Previous Courses

Fall 2017 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

Jung for the 21st Century
01:090:292:01 Index# 12056
Professor Stephen Walker
T 0950 A - 1250
HC S120
College Ave

Wise Fools
01:090:292:02 Index# 12060
Professor Nicholas Rennie
TH 0950 A - 1250
AB 4050
College Ave

Visual Culture and Crisis
01:090:292:03 Index# 12063
Professor Rhiannon Welch
T 0950 A - 1250
HC S124
College Ave

Politics of Reproduction
01:090:292:04 Index# 13380
Professor Cynthia Daniels
T 1055 A - 0155
HCK 127
Cook/Douglass

Evolution, Cognition, and Belief
01:090:293:01 Index# 12057
Professor Lee Cronki
W 1235 P - 0335
HCK 132
Cook/Douglass

Guests, Neighbors, Enemies: Xenophobia, Xenophilia, and the Other in Europe Today
01:090:293:02 Index# 12064
Professor Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi
M-Th 1235 P - 0155
HCK 129
Cook/Douglass

Michelangelo
01:090:293:04 Index# 15508
Professor Sarah McHam
T 0950 A - 1250
HC N106
College Ave

Anti-Apartheid and Civil Rights Movement: King and Mandela Lessons in Leadership Seminar
01:090:293:05 Index# 15411
Professor Ronald Quincy
W 0950 A - 1250
BRT SEM
College Ave

Hard Choices
01:090:294:03 Index# 12065
Professor Ruth Chang
F 1130 A - 0230
HC S120
College Ave

Philosophy of Cosmology
01:090:294:04 Index# 12091
Professor Barry Loewer
TH 0950 A - 1250
HC S126
College Ave

How Governments, Businesses, and Non-Profits Change Behavior
01:090:294:05 Index# 13383
Professor Hana Shepherd
M-Th 1055 A - 1215
HCK 131
Cook/Douglass

Personal Identity in Philosophy and Popular Culture
01:090:294:06 Index# 21864
Professor Trip McCrossin
TH 1130 A - 0230
BRT SEM
College Ave

Climate Change and Energy in the 21st Century
01:090:295:01 Index# 15409
Professor Premala Chandra
M 0140 P - 0440
TIL 204
Livingston

Bilingualism: How It Shapes Our Minds
01:090:295:02 Index# 11087
Professor Liliana Sanchez
M-W 0110 P - 0230
HC S120
College Ave

Children in Danger: Abduction, Abandonment, Adoption in Global Perspective
01:090:295:03 Index# 18629
Professor Judith Surkis
T 0950 A - 1250
HC E128
College Ave 

Botanic Sociality: People, Plants, & Words
01:090:296:01 Index# 13384
Professor Becky Schulthies
T-Th 0215 P - 0335
HCK 218
Cook/Douglass

Roman Empresses
01:090:296:02 Index# 12061
Professor Corey Brennan
T-Th 0250 P - 0410
HC S124
College Ave

Colors in Literature from Poe to the Present
01:090:296:03 Index# 12062
Professor Nicholas Gaskill
T-Th 0110 P - 0230
HC S124
College Ave

Digital Technology and Disruptive Change
01:090:296:04 Index# 13385
Professor Mary Chayko
TH 1130 A - 0230
CI 203
College Ave

Race, Intimacies & Border-Crossing
01:090:296:06 Index# 19986
Professor Louisa Schein
T 0215 P - 0515
RAB 209A
Cook/Douglass 

Food-Energy-Water Nexus in the Anthropocene
01:090:297:H1 Index# 18403
Professor Nirav Patel
W 1130 A – 1250
AB 4400
F 0950 A - 1110
F 0110 P – 0230
AB 1100
College Ave

Spring 2018 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

Communication and the Construction of FamilyCommunication and the Construction of Family
01:090:292:01 Index# 10523
Professor Jenny Mandelbaum
Monday 2:50 PM-5:50 PM
BRT, Seminar Room
CAC Campus

The History of Predicting the Future (and Getting it Wrong)
01:090:292:02 Index# 10534
Professor Jamie Pietruska
M-Th 9:50-11:10 AM
Honors College, Room S124, CAC Campus

The Trump Phenomenon
01:090:292:03 Index# 13265
Professor David Greenberg
Monday 1:10-4:10 PM
Honors College, Room S124, CAC Campus

Problem of Evil in Philosophy and Popular Culture
01:090:292:04 Index# 11992
Professor Edward McCrossin
Thursday 9:50AM- 12:50 PM
BRT, Seminar Room
CAC Campus

Scapegoating, Terrorism and the Innocent Victim
01:090:293:01 Index# 10524
Professor Steven Walker
Tuesday 9:50 AM-12:50 PM
Honors College, Room S126, CAC Campus

Walking in the Metropolis
01:090:293:03 Index# 10525
Professor Andrea Baldi
T-Th 1:10 PM-2:30 PM
Honors College, Room S120, CAC Campus

Artificial Intelligence: A Cultural History
01:090:293:04 Index# 11991
Professor Emrah Efe Khayyat
M-W 4:30-5:50 PM
Honors College, Rm E128, CAC Campus

Genes and Evolution
01:090:294:01 Index# 10526
Professor Frank Deis
M-W 1:40-3 PM
Allison Road Classroom, Room 203, BUSCH Campus

Cultures of American Adolescence
01:090:294:02 Index# 10527
Professor Leslie Fishbein
Monday 9:15 AM-12:15 PM
Ruth Adams Bldg, Room 18 C/D Campus

Reading in Slow Motion
01:090:294:04 Index# 13266
Professor Richard Miller
M-W 1:10-2:30PM
Academic Building, Rm 1100, CAC Campus

Society and Education in Contemporary China
01:090:295:01 Index# 11989
Professor Tanja Sargent
Tuesday 1:10-4:10 PM
Honors College, Room S124, CAC Campus

How Do We Know This
01:090:295:03 Index# 10753
Professor Gary Rendsburg
T-Th 2:50PM-4:10 PM
Honors College, Room S120, CAC Campus

Historical Archaeology of Slavery
01:090:295:06 Index# 14330
Professor Carmel Schrire
Wednesday 2:15-5:15 PM
Biol Sciences Bldg Rm 206, C/D Campus

The Food-Energy-Water Nexus in the Anthropocene
01:090:296:01 01:090:296:02 Index# 01:11988 /02:10532
Professor Nirav Patel
Tuesday 8:10-9:30 AM Wednesday 1-8:10-9:30 AM Wednesday 2-9:50- 11:10AM
Academic Building, Rm 1100
CAC Campus

Inequality and Opportunity in America
01:090:296:03 Index# 10533
Professor Patricia Roos
Tuesday 9:15 AM-12:15 PM
Hickman Hall, Room 132
C/D Campus

Darwin and Literature
01:090:296:05 Index# 16122
Professor Paul Gilmore
M-Th 11:30 AM-12:50 PM
Honors College, Room N106, CAC Campus

The Troubles: Partition, Sectarianism, Peace & Reconciliation in Northern Ireland
01:090:297:01 Index# 10529
Professor Paul Blaney
Wednesday 2:50-5:50 PM35 College Ave., Room 302
CAC Campus

Medieval Cluny, Christendom & Islam Medieval Cluny, Christendom & Islam
01:090:297:02 Index# 10530
Professor Stephen Reinert
Th 11:30 AM - 02:30 PM Honors College Rm E128
CAC Campus

Molecular View of Human Anatomy: Antimicrobial Resistance in Three Dimensions
01:090:297:03 Index# 10531
Professor Shuchismita Dutta
Monday/ 10:20 AM-1:20 PM
Proteomics Bldg. Rm 126 Busch Campus

Spring 2017 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

Shakespeare in the Now

01:090:292:01 Index# 11208
Professor Emily Bartels, SAS - English
M 01:10 - 04:10P
Honors College Rm E128
College Ave Campus

 

The Culture of British Imperialism at Its Peak: 1875-1925

01:090:292:02 Index# 11219
Professor John Kucich, SAS - English
MW 01:10-02:30P
Honors College Rm S120
College Ave Campus

 

Law and Religion in Asian History

01:090:292:03 Index# 14437
Professor Dietrich Lammerts, SAS - Religion
MW 01:10-02:30P
Honors College Rm S124
College Ave Campus

 

Humanimals in Middle Eastern Literature

01:090:292:04 Index# 12892
Professor Yasmine Khayyat, SAS-African, Middle Eastern & South Asian Language & Literatures
T 09:50A-12:50P
Honors College Rm S126
College Ave Campus

 

Intertextuality in Popular Music

01:090:292:05 Index# 14436
Professor Christopher Doll, MGSA - Music
TF 09:15-10:35A
Art History Rm 202
Douglass Campus

 

Millennial Mythologies

01:090:293:01 Index# 11209
Professor Jerry Flieger, SAS - French
T 01:10-04:10P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

 

Vice, Virtue, and Violence: Norms and their Violation in Ancient Greece

01:090:293:02 Index# 12890
Professor Emily Allen-Hornblower, SAS - Classics
M 04:30-07:30P
Honors College Rm E128
College Ave Campus

 

Walking in the Metropolis

01:090:293:03 Index# 11210
Professor Andrea Baldi, SAS - Italian
TH 09:50A-12:50P
Honors College Rm S120
College Ave Campus

 

Scripts and Writing

01:090:293:04 Index# 12891
Professor Charles Haberl, SAS-African, Middle Eastern & South Asian Language & Literatures
MW 4:30-5:50P
RU Academic Building Rm 2100
College Ave Campus

 

Genes & Evolution

01:090:294:01 Index# 11211
Professor Frank Deis, SAS-Division of Life Sciences
MW 01:40-03:00P
Allison Road Classroom Rm 203
Busch Campus

 

Medicine, Ethics, and the Humanities

01:090:294:02 Index #11212
Professor Ahmed Khan, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School
TH 04:30-07:30P
Honors College Rm E128
College Ave Campus

 

Surveillance, Freedom, and Democracy

01:090:294:03 Index# 11242
Professor Paul Hirschfield, SAS - Sociology
W 01:40-04:40P
Lucy Stone Hall Rm A215
Livingston Campus

 

China's Capitals Across Time and Their Linguistic and Cultural Impacts

01:090:294:04 Index# 14438
Professor Richard Simmons, SAS- Asian Language & Cultures
MW 1:10-2:30P
RU Academic Building Rm 1100
College Ave Campus
*BY SPECIAL PERMISSION

 

Society and Education in Contemporary China

01:090:295:01 Index# 12889
Professor Tanja Sargent, GSE-Edu Theory, Policy & Admin
T 01:10-04:10P
Honors College Rm S124
College Ave Campus

 

Who Makes our Stuff? Work and Labor in the Global Economy

01:090:295:02 Index# 11213
Professor Kevin Kolben, RBS-Supply Chain Management
W 8:40A-11:40A
Business Rockefeller Road Rm 3038
Livingston Campus

 

Evolution of the Human Language Faculty

01:090:295:03 Index# 11476
Professor Kenneth Safir, SAS - Linguistics
TTH 02:50-4:10P
Honors College Rm S120
College Ave Campus

 

Asian Americans, Labor, and the Politics of Belonging

01:090:295:04 Index# 14439
Professor Saunjuhi Verma, SMLR-Labor Studies & Employment Relations
T 01:10-04:10P
Honors College Rm E128
College Ave Campus

 

Historical Archaeology of Slavery

01:090:295:06 Index# 16281
Professor Carmel Schrire, SAS - Anthropology
TTh 3:55-5:15P
Biological Sciences Building, Room 206
Douglass Campus

 

The Art of Medical Photography

01:090:296:01 Index# 12888
Professor Susan Sidlauskas, SAS - Art History
TH 01:10-04:10P
Honors College Rm E128
College Ave Campus

 

Personal Identity in Philosophy and Popular Culture

01:090:296:02 Index# 11217
Professor Edward "Trip" McCrossin, SAS - Philosophy
TH 09:50A-12:50P
Honors College Rm E128
College Ave Campus

 

Our Vampires, Ourselves: Literature, History, Visual Culture, Science

01:090:296:03 Index# 11218
Professor Dianne Sadoff, SAS - English
TTH 01:10-02:30P
Honors College Rm S120
College Ave Campus

 

Neurobiology of Addiction

01:090:296:04 Index# 15147
Professor Mark West, SAS - Psychology
MTH 12:00-1:20P
Allison Road Classroom Rm 333
Busch Campus

 

Music and Revolution: Sounds, Stages, Subjects

01:090:296:05 Index# 20318
Professor Daniel Villegas-Velez, SAS - Center for Cultural Analysis
MTH 11:30A-12:50P
Honors College Rm N106
College Ave Campus

 

Forging an Irish Identity

01:090:297:01 Index# 11214
Professor Paul Blaney, SAS - English, SASHP
W 02:50-05:50P
35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Ave Campus
*BY SPECIAL PERMISSION

 

Language, Gender, and Sexuality

01:090:297:02 Index# 11215
Professor Kathleen Riley, SAS - Anthropology
W 02:50-05:50P
Honors College Rm S124
College Ave Campus

 

Molecular View of Human Anatomy: Diabetes

01:090:297:03 Index# 11216
Professor Shuchismita Dutta, SAS - Chemistry & Chemical Biology - Protein Database
Stephen Burley, SAS - Chemistry and Chemical Biology
M10:20A-01:20P
Proteomics Building Room 126
Busch Campus

 

Images of the World: A World History of Maps

01:090:297:04 Index# 12887
Professor Tarek Kahlaoui, SAS - Art History
M 12:00-03:00P
Lucy Stone Hall Rm A215
Livingston Campus

Fall 2020 Department-Based Honors Courses


Fall 2020 Department-Based Honors Courses

 

Please note: These courses have been scheduled by the individual departments. They may cancel or reschedule them at their discretion. The SAS Honors Program does not monitor departmental course cancellations.

Students may also complete up to one of their honors course requirements by pursuing an honors contract course. With the prior approval of the course instructor, students may petition to take up to one section of a traditional course with an honors contract to perform additional assignments—research, independent study, and more.  Students are advised to speak with their Honors Dean for more information.

