This Term's Honors Seminars
Honors Seminars: Spring 2012
1-Credit Special Topics Seminars
BLOCK I
IISP 21000-08 C.P. Snow Seminar: Evolution & Creation CRN: 41746 NEW SEMINAR!
Instructor: Jack Rossen
W 5:25-7:00pm
For nearly 50 years Ithaca College has been the site of the C.P. Snow speakers series. C.P. Snow was a brilliant British scientist who presciently warned that the modern world was splitting into two separate intellectual cultures, the humanistic and the scientific, that were increasingly incapable of communicating with each other. For the last several years Honors has mounted 1-credit seminars that address the careers and ideas of the C.P. Snow speakers, major intellectuals who attempt to bridge the sciences and the humanities. In spring 2012 Professor Eugenie Scott, a prominent physical anthropologist and author, will be the C.P. Snow Speaker at Ithaca College. Since 1987 she has been executive director of the National Center for Science Education. She is a leading critic of “young earth creationism” and “intelligent design” theories of species differentiation, and particularly the teaching of those theories in American public schools. Professor Jack Rossen (Anthropology) will lead this Block I investigation of creationism and evolution in American intellectual life and public policy. When Professor Scott comes to IC as this year's C. P. Snow speaker, she will lead the seminar.
BLOCK II
IISP 21001-09 The Ring Cycle CRN: 41747 NEW SEMINAR!
Instructor: Brian Demaris
W 6:00-8:00pm
Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen) is one of the great monuments of Western European culture. Dauntingly complex and emotionally draining, The Ring has excercised a powerful thrall over audiences ever since its first performance in 1876. The cycle is a work of extraordinary scale – the four operas that comprise it have a total performance time of nearly 15 hours. Professor Brian DeMaris (Music), opera conductor at Ithaca College, will lead this seminar into the world of The Ring. The seminar will focus on experiencing this masterpiece, by listening to recordings, viewing filmed performances, and by attending live performances. The New York Metropolitan Opera is performing the Ring this spring and this seminar will attend a performance of Das Rheingold at Lincoln Center.
Intermediate Seminars (3-Credits)
IISP 15000-01 Cultural Encounter with Ithaca College CRN: 42525
Instructor: James Pfrehm
MWF 1:00-1:50pm
Open only to First-year students in the Honors Program, this seminar will immerse its participants in the amazing array of cultural events being offered at Ithaca College during the spring semester. The seminar will meet in a classroom to contextualize and discuss the events that they will attend. The heart of the seminar, however, will take place in attending the events themselves, theatrical productions, musical performances, poetry readings, film viewings, art openings, and anything and everything that happens this spring. Participants should be aware that they will need to attend a number of events during the evening hours.
BIOL 22040-01 Evolution of Evolution: Society and the Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection CRN: 43124
Instructor: Leann Kanda
MWF 10:00-10:50am; 2a NS
We will address both the theory of evolution by natural selection as an explanation of the natural world and as a concept that has shaped and been shaped by society. Students will learn about what the theory entails, and a brief history of the social reactions to the concept, including the long-standing conflict with western religion. We will explore how our understanding of evolution has, and has not, itself evolved from Darwin's formulations. Finally, the application of evolutionary theory in modern society will be considered, from its relevance to racism to its role in the internet.
Requirements and Grading: Essays, midterm and final papers, and participation.
ENGL 20005-01 Dickens & London CRN: 43368 - New Seminar!
Instructor: Elizabeth Bleicher
TR 2:35-3:50pm 3a, h, (pending) HU
As part of Ithaca College’s celebration of Charles Dickens’s 200th birthday, we will be reading works that both celebrated and created the city of London. Dickens wrote in a style that is at times quite cinematic, and directors from D.W. Griffith to David Lean have cited Dickens as the source for the vision of London that has been handed down to contemporary audiences. In addition to reading shorter works from Sketches by Boz, we will tackle two novels in their entirety. Class members will vote on reading Nicholas Nickelby, Great Expectations, Bleak House or Our Mutual Friend as the two anchor texts, which will be supplemented with excerpts from the other two. Secondary readings include film and literary criticism, in addition to cultural studies of London itself, including analyses of the intersections between literature and industrialization, poverty and education. Co-curricular programming for the Dickens Bicentenary celebration offers ample volunteer opportunities for course members to gain academic and professional experience. Course members also receive admissions priority for the Honors London trip in May.
