Fall Semester 2001 Courses |
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| Anthropology |
Chemistry |
Classics |
Comparative Literature | | Economics | English | General Studies | Geology | History | | Mathematics | Philosophy | Political Science | Psychology | | Southwest Studies | Studies in the Humanities | See courses from 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003, 2002, 2000 |
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The "First Course" is intended to provide a stimulating introduction to Colorado College, to enhance the research and writing skills important to academic success, and to reinforce excitement about learning, rigorous analysis and creative expression. First Courses include a substantial writing component and a research project. The seminar format and class size encourage active student involvement. The First Course also introduces students to the CC Library, the Writing Center, other academic support systems, and the Honor system. The courses are only a part of the first year; the entire first-year experience includes interaction with first-year peer advisors and student-organized events, such as speakers, films, performances, and workshops. The offices of Student Life, Residential Life and Community Service will work with first-year students throughout the academic year. Find out about picking courses with the point system. Winter Start Program Approximately 60 students (ten percent of the entering class) are expected to enter the freshman class in Spring 2002 as the first class in the winter start program. These students are free during the fall for work, travel, or off-campus study, and begin their studies in January. Click here for Spring 2002 courses . Anthropology Mike Hoffman and Alex Vargo: AN 101 / BY 109 "Unity and Diversity: Exploring Vertebrates and Humans" (2 units of Natural Science credit, 1 unit of which is also Natural Science Lab credit) This set of linked courses explores both the biological unity and diversity within modern and ancient vertebrates and humans. We begin, in Biological Anthropology (AN 101), with the most familiar of these animals -- ourselves -- and explore why humans are vertebrates and primates and whether humans are different in kind or merely degree from other animals to which they are related, e.g., is culture a uniquely evolved human characteristic or is it part of the behavioral repertoire of other animals? Is the nature of human evolution, often described as a biocultural phenomenon, distinct from others? How can modern human biological diversity be explained? The Biological Anthropology course fulfills an introductory course requirement for the anthropology major. The second course, Biology of Vertebrates (BY 109), will deepen the understanding of human evolution and biological diversity by studying phylogeny, comparative anatomy and physiology of all the major vertebrate groups. Biological theories about evolution and extinction of each group are emphasized. Through laboratory and discussion adaptive features are approached in the context of the environment of representative forms. The Biology of Vertebrates course meets one of the two introductory course requirements for the biology major. With both courses, we include an examination of classification which brings a kind of order out of the chaos of so many diverse life forms, overviews of the evolutionary records of these animals, a look at the common and unique kinds of behaviors exhibited, and questioning how can we explain the great diversity of past and modern forms of vertebrates and humans. Binding all of these issues is the modern theory of organic evolution, our best tool for explaining order and diversity in the living world. A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together, with one instructor in each block. Calla Jacobson and Tricia Waters: AN 102 / PY 116 "Constructing Identities, Constructing Selves: An Interdisciplinary Approach to the Study of Human Behavior in Cultural Context" (One unit of AP:B credit; 1 credit in Social Science and one credit in Natural Science) Click here for course homepage These two linked blocks will provide exploration of human identity, diversity, and psychological and social experience from the complementary disciplinary perspectives of anthropology and psychology. Each block will provide a specific disciplinary approach to the dialectic/interplay of order and chaos in human thought and behavior. The first block, Introduction to Cultural Anthropology, will concentrate on social life and the way culture structures human thought and interaction. The second block, Cultural Psychology, will explore cultural differences in parenting beliefs and practices, diversity in acquisition of socio-cognitive skills, cultural differences in schooling, and cultural variation in identity construction. In the first block, we examine the diversity of human cultural forms in areas such as economics, social and personal identity, emotions, ritual and belief, social inequality, family and kinship, and gender. We will look at the disordered experiences anthropologists have during their ethnographic fieldwork and interrogate their written attempts to impose conceptual order on human life and action through the concept of culture. Throughout the course we will challenge the traditional anthropological ideas of perfectly patterned cultural behavior by examining such topics as intercultural contact and conflict, social inequality, and differential experiences within "cultures." The course is designed both to teach about the unfamiliar practices and beliefs of others and to encourage an examination of our own actions and assumptions about the world. We will pay particular attention to ethnography, the unique methodology of anthropology, and will look at the experiences and results of various kinds of ethnographic fieldwork. Students will be expected to design and carry out an ethnographic study. The second block, Cultural Psychology, is an introduction to cultural variation in psychological phenomena. The course will place particular emphasis on variation in normal developmental processes (for example, intellectual and social development, variation in contexts of development, and diversity in clinical experience). The course will include an examination of methods used to study psychological processes in non-western settings, and will explore both quantitative and qualitative approaches to uncovering cultural variation in human behavior. Students will develop a research proposal to investigate one aspect of psychology in a non-western cultural setting of their choice. A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together, with one instructor in each block. |
