Fall 2013 Courses

The courses below are available for the Fall 2013 semester. Courses that are part of multiple themes may be listed twice. Courses designated as writing are listed both in their theme and under the Writing heading. Honors sections are listed separately at the end of the list.

Identities Theme

Derek Adams
[THIS TITLE HAS BEEN CENSORED]: Language, Hatred, and the Postracial World
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23144 CRN 10500-41 TR 1:20-2:25, M 12:00-12:50
This course offers a direct challenge to the popular public sentiment that we live in a post-racial society and that systematic structures of power and privilege have ceased to exist in our world. In this class, we will explore the persistent operation of systematic discrimination in the 21st century through a collection of materials – i.e. short stories, magazine covers, film, advertisements, critical essays, and websites. Our study begins from the position that certain code words and social practices have transformed overt types of discrimination into more subtle and deceiving forms of bigotry. Words like “nigger,” “bitch,” and “fag” may have fallen out of fashion, but their essence lives on in our daily interactions. We will devote a significant amount of time to assessing how our social interactions are influenced by the legacy. The nature of the material we will cover in this course is likely to cause you cognitive dissonance. This is intentional. Talking about issues of race, gender, and sexuality is rarely conducive to positive feelings. Too, the course requires your personal investment in its development, including sharing and discussing your own race, gender, and sexual orientation with your classmates. I will establish our classroom as a safe space for the respectful reception of your individual life experiences, but there will inevitably be moments when the ideas you express will challenge belief structures that your classmates invest in, and vice versa.

Susan Adams Delaney
Writing (as) Technology: Identity and Inscription in the Digital Age
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23187 CRN 10800-01 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
You may have heard your teachers complain that IM-speak is ruining our writing, or that short-form new media like Twitter or Facebook are disrupting our ability to read and think deeply. Of course, to borrow a popular phrase, back in the day Plato similarly complained of writing itself. Our culture takes technologies for granted; they become naturalized, assumed, almost invisible. It is only when a technology is relatively new that we pay attention to how it impacts our lives and our thinking. Yet such technologies—from the invention of the alphabet to the printing press to the personal computer—constrain and enable particular ways of thinking and communicating. This course will challenge students to consider writing as technology and writing as mediated through other technologies as they practice a range of academic and civic genres.

Jessica Barros
"The World is Yours": An Introduction to College Studies and Service Work
Perspectives: Humanities, Social Science
Course #23176 CRN 10800-10 TR 4:00-5:15, W 12:00-12:50
This course is meant to introduce students to how they may use various academic disciplines offered at IC in community work. More specifically, we will read and study specific case studies of doing work in prisons, elder centers, and literacy education with marginalized populations. While students will consider how the majors they are interested in lend themselves to this type of work, they will aso be introduced to other academic disciplines, issues they may encounter as outsiders as well as culturlally responsive methodologies they may use when working with these populations. By the end of the semester, students will have a portfolio consisting of a personal statement where they critically think about their position as insiders/outsiders in a community, and a paradigm of culturally sensitive methods they will use while working with a marginalized population of their choice.

Nancy Brcak
Houses and Their Inhabitants: Shelter, Personal Expression, and Social Record
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23105 CRN 10500-02 TR 1:10-2:25, M 12:00-12:50
Course #23106 CRN 10500-02 TR 4:00-5:15, W 12:00-12:50
Winston Churchill once famously remarked, “We shape our buildings, and afterward our buildings shape us.” With this thought in mind, the class will begin with an examination of some familiar examples: a unit on the American house in its many forms and the impact it has had on individuals as well as the character of the larger population. We will then consider less well-known models from Europe, Asia, and other continents, as they have evolved over time. These examples will include vernacular as well as architect-designed houses. Also, there will be an “upstairs/downstairs” aspect to the study, with an examination of dissimilar socio-economic groups sharing the same dwellings, and the impact such social encounters had on those involved.
In short, this is a course about dwellings, their creators, and their inhabitants.

Michael Buck
The Art of Being Right
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23107 CRN 10500-04 TR 8:00-9:25, M 12:00-12:50
We continually make decisions often without conscious deliberation or consideration. Of course we do not intentionally seek to be wrong in our decisions but do we intentionally seek to be right in our decisions? This course will investigate the process of decision making, the various influences on our thinking process and the common errors in decision making. We will explore personal decisions and actions with the goal of becoming more aware of why we “do the things we do”. Students will explore how biases, upbringing, personality, etc. impact their decisions. Through elevating their awareness, students will become more mindful of what influences their decisions and how to avoid common errors in decision making.

Cathrene Connery
The Social Construction of Childhood: The Young Mind, Society and Meaning Making
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23108 CRN 10500-05 TR 4:00-5:15, M 12:00-12:50
What is “childhood?” How does our society conceptualize the physical, emotional, social, and behavioral experience of the young? Do Americans possess a distinct perspective about childhood and, if so, does such a viewpoint align with the sociopolitical and cultural-historical realities that actively shape our nation’s youth? How is childhood experienced by children themselves? In what ways might we more appropriately understand and respect the social development of consciousness, diversity of ways youth come of age, and appropriation of cultural tools that signal emergence into 21rst century adulthood? This interdisciplinary course will explore these critical questions by addressing a series of contemporary topics, seminal texts, and related research from history, philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics, education, and the law. Students will examine competing perspectives on how humans understand and shape childhood as a distinct time period, and critique how these perspectives influence our understandings of the relationships between culture, development, and learning. Students will analyze the implications of these perspectives on their own childhood socialization and education; on the learning, development, and identity construction of children in modern society; and on the values that guide the policies, decisions, actions, and allocations of individuals, social systems, and institutions that impact children in the 21st century.

Jeane Copenhaver-Johnson
Children's Inquiry: Agency and Learning in Childhood
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23146 CRN 10500-43 TR 4:00-5:15, W 12:00-12:50
Students in this course will explore their own values, beliefs and behaviors related to children’s inquiry by reflecting on their own experiences as child learners, reviewing texts that provide research and theory-based findings about childhood and learning, viewing films that offer alternative perspectives on children’s opportunities for learning, and participating in discussions and written experiences that prompt students to reveal how their own understandings and experiences compare to those of other students and to the children whose lives are reflected in course resources. Students will analyze how social class, race, language, and other social structures influence the contexts and consequences of children’s inquiry. In addition, they will participate in discussions in which they come to more defensible understandings of the relationships between identities, culture, learning, and power in the context of children’s inquiry. Students will learn how to engage multiple and competing points of view via the discussion format used in class and the strategic reading and viewing of diverse texts. They will develop and evaluate ideas and arguments about environments for children’s inquiry as they discuss and write about the course materials. Finally, throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to learn more about the resources offered by Ithaca College that can (1) contribute to their success at the College and (2) enhance their experiences while here.

Julia Cozzarelli
Animal Imagery: Literature, Human Nature, and the Animal World
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23109 CRN 10500-06 MWF 1:00-1:50, F 12:00-12:50
The course will examine representations of human nature and its intersection with the animal world in written works, with an emphasis on Italian literature supplemented by film and art. Through examinations of texts, it seeks to address the questions: What do our interactions with, and interpretations of, the animal world tell us about who we are? How do we, as human beings, distinguish ourselves from the animal world? Course activities include exploration of the "animal" side of human nature; how the animal world has been used to define and differentiate humankind; and examinations of how perceptions of, and interactions with, the animal world have changed through different historical periods. Content includes medieval to contemporary Italian literary works supplemented by material from a variety of other perspectives (historical, journalistic, philosophical, anthropological, etc.).
Topics include: Medieval/Renaissance views of the animal world in Italy and throughout Europe, including the distinction between the rational and the bestial in human nature and how this balance affects the soul's fate after death; animal symbolism in literature and art; changing perceptions of ethical human behavior towards animals; and the evolution of human perceptions of animal and human nature as demonstrated by Modern/Contemporary works in Europe and in the United States.

Ron Denson
Tribes and Scribes
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23188 CRN 10800-02 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
This course aims to introduce students to significant issues in the lives of American Indians in the contemporary United States, issues that illustrate the complex dynamics of the struggle for a vital American Indian future at the beginning of the second 500 years of European presence in the so-called New World. We will examine the variety and complexity of experiences comprehended under the conventional Columbian label of “Indian,” as we focus on the experiences and concerns of individual nations while also looking at expressions of a recent pan-Indian identity. The case studies that we will pursue will illuminate how enduring questions of justice, freedom, and equality grounded in our national creed are played out in the lives of the First Peoples at the beginning of the 21st century, particularly with regard to questions of sovereignty and self-determination, goals the pursuit of which set American Indians apart from other American “minorities.”

Maria DiFrancesco
Exile, Migration and Terror in the Spanish-Speaking World
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23148 CRN 10500-45 MWF 3:00-3:50, M 12:00-12:50
Through the prism of literature, students will closely examine how exile, human migration and terror have been portrayed by various writers from the Spanish-speaking world. Through class discussions, writing assignments and oral presentations that are consistent with a liberal arts seminar style, we will:
Broadly define the notions at play in the course (that is, exile, migration, terror);
Analyze and critically evaluate how the terms “exile,” “migration” and “terror,” intersect and dialogue with each other;
Consider how various social/political/cultural contexts directly shape and impact the identy of individuals who experience exile, migration and terror
As an Ithaca College Seminar, this class is also intended to immerse students in the first year college experience through reading, writing and sharing of personal experiences and experiential opportunities on and off campus

Gregory Evans
Jazz in Society
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23110 CRN 10500-07 MWF 9:00-9:50, M 12:00-12:50
This course studies the culture in America the lead to the creation of blues and jazz in America, and the subsequent development of the various strands of jazz throughout the 20th century. Students will be immersed in the first-year college experience with readings about jazz and the surrounding American culture, listening to jazz recording, attending live jazz performances, and finally writing about and sharing these experiences with the class.