FREN 22300-01 Explosion in a Shingle Factory: Experiments in French Modernism CRN: 43141 - New Seminar!
Instructor: Mark Hall
TR 2:35-3:50pm; 3b,h, HU (pending)
Writing in a review of the 1913 International Exhibition of Modern Art, New York Times critic Julian Street describes Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase as resembling nothing so much as “an explosion in a shingle factory.” Street’s derisive quip captures the uneasy bemusement that so many felt in response to Duchamp’s splintered canvas, but perhaps more importantly, it also alludes to the real risk involved in “modern art.” As a self-consciously modern expression, Duchamp’s painting challenges conventional ways of seeing. For some, the result is a moving study of color and form. For others, it is an experiment gone comically awry. The work of art, in this view, blows up in the artist’s face. Wherever one’s sympathies may lie, the Modern is too significant an aesthetic moment not to be taken seriously. In this course, we will adopt a perspective similar to that of those New Yorkers who almost a century ago ventured to the Armory Show, as the exhibition has come to be known, hoping to discover what was so modern about the art being produced in France. Our perspective, widened to consider the verbal as well as the visual, will be further enriched with selected readings in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literary theory and will be guided by three broad but bold questions: What does it mean to remember? What does it mean to dream? and What does it mean to be alive? In the end, however, we will be seeking answers to the question that haunts the reader or viewer of any work of art of any moment or medium: Who am I?
In addition to attending to a great variety of artistic materials we will read Nadja by André Breton, Moderato Cantabile by Marguerite Duras, Swann’s Way by Marcel Proust and selections from Henri Bergson’s Matter and Memory, Sigmund Freud’s case studies, essays, and lectures on psychoanalysis, and Alain Robbe-Grillet’s collection of essays “For a New Novel.” All materials will be read in English translations.
GERM 22201-01 Imagining Hitler CRN: 43144
Instructor: Michael Richardson
MWF 12:00-12:50; 3a 3b
This course will examine American representations of Hitler and Nazism, from Chaplin‘s The Great Dictator to Don DeLillo‘s White Noise. In American culture, Hitler – the person and the concept – has generally stood in for terrifying and absolute evil. Yet this seems to be contradicted by the multitude of humorous representations that disempower the Nazis by turning them into evil, yet bumbling and inept clowns. This class will examine (primarily) American representations of Hitler and the Nazis and ask the following questions: What is the function of Hitler in these representations? Does it ultimately facilitate or prevent our deeper examination of the Holocaust? What sorts of identifications are at work (or not at work) in these representations? What sort of limits are there (or must there be) on representations of Hitler? What determines those limits: good taste, morality, politics, something else? Topics will include: the use of humor in representations of Hitler and the Holocaust, representations of Hitler that imagine his survival or victory, sexualized representations of Hitler and the Nazis, and the use and misuse of Hitler in contemporary public discourse.
HLTH 20400 The Architecture of Health CRN: 43464 - New Seminar!
Instructor: Stewart Auyash
TR 9:25-10:50am; 1 (pending)
This course studies the meanings and ideas that we call health and how we built and developed them. Combining history, anthropology, politics, and literary analysis with health sciences, students will embark on intellectual journey concerning all things “health.” Health will be considered as an architectonic concept: learning about the development of the ways we know and learn about health informs how we live, think, communicate, and act on it.
MATH 26502-01 Oil, Energy, and the Future of Society CRN: 43218
Instructor: Thomas Pfaff
MWF 3:00-3:50pm; 2a, NS
This course will examine why past societies have collapsed and scientifically examine our current energy consumption, with special attention to oil, and how this consumption may impact our future. We will be using Jared Diamond's book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, to provide scientific criterion to analyze past societies and to provide some historic perspective. At the same time we will analyze our current energy consumptions with a focus on peak oil to try and decide if we are currently choosing to fail or succeed. Students will gain a scientific perspective of past societies and gain data analysis skills to understand our current energy situation.
MATH 26503-01 The Nature of Mathematics CRN: 43219 - New Seminar!