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Chemistry Nate Bower and Ted Lindeman: CH 113 / NS 109: "Art or Alchemy? Investigating the Origins of Chemistry" and "The Material World" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of Natural Science credit) The first block of this course provides a topical and historical overview of some of the events of history that have led to the unifying principles of chemistry and its current view of reality. It also explores some of the methods we use for rediscovering this past. Beginning with the development of ceramics, medicine, metallurgy and other "arts" coaxed from "Nature" starting before the bronze age and continuing into the industrial age, the complex interaction of "world views" and ideas about matter and energy as one culture encountered another will be explored through art, artifacts and experiment. Conversations will range from topics such as early metallurgical practices to Galileo's theory of matter. The first block will prepare students for the discussion and materials of the second block, NS109, "The Material World," a study of natural and synthetic materials, their properties at both the gross and the molecular level, their functions in living and engineered structures, and the environmental impacts of their use. This block will treat applications to human-powered vehicles, lasers, superconductors, medical prostheses, and other systems familiar and exotic from recent decades. A set of linked one block courses that must be taken together with one instructor for each block. Sally Meyer, Mark Morgenstern and Shane Burns: EV 112 / CH 107 "Basic Environmental Science: The Entropy Crisis" (2 units of Natural Science Lab credit) This course, which includes 2 units of Laboratory credit, will provide students with a fundamental understanding of the "Natural Laws" that will limit and govern human behavior in the near future. The course will take a qualitative look at the limits of energy transfers based on the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Students will also study and discuss the present and future state of the environment with an emphasis upon chaos and order. Students will conduct independent research based on readings, class discussion, and an extended schedule of field trips. Laboratory, computer and field projects will emphasize basic physics, chemistry, and geology/hydrology. Course texts include The Second Law: Energy, Chaos and Form by P.W. Atkins, Entropy: Into the Greenhouse World, Jeremy Rifkin, and The Energy-Environment Connection by Jack Hollander. "Energy and the environment" is an excellent topic to help guide you to the area that interests you the most and in which you will do independent research. The scheduled field trips will allow the class access to people and resources in many areas as work begins on course-related research projects. A set of linked, team-taught one-block courses that must be taken together. Prerequisite: Two years of high school algebra and one year of high school chemistry or consent of instructor. |
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Classics Marcia Dobson and Patricia Fitzgibbon: CL114 / HY 114 "Goddesses, Heroes, Sages and Statesmen: An Introduction to Greece and Rome" (2 units of Humanities credit OR 1 unit of Humanities credit and 1 unit of Social Science credit) This course offers an introduction to ancient Greek and Roman cultures through readings of original sources and some study of the original languages. The ways in which human beings conceived the order of nature and culture and the sacred and secular in these periods constitutes the common inheritance of western culture and predisposes the views of self and individual in contemporary western thought. The emphasis in this course is upon how these cultures understood the destructive and creative powers of chaos and what forms of order they thought best for human beings. Block 1 will include selections from Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Hesiod's Theogony, the Presocratics, the ancient Greek dramatists Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes, the historians Herodotus and Thucydides, Aristotle's Poetics and Plato's Symposium and Phaedrus. Block 2 will include selections from the statesmen Cicero and Caesar, the historians Sallust and Livy, and lyric and epic poetry of Lucretius, Catullus, Vergil, Horace and Ovid. A two-block course with one instructor in each block. |
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Comparative Literature Solomon Nkiwane and Ibrahima Wade: GS 234 / CO 200 "An Introduction to Africa: History, Politics, Literature and Culture" (Fulfills the AP:B requirement; 1 unit of Social Science credit and 1 unit of Humanities credit) These two blocks will provide a survey of African civilization in a two-block linked sequence. The theme of this year's First Year Experience, order and chaos, is particularly appropriate for a two-block African survey. Indeed, coping with problems of social order and social chaos explains the emergence of traditional states in Africa more than two millennia ago. After a brief survey of African history, Block One will focus on politics, society and culture in Sub-Saharan Africa. Particular emphasis will be paid to issues of contemporary interest and concern. Some African states have been more successful than others in achieving political order and economic growth since independence in the 1960s and 1970s. What steps are currently being taken in the continent's more troubled nations to reach these goals? Block 2 will deal