Paul Geisler
The Clinical Gaze: Medical Humanities in the TechnoDigital Age
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23111 CRN 10500-08 TR 1:10-2:25, F 12:00-12:50
According to the New York University School of Medicine, the medical humanities “broadly include an interdisciplinary field of humanities (literature, philosophy, ethics, history and religion), social science (anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, sociology), and the arts (literature, theater, film, and visual arts) and their application to medical education and practice.” The intent herein is to center the human/patient condition, and also to offer historical and sociocultural perspectives on medical practice in order to better appreciate the myriad skills that are part and parcel of the medical experience. By weaving the humanities into the conversation, we become better at understanding the systemic complexity that underlies both patient and provider experiences in larger contexts that defy and challenge the reductionist paradigm of typical Western medicine. Using Michel Foucault’s anthropological “Birth of the Clinic” as a starting point, this course will use various forms of media (film, books, articles) and self expression (personal narratives and inquiry, artistic expression) to investigate how our cyborg(ian) culture has progressively dispositioned the subject (patient) of the medical experience, by favoring the object (disease) of the science (Foucault’s “Clinical Gaze”).

Jennifer Germann
Monsters
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23112 CRN 10500-09 TR 9:25-10:40, F 12:00-12:50
Monsters inspire a number of reactions: fear, loathing, fascination and even desire. This seminar will explore the creation and representation of monsters in the art, visual culture, and literature of historical and contemporary Europe and the United States to understand why we have been and continue to be fascinated by monsters. In this course, we will explore the representation of a variety of monsters, including Medusa, Frankenstein, vampires, werewolves, and zombies, to consider how monsters have been imagined, their role in society particularly in relation to identity, and how identities are imagined in relation to questions of power.

Maki Inada
The Human Genome: the promise and the perils
Perspective: Natural Science
Course #23113 CRN 10500-10 MWF 11:00-11:50, M 12:00-12:50
In 2001, the sequence of the Human Genome was completed. However, in many ways this was just the beginning. If the genome represents the words in a dictionary, the scientific community is now trying to understand the prose that is spoken to make us who we are. Based on genetic tests, we can learn our identity and diagnose disease as well as make predictions about our future health and well being. In this course we will examine the information the human genome promises to provide and the immense impacts it carries to both you as an individual and society. We will cover topics such as gene therapy, reproductive technologies, genetic engineering, forensics, personalized genomics and cancer, stem cells and cloning. Following a general introduction of the science underlying DNA sequencing and genetic engineering, we will discuss the ethical, political and sociological impact of advances in biotechnology on society today. This course is designed to help make the transition to college level learning through readings, class discussion and writing.

Katharine Kittredge
Girlstories
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23140 CRN 10500-37 TR 2:35-3:50, W 1:00-1:50
This class looks at the way that young women’s identities emerge in response to varying social, economic, racial or cultural pressures. We will be analyzing works of fiction, autobiography, drama, and poetry, and we will also analyze visual images presented in film, television, and advertizing. As students consider these stories of self-creation, they will also reflect on the ways in which they are growing and changing as a result of the opportunities and challenges of their first semester. The need to balance ones mental, physical, and spiritual needs will be an on-going theme of the course.

Nick Kowalczyk
Telling True Stories: The Art of the Essay
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23169 CRN 10800-03 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
Alternately known as creative nonfiction, the so-called ‘fourth genre’ of literature is perhaps less studied than poetry, fiction, and drama, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less substantial, creative, or informed by literary tradition. This seminar will expose students to the history and stylistic techniques of the essay, a form that encompasses memoir, personal essay, magazine and feature writing, cultural criticism, argument, the lyric essay, nature writing, travel writing, and more. Focus will be placed on genre history, selected essayists, research skills, and literary craft. Students will write mostly analytic essays, but also some creative ones, too. This course is geared specifically to non-writing majors.

Julia Lapp and Paula Turkon
We Are What We've Eaten
Perspective: Quest for a Sustainable Future
Course #23160 CRN 10500-57 MWF 3:00-3:50, W 12:00-12:50
This interdisciplinary, team-taught course examines the centrality of food in human life across time and space. Students will explore human relationships to key foods from prehistoric, historic, and contemporary perspectives.

Rebecca Lesses
Jerusalem: City of Faith, City of Struggle
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23150 CRN 10500-47 MWF 11:00-11:50, F 12:00-12:50
What does it mean to live in a divided city? This course focuses on contemporary Jerusalem, using films, short stories, memoirs, poetry, and analytical articles to explore the experiences of the city’s people today. The course will investigate what it means to live in a city divided along religious, ethnic, and national lines: between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and between and among the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious communities. The course will address how the wars of the twentieth century have affected the lives of all who live in the city, especially the 1948 war, which divided the city between Israeli and Jordanian control, and the 1967 war, which united the city under Israeli rule. The course will also address the political issues of occupation, annexation, and settlement from both the Palestinian and Israeli perspectives. As a final project, students will formulate their own proposal for the final status of Jerusalem within a political agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.

Katharyn Howd Machan
Fairy Tales: The Hero's Journey
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23172 CRN 10800-06 MWF 11:00-11:50, F 12:00-12:50
Fairy tales are the maps of our psyches, the mirrors of our longings and fears. In them we find the questions and answers we need to continue the shaping of our own lives, through darkness and light, shadow and brilliant image. Our oldest fairy tales, from the oral culture, have been polished to the bone; they gleam with an intensity of truth free of specific history. Newer tales, too, their authors known and celebrated, reach to the place of magic and dream, and give us guides in delight and knowledge.
This course (while also fulfilling the 106 requirement by introducing students to the language and appropriate use of academic writing) will focus on the study of classic and literary fairy tales, with an emphasis on themes of self-discovery and transition/transformation. Readings will be drawn from the tales themselves, essays about them, and contemporary re-workings of them in fiction and poetry. Prepared by shorter in-class and homework assignments, students will write one three-to-five-page identity essay, three five-to seven-page academic essays on assigned topics (one of which will be gerontology driven, in the spirit of looking forward through the rest of one’s life), and one open-length imaginative/creative assignment, as well as keep regularly a personal response journal based on readings, news events, and individual experiences.
This course will also incorporate the important issues of transition to college, but in the psychological context of fairy tales. What, for example, are the “ogres” of adolescents’ fears? To whom can students turn for “Wise Woman/Wise Man” guidance? How will first-years survive on the “one bag of gold” their checkbooks allow? What “frogs” will they choose to kiss? How will each discover and strengthen the “prince/ princess” each can become, in the context of world events as well as the rhythms of private daily life? Essentially, each young man and woman in the class will be given the opportunity to look at himself or herself as the hero of his or her own life, in this journey-quest not only to survive the first semester, but to “find the treasure” in a commitment to continuing a college career. Emphasis will be on definition arrived at through observation, questioning, and reflection about past, present, and future self and the role of that self, and others’, in the world. A major goal throughout the course will be to heighten and strengthen students’ awareness that they have freedom and responsibility to shape who they are and who they will become, and that by doing so they will shape society.

Granger Macy
Beyond Dilbert's Cubicle: Thinking outside the box to make the most of living in the changing world of work
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23114 CRN 10500-11 MWF 9:00-9:50, M 12:00-12:50
Course #23115 CRN 10500-12 MWF 11:00-11:50, W 12:00-12:50
Course #23118 CRN 10500-13 MWF 3:00-3:50, F 12:00-12:50
This course is focused on an exploration of the confluence of philosophy and scientific findings in order to develop an understanding of the meaning of 'the good life' (eudaemonia). We will start with a reviewing a brief history of work life attitudes and trends including a study of work and leisure options in the modern world focusing on the effects of technology, globalization, and diminishing resources. The course will also help students to reflect on preferred life, career, and educational choices in pursuing their individual interests and skills.

Katie Marks
Pop Culture as Text
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23170 CRN 10800-04 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
In this seminar, we will explore popular culture and its role in contemporary society. We will consider whether it reflects our thoughts and beliefs or whether it shapes them. We will also investigate how it might affect who we become as individuals. Students’ firsthand observations of, and critical thinking about, advertising, television, film, music, and social networking will play a central role in the class. This course will be writing-intensive and will satisfy department and school requirements for a 100-level writing course.

Stephen Mosher
"Reel" Sports
Course # 23151 CRN 10500-48 TR 2:35-3:50, W 12:00-12:50

Brendan Murday
The Seven Deadly Sins
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23131 CRN 10500-28 MWF 9:00-9:50, 12:00-12:50
We will critically examine a variety of views on morality and virtue/vice by considering each of “seven deadly sins” (anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, and sloth). How should we characterize each of these traits? Are they harmful or “deadly”, or might we think of them as neutral or positive character traits? Is there room to take seriously a discussion of these as character defects independently of a religious view that takes seriously the concept of sin? In addition to considering these questions, we will address a host of broader questions that arise in ethical philosophy, and attempt to see how one might incorporate a theory of the deadly sins within moral theory.