Instructor: Aaron Weinberg
MWF 3:00-3:50pm; 2a
The goal of this course is to reflect on and find your own answer to the question: “What is Mathematics?” We will, as a class, investigate the nature of mathematics by experiencing, reading about, and discussing several aspects of mathematical thinking and learning. We will use ideas from philosophy, psychology, history, sociology, and biology to explore and gain insight into math as it has developed historically, as it is taught in schools, and as it is used in society.
PHIL 27500-01 The Rules of Rules CRN: 43305 - New Seminar!
Instructor: Craig Duncan
TR 4:00-5:15pm; 1, HU (pending)
Rules are pervasive in both our internal and external lives. Internally, rules of grammar and word usage govern the “inner voice” of our thought, while rules of logic govern (one hopes!) our reasoning and formation of beliefs. Externally, numerous sets of rules lay claim to our allegiance – for example, the rules of morality and the rules encoded in the law. (Indeed, one might even think of the laws of nature as a type of rule, a type that can never be broken!) We even voluntarily submit to rules, by getting married, say, or taking a job, or playing a sport or game.
Given the ubiquitous presence of rules in life, it is natural that they should be an object of study, by philosophers, historians, social scientists, and others. In this course I propose to examine some of these studies using an interdisciplinary approach, in order to lead students to appreciate the importance of the rules we live under and subject ourselves to. More specifically, I hope to lead students to understand better the nature of rules and rule-based reasoning, to appreciate the benefits rules bring and the costs they impose, and to explore some of the ethical issues created by the “rule of rules.”
PHYS 23200-01 Quantum Physics and Relativity in Society CRN: 43238
Instructor: Matthew Sullivan
MWF 9:00-9:50am; 2a
Special relativity and quantum mechanics are the backbone of modern physics and the basis for one-third of our current economy, yet are poorly understood and often misinterpreted by the general public. This course will examine the mathematical and physical basis for special relativity and quantum mechanics such that all students in the course have a basic understanding of the phenomena and how to use them. We will then explore how society views these phenomena: in news reports, fiction, and pseudo-scientific and neo-religious texts. However, even the mathematically and physically correct application of the theories lead to real (and unresolved) scientific and philosophic quandaries, which we will also explore in this course.
SPCM 23100-01 Troubling Masculinities: Queering/Crippling the Novel in Performance CRN: 43417 - New Seminar!
Instructor: Bruce Henderson
TR 1:10-2:25pm; 3b
This seminar will explore what have come to be called “queer” and “crip” theory approaches to texts (literary, mediated, and performative), focusing on a set of novels (and their adaptations into film, opera, theatre, and other media) spanning the 19th century in the United States and England, preceding the articulation of either the “homosexual” or the “disabled” as distinct categories of identity and moving to the present day. We will especially interested in considering how contemporary theories shed light on the intersectionalities between various axes of identity—and how such theories may be used to explore both nonnormative positions of masculinity and ability in texts not explicitly about homosexuality or disability per se. We will begin by reading a few brief novellas/short stories that precede the late Victorian medicalization of both sexuality and ability, then proceed to read a few central theoretical texts, and survey a set of 20th century works that move in and out of various ways of juxtaposing “queerness” and “cripness.” The larger theoretical premise from which we will be working is that such categories of identity (and their intersections) are, as Judith Butler would put, it always performative—always in a process of becoming and revising, and just when they seem to be stabilized into an (apparently) “naturalized” state of being, social, cultural, and historical events and movements come along and force us to rethink and reperform these categories. Students will read many texts, either write papers or create performances based on the texts.
SPCM 23101-01 I, Too/We Two: Performing Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes CRN: 43418 - New Seminar!
Instructor: Bruce Henderson
TR 5:25-6:40pm; 3b
This is a performance-centered seminar in the major works of the two most prominent writers to emerge from the Harlem Renaisssance: Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. We will take a comparative approach, looking at the parallel careers of these two writers, considering their work in such genres as memoir, novel, and drama, as well as their singular accomplishments (Hurston as folklorist, Hughes as poet), In addition to primary texts by Hurston and Hughes, students will read other works of the time, historical studies, and theoretical texts. Students will create and present performances drawn from both writers, as well as write critical and analytical papers.