with many of these same issues and themes but from the perspective of traditional and contemporary African writers from the continent's several regions. African literature deals with the confrontations between indigenous tradition on the one hand and colonialism, Arabo-Islamization, Westernization and modernization on the other. Yet traditional Africa has been kept alive in literary narratives, surely one way of constructing order out of chaos. More recent means to the same end -- the ideologies of Negritude, Pan-Africanism, and the African Personality -- will also be studied in the novels, poems and drama of Anglophone and Francophone Africans. The class will include reading and discussion and we expect our students to do analytical writing. Final research projects will focus on issues and themes covered in the two blocks. A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together. Owen Cramer, Françoise Paheau, Regula Evitt and Corinne Scheiner: CO 100 "Introduction to Comparative Literature" (AP:C -- meets either the AP:A requirement or the AP:B requirement; 2 units of Humanities credit) What is literature? What are genres? How should they be read, interpreted and evaluated? What social and personal functions does writing have? How is writing related to oral tradition? How do writers compare themselves to others (admiration and imitation, rejection, transformation)? Why do they also compare their fictional characters to monsters, gods, and beasts? As a First Year Experience with the theme order and chaos, this course will address literature's role in ordering unformed or chaotic experience (genre as a way of creating events and forms in the flow of consciousness). It will also consider a number of literary representations of chaos (the literal chaos "yawning gap" of Greek epic cosmogony; the tohu v' bohu "formless void" of Genesis) and its evolution into or creative replacement by order (Greek kosmos); also representations of chaotic interventions in ordered life: return of watery disorder in Noah's flood, Vergilian storm, or Odyssean or Beowulfian passage; medieval tropes of the suspension of rational control in magic and infernal experience, Romanticism's celebration of the childlike, the primitive and the dream, tragedy as the "unexpected dysfunction of the functional", comedy as its flip-side; the novel as a playground of disruptive voices and transgressive explorations. CO 100 fulfills the entry course requirement for the Comparative Literature major. A team-taught, two-block course. |
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Economics Bill Weida: EC 150 "Principles of Economics" (2 units of Social Science credit) "The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist."Economics, the study of human behavior producing, exchanging, and consuming material goods, is a discipline of incentives that exposes you to new and different ways of thinking about problems. Economics is fundamental to understanding not only our economy, but also our politics and ourselves. As such, it is a basic tool in determining how countries and people will interact. Among other topics, this course will emphasize the microeconomic decisions made by households and firms, the way markets work, how income is distributed, and the impact of government on each part of the market. This course fulfills the entry requirements for the Economics, Business and International Political Economy majors. A two-block single instructor course. |
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English Dan Peddie: EN 221 / EN 280 "The Orders of Poetry: Introduction to Poetry & The Anglophone Epic Tradition" (2 units of Humanities credit; the EN 221 is one of the core requirements for the English major) Oh! Blessed rage for order ...Interpreting a poem means, among other things, discerning its principles of order -- the architecture of its argument, the syntax of its imagery, the patterning of its sounds, and the logic of its figurative language. The text becomes increasingly meaningful to us as we begin to grasp how these and other elements of organization work together to produce a unified reading. In many respects the conventions of poetry have been remarkably consistent since Antiquity, and yet if we are to believe the poets and poetic theorists themselves, the ideal of poetic order has not always and everywhere been the same. There are different orders of order in poetry, so to speak, and distinguishing among them will involve us from time to time in philosophic questions that go beyond strictly literary concerns. The objective of the first block will be to practice critical thinking, speaking, and writing in the presence of the text. After considering such fundamental "ordering" elements as line length, mode and genre, and open and closed verse-forms, we shall address the more technical issues of figurative language and prosody. The class will work together to produce readings of some of the finest shorter poems in English -- including a wide variety of works by women writers of the past three hundred years. Along the way we shall also examine a few celebrated documents of poetic theory. The written requirements of this unit will include three brief "close-reading" papers, as well as daily worksheet assignments to focus our discussion of the texts. The second block will apply these interpretive skills to an intensive study of how the Anglophone epic tradition has invoked figures of order at moments of profound social, political, and cultural crisis. We shall read epics by Spenser, Milton, Pound, and Walcott in excerpt, and Wordsworth's The Prelude in its entirety. Through peer review and library and Web work each student will develop a longer essay combining research with formalist textual analysis. A set of linked one-block courses with a single instructor. Dan Tynan: EN 203 "Tradition and Change in Literature: The Hero" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of Humanities credit) For the benefit of their societies, heroes traditionally have forayed out of the orderly comforts of culture and reason into the chaotic fiery underworld of the irrational and evil. This course will examine the changing definitions of heroism and the possibility that the modern world holds no place for heroes; or, that heroes have no place in the modern world where chaos ultimately rules. Readings will include, among other texts and films, Gilgamesh, The Odyssey, Dante's Inferno, Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Toni Morrison's Sula, and Margaret Atwood's Surfacing. A two-block single-instructor course. |