Mary Pitti and Barb Belyea
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions: The Art and Science of Decision Making
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23104 CRN 10500-01 TR 8:00-9:25, M 12:00-12:50
Decision making is key in every part of a person’s life. It becomes especially important as a young person transitions to college and becomes more independent. From food choices in the dining hall, to course selections and ultimately a career path, a student is confronted with innumerable daily decisions.
This course will provide students with research based strategies as well as common sense practical approaches to mindful, responsible decision making. Using real life situations and scenarios this course will explore the art and science of decision making through a variety of lens, including self-awareness of biases, tolerance of others’ opinions and the impact of personal values on choices. Students will build confidence and accountability as they better understand how different perspectives affect the process of decision making.

Nick Quarrier and Hongwei Guan
Hello China: Preparing for the Future
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23117 CRN 10500-14 TR 10:50-12:10, F 12:00-12:50
The primary goal of this seminar will be to develop student awareness and knowledge of the Chinese culture and people. This course will examine and discuss a variety of Chinese topics, such China history, culture, health and medicine, sports, industrialization, US business relations, language, food, education and the literature and arts. Some guest speakers, group and individual student presenters and group discussions will present these topics as well as group excursions to various Chinese venues in the City of Ithaca. The goal of the seminar is also to help the student adjust to college life by developing interpersonal communication and writing skills, and gaining an understanding of various aspects of and interests in the campus community and surrounding community of Ithaca.

Catherine Taylor
Innovations in the Arts
Perspectives: Humanities, Creative Arts
Course #23175 CRN 10800-09 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
This course will engage with the history and practice of innovative movements in literature, film, music and the visual arts. These practices are often allied with notions of progress, social disruption and change. But while they may seek controversy, and sometimes remain controverisal, they also often form the foundation of the next artisitic or literary canon. One can study avant-garde artists in universities, read their works in major anthologies, and see their traces in mainstream media and entertainment. We'll look at what makes somethng new and what happens when that newness ends.

Jennifer Tennant
Disability Identity and Policy
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23118 CRN 10500-15 TR 4:00-5:15, F 12:00-12:50
What is disability? How is it influenced by the environment? An understanding of identity is crucial before appropriate public policies are created and enacted. Data measurement is vital and has tremendous implications for policy. How is disability measured in socio-economic datasets, and how has that measurement changed over time? What does the data tell us about employment, program participation (SSDI, SSI, Veteran’s disability program etc.), housing etc? What has been the effect of the Americans with Disabilities Act? How do accommodations affect disability status and various outcomes?

Andrew Utterson
Contemporary European Cinema
Perspectives: Creative Arts, Humanities
Course #23136 CRN 10500-33 TR1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
This course will explore contemporary European films and filmmakers, considering questions of cultural identity in the context of national cinemas and the political and other systems that define today’s Europe, a collective union (geographical, political, economic, etc.) of diverse nations. Films and filmmakers will be considered in national and transnational contexts, mapping the cultural and other boundaries of an evolving Europe and related conceptions of European, Europeanness, and in turn European cinema.

Susan Weisend
The Faces of Identity in Silkscreen Printing
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23119 CRN 10500-16 TR 1:10-2:25, M 12:00-12:50
Visual art has been used as a means of exploring the concept of identity throughout human history. The silkscreen print packs a punch as a visual statement in contemporary culture, particularly as a means of expressing themes of identity. Students in this course will study the historical and cultural context of screen printed images while engaging in the hands-on printing of a series of silkscreen projects. We will concentrate on three aspects of identity exploration: the narrative image, the portrait, creating a sense of place.

Kyle Woody
Social Media and You
Course #23120 CRN 10500-17 TR 4:00-5:15, F 12:00-12:50
This course explores how individuals navigate and participate the world of social media. Through literature, poetry, songs, documentaries and films, students analyze their respective role within our social systems.
The primary objective is recognizing that individuals belong to a many "systems," but also acknowledging the downfalls, frustrations and abuse that may occur by completing "giving into a system." The creation of "identity" and "self-reliance" are two themes that emerge from the course.
The course, also, attempts to define "social media" and [indirectly] debunk the notion that "social media" is a novel creation spurred by advances in technology.

Inquiry, Imagination and Innovation Theme

Dennis Charsky
Designing Compelling Presentations
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23121 CRN 10500-18 MWF 9:00-9:50, W 12:00-12:50
Designed just for first year students, this course will focus on analyzing content from a variety of disciplines in order to evaluate presentations that convey information in a compelling manner. Students will analyze presentations from academic, business, and mass media contexts to identify forms and techniques that make for successful presentations. Students use critical and imaginative thinking to create multimedia that utilize visual and message design and performance principles to effectively achieve their goals.

Changhee Chun
Understanding a Visual Language in Film and other Media
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23122 CRN 10500-19 TR 4:00-5:15, M 12:00-12:50
In this seminar, we will examine different visual languages using significant films and other media representative of important historic and contemporary ideas and movements. Screenings and readings guide discussions and analysis geared toward providing familiarity with a broad range of visual language styles and connecting them to larger questions of culture production and artistic expression.

Brian DeMaris
Opera and Revolution
Perspectives: Creative Arts, Humanities
Course #23147 CRN 10500-44 MWF 11:00-11:50, M 12:00-12:50
Students will learn about opera and history by analyzing operas based on revolution in its various forms and investigating the historical events on which they are based. Class discussions, written assignments, exams and a creative final project will provide a vehicle for students to respond to the works and formulate their own opinions on the issues presented. Sample studies include: Beaumarchais’ Figaro Trilogy and the social conflicts of 18th Century Europe, the American and French Revolutions, and the Age of Enlightenment; Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the philosophical and political unrest of 19th Century Europe, the Industrial Revolution, Wagner’s influence in cinema, philosophy and politics; Verdi and his operas as related to political and social reform, human bondage and exile, Nationalism, Fascism and the Risorgimento; Philip Glass’ Portrait Trilogy, which depicts revolutionary individuals in religion (Akhenaten), science (Einstein), and politics (Gandhi), as portrayed by Glass during the Vietnam War and Cold War; and John Adams' ""CNN Operas"" (Death of Klinghoffer, Nixon in China and Dr. Atomic) and the portrayal of contemporary conflicts in opera today.

Mary Ann Erickson
Creativity and Mindfullness
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23138 CRN 10500-35 TR 8:00-9:25, F 12:00-12:50
What does it mean to “be creative”? What does it mean to “pay attention”? We will explore the related concepts of creativity and mindfulness from a variety of perspectives, including history, psychology and sociology, and explore applications in fields such as business, education, and the arts. In addition to reading and writing, we will practice both creativity and mindfulness in class as well as off-campus with both younger and older people.

Paul Geisler
The Clinical Gaze: Medical Humanities in the TechnoDigital Age
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23111 CRN 10500-08 TR 1:10-2:25, F 12:00-12:50
According to the New York University School of Medicine, the medical humanities “broadly include an interdisciplinary field of humanities (literature, philosophy, ethics, history and religion), social science (anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, sociology), and the arts (literature, theater, film, and visual arts) and their application to medical education and practice.” The intent herein is to center the human/patient condition, and also to offer historical and sociocultural perspectives on medical practice in order to better appreciate the myriad skills that are part and parcel of the medical experience. By weaving the humanities into the conversation, we become better at understanding the systemic complexity that underlies both patient and provider experiences in larger contexts that defy and challenge the reductionist paradigm of typical Western medicine. Using Michel Foucault’s anthropological “Birth of the Clinic” as a starting point, this course will use various forms of media (film, books, articles) and self expression (personal narratives and inquiry, artistic expression) to investigate how our cyborg(ian) culture has progressively dispositioned the subject (patient) of the medical experience, by favoring the object (disease) of the science (Foucault’s “Clinical Gaze”).

Sara Haefeli
Creativity and the Arts
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course # 23123 CRN 10500-20 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
The purpose of this course is to: explore the philosophies connected to creativity, imagination, and art; discover the nature of creativity and the habits and environments that promote creativity; experience art as a fundamental human need; enjoy the inter-relatedness of the arts and the relationship of the arts to all other human activities (social, scientific, education, technical, etc.); develop critical skills to enable the discrimination between art and ruse; develop excellent written and aural communication skills.

Eleanor Henderson
Short Stories on the Screen
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23171 CRN 10800-05 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
Since the dawn of Hollywood studios, filmmakers have looked to works of fiction to reinterpret for the silver screen. Often, these works are novels - regarded by many as the literary equivalent of the feature film. But more and more, short stories - despite their size - are serving as the basis for full-length film adaptations. What qualities make the short story an ideal inspiration for film? When a story is adapted into a movie, what narrative challenges does it pose? And what responsibilities does a filmmaker have to preserve the author's original vision? In this course, we will examine a number of short stories and their film counterparts, seeking insight into the craft of storytelling and its role in our culture. With an emphasis on critical reading and writing, this course serves as an equivalent to Academic Writing, WRTG 10600. Students will learn research and documentation methods and will be required to write and revise analytical papers.

Christopher House
Everything I Know about Communication, I Learned from Homer Simpson
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23124 CRN 10500-21 TR 4:00-5:15, W 12:00-12:50
The course will introduce students to the study of rhetoric and communication as a public, performative practice in which language is invented, crafted, and used to influence audiences for either good or nefarious purposes. Theoretical, conceptual, and historical resources will be used to examine some important rhetorical practices in American public life, as expressed through the lens of The Simpsons’. In this course, we will examine election campaigns, advocacy for/against war, public controversies, ceremonial events, and even court decisions. Focus will be on the various ways that symbolic resources can be used in the public arena for making timely interventions.

