakes and from the active and inactive volcanoes that surround us, this team-taught course will study the history of geologic inquiry into the process of mountain-building (with special attention to the American West), from nineteenth-century debates to the emergence of plate tectonic theory in the late 1960s. The course will be grounded in basic geology and supported by at least one field excursion. But examining the paradigm shift to plate tectonic theory will also bring into view significant philosophical, cultural, and rhetorical dimensions both of working science and the public dissemination of scientific knowledge. These topics will include how theories are shaped, tested, and debated; how national, social, and personal factors (including gender) can affect the acceptance and rejection of theories; and how rhetorical and literary devices shape scientific discourse, both in professional scientific writing and in environmental nonfiction written for a general audience. In addition to original scientific papers and selections from recent histories of geology, course readings will include Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology (1830-3), Henry Thoreau, Walden (1854), Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962), and John McPhee, Assembling California (1993).
This topic may be taken as a substitute for HC 431. Please ask your CHC Advisor to authorize this substitution in your student file. HC AMERICAN CULTURES COLLOQUIUM "Visions of Freedom III: The Violence of Constraint Theoretical Questions and Lived Experience of Race and Class" In our world, in which "violence" is almost exclusively used to depict that which "criminals" and "terrorists" do, we might do well to recall the etymology of the English term - from the Greek βια, meaning bodily strength, but which has the derived meaning: "to constrain." Seen as "constraint," "violence" becomes a much wider and deeper term, referring not just to the exercise of physical force, but as the exercise of any kind of constraint that infringes on a person's or a group's freedom. Seen as "constraint," then, violence is the direct opposite of "freedom" - a term that has become so inflated today that it is applied to, in order to sell, everything from shoes, to cars, to cell phones. In this course we intend to return to this original meaning of "violence" in order to rethink notions of freedom. We will focus primarily on race and class, including on how gender is mediated by race and class, and analyze how these socially constructed categories exercise constraints that obstruct the freedom of those whose identity and life-experience are defined by them. By exposing the constraining dimensions of violence, we will be able to define in greater depth the hidden dimensions of freedom. In this course we will first study race and class theoretically and experientially and then the relations (intersecting, parallel, opposing) between them. In the study of these categories, our inquiry will be concerned with three issues: the social construction of the category; the consequences of its institutionalization; and the lived experience of those whose lives are constrained by them - both the violence suffered and the forms of resistance they develop. In the final third of the course we will turn attention to the problem of social inequalities and the law. We will focus on legal battles over questions of comparable worth, affirmative action, and reparations for slave labor in order to determine what dimensions of freedom are embedded in our constitution and to what dimensions might it be myopic if not blind. THESIS ORIENTATION back to top
THESIS ORIENTATION WORKSHOP This short class introduces Clark Honors College Students to the thesis project required of all our students. The workshop will meet for one day, plus one additional conference with the instructor. We will discuss what makes a successful thesis, what the student can hope to get out of the project, how to identify possible areas of interest, how to find appropriate faculty sponsors, how to identify courses which will provide necessary background, and how to plan the project so that it is manageable and rewarding, rather than burdensome. Other subjects include the difference between research-oriented and creative theses and how to incorporate plans for study abroad into their thesis plans. This workshop is NOT a substitute for HC 477 Thesis Prospectus (see below). This new workshop aims to assist students in the earlier and preliminary work of how to approach the thesis. THESIS PROSPECTUS back to top
THESIS PROSPECTUS Students will spend the majority of their time in this class polishing their prospectuses and then participating in mock oral examinations. Students will also complete a Preliminary Graduation Audit with either their Thesis Prospectus instructors or their CHC Faculty Advisors. This must occur before the end of the term or the student will not pass the course. Seniors should also have a graduation audit done in their major department(s). Enrollment is based on a first-come, first-served basis. Space is limited! Students who do not file applications in a timely manner will be asked to take Thesis Prospectus the following term. Before enrolling in this class, students should
Students who are studying abroad and need to register for Thesis Prospectus should contact Kris Kirkeby for a new way to do this from afar! INDIVIDUALIZED STUDY back to topIf you wish to take an individualized study course, as listed below, please follow these steps.
Please note that the individualized study courses are subject to the same deadlines as all other courses.
SUMMER TERM 2006 back to top
Any summer session student may enroll in this course if the prerequisite is satisfied. Register with a non-CHC friend! Prerequisite: Sophomore standing only Professor Henry Alley HC IDENTITIES COLLOQUIUM The texts are Marlowe's King Edward II (play), Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (short novel), Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman (novel), Kushner's Angels in America (play), Kramer's Women in Love (screenplay), Dixon's Vanishing Rooms (novel), Fierstein's Torch Song Trilogy (play), Proulx's and McMurtry-Ossana's Brokeback Mountain (story and screenplay), and selections from The Penguin Anthology of Homosexual Verse. The course will provide an overview of gay men's literature, as it has evolved from the Renaissance to the present day. We will discuss how social acceptance has both grown and created more backlashes, as dramatized in the literature. We will look at five tragic perspectives in Marlowe, Wilde, Kramer, Puig, and Proulx, two epic outlooks in Kushner and Dixon, and one comic point of view in Fierstein. These works will trace out the birth of the gay man's Arcadia, where two lovers may retreat from adversity, to the development of the gay marriage and family in the twentieth century. We will have a special look at the war against homophobia, particularly as expressed in the life and work of Oscar Wilde. There will be two short papers and one long one. A reading journal will be optional. There will be a strong emphasis on discussion, and videos of several of the works will be available -- Women in Love, Kiss of the Spider Woman, Torch Song Trilogy, and Brokeback Mountain. |
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