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General Studies Bill Davis, Director: GS 101 "Freedom & Authority" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of general college credit) This coming academic year will be the 50th anniversary of "Freedom and Authority," the first interdisciplinary course at Colorado College. The course focuses on the conflict between individual freedom and the limits imposed on this freedom by governments, religions, other individuals, and social groups. As an interdisciplinary course, it studies literary, philosophical, religious, historical, and scientific texts in a thematic context, focusing on four main themes: personal authority, social authority, political authority, and religious authority. Behind all of these themes are questions such as: What constitutes personal identity? How does the individual relate to the group? How do authority and power work to constrain and mold individuals? How do sources of authority legitimate themselves? Through reading, writing, discussion, and critical thinking students and faculty will grapple with these questions central to the human condition. A two-block course with one instructor in each block; one grade will be given for the course as a whole (for both blocks together). Section One will have one professor each block, while Sections Two and Three will be team-taught both blocks. Section OneKeith Kester and Joseph Pickle: GS 204 "Ordering Chaos? Scientific and Religious Strategies" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 1 unit of Humanities credit and 1 unit of Natural Science credit) Both science and religion seek meaning in the nature of things. Both use strategies to tease order out of chaos, understanding out of confusion. Order has been imagined, discovered, and imposed in both traditions. Both have to take seriously things that "don't fit." In science chaos can be represented as randomness, entropy, pollution, error and even as zebra stripes. In religion order is represented as created out of chaos, but in religious understandings of impurity, evil and sin chaos is represented as persisting. This course will explore the ways in which scientific and religious communities have developed theories of knowledge and cosmological systems of meaning. The course will highlight the development of the theory of evolution and its elaborations in genetics and ecology, exploring their philosophical and theological implications. Readings will include selected cosmological myths, David Hume, Charles Darwin, A. R. Ammons, Paul Tillich, E. O. Wilson, Ursula Goodenough, Diana Eck and Rosemary Ruether. There will be field projects in bio-diversity and the geologic history of the Garden of the Gods. In a community-based learning project, students will interview middle and high school teachers of science and religion in public and private schools. 2 Units. A team-taught, two-block course. Ruth Barton, Dick Hilt and Mike Siddoway: GS 242 "The Weave of Science and Literature" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of general college credit) This course will explore interconnections between science and literature, focusing on ways in which they try to make sense of order and chaos. We will consider various scientific fields, but the course will concentrate on ways in which the physical sciences, mathematics, and literature all explore aspects of order and chaos. We will read works from Archimedes and Euripides to the present, dealing with scientists and mathematicians such as Euclid, Kepler, Newton, Cantor, Godel, Turing, and Einstein, and with what is sometimes called the new science of Chaos. Literary works will include fiction, drama and poetry by writers such as Shakespeare, Donne, Blake, Wordsworth, Calvino, Borges, Stoppard, Pynchon, Yeats, Hopkins, Williams, Stevens and Ammons. Although welcome, no advanced mathematics is required. A team-taught, two-block course. |
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Geology Jeff Noblett: GY 140 / GY 150 / EV 150 "The Earth System: Patterns and Perspectives" (2 units of Natural Science Lab credit) This course will examine the scientific perspective on the Earth System from order (atomic structure) through chaotic behavior (weather, El Nino, earthquake prediction). Interwoven through this scientific theme will be the question raised from the perspective of ecofeminists of what our connection to place (Earth) consists of. This journey begins with personal feeling (chaos!) and continues towards patterns of human perspectives on the Earth (order?). We will examine the Earth System with the tools of a geologist, from the atomic-scale order of crystal structures through the larger subsystems of lithosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere, with some acknowledgment of the biosphere. Emphasis will be on learning to recognize minerals, rocks and fossils in outcrops; to observe and interpret combinations of these to reveal ancient environments; to record this data on maps; to unravel folds and faults which change these patterns. After understanding the lithosphere in some detail, the course will review patterns found in the other three subsystems of the Earth, aspects of which behave in chaotic manners. This course will also include discussion of issues in environmental geology such as earth catastrophes, mineral and energy resources, and human-induced problems. Throughout this examination, the course will pursue questions raised by ecofeminists and other critics of traditional science concerning the place of humans in this system. What perspectives do we bring to science; what alternative solutions to environmental issues could non-scientists discover through the chaos of their personal feelings about their connection to the Earth; how could this chaos find order in the examination of the place of humans in the Earth System? A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together, with a single instructor. |