Hunting, Janet
Chemistry and Crime
Perspective: Natural Science
This is a course teaching basic chemical and physical principles, and investigating how science can be applied to solving crimes, using a case-oriented approach. The analysis of trace evidence, including glass, soil, fabrics, inks, and heavy metal poisons are discussed through an understanding of the basic concepts of general and analytical chemistry. The class will be taught in both laboratory and lecture format providing an appreciation of scientific experimentation in general and the work of a crime lab in particular. It includes an analysis of evidence collected at various crime scenes and provides an opportunity to learn forensic techniques. Selected topics of forensic science will be explored; chemical principles will be vividly illustrated using a (simulated) crime-scene, case-studies, and true accounts of drug deals, murders and thefts. The nature of physical evidence is discussed, along with the chemical techniques used to gather and analyze that evidence. Background is presented in terms of simple chemical principles understandable to students with majors other than the sciences. Three hours of laboratory, demonstrations, discussion and problem-solving per week, plus one hour of Ithaca Seminar activities. No prerequisites. Not open to students who have taken CHEM 12100 or CHEM 12300

Danette Johnson
Did you Hear the One About...? Humor and Well-Being
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23138 CRN 10500-36 MWF 9:00-9:50, M 12:00-12:50
Humor is a fundamental part of our daily lives, from one-on-one interactions to the media we consume. By discussing and evaluating published research on humor, as well as examining specific examples of humorous messages, students in this course will examine how the humorous messages we produce and those that we encounter in interaction influence our physical and psychological well-being.

Luke Keller
Molecules, Cells and Galaxies: The Nature of Science
Perspective: Natural Science
Course #23126 CRN 10500-23 TR 9:25-10:40, W 12:00-12:50
An introductory survey of contemporary natural science–primarily biology, chemistry, geology, and physics though others may creep into our discussions–focussing on the methods that scientists use to learn about nature, the relationships between science and technological advances, the nature of scientific work and knowledge, and a summary of the basic results and conclusions of scientific investigations past and present. Students in this course will develop and enrich their understanding of the physical basis of the natural sciences and associated technology, as well as the methods that scientists use to study physical and natural phenomena. Students will develop an understanding of some basic scientific principles and an appreciation for the relevance of science to society and will also develop an understanding of the methods the natural sciences use to study the physical world through observation, experimentation, evaluation of data, and development and testing of hypotheses. There is no formal laboratory component to this course, but we will be conducting simple observations and experiments periodically during class meetings to demonstrate concepts and/or initiate discussions. This is an introductory course that does not assume a lot of science and mathematics background.

Ari Kissiloff
Designing Compelling Presentations
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23127 CRN 10500-24 MWF 11:00-11:50, W 12:00-12:50
Designed just for first year students, this course will focus on analyzing content from a variety of disciplines in order to evaluate presentations that convey information in a compelling manner. Students will analyze presentations from academic, business, and mass media contexts to identify forms and techniques that make for successful presentations. Students use critical and imaginative thinking to create multimedia that utilize visual and message design and performance principles to effectively achieve their goals.

Kurt Komaromi
Dialogue on Design
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23128 CRN 10500-25 TR 1:10-2:25, M 12:00-12:50
Explores how design informs the environment we live in, the products we buy, and the dialogue we create with other human beings. Focuses on an appreciation of modern design in the fields of architecture, industrial design, and graphic design. Students gain an understanding of the creative process by examining the work of iconic figures such as Louis Kahn, Richard Neutra, Dieter Rams, Jonathan Ives, Steve Jobs, Paul Rand, and Milton Glaser. We learn that design encompasses both the aesthetic and the functional, connecting art and commerce, and elevating the human spirit along with the bottom line. We discuss principles of design, reflecting on how design thinking can be applied in our lives to achieve our creative potential and succeed in our chosen academic discipline.

Nick Kowalczyk
Telling True Stories: The Art of the Essay
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23169 CRN 10800-03 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
Alternately known as creative nonfiction, the so-called ‘fourth genre’ of literature is perhaps less studied than poetry, fiction, and drama, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less substantial, creative, or informed by literary tradition. This seminar will expose students to the history and stylistic techniques of the essay, a form that encompasses memoir, personal essay, magazine and feature writing, cultural criticism, argument, the lyric essay, nature writing, travel writing, and more. Focus will be placed on genre history, selected essayists, research skills, and literary craft. Students will write mostly analytic essays, but also some creative ones, too. This course is geared specifically to non-writing majors.

Anna Larsen
Chemistry as Humanity: How Chemistry Shapes Human Experience
Course #23129 CRN 10500-26 TR 9:25-10:40, F 12:00-12:50

Michael Malpass
Great Mysteries of the Past
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23130 CRN 10500-27 MWF 11:00-11:50, M 12:00-12:50
In this class we will be looking at some interesting mysteries from the annals of anthropology as well as a few from contemporary society. Some of these mysteries have explanations, and some don't. All provide lessons about the humans, both past and present. The main objective of this course is the discussion of these mysteries and how we know what we do about them.

Joan Marcus
The Real and the Imaginary in Popular Culture
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23173 CRN 10800-07 MWF 11:00-11:50, M 12:00-12:50
This course explores the indistinct line between real and imaginary worlds in popular culture. On the one hand, Americans seem to hunger for authenticity, devouring memoirs and entertaining themselves with shows such as “16 and Pregnant” that presume to be based on the raw, uncensored lives of real people. The fact that so many memoires are at least semi-fictionalized, and that reality television is anything but real, occasionally bothers us, but more often we seem to understand that reality is ours to craft and mold as we see fit. At the same time, fantasy worlds have become more popular than ever. Online role-playing games allow us to create new lives for ourselves, the anonymity of the Internet lets us adopt artificial personas (even new genders), and for many of us, simulated worlds and their fandoms are every bit as tangible as the food we eat and the people we interact with face-to-face every day. Students will explore these notions — that reality can be crafted or even fictionalized to serve our needs, and that fictional worlds can be made real — in a number of ways in this course. With an emphasis on critical reading and writing, this course serves as an equivalent to Academic Writing, WRTG 10600. Students will learn research and documentation methods and will be required to write and revise analytical papers.

Mary Beth O'Connor
The Lure of the Mysterious, the Strange and the Deeply Weird
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23174 CRN 10800-08 MWF 3:00-3:50, M 12:00-12:50
What is it about categories of the unknown that so appeals to many of us—especially artists and scientists, perhaps? We will investigate this question through looking at television shows old, The Twilight Zone, and newer, Dexter, The Walking Dead, and others; phenomena like spiritualism, haunted houses, UFO sightings, freak shows, hypnotism; essays on our views of the nature of “reality” by thinkers like Nietzsche; works of southern gothic literature and stories by Edgar Allen Poe; and various anthropological accounts of shamanism, witchcraft, and sorcery. Each student will undertake a research project and, with a partner, provide a presentation of his or her findings to the class. Our investigation will be grounded in an academic approach to popular and intellectual culture; that is, the focus will not be on whether such phenomena are “real” but on why they are compelling to the imagination and in what ways they inspire the production of art and knowledge. With an emphasis on critical reading and writing, this course serves as an equivalent to Academic Writing, WRTG 10600. Students will learn research and documentation methods and will be required to write and revise analytical papers.

Deborah Rifkin
Music Phrases Through the Ages
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23132 CRN 10500-29 MWF 11:00-11:50, W 12:00-12:50
This seminar will introduce the tools for analyzing and understanding musical phrases. In addition to developing skills to model and describe small music forms, students will explore how music is a product of its time and culture by comparing it to other contemporaneous art forms such as painting, architecture, and literature. We will study several different styles of music, including classical, folk and popular music from 1650 to the present. Students will learn how to describe and discuss their aesthetic experience.

Richard Schissel
What was in Aristotle's Medicine Cabinet? The History of Western Medicine
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23160 CRN 10500-57 MWF 3:00-3:50, W 12:00-12:50
Course #23186 CRN 10500-63 MWF 9:00-9:50, F 12:00-12:50
This seminar will examine the evolution of ideas and concepts of health, disease, and medicine through history. Beginning in Mesopotamia, we will explore how beliefs and ideas about health and the causes and treatment of disease changed through time, and how the actions of individuals and societies changed, with changes in religious beliefs and the development of science. We will begin to see how the evolution of medicine was influenced by wars, culture, geography, religion, economics, and even art. The course will explore how current ideas and practices in Western biomedicine have been built on past beliefs and practices and how different cultural beliefs shaped different medical practices.
The course also is designed to help you continue to develop your verbal and written communication skills, as well as your ability to work and play well with others. Course requirements will include: two 4 page research papers, one group presentation project, four 2 page Discussion Issue papers, and two 1 page response papers. Potential topics for the research papers and group presentation project will be discussed the first day of class. All of the individual research papers, Discussion Issue papers, and written summaries of the group presentation projects will be posted on Sakai. Each student will be required to post a one page response to two of the Discussion Issue papers.

Carla Stetson
Collage and Assemblage: The Construction of Meaning
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23133 CRN 10500-30 TR 4:00-5:15, M 12:00-12:50
What makes an artwork original or new? Who defines what is trash, junk, or the readymade sculpture? In this course we will discuss the ways artists transform found materials in collage, photomontage, assemblage and sampling. Many contemporary artists utilize a “cut and paste” aesthetic and we will investigate the manifestations and meanings created when parts and pieces of the “real” are incorporated into new work. Through lectures, films and reading you will discover how collage and assemblage practices started, and then you will research how contemporary artists use these methods, and present your research to the group. You will create three large-scale art projects both in two and three dimensions, and play some of the games the surrealists used to stimulate the imagination.

