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Home > Curriculum > Course Descriptions > Winter 2008 Newsletter
Winter 2008 Newsletter
Winter 2008 Course Descriptions | Literature | History | Science | Special Studies WINTER 2008 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS back to topLITERATURE back to top
A Sense of Discovery: Travel and the Construction of Identity This course explores the theme of travel as found in texts written during the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. By reading works such as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu’s “Turkish Embassy Letters,” Olaudah Equiano’s The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano (excerpts), and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, we will interrogate the ways in which geographic and imaginative travel contributed to a sense of individual and national identity. Classes will include lecture, group projects, and discussion. There will be two papers and a comprehensive final exam.
New Worlds, Real and Ideal This class will investigate the literature of the “Age of Exploration” and its aftermath by paying attention to moments of culture contact. During this time, many writers were grappling with ways to represent other cultures in writing, and such projects often also inspired them to reflect critically on the norms of their own cultures. We’ll focus primarily on Europe, the “New World,” and the Ottoman Empire, and look at works including Thomas More’s Utopia, the poetry of Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Shakespeare’s Tempest, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Mary Rowlandson’s captivity narrative, and Mary Wortley Montagu’s Letters from a Turkish Embassy.
Tradition and Innovation: Understanding Literature through Literary Movements In this course we will be reading important works of Western and Eastern European literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. While approaching the texts through close reading, we will also discuss the works in their historical, cultural, and national contexts. In particular, we will focus on the three literary and artistic movements of Classicism, Romanticism, and Realism. Our readings will include Molière’s Tartuffe, Voltaire’s Candide, or Optimism, Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Confessions, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust, Alexander Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin, and others. We will also consider the works in relation to other artistic mediums and view film adaptations. Students will be evaluated on the basis of three short essays (3-5 pages), a final examination, and active participation and discussion in class.
Considering Comedy From the Reeve to Poor Richard This term, we’ll consider the role that comedy, broadly defined, plays in literature from the medieval period through the Restoration and on into early American literature. The texts we will read utilize a variety of comic modes, including traditional medieval notions of comedy, satire, wit, and bawdy humor. We will consider the function of these texts in their original historic and cultural contexts and ground our discussions with careful close readings of both primary and secondary material. Can “comedy” serve a serious purpose? If so, what topics are best suited to the comedic mode? How might “comic” elements be used to challenge conventional notions about class, gender and personal or national identity? Does a text’s designation as a comedy work against its ability to challenge societal conventions? We will begin the term with a selection from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, and continue with considerations of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, Behn’s The Rover, Franklin’s Autobiography, and Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera. We will also look at representations of women in the satiric poems of Pope and Swift and responses to these portrayals from Montagu, Finch, and others.
Emerging Voices in the Renaissance and the Neoclassical Age The texts are Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Shakespeare’s King Lear, Behn’s The Rover, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Pope’s “Essay on Man,” Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Kurosawa’s Ran. The course will explore major debatable literary topics, as proposed by classic texts. We will look at the gain and loss of ideal worlds proposed by the Renaissance and Restoration (Aphra Behn, Shakespeare, Milton), and the subsequent equilibrium attained by the 18th century (Pope and Austen). The class will also study the forms of tragedy (King Lear, Ran), comedy (The Rover, Pride and Prejudice), and epic (Paradise Lost). We will be particularly interested in how previously marginalized voices – in women, in political rebels, in people in underprivileged classes, in artists, in unacknowleged non-Western writers – actually acquire a voice in these texts. Class will consist of discussion, lecture, and semi-formal debate. In lecture, particular emphasis will be given to recent scholarship, which calls for a new focus on great women authors, such as Aphra Behn, as well as a revision of how we view such classic writers as Milton, Austen, and Shakespeare. We will also be looking at a film script and film, Ran, a Samurai version of King Lear created by the great Japanese director, Kurosawa.
Order: Moral and Otherwise This term, using primarily the genre of drama, we will explore philosophical centers of private order as shown through literature as well as exploring various elements of drama. Centers of order include love (Petrarchan and anti-Petrarchan), reason, honor, Confucianism and the law, religion, and common sense. Around what (or by what) does an individual set priorities? What comes first, and what are the results of these choices in life? We will compare centers of order and problems inherent in each during the term. Texts will include some of the following: a Spanish play from the 16th century, Tirso de Mollina’s Burlador de Sevilla (Trickster of Seville) [Comedia de capa y espada]; Corneille’s Le Cid [French 17th century Neoclassical Tragedy]; Molière’s Le Misanthrope [French 17th century Neoclassical Comedy]; Shakespeare’s Hamlet [17th century English Revenge Tragedy]; and Aphra Behn’s The Rover [English Restoration Comedy]. We will also study some poetry (sonnets and love poems from Italy, France, and England, by both men and women) and two prose works (Malory’s Morte d’Arthur [15th century romance and Arthurian legends] and Van Gulik’s translation of Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee [18th century Q’ing dynasty Chinese mystery]. HISTORY back to top
Constructing the Modern World: Historical Thinking in a Global Framework from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment Europe is at the center of this second segment of the year-long history sequence. We will identify the philosophical, cultural, artistic, political, religious, and economic pillars on which modern Europe was built, and then we will evaluate ways in which European culture, ideas, and values were disseminated—sometimes forcibly—to the rest of the world, including the Americas, Asia, and Africa. We will highlight the conflicts that arose within and between cultures, and we will attempt to uncover the voices not only of men and women making Europe but also those fleeing Europe, rebelling against European political and religious organizations, trading with and being traded by Europe, and coming into conflict with European conquerors. The course begins with the Renaissance and then covers European exploration and colonization, the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment.