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History Susan Ashley: HY 105 "Civilization in the West" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of Social Science credit) Click here for course homepage This course looks at the wild side. It examines how people in different periods imagined and dealt with disorder and conflict. What did they fear in nature, in other people and in themselves, and how did they express these fears in their actions and thoughts? The course also explores what they did to find a measure of security through religion and through social and political communities. The first block focuses on classical and feudal culture in the Mediterranean; the second deals with developments from the Renaissance to the present in Europe. Both blocks emphasize close reading and discussion of literary and philosophical texts as well as key historical studies and visual sources. Works range from classical thinkers such as Aristotle and Plato to moderns such as Marx, Freud and the Existentialists. This course fulfills the entry requirement for the History, History/Political Science and Classics/History/Politics majors. A two-block course taught by one instructor. Bryan Rommel-Ruiz: HY 105 "Civilization in the West : The Atlantic World" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of Social Science credit) This course examines the cultural, social, political and economic foundations of Western civilization, beginning with the Roman Republic and culminating with the Spanish-American War. It will explore the principles of Roman civilization, trace how they influenced English and Iberian traditions, and follow those traditions as they encounter Native American societies in the "New World." As Anglo and Hispano-American societies matured, they blended old world traditions with New World experiences. This course will look closely at how the peoples from these areas constructed borders and boundaries in their political, social and cosmological systems to order the chaos of war, cultural encounters and economic transformations. This course fulfills the entry requirement for the History, History/Political Science and Classics/History/Politics majors. A two-block course taught by one instructor. Carol Neel, Joy Hall and department: HY 104 "Culture, Society and History" (AP:C meets either the AP:A requirement or the AP:B requirement; 2 units of Social Science credit) Click here for course homepage This course investigates how historical and modern cultures have developed order and discerned beauty in human experience. Its first block identifies themes in twentieth-century European and Chinese culture, and returns to ancient Mediterranean civilization, medieval Europe, and China's imperial past to compare these themes' development. Its second block examines the cultural encounters of early modernity and the emergence of a more fully global history in recent times. Throughout, the course challenges students with a variety of materials for reading and discussion: novels, primary sources, historical essays. Individual research projects center on artifacts whose exact historical context and broad cultural significance is clarified in written and in oral presentation. This course fulfills the entry requirement for the History, History/Political Science and Classics/History/Politics majors. A team-taught, two-block course. Bob Lee: HY 200 / PS 203 "The Search for Islamic Order: Yesterday and Today" (Fulfills the AP:B requirement; 2 units of Social Science credit) "...The myth, perpetrated by Muslims and non-Muslims alike, is that 'Islam' and the Islamic communities represent one community, one imma. This has never been true of the Islamic world since the years of the first caliphs...."In the first block, the course examines the historical development of four versions of Islamic order. The first emerged from the chaos of the 7th century under the leadership of Muhammad in Mecca and Medina. The Medina State, driven by the spirit of the Prophet himself, continues to represent a Muslim ideal. As the Islamic empire grew to encompass a belt of land from Iran to Morocco and Spain, it developed a new version of order grounded in law and orthodoxy, the order of the High Caliphates. Still a third version of Islamic order, this one more spiritual than worldly at the outset, emerged in the form of Sufism, the mystical movement within Islam. The Ottoman Empire, which dominated a major portion of the Islamdom from the 14th century until the 20th constitutes the fourth version of Islamic order considered in the first block. The second block confronts the question of order and chaos in the contemporary Muslim Middle East, examining questions such as the place of the nation-state in Islamic theory, the impact of imperialism, liberalism, and socialism; the rise of Islamist movements, the position of women in the Islamic world, the relationship of Islam to human rights, democracy, war, and violence more generally. A set of linked one-block courses (one credit in History, the other in Political Science) that must be taken together, with a single instructor. |
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Mathematics Marlow Anderson, Kathy Merrill, Fred Tinsley and John Watkins: NS 150 "From Order to Chaos to Order" (2 units of Natural Science credit) In this course we will examine two complementary scientific approaches to the theme order and chaos. During the first block we will emphasize exciting recent mathematical and scientific developments in the study of chaotic systems, and how chaotic behavior arises in contexts that seemingly ought to be predictable. Often this chaotic behavior leads to the beautiful pictures known as fractals. During the second block we will emphasize how statistical regularities arise out of seemingly chaotic and random behavior. The course as a whole will thus provide a good conceptual understanding of the scientific and mathematical approach to both Order and Chaos. The course will be supplemented by guest appearances by faculty from other disciplines, examining how these ideas are applied in physics, art, music and literature. A team-taught, two-block course. |
