New York City Baseball in the 20th Century

V50.0206  Prince. 4 points.

Baseball is neither a metaphor for life nor a perfect explanation for the uniqueness of American culture or American character. But sport—and, for some cogent reasons, baseball in particular—does provide a way into an examination of major contemporary historical questions in the areas of race, gender, and class. The Brooklyn Dodgers’ pioneering role in American racial integration in the years after World War II, for example, and the Yankees’ early failure to follow suit provide useful laboratories for a study of race. The strongly macho character of baseball reveals basic gender aspirations and prejudices more subtly evoked in other areas of American life. To the extent that baseball is indeed a working-class game, fan involvement reveals much about the nature of urban class values and tensions in the 20th century. A full-length baseball-related research paper is required.

Computer Simulation

V50.0207  Peskin. 4 points.

This is a hands-on course in which students learn how to program computers to simulate physical and biological processes. The course meets alternately in a classroom and in a computer laboratory setting. The techniques needed to perform such simulations are taught in class and then applied in the laboratory by the students themselves, who work individually or in teams on computing projects and report on these projects to the group as a whole. Students learn how to make the computer generate graphics, movies, and sounds as needed for presentation of the results of the different simulations. Examples emphasized in class include the orbits of planets, moons, comets, and spacecraft; the spread of diseases in a population; the production of sound by musical instruments; and the electrical activity of nerves. Students may draw their projects from this list or choose other projects according to individual interests.

Language and Reality in 20th-Century Science and Literature

V50.0210  Ulfers. 4 points.

This course explores the possibility that a common ground exists between the so-called two cultures of science and the humanities. It posits the hypothesis of a correlation between postclassical science (e.g., quantum theory) and postmodern literature and philosophy. Among the key notions examined are Heisenberg’s “uncertainty principle” and the “undecidability” of deconstructive theory. The discussion of these notions, and their implications in literary works, revolves around their effect on classical logic, the referential function of language, and the traditional goal of a complete explanation/description of reality. Readings include selections from the works of Borges, Kundera, Pirsig, and Pynchon and from nontechnical texts on quantum and chaos theories.

The Supreme Court and the Religion Clauses: Religion and State in America

V50.0218  Sexton. 4 points.

Should members of the Native American church be allowed to smoke peyote at religious ceremonies? Can a public high school invite a rabbi to give a benediction and convocation at graduation? Should a state legislator rely on his or her religious convictions in forming a view about the legality of capital punishment or abortion? The course divides these questions into three subject areas: religious liberty; separation of church and state; and the role of religion in public and political life. It focuses on how the Supreme Court has dealt with these areas and, more important, invites students to construct a new vision of the proper relationship among religion, state, and society in a 20th-century liberal constitutional democracy.

First Amendment Freedom of Expression

V50.0235  Solomon. 4 points.

Conflicts over freedom of speech erupt into public debate almost every week. Congress passes a law to purge indecency from online communications. A tobacco company sues a major television network for libel. Press disclosures threaten the fair-trial rights of defendants in the Oklahoma City bombing trial. Although the First Amendment appears on its face to prohibit any governmental restrictions on speech, the Supreme Court in fact balances free and open expression against other vital interests of society. This course begins by examining the struggle against seditious libel (the crime of criticizing government or its officials) that was not won in this country until the landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964. Students examine freedom of speech through the prism of a rich variety of contemporary conflicts, including political dissent that advocates overthrow of the government; prior restraints against publication; obscenity and pornography; flag burning; the new law that bans indecency from online services; hate speech; and inflictions of emotional distress. Students read and analyze important decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Realism and How to Get Rid of It

V50.0244  Bishop. 4 points.

