Past and Present in Critical Dialogue
The past and present are fundamentally linked. Our lives build on the accumulated knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of our predecessors. Our preferences and our choices are shaped by institutional structures and cultural expectations established by previous generations. However, understanding the present as an inevitable effect of the past leaves unexamined the deliberate ways we use, reproduce, and transform the past to situate the present and shape the future. Courses in this cluster take up questions related to the critical intersections of past and present: how they relate, how they challenge one another, and how they exist in dynamic tension with one another.
Associated Course Pairings:
Course Descriptions
Instructors: Stephanie Doktor & Michael Grace
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Creative Process
CRN# 12541
Block: 1
Often “classical” and “popular” musics are thought to inhabit different worlds and to have little in common. But closer examination of their styles and forms, of their sounds, and of how they relate to their societal contexts may reveal a kinship between these two apparently rival worlds. Are there significant similarities between improvisational choruses in New Orleans jazz and Beethoven’s Theme and Variations from his piano sonata, Op. 111 in C minor? Could there be a kinship between Hector Berlioz experiments in orchestral colors in his Symphonie Fantastique and Jimi Hendrix’ “fuzz” guitar sounds in his Star Spangled Banner as performed at Woodstock? Can we imagine Chopin and Elton John talking about piano music “over the back fence”?
Through creative musical listening and analysis, students will be expected discover basic principles of music that resonate in apparently disparate musical repertoires. And they will be expected to learn about cultural contexts for different musics to see if musicians at the time of Mozart dealt with issues that bear similarity to those felt by Hip Hop artists of the late 1900s? Do basic social forces like “enlightenment” prevail in such very different political eras? Students will be expected think creatively and to listen critically to a variety of different composers, performers and musical genres.
CC120: Music, Power, & Inequality
Instructor: Stephanie Doktor
CRN# 12522
Block: 2
How do I get better at writing? Who decides what “good” writing is and why does it matter? You will find rich answers to these questions and others as we examine how musicians and listeners negotiate systematic forms of inequality; how the music industry constructs differences based on race, gender, class, and sexuality; how music shapes civil rights movements, constitutes citizenship, and undergirds colonialist projects; and how music can be used to oppress some and empower others. We will use this course’s topic and the discipline of musicology to get better at writing and to reflect critically on disciplinary norms and expectations in higher education. We will do so by interrogating the notion of writing as a tool of power itself and directly related to music and inequality.
CC100: Myth, Gender and Metamorphosis (I)
Instructor: Marcia Dobson
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Analysis & Interpretation of Meaning
CRN# 12486
Block: 1
This course is an introduction to comparative mythology and material culture in the ancient Mediterranean basin and the Near East. It is designed sequence with the First-Year Writing Seminar with the same title. Block 1 is an exploration of the ancient Greek psyche through history, philosophy literature and myth. We will read selections of epic and lyric poetry, oracles, riddles, drama, and myths in Ovid complementary to them to inquire into how transformations in language and style reflect cultural and historical changes, focusing especially on expressions of the liminal realms between gods and humans. We also consider ways of receiving and interpreting these ideas in eras that postdate the classical period. Some of these forms of reception are artistic, others literary, dramatic or in film. Students will also see how other disciplines approach the study of myth and culture, including, but not limited to, Anthropology, Art History, Gender Studies, History, Philosophy, and Psychology.
CC120: Myth, Gender and Metamorphosis (II)
Instructor: Owen Cramer
CRN# 12520
Block: 2
The course continues the study of comparative mythology and offers an introduction to
printed and online sources of information and to college-level writing. As in block 1, students will read a series of scholarly articles to complement the main daily readings. These articles will offer a range of perspectives and a diverse set of authors. Students will get an idea of how scholarship has evolved in the field, while also examining pieces from different genres (commentaries, short notes, articles, book chapters). Students will be introduced to college level writing through a series of tiered assignments.