Introduction to Historical Thinking in a Global Framework: 1350-1789 In the beginning of the century near whose end Columbus crossed the Atlantic, the Chinese admiral Zheng He made seven major voyages throughout the South Pacific and across Indian Ocean to the thriving trade centers on Africa’s east coast. His fleet consisted of 62 ships, most of which were so large that Columbus’s entire fleet of three ships could easily fit on their decks. Compared to the great cities of China, the Indian Ocean rim, and the Eastern Mediterranean, Europe was a rural and provincial backwater. By the end of the period covered in this course, Europe was about to complete its conquest of the world and the tiny kingdom of England had acquired an empire "on which the sun never set." This astonishing transformation and its consequences will be the topics of this course, which will be divided into three parts. In the first part we will take stock of the state of the world in 1350. Through comparative socio-cultural analyses we will glimpse the similarities and differences in how people lived and thought in China, in the Islamic World, in Africa and the Americas. We will analyze social forms in order to reconstruct modes of behavior and the tone of daily life; and we will interpret works of art and literature, religion and philosophy in order to understand how contemporaries perceived their world. In the second part of the course, we will focus specifically on the profound process of transformation effected in Europe by the advent of capitalism. We will focus on the motives behind European expansion and the sources of its success. In the third part of the course we will examine the global consequences of Europe's newfound economic and military power. Our major concerns will be: how European conquest and colonialization produced "third worlds," that is, economic underdevelopment, in much of the world; the consequences of the slave trade for Africa, the Americas, and Europe; the cultural contacts and conflicts that took place in the context of colonial domination. Since so many current conflicts, both within the West and around the world have their origins in this period, an understanding of Europe's rise to dominance and the origins and nature of its relations with the rest of the world is crucial to understanding the present.
Empire, Religion, and Discovery: Global Contact and Change, 1400-1750 This course will explore the rapid changes that affected the globe during 1400-1750. We will focus on three imperial systems: Western Europe and her colonies in North and South America, China, and the Ottoman (the Islamic empire that came to control all of North Africa, the Middle East, and Southeast Europe). We will consider the culture, politics, economics, and religion of each region, as well as the interactions between these empires. Our investigation will examine such questions as: How did Europe change the Americas, and how did the Americas change Europe? How did Europe, which began as an insubstantial backwater, come to international prominence by the end of this period? How did the Ottomans manage an empire that contained such a tremendous area and diversity of peoples? How did Muslims and Christians compete and cooperate with each other throughout the Mediterranean? How did the Chinese respond to Manchu domination and contact with the Europeans? Why did the Chinese, who in the fifteenth century launched the most powerful program of maritime exploration in the world, become so disinterested in foreign contact? What led to, and what were the effects of, the European Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment, which propelled Europe to world domination in the modern era? How did religion, philosophy, and technology affect the fortunes of these empires and their policies? How did women shape and respond to imperial economics, administration, and warfare?
