LEH300-LEH301 SECTIONS  SUMMER 2007
Session I
	LEH300	01A	Gellens, Sam	Literature, Art and Film of WWI
	MTWH	8:00-10:05		This course will take a global approach to World War One.  While students will be expected to master the historical narrative of this war -- its causes, important battles and fronts, and long-term consequences -- the course's emphasis will be on the war's portrayal in literature, art, and film.  Students will read two famous novels, Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front and Helen Zenna Smith's Not So Quiet , poetry by the so-called "war poets", among them Rupert Brooke and Sigfried Sassoon, and look at paintings by artists from all over the world which depict various aspects of the horrors of total war.  Finally, we will see how several modern filmmakers, e.g. Stanley Kubrick, have treated the war.
	LEH300	02WA	Cash, Jeremy	Leisure and Recreation in a Multicultural Society
	MTWH	8:00-10:05		This course will examine the diverse cultures which make up the American Landscape.  Culture will be examined using leisure as its theme and starting point.  Similarities as well as differences between culture will be identified.  Folktales, proverbs, riddles, holidays, rituals and games from around the world will be presented and discussed.
	LEH300	03WA	Sramek, Joseph	Colonial Cultures
	MTWH	12:30-2:35PM		This course examines the cultural aspects of British imperialism during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, Ireland, and post-imperial Britain, drawing upon the academic disciplines of history, literature, and anthropology.  The major aim of the course will be to study how the identities of colonizers and colonized peoples were shaped through the “colonial encounter” with particular attention being paid to the roles of race, class, and gender.  In addition to providing students with a basic historical and theoretical understanding of British imperialism, the course will consist of reading several colonial novels as well as recent scholarship by historians, literary critics, and anthropologists.
	LEH300	04WA	Murphy, Mark	Ovid’s Metamorphoses: Tales of Love, Human and Divine
	MTWH	10:15-1220		If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Ovid must be reckoned the most indulged author of classical antiquity.  From Shakespeare to Shakar, his dazzling masterpiece the Metamorphoses has inspired writers and artists throughout the post-classical western tradition.  This course aims to explore in detail a selection of the Greek myths Ovid uses to make Roman epic (the poet presents over 250 myths in his ‘seamless song’).  The secondary readings are designed to focus students’ attention on a number of issues that emerge and ‘submerge’ in the course of this anti-Aeneid and include Roman politics, history (political and literary), religion (Roman, Greek, and other), women in antiquity, and story-telling (its form and substance).
	LEH300	05A	Saint-Just, Sophie	The Indies: Reading Cinematic Texts
	MTWH	10:15-1220		The advent of independent films has paralleled the emergence of voices from oppressed minority groups. This interdisciplinary introductory course explores discourses of cultural affirmation and contestation through the lenses of independent films (indies) but also through poems, short stories, and theories from the English, Spanish, and French-Speaking Americas, with an emphasis on the variegated historical experiences of the African Diaspora but not exclusively.   We will look at the way independent filmmakers and authors from the Caribbean have contributed to discourses on American identities in poems and short stories. For instance, we will delve into the cultural process of Creolization when we examine how the interaction between poor African-American and Caribbean (English and Spanish-speaking) youth gave birth to Hip-Hop in the South Bronx in the 1970s (in documentaries such as Wild Style and Style Wars and in an article by Juan Flores. Then we will discuss the way the recent documentary Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes queries misogyny and sexual identity.
	LEH300	06WA	DeSimone, Janet	Ethics and Decision Making in Literature and Film
	MTW	9:30-12:20		Through literature and film, this writing-intensive course will examine decision making as a process and the ethical dimensions inherent in making choices that significantly impact the lives of others. Emphasis will be placed on decision-making strategies that embrace integrity, impartiality, authenticity, and respect. Various decision-making theories will also be explored. Some works covered include Sophie’s Choice, The Crucible, “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” and 12 Angry Men.