 

Fall 2016 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

  pdf Political Representation (179 KB)

01:090:292:01 Index# 13335
Professor Mona LenaKrook, SAS - Political Science
T 09:15A-12:15P
Hickman Hall Rm 117
Douglass Campus

 

pdf Quantitative Research: A Hands-On Preparation (180 KB)   

pdf Syllabus (524 KB)

01:090:292:02 Index#13339
Professor Nuria Sagarra, SAS- Spanish & Portuguese
M 11:30A-2:30P
Academic Building Rm 5190
College Avenue Campus

 

pdf Homer's Odyssey: Mythology, Psychology and Politics (185 KB)

pdf Syllabus (301 KB)

01:090:292:03 Index# 13342
Professor Steven Walker, SAS- Asian Language & Cultures
T 09:50A-12:50P
Honors College Rm S120
College Ave Campus

 

pdf America as a Celebrity Culture (267 KB)
01:090:292:04 Index# 15082
Professor Michael Rockland, SAS - American Studies
T 10:55A-1:55P
Ruth Adams Building Rm 018
Douglass Campus

 

pdf Migration, Globalization, Education (264 KB)
01:090:292:05 Index# 16134
Professor Thea Abu El-Haj, GSE-Edu Theory, Policy & Admin
T 9:50A-12:50P
Honors College Room E128
College Ave Campus

 

pdf Protest and Progress (156 KB)

pdf Syllabus (241 KB)

01:090:292:06 Index# 20835
Professor William Field, SAS - Political Science
W 09:50A-12:50P
Honors College Rm HC S126
College Avenue Campus

 

pdf Rethinking the Global Wealth Divide (187 KB)

  pdf Syllabus (181 KB)

01:090:293:01 Index# 13336
Professor Angelique Haugerud, SAS - Anthropology
T 1:10-4:10P
Honors College Rm E128
College Ave Campus

 

  pdf The Political Economy of Piracy
(266 KB) 01:090:293:02
Professor Johan Mathew, SAS - History
TF 9:50-11:10A
Honors College Rm S124
College Avenue Campus

 

pdf Sociologists Go To College (180 KB)

01:090:293:03 Index# 15084
Professor D. Randall Smith, SAS - Sociology
TF 12:00-1:20P
Lucy Stone Hall A215
Livingston Campus

 

pdf Truth, Fiction, and Inequality (264 KB)

  pdf Syllabus (250 KB)

01:090:293:04 Index# 18643
Professor Bradley Evans, SAS - English
TTH 1:10-2:30P
Honors College Rm S120
College Ave Campus

 

pdf Sharing Space in the City: The Spatial Politics of Urban Divisions (188 KB)

  pdf Syllabus (138 KB)

01:090:293:05 Index# 18519
Professor Anita Bakshi, SEBS - Landscape Architecture
MW 2:15-3:35P
Blake Hall Rm 128
Cook Campus

 

pdf Language, Thought, and Identity (182 KB)
01:090:293:06 Index# 18518
Professor Eviatar Zerubavel, SAS - Sociology
TTH 2:15-3:35P
Hickman Hall Rm 206
Douglass Campus

 

pdf The Arts of Resistance: Underground Media and Political Subversion from the English Revolution to the Age of Wikileaks (262 KB)
01:090:294:01 Index# 13337
Professor Alastair Bellany, SAS - History
M 11:30A-2:30P
Honors College Rm S124
College Ave Campus

 

pdf The 2016 Presidential Election (180 KB)
01:090:294:02 Index# 15085
Professor David Greenberg, History
M 11:30A-2:30P
Honors College Rm S120
College Ave Campus

 

pdf Exploring Happiness
(63 KB) 01:090:294:03 Index #13347
Professor Sarah Rosenfield
W 2:15-5:15P
Hickman Hall Rm 209
Douglass Campus

 

pdf The Politics of Art and Poetry (263 KB)
01:090:294:04 Index# 13377
Professor Paul Blaney, SAS - English, SASHP
Dean Julio Nazario, SASHP
W 2:50-5:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

 

pdf Theories in Human Adaptation (178 KB)
01:090:294:05 Index# 15086
Professor Susan Cachel, SAS - Anthropology
MW 3:55-5:15P
Hickman Hall Rm 131
Douglass Campus

 

pdf Contestation of Values in Classical Chinese Thought (267 KB)
01:090:295:01 Index# 18516
Professor Tao Jiang, SAS - Religion
T 9:50a-12:50p
Honors College Rm N106
College Ave Campus

 

pdf Bodies in Social Interaction (182 KB)

pdf Syllabus (234 KB)

01:090:295:02 Index# 12172
Professor Galina Bolden, SC&I - Communication
T 11:30A-2:30P
Alcove Computing Lounge- Records Hall
College Ave Campus

 

pdf Politics and Existentialism (266 KB)
01:090:296:01 Index# 15087
Professor Stephen Bronner, SAS - Political Science
TH 1:10-4:10P
Honors College Rm S124
College Ave Campus

 

pdf Philosophy of Language: What is Meaning? (176 KB)
01:090:296:02 Index# 13340
Professor Elisabeth Camp, SAS - Philosophy
TH 11:30A-2:30P
RU Academic Building Rm 3450
College Avenue Campus

 

pdf Anti-Apartheid and Civil Rights Movements: King and Mandela, Lessons in Leadership Seminar (185 KB)
01:090:296:03 Index# 13341
Professor Ronald Quincy, School of Social Work
TH 04:30-07:30P
Honors College Rm E128
College Ave Campus

 

pdf Jews and Medicine (175 KB)
01:090:296:04 Index#
Professor Hilit Surowitz, SAS - Religion/Jewish Studies
M 2:50-5:50P
Miller Hall Room 116
College Ave Campus

 

pdf The Problem of Evil in Philosophy and Popular Culture (186 KB)
01:090:297:01 Index# 13338
Professor Edward McCrossin, SAS - Philosophy
TH 9:50A-12:50P
Honors College Rm S120
College Ave Campus

 

Spring 2016 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

pdf Quantitative Research: A Hands-On Preparation (179 KB)

01:090:292:01 Index# 12435
Nuria Sagarra, SAS - Spanish & Portuguese
M 01:10-04:10P
Honors College Seminar Room E128
College Ave Campus

pdf Writing the 21st Century (177 KB)

01:090:292:02 Index# 12446
Harriet Davidson, SAS - English
MW 01:10-02:30P
Honors College Seminar Room S124
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - English Major
Will Count Towards SAS - English Minor

pdf Energy and Culture (177 KB)

01:090:292:03 Index# 17324
David Hughes, SAS - Anthropology
MW 02:15-03:35P
Ruth Adams Building Room 109B
Douglass Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - Anthropology Major
Will Count Towards SAS - Anthropology Minor

pdf Foundational Works on American Politics (258 KB)

01:090:292:04 Index# 14571
Gerald Pomper, SAS - Political Science
W 09:50A-12:50P
Honors College Seminar Room S120
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - Political Science Major
Will Count Towards SAS - Political Science Minor

pdf Art, Archeology, and Chemistry (177 KB)

01:090:292:05 Index# 17323
Kuang Yu Chen, SAS - Chemistry & Chemical Biology
T 03:20-06:20P
Allison Road Classroom Room 203
Busch Campus

pdf Nature, Environment, and Literature: Ecocritical Reading and Writing (183 KB)

01:090:292:06 Index# 19259
Alexander Pichugin, SAS-German,Russian & Eastern European Languages & Literatures
W 11:30A-2:30P
Honors College Seminar Room S126
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS-German,Russian & Eastern European Languages & Literatures Major
Will Count Towards SAS-German,Russian & Eastern European Languages & Literatures Minor

pdf The 2016 Presidential Election (180 KB)

01:090:293:01 Index# 12436 pdf *Click here for Course Syllabus! (493 KB)
David Greenberg, SAS - History
M 11:30A-02:30P
Honors College Seminar Room N106
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - History Major
Will Count Towards SAS - History Minor

pdf Scapegoating, Terrorism and the Innocent Victim (267 KB)

01:090:293:02 Index# 14567
Steven Walker, SAS- Asian Language & Cultures, Comparative Literature
T 09:50A-12:50P
Honors College Seminar Room S124
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS- Comparative Literature Major
Will Count Towards SAS- Comparative Literature Minor

pdf The Architecture of Colleges and Universities in the US (174 KB)

01:090:293:03 Index#12437
Carla Yanni, SAS - Art History
TH 01:10-04:10P
Honors College Seminar Room S124
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - Art History Major
Will Count Towards SAS - Art History Minor

pdf The Science of Science Fiction (179 KB)

01:090:293:04 Index# 14568
Eric Gawiser, SAS - Physics & Astronomy
T 10:20A-01:20P
SEC Room 218
Busch Campus

pdf Wonderful Life -- Genes and Evolution (179 KB)

01:090:294:01 Index# 12438
Frank Deis, SAS-Division of Life Sciences
MW 01:40-03:00P
Allison Road Classroom Room 203
Busch Campus

pdf How Societies Remember? (255 KB)

01:090:294:02 Index# 12439  *Click here for Course Syllabus
Yael Zerubavel, SAS - Jewish Studies & History
MW 02:50-04:10P
Bildner Center, 12 College Avenue Room 206
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - Jewish Studies & History Major

pdf Disaster, Culture, and Society (181 KB)

01:090:294:03 Index# 12481
Lee Clarke, SAS - Sociology
MTH 12:00-01:20P
Lucy Stone Hall Room A215
Livingston Campus

pdf Ethics and Human Nature (334 KB)

01:090:294:04 Index# 17325
Wayne Eastman, RBS-Supply Chain Management & Marketing Sciences
MW 02:50-04:10P
Honors College Seminar Room S124
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards RBS-Supply Chain Management & Marketing Sciences Major
Will Count Towards RBS-Supply Chain Management & Marketing Sciences Minor

pdf Society and Education in Contemporary China (174 KB)

01:090:295:01 Index# 14563
Tanja Sargent, GSE-Educational Theory, Policy & Administration
T 01:10-04:10P
Honors College Seminar Room S124
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards the minor in Education as a Social Science

pdf Thinking with Animals (179 KB)

01:090:295:02 Index# 12440
V. Yans-Mclaughlin, SAS - History
M 10:55A-01:55P
Hickman Hall Room 113
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - History Major
Will Count Towards SAS - History Minor

pdf Graphic Novels & Psychoanalysis: Alison Bechdel & D.W. Winnicott (181 KB)

01:090:295:03 Index# 12775
Martin Gliserman, SAS - English
TTH 02:50-04:10P
Murray Hall Room 038
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - English Major
Will Count Towards SAS - English Minor

pdf History of Cosmology from Ancient Greece to the Modern Era (178 KB)

01:090:295:04 Index# 17326
Jeremy Sellwood, SAS - Physics & Astronomy
TTH 03:20-04:40P
Allison Road Classroom Room 207
Busch Campus

pdf Beyond Bollywood: Film and Literature in South Asian Culture (180 KB)

01:090:295:05 Index# 18765
Meheli Sen, SAS-African,Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Literature
TTH 03:20-04:40P Film Screenings: T 06:40-09:30P or By Arrangement
Tillett Hall Room 252
Livingston Campus
Will Count Towards SAS-African,Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Literature Major
Will Count Towards SAS-African,Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Literature Minor

pdf Europe, European Union, Eurocentrism (179 KB)

01:090:295:06 Index# 19734  pdf *Click here for Course Syllabus! (341 KB)
Jozsef Borocz, SAS - Sociology
TTH 5:35-6:55P
Hickman Hall Room 122
Douglass Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - Sociology Major

pdf Scripts and Writing (253 KB)

01:090:296:01 Index# 14562
Charles Haberl, SAS-African,Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Literature
TTH 04:30-05:50P
Honors College Seminar Room S124
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS-African,Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Literature Major
Will Count Towards SAS-African,Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Literature Minor

pdf The Just World Fallacy and The History of Optimism (257 KB)

01:090:296:02 Index# 12444
Edward McCrossin, SAS - Philosophy
TH 09:50A-12:50P
Honors College Seminar Room E128
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - Philosophy Major
Will Count Towards SAS - Philosophy Minor

pdf Peer Influence in the 21st Century (179 KB)

01:090:296:03 Index# 12445
Itzhak Yanovitzky, SC&I - Communication
TH 09:50A-12:50P
Honors College Seminar Room N106
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SC&I - Communication Major

pdf Bruce Springsteen's Theologies (173 KB)

01:090:296:04 Index# 18258
Azzan Yadin-Israel, SAS - Jewish Studies
MTH 09:50-11:10A
Honors College Seminar Room S124
College Ave Campus 

Forging an Irish Identity

*BY SPECIAL PERMISSION
01:090:297:01 Index# 12441
Paul Blaney, SAS - English, SASHP
W 02:50-05:50P
35 College Avenue Room 302
College Ave Campus

pdf Race, Culture, & Colorblindness (182 KB)

01:090:297:02 Index# 12442
Stephane Robolin, SAS - English Writing Program
T 04:30-07:30
Honors College Seminar Room N106
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SAS - English Writing Program Major
Will Count Towards SAS - English Writing Program Minor 

pdf Molecular View of Human Anatomy: Diabetes (176 KB)

01:090:297:03 Index# 12443
Shuchismita Dutta, SAS - Chemistry and Chemical Biology - Protein Database
Stephen Burley, SAS - Chemistry and Chemical Biology
M10:20A-01:20P
Proteomics Building Room 126
Busch Campus

pdf When God Came to the City: Urban Life and the Transformation of Religion (180 KB)

01:090:297:04 Index# 14561
Hilit Surowitz Israel, SAS - Jewish Studies
MTH 09:50-11:10A
Honors College Seminar Room S120
College Ave Campus

pdf Digital Technology and Disruptive Change (177 KB)

01:090:297:05 Index# 19436
Mary Chayko, SC&I- Communication
TTH 2:50-04:10P
SC&I Room 203
College Ave Campus
Will Count Towards SC&I- Digital Communication, Information, and Media minor

Fall 2015 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

  • Genocide In Comparative Historical Perspective
  • The Formation of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes in the Double-Dark Universe
  • Jung for the 21st Century
  • Tolstoy's War and Peace
  • Why We Play: Play in Children, Animals, and Adults
  • The Bilingual Mind
  • Philosophy of Cosmology
  • Animals, Poets, Philosophers
  • The Wonderful World of Opera
  • Reading Redder: Color in Literature, from Poe to Comics
  • Jewish Museums
  • A(t) Home in the World
  • Who Makes our Stuff? Work and Labor in the Global Economy
  • Stories of the Self
  • Brazilian Culture: Conquest to Contemporary
  • The First Three Minutes After The Big Bang
  • The First World War: Causes, Consequences, and Controversies
  • Civil Society, Social Entrepreneurs and the New Economy: New forms of Organizing for a More Just and Sustainable World?
  • Mapping the Brain
  • Existentialism in Philosophy, Literature, and Film
  • Anti-Apartheid and Civil Rights Movements: King and Mandela, Lessons in Leadership Seminar
  • Communication and the Construction of Family
  • The "God Debate"
  • Collecting the World: From Ancient Relics and Cabinets of Curiosity to the Modern Art Museum
  • Literature and Maps: The Cartographic Impulse
  • Doctor/Lawyer, Artist/Technologist, Programmer/ Poet: How Do We Learn From Each Other?
  • The Problem of Evil in Philosophy and Popular Culture
  • Sacrifice, Sorcery, and Society

 

Read more ...

Spring 2015 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

  • CrIME: Criminal Investigation through Mathematical Examination
  • Identity in Ancient Greece: Belonging and Otherness
  • Applying Cognitive Science to Problems in the Real- and Virtual-Worlds
  • Literature and Medicine
  • The United States During the 1980s
  • Complementarity in Physics, Biology and Philosophy
  • What is Political Theater?
  • Wonderful Life Genes and Evolution

  • Inequality and Opportunity in America
  • Our Vampires, Ourselves: Literature, History, Visual Culture, Science
  • Lives of the Dead
  • Conservatism:  What is it?
  • Bodies in Social Interaction
  • Scripts and Writing
  • The Problem of Evil in Philosophy and Popular Culture
  • The Biological Basis of Cancer
  • Forging an Irish Identity
  • The Beast Within:  Animals in the American Imagination
  • Molecular View of Human Anatomy: Diabetes
  • Love in South Asia

Read more ...

Spring 2012 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

NO SPECIAL PERMISSION NUMBERS WILL BE GIVEN OUT DURING PRE-REGISTRATION FOR CLOSED SECTIONS.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO CHECK THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES FROM NOW UNTIL ADD/DROP PERIOD IN THE SPRING SEMESTER.

  • Public Monuments in America 19th -21st Centuries
  • Intimacy and the City
  • The "God Debate": Modern Doubt Past and Present
  • Jung for the 21st Century
  • Wonderful Life: Genes and Evolution
  • Molecular View of Human Anatomy: How Do Antibiotics Work?
  • Wise Fools
  • America in Vietnamese Eyes; Vietnam in American Eyes
  • Three Modernist Cities: London, Paris, Harlem
  • Unpredictable Events in History
  • Inequality and Opportunity in America
  • Disaster, Culture, and Society
  • The Globalization of Disability: Gender Sexuality Race and the Critique of Able-ism
  • Social Innovation: The Business of Doing Good
  • A Place in the World
  • Bodies in Social Interaction
  • A Sustainable World

Read more ...