South Asia and Atlantic World: Contact Zones in the Early Modern Era, 1400-1800 This course examines the Atlantic and Asian contact zones of social and political exchange. We will consider the shift from overland routes to sea routes that occurred by the 15th century and continued to shape commercial, military, and political relations into what has been termed the early modern era in world history. As movement of labor, commodities, and technologies crossed political environments, the process of modern state-building emerged. Our readings include Chinese and Portuguese accounts of Calicut on the Indian Ocean, reports on the voyages of Zheng He, Vasco da Gama, and Columbus, as well as readings in the scientific and religious traditions of Ibn al-Shatin and Copernicus. SCIENCE back to top
21st Century Science The 21st century will be a golden age for scientific knowledge and technological progress. During this last century, our view of Nature shifted from a Cartesian-Newtonian view of a clockwork Universe to an expanding Universe ruled by chaos, complexity and quantum uncertainty. This course will explore scientific topics concerning the macroscopic world, microscopic world and cosmology (dynamics, elementary particles, galaxies, Big Bang) in the context of the philosophy of science that we use to apply meaning to reality (reductionism, emergence, holism and creation). The website for this class is http://abyss.uoregon.edu/~js SPECIAL STUDIES back to top
HONORS COLLEGE HISTORY Forensics Clark Honors College hosts the nationally ranked University of Oregon Forensics Program. The program is designed to teach rhetorical habits of mind and speech through intercollegiate debate and individual events. The program travels to about thirteen tournaments, hosts two on-campus tournaments, and engages in some on-campus speaking activities. Two graduate teaching fellows are assigned to the program. Debate students will be paired with partners and will be expected to conduct extensive research on the debate topics selected by the Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) and the Parliamentary Debate Association. Novice and experienced student debaters are welcome, and students do not need to be Clark Honors College students to enroll. COLLOQUIA back to top
See also JDST 399* “The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America” Monique Balbuena * Course Substitution Petition, required. HONORS COLLEGE ARTS & LETTERS COLLOQUIUM
Prerequisite: HC 221-223 or 231-233
Graduation Requirement: This class will fulfill both of the following requirements: an Arts & Letters Colloquium and an IP Multicultural class. If the student has already taken an Arts & Letters Colloquium, this class will fulfill both of the following requirements: an Elective Colloquium and an IP Multicultural class. HC IDENTITIES COLLOQUIUM [HC ARTS & LETTERS COLLOQUIUM] Women's Religious Narratives East & West This course examines theory and narrative in the study of women's lives in cross-cultural and comparative context. We will begin by reading scholarly literature dealing with issues of feminist and gender theory in general as well as regarding eastern or Asian materials. After this, we will focus on narrative accounts of women religions and spiritual traditions as found in journals, autobiographies, and fiction. The theoretical readings at the beginning of the course provide analytical tools for digesting and examining the narrative accounts, and the narratives provide test cases for the theories we will have covered earlier.
Graduation Requirement: This class will fulfill both of the following requirements: a Social Science Colloquium and an IP Multicultural class. If the student has already taken a Social Science Colloquium, this class will fulfill both of the following requirements: an Elective Colloquium and an IP Multicultural class. HC IDENTITIES COLLOQUIUM [HC SOCIAL SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM] Comparative 'Tribalisms': US Cultural Politics in African Perspective For decades, analysts thought that “tribal” identities and “tribalist” politics were confined to “backward” places like sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, the Amazon, or North American Indian reservations. Once upon a time, we really did believe that everyone who experienced education, industrialization, urbanization and development would learn to count up their individual interests, team up with others who shared the same worldview or ideology, and put away forever old loyalties. However, Milosevic and the slaughter at Srebenica, Hindu nationalists razing the mosque at Ahodya, the Tutsi corpses of Lake Kivu, even the rebellion in Chiapas reminded us of the mobilizational salience of cultural identity “out there” in the rest of the world. Back in the “modern” world, one need not look long to find a renewed resentment of immigrant “others” and calls for the restoration of “traditional” national cultural values. As the debate over affirmative action raged on in the U.S., James Byrd was dragged to death behind a pickup truck in Texas, and Matthew Sheppard was beaten and hung out to die for his sexual orientation. 9-11 and subsequent wars suggest that there really is a “clash of civilizations” going on, that “our” side stands for ideas, rights and rule of law, and “their” side stands for irrational hate and “tribal,” blind loyalty to dogmatic religious beliefs, a classic fight between light and dark, good and evil, order and chaos. Is tribalism, that political pathology supposedly endemic to the Africas of the world, spreading, Ebola-like, to places once considered immune to the disease? In this course we explore collective cultural identity by placing U.S. cultural politics alongside cultural politics in the developing world, especially sub-Saharan Africa, the putative “homeland of tribalism.” We compare experiences of U.S. identity groups – Native, African, and European Americans – with experiences of those in developing countries – Nigeria, India, South Africa, ex-Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Indonesia, and Brazil. We move beyond terms like “tribalism,” developing instead an understanding of ethnic, cultural and identity politics.
Culture, Nature, History: the Animal-Human Bond This course is a cross-societal, historical look at the ways people have constructed their relationship to nature. Our main goal is to understand the interplay of factors that shape this relationship and the resulting consequences for natural and social environments. Drawing on literature from environmental studies, cultural studies, and animal studies we will explore this topic from the perspective of different historical periods and places. In addition to common readings, students will choose topics from their individual interests to present to the class. Among these might be landscape art, animal-assisted therapies in medicine and psychology, climate studies, or children's literature to name a few possibilities.
Democracy and Communication At the same time the United States is engaged in an effort to promote worldwide democracy through diplomacy as well as military action there is growing confusion over both the viability and meaning of democracy within its own borders. This class will take a close look at this paradox by examining the role of news and entertainment in the struggles to define democracy and create a democratic culture.
