Dr. Kristen Lillvis

MW || 2:00 – 3:15 || OM 353

Attribute(s): Writing Intensive

Recommended Credit: Literature or Social Science

Do you use a smart phone? Have (or want) an iPad? Ever thought about how these products shape us? Today, as greater numbers of people engage with the world via Internet-ready technologies, some theorists argue that our identity must be understood as informational or digital rather than physical. This course explores what it means to be human by studying robots, cyborgs, and posthuman subjects in literature. We will look at texts from the early 19th century to today in order to examine how thought about the human mind and body has developed. Throughout the course, we will work to offer tentative answers to some of the most important questions about humanity: What does it mean to be human? How do our ideas about the human change as we become more and more dependent on technology, and what will happen to us (and our bodies) in the future?

Dr. Mary Moore

TR || 2:00 -3 :15 || OM 230

Attribute(s): Writing Intensive; Women's Studies

Recommended Credit: Literature

This course will combine historical, medical and literary texts to create a fertile ground for reading Shakespeare’s female characters in sonnets and plays.  Our reading will lay the groundwork for subsequent thought about women, helping us learn about the notion of women that the Renaissance inherited, and which, we, in turn, also inherited from that influential era. Reading will include Thomas Laquere’s Making Sex, a study of how classical ideas of anatomy influence concepts of the sexes, and Constance Jordan’s Renaissance Feminism, which discusses these influences and those of the early Church Fathers from a feminist perspective.  We also will read some examples of the late Medieval and Renaissance discourse on women, the querelles des femmes or controversy about women.  A sometimes serious, sometimes bawdy and humorous textual debate in both learned and popular forms, written by both men and women, the querelles flesh out the Renaissance’s inherited notions about women, calling into question women’s rationality, ability to act morally and ethically, their intellect, wit, and ability to rule.

Dr. Charles Lloyd

MW || 5:00 - 6:15 || SM 107

Attribute(s): Writing Intensive

Recommended Credit: Social Science or Fine Arts

Ruth Etting—recording artist, radio singer, Broadway and film star—opens a window on American popular culture of the 1920s and 1930s. On her rise to fame, she performed for Al Capone in Chicago. In New York Flo Ziegfeld chose her as a Ziegfeld Girl, one of his famous American Girls. Her singing style set the standard for female crooners, and her torch song renditions, blues for white people, made her internationally famous—she was the top female radio vocalist four years running. She sang in forty short film subjects, forerunners of music videos. This writing-intensive course will explore American entertainment culture during the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, the short subject as a means to celebrity, the art of the torch song, and the significance of crooning as an art form. To understand her formative era, you will interpret Etting’s music by singing it yourself.

Dr. Caroline Perkins & Dr. Kateryna Schray

M || 4:00 - 6:20p|| JH B10

Attribute(s): Writing Intensive

Recommended Credit: Humanities or Literature

In this seminar we will examine themes of heroic epic that persist through time. We will integrate readings from the ancient world by such authors as Homer, Apollonius and Vergil with readings from Anglo-Saxon, medieval and 18th, 19th and 20th century British and American literature. It is our intention to examine the themes of the journey, the quest, the romance, and the task in order to see whether and/or how they have evolved over time and why they resonate with their own and modern audiences.  We will accomplish through reading and class discussion, informal writing in an online discussion board, film analysis, a set design project, and an interdisciplinary anthology of items related to the course themes.

Dr. James Sottile & Wendy Trzyna

T || 4:00 - 6:20 || OM 353

Attribute(s):

Recommended Credit: Social Science

This course explores the current state of knowledge related to the contribution of environmental components and genetics to learning and motivation and to other complex behavioral traits. Topics include the biology and physiology of learning, theories of motivation and learning, the genetics of a variety of human conditions and disorders, and the contribution of environmental factors that influence their establishment, progression and outcomes. Historical and recent advances in the fields of learning and genomics are discussed. The unifying theme is the interplay between genes and environment (nature vs. nurture). Students are engaged in active learning (debate style) through the exploration of the many unanswered questions in these fields. The class content is geared to biology and education majors, nevertheless, any student interested in the area of biology and education will gain valuable insight into the process of learning and biological change.

Dr. Robert Rabe

W || 4:00 - 6:20 || OM 353

Attribute(s):-

Recommended Credit: Social Science

This seminar is an exploration of the many significant changes taking place in American political culture due to changes in communications technology and practices of public interaction.  People often talk about new technology as if it were “democratic” in its very nature, but in reality I think the effects are more complex than that.  We will discuss the concept of the “ideal citizen” and think about all the ways that new technology might expand or limit the possibilities of citizenship.  Students will be asked to work on projects that explore the new digital political culture and the many ways that people get and share information about government and politics, or take part in civic life in new ways by using new technologies.

Dr. Cory Pillen

R ||4:00 - 6:20|| OM 353

Attribute(s): Women's Studies

Recommended Credit: Fine Arts or Social Science

Focusing on representations of the body, this seminar explores critical issues related to the social construction of health and illness in visual culture.  Throughout the semester, we will look at a variety of visual media produced by scientific illustrators, fine artists, and popular image-makers.  We will also discuss medical imaging technologies that visualize bodies, including MRI scanners and fetal sonograms.  In addressing these works, we will consider the role images have played in defining, analyzing, and regulating the body and bodily norms.  We will also discuss various ways individuals have used visuals to both engage with and challenge established attitudes concerning health, illness, and the body, which is an important site for the negotiation of power relationships.  In doing so, we will explore some of the ways images work to shape and redefine conceptions of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability, age, identity, “normalcy,” and difference.