Fall 2014 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

  • Genocide in Comparative Historical Perspective
  • Stories of the Self
  • Homer's Odyssey: Myth, Psychology and Politics
  • Meaning & Morality: Questions About Who We Are How People Act And What We Should Believe About Good And Evil
  • Writing Italian Women's Lives
  • One Mind, Two Languages
  • European Languages: History and Theory
  • Immigrants in the Americas
  • Gender, Sexuality, and Narrative Theory
  • Can Grandma Survive Entitlement Reform?  How Will Changes in Social Security, Medicare and Other Programs Affect You and Your Family?
  • Art, Archeology, and Chemistry
  • Paradoxes of Zionism
  • Migration, Globalization, and Education
  • Anti-Apartheid and Civil Rights Movements: King and Mandela, Lessons in Leadership Seminar
  • Understanding War: Will the Second Horseman Ride Forever?
  • The Cartographic Impulse
  • Does Anything Matter?
  • What About Love? Marriage and Family in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Read more ...

Spring 2014 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

  • Wonderful Life Genes and Evolution
  • Catastrophe, Collective Memory and Everyday Life  
  • The Aesthetics of Rap
  • Jung for the 21st Century
  • Language, Categories, and Cognition
  • Theories of the Universe:  Creation Myths Through the Ages
  • Materializing the Sacred: Medieval Art Between Visible and Invisible
  • The Meaning of the 21st Century
  • A(t) Home in the World?
  • Intertextuality in Popular Music
  • Muslims, Christians and Jews: Conflict and Coexistence
  • Climate Change, Justice and Equity: from the Tropical Rainforest to the Jersey Shore
  • Heaven and Hell in the Western Tradition
  • The Biological Basis of Cancer
  • Reading Shakespeare Across Texts and Culture
  • Blackness and Visual Culture
  • Molecular View of Human Anatomy: HIV and AIDS

Read more ...

Fall 2013 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

  • Grasping American Freedom
  • Chemistry in Art and Archeology
  • The Question of the Animal
  • The Poetry of Slavery
  • New Jersey's Greatest Natural Disaster(s)
  • The Last Days of Mankind: Modernism in the Interwar Period
  • Genocide in Comparative Historical Perspective
  • The Formation of Galaxies and Supermassive Black Holes in the Double-Dark Universe
  • How to Do Things with Stories: Narratives in Everyday Conversation
  • Communications and Human Values
  • Anti Apartheid and Civil Rights Movements: King and Mandela - Lessons In Leadership
  • Complementarity in Physics, Biology and Philosophy
  • Philosophy of Cosmology

Read more ...

Spring 2013 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

NO SPECIAL PERMISSION NUMBERS WILL BE GIVEN OUT DURING PRE-REGISTRATION FOR CLOSED SECTIONS.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO CHECK THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES FROM NOW UNTIL ADD/DROP PERIOD IN THE SPRING SEMESTER.

  • Inequality and Opportunity in America
  • Ancient Rome in the Modern World
  • Polynomials are Too Beautiful to be Limited to Math
  • Great Trials in Film & Literature
  • Evolutionary Approach to Social and Economic Behavior
  • Wonderful Life Genes and Evolution
  • Molecular View of Human Anatomy: The Immune System
  • Our Vampires, Ourselves: Literature, Culture, History, Cinema
  • Three Modernist Cities: London, Paris, Harlem
  • Living in a World of Unpredictable Events
  • How Sex Changed
  • The Great Epics of India: Ramayana and Mahabharata in past and present
  • Language, Categories, and Cognition
  • Social Innovation
  • Sustainability: Energy Materials and the Environment
  • Cosmology from Ancient Greece to the Modern Era
  • CrIME: Criminal Investigation through Mathematical Examination

Read more ...

Fall 2012 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

NO SPECIAL PERMISSION NUMBERS WILL BE GIVEN OUT DURING PRE-REGISTRATION FOR CLOSED SECTIONS.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO CHECK THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES FROM NOW UNTIL ADD/DROP PERIOD IN THE FALL SEMESTER.

  • Law Race and LiteratureWar on Terror in a Post-9/11 World
  • The Evolution of the Global Energy System: From Earth's Deep Past to Civilization's Future
  • Entitlement Reform; What Is It and What Does It Mean for Grandma?
  • 21st Century Myth: the Alien Among Us
  • Atrocity Crimes and Legal Response
  • The Maya Apocalypse of 2012 and the Western Imagination
  • Quantum Reality
  • Philosophy of Literature
  • The Science and Life of Albert Einstein
  • Homer's Odyssey: Mythology Psychology and Politics
  • Anti Apartheid and Civil Rights Movements: King and Mandela - Lessons In Leadership
  • Probability Quantum Mechanics Space and Time 
  • The Biological Basis of Cancer 
  • Meaning & Morality: Questions About Who We Are How People Act And What We Should Believe About Good And Evil 
  • Jane Austen and her World 
  • The 2012 Presidential Election 
  • Bodies in Social Interaction 
  • Communications and Human Values

Read more ...

Fall 2011 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

NO SPECIAL PERMISSION NUMBERS WILL BE GIVEN OUT DURING PRE-REGISTRATION FOR CLOSED SECTIONS.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO CHECK THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES FROM NOW UNTIL ADD/DROP PERIOD IN THE FALL SEMESTER.

  • How Sex Changed: Biomedical Sex Research in the Twentieth Century
  • The United States and the Middle East in Revolution, 1945 to 2011 and Beyond
  • What is Sophistication?
  • Visible Writings: Cultures Forms Readings
  • Civilization and Its Discontents
  • Jewish Museums
  • Extraterrestrial Life
  • Religion in a Secular Society
  • Victorian Popular Culture: As Seen Through Musical Theater
  • Medical Ethics and the Law
  • Climate Change Impacts Vulnerability and Adaptation
  • Anti Apartheid and Civil Rights Movements: King and Mandela - Lessons In Leadership
  • Polynomials are Too Beautiful to be Limited to Math
  • Complementarity in Physics Biology and Philosophy
  • Social Media and Participatory Culture
  • Communications and Human Values

Read more ...

Spring 2011 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

**NO SPECIAL PERMISSION NUMBERS WILL BE GIVEN OUT DURING PRE-REGISTRATION FOR CLOSED SECTIONS.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO CHECK THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES FROM NOW UNTIL ADD/DROP PERIOD IN THE SPRING SEMESTER.**

 

 



Evolutionary Approach to Social and Economic Behavior
01:090:271 Index#54790
Tomas Sjostrom - SAS - Economics
TTH 01:10-02:30P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Economists study competitive and cooperative interactions in small-scale face-to-face groups, as well as anonymous large-scale markets. The traditional assumption is that people behave rationally, as profit- or utility-maximizers. That is, people are assumed to act in their own (typically narrowly-defined) best interest. But in the real world, individuals often act in ways that economists find hard to explain. Why do tourists leave tips in foreign restaurants to which they will never return? Why do people get angry and do things that hurt themselves more than they hurt anyone else? Why do CEOs, who already earn more money than they can spend in a lifetime, risk everything by engaging in illegal accounting practices? Evolutionary psychology and game theory can explain such behavior. Game theory is a framework for analyzing strategic interaction. It is a branch of applied mathematics, so it requires serious thinking (but no particular math background). Evolutionary psychology applies "Darwinian" logic to human behavior. Of course, humans aren't robots, blindly programmed by evolution to leave tips in restaurants.  Behavior is influenced by the social environment, norms, culture, education and many other things. That's why behavior is different in different parts of the world. But why are we so easily influenced? And there are similarities as well as differences... Ultimately, we are trying to understand the nature of humankind.  The grade will be based on seminar participation (including attendance, discussion, and term paper presentation), several quizzes, and a 10-15 page term paper on any topic discussed in the course. The required readings include class handouts and the following three books: The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition by Richard Dawkins; The Origins of Virtue by Matt Ridley; Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals by Frans B. M. de Waal.

TOMAS SJOSTROM is the first holder of the James Cullen Chair in Economics.  He did his undergraduate studies in Stockholm and received a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester in 1991. He taught at Harvard and Penn State before moving to Rutgers in 2004. His early work was on the topic of Mechanism Design, the mathematical analysis of social institutions.  Currently, he is asking "Why is there war rather than peace" and "How does the brain work"?



The New Animal Studies
01:090:272 Index #51596
Marianne De Koven - SAS - English
MW 01:10-02:30P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

Animals (often called “nonhuman animals”) are increasingly visible in contemporary legal and humane advocacy, and in literature, film, television, and other modes of cultural and political representation. There is a burgeoning interdisciplinary field called “animal studies,” which includes academics (from a wide variety of disciplines in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences), animal activists, writers, artists, and other cultural and political workers. Why is this happening? What kinds of animals do we most often read about and see? How are they represented? What kinds of issues do these studies and representations of animals address and raise for us, in addition to the questions of animal rights, the humane treatment of animals, and species extinction? How does the new animal studies expand our understanding of the human-animal relation? Has the representation of animals changed in meaningful ways in tandem with the development of the new animal studies? These are some of the questions we will ask in this course. Readings will represent the wide variety of approaches developed within this complex interdisciplinary field.

MARIANNE DEKOVEN, Professor II of English at Rutgers University (Ph.D. Stanford University, 1976), is the author of Utopia Limited: The Sixties and the Emergence of the Postmodern (Duke University Press, 2004, winner of the Perkins Prize), Rich and Strange: Gender History, Modernism (Princeton University Press, 1991, Choice Award), and A Different Language: Gertrude Stein’s Experimental Writing (Wisconsin, 1983). She is also the editor of the Norton Critical Edition of Gertrude Stein’s Three Lives (2006), of Feminist Locations: Global and Local, Theory and Practice (Rutgers University Press, 2001), and co-editor of Species Matters: Humane Advocacy and Cultural Theory, forthcoming 2011 from Columbia U Press). She has published numerous journal articles and book chapters, on a range of topics including modernism, postmodernism, gender, feminist theory, and twentieth-century fiction. She is currently working on a book project on cultural uses and meanings of animals in modern and postmodern fiction.

 
Homer's Odyssey: Mythology Psychology and Politics
01:090:273 Index #48916
Steven Walker - SAS - Asian Languages and Cultures
T 09:50A-12:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

Many students may have already read Homer’s Odyssey or parts thereof, but this is one of those books that really are worth rereading and rethinking. There are 24 chapters in the Odyssey, and we will be reading and discussing 2-3 of them each week in the translation by Robert Fitzgerald. We will be using a recent commentary (Frederick Ahl and Hanna M. Roisman, The Odyssey Re-Formed) for initial inspiration and stimulation. But the bulk of our seminar work together will simply be letting our minds and imaginations work on the text through close reading and discussion, and seeing what we come up with. Homer can mean many different things to many different people, as we will surely discover.

The mythological side of the Odyssey is one of the things that have made it fascinating for each new generation of readers. We will look carefully at the rich mythological world of the Odyssey with a special eye for psychological meaning and insight, especially as regards the initiation process of a young man (Telemachus), a young woman (Nausicaa), an older man (Odysseus), and an older woman (Penelope). But there has also been a perennial fascination with the historical subtext: did Odysseus (or someone like him) really exist? Does what Homer tells us about him, his island Ithaca and his society actually correspond to history? The now classic study The World of Odysseus by Moses Finley will give us a look at some of what lay behind the heroic legends of this epic of seafaring and adventure. Finally, the Odyssey turns out to have an special relevance for the discussion and the resolution of one major problem our society is facing today, and it is Jonathan Shay’s book Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming that will lead us from the world of ancient heroic epic to the problems of modern war.

STEVEN F. WALKER, Professor of Comparative Literature, majored in Greek as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, and continued to study ancient Greek literature in his work for a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature at Harvard. The Odyssey has long been one of his favorite books, but, oddly enough, although he has thought about it a lot, he hasn’t written or published much on it—perhaps he wished to keep it a book mainly for pleasure reading and not for academic analysis? In all events, it is his pleasure with the text that he would like most to share with you.



Wonderful Life: Genes and Evolution
01:090:274 Index #69628
Frank Deis - SAS - Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
MW 01:40-03:00P
ARC 105
Busch Campus

Life appears to have originated on Earth nearly 4.5 billion years ago when the oceans boiled and the atmosphere had no oxygen.  The changing conditions on our planet have defined the parameters within which life has existed.  An increase in the amount of oxygen in the air from 2.5 billion to 500 million years ago eventually permitted “modern” animals to exist.  Massive extinctions (especially at the end of the Permian Period) have narrowed the spectrum of species on the planet.

One theme of the seminar will be the origin of life, early evolution, implications for life in extreme environments, and possible life on Mars.  Students with an appreciation of chemistry will perhaps better understand the concepts in this part of the seminar than those without, but the readings are intended to be non-technical.

A second theme of the seminar is that science, as a human endeavor, is full of disagreements and political axes to grind.  One of the most controversial areas of evolutionary science is the connection between genes and behavior.  We will try to illuminate this controversy through class readings and discussions.

The reading materials throughout the seminar will be enhanced and complemented by materials in other media, especially video and film.  Books by Stephen Jay Gould and other writers on evolution and paleontology will be assigned.  Professor Deis will also bring in appropriate fossils, shells, and minerals from his collection.

Periodic papers will be assigned.  The factual content of the course will require an occasional short quiz.  Attendance and active class participation will contribute to each student’s grade.

FRANK DEIS studied Chemistry at Rice University and the University of Virginia, and Medicinal Chemistry at the Medical College of Virginia.  He has taught Biochemistry at Rutgers since 1977, and is author of Companion to Biochemistry (W.H. Freeman 2006).



Molecular View of Human Anatomy: Infectious Diseases
01:090:275 Index #49003
Helen Berman - SAS - Chemistry & Chemical Biology
Shuchismita Dutta - SAS - Chemistry & Chemical Biology
TH 01:40-04:40P
CABM Rm 010
Busch Campus

What do proteins, DNA, and other biological molecules look like? Where do these molecules fit in your body and how do they work? How do molecules from some pathogens cause infectious diseases? How does your body respond to these pathogens? This seminar will introduce you to the basics of structural biology using human anatomy and diseases as themes.

In the first half of this seminar, we will learn the fundamentals of structural biology - how proteins and DNA are shaped and how these structures are determined by scientists. Through the second half of the seminar, students will conduct research on molecules related to various human infectious diseases. They will look at the structures of specific molecules from disease causing organisms - how they are involved in causing the disease and how some of these diseases can be treated or prevented.

Students will learn to critically read articles, in scientific journals and in lay press. This seminar will also provide an opportunity for students to interactively use computers for self-publishing. It will be helpful if the student can bring in their own laptop to class.

This seminar has no pre-requisites; non-science majors are particularly encouraged to enroll. Students will be evaluated on two written reports and one oral presentation related to structural aspects of the course theme and participation in class discussions/activities. The main aim of the seminar is to encourage research-based learning and to familiarize students with a molecular view of biology.

HELEN BERMAN is a Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University.  Her research area is structural biology and bioinformatics, with a special focus on protein-nucleic acid interactions.  She is the founder of the Nucleic Acid Database, a repository of information about the structures of nucleic acid-containing molecules; and is the co-founder and Director of the Protein Data Bank, the international repository of the structures of biological macromolecules.  She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Biophysical Society, from which she received the Distinguished Service Award in 2000.  A past president of the American Crystallographic Association, she is a recipient of the Buerger Award (2006).  Dr. Berman received her A.B. in 1964 from Barnard College and a Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Pittsburgh.

SHUCHISMITA DUTTA is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers. She completed her Ph.D. in 2000 from Boston University and followed it by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University. With her background in crystallography and expert knowledge of the Protein Data Bank (PDB), she has taught various audiences about structural biology and the use of structural data archived in the PDB. She has been teaching this honors seminar course since 2006.