Catherine Taylor
Innovations in the Arts
Perspectives: Humanities, Creative Arts
Course #23175 CRN 10800-09 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
This course will engage with the history and practice of innovative movements in literature, film, music and the visual arts. These practices are often allied with notions of progress, social disruption and change. But while they may seek controversy, and sometimes remain controverisal, they also often form the foundation of the next artisitic or literary canon. One can study avant-garde artists in universities, read their works in major anthologies, and see their traces in mainstream media and entertainment. We'll look at what makes somethng new and what happens when that newness ends.

Phillip Scott Thomson
The Rhetoric of Conspiracy Theory
Perspective: Humanities
Course # 23134 CRN 10500-31 MWF 3:00-3:50, M 12:00-12:50
From the Kennedy assassination to chemtrails, conspiracy theories abound. This course looks at conspiracy theories as rhetorical phenomena and investigates their origin, structure, and impact on both individuals and society. In the course students will read several texts about conspiracy theory and will choose a particular conspiracy to investigate and critique.

Baruch Whitehead
African Drumming and Dance
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23143 CRN 10500-40 MWF 1:00-1:50, M 12:00-12:50
African Drum & Dance Performance Practices is comprised of three performance components - drumming, singing, and dance. Students have the opportunity to explore first-hand the exciting traditions of West African music by investigating specific musical types, styles and traditions on "authentic" African musical instruments. Social functions and analytical study of dance movements in ritual, ceremonial, religious, and recreational contexts are also investigated.

Mind, Body, Spirit Theme

Kathryn Caldwell
Healthy Psyches, Healthy Planet
Perspectives: Humanities, Social Science
Course #23137 CRN 10500-34 TR 8:00-9:25, M 12:00-12:50
Ecopsychologists believe that humans are part of a vast interconnected system that is the natural world. Whether we feel this connection or not is of vital importance to our emotional, cognitive and even physical well-being. Moreover, western contemporary societal structures and economic philosophies often serve to disconnect us from the natural world and therefore play a role in our mental and physical “dis-ease”. The ecosystem in turn, suffers from our disconnection. Taking a primarily psychological perspective, we will explore these ideas, and critically evaluate the research literature that supports these views as well as the limitations of that research. We will look to other perspectives, finding out what poets, philosophers, ecologists and artists have to say on the subject. We’ll mine for our own insights through active learning, nature jaunts, mindful meditations, artistic immersions, lively discussions and reflective journaling (via blogs). Learning about ourselves and reflecting on our societal structures, we will apply these insights to propose solutions for helping the planet and people live in better harmony and health.

Mary Ann Erickson
Creativity and Mindfullness
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23138 CRN 10500-35 TR 8:00-9:25, F 12:00-12:50
What does it mean to “be creative”? What does it mean to “pay attention”? We will explore the related concepts of creativity and mindfulness from a variety of perspectives, including history, psychology and sociology, and explore applications in fields such as business, education, and the arts. In addition to reading and writing, we will practice both creativity and mindfulness in class as well as off-campus with both younger and older people.

Danette Johnson
Did You Hear the One About...? Humor and Well-Being
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23138 CRN 10500-36 MWF 9:00-9:50, M 12:00-12:50
Humor is a fundamental part of our daily lives, from one-on-one interactions to the media we consume. By discussing and evaluating published research on humor, as well as examining specific examples of humorous messages, students in this course will examine how the humorous messages we produce and those that we encounter in interaction influence our physical and psychological well-being.

Katharine Kittredge
Girlstories
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23140 CRN 10500-34 TR 2:30-3:50, W 1:00-1:50
This class looks at the way that young women’s identities emerge in response to varying social, economic, racial or cultural pressures. We will be analyzing works of fiction, autobiography, drama, and poetry, and we will also analyze visual images presented in film, television, and advertising. As students consider these stories of self-creation, they will also reflect on the ways in which they are growing and changing as a result of the opportunities and challenges of their first semester. The need to balance ones mental, physical, and spiritual needs will be an on-going theme of the course.

Tatiana Patrone
Life Before Birth
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23141 CRN 10500-38 MWF 11:00-11:50, F 12:00-12:50
Exploration of general philosophical and ethical issues related to reproductive choices. Topics range from abortion, genetic enhancement and eugenics, to cloning, surrogacy, ivf, pre-natal testing, and ‘savior siblings’.

Dawn Pierce
Yes...and - Self Realization through Improv
Course #23142 CRN 10500-39

Baruch Whitehead
African Drumming and Dance
Course #23143 CRN 10500-40 MWF 1:00-1:50, M 12:00-12:50
African Drum & Dance Performance Practices is comprised of three performance components - drumming, singing, and dance. Students have the opportunity to explore first-hand the exciting traditions of West African music by investigating specific musical types, styles and traditions on "authentic" African musical instruments. Social functions and analytical study of dance movements in ritual, ceremonial, religious, and recreational contexts are also investigated.

Power and Justice Theme

Derek Adams
[THIS TITLE HAS BEEN CENSORED]: Language, Hatred, and the Postracial World
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23144 CRN 10500-41 TR 1:20-2:25, M 12:00-12:50
This course offers a direct challenge to the popular public sentiment that we live in a post-racial society and that systematic structures of power and privilege have ceased to exist in our world. In this class, we will explore the persistent operation of systematic discrimination in the 21st century through a collection of materials – i.e. short stories, magazine covers, film, advertisements, critical essays, and websites. Our study begins from the position that certain code words and social practices have transformed overt types of discrimination into more subtle and deceiving forms of bigotry. Words like “nigger,” “bitch,” and “fag” may have fallen out of fashion, but their essence lives on in our daily interactions. We will devote a significant amount of time to assessing how our social interactions are influenced by the legacy. The nature of the material we will cover in this course is likely to cause you cognitive dissonance. This is intentional. Talking about issues of race, gender, and sexuality is rarely conducive to positive feelings. Too, the course requires your personal investment in its development, including sharing and discussing your own race, gender, and sexual orientation with your classmates. I will establish our classroom as a safe space for the respectful reception of your individual life experiences, but there will inevitably be moments when the ideas you express will challenge belief structures that your classmates invest in, and vice versa.

Mara Alper
The Power of Water: Sustaining our Future
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23154 CRN 10500-51 TR 4:00-5:50, F 12:00-12:50
Understand water sustainability issues through an interdisciplinary approach to topics from the personal to global level. Emphasis is on the complex interrelationships of water for individuals, cultures, countries and the global environment.

Kimberly Baker
Hate and Hate Crimes
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23145 CRN 10500-42 TR 4:00-5:15, F 12:00-12:50
This class is designed to explore the meaning of hate at both personal and social levels. We will explore hate as a strategy used to establish and protect positions of power. In particular, this course will focus on hate as enacted through hate groups and hate crimes. We will explore how hate groups developed in the US, why people join hate groups, and why some people decide to leave such groups. We will also work on developing practical strategies to combat hate in society.

Jessica Barros
"The World is Yours": An Introduction to College Studies and Service Work
Perspectives: Humanities, Social Science
Course #23176 CRN 10800-10 TR 4:00-5:15, W 12:00-12:50
This course is meant to introduce students to how they may use various academic disciplines offered at IC in community work. More specifically, we will read and study specific case studies of doing work in prisons, elder centers, and literacy education with marginalized populations. While students will consider how the majors they are interested in lend themselves to this type of work, they will aso be introduced to other academic disciplines, issues they may encounter as outsiders as well as culturlally responsive methodologies they may use when working with these populations. By the end of the semester, students will have a portfolio consisting of a personal statement where they critically think about their position as insiders/outsiders in a community, and a paradigm of culturally sensitive methods they will use while working with a marginalized population of their choice.

Jeane Copenhaver-Johnson
Children's Inquiry: Agency and Learning in Childhood
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23146 CRN 10500-43 TR 4:00-5:15, W 12:00-12:50
Students in this course will explore their own values, beliefs and behaviors related to children’s inquiry by reflecting on their own experiences as child learners, reviewing texts that provide research and theory-based findings about childhood and learning, viewing films that offer alternative perspectives on children’s opportunities for learning, and participating in discussions and written experiences that prompt students to reveal how their own understandings and experiences compare to those of other students and to the children whose lives are reflected in course resources. Students will analyze how social class, race, language, and other social structures influence the contexts and consequences of children’s inquiry. In addition, they will participate in discussions in which they come to more defensible understandings of the relationships between identities, culture, learning, and power in the context of children’s inquiry. Students will learn how to engage multiple and competing points of view via the discussion format used in class and the strategic reading and viewing of diverse texts. They will develop and evaluate ideas and arguments about environments for children’s inquiry as they discuss and write about the course materials. Finally, throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to learn more about the resources offered by Ithaca College that can (1) contribute to their success at the College and (2) enhance their experiences while here.