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Philosophy John Riker: PH 100 "Introduction to the History of Western Philosophy" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of Humanities credit) This course begins with the Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, works intensively with the monumental systematic thought of Plato and Aristotle, explores variations of these systems in Hellenistic philosophers and Christian theologians, and then examines the crucial philosophers in the development of modernity -- Descartes, Hume, Spinoza, and Kant. The course will end by looking at new directions in philosophy that were initiated by Nietzsche and Emerson. Throughout the course we will pay special attention to how philosophy transformed ways of life for the West and how its visions of how we might be human and engage reality are still compelling and thought-provoking. The theme of order and chaos will be at play throughout the course. We will try to understand how chaos is envisioned as the most destructive of all forces and also as the necessary ground for genuine creativity. We will explore how Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant want us to order our minds so as to achieve the zenith in human living and how Heraclitus, Hume, and Nietzsche want to destroy the prison houses of order so that life and mind might be free to openly explore new ways of living, thinking, and dwelling on the earth. A two-block course taught by one instructor. |
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Political Science Lief Carter: PS 101 "What is Politics?" and PS 296 "Politics of the Legal Process" (2 units of Social Science credit) Click here for course homepage "And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand."PS 101 officially serves as an introduction to the Political Science major. It explores political power (e.g., force and coercion) and influence (e.g., rhetoric and other forms of persuasion), and contrasts both of these to economic processes of social organization. PS 296 introduces the nature of legality and legal reasoning. Power is the rawest and most primitive form of imposing social order. Influence and then law serve as successive "civilizing" steps toward more effective and peaceful forms of social ordering. These linked courses provide a good introduction to the perennial problem of social chaos and to the solutions that liberal thought in Western Civilization has thus far offered for that problem. Obviously the gods have not yet managed to "create a race that can understand." A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together, with a single instructor. |
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Psychology Cathey Weir and Tomi-Ann Roberts: PY 111 "Introduction to Psychology: General Laws and Individual Differences" (2 units of Natural Science credit, 1 unit of which is also Natural Science Lab credit) "All people are the same; only their habits differ."PY 111 is an introduction to academic psychology. Two major views of the scientific study of behavior and experience will be explored by studying original readings by researchers whose main effort is either (1) to make generalizations about average performance of people, or (2) to find out sources of individual differences between them. One topic is perceptual development, especially how our visual system works and is affected by early experience, and also how we learn to recognize speech. Another topic is social psychology where researchers have attempted to understand the conditions under which conformity and prejudice occur. Some readings will examine answers to nature/nurture questions by allocating genetic and environmental causes for cognition (like intelligence test scores), gender roles, and personality (like extraversion and neuroticism). This is a laboratory course and students will participate in laboratories including speech recognition, animal conditioning, memory, and emotional expression. The course will emphasize the way that academic psychologists do research in an effort to impose order on the seeming chaos of human behavior. This course fulfills the entry requirement for the Psychology major. A two-block course with one instructor in each block; one grade will be given for the course as a whole (for both blocks together). |
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Southwest Studies Victoria Levine and Susan Scarberry-Garcia: SW 175 "The American Southwest" (Fulfills the AP:B requirement) 
"The American Southwest" introduces the region's histories, peoples, and cultures through an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach. The course has twin themes: inter-ethnic conflict and cooperation and the use of aesthetic media to construct and express concepts of ethnicity. Block 1 explores the interconnections among ritual, epistemology, social structure, and aesthetic expression in the creation of meaning and order among Southwestern peoples. We will study creation narratives as the foundation for world view, kinship and social organization, and other cultural domains. Block 2 focuses on historical dynamics in the Southwest, including intercultural conflict and resolution as newcomers have been integrated into the larger regional system. We will investigate the role of expressive culture (especially literature, poetry, and music) in conflict resolution and the renegotiation of ethnic boundaries. Local field trips and a four-day trip to New Mexico will provide opportunities for experiential learning. This course fulfills the entry requirement for the Southwest Studies LAS major and thematic minor. A team-taught, two-block course. |