From Lansdale to Petraeus: The Evolution of Counter Insurgency Doctrine (COIN)
01:090:276 Index #49004
Lloyd Gardner - SAS - History
T 1:10-4:10P
35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Ave Campus

This seminar, "From Lansdale to Petraeus," will consider the recent origins of Counter-Insurgency (COIN) from the Vietnam War until the present, with a brief look back at more distant origins in the Indian Wars and the Philippines.  Probably the most famous, certainly the most controversial, figure in this history was Col. Edward Lansdale, the presumed model for a number of books and films, especially "The Quiet American."  At one point Lansdale was considered a pioneer of irregular warfare, one who out-maneuvered the Huks in the Philippines and saved that new country from Communism.  Then, after his tour in Vietnam, he was considered a proponent of targeted propaganda and violence who did more harm than good.  In recent years, however, in the wake of the so-called "New History" of the Vietnam War, which posits a happy ending -- or there could have been a happy ending if COIN had been adopted earlier in place of search and destroy -- Lansdale has become honored as a prophet of how to win wars against insurgents.  It is now argued that one man, David Petraeus, epitomizes the best thinking in COIN theory, and practice.  But this is not great man history, but rather the story of how paradigms develop, get lost, and are found again, as the circumstances of America's role in the world change and produce attempts to adapt to the altered environment from Vietnam to today in Afghanistan.  We will have several guest speakers uniquely able to address these questions, including, it is hoped, one of the authors of the new army manual on Counter-Insurgency.

Students will be expected to participate in all classes, and vigorously join in the debates the readings and speakers stimulate, and to complete a 20 page original research paper.

LLOYD GARDNER has taught at Rutgers since 1963.  After receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin he taught briefly at Lake Forest College, and then spent three years in the Air Force.  His special interests are in 20th and 21st Century American foreign policy, and he is the author or editor of more than a dozen books in this field, most recently, "The Long Road to Baghdad: American Foreign Policy Since 1970, " and "Three Kings: The Rise of an American Empire in the Middle East after World War II."  He has taught a variety of courses and worked with many Henry Rutgers' students over the years.


Trou
Troubled Occupations: U.S. Attempts to Transform Foreign Nations Since 1898
01:090:277 Index #49005
David Foglesong - SAS - History
TH 09:50A-12:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

This honors seminar will examine a number of controversial U.S. occupations of foreign nations since 1898, including the Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, Japan, Vietnam, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan.  The assigned common reading will focus on how the United States has attempted to remake foreign countries and how the American public has been divided over the wisdom and feasibility of the efforts. We will examine the origins of U.S. involvements, investigate how successful the efforts have been, analyze mistakes that have been made, and consider the responses of foreign peoples.

Each student will be required to make one brief (5 minute) oral presentation to open discussion of the assigned reading and write four short (roughly five-page) essays in response to the common reading.  Each student will have the option to write one longer essay (12-15 pages) instead of two of the short papers.  The longer essay may focus on a country, organization, individual, or theme to be chosen by the student.  This essay should either: (1) develop a critical perspective on much of the scholarship relevant to the topic or (2) make extensive use of primary sources, such as government documents, memoirs, or newspaper editorials.

DAVID FOGLESONG is a historian of the foreign relations of the United States.  His research has focused primarily on relations between the United States and Russia.  It has led to the publication of many articles in scholarly journals and two books: The American Mission and the “Evil Empire": The Crusade for a "Free Russia" Since 1881 (Cambridge University Press, 2007); and America's Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920 (The University of North Carolina Press, 1995).  Born in California, Foglesong went to Amherst College for his undergraduate education.  At Amherst he earned a B.A. in European Studies, magna cum laude (1980).  He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of California at Berkeley in 1991.  Since 1991 Foglesong has taught at Rutgers University as an Assistant Professor (1991-1996) and Associate Professor (1996 to 2009).  He regularly teaches courses on U.S. foreign policy, the Cold War, U.S. experiences with “nation building,” and modern Russian history.  Foglesong is currently working on two major projects.  Together with two Russian historians, he is writing a history of American-Russian relations since 1776.  In addition, he is conducting research for a history of the U.S. experience with “nation building” since 1898.



Three Modernist Cities: London, Paris, Harlem
01:090:278 Index #49962
Carol Smith - SAS - English
W 09:50A-12:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

London, Paris, and Harlem have come to known as centers of 20th century modernist culture.  In this seminar we will look at the cities themselves and how they became the urban spaces that drew early 20th century writers and artists.  For each city we will examine a pair of writers, one male, one female, who were part of the city’s cultural debates and who, in most cases, used the cities themselves as a backdrop for the texts we will read.

We will look first at the London that attracted American writers such as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, as well as British writers and intellectuals who were part of the Bloomsbury Group, especially Virginia Woolf.  Next will be post World War I Paris and the expatriate literary colony centered on the Left Bank.  We will discuss the painters who attracted and influenced writers like Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, as well as the proliferation of experimental presses, bookstores, and literary salons where writers and artists gathered.  Finally we will look at Harlem and the literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance, including the close connections between Left Bank Paris and Harlem.  Here we will focus on texts by Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison, as well as the cultural battles over the way black culture should be presented to the public.  We will end the discussion of each city with a roundtable with short reports on individual student research projects.

CAROL SMITH is Professor Emerita of English.  She has taught many courses on modernism and 20th century literature in the Department of English.  She directed the Graduate Program in English, and served as chair of the Douglass English department and as Acting Dean of Douglass College.  She is the author of T. S. Eliot’s Dramatic Theory and Practice and many articles on American and British 20th century authors.  Her special interests include the cultural backgrounds of modernism and 20th century women writers.



Energy Materials and the Environment
01:090:279 Index #49006
Gabriel Kotliar - SAS - Physics & Astronomy
F 11:30A-2:30P
Scott Hall Rm 116
College Ave Campus

In the twenty first century humans are no longer a small perturbation on their habitat. Excess carbon dioxide in the air from burning fossil fuels has been linked to  climate change, ocean acidification and indirectly responsible for drastic reductions in the amount of phytoplankton that make up the bottom of the food chain in the ocean.

We will examine these problems and potential solutions, focusing on the following questions:

  1. How do we resolve the increasing world demand for fossil fuels with the finite supply of economically accessible resources?
  2. As the worlds standard of living and energy consumption per capita increase can we avoid destroying our own habitat?
  3. Is there a technologically viable solution to the current energy crisis, or is the survival of our way of life dependent on technological breakthroughs that have not yet taken place?
  4. If problems with energy, the ocean and climate change problem are so pressing, than why is it so hard to take concerted action?

We will discuss the relative importance of energy and excess carbon dioxide air concentrations from a policy perspective in light of other critical 21st century problems, such as eradication of poverty, warfare and environmental degradation.  Students will be provided with a solid  understanding of the issues and will develop the skills necessary to understand the constraints imposed by the laws of physics when these questions are addressed.

From an interdisciplinary perspective, the seminar will start by asking what energy is and how it is used in various settings. We will then describe the different forms that energy can take, such as nuclear, solar, chemical, electrical, and mechanical as well as the efficiency of converting between the various forms of energy, (solar, chemical, electrical, chemical, a mechanical, etc,) .  We will brainstorm which steps are the most likely to be effective in reducing reliance on fossil fuels as well as what steps are currently being taken .  The physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology that relate to these topics will be presented  at an elementary level, and should be suitable for a motivated non-science major with a good high school science education.

The goal of the seminar is to teach students to think  quantitatively and scientifically  about important problems  and to elicit discussions about the current options that we as a society have in facing the current energy and climate crisis.  Further information will be made available in http://physcgi/user-html/gkguest/CourseContent/index.php

GABRIEL KOTLIAR is a theoretical physicist with interests in materials science. He got his Ph.D.in Princeton and is currently a Board of Governors Professor at Rutgers University.  Kotliar received the 2006 Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize for his work on strongly correlated electron materials. He is also a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Sloan fellowship, and a Lady Davis fellowship.  He was a recipient of the Blaise Pascal Chair and has been a frequent visitor at the Physics Departments of Ecole Normale Superieure, Ecole Polytechnique, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  His research interests are in the theory of materials, and his goal is to speed up the discovery of materials with useful properties  For this purpose he uses quantum field theory methods, algorithms, and computer simulations.  He believes that education and scientific research are the key investments that society needs to make to ensure a better future.



Sociology of Trauma and Collective Memory
01:090:280 Index #49007
Arlene Stein - SAS - Sociology
MW 03:55-05:15P
Hickman Hall Rm 132
Douglass Campus

The Holocaust and other genocides, along with war, terrorism, slavery, sexual abuse, AIDS, and natural disasters irrevocably alter the lives of survivors and the societies in which they live. This seminar will consider how social scientists make sense of the impact of these events. Why are survivors often unable or unwilling to acknowledge or speak about them? How do traumatic experiences shape survivors' sense of self over time? How have medical professionals, government officials and social movement activists responded? How does membership in different groups (religious, ethnic, national, gender) shape the ways people remember, forget, and deny traumatic events? And finally, how do descendants of trauma survivors make sense of the past many years later? The course will feature lectures, discussions, films and guest speakers. We will read two memoirs: Saidya Hartman, Lose Your Mother, by a granddaughter of African American slaves, and Alice Sebold, Lucky, by a woman who experienced sexual abuse. We will also read articles by sociologists, psychologists, political scientists and literary critics. Students will be required to complete a 5-6 page take-home essay on the readings. They will work in groups to analyze narratives of Holocaust survivors collected by the USC Shoah Foundation Institute's Visual History Archive, and prepare a group presentation and paper on their findings.

Arlene Stein is a professor of sociology at Rutgers. She teaches courses on the sociology of sexualities, identities, and culture. Her research interests include the cultural and emotional dimensions of social movements, trauma and collective memory, the social construction of LGBT identities and communities, and conservative social movements. She is the author of three books and the editor of two collections of essays. Among them is The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community’s Battle Over Sex, Faith, and Civil Rights, which won the American Anthropological Association’s Ruth Benedict Award. She is currently writing a book about storytelling and the intergenerational transmission of Holocaust memories.



Human Diversity
01:090:281 Index #49008
Stephen Stich - SAS - Philosophy
TTH 02:50-04:10P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

This seminar will have three components.  The first will look at the anthropological and psychological evidence for human diversity in several domains, including religion, race, gender, moral norms, food preferences and sexual practices.  The goal of this component of the seminar will be to better acquaint students with the extraordinarily broad range of human diversity.  The second component will introduce students to a variety of theories aimed at explaining various sorts of human diversity, including evolutionary psychology and gene-culture “dual inheritance” theory; we will also look at theories about the distinction between normal psychological functioning and mental disorder, in order to assess the hypothesis that some sorts of diversity are to be explained by mental disorder.  Finally, we will consider a variety of views in political philosophy and political theory about how we ought to react to diversity.  Should it be encouraged, tolerated, discouraged or suppressed?  Plausible answers will, of course, depend on the sort of diversity being considered.

STEPHEN STICH is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University and the Director of the Research Group on Evolution and Higher Cognition.  He is also Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom.  Prior to joining the Rutgers faculty in 1989, he taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Maryland and the University of California, San Diego. He has held visiting appointments at a number of universities in the USA, Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and has lectured at universities on every continent (except Antarctica).  He has done research on a wide variety of topics and is the author or editor of 18 books and over 150 articles.  In recent years much of his research has focused on human diversity, moral psychology, and philosophical methodology.  He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a recipient of the Jean Nicod Prize and the first recipient of the Gittler Award for Outstanding Scholarly Contribution in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences.  Stich was one of the founders of the experimental philosophy movement, and his former students are now among the leaders in the field.



Politics, Democracy and Punishment
01:090:282 Index #49009 (CROSS LISTED WITH 01:202:388:01)
Lisa Miller - SAS - Political Science
M 09:15A-12:15P
Hickman Hall Foom 206
Douglass Campus

Can there be too much democracy? In the United States, citizens often express skepticism of the ability of democratic majorities to produce policy outcomes that are fair and protective of individual rights. Indeed, critics of the American criminal justice system have argued that it is precisely the over-responsiveness of U.S. politics to popular majorities that explains its high incarceration rates, relative to other developed democracies. In this line of reasoning, the U.S. political system is too democratic, creating many opportunities for citizens to translate their desire for vengeance into law and for policymakers to exploit punishment as an electoral issue. Thus, some argue that when it comes to deciding how to respond to crime and violence, too much democracy leads to overly punitive states, particularly with respect to deep disparities in punishment across racial and ethnic groups. In fact, a recent cross-national study of incarceration warned that those who “dislike the recent expansions in incarceration that have occurred in so many of the advanced democracies should not seek political arrangements that give the public greater influence” (Jacobs and Kleban 2003, 748).
 
This seminar takes this claim as its starting point to explore the relationship between democratic politics, crime, punishment and inequality. In particular, we will pay attention to different understandings of democracy, the role of citizen participation in democratic systems, and the extent to which public influence over crime politics is determinative of the degree of punishment. The seminar is designed to push students to challenge their understanding of democracy, the relationship between democratic politics and crime, and the role that citizens play in determining appropriate responses to lawbreakers. In addition to the empirical questions embedded in these topics, we will also discuss their normative dimensions. The course requires active student participation, a midterm and final exam and a research paper.

LISA L. MILLER is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. Her interests are at the intersection of law and social policy, specifically the politics of criminal punishment and racial inequality and their dynamic interaction with American political and legal institutions. She has written extensively on the development of crime and justice policy and legal frameworks in the United States and has also published research examining the inner workings of the federal criminal courts. Her most recent book, The Perils of Federalism: Race, Poverty and the Politics of Crime Control (2008, Oxford University Press), explores the impact of American-style federalism on the politics of crime and punishment and racial inequality in the U.S. She is currently working on a book examining the relationship between democratic politics and punishment in a comparative context. 


Science in the Jungle: Laboratories, Expeditions and Natives in Global History
01:090:283 Index #54791
James Delbourgo - SAS - History
T 04:30-07:30P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

What new kinds of knowledge about the natural world are gained and lost when people from radically different cultures meet? This seminar explores the social and cultural histories of science, technology and medicine as a series of encounters in different parts of the world between the 17th and 20th centuries. Instead of seeing science as an isolated western intellectual practice – the lone professional scientist in his/her lab – we will connect the laboratory to the rest of the world and see how knowledge has been made for several centuries through travel, global networks and cultural encounters, involving peoples from western Europe, the United States, South America and the Caribbean, Africa, South Asia, China, Japan, Australasia and the Pacific Islands. One essential aspect of this global history of science and technology is colonization, empire-building, and ideologies of racial superiority based on technical supremacy. But we will aim as much possible to explore the perspective of non-western peoples in encounters, and the mechanics of exchange between peoples trading plants, animals, objects, maps, germs, tools, guns, and so on. We will also ask about those who move between cultures and act as go-betweens, informants and translators to make knowledge travel. Who are these figures, what are their motives, how do encounters shape their identities, and what roles do they perform to create bridges between cultures? In addition to reading fascinating stories about travel, science and encounter, the course material will enable us to engage in key debates in humanities scholarship in recent years: what is the relationship between knowledge and power in global history? Is western knowledge universal, while non-western knowledge is local? How have so-called western and non-western knowledge systems nevertheless interacted to create the modern world, and what kind of modernity has this interaction produced?

JAMES DELBOURGO came to Rutgers in 2009. He was educated at the University of East Anglia, the University of Cambridge and Columbia University. He researches the histories of science, travel, empire and cultural exchange in the 17th and 18th century Atlantic world. He has published 3 books: A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America (Harvard, 2006, winner, Thomas J. Wilson Prize); Science and Empire in the Atlantic World (Routledge, 2007, co-editor); and The Brokered World: Go-Betweens and Global Intelligence, 1770-1820 (Science History Publications, 2009, co-editor). He is currently writing a book about collecting, science and slavery in the 17th and 18th century Atlantic world, entitled Empire of Curiosities. His published essays have explored such topics as bodily electrification in the 18th century; experiments with electric eels; spying, dyeing and chemical experimentation with native American dyes; racial anatomy and Newtonian optics in colonial Virginia; botanical investigations of Jamaican Cacao and the invention of milk chocolate; slavery, natural history and medicine; specimen preservation and the material culture of scientific paperwork; treasure-hunting, diving and underwater collecting in the Caribbean Sea. At Rutgers he is actively involved in the seminar series in global perspectives on Science, Technology, Environment and Health (STEH).