Brian DeMaris
Opera and Revolution
Perspectives: Creative Arts, Humanities
Course #23147 CRN 10500-44 MWF 11:00-11:50, M 12:00-12:50
Students will learn about opera and history by analyzing operas based on revolution in its various forms and investigating the historical events on which they are based. Class discussions, written assignments, exams and a creative final project will provide a vehicle for students to respond to the works and formulate their own opinions on the issues presented.
Sample studies include: Beaumarchais’ Figaro Trilogy and the social conflicts of 18th Century Europe, the American and French Revolutions, and the Age of Enlightenment; Wagner’s Ring Cycle and the philosophical and political unrest of 19th Century Europe, the Industrial Revolution, Wagner’s influence in cinema, philosophy and politics; Verdi and his operas as related to political and social reform, human bondage and exile, Nationalism, Fascism and the Risorgimento; Philip Glass’ Portrait Trilogy, which depicts revolutionary individuals in religion (Akhenaten), science (Einstein), and politics (Gandhi), as portrayed by Glass during the Vietnam War and Cold War; and John Adams' ""CNN Operas"" (Death of Klinghoffer, Nixon in China and Dr. Atomic) and the portrayal of contemporary conflicts in opera today.

Nancy Jacobson
Global Warming - It's a Hot Topic
Perspective: Natural Science
Course #23167 CRN 10500-54 MWF 3:00-3:50, F 12:00-12:50
We will explore global warming and the resulting climate change through the lens of power and justice. We will look at the power and limitations of science to explain current climate change and to predict what we will see in the future. And we will look at climate justice. Students will take on the roles of scientists and policy makers in various countries to understand the global differences in the impact of climate change and their power to prevent or adapt to it.

Rebecca Lesses
Jerusalem: City of Faith, City of Struggle
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23150 CRN 10500-47 MWF 11:00-11:50, M 12:00-12:50
What does it mean to live in a divided city? This course focuses on contemporary Jerusalem, using films, short stories, memoirs, poetry, and analytical articles to explore the experiences of the city’s people today. The course will investigate what it means to live in a city divided along religious, ethnic, and national lines: between Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and between and among the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious communities. The course will address how the wars of the twentieth century have affected the lives of all who live in the city, especially the 1948 war, which divided the city between Israeli and Jordanian control, and the 1967 war, which united the city under Israeli rule. The course will also address the political issues of occupation, annexation, and settlement from both the Palestinian and Israeli perspectives. As a final project, students will formulate their own proposal for the final status of Jerusalem within a political agreement between Israelis and Palestinians.

Stephen Mosher
"Reel" Sports
Course #23151 CRN 1500-48 TR 2:35-3:50, W 12:00-12:50

Jennifer Muller
Mummies, Gladiators and the Enslaved: Revealing History Through Skeletal Analysis
Course #23162 CRN 10500-49 TR 4:00-5:15, M 12:00-12:50
Bone is living tissue. Therefore, the skeleton is an archive that records many of the events that we experience within our lifetime. The primary goal of the anthropological analysis of human skeletal remains is to “read” the evidence of these events on bone in an effort to inform our understanding of the culture of past populations. Through case study analysis, this course aims to introduce participants to the theoretical basis and methodological processes required to achieve this. The focus of this course is not solely on the biological processes that contribute to the treatment of human bodies and the skeletal manifestations of stress, but the extrinsic cultural factors that contribute to their differential expression in particular human groups throughout history. Participants learn how the integration of skeletal analysis into more traditional historical research may contribute to a fuller picture of past populations and events.
The planned topics for the course illustrate how behaviors within a particular society influence the skeletal archive. Among the topics/populations considered are grave robbing, mummies, bog bodies, Roman gladiators, enslaved populations, passengers on the Titanic and the Charles Lindbergh Jr. kidnapping. Critical evaluation of the complex ethical issues associated with the study of human skeletal remains is an integral part of the course. This course is designed to immerse students in their first year college experience through discussions, writing assignments, and experiential opportunities on and off campus.

Tom Shevory
Environmental Politics through Film
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23163 CRN 10500-50 TR 8:00-9:25, F 12:00-12:50
This course draws upon my experience as codirector of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival. As with the festival, the course questions a narrow definition of “environment” and considers the connections between power differentials, human rights, economic inequality, and the environmental crisis. Thus, we begin the course with a reading of Shellenberger and Nordhaus’s controversial paper declaring the “death” of environmentalism, and some critical reactions to it.
The course then extends into a wide variety of topics that consider explicit and implicit connections between the humans and the social and natural systems that we inhabit. These include “wilderness” protection, food production and consumption, labor issues, global economic growth, climate change, drug policy, human rights, and public health. Each week includes a film screening, followed by lecture and discussion organized around supplementary readings designed to illuminate the issues raised in the films.
In a number of cases, we will use Skype to connect with film directors, who will be available to answer student questions.

Quest for a Sustainable Future Theme

Mara Alper
The Power of Water: Sustaining our Future
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23154 CRN 10500-51 TR 4:00-5:15, F 12:00-12:50
Understand water sustainability issues through an interdisciplinary approach to topics from the personal to global level. Emphasis is on the complex interrelationships of water for individuals, cultures, countries and the global environment.

Kathryn Caldwell
Healthy Psyches, Healthy Planet
Perspectives: Humanities and Social Science
Course #23137 CRN 10500-34 TR 8:00-9:25, M 12:00-12:50
Ecopsychologists believe that humans are part of a vast interconnected system that is the natural world. Whether we feel this connection or not is of vital importance to our emotional, cognitive and even physical well-being. Moreover, western contemporary societal structures and economic philosophies often serve to disconnect us from the natural world and therefore play a role in our mental and physical “dis-ease”. The ecosystem in turn, suffers from our disconnection. Taking a primarily psychological perspective, we will explore these ideas, and critically evaluate the research literature that supports these views as well as the limitations of that research. We will look to other perspectives, finding out what poets, philosophers, ecologists and artists have to say on the subject. We’ll mine for our own insights through active learning, nature jaunts, mindful meditations, artistic immersions, lively discussions and reflective journaling (via blogs). Learning about ourselves and reflecting on our societal structures, we will apply these insights to propose solutions for helping the planet and people live in better harmony and health.

Beth Ellen Clark Joseph
Power and Energy Technologies
Course #23156 CRN 10500-52 TR 4:00-5:15, W 12:00-12:50
Survey of power and energy. Topics include energy resources, electricity, the rudiments of heat production and transfer, fossil fuels, nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, and the economic and environmental opportunities created by energy efficiency and sustainable energy systems. As concern over long-term supplies of fossil fuels and the environmental impacts of their use continue to grow, energy issues will occupy an increasingly important place in economic, political, and environmental debates. This course looks at energy use in the home (lightbulbs, appliances), and gradually expands to more complex subjects such as the electrical grid, national energy policy, and life cycle assessment. The course will provide students with a grounding in the technical principles necessary to design energy projects of their own and to evaluate their costs and benefits. Some math at the high-school algebra level is required. The course is team taught to incorporate valuable local expertise on these topics.

Nancy Jacobson
Global Warming - It's a Hot Topic
Perspective: Natural Science
Course #23167 CRN 10500-54 MWF 3:00-3:50, F 12:00-12:50
We will explore global warming and the resulting climate change through the lens of power and justice. We will look at the power and limitations of science to explain current climate change and to predict what we will see in the future. And we will look at climate justice. Students will take on the roles of scientists and policy makers in various countries to understand the global differences in the impact of climate change and their power to prevent or adapt to it.

Julia Lapp and Paula Turkon
We Are What We've Eaten
Perspective: Quest for a Sustainable Future
Course #23160 CRN 10500-57 MWF 3:00-3:50, W 12:00-12:50
This interdisciplinary, team-taught course examines the centrality of food in human life across time and space. Students will explore human relationships to key foods from prehistoric, historic, and contemporary perspectives.

Nancy Menning
Death of Nature: Mourning Environmental Losses
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23158 CRN 10500-55 MWF 3:00-3:50, W 12:00-12:50
Our capacity to address present and pending environmental challenges may depend on how adequately we have mourned the ecological losses we have already sustained. Religious traditions around the globe have constructed and conveyed historically-conditioned cultural wisdom and culturally-specific practices for mourning and memorializing human deaths. We will explore five of these traditions – West African (Dagara) funerals, Tibetan Buddhist sky burials, Jewish kaddish, Shi’ite Ashura, and Franciscan Transitus – and draw analogies from these examples to the challenge of mourning and remembering “natural” deaths, such as the death of pets, loss of the family farm, extinction of species, and the “death of nature” due to anthropogenic climate change.

Tom Shevory
Environmental Politics through Film
Perspective: Social Science
Course #23163 CRN 10500-50 TR 8:00-9:25, F 12:00-12:50
This course draws upon my experience as codirector of the Finger Lakes Environmental Film Festival. As with the festival, the course questions a narrow definition of “environment” and considers the connections between power differentials, human rights, economic inequality, and the environmental crisis. Thus, we begin the course with a reading of Shellenberger and Nordhaus’s controversial paper declaring the “death” of environmentalism, and some critical reactions to it.
The course then extends into a wide variety of topics that consider explicit and implicit connections between the humans and the social and natural systems that we inhabit. These include “wilderness” protection, food production and consumption, labor issues, global economic growth, climate change, drug policy, human rights, and public health. Each week includes a film screening, followed by lecture and discussion organized around supplementary readings designed to illuminate the issues raised in the films.
In a number of cases, we will use Skype to connect with film directors, who will be available to answer student questions.

World of Systems Theme

David Brown
History of Secrets
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23161, CRN 10500-58 MWF 11:00-11:50, F 12:00-12:50
For thousands of years, people have tried to keep information secret. Sophisticated techniques have been created in order to hide messages from unwanted eyes. We investigate the history of writing secret messages; this is the study of cryptography. We learn how mathematics is the basis of secret message writing and uncover the espionage history of intelligence gathering. We focus on key moments when cryptography changed history, including the breaking of the Enigma machine in World War II, continuing through the Cold War, and on to Internet commerce.