	LEH300	07WA	Radford, Tanya	Pattern Recognition: Images and Visual Literacy
	MTWH	2:00-4:05		We are surrounded by images and we gather information from visual sources constantly. But how do we know what visual representations are saying to us? What are images and how do they work? What is visual literacy? How do we “read” pictures? How do we compose information in a visual format? In this course, we will look at the role of images in constructing our understanding of the world. We will also think about images as a means of manipulating the truth. Ranging from children’s picture books to high art to photography and film, this course will look at visual representation in the disciplines, in our art forms, and in our everyday reality. Students will be asked to consider the role of images and visual information in their own fields of study and in the world around them. We will develop and exercise our skills in visual rhetorical analysis by looking at visual images and reading essays about visual images.
	LEH300	08A	Larimer, Amy	Yoga and Habitual Thinking
	MTWH	12:30-2:35		Yoga and Habitual Thinking combines the study of yoga, Buddhist philosophy and recent developments in neuroscience in an effort to learn more about both our personal and cultural habits.  The course will include a daily yoga and meditation practice, frequent journal assignments, research and discussion.  Yoga and meditation are excellent ways to observe both our physical and mental habits.  This observation will continue outside of the classroom in the form of frequent journal assignments designed to make us more aware of habitual patterns.  This work will be supported with readings from both the Buddhist perspective and the scientific perspective on how we form habits and how those habits affect the relationship between the mind and the body and ourselves and the world.  No prior experience is necessary and the physical aspect of the class will be designed to suit the needs of each student.
	LEH300	OA1WA,OA2WA	Piccolomini, Manfredi	Birth of the Renaissance in Florence
	FM:	6/4, 4:00		This course examines the revival of all aspects of classical learning, both humanistic and scientific, that took place in Florence at the beginning of the Renaissance. It will concentrate both on the literary and political revolutions of the time, as well as on the influence of the rediscovered principles of Euclidean geometry in the development of perspective in painting and the creation of the maps that led to great geographical discoveries. The goal of the course is to show how the Renaissance, especially as it developed in Florence, was at the basis of the modern world.
	LEH300	OA3WA	Viano, Bernado	Mexican Muralism: Revolution and Other Universal Themes
	FM:	6/4/  3:00		This course explores the interaction of a national, public art (mural painting) and a social event (the Mexican Revolution 1910). Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco, among others, created world-famous murals; their themes are universal, but two dominate: the experience of the Mexican Revolution and the concern of the place of human kind within the 20th century. The Revolution left its indelible mark on Mexican narrative as well; thus, we will read two novels that have something in common with the structure and thematic of muralismo mexicano.
	LEH300	OA4WA	Carroll, Mary	Monsters: Ancient and Modern
	FM:	6/4 1:00		From the Golem to Godzilla, form gargoyles to Frankenstein, we seem to have an eternal fascination with the monstrous. When you read certain books or see certain films, do you secretly root for the monster? Are you willing to see to see his/her/its point of view? If so, this course is one that you will enjoy. We will be investigating why certain monsters hold such a special place in our cultural and literary lives. Their existence is not based simply on being the NOT HERO; they touch deep wells within us that may hold clues to our own selves and, on a broader level, to man's inhumanity to man. Various genres, from novels to cartoons to poetry, art and film will form our course work. In addition, you will go to a museum to find an appropriate painting or sculpture that exemplifies the monstrous in a particular genre we have examined and write a major paper on that work.
	LEH300	81WA	O'Hanlon, Tom	Music Artwork in Mass Culture
	MTWH	5:45-7:50		Music Artwork in Mass Culture will use music album artwork as well as concert posters and marketing materials to examine shifting societal norms and expectations from one generation to the next.    These visual examples will be examined in conjunction with assigned readings, viewing of video programming and listening to samples of the audio content that is marketed through these images.  Lectures and discussion will focus on the intended as well as perceived messages in artistic renderings of pop culture idols, images, trends and marketing.   In this writing intensive course, students will prepare four short papers on different aspects of mass culture reflected in music album packaging and marketing, as well as one final research project.