See also HC 434H "Rights& Needs in the Northern Ireland Conflict" Cohen & Frank See also HC 444H "Visions of Freedom III: the Violence of Constraint" Joseph Fracchia HONORS COLLEGE SOCIAL SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM
Graduation Requirement: This class will fulfill both of the following requirements: a Social Science Colloquium and an IC Multicultural class. If the student has already taken a Social Science Colloquium, this class will fulfill both of the following requirements: an Elective Colloquium and an IC Multicultural class. HC INTERNATIONAL CULTURES COLLOQUIUM Rights and Needs in the Northern Ireland Conflict This course features the conflicts between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland. These conflicts emanate from ethno-territorial disputes and the course will highlight conflict theories and models designed to move bargainers from rights to needs in conflict over identity and resources. These theories and models set forth the following principles for use in ethno-territorial disputes: 1) a shift from rights to needs, 2) use of time rather than sovereignty as a primary value, 3) optimal use of resources for both parties, and 4) the development of a language recognizing local circumstances and constraints.
Graduation Requirement: This class will fulfill both of the following requirements: a Science Colloquium and an IC Multicultural class. If the student has already taken a Science Colloquium, this class will fulfill both of the following requirements: an Elective Colloquium and an IC Multicultural class. HC INTERNATIONAL CULTURES COLLOQUIUM [HC SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM] The Challenge of Malaria and HIV/AIDS in Africa Malaria and HIV/AIDS have devastating impacts on the people of Africa and kill millions of people each year. They are diseases of poverty that in turn condemn large segments of the world’s population to poverty, illness and unfulfilled potential. In this age of remarkable medical advances in the developed world, why are malaria and HIV/AIDS such intractable problems in Africa? We will focus on two broad topics. First, we will investigate biological and medical aspects of malaria and HIV/AIDS, and current ‘best practices’ in their prevention and treatment. Second, we will investigate economic, cultural and political barriers to the successful management of these diseases in Africa.
Mysteries of the Brain: Neuroscience and Society This course will provide science and non-science HC students with a basic understanding of neuroscience, the study of the brain. Students will acquire an understanding of the complexities underlying brain function, learn about the methods and fundamental processes underlying scientific research, gain an appreciation of the role and limitations of basic biomedical research in our society, and explore ethical dilemmas in neuroscience research. Students will also improve critical thinking and communication skills through oral presentations and written work.
HONORS COLLEGE SCIENCE COLLOQUIUM
Graduation Requirement: This class will fulfill both of the following requirements: a Social Science Colloquium and an AC Multicultural class. If the student has already taken a Social Science Colloquium, this class will fulfill both of the following requirements: an Elective Colloquium and an AC Multicultural class. HC AMERICAN CULTURES COLLOQUIUM [HC SOCIAL SCIENCE 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. SPECIAL COURSE OFFERINGS back to top
JUDIAC STUDIES [HC ARTS & LETTERS COLLOQUIUM] The Jewish Diaspora in Latin America The coupling of the terms “Jew” and “Latino,” or “Jewish” and “Latin American” still elicits surprise and disbelief, especially among those who grew accustomed to identifying “Jewish” with “Eastern European.” However, a growing corpus of Jewish and Latin American literature increasingly demands that we acknowledge and confront both the Jewish contribution to the make-up of the Latin American cultural fabric, and the relevance of Latin American realities in shaping a distinctive Jewish identity. This course will study the presence of Jews in Latin America, the construction and representation of Jewish identity, as well as the relationships established between Jews and non-Jews in different Latin American countries. We will read literature written by Latin American Jews, watch movies that present their realities and conflicts in a very diverse region, and observe some of the Jewish contribution to the plastic arts. We will also listen to music by Jews in established Latin American genres, such as the tango, and traditional Jewish Sephardic genres which are now being recovered by contemporary singers. THESIS ORIENTATION back to top
THESIS ORIENTATION WORKSHOP This short workshop 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 477H Thesis Prospectus (see below). This workshop aims to assist students in the earlier and preliminary work of how to approach the thesis. Consider taking this course when you begin seriously exploring your research possibilities, but no later than the term before you take HC 477H Thesis Prospectus. Thesis Orientation is not required for graduation, but CHC students who have taken it found that it relieved their anxiety about the thesis process. 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. Course requirements include submitting a Thesis Prospectus and completing the Graduation Audit. 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, a student should
INDIVIDUALIZED STUDY back to top
HC 403H CRN 22353 1-12 Credits THESIS Graded or P/N HC 405H CRN 22354 1-12 Credits READING P/N Only HC 406H CRN 22355 1-12 Credits SPECIAL PROBLEMS P/N Only HC 409H CRN 22356 1-12 Credits PRACTICUM Graded or P/N SPRING 2008 PROPOSED COURSES back to top
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