Thomas Girshin
Lies, Cheats and Plagiarisms
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23177 CRN 10800-11 MWF 11:00-11:50, M 12:00-12:50
According to Ian Leslie, we are “born liars.” We are a “cheating culture” says David Callahan. Jonah Lehrer recently made headlines for plagiarizing himself. It seems that duplicity is everywhere, breaking scandals followed by confessions to Oprah. These issues are especially relevant when it comes to student writing, as students are often asked to present themselves as credible authorities on subjects they are only beginning to learn. This course considers some of these popular perceptions of representation, as well as issues of trust and transgression. We will trouble the popular idea that these textual practices are evidence of moral corruption.

Matt Mogekwu
The African Press in a Globalized World
Course #23184 CRN 10500-61 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
This seminar focuses on the nature of the press in Africa especially as it operates within the global information and communication environment, examining, in particular, the complex issues of power, technology and the economy and their connectivity and interrelatedness in the continuing attempt at fashioning a new world information order. Students will be expected and encouraged to examine/analyze selected press systems and interrogate the enduring notion of the press as a crucial tool in effective governance . What social, economic and political factors make the press effective in some parts of the world and not in others? Students should begin to see the world beyond their own national perspective, and an appreciation of how the press functions in other parts of the world will contribute to this broadened perspective. It is hoped that at the end of the seminar, students will be able to understand and explain the place of the press in global politics and international understanding and cooperation.

James Pfrehm
Language Matters: Exploring Linguistic Systems
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23185 CRN 10500-62 MWF 9:00-9:50, F 12:00-12:50
Language is one of the most intricate innate systems of humankind. Speakers navigate this system, in large part, unconsciously. However, the endeavor to understand this complicated system of sounds, rules, and meaning has occupied thinkers for thousands of years. In this course, students will explore language matters--from how it works in the brain to how we use it in the social world—and consider why language matters.

Richard Schissel
What was in Aristotle's Medicine Cabinet? The History of Western Medicine
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23160 CRN 10500-57 MWF 3:00-3:50. W 12:00-12:50
Course #23186 CRN 10500-63 MWF 9:00-9:50, F 12:00-12:50
This seminar will examine the evolution of ideas and concepts of health, disease, and medicine through history. Beginning in Mesopotamia, we will explore how beliefs and ideas about health and the causes and treatment of disease changed through time, and how the actions of individuals and societies changed, with changes in religious beliefs and the development of science. We will begin to see how the evolution of medicine was influenced by wars, culture, geography, religion, economics, and even art. The course will explore how current ideas and practices in Western biomedicine have been built on past beliefs and practices and how different cultural beliefs shaped different medical practices.
The course also is designed to help you continue to develop your verbal and written communication skills, as well as your ability to work and play well with others. Course requirements will include: two 4 page research papers, one group presentation project, four 2 page Discussion Issue papers, and two 1 page response papers. Potential topics for the research papers and group presentation project will be discussed the first day of class. All of the individual research papers, Discussion Issue papers, and written summaries of the group presentation projects will be posted on Sakai. Each student will be required to post a one page response to two of the Discussion Issue papers.

Mary Lourdes Silva
Mobile Media Culture and Communication
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23178 CRN 10800-12 MWF 3:00-3:50, M 12:00-12:50
This course is an inquiry into the ways mobile technologies and mobile media have shaped and been systems of economics, ideology, culture, and language. Students will have the opportunity to learn the history of telecommunications and how current mobile technologies have integrated a motley of information communication technologies; learn the social and cultural debates related to texting language, as well as its genre conventions and rhetorical elements; and learn about mobile media communication within integrative social media networks and the re-negotiation of identity and social relationships. In this course students will have the opportunity to use mobile technologies, such as tablets, smartphones, and/or laptops to investigate the themes in the course and critically analyze the various audiences that participate in mobile media communication.

Andrew Utterson
Contemporary European Cinema
Perspectives: Creative Arts, Humanities
Course #23136 CRN 10500-33 TR1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
This course will explore contemporary European films and filmmakers, considering questions of cultural identity in the context of national cinemas and the political and other systems that define today’s Europe, a collective union (geographical, political, economic, etc.) of diverse nations. Films and filmmakers will be considered in national and transnational contexts, mapping the cultural and other boundaries of an evolving Europe and related conceptions of European, Europeanness, and in turn European cinema.

Writing Sections:

Susan Adams Delaney
Writing (as) Technology: Identity and Inscription in the Digital Age
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23187 CRN 10800-01 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
You may have heard your teachers complain that IM-speak is ruining our writing, or that short-form new media like Twitter or Facebook are disrupting our ability to read and think deeply. Of course, to borrow a popular phrase, back in the day Plato similarly complained of writing itself. Our culture takes technologies for granted; they become naturalized, assumed, almost invisible. It is only when a technology is relatively new that we pay attention to how it impacts our lives and our thinking. Yet such technologies—from the invention of the alphabet to the printing press to the personal computer—constrain and enable particular ways of thinking and communicating. This course will challenge students to consider writing as technology and writing as mediated through other technologies as they practice a range of academic and civic genres.

Ron Denson
Tribes and Scribes
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23188 CRN 10800-02 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
This course aims to introduce students to significant issues in the lives of American Indians in the contemporary United States, issues that illustrate the complex dynamics of the struggle for a vital American Indian future at the beginning of the second 500 years of European presence in the so-called New World. We will examine the variety and complexity of experiences comprehended under the conventional Columbian label of “Indian,” as we focus on the experiences and concerns of individual nations while also looking at expressions of a recent pan-Indian identity. The case studies that we will pursue will illuminate how enduring questions of justice, freedom, and equality grounded in our national creed are played out in the lives of the First Peoples at the beginning of the 21st century, particularly with regard to questions of sovereignty and self-determination, goals the pursuit of which set American Indians apart from other American “minorities.”

Thomas Girshin
Lies, Cheats and Plagiarisms
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23177 CRN 10800-11 MWF 11:00-11:50, M 12:00-12:50
According to Ian Leslie, we are “born liars.” We are a “cheating culture” says David Callahan. Jonah Lehrer recently made headlines for plagiarizing himself. It seems that duplicity is everywhere, breaking scandals followed by confessions to Oprah. These issues are especially relevant when it comes to student writing, as students are often asked to present themselves as credible authorities on subjects they are only beginning to learn. This course considers some of these popular perceptions of representation, as well as issues of trust and transgression. We will trouble the popular idea that these textual practices are evidence of moral corruption

Eleanor Henderson
Short Stories on the Screen
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23171 CRN 10800-05 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
Since the dawn of Hollywood studios, filmmakers have looked to works of fiction to reinterpret for the silver screen. Often, these works are novels - regarded by many as the literary equivalent of the feature film. But more and more, short stories - despite their size - are serving as the basis for full-length film adaptations. What qualities make the short story an ideal inspiration for film? When a story is adapted into a movie, what narrative challenges does it pose? And what responsibilities does a filmmaker have to preserve the author's original vision? In this course, we will examine a number of short stories and their film counterparts, seeking insight into the craft of storytelling and its role in our culture. With an emphasis on critical reading and writing, this course serves as an equivalent to Academic Writing, WRTG 10600. Students will learn research and documentation methods and will be required to write and revise analytical papers.

Nick Kowalczyk
Telling True Stories: The Art of the Essay
Perspective: Creative Arts
Course #23169 CRN 10800-03 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
Alternately known as creative nonfiction, the so-called ‘fourth genre’ of literature is perhaps less studied than poetry, fiction, and drama, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less substantial, creative, or informed by literary tradition. This seminar will expose students to the history and stylistic techniques of the essay, a form that encompasses memoir, personal essay, magazine and feature writing, cultural criticism, argument, the lyric essay, nature writing, travel writing, and more. Focus will be placed on genre history, selected essayists, research skills, and literary craft. Students will write mostly analytic essays, but also some creative ones, too. This course is geared specifically to non-writing majors.

Katharyn Howd Machan
Fairy Tales: The Hero's Journey
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23172 CRN 10800-06 MWF 11:00-11:50, F 12:00-12:50
Fairy tales are the maps of our psyches, the mirrors of our longings and fears. In them we find the questions and answers we need to continue the shaping of our own lives, through darkness and light, shadow and brilliant image. Our oldest fairy tales, from the oral culture, have been polished to the bone; they gleam with an intensity of truth free of specific history. Newer tales, too, their authors known and celebrated, reach to the place of magic and dream, and give us guides in delight and knowledge.
This course (while also fulfilling the 106 requirement by introducing students to the language and appropriate use of academic writing) will focus on the study of classic and literary fairy tales, with an emphasis on themes of self-discovery and transition/transformation. Readings will be drawn from the tales themselves, essays about them, and contemporary re-workings of them in fiction and poetry. Prepared by shorter in-class and homework assignments, students will write one three-to-five-page identity essay, three five-to seven-page academic essays on assigned topics (one of which will be gerontology driven, in the spirit of looking forward through the rest of one’s life), and one open-length imaginative/creative assignment, as well as keep regularly a personal response journal based on readings, news events, and individual experiences.
This course will also incorporate the important issues of transition to college, but in the psychological context of fairy tales. What, for example, are the “ogres” of adolescents’ fears? To whom can students turn for “Wise Woman/Wise Man” guidance? How will first-years survive on the “one bag of gold” their checkbooks allow? What “frogs” will they choose to kiss? How will each discover and strengthen the “prince/ princess” each can become, in the context of world events as well as the rhythms of private daily life? Essentially, each young man and woman in the class will be given the opportunity to look at himself or herself as the hero of his or her own life, in this journey-quest not only to survive the first semester, but to “find the treasure” in a commitment to continuing a college career. Emphasis will be on definition arrived at through observation, questioning, and reflection about past, present, and future self and the role of that self, and others’, in the world. A major goal throughout the course will be to heighten and strengthen students’ awareness that they have freedom and responsibility to shape who they are and who they will become, and that by doing so they will shape society.