	LEH301	02WA	Ricourt, Milagros	Human Rights and Women in Latin America
	MTWH	2:00-4:05		This course explores the role of women in the fight against human rights violation in Latin America during the 1960s and 1970s.  From an interdisciplinary perspective, this course will analyze the cases of Chile, Argentina, Brazil, and El Salvador. In each of these countries atrocities against humanity were committed by Juntas Militares, dictators, and Death Squads: women took the streets demanding the truth about their disappeared relatives.  The monumental struggle of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, Arpilleras in Chile, COMADRES in El Salvador, and CONAVIGUA in Guatemala will be analyzed from different angles.  First, scholarly book chapters and journal articles will underline the analytical perspective of these movements. Second, films (Madres: Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, 1983, New York: Women Make Movies, In Women’s Hands, 1992, Americas Series) will allow the students to visually understand the political processes of the 1970s in Latin America. Third, newspaper clippings from the 1970s to the present dealing with the issue of the gendering of human rights in Latin America will be analyzed.
	LEH301	03WA	Shahidi, Samina	The New American Memoir
	MTWH	10:15-12:20		This course examines four memoirs that explore American identity though the lenses of political theory, race construction and literary aesthics. In Another Bulls*** Night in S**k City, acclaimed poet and author Nick Flynn examines his estranged father’s homelessness in Boston during the 1970’s. Through startling and experimental literary device, Flynn writes about his search for his own on the streets as a social worker in a homeless shelter. Lipstick Jihad is Iranian American journalist Azadeh Moaveni’s smart and sexy interrogation of the political, cultural and social negotiations that Iranian Americans and Iranians make as citizens in both countries as their governments struggle towards reasonable dialogue. Anne du Cille in elegant and thorough language traces the intersections of gender, race, class and politics in “Skin Trade”, a compelling personal and academic essay on growing up with Barbie as an African American girl during the Vietnam War. These personal narratives  achieve a double ness of internal and external reflection of what it means to be American .
	LEH301	04WA	Khalid, Robina	Brother from Another Planet: African-American Speculative Fiction
	MTWH	12:30-2:35		African-American science fiction writer Nalo Hopkinson asserts that "science fiction has always been a subversive literature" because it forces the reader to "think twice and thrice about a whole bunch of things in relation to each other: sexuality, race, class, color, history." These questions will animate our course: is there a distinct tradition of black speculative fiction? How might a culture that has, in Hopkinson's words, "been on the receiving end of the colonization glorified in some science fiction" negotiate and politicize the genre? Does black speculative fiction cause one, in fact, "to think twice and thrice" about race, class, and sexuality? We will begin with a general consideration of the fantastic in literature. Using supplementary materials from postcolonial and feminist theory, as well as a consideration of the traditions of travel writing and utopian/dystopian thought, we will look at how black writers, filmmakers and musicians have used speculative methods to defamiliarize our assumptions about "familiar" social issues. Texts may include writings by Pauline Hopkins, George Schuyler, W.E.B. Du Bois, Octavia Butler, Samuel Delany, Walter Mosley, Ishmael Reed, Jewelle Gomez, and Nalo Hopkinson.
	LEH301	05WA	Ruiz, Philip	Film and Society: The American Image
	MTWH	2:00-4:05		This American Experience course will use film as a source of cross-cultural study. Students will learn how social forces can shape and reflect the concerns and events of contemporary film. American film will be viewed from a historical perspective, as an institutional phenomenon, as well as a form of communication. Also, American film genre’s importance, meaning and popularity will be discussed, and audience receptivity to genre films in terms of social and cultural terms will be highlighted. In addition, examples of how films can challenge and shape American society will be considered.