Sickle Cell Anemia - The Intersection of Genetics, Biochemistry, Medicine, History, Evolution and Politics CANCELLED
01:090:284 Index #49010
Abram Gabriel - SAS - Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
TH 03:20-06:20P
CABM Rm 308
Busch Campus

As our society becomes more and more specialized, the gaps in knowledge and perspectives separating scientists, physicians, politicians, and consumers from one another, become wider and the consequences more serious.  Although half the American public does not believe in the theory of evolution, advances in molecular biology, genetics and genomics, all with an evolutionary underpinning, are transforming our concepts of health and individual disease risks, with implications for insurance coverage, diagnostic decisions and treatment options. 

This seminar will concentrate on examining medical, biochemical, genetic, evolutionary, as well as historic, political, and sociological aspects of sickle cell anemia (SCA), the most common Mendelian genetic disorder of African-Americans.  SCA has been at the forefront of biomedical research, in terms of understanding its molecular basis and designing diagnostic tests and treatments.  The relationship between SCA and malaria resistance is one of clearest examples of natural selection, while the prevalence of SCA in the U.S. (>80,000 affected individuals) is the direct result of the importation of slaves from West Africa.  Diagnosis, treatment and ongoing management of patients with SCA varies among states and countries, and reflect political and cultural priorities.

The class will consist of lectures, guest lectures, as well as class discussions and student presentations.  Students will be assigned readings from journal articles and books.  Early in the semester, students will decide on a research topic of mutual instructor/student interest related to some aspect of SCA or another genetic disorder.  During the semester, students will present their findings to the class.  At the end of the semester, students will submit a term paper on their topic, utilizing primary literature, policy reviews, and/or personal interviews.

This course is designed for students interested in majoring or already majoring in Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, History, Africana Studies, Evolution and Ecology, Anthropology, as well as for students with career interests in medicine, public health, molecular biology, biotechnology, sociology, or the history of medicine.  There are no pre-requisites.

ABRAM GABRIEL is an associate professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and Graduate Director of the Joint Program in Biochemistry.  He received his B.A. from Harvard University and his M.D. and M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University.  His research centers on mechanisms and consequences of transposable genetic elements.  This is his first SAS honors seminar, and is based on his interest in making molecular genetics more widely understandable to non-scientists and making the societal repercussions of genetics better appreciated by those planning careers in biomedical science.



The Science Technology and Policy of Global Climate Change
01:090:285 Index #50070
Frank Felder - Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
T 01:10-04:10P
Civic Square Bldg Rm 243
Downtown New Brunswick Campus

Global climate change is a major international concern involving complex issues in science, technology, economics and public policy. This interdisciplinary seminar brings together these disciplines to focus on the major questions related to global climate change. The goal is to penetrate the major public policy debates in order to assess the issues critically. The seminar will start with the science of climate change, its basis and uncertainties then proceed to investigate various technological solutions, such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, nuclear power, biomass, forestation, and geo-engineering options. Next, we will study various economic proposals including cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, research and development subsidies, and command and control regulation. Finally, we will integrate what we have learned into analyzing national and international policy.

FRANK FELDER’s primary research and teaching area is energy planning and policy. Much of his recent work has involved state energy planning, evaluation of renewable and energy efficiency alternatives, electricity markets, and policies to address global climate change.  He is the Director of the Center for Energy, Economics and Environmental Policy at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and Associate Research Professor. His center conducts research in the areas of energy efficiency, renewable energy, environmental policies, and economic impacts of energy and environmental policy. Dr. Felder has taught extensively at the undergraduate level.  His undergraduate degrees are from Columbia College and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and master and doctorate degrees from M.I.T in Technology, Management and Policy.



Sustainable Structural Materials For Heavy Infrastructure
01:090:287 Index #51941
Jennifer Lynch - Engn - Materials Science and Engineering
TH 01:40-04:40P
Allison Road Classroom Rm 203
Busch Campus

People have a love-hate affair with plastic. We often look down on plastic imitations of natural products, yet we all use plastic every day.  Currently, scientists believe the world's largest garbage dump is not on land but in the Pacific Ocean. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch stretches from the coast of California to Japan and is estimated to be twice the size of Texas.  This area of concentrated marine debris, largely composed of different plastics, formed gradually as a result of marine pollution gathered by oceanic currents.  Well, what can we do about all this plastic waste?  Why not recycle it and make useful products?

In this seminar, we will learn about plastics recycling and examine basic materials development necessary to produce sustainable, structural materials for heavily loaded infrastructure from recycled plastic composites.  We will first investigate – “what is sustainable”.  We will then examine plastics recycling, the advent of recycled plastic lumber (RPL), and materials advancements that resulted in structural RPL or recycled structural composites (RSC).  We will investigate several RSC materials developed here at Rutgers and discuss applications for these materials.  We will also investigate the benefit of RPL and RSC on the environment, greenhouse gas reduction, and global warming.  Research and development at Rutgers has resulted in patented and licensed RSC materials used in heavy load bearing applications, including railroad ties, pilings, I-beams, bridge substructure, and decking.  Interested students will be invited to attend a field trip to see a vehicular bridge composed of a RSC developed at Rutgers or a plant where RSC is manufactured.  Students will also have the opportunity to visit our labs in the Materials Science and Engineering Department to see our processing and characterization equipment.

The goal of this seminar is to introduce students to sustainable materials and to show examples of how they may be used as alternatives to traditional materials that will benefit our environment.  The course will be mostly project-based.  Students will be assigned background reading to discuss findings in class and review a particular topic which they will present to the class.  There are no pre-requisites, but a general high school science understanding would be helpful.

JENNIFER LYNCH received her MS and PhD degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Rutgers University.  She is currently research faculty in the Materials Science and Engineering Department and is part of the Center for Advanced Materials via Immiscible Polymer Processing (AMIPP).  Her research interests include advanced materials development for structural and functional applications; processing, properties, and characterization of polymers, polymer blends, composites, and nano-composites; and prediction of long-term viscoelastic properties of polymers, blends, and composites.



Cognitive Neuroscience and Religion
01:090:288 Index #51597
James Jones - SAS - Religion
M 09:15A-12:15P
Loree Hall Rm 131  
Douglass Campus

This seminar will critically explore and evaluate contemporary cognitive neuroscience accounts of religion. Topics will include: evolutionary explanations of the origin of religion, religion and cognition, the neurophysiology of meditative experience in Buddhism and Christianity, contemporary scientific and religious theories of human nature and several relevant and controversial areas in contemporary psychology, psycho-physiology, and religion. The first third will cover general issues in religion and science, especially religious and scientific epistemologies. We will read two of the instructor’s books: The Texture of Knowledge: An Essay on Religion and Science and Waking From Newton’s Sleep: Dialogues on Spirituality in an Age of Science. Then we will discuss evolutionary approaches to understanding religion. We will read Scott Atran’s In Gods We Trust. The remainder of the readings will be from current research reports and papers on the religious and philosophical implications of contemporary cognitive neuroscience.
 
JAMES JONES has earned doctorates in both Religious Studies and Clinical Psychology, as well as an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He is professor of Religion and adjunct professor of Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. He has been a lecturer in Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York; visting Professor of Medical Humanities at the Graduate School of Drew University, and a visiting professor at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He is the author of twelve books and over twenty professional papers and book chapters. His books have been published both in the United States and Europe and translated in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Portuguese. He serves on the editorial boards of several publications both here and abroad. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and in 1993 at their annual convention, he received an award for his contributions to the psychology of religion. For six years he was co-chair of the Religion and Social Sciences Section of the American Academy of Religion. He is the vice-president of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion. He also maintains a private practice as a clinical psychologist.

 

Intertextuality in Popular Music
01:090:289 Index #51969
Christopher Doll - MGSA - Music
MW 02:15-03:35P
Marryott Music Building Room 207
Douglass Campus

From the unconscious borrowing of established pitch and rhythmic patterns, to the deliberate sampling of fragments of older songs, intertextuality is ubiquitous in the world of popular music. This seminar will focus students’ attention to musical details that raise issues of reference, quotation, similarity, and influence. Readings from literary theory and musicology will set the stage for the exploration of songs from all over the popular-music repertory. We will listen to artists such as Elvis, the Beatles, Marvin Gaye, Led Zeppelin, Spinal Tap, Michael Jackson, Madonna, Public Enemy, Danger Mouse, and Coldplay; and we will also watch musically intertextual films such as “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” and “Moulin Rouge”.

Assignments will include listening to a large body of music, watching videos and films, and reading scholarship. Classes will consist of lectures, discussions, and student presentations. The semester will culminate with students’ writing a substantial research paper. No musical training is required.

Christopher Doll specializes in the analysis of recent popular and art music (especially in regard to tonality), the analysis of film music, metatheory, and composition. He teaches graduate and undergraduate harmony, counterpoint, analysis, and composition in the Mason Gross School of the Arts, and is currently writing a large music-theoretical treatise entitled “Rock Harmony Revealed”.



Analyzing the Post-Cold War Arena of Conflict & Economic Warfare
01:090:290 Index #54139
Jack Jarmon - DIMACS
W 05:00-08:00P
CoRE Building Rm 433
Busch Campus

The seminar will delve into questions regarding the definition of national interests, security strategies, and understanding the risks and defenses of asymmetrical attack - be it the actions of a state or non-state actor.  These issues will be explored and discussed in the context of how they relate to national defense, the emerging new order in global governance, and the current financial crises.  Students will gain an understanding of the interconnectedness and tensions of globalization and what contributes to the inner rhythms of international relations, political conflict, and economic competition.  The seminar will require an independent research project on a relevant topic, and participation in a war game simulation.

JACK JARMON is currently Associate Director of the Command Control and Interoperability Center for Advance Data Analysis at Rutgers University.  He is also a Lecturer in the International Relations Program at the University of Pennsylvania, and Chief Research Officer of New Era Associates in Dallas.  His research focuses on the private/public sector partnership and issues of governance within the context of national security imperatives and frictionless trade.  His research also involves the analysis concerning the basilar societal, economic, political and cultural elements, which beget tension, and trigger and influence terrorist events.  His Ph.D. is in Global Affairs, from Rutgers University.  He was a Mid-Career Fellow at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.  His Masters is in Soviet and Russian Affairs, from Fordham University, and his BA, in Russian & Eastern European Area Studies, is from Rutgers College.  His current book project is a core text for courses and students of security studies and international relations, to be published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.  The book is an analysis of the current arena of conflict and the competition over political and economic control by state and non-state actors.



Shakespeare and His World
01:090:291 Index #54792
Maurice Lee - SAS - History
T 09:15A-12:15P
Voorhees Chapel Room 005
Douglass Campus

This course will deal with England as Shakespeare saw it during his active years as a playwright, the last decade of the reign of Queen Elizabeth and the first years of that of her successor, James I. Shakespeare wrote about two things: love and marriage and the family, and power and kingship and war, and sometimes both at once. We’ll read ten plays, for about love and marriage, four about kingship and power, and two about both, more or less in the order in which Shakespeare wrote them. And since I’m a historian and not a literary scholar, we’ll tackle them as evidence of what English politics and society were like, and what Shakespeare thought about political and social issues, rather than as the creative masterpieces many – not all – of them are.

You’ll be asked to get two books, the Oxford Press edition of Shakespeare’s works, and L.B. Smith, This Realm of England, for the necessary historical background. There will be three papers, two shorter ones during the semester, and a longer one at the end.

MAURICE LEE is Margaret Judson Professor of History Emeritus. He taught at Rutgers for thirty years before retiring. He is a specialist on the history of early modern Britain and has written a number of books on the period.

Fall 2010 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

**NO SPECIAL PERMISSION NUMBERS WILL BE GIVEN OUT DURING PRE-REGISTRATION FOR CLOSED SECTIONS. PLEASE CONTINUE TO CHECK THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES FROM NOW UNTIL ADD/DROP PERIOD IN THE FALL SEMESTER.**


How Sex Changed: Biomedical Sex Research in the 20th Century
01:090:250 Index #09294
Professor James Reed - SAS - History
T 01:10-04:10P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

This is a seminar about the relationship between scientists and human sexuality.  We will examine some of the most important efforts to understand and to control sexual behavior.  Who studied sex?  How did they define it? What methods did they use? Why did they do it?  Who paid for the work? What is the relationship between this science, gender systems, and other salient aspects of U.S. society? What can we learn from the immense discourse constructed by sex researchers?

We will begin with the "crisis in civilized sexual morality" and Freud's visit to the U.S. in 1909, and end with the emergence of the intersexed and transsexuals as self-conscious minorities successfully struggling for civil rights. We will have an Alfred Kinsey film festival, and will devote several weeks to the career of John Money, the Johns Hopkins University clinical psychologist who championed the cause of surgical sex reassignment.  Assigned readings will include: Susan Stryker, Transgender History; Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality; Deborah Rudacille, The Riddle of Gender; John Coalpinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl; and other materials provided by the instructor.  All participants in the class will be expected to make a presentation (15 minutes maximum) about a researcher, novel, autobiography, journal, or website that is relevant to our story.  There will be two short written assignments (5 pages) and a longer essay (minimum 10 pages) that will serve as a final exam.

JAMES REED has professed History at Rutgers since 1975.  He got his B.A. at Louisiana State University and his A.M. and Ph.D. at Harvard.  Among historians he is best known for From Private Vice to Public Virtue, a history of birth control in the United States  He has also written on intelligence tests, penitentiaries, and biomedical sex research.  His current writing project is a history of biomedical sex research, with the working title Sex Research in America: From Social Hygiene to Sexology.  Among Rutgers students he is best known as the instructor in Development of the U.S. I & II, as well as more specialized courses such as Health and the Environment in the U.S., Sport in History, and The IQ Controversy.”  He served as Dean of Rutgers College from 1985 to 1994.



War, Literature and the Arts in the Twentieth Century
01:090:251 Index #09295
Professor Michael Adas - SAS - History
M 01:10-04:10P
35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Ave Campus

This seminar will focus on the critical and varied influences that modern, mechanized warfare has exerted on various modes of artistic expression over the course of the twentieth century. The early weeks of the seminar will be devoted to group discussions of readings on representation through various art forms, stressing those favored by actual combatants and other contemporary observers of wars that my research and writing over the past two or three decades suggests have had the greatest influence on the arts and often affected the broader course of twentieth-century history. In the early meetings of the seminar, for example, we will collectively consider First World War poetry, which was one of the one of the most powerful and resonate ways in which participants expressed the trauma and disillusionment brought on by the unprecedented slaughter in the trenches.  We will also consider novels that proved to be seminal modes of capturing the experience of World War II and the Vietnam conflict. Subsequent discussion sessions will be devoted to other artistic mediums, including trench art and its impact on key, twentieth-century artistic movements ranging from Expressionism, Futurism, Cubism, and Surrealism. We will also look at the art of propaganda during and after the war, with special emphasis on the grandiose productions of works linked to the Mexican and Russian revolutions as well as the rise of Fascism in Italy and Nazism in Germany. We will also consider segments from classic films and theatrical productions dealing with war and the major contributions of war photographers, such as Robert Capa, which often extended beyond combat conditions to the devastation unleashed on the civilian population by modern warfare.

The second half of the seminar will be focused on individual research projects that students will design and undertake based on consultations through the early weeks of the semester. Each of these would be focused on major examples of artistic representation in media and relating to the conflicts. Students will both present their findings and write a major essay based on their research. Most of the readings for the early discussion sessions of common themes will be placed on electronic reserve.