Joan Marcus
The Real and the Imaginary in Popular Culture
Course #23173 CRN 10800-07 MWF 11:00-11:50, M 12:00-12:50
This course explores the indistinct line between real and imaginary worlds in popular culture. On the one hand, Americans seem to hunger for authenticity, devouring memoirs and entertaining themselves with shows such as “16 and Pregnant” that presume to be based on the raw, uncensored lives of real people. The fact that so many memoires are at least semi-fictionalized, and that reality television is anything but real, occasionally bothers us, but more often we seem to understand that reality is ours to craft and mold as we see fit. At the same time, fantasy worlds have become more popular than ever. Online role-playing games allow us to create new lives for ourselves, the anonymity of the Internet lets us adopt artificial personas (even new genders), and for many of us, simulated worlds and their fandoms are every bit as tangible as the food we eat and the people we interact with face-to-face every day. Students will explore these notions — that reality can be crafted or even fictionalized to serve our needs, and that fictional worlds can be made real — in a number of ways in this course. With an emphasis on critical reading and writing, this course serves as an equivalent to Academic Writing, WRTG 10600. Students will learn research and documentation methods and will be required to write and revise analytical papers.

Katie Marks
Pop Culture as Text
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23170 CRN 10800-04 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
In this seminar, we will explore popular culture and its role in contemporary society. We will consider whether it reflects our thoughts and beliefs or whether it shapes them. We will also investigate how it might affect who we become as individuals. Students’ firsthand observations of, and critical thinking about, advertising, television, film, music, and social networking will play a central role in the class. This course will be writing-intensive and will satisfy department and school requirements for a 100-level writing course.

Mary Beth O'Connor
The Lure of the Mysterious, the Strange and the Deeply Weird
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23174 CRN 10800-08 MWF 3:00-3:50, M 12:00-12:50
What is it about categories of the unknown that so appeals to many of us—especially artists and scientists, perhaps? We will investigate this question through looking at television shows old, The Twilight Zone, and newer, Dexter, The Walking Dead, and others; phenomena like spiritualism, haunted houses, UFO sightings, freak shows, hypnotism; essays on our views of the nature of “reality” by thinkers like Nietzsche; works of southern gothic literature and stories by Edgar Allen Poe; and various anthropological accounts of shamanism, witchcraft, and sorcery. Each student will undertake a research project and, with a partner, provide a presentation of his or her findings to the class. Our investigation will be grounded in an academic approach to popular and intellectual culture; that is, the focus will not be on whether such phenomena are “real” but on why they are compelling to the imagination and in what ways they inspire the production of art and knowledge. With an emphasis on critical reading and writing, this course serves as an equivalent to Academic Writing, WRTG 10600. Students will learn research and documentation methods and will be required to write and revise analytical papers.

Catherine Taylor
Innovations in the Arts
Course #23175 CRN 10800-09 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
This course will engage with the history and practice of innovative movements in literature, film, music and the visual arts. These practices are often allied with notions of progress, social disruption and change. But while they may seek controversy, and sometimes remain controverisal, they also often form the foundation of the next artisitic or literary canon. One can study avant-garde artists in universities, read their works in major anthologies, and see their traces in mainstream media and entertainment. We'll look at what makes somethng new and what happens when that newness ends.

Honors Sections

Elizabeth Bleicher
Why are We Here? Student Culture and the Problem of College
Themes: World of Systems, Power and Justice
Perspectives: Humanities, Social Science
Course #23181 CRN 11000-03 TR 8:00-9:25, W 12:00-12:50
What does it mean to be educated? Are you here to get a job or to get a life? To answer these questions, we will explore competing rationales behind collegiate study and engage in advanced literary and cultural analyses. We will study historical precedents, scholarly and journalistic articles, social critiques, and fictional collegians. We will conduct primary research into youth culture, access to education, and attitudes toward education, develop rhetorical skills by sharing our findings, and write extensively across a variety of genres. Individually, you will articulate your personal philosophy of education and develop your own personal goals. Collaboratively, we will analyze the extent to which our readings and writings fit with our evolving understanding of the goals for collegiate study

Bruce Henderson
Teenage Wastelands: Dystopic Narratives and Alienated Youth
Themes: Identities; Inquiry, Imagination and Innovation
Perspective: Humanities
Course #23179 CRN 11000-01 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
"Dystopic" refers to narratives that imagine a world that is not only "imperfect," but typically in a state of decay, chaos, or dissolution, often as a result of a natural disaster, a human corruption of the world, an epidemic, or a major global conflict of some kind. While there have been dystopic narratives probably as long as people have been telling stories to try to make sense of what is wrong with the present state of the world and to predict possible or likely trajectories for times to come (the Fall from Eden, the Flood, the myth of Prometheus, millennial panics, the Rapture, 2012 to name a few of the most familiar ones), recent years have shown a dramatic increase in literary fiction that uses dystopic plots and themes, and, interestingly enough, as noted in an article in The New Yorker about a year, a large number of them have featured "young adults" (from tweens to adolescents to those in their early twenties) as central characters and have been written with such readers as central audiences (though adults have eagerly followed them, as well). This course will trace the course of dystopic young adult narratives, following a basically chronological structure, looking back briefly at dystopic themes in some classic children's fantasy novels from the "Golden Age" of children's literature to a handful of defining dystopic novels (which do not necessarily focus on young adults, but which establish major traditions in dystopic narrative as a genre) and then survey dystopic narratives about/for young adults from the 1950s to the present day. Many, if not most, dystopic narratives fit within the popular genres of "science fiction" or "fantasy," though we will read at least one novel that looks at the "real world" (i.e. one locatable in the real geography and history of the United States) as a "dystopic narrative." Indeed, good arguments could be made for placing our FYRI text, Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints, as a kind of "historical dystopia."

Katharine Kittredge
Lethal Girls and Lady Knights: Female Warriors in Fantasy and Science Fiction
Themes: Identities, Power and Justice
Perspectives: Humanities, Social Science
Course #23180 CRN 11000-02 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
This class could be called “The road to the Hunger Games”; it looks at works of fantasy and science fiction which have depicted strong female characters, and considers them in the larger context of the history of feminist science fiction and the United States’ concurrent waves of feminist thought and activism.

Tom Pfaff
Why are We Here? Student Culture and the Problem of College
Themes: World of Systems, Power and Justice
Perspectives: Humanities, Social Science
Course #23182 11000-04 MWF 11:00-11:50, W 12:00-12:50
What does it mean to be educated? Are you here to get a job or to get a life? To answer these questions, we will explore competing rationales behind collegiate study and engage in advanced literary and cultural analyses. We will study historical precedents, scholarly and journalistic articles, social critiques, and fictional collegians. We will conduct primary research into youth culture, access to education, and attitudes toward education, develop rhetorical skills by sharing our findings, and write extensively across a variety of genres. Individually, you will articulate your personal philosophy of education and develop your own personal goals. Collaboratively, we will analyze the extent to which our readings and writings fit with our evolving understanding of the goals for collegiate study.

Honors AND Writing Sections

David Flanagan
Power and Justice in Classical Athens
Themes: World of Systems, Power and Justice
Course #20998 CRN 11800-01 MWF 3:00-3:50, F 12:00-12:50
Our high school courses taught us that fifth-century Athens was "the cradle of democracy," and the birthplace of Western drama. Male Athenian citizens used persuasive language to exercise power in the law courts and the Assembly. But what about those other Athenians, like women, whose voices weren't heard in those public institutions? We'll explore the Athenian discourse about justice and power by reading about the trial of Socrates and the Assembly debates over the Peloponnesian War. And we'll investigate what Greek drama might reveal about the otherwise hidden lives of Athenian women.

Marlene Kobre
Facing Nature, Facing Ourselves
Themes: Mind, Body and Spirit; Quest for a Sustainable Future
Perspective: Humanities
Course #20999 CRN 11800-02 TR 1:10-2:25, W 12:00-12:50
Since America’s early colonization and settlement by Europeans, our nation has had an ambivalent response to the rich natural world that is our home. One response has been a sense of awe in the face of such abundance, beauty, power, and mystery; another has been a relentless drive to use—some might say exploit--nature to serve human needs. The serious environmental dilemma we now face is one legacy of this conflicted response. If we are to understand the roots of this complex relationship and to explore ways that we might begin to repair the damage suffered by the earth and our human communities, we must ask tough questions: Why has our relationship with nature been so conflicted? What does nature mean to us? What human needs does it satisfy? Does nature have needs of its own, intrinsic value, and even rights? Should we and can we balance the needs of humans and the needs of nature? If so, what changes must we make in our assumptions, values, and choices? This course will offer us a chance to seek answers to these questions by studying a range of interdisciplinary texts--literary, historical, philosophical, and political—that will often reflect conflicting perspectives. I hope that analyzing the differences in the values underlying these perspectives will help us to clarify our own attitudes and beliefs

Ithaca College

Ithaca Seminars

Fall 2013 Courses