Realism relates both to a permanent concern of literature and art and to a “school” that became the dominant mode of 19th-century artistic expression. In the large sense, realism is accuracy in the portrayal of life or reality; referring to the 19th-century literary movement, realism reflects the ordinary life of the average person. The realistic novel and theatre focused on the conflicts and characters familiar to readers and spectators by means of artistic conventions relating to the credibility of plot and characters, the role of narration, and the function of the reader/spectator. The 20th century turned its back on realism through a series of powerful modernist and avant-garde movements that reacted against linear narrative and a literal depiction of reality. Following an examination of 19th-century realism in the novel and theatre (Balzac, James, and Ibsen), the seminar stresses 20th-century reactions (Borges, Beckett, Robbe-Grillet, Sukenick, Pirandello, Brecht, Ionesco, Genet, and Pinter). These reactions include the stream-of-consciousness novel, surrealism, abstract expressionism, Brechtian epic theatre, theatre of the absurd, first-person singular narrative, and postmodern fiction. Attention is concentrated on form and language, on conventions, and on the relationship of the work to the reader or spectator. Film viewings concentrate on nonnarrative cinema (Resnais, Antonioni). The work of realist and nonrealist painters is also discussed.

V50.0276  Blaser and Ernst. 4 points.

Infectious diseases have shaped human biology, genes, culture, and imagination. After the advent of antibiotics, we thought that we could win the “war” on infectious diseases. Antibiotic resistance and AIDS, among other events, have taught us that the war is not winnable. Rather, we must understand our place in the microbial world, learn to adapt strategies that minimize infectious disease impact, and maximize our symbiosis with indigenous organisms. After introductory discussions, the course is conducted as a series of seminars by students on topics that provide greater understanding of the underlying biological issues. Topics that may be discussed include genetic susceptibility to diseases such as malaria, problems involved in antibiotic resistance, the evolution of HIV, good microbes versus bad, and infectious diseases in the postmodern world.

From the Rise of Christianity to Bowling Alone: A Sociological Perspective on Two Millennia

V50.0282  Lehman. 4 points.

The new millennium has dawned with growing disenchantment with traditional left-right cleavages and with the claim that the United States is increasingly a nation of isolated individualists whose disregard for collective responsibilities is eroding civic virtues and its democratic institutions. The aim of this course is to assess the trajectory of our culture using the dimensions of autonomy versus order and freedom versus determinism. The seminar begins by probing these diagnoses in the broader context of moral and social transformations in the West over the last two thousand years. Students examine social-science analyses of pivotal changes that have occurred in that period. They consider the sociologist Rodney Stark’s highly acclaimed The Rise of Christianity, which focuses on developments during the first four centuries of the first millennium of the common era. The final reading of the course is the political scientist Robert Putnam’s controversial Bowling Alone, which is currently the most publicized critique of contemporary American civic life.

Europe in Africa and Africa in Europe: Interaction and Rupture in History

V50.0303  Lewis. 4 points.

This seminar explores pivotal moments of confrontation and exchange in which the course of economic, cultural, and political development in the European and African experiences are reciprocally and significantly altered. The proposition that what others have made us applies at the most profound levels equally to conqueror and conquered, exploiter and exploited, superordinates and subordinates alike is to be tested in this seminar through an exploration of five turning-point interactions: (1) Islam’s first European century (viz., the 8th-century Muslim conquest of Iberia); (2) capitalism and slavery, 1400s to 1850; (3) African resistance in the scramble for Africa; (4) bohemian Paris and Renaissance Harlem; (5) literatures and politics of rupture (Wells-Barnett, Du Bois, and Maran to Fanon, Baldwin, et al.; Ghana and the Congo). Five essays keyed to the five topics and based on seminar discussions, required readings, and independent research are to be presented serially.

V50.0323  Roth. 4 points.