MICHAEL ADAS is the Abraham E. Voorhees Professor and Board of Governor’s Chair at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. His early work focused on the comparative history of European colonialism, particularly patterns of economic and social change and peasant protest in South and Southeast Asia. Over the past two decades his teaching and research have been centered on the impact of Western science and technology on European and American colonization and post-colonial interventions in Asia and Africa.  His Machines as the Measure of Men:  Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (1989-1992) received the Dexter Prize from the Society for the History of Technology and the NJ-NEH Annual Book Award. In recent years, his research, writing and teaching have been increasingly concentrated on the history of America’s rise to global hegemony and its ambivalent participation in the process of globalization. In addition to several articles on these themes, Adas’s most recent book, Dominance by Design: Technological Imperatives and America’s Civilizing Mission, was published by the Harvard University Press in 2006 (pbk. ed, 2009). He is

currently researching and writing several books, including a comparative study of the combat experience of British soldiers on the Western Front in World War I and America GIs in Vietnam as well as a global history of the Great War.



No Permanent Waves; Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism
01:090:252 Index #09296
Professor Nancy Hewitt - SAS - History
W 12:35-03:35P
Voorhees Chapel Rm 005
Douglass Campus

This seminar will analyze feminist movements in the United States from the 1830s to the present, exploring diverse participants, strategies, ideologies and agendas. The dominant narrative of U.S. feminism focuses on three distinct waves—1848-1920, 1960s-1970s, and 1980s to now—each one building on but also moving beyond its predecessor. Yet this concept of oceanic waves flattens both the differences and contestations within any one period of feminist activism and the connections and echoes across periods.  In this course we will explore diverse feminist campaigns and debates that challenge the three-wave model even as we examine the breadth and multiplicity of movements within these periods. We will focus particular attention on the ways that race, class, nationality, and sexuality shaped distinct feminist visions and priorities; the relation of U.S. movements to international and transnational feminist campaigns; and the importance of changing technologies (including media) to activist efforts. The readings for this course include primary sources as well as analyses by historians, sociologists, political scientists, literary and women’s and gender studies scholars. Students will be assigned weekly readings, primary document and web projects, two short response papers, and a final research paper.

NANCY A. HEWITT is Professor II of History and Women’s and Gender Studies. She has taught American history, women’s history and women’s studies at the University of South Florida, Duke University and the University of Cambridge as well as Rutgers. Her research focuses on myriad forms of women’s activism, including abolition, woman’s rights, religious reform, labor organizing, civil rights, feminism, peace, and contemporary social justice and human rights issues. She has generally focused on the ways that class, race and ethnicity shape competing organizations, movements and agendas in particular times and places. Her books include Women’s Activism and Social Change in Rochester, New York, 1822-1872; Southern Discomfort: Women’s Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s; and most recently, No Permanent Waves: Recasting Histories of U.S. Feminism, an edited collection ranging across the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. This last book inspired the current course. She is currently co-authoring an American History textbook and writing a biography of an early woman’s rights, abolitionist and spiritualist named Amy Post. She has won a variety of awards and fellowships related to her teaching as well as her scholarship.



American Culture in the 1930s
01:090:253 Index #09394
Professor Ann Fabian - SAS - American Studies
TH 04:30-07:30P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

Why study the culture of the United States in the 1930s—a depressing decade that gave us FDR and Mickey Mouse, Superman, Babe Ruth, Amelia Earhart, the Empire State Building, and Groucho Marx?  What part have memories of the 1930s played in the reporting on our most recent financial crisis?

This was the decade of the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, and the New Deal.  The shocking crash of the U.S. economy in 1929 triggered a series of related crises for many Americans – crises that made them question their values, their sense of community, their ideas about family life, and their sense of the social contract between citizens and their government.  Responding to these crises, Americans across the country used politics, strikes, movies, photography, art, music, radio, theater, jokes and all sorts of creative forms to express ideas about what had happened and to try to imagine a new “America” from the ruins of the old.

In this seminar we will explore the enormous cultural and political creativity of this period that meant economic ruin for so many.  We will begin with “The Crash” and end with a world pulled into war, but along the way we will read some great books, watch some wonderful movies, and listen to some fine music.



The Life and Times of Ida B. Wells: A Cultural History
01:090:254 Index #09297
Professor Evie Shockley - SAS - English
T 04:30-07:30P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

In 2008, historian Paula Giddings published Ida: A Sword Among Lions: Ida B. Wells and the Campaign Against Lynching, the long-awaited biography of one of the most fascinating and important African American women of her time.  Ida B. Wells was born just before the system of slavery was abolished in the U.S., and went on to become: a teacher; a journalist; the co-owner of a newspaper; an anti-segregation activist; a wife; a mother; and a leading figure in—in many ways, an initiator of—the struggle to end the practice of lynching.  White supremacists used these brutal, typically unpunished murders to terrify the African American population and discourage them from exercising their hard-won civil rights (e.g., voting) or from taking advantage of opportunities for economic advancement, for example.  In newspaper editorials and on the speakers’ circuit, Wells battled against the forces that perpetuated this barbaric practice, which involved hundreds of lynchings every year during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  As an outspoken, independent woman making a name for herself in the public—and political—arena, she also had to contend with white and black men who saw her as overstepping the boundaries of feminine propriety.

We will read this rich, deeply contextualized biography together over the course of the semester.  As we move through Wells’ life, we will pause regularly to read other literary and historical texts that are from or about the period in which she lived, the people with whom she interacted, and the issues and events that shaped her experience.  The novels, poems, stories, and autobiographical narratives we engage will bring alive the culture of which Wells was a part; at the same time, the historical documents we explore will clarify what is at stake in the personal and imaginative narratives. 

EVIE SHOCKLEY, Assistant Professor of English, is the author of two collections of poetry: a half-red sea (Carolina Wren Press, 2006) and the new black (Wesleyan University Press, forthcoming 2011).  Her current research focuses on poetry as well and has culminated in a manuscript titled “Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry.”  She has also published articles exploring the phenomenon she calls “gothic homelessness” in African American literature and culture.  She teaches courses in African American literature and creative writing.  Her interest in teaching this seminar comes from a few diverse sources: her graduate school research on the ideology of domesticity and its implications for African Americans; her engagement with Constitutional law and issues of civil rights during her years in law school; and her fascination with biographies of strong, unusual people.



Identity in Ancient Greece: Belonging and Otherness
01:090:255 Index #09298
Professor Thomas Figueira - SAS - Classics
W 09:50A-12:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

A naive and erroneous view of ancient Greek civilization would describe it as the work of “dead white European males”. This not only misstates the nature of diversity in ancient civilizations but also implies a false conception of the nature of socialization and acculturation in ancient western society. In our seminar, we are going to explore the interaction of ancient Greek political classes with others who have been rightly or wrongly considered to be marginal to such societies, including women, slaves, individuals from different ethnic or racial groups, and those who varied in their sexual behaviors.  It is my hope not only to impart a reasonable amount of information and interpretation about the nature of ancient Greek social institutions, but also to explore social identities in a cultural setting that is arguably ancestral to our own.

THOMAS J. FIGUEIRA was born on Broadway in Manhattan in 1948 and educated in the public schools of New York City and Poughkeepsie, New York. He received his B.A. in Liberal Arts from Bensalem College of Fordham University in 1970 and his Ph.D. in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania in 1977. He is a Professor (II) of Classics and of Ancient History at Rutgers, where he teaches courses in ancient history, Greek, Latin, and classical civilization in the departments of History and Classics and in interdisciplinary programs. He has taught over fifty different courses. He is the author of Aegina (1981), Athens and Aigina in the Age of Imperial Colonization (1991), Excursions in Epichoric History (1993), The Power of Money: Coinage and Politics in the Athenian Empire (1998), co-author of Wisdom from the Ancients (2001); editor of Spartan Society (2004) and co-editor of Theognis of Megara: Poetry and the Polis (1985). In his areas of interest in Greek history and literature, he has written numerous articles, chapters, contributions, and reviews, that number around one hundred in their totalality. In recent years, Figueira has begun to produce scholarship in Comparative Studies in collaboration with his sister, the noted Comparatist, D.M. Figueira. For details, see classics.rutgers.edu/tjf.



Apocalypse Now?  Religious Movements and the End of Time
01:090:256 Index #15067
Professor Emma Wasserman - SAS - Religion
TTH 02:15–3:35P
Loree Hall Rm 131
Douglass Campus

From the book of Revelation to recent whispers about the year 2012, many leaders and texts speak about a coming time of apocalyptic violence, upheaval, and judgment. The seminar treats ancient, Medieval, and contemporary apocalyptic movements comparatively. Case studies will include the Jewish apocalyptic movement associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls and Pauline Christianity, Medieval apocalypticism surrounding Joachim of Fiore and the Crusades, and more contemporary movements such as Jonestown, Heaven’s gate, and the Left Behind series of Christian thrillers. One goal will be to test certain theories of apocalypticism and millenarianism in these different cases; another will be to situate these movement within relevant historical, social, and literary contexts. Peter Worsley’s classic study of Cargo Cults in Melanesia will serve as a foundational social-scientific approach to millenarianism but students will be encouraged to pursue a variety of methodological approaches including those critical of Worsley.

The first part of the seminar treats theories of millenarianism, focusing especially on Worsley’s The Trumpet Shall Sound and subsequent critiques of and alternatives to it, while also introducing contemporary examples drawn from films such as Hal Lindsey’s ‘The Late Great Planet Earth’. The course then turns to the ancient apocalyptic movements focusing on the Dead Sea Scrolls community and earliest Christianity where the focus will be on Pauline Christianity, the gospel of Mark, and Revelation. Part three turns to medieval apocalyptic or millenarian texts and movements, focusing especially on Joachim of Fiore and the relation between apocalyptic thought and violence in the Crusades. Part four turns back again to more contemporary movements such as Heavens Gate, Waco, and Jonestown with David Chidester’s study Salvation and Suicide, providing for a rich contextualization of Jonestown. Central aims of the final part of the course will be to consider new religious movements and millenarian thought, the relationship between millenarianism, violence, and terrorism, and the possibility of identifying apocalyptic thought in modern secular movements.

EMMA WASSERMAN is an assistant professor of religion whose work focuses on Christian origins. She is currently working on a book about apocalyptic beliefs and expectations in the earliest period of Christianity and has previously published on the Christian appropriation of Platonic philosophy. She received her BA from Brown University, her PhD from Yale University, and before coming to Rutgers in 2008 she taught at Brown University and Reed College.  



Financial Crises in Historical Perspective
01:090:257 Index #09299
Professor Michael Bordo - SAS - Economics
M 09:50-12:50A
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

The world has just emerged from a financial crisis and a deep recession. This is not the first time.  Indeed financial crises can be traced back to early modern times.  This seminar will focus on the issue of financial crises from an historical perspective.  It will survey the history of banking and currency crises across the world for the past century and a half, but focus primarily on the experience in the US and UK.

It will also examine the empirical evidence on crisis incidences, crisis severity and international crisis transmissions.  Finally the seminar considers the issue of policy in dealing with crises, with focus on the lender of last resort.



Evolution of the Language Faculty
01:090:258 Index #09300
Professor Kenneth Safir - SAS - Linguistics
TTH 11:30A-12:50P
35 College Avenue Rm 102
College Ave Campus

It is often pointed out by linguists that human languages have properties and functions that no other animal communication systems seem to have in anything like the same range of complexity and flexibility. What is it that humans have in their head that permits them to have such complex linguistic interaction and how did humans come by it? In accounting for how such complexity could arise in humans, what sort of processes of evolution must be appealed to? How does the design of the mental objects we have evidence for (i.e., grammars) reflect the sorts of evolutionary processes that must have given rise to them?

It is no longer seriously controversial that human beings have an inborn linguistic ability that permits any normal child to acquire a human language as long as he or she is exposed to the language of the community in which he or she is raised. There is quite a bit of controversy, however, as to how much of this inborn linguistic ability arises from language-specific mental faculties, and how much of it arises simply from a more complex interaction of faculties of the sort that exist in other kinds of animals, primates particularly. However, if certain linguistic abilities are indeed peculiar to humans, what might be the role of evolutionary processes in shaping grammatical form?

The seminar will be designed to expose students to the reasoning and mechanisms that the theory of evolution has given rise to, on the one hand, and the special challenges that the application of these principles to human grammar poses, on the other. Very rudimentary formal training in phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics will be offered as general background. Readings will include works on evolutionary theory, human paleontology, genetics, non-linguistic human cognition, comparative animal cognition, brain anatomy, language acquisition, modern linguistic theory, as well as some of the new literature that has sought to explain the emergence of linguistic faculties in evolutionary terms.

KEN SAFIR received his Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT in 1982 after many detours from academic life. He has been teaching at Rutgers since 1984. He is best known for his work on language typology, syntactic theory, and the syntactician’s view of the syntax/semantics interface, but his work has also touched on questions of language acquisition and the philosophy of language. He has linguistic expertise in Romance, Germanic and African languages and he is currently the principal investigator for a research project and website dedicated to the study of African languages (supported a National Science Foundation grant). His most recent work touches on evolutionary questions with respect to the origin of the human language faculty and more specifically, to the origin of human syntax. He is also interested in exploring the relation between linguistic semantic distinctions embedded in grammar to the semantic distinctions more typically discussed in psychological and philosophical accounts of the theory of mind.



Globalization and Social Movements
01:090:259 Index #10408
Professor Zakia Salime - SAS - Sociology
M 12:35-03:35P
Hickman Rm 132
Douglass Campus

Globalization has shaped new patterns of collective behavior. This seminar explores the impact of globalizations on aspects of collective mobilization by transnational actors. The purpose of this seminar is first to help recognize how global trends have shaped contemporary social movements; second to understand how these movements have become globalizing forces in their own rights. We will explore these connections by looking at patterns of mobilization discourses and politics of major contemporary social movements. We will focus on three types of movements: social justice and human rights women’s rights peace movements and the religious right. We will see how they respond to the ‘opportunities’ and ‘threats’ brought by globalization to (1) global justice and human welfare (2) group identity (3) global security.

This seminar will draw on a broad and interdisciplinary theoretical framework in the social science in order to meet the various interests of students and enable them to connect these interests to academic debates in fields as diverse as media and cultural studies anthropology sociology political theory feminist economics and theory environmental and global studies.

ZAKIA SALIME is an Assistant Professor in Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies.  She teaches courses in comparative feminism(s), gender, globalization, social movements, international inequalities and postcoloniality. Her research interests include, race, empire, the political economy of the "war on terror", development policies, Islamic societies and movements, Middle East and US relations. She is currently working on a book manuscript on the interactions among the feminist and the Islamist women's movements in Morocco.



Medical Ethics and the Law
01:090:260 Index #11899
Professor Stanley Vitello - GSE - Education Psychology
TH 09:50A-12:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

This seminar will consider the justifications for overriding the individual choice of mentally competent people who want physician assistance in terminating their lives; or who want access to drugs that have not been approved by federal agencies as the Food and Drug Administration; or who want treatment notwithstanding their physicians' data-based judgment that such treatment would be "futile"; or who want to participate in medical experiments deemed "excessively risky" by state and federal regulators; or who want to donate or sell their organs for transplantation.

The seminar will also evaluate the ways that the individual choice norm has been extended to or withheld form individuals who have lost competence or who (because of mental impairment) had never been or (because they were infants or fetuses) had not yet become competent to decide for themselves.

STANLEY VITELLO teaches courses on disability law and policy in the Graduate School of Education. He is affiliated with the Center on Bio-ethics at Yale University where he received a law degree. Professor Vitello's scholarship address quality of life issues confronting persons with intellectual disabilities across the life span.  