WRTG 27000-01 Creativity & Madness: An Investigation CRN: 43112
Instructor: Mary Beth O’Connor
MWF 10:00-10:50am; 3a
Much has been written on the apparent relationship between creativity and madness at least as far back as the Socratic Dialogue Ion, in which Plato describes the inspired artist as inhabiting a state of “divine madness.” Taking up C.G. Jung’s warnings against reductionism, specifically his admonition that we remember that “a work of art is not a disease,” we will problematize such terms as “madness,” “mental illness,” and “creativity,” and then proceed to investigate psychoanalytic theories including the following: that the artist creates in order to heal her or himself, that the mood disturbances present in a high percentage of artists and writers may be related to cognitive processes associated with certain emotional states, and even that there is no real link between creativity and madness. We’ll also view and read the works of visual artists and writers identified as having suffered from “madness,” as well as accounts by these artists and writers themselves regarding their motivations for creating art, their use of suffering in their work, and their self-destructive tendencies. The course is designed as an exploration into an issue fraught with a long history of philosophical assumptions, scientific theories, and personal narratives, as well as a rich body of artistic work. It is a necessarily interdisciplinary investigation, with important implications especially for those who wish to pursue art themselves, as well as for those interested in aesthetics, psychology, literature, and visual art.
WRTG 27001-01 2012: The End of Time? CRN: 43113
Instructor: Ron Denson
MW 4:00-5:15pm; 3a
This seminar examines the phenomenon of Americans’ fascination with what is purported to be the Mayan prediction of the end of the current creation on Dec. 21, 2012, the date that marks the end of their “great” calendar cycle of 5,126 years. The flurry of books, articles, and big-budget Hollywood films, the proliferation of sites devoted to the “Y12” question on the internet, the bemused curiosity of even self-professedly “rational” people, all attest to the interest that the end of the Mayan Long Count has generated in recent years. The seminar addresses the various kinds of significance—and nonsignificance—attached to the event by orthodox and dissenting scholars, scientific popularizers, religious leaders, and activists intent on hastening the collapse of the American empire and ushering in a new age. It pursues this inquiry in a historical context that takes into account Christian millenarian movements of the last 2000 years as well as more recent technological fantasies such as the Y2K meltdown.
WRTG 27003-01 Highway 61 Revisited CRN: 42527
Instructor: David Flanagan
MWF 1:00-1:50pm; 3b, h, HU
In this seminar we will study the historical development of the quintessential American musical genre, the blues, and critically investigate scholarly reception and interpretation of that music. We will also examine how mainstream majority culture has reacted to the culture of African-Americans in the Deep South during the early 20th century. The overarching theme for the seminar will be the intersection of music, commerce, and technology. The music is an expression of individuals and their communities. Like all popular music, it is also a commercial product offered for sale to consumers. And like all popular music, the blues and its commercial dissemination are in turn influenced by technological innovation. Since this music continues to be a active area of musicological research, the seminar will critically interrogate still-controversial research issues for this music.
WRTG 27004-01 The Science and Philosophy of Sex and Love CRN: 43114
Instructor: Cory Brown
MW 5:25-6:40pm; 3a
A critical assessment of conventional perspectives of love and sex. We will consider more progressive perspectives from the fields of history, anthropology, evolutionary biology and evolutionary psychology, and literature.
Senior Seminar (3-Credits)
IISP 40000-01 Global Bodies CRN: 41748
Instructor: Zillah Eisenstein
W 3:00-5:30pm
This course will ask students to think or re-think the static/NATURALIZED ways they think about sexes, races and genders. At the core will be attempts to de-naturalize and de-normalize the constructions of these categories to see what is known and unknown; what is historical construction and what is biological necessity; whether there is such a thing as biology or sexual and/or racial difference to `begin with’—so-to-speak. The framework of the course is to open up the newest possibilities for questioning and knowing why and what and how we see/view notions of biology, culture, politics, history, etc. In the course we travel the globe, examine the `08 election, think about the biological body and then revamp it, etc… We will read a book a week and the books cover a wide interdisciplinary spectrum. There are two required analytic papers which are based on these course readings.