Instructor: Jake Smith
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Historical Perspectives
CRN# 12575
Block: 1
As the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote almost one-hundred years ago, the march of progress is like a storm that leaves only ruins in its wake – ruined environments, ruined cultures, ruined bodies. Whereas some have sought refuge from these storms of progress in nostalgic attempt to retrieve – and, in some cases, return to – lost times, others have eschewed such romantic pursuits, seeking instead to forge alternative ways of being in the world, some modicum of a right life in the wrong one. After examining the destructive dynamics associated with capitalist modernity, this course will turn its attention to the oppositional milieus and defiant voices that have flourished in modernity’s ruins. Although the course makes occasional forays into global history, the primary focus will be on 19th- and 20th-century Europe.
CC120: Central Europe's Post-Community Journey: 1989 to the Present
Instructor: John Gould
CRN# 12530
Block: 2
An exploration into the (re)introduction of liberalism in post-communist Europe after the fall of communism. Topics include Communism, Revolutions, Neo-liberalism, Democratization, Nationalism, Gender and Sexuality, Western Intervention, Populism and Illiberalism. Moving chronologically and through topics, students will explore how new hierarchies of power emerged from the communist era, with a particular focus on how the production of wealth and power often relied on the marginalization and silencing of others.
CC100: The Roads that Lead to Rome (I)
Instructor: Owen Cramer
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Analysis & Interpretation of Meaning
CRN# 12485
Block: 1
Introduction to the liberal arts through reading of some of their most ancient and foundational sources. Greek and Roman literature from various genres (such as epic, dramatic, lyric and philosophical); modern ways of receiving and interpreting them. Art, architecture and topography of ancient Greece and Rome. This course will consider the long-standing influence these civilizations exercised in the development of later Western cultures, and will examine modern outcomes and parallels to the historical forms and movements, such as Athenian democracy as a precedent for American democracy, colonization in antiquity and European colonialism in the c. 16-19, and the Roman Empire as a precedent for the expansive American State of late c. 19 to the present.
CC120: The Roads that Lead to Rome (II)
Instructor: Clayton Schroer
CRN# 12543
Block: 2
Classics is a discipline defined by its subject-matter (Greek and Roman civilizations) and its sources (ancient literature, cultural history/histories, material remains)—rather than any single approach to these; literary analysis, historical inquiry, archeology and everything from feminist theory to ecocriticism represent important and intertwined strands of contemporary inquiry into the Classical World. Starting from a central historical topic and a set of related ancient texts (e.g. “barbarian” peoples and their presentation in Roman poets and historians), we will spend our first week observing different ways that modern scholars tackle this shared evidence and theme (e.g. One approach: “What sources of information did Roman writers have about the non-Roman peoples they write about, and were they accurate?” Another: “The way Roman poets and historians
respond to contemporary propaganda, defining barbarians as primitive ‘others’ as part of an ideology justifying Roman imperialism.”). This provides an excellent and timely opportunity to reflect on the critical continuities—evidence-based hypotheses, say—and methodological diversity available when analyzing any cultural object; such critical activity lies at the very heart of a liberal-arts education. Starting week two, each student will choose a focus within our larger area. Together we will then explore how to conduct research in a socially responsible, organized, and empowering fashion, before drafting, peer-reviewing, and rewriting a paper that draws on both the information we, in consultation and discussion with our peers, have gathered and the methodologies we have mastered.
CC100: What is Liberal Arts Education?
Instructor: Timothy Fuller
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Analysis & Interpretation of Meaning
CRN# 12489
Block: 1
Exploring the various answers to the question from the Platonic Academy in antiquity to the founding of liberal arts colleges in America in the 18th and 19th centuries, including the founding of Colorado College; study of the humanities, the inclusion of the natural sciences and the development of the social sciences in the 19th century. The advent of women’s colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities. And philosophic reflections on the role of higher education in the larger society today.
CC120: Introduction to Political Philosophy
Instructor: Eve Grace
CRN# 12532
Block: 2
Investigates the foundation and aims of political rule as well as fundamental debates over the meaning of justice, liberty, power, authority, law, and rights through an examination of basic but competing perspectives drawn from ancient, medieval, and modern texts. Thinkers include, but are not limited to, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, and Locke.