	LEH301	06WA	Joyce, Regina	Latin America: The Violent Children of Cain
	MTWH	5:45-7:50		This course will provide an overview into Latin American violence emphasizing the complexity of repression and rebellion in this region’s history. Rosenberg in Children of Cain states “that one doesn’t necessarily have to be pathological to do horrible things. but rather this belongs to the society.” If society contains the answer, this course will consider a wide range of texts trying to not only understand the origins of violence in Latin America but also the point where global history enters into this equation. Themes of postcolonial mindsets and behavioral patterns, reflecting current political and economic relationships will emerge and the role of certain social movements will be examined.
	LEH301	07WA	Esdaile, Lisa	American Nightmare: Horror in Literature and Film
	MTWH	12:30-2:35		What is horror?  What is a monster, and is that monster what we are really supposed to be afraid of?  That is, what does that monster, the "Other," represent?  In this writing-intensive course, we will survey the American horror film, with particular emphasis on the horror films produced in the 1970s, a moment of independent political movie making that gave us Easy Rider, Mean Streets, Nashville, and The Godfather (I and II).  How did this movement and the political climate of that period affect filmmakers working in horror? We will watch films and also read texts that have helped shape horror as we know it. Themes include: issues of gender, sexuality, and reproduction; race (who has the right to be haunted); class (Freddy Kruger and Jason Voorhes, the working-class monsters); history and fears of each decade and how they're manifested (the Cold War and sci-fi films, for example); and types of films (e.g., the slasher film and heroine; splatter films; the sequel).
	LEH301	OA1WA	Hall, Polly	American Environmental Policy
	FM:	6/4/		American Environmental Politics captures the major issues and stakeholders in the shaping of environmental policy. We will examine how environmental problems are identified and how solutions are formulated and implemented. By addressing the historical roots of environmentalism, milestones in the development of key policies, and current problems and conflicts, we will explore the inter-complexity and importance of the field. In addition to understanding the domestic dimensions of environmental policy, we will also integrate an international perspective on environmental law and issues that require a global response.
	LEH301	OA2WA	Whittaker, Robert	FEAR: The Cold War and American Culture
	FM:	6/4  6:00		How America reacted to the “threat of Communism” and how this fear was reflected in literature, art, film and mass culture (including TV and political propaganda).  The historical focus will be on the immediate post-War era of the 1950s and early 1960s.
	LEH301	OA4WA	Carney, Jim	Big Media: Profits vs. Public Interest
	FM:	6/4  7:00		From the days of Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst to Rupert Murdock - From the propagandistic Yellow Journalism to the Fox News Channel.  Business interest has always been the engine that has driven American Media. The First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees free expression, but the original assumptions of the Founding Fathers, take on different meanings in a world where hundreds of billions of dollars are controlled by a few mega media corporations.  To what degree does the concept of making money balance with serving “in the public interest”? This course will – with the assistance of case studies - look at the dichotomy of a free and independent press, and corporate interests.  We will examine how the drive to earn a profit, has shaped modern American society, and how the commercial interests will drastically shape the brave new world by players such as Google, Microsoft and Ebay.
	LEH301	81A	Kaczinsky, Charles	“Real to Reel”: New York Immigration in Film
	MTWH	5:45-7:50PM		This course will examine the history of immigration to New York City and its depiction in popular films.  By examining the historical record within the framework of cinematic representations of immigration, students will confront issues of historical accuracy versus creative license.  Along with comparing “real” immigration to “reel” immigration, students will analyze the films as historical artifacts of the time in which they were produced, recognizing how the films exhibit the attitudes and assumptions commonly held about immigration at particular points in American history.
Session II
	LEH300	01B	Gallo, Marcia	Sexuality and Sex Roles in Transnational Perspective
	MTWH	3:00-5:05PM		What is the relevance of gender and sexuality to the study of world histories and cultures?  Using nonfiction and fiction writings, poetry, film, music and art, we will explore the changing meanings of sexuality and sex roles in relationship to demography, migration patterns, technology, economy, religion/spirituality, and family and other cultural forces.  We will trace the development of sexual politics in specific societies in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and the Americas; we will also explore how the study of sexuality offers opportunities to re-think major themes in world history.