Anti Apartheid and Civil Rights Movements: King and Mandela - Lessons In Leadership
01:090:261 Index #09301
Professor Ronald Quincy - School of Social Work
TTH 04:30-05:50P
390 George Street Room 515
Downtown New Brunswick

This seminar will examine the strategic ways in which leaders have sought to institutionalize their activism and public dissent.  We will utilize an interactive discussion format. On a macro-level, the focus will include founders of civil and human rights organizations and other social change pressure groups.  On a micro-level, we will contrast leadership roles of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his co-founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and Nelson Mandela and his leadership role in the African National Congress (ANC).

Students will explore a combination of readings of great social movement thinkers such as David Thoreau and draw from original case studies to provide comparative and contrasting ideas of King and Mandela, along with other influencers.  The important role of interracial and interfaith groups during these time periods will be explored along with issues pertaining to self-sacrifice and the ethics of Movement leadership will also be addressed.

Utilizing real world interactions with historical ANC and civil rights activists, the instructor will facilitate student led electronic interviews of selected leaders.  Students will form in class role-play debate teams. In lieu of a final examination, students may develop a comprehensive annotated leadership chronology and leadership decision analysis matrix for a selected historical figure.

Students will prepare mock contemporary conversations between Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela as they reflect on one another’s political and social change “best practices” and leadership lessons learned.

RONALD l. QUINCY, PhD (Michigan State University) is currently Director, Center for Nonprofit Management and Governance, and Lecturer (Professor), School of Social Work, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Dr. Quincy teaches courses in the nonprofit and management concentration. His research interests are organizational leadership, governance, community empowerment, and diversity in the human services sector. Dr. Quincy is formerly an associate vice president at Harvard University, where he also served as assistant to the president of Harvard.  Dr. Quincy has served two governors as a state cabinet officer in Michigan, Special Assistant to the Secretary, US Department of Housing and Urban Development, Executive Director, Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, President of the White House Fellows Foundation, Executive Director/President Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, Foreign Affairs Advisor, US State Department, and Director of the Office of Human Resource Policy, State of Michigan. Ron has served on special advisory boards for a number of institutions including MIT, Harvard, and Michigan State. He also served on the governing board of Egleston Children's Hospital (Emory University), Michigan Criminal Justice Commission, Governor's Task Force on School Violence and Vandalism, among others public service agencies.  Earlier in his career, Dr. Quincy served as a White House Fellow.


* CANCELLED* Never Heard of Her: Women Writers, Artists and Intellectuals from the 11th to the 18th Centuries
01:090:262 Index #14754
Professor Joseph Consoli - Research & Instructional Svcs-Libraries
M 02:50-05:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

While many women accomplished in the arts have been recognized from the late twentieth century to the present, before that it was rare to find a woman included in the ranks of great minds.  They were usually the object rather than the creator of art. And, in fact, when they did appear, it was often because their accomplishments were just too difficult to deny or ignore. Still, there was always "a little something" which made one believe that she had obtained such notoriety by some special, unique, odd, even aberrant means.  Some cut their hair, suggesting they were modeling themselves after men, others took men's names, many were reported to have loose morals, still others only excelled because their fathers or husbands taught them their artistic trades. In this course we will look at women, many women, who have excelled in the humanistic fields from the medieval ages through the 18th centuries. Women whose names should be common place in their disciplines and in academe, but who still have not achieved the prominence they deserve.



American Regions and Regionalism: Growth and Decline
01:090:263 Index #15071  (cross- listed with 10:762:495:01 Index#12149)
Professor Frank Popper - Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
W 01:10-04:10P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

This seminar explores the American history, planning and prospects of large rural regions (e.g., the Upper Midwest) and large metropolitan areas that amount to urban regions (Philadelphia). The course analyzes the ideas of regions and regionalism in American life, explores the ideas' artistic, environmental and policy consequences, compares the regions' experiences and projects them into the future. The course will make cross-national comparisons, especially with Europe and East Asia. The course should draw students interested in American studies, economics, geography, history, literature, planning or politics. The instructor tries to make the course as interdisciplinary as possible.

FRANK J. POPPER, a professor at Rutgers' Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy and Princeton's Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, has degrees from Haverford and Harvard. His research has explored the Great Plains, Midwest and Lower Mississippi Delta, the politics of land-use planning, Locally Unwanted Land Uses (or LULUs, an idea he invented), the emergence of shrinking cities, the return of the American frontier and the effects of concentrated landownership. He works frequently with his wife, Deborah Popper, a geographer at the College of Staten Island/City University of New York and Princeton. He chairs the board of the Great Plains Restoration Council, is on the board of the National Center for Frontier Communities and helped found both.



Origin of Writing and Civilization
01:090:264 Index #09302
Professor Kuang Yu Chen - SAS - Chemistry & Chemical Biology
M 05:00-08:00P
Wright Rieman Building Rm A202
Busch Campus

This seminar will focus on two related topics: origin of writing and origin of civilization.  The four original writings, namely, Sumerian cuneiform, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Chinese oracle bone inscriptions, and Mayan hieroglyphics, will be introduced, including decipherment and epigraphy. Students will learn the basics on reading these inscriptions. We will then examine the culture landscape of these ancient lands and analyze the driving forces that led to the invention of these four writings. As the genesis of civilization was tightly coupled to writing, we will discuss the role of writing in this process. The key features of these four primordial civilizations will be examined and compared. Finally, the controversy of the Harappan writing and civilization will also be discussed. 

KUANG YU CHEN, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, is working  in the area of chemical biology and cancer biology, particularly on the biochemistry and function of polyamines,  eIF5A, and  hypusine formation in cancer cell growth and death.  He is also an Adjunct Professor of Asian Languages and Cultures at Rutgers. In the humanity area, his interest is on Early China (1600 -1000 BCE), particularly the Shang history and oracle bone inscriptions.  He is writing a book on the reading of oracle bone inscriptions.  He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,  a member of Columbia University Early China Seminar and a Board Member of Confucius Institute at Rutgers.  He holds B.S. degree from National Taiwan University (1967) and Ph.D. from Yale University (1972).



Creating Art and Discovering Science Through Visualization in Polynomiography
01:090:265 Index #09303
Professor Bahman Kalantari - SAS - Computer Science
TH  03:20-06:20P
Lucy Stone Hall Rm A215
Livingston Campus

This seminar will introduce a novel and interdisciplinary field, polynomiography, the fine art and science of visualizing a polynomial equation through computer-generated images.  Students will learn the basics of the underlying mathematical and algorithmic foundation of polynomiography aimed at solving a polynomial equation, a task present in every branch of science and mathematics.  However, through polynomiography and its software students will also learn to create art and design by turning the polynomial root-finding problem upside down.  While polynomiography allows virtual painting using the computer screen as its canvas, it also inspires new artistic styles and actual paintings, whether originated directly from polynomiography software, or indirectly from its concepts.

In this seminar, students will be introduced to a range of possible course projects to be carried out either individually or in small groups. Sample projects consist of: 2D or 3D art- work using polynomiography software, e.g. as prints or video productions; visualizations or animations, as art or as means in conveying a mathematical property or concept; comparison of polynomioraphic images and traditional human art and design. Students may also propose their own creative projects.

The mathematical prerequisite for the course includes Calculus, and interest to explore.

BAHMAN KALANTARI is a professor of computer science and the inventor of the U.S. patented technology of Polynomiography. His research interests lie in theory, algorithms, and applications in a wide range of topics that include mathematical programming; discrete and combinatorial optimization; polynomial root-finding and approximation theory; and Polynomiography, a mathematically inspired medium for art, math, education, and science. Kalantari's Polynomiography has received national and international media recognition that include the Star-Ledger, New Jersey Savvy Living Magazine, Science News, DISCOVER Magazine, Tiede (popular science magazine of Finland), Muy Interesante (popular science magazine of Spain) and more. His artworks have been exhibited in such venues as a traveling art-math exhibition in France, SIGGRAPH Art Gallery in LA, as well as at Rutgers and around New Jersey. His artworks have also appeared on the cover of publications such as Computer Graphics Quarterly, Princeton University Press book, art-math conference proceedings, and in science magazines and high school math books. He has delivered numerous lectures, including invited presentations in USA, France, Austria, Italy, Canada, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Poland, Denmark, as well as in middle and high schools in New Jersey, and K-12 teacher conferences. He hopes to internationalize Polynomiography as a medium for art, math, science, and education, and at many different levels. He has also authored a book, ``Polynomial Root-Finding and Polynomiography,’’  December 2008. www.polynomiography.com



Cosmology from Ancient Greece to the Modern Era
01:090:266 Index #10888
Professor Jeremy Sellwood - SAS - Physics & Astronomy
MW 03:20-04:40P
SEC 204
Busch Campus

For centuries, mankind has attempted to understand the universe in which we find ourselves. The motions of the Sun, Moon and planets have intrigued some of the most powerful minds throughout history. The astronomical foundations laid by Aristarchus, Aristotle, Ptolemy and

others contained both surprising insights and profound misconceptions. Most errors were dispelled in the Renaissance by Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and Newton. The true scale of the universe was not grasped until the work of Einstein and Hubble in the early the 20th century and our understanding of the universe is still developing today.

The seminar will trace this history, focusing both on the scientific concepts and the characters behind them. We will review the observational data that demand explanation and the development of the scientific process. We will conclude with an assessment of our current picture and ask in what ways it may still be wrong. Students will not need any college level math or science, but competence in high school math, including geometry and science will be assumed.

JERRY SELLWOOD completed his PhD in Astronomy at Manchester University, England in 1977. He has held positions at the European Southern Observatory, Groningen University (The Netherlands), Cambridge University (England), and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. He has been on the Faculty at Rutgers University since 1991.

He is a member of the International Astronomical Union and of the American Astronomical Society. He is also a Life Member of Clare Hall Cambridge and recipient of the 1999 Graduate Teaching Award from Rutgers Graduate School.  His main interests are structure and evolution of galaxies, their formation and their dark matter content. He is an expert on disk dynamics, bars and spirals in galaxies, and uses state-of-the-art N-body simulations to learn about these systems. He has published over 100 papers, edited three volumes of conference proceedings, and delivered more than 40 invited lectures at international conferences.



Complementarity in Physics Biology and Philosophy
01:090:267 Index #11043
Professor Sungchul Ji - Pharm - Pharmacology & Toxicology
TTH 01:40-03:00P
ARC 207
Busch Campus

Recent developments in molecular and cell biology indicate that Bohr’s  principle of complementarity originally derived from quantum physics may play a fundamental role in living processes in the form of information-energy complementarity.   Complementarity-like concepts also occur in psychology, philosophy, semiotics (the study of signs), and world religions.  The universality of Bohr’s complementarity may be traced to the complementary neuro-electrophysiological functions of the human brain, including the dichotomy of the left and right hemispheres.  These findings motivated the formulation of a new philosophical framework known as complementarism in the early 1990’s, the essential content of which being that the ultimate reality perceived and communicated by the human brain is a complementary union of irreconcilable opposites [S. Ji, “Complementarism: A Biology-Based Philosophical Framework to Integrate Western Science and Eastern Tao,” in Psychotherapy East and West: Integration of Psychotherapies, The Korean Academy of Psychotherapists, Seoul, Korea, 1995, pp. 518-548].

In the latter half of the 1990’s, it was found that living cells use a language (called cell language) whose design principles are very similar to those of human language [S. Ji, BioSystems 44: 17-39 (1997)].  This finding further strengthens the link between biology and philosophy, in agreement with the philosophies of Aristotle (384-322 BC), Spinoza (1632-1677), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907-1961). Thus, complementarism, which is rooted in both modern biological sciences and classical and modern philosophical systems, may provide a powerful new philosophical framework for integrating not only science and philosophy on the one hand, but also apparently irreconcilable philosophies and religions of the world on the other.

During the first half of the semester, students will be introduced to the essentials of complementarism, and their physical and metaphysical supports derived from physics, chemistry, biology, linguistics, philosophy, and semiotics.  The second half of the semester will be devoted to students’ presentations consisting of short talks (10-minute long) and final seminars (30-minute long) on topics related to some aspects of complementarism or to its application to solving practical problems in contemporary life.  The final grade will be based on classroom participation, including short talks (30%, two short talks per student), final seminar (30%), and a written version of the final seminar (10–15 pages, single spaced, including figures, tables, and references; 40%) due one week after the oral presentation.

Pre-requisite:  A college-level introductory course (or equivalents) in biology, chemistry, or physics.   

DR. SUNGCHUL JI received a BA degree in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Minnesota in 1965 and a Ph.D. degree in physical organic chemistry in 1970 from the State University of New York at Albany. After a series of postdoctoral research and teaching experiences in enzymology (University of Wisconsin, Madison), biophysics (University of Pennsylvania), systems physiology (Max Planck Institute, Dortmund, West Germany), and toxicology (University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill), Dr. Ji has been teaching pharmacology, toxicology, and computational/theoretical cell biology at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, Rutgers University since 1982.  Dr. Ji founded the Theoretical Aspects of Pharmacology course in 2000 at Rutgers and is the author of Molecular Theory of the Living Cell: Conceptual Foundations, Molecular Mechanisms and Applications, to be published by Springer, New York, in 2010.



Science on the Nanoscale
01:090:268 Index #11142
Professor Frederic Cosandey - Engn - Materials Science and Engineering
W 08:40 – 11:40A
SEC-204
Busch Campus

The word “nano” has now entered our every-day life and has been used to describe small objects from electronic devices to very, very small entities like viruses or a small group of atoms forming clusters.  These nano-objects are all around us; they affect properties of materials such as color and are used in a large variety of technological applications like TV screens or phones as well as in biology and medicine for application like drug delivery or cancer treatments.  Such nano-objects are invisible to the naked eye but can be visualized using electron microscopes. 

What is an electron microscope? Is it just a scientific instrument or can it provide images with some aesthetic value? What is the 3D structure of viruses and carbon nanotubes? Can we see atoms and the atomic structure of materials?  How are material properties, processes and science affected by the nanoscale?  These are questions that will be addressed in this seminar.  Discussions will include the historical development of microscopes to the design of modern instruments with practical examples in materials science, physics and biology.  There will be laboratory visits where the students will experienced first-hand the operation of an electron microscope and yes, see directly the atomic structure of materials.

The goal of the seminar is to introduce students to various science topics which are controlled by the nanoscale and to show with examples and direct observation what our nano-world is made off.  There will be assignments where the students will review a particular topic describing the science and visualization of the nano-world as observed by electron microscopy. 

There are no pre-requisites for this seminar but some high school level background in physics, chemistry or biology will be helpful.

FREDERIC COSANDEY received his MS and PhD degree in Materials Science from Carnegie Mellon University.  He spent three years at Columbia University as a post-doctoral fellow before joining Rutgers University in 1982.  He is currently Professor of Materials Science in the School of Engineering and is head of the electron microscopy facility.   His teaching and research interests are centered on understanding structure –property relationship in materials and the determination of material chemistry and structure at the nanoscale.   He is currently studying new nano-materials for Li-Ion batteries.  



The Philosophy of Socrates
01:090:269 Index #17294
Professor Alan Code - SAS - Philosophy
W 04:30-07:30P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

Although he left no philosophical writings at all, Socrates was a pivotal thinker in ancient Greek culture in general and philosophy in particular.  Using a short question and answer method of dialectical inquiry he would examine the ethical beliefs of anybody who claimed to have knowledge, and typically would undermine such claims by showing how the internal inconsistency of his respondent's moral beliefs. 

Plato wrote a number of fairly short dialogues that represent Socrates carrying about his characteristic activity, and from them we can learn the key features of Socratic method. Socrates was the first to turn his attention to the problem of giving general definitions of moral concepts with an eye to using them as a basis for knowledge, and yet famously he professed ignorance.  In addition these dialogues introduce us to some of the fundamental themes of ancient Greek moral psychology, including the idea that virtue (or excellence of character) always contributes to happiness and the Socratic paradoxes that virtue is knowledge, that all wronging is involuntary, and that human virtue is so unified that it is impossible to possess one virtue with possessing them all. 