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Studies in the Humanities Marie Daniels, Michael Grace, Jane Hilberry, Edith Kirsch, Bob McJimsey, Dick Hilt: HS 120 Renaissance Culture (3 blocks) (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; A team-taught, THREE-block course with 3 units of Humanities credit) Click here for full description Block One: "Vision and Self: The Renaissance Eye/I" Edith Kirsch (Art History), Maria Daniels (Spanish) Click here for course homepage Block One of Renaissance Culture examines the re-ordering of European culture through the lens of classical art and literature in Italy from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. In literature, we study the works of Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio, Castiglione and Machiavelli and the impact of their ideas on such fundamental issues as the authority of classical antiquity, the "chaos" of the Middle Ages, the imitation of nature, and the power and meaning of love (as grounded in the writing of Plato). We also examine the work of visual artists who, like their literary counterparts, expressed and at the same time gave shape to the principles of the Italian Renaissance. These artists include Giotto, Brunelleschi, Donatello, Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Block Two: "The Evolution of the Creative Artist" Michael Grace (Music), Jane Hilberry (English) In Block Two of Renaissance Culture, we will explore twin issues in the development and representation of the creative artist during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. First, we will look at the way that innovation in the arts, particularly music, was often perceived as threatening to disrupt the established (and God-given) order. We will consider such innovation in the musical compositions of Leonin, Guillaume de Machaut, Josquin des Pres and Claudio Monteverdi. Secondly, we will examine the way artist-figures within literary texts (characters such as Walter in Chaucer's Clerk's Tale and the Duke in Measure for Measure) seek to order their "materials" -- the people and events taking shape around them -- and the way those materials resist shaping. In both cases, art is seen to arise from the fruitful tension between the forces of order and chaos (or tradition and innovation, control and resistance). Block Three: "Revolution or Reform: How Shall the World Be Ordered" Robert McJimsey (History), Dick Hilt (Physics) This block examines those writers who kept alive the traditions of Humanist thought and criticism. Criticism of the established order was especially sharp during the Renaissance. The Reformation, the Wars of Religion and the expansion of Europe overseas demonstrate the conflict and chaos of transition to new ways to view the world and our relationships with it and with each other. Michael Grace, Tom Lindblade, Dave Mason, Gale Murray: HS 180 Revolution in the Arts (2 units of Humanities credit) When major changes occur in the arts, often the new genres, styles and media at first seem chaotic to audiences, viewers, and readers; only the older arts are judged to be rational and ordered. Human sensibilities have, however, proven remarkably adaptable to new aesthetic ideas. And it is this adaptability, manifest in a desire to find order in apparent chaos, that has allowed the arts in the western world to progress. During periods of profound societal change and ruptures with tradition the artist has often been the first to express new values which define the individual=s place in a changing world. This course will examine periods of artistic revolution in four media - the visual arts and music in Block 1, drama and literature in Block 2. The periods of change that will be examined are: 1) the emergence of Romanticism in the 19th century from the18th-century Enlightenment; 2) the dawn of Modernism in the mid to later 19th century; 3) the growth of modern arts in the first half of the 20th century. A team-taught, two-block course. Block 1 Michael Grace (music) and Gale Murray (art) - Study of three revolutionary periods in art and music: the emergence of a new romantic aesthetic in reaction to the rational balance of form and feeling in the 18th century; the transformation of 19th-century Romanticism into the pre-modern movements of Realism, Impressionism and Symbolism; the growth of modern art and music under the banners of Expressionism, Cubism and Surrealism. Specifically, the course will cover the following:
Lindblade (Drama/Dance) and David Mason (English) -- Study of three revolutionary moments in literature: the Enlightenment revolution of satire and humor; the Romantic revolution of self and identity; and the Modernist revolution of perspective and form. Several genres will be considered in light of these great changes in culture and consciousness. Specifically, the course will cover the following:
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Spring 2002 First Year Experience Courses Biology Tass Kelso and Ron Capen: BY 105 / BY 109: "The Life of Complex Organisms: Structure and Function of Plants and Animals" (2 units of Natural Science Lab credit) This class is an introductory course in the biology of plants and vertebrates. We will explore how plants and animals are organized with respect to their structural and physiological components, and how this organization reflects function and survival in diverse environments and different ecological and evolutionary contexts. Block 5 (Prof. Kelso) will focus on the biology of plants from the cellular level to ecological interactions of plants, animals and environment. The class will include lecture, laboratory work, writing, and discussion. Block 6 (Prof. Capen) will focus on the structure, physiology, and evolution of vertebrate animals using lecture, laboratories based on dissection, and discussion of readings. This two-block class serves as the equivalent of BY 105 (Biology of Plants) and BY 109 (Biology of Vertebrates). Students taking this sequence meet the Biology major requirement for 2 introductory units. High school chemistry background is strongly recommended. A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together with one instructor in each block; separate grades will be given for each block. Comparative Literature Alberto Hernandez: CO 118 "The Juncture of Ethics and Aesthetics" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of