	LEH300	02B	Madden, Brian	Suffering and the Human Response
	MTWH	2:00-4:05		That suffering is a part of human existence, none would deny.  There is a sense in which every area of human inquiry conducts itself with an eye to this problem.  For the purposes of this course, we will explore how the question of suffering is presented and addressed in the works of artists, poets, philosophers and theologians.  We will examine paintings by Grunewald, Gericault, and Picasso; explore tragedies by Sophocles and Shakespeare; and consider the problem of suffering as it is addressed in Buddhist and Epicurean philosophical works and in the Book of Job.  The aim of this course, in part, will be to foster a greater understanding of the diverse ways in which the problem of suffering has been described, while also providing an opportunity to explore the breadth of human resources that have been employed in the effort to confront this problem.
	LEH300	03B	Choplet, Nadeige	Madness and Modernism
	Tu,Th	Tu,Th 1:30-5:40		The Modernist Revolution is unique because it did not establish a new order. The similarities between madness and modernism are striking: defiance of the authority, nihilism, extreme relativism, distortions of time,  strange transformations of self, and much more.  During this semester we will underline the affinities between schizophrenia and modernism through the work of such writers and artists as Virginia Woolf, Kafka, Beckett and the Cubists, the Dadaist, the Surrealists and Picasso. We will also consider the ideas of  philosophers including Nietzsche, Heidegger, Foucault and Derrida.
	LEH300	04B	Ruiz, Philip	Filming Classic Texts
	MTWH	10:15-12;20		This course will consider, examine and evaluate the relationship between the written word and the visual image. Specifically, the transformation of a written work (be it a novel, short story, play, historical account or graphic novel) to film will be explored. Adapting a literary work to film is a complex and intricate undertaking.  By examining a literary work, its film adaptation and the period of its creation, an understanding of the theory and practice of film adaptation will be learned. Students will use a series of methodologies from film studies, historical approaches to understanding material and literary analysis to gain a better understanding how of film adaptation, and how a film is perceived and understood through two art forms.
	LEH300	OA2WB	Quarrell, Susan	Widows and Maids: Medieval Images of Women in Chaucer’s "The Canterbury Tales"
	FM:	7/9 1:00		The Middle Ages, despite the pervasive presence of a gloomy repressive church, was a period of immense social change and lively discourse. At the center of this discourse is Geoffrey Chaucer—considered by many to be the father of English Literature. In this course we will examine the Middle Ages and the images of medieval women that emerge as portrayed by Chaucer in his work The Canterbury Tales. We will explore elements of history, economics, sociology, and psychology represented by such figures as the Prioress, Griselda (the Clerk’s Tale), and the Wife of Bath, discovering the tensions inherent in the progress of women in medieval society. Discussions of women in the Tales  will touch upon the question of whether women are good or bad—modeled on either the Virgin Mary or Eve. Students will gain an understanding of the influence of gender on individual behavior, as well as on contemporary institutions of marriage, workplace, and church.
	LEH301	02WB	Romero, Domenico	Latino Experience in the U.S.
	MTWH	2:00-4:05
	LEH301	OA1WB	Lahey, Miriam	American Approaches to Disability: Changing Contexts and Concepts
	FM:	7/9 4:00		A cultural history of disability in America, this course explores, using a case-study approach, the changing cultural experience of disability and traces the development of American disability law through selected landmark cases.
	LEH301	OA2WB	Hall, Polly	American Environmental Policy
	FM:	7/9  5:00		American Environmental Politics captures the major issues and stakeholders in the shaping of environmental policy. We will examine how environmental problems are identified and how solutions are formulated and implemented. By addressing the historical roots of environmentalism, milestones in the development of key policies, and current problems and conflicts, we will explore the inter-complexity and importance of the field. In addition to understanding the domestic dimensions of environmental policy, we will also integrate an international perspective on environmental law and issues that require a global response.