Long before Cleopatra, the royal women of ancientEgypt often had a great deal of influence on world events. Some even became pharaohs in their own right and were depicted with a beard and a male body or wearing the ceremonial dress of a king over the modest traditional dress of a woman. Others exercised religious authority in priestly offices or as the ceremonial wife of a god. This course examines the lives and roles of these women, as reflected in the art, archaeology, and texts of their own times, and often in their own words. Questions examined include the assumptions about gender and sex underlying Egyptian culture, the practical and symbolic roles of queens, the character of women’s monuments, the destruction of some monuments of powerful women by later generations, and changes in the roles of elite women over almost three millennia of Egyptian history. Through their culturally anomalous position, we come to understand some important principles of gender and power inEgypt and perhaps elsewhere as well. In addition, we examine the views of these women taken by Western scholars and popular media and how such understandings of their roles reflect the evolution of our own cultural attitudes.

Lives in Contexts

V50.0331 Persell. 4 points.

What are social contexts? How do social contexts influence who we are? How do we develop ways of analyzing those contexts so we can become more aware of them and their influences on us and become less likely to be determined by them? Some of the social contexts we will explore in this seminar are families, peers, race/ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social class, markets, organizations, cooperation and competition, opportunity structures, prevailing rules, historical epochs, nations, and demography. Students will become familiar with these social-science concepts and processes by analyzing their own lives in their respective social contexts, as well as reflecting about the types of contexts where they might like to live and work in the future. They will also be introduced to the concept of framing, i.e., the way social situations are set up for analysis and discussion.

V50.0337 Shrum. 4 points.

The year 1960 saw the first general election presidential debates in American history. But for the next three elections, as incumbents or front-runners saw all risk and no advantage in debating, there were no such exchanges. As the country grew increasingly divided, speeches actually became defining moments in ways few commentators had predicted: from Barry Goldwater’s “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice”; to Richard Nixon’s retooling of his image with his 1968 acceptance speech; to George McGovern’s call to “come home, America” in 1972. But four years later, running far behind, the incumbent Gerald Ford challenged Jimmy Carter to debate, and debates have been a staple of presidential campaigns ever since. Drawing on primary as well as secondary materials, this course examines the impact of the debates and the continuing relevance of rhetoric and speeches in the race for the White House. How can debates establish a less experienced candidate’s credentials? Can mistakes or moments in a debate decide an election? How do candidates plan and prepare for such “moments”? How is it possible to “win” the debates and lose the election? Is the importance of debates overstated and that of speeches and rhetoric understated? Have speeches survived the sound-bite culture, and how has it changed them? When do debates really matter in presidential primaries where multiple candidates may be onstage? Finally, how have debates influenced some of the most critical nonpresidential races?

V50.0352 Goodwin. 4 points.

Joe Hill, the labor activist and songwriter, once wrote, “A pamphlet, no matter how good, is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over.” Musical artists have often protested social and political conditions in the United States. What role has music played in encouraging and sustaining political protest? Conversely, how have political dissent and mass movements influenced music? Why has “protest music” sometimes flourished even in the absence of protest movements? Does effective protest music share similar qualities? To answer these questions, this course will examine several protest movements and the music that helped inspire them, including the labor movement, the civil rights and Black Power movements, and the anti–Vietnam War movement. Along the way, we will listen to the music of Joe Hill, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Phil Ochs, Curtis Mayfield, John Lennon, and many others. We will also listen to politically inspired punk, hip-hop, and other contemporary protest music that has not been connected to mass movements.

V50.0357 LeDoux. 4 points.

What is mind? Is it a system of impulses or something changeable? This paraphrase of a Bart Simpson remark captures one of the great debates in history: to what extent are we hard-wired as opposed to shaped by experience? Several hundred years ago, fundamental questions such as these were addressed by philosophers. The birth of psychology in the late 19th century gave us ways of studying the mind scientifically rather than simply speculating about it. Modern neuroscience gives us a new approach, one in which we use discoveries about the brain to understand who we are and why we are that way. What have we learned? And does this approach enhance (or diminish) our sense of who we are? In this course we will address these questions, looking at the issues both historically and in terms of modern discoveries. We will use the topic of emotions, and their relation to the brain, as a window on the broader problem of mind and brain.