Humanities credit) Since very early in the history of our Western philosophical tradition and up to the present, the beautiful has often been debated in terms of its connection with the good. Aesthetics, the discipline that occupies itself with issues of art and beauty, can be considered a privileged arena on which to probe ethical questions. Does appreciation of the beautiful make us morally better individuals? Must art be beautiful? The juncture between ethics and aesthetics is a fertile ground for students beginning a liberal arts education. In addition to sharpening their awareness of the fact that even such intimate feelings as the aesthetic experience are theoretically constructed, students will be encouraged to articulate different approaches to account for the artistic phenomenon. An important connection between things personal and things political will come to the fore. A two-block, discussion-based, single-instructor course. History Susan Ashley and Peter Blasenheim: HY 105 "Civilization in the West: Atlantic World" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of Social Science credit) This course focuses on boundaries, on the different ways people in the past established a sense of identity and place by creating borders between themselves and others. In particular it examines changing views of the upper class and the underclass, insiders and outcasts, natives and strangers and tries to uncover the logic beneath these distinctions. Topics include slavery, heresy, race, and conformity. The first block deals with the ancient Mediterranean and medieval and Renaissance Europe; the second sifts emphasis with the Age of Discovery to Latin America. Both parts of the course use literary and philosophical texts, historical studies, and film, and both emphasize close reading and discussion and provide opportunities for analytical writing. This course fulfills the entry requirement for the History, History/Political Science and Classics/History/Politics majors. A two-block course with one instructor in each block; one grade will be given for the course as a whole (for both blocks together). Music and Literature Ofer Ben-Amots and Horst Richardson: MU 228 / FS 109 "Music and Silence: How Music and Literature Reflect Order and Chaos" (2 units of Humanities credit) The very essence of music is creating order from the chaos of natural sound. The development of instruments, notation methods and systems of tuning enables the musician to control timbres and to organize them according to refined musical concepts. The past one thousand years have witnessed the dramatic development of Western art music, from its monophonic origins in Gregorian chant through the intricate forms of polyphony cultivated in the sixteenth century, and up to the complex and conceptual music of the twentieth century. In the first block, the course will trace the changes in musical style throughout the millennium, with emphasis on the creative use of chaos and order by 20th century composers. In addition, we will examine the special connection between music and literature in genres like song, lied, and opera. In the second block we will explore Franz Kafka's world of alienation and discover order and chaos in a most cataclysmic period of history: 1890-1945. The complex and ethnically diverse region of Bohemia, Kafka's native environment, produced a fascinating and perplexing culture which can provide much insight for us as we stand on the brink of another century. We will pay particular attention to Kafka's use of music in his works. While the second block has a strong focus on a specific author, specific historical period and a specific culture, the first is more general and will focus upon music as a language that explores the boundaries between order and chaos. A set of linked courses with one instructor each block; separate grades given for each block. Political Science Eve Grace: PS 103 "AWestern Political Traditions" (Fulfills the AP:A requirement; 2 units of Social Science Credit) This course will ask you to reflect upon and engage the claims of political and moral orders which guide our communities and inform our private lives. Among the primary questions we will raise are: What is the nature and foundation of political rule? What is the basis, character, and extent of our public and private concern for such principles as justice, equality, and freedom? How are these principles defined and defended? Are they informed and supported by an account of "human nature?" If there is such a nature, is it pointed towards, or away from, justice and community? But is there such a nature and can we determine what it is? What, if any, standards can we point to in support of our political and moral claims? Do we "invent", or do we "discover" the political and moral principles by which we are guided? What is the relation between politics and principle? A variety of basic but competing perspectives is analyzed, and stress is placed on situating you in the midst of debate and controversy among them. You will be asked to consider whether and how these questions affect not only our politics, but your own lives. We will read influential and controversial texts ranging from the period of ancient Greece to that of the contemporary United States. This course fulfills the entry requirements for Political Science, History/Political Science, and Classics/History/Politics. A two-block single instructor course. |
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The Point System for Bidding on Courses at Pre-registration Students pre-register for the following year's courses during the Spring semester. Each student receives 10 points per block and a total of 80 points to bid on their courses during pre-registration. Every student has the same number of points to work with. This allows every student to have the same chance to bid on a course. If the number of points bid on a course does not lead to the enrollment of the student in the class, the student will be placed on the waiting list for the class. Things to remember about the point system and pre-registration:
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