In this seminar we will read most of the so-called 'Socratic' dialogues of Plato (Apology, Crito, Euthyphro, Laches, Protagoras, Meno, Hippias Minor, Charmides and Lysis) as well as some of the current secondary literature on the above topics.  As new topics are introduced we will have short presentations by students followed by in depth examinations of the accompanying philosophy.  In consultation with the instructor each student will pick a seminar topic.  Towards the end of the seminar each student will give a brief presentation to the class on their topic, and will then write a final version to submit at the end of the course.  Possible seminar topics include: The unity of virtue, the possibility of knowing the better and doing the worse, no one errs willingly, Socratic dialectic (the unexamined life is not worth living), civil disobedience, the definition and moral knowledge, objective standards and moral relativism.

No previous knowledge of philosophy or ancient Greek culture will be presupposed.  This course should serve both as an introduction to ancient Greek ethics and to some of the perennial issues in moral philosophy. 

ALAN CODE received his Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and is a Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy.  He specializes on ancient Greek philosophy, and his recent research has concentrated on issues in Aristotle's metaphysics and logic, and related topics in his natural philosophy and biology. Most of his publications pertain to general issues about the role of logic in metaphysical inquiry, connections between epistemology and metaphysics, and various aspects of his philosophy of nature (including the definition of color and the explanation of weight).  Part of his current research is on the way in which Socrates, and Socratic method, played a key role in the development of ancient Greek dialectic and scientific method, and had a formative role in the origin of Plato and Aristotle's metaphysical doctrines.  



Bodies in Social Interaction
01:090:270 Index #14755
Professor Galina Bolden - SC&I - Communication
TH 01:10-04:10P
Course Meets in Records Hall Alcove
College Ave Campus

Our bodies play a central role in how we construct meaning and actions through social interaction with each other in the diverse settings that make up a society’s social worlds. In this seminar, we will analyze embodied behaviors not as an isolated, self-contained code but in relation to language, processes of human interaction, and the rich settings where people conduct their lives. We will examine the role of different kinds of embodied behaviors (i.e., body orientation and posture, eye gaze, gestures, laughter, prosody, etc.) in carrying out fundamental human activities in talk-in-interaction, including establishing joint foci of attention, coordinating turn-taking, repairing interactional problems, negotiating meaning, and constructing and negotiating interpersonal relationships. We will also consider embodied communicative behaviors in a variety of professional settings, such as courtrooms, archeological sites, doctors’ offices, and public speaking arenas. This seminar is interdisciplinary and will incorporate materials from the fields of communication, anthropology, linguistics, and sociology.

Videotapes of actual, everyday interactions will be used as a primary source of data, and ordinary face-to-face interactions will be treated as a prime site for studying embodied communicative conduct.  We will inspect videotaped recordings of interactions to discover how people assemble the actions that make up ordinary social life and will produce empirically-based analyses of some of those practices.

Students will be engaged in a guided semester-long research project that will involve video recording, transcribing, and analyzing a naturalistic face-to-face interaction. The goals of the project are to develop technical and analytic skills for conducting empirical research on social interaction and to produce a detailed, original analysis of an embodied interactional phenomenon.

GALINA BOLDEN received her BA in Linguistics from the University of Minnesota, and her MA and PhD in Applied Linguistics from University of California, Los Angeles. Her research examines naturally occurring, video/audio-recorded social interactions in a variety of settings: ordinary conversations between family and friends, doctor-patient interactions conducted with the help of language interpreters, and conversations among co-workers at workplaces. She has conducted research on talk in Russian and English languages, as well as bilingual Russian-English conversations. Her current project focuses on communication in Russian immigrant families in the US.



Communications and Human Values
01:090:271 Index #11155 (cross- listed with 04:189:441:01 Index#10537)
**Interview Required, By Special Permission.
Professor Richard Heffner - SC&I - Communication
T 09:50A-12:50P
Scott Hall Rm 201
College Ave Campus

**To setup an appointment, please contact Prof. Heffner at 212-799-7979 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  Prof. Heffner will hold interviews with students on Wednesday, April 7, and Thursday, April 8, from 8:30am-12:30pm and 2:00-5:00pm in Room 236 Scott Hall, College Avenue Campus.

This seminar is an intellectual inquiry into the development of American public policy as it relates to mass communications.  It is not a practicum, not a "how-to" seminar about film and television, or not about the media generally.

The seminar's purpose is to analyze how much of our sense of what it means to be an American early in the 21st century has been molded by the media -- first print and now increasingly electronic -- with particular reference to their socializing and value-legitimating content.  To learn then to deal appropriately and reasonably with such media power, students are asked first to identify their own respective approaches to the role of the state and its proper relationship to the individual through class discussion of such readings as Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, Robert Merton's Mass Persuasion, J. S. Mill's On Liberty, Herman Melville's Billy Budd, and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death; of such films as Hearts and Minds, JFK, and Fahrenheit 9/11; and of the increasingly unfair and unbalanced rants and raves of America's newer communications outlets.

Finally, class emphasis is placed on analyzing and resolving such contemporary media issues as a Fairness Doctrine (the real or imagined "chilling effect" of a requirement for media fairness and balance); cameras in the courts (do televised trials enhance justice, or instead create a "mobocracy", with trial by a new jury of public opinion?); the importance of journalistic "privilege"; and media self-regulation (can there in fact be meaningful voluntary self-discipline in a free market, free speech, mass media-driven society?).

RICHARD D. HEFFNER is University Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where he began to teach in 1948.  Trained as an American historian, Mr. Heffner is the author of A Documentary History of the United States and the editor of Alexis de Tocqueville's classic Democracy In America.  His most recent book, a collaboration entitled Conversations With Elie Wiesel, derives from The Open Mind, the prize winning television program which he began in 1956 and which he still produces and moderates each week on public broadcasting stations around the country.  In 1961, after serving on-the-air and as an executive at CBS, ABC and NBC, Professor Heffner played a leading role in the acquisition and activation of Channel 13 in New York, becoming its Founding General Manager.  For twenty years (1974 to 1994), he also commuted to Hollywood, serving as Chairman of the Board of the motion picture industry's voluntary film classification and rating system.  Professor Heffner and his wife, Dr. Elaine Heffner, live in New York City.  They have two sons -- Daniel, a filmmaker; and Andrew, an Assistant New York State Attorney General -- and four grandchildren.

Spring 2010 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

**NO SPECIAL PERMISSION NUMBERS WILL BE GIVEN OUT DURING PRE-REGISTRATION FOR CLOSED SECTIONS.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO CHECK THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES FROM NOW UNTIL ADD/DROP PERIOD IN THE SPRING SEMESTER.**


Human Development & Public Policy
01:090:270 Index #69625 (cross- listed with 10:762:497:01)
Professor Stephanie Curenton – Bloustein School of Planning & Public Policy
T 03:55-06:55P
Voorhees Chapel  005
Douglass Campus

OPTIONAL: Students may also register for a 1 credit community service learning option 10:762:299:01 Index#74771.

The purpose of this seminar is to provide an overview of the major theoretical perspectives and empirical findings that guide our understanding of child, family, and education policy. The seminar explores the effects child and family policies and programs have on children's short- and long-term development. Students will use their reading, writing, reasoning, and discussion skills to demonstrate they have accomplished this goal.  In addition, students who are interested will have an opportunity to get hands-on experience doing classroom observations for Head Start programs.  This hands-on experience is being offered by an additional 1 credit community service learning option to the course.

STEPHANIE M. CURENTON earned her Ph.D. in Developmental and Community Psychology from the University of Virginia. After receiving her degree, she spent two years as a Society for Research on Child Development Policy Fellow, examining early care and education interventions and policies in the Administration for Children and Families, Child Care Bureau.  Dr. Curenton studies the development of low-income and minority children within various ecological contexts, such as parent-child interactions, early childhood education programs, and related state and federal policies. She has been the principal investigator on a National Research Council Pre-doctoral Fellowship from the Ford Foundation and several university-funded research projects.  Presently, she serves as the co-director for a federally funded study with the Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), investigating the impact of pre-K expansion on child care for low-income families. This project is funded by a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Program Research and Evaluation.  Dr. Curenton has been recognized as a national leader in the early education field through her appointment to the governing board of the National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC).


Exploring the Nano-World with Electron Microscopy **CANCELLED**
01:090:271 Index #69626
Professor Frederic Cosandey - Engineering - Materials Science and Engineering
TH 01:40-04:40P
LSH A215
Livingston Campus

The word “nano” has now entered our every-day life and has been used (and misused) to describe small objects from listening devices to very, very small entities like viruses or a small group of atoms forming clusters.  These nano-objects are all around us; they affect properties of materials such as color and are used in a large variety of technological applications like TV screens or phones as well as in biology and medicine for application like drug delivery or cancer treatments.  Such nano-objects are invisible to the naked eye but can be visualized using electron microscopes. 

What is an electron microscope? Is it just a scientific instrument or can it provide images with some aesthetic value? What is the 3D structure of viruses and carbon nanotubes? Can we see atoms and the atomic structure of materials?  These are questions that will be addressed in this seminar.  Discussions will range from the historical development of electron microscopes to the design of modern instruments with practical examples in materials science and biology.  There will be laboratory visits where the students will experienced first-hand the operation of an electron microscope and yes!…see directly the atomic structure of materials.

The goal of the seminar is to introduce students to the nano-world and to show with examples and direct observation what our nano-world is made off.  There will be assignments where the students will review a particular topic and describe the nano-world as observed through the lens of an electron microscope. 

There are no pre-requisites for this seminar but some background in physics, chemistry or biology will be helpful.

FREDERIC COSANDEY received his MS and PhD degree in Materials Science from Carnegie Mellon University.  He spent three years at Columbia University as a post-doctoral fellow before joining Rutgers University in 1982. He is currently Professor of Materials Science in the School of Engineering and is head of the electron microscopy facility. His teaching and research interest center on understanding materials properties and the determination of their atomic structure. 


Representing Addiction in America
01:090:272 Index #74248
Professor Sara Harrington - Research & Instructional Services-Libraries
TTH 07:40-09:00P
35 College Avenue Rm 102
College Avenue Campus

This seminar will examine representations of alcohol/drug use and abuse in visual and literary culture in the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The course will begin with an exploration of the development of a disease concept of alcohol abuse. We will examine the visual culture of alcoholism and the temperance movement in nineteenth and early twentieth century high and low art. Additional issues for examination include the imagery of Prohibition, cigarette advertisements, and the visual culture of the Alcoholics Anonymous movement. In addition to still imagery in art and advertising, the course will consider the moving image, and examine the televised Public Service Announcements (PSA’s) of the late twentieth century related to the so-called “War on Drugs." Finally, we will move to consider contemporary reality television shows such as “Intervention” and “Celebrity Rehab.” This imagery will be set and studied against the social and cultural history of nineteenth and twentieth century America.

This interdisciplinary seminar will include elements from the study of art history and visual culture, media studies, American history and American studies, and the history of medicine.

Students will conduct original research on primary source material including both images and literature from the period under study. Assignments will include one short paper of 3 pages, two oral presentations, and one longer paper of 15 pages.

SARA HARRINGTON is the Art Librarian here at Rutgers. She holds a Master's in Library Science and a Ph.D. in Art History, and has written on 19th century French art, World War II posters, and Shaker art and material culture. Dr. Harrington looks forward to working with Honors Program students, whom she first met while facilitating Honors Colloquia. She hopes that this course will engage honors students and promote visual literacy, the critical exploration of the images that surround us, and foster information literacy, the transformation of information into knowledge.


Jung for the 21st Century
01:090:273 Index #69627
Professor Steven Walker - SAS - Asian Languages and Cultures
T 09:50A -12:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

This seminar will introduce students to a system of psychology that, after having been overshadowed by Freudian psychology in the 20th century, is coming into its own in the 21st.  The seminar will present basic principles and paradigms, and will engage students in a number of practical applications in the areas of the psychology of everyday life: the role of mythology in dreams and social life, religion, the analysis of films and literary texts, and self-analysis.  No special preparation is needed, but students should come with an attitude of openness towards what may seem at first to be somewhat uncanny and even disturbing aspects of the unconscious mind.

In the area of the psychology of everyday life, Jungian psychology makes its greatest contribution through its dynamic presentation and analysis of the shadow (the unconscious and repressed personality), the anima and animus (the repressed contrasexual personality), and typology (categories of psychological functioning).  Students in this seminar should be ready for some creative self-analysis!  We will also deal with the disturbing issue of psychopathy/sociopathy as presented by Guggenbuhl-Craig, one of Jung's most original followers. 

Jungian psychology also values the creative arts, and sees them as performing a remarkable role in the psychic life of the individual and society.  Accordingly, we will analyze several narrative and film texts from a Jungian perspective: Toni Morrison's Sula, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jane Campion's The Piano, and other texts chosen as the occasion arises.

The textbook will be my own recent presentation of the Jungian system and its later developments, Jung and the Jungians on Myth: an Introduction (2002).  We will also study Guggenbuhl-Craig's The Emptied Soul and Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

STEVEN F. WALKER, Professor of Comparative Literature, holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin (B.A. in classical Greek) and Harvard (M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature).  He teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate programs in Comparative Literature, and he is a direct descendent (really!) of Henry Rutgers.  He has been reading Jung voraciously since his undergraduate days.

 


Wonderful Life: Genes and Evolution
01:090:274 Index #69628
Professor Frank Deis - SAS - Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
MW 01:40-03:00P
ARC 105
Busch Campus

Life appears to have originated on Earth nearly 4.5 billion years ago when the oceans boiled and the atmosphere had no oxygen.  The changing conditions on our planet have defined the parameters within which life has existed.  An increase in the amount of oxygen in the air from 2.5 billion to 500 million years ago eventually permitted “modern” animals to exist.  Massive extinctions (especially at the end of the Permian Period) have narrowed the spectrum of species on the planet.

One theme of the seminar will be the origin of life, early evolution, implications for life in extreme environments, and possible life on Mars.  Students with an appreciation of chemistry will perhaps better understand the concepts in this part of the seminar than those without, but the readings are intended to be non-technical.

A second theme of the seminar is that science, as a human endeavor, is full of disagreements and political axes to grind.  One of the most controversial areas of evolutionary science is the connection between genes and behavior.  We will try to illuminate this controversy through class readings and discussions.

The reading materials throughout the seminar will be enhanced and complemented by materials in other media, especially video and film.  Books by Stephen Jay Gould and other writers on evolution and paleontology will be assigned.  Professor Deis will also bring in appropriate fossils, shells, and minerals from his collection.

Periodic papers will be assigned.  The factual content of the course will require an occasional short quiz.  Attendance and active class participation will contribute to each student’s grade.

FRANK DEIS studied Chemistry at Rice University and the University of Virginia, and Medicinal Chemistry at the Medical College of Virginia.  He has taught Biochemistry at Rutgers since 1977, and is author of Companion to Biochemistry (W.H. Freeman 2006).


British Novels and Film
01:090:275 Index #69739
Professor Dianne Sadoff - SAS - English
MW 02:50-04:10P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

What happens when a postmodern, postcolonial, or queer author rewrites the modern novel? Or adapts and films it? Wild things! Come along on this journey on which we will read rewritings and screen remediations of modern British novels. We’ll ask questions about our—and our authors’ and filmmakers’—historical moments and cultural locations, about racial, sexual, and gender positions from which to speak, write, and rewrite. We will encounter exciting new ways of thinking about classic novels of the recent past—as historical, cultural, and media documents.

Critical thinking about literature, culture, and film inquires into the categories that “general” cultural consumers normally take for granted, such as the concepts of authorship, writing, reading, and cultural production. The purpose of this seminar is to introduce students to the terminologies, methodologies, and writing strategies important in understanding the relationships among literature, history, and culture, ideas useful to anyone pursuing a major in the humanities or social sciences.

There will be a strong emphasis on assignments that teach the skills of critical thinking and literary writing. You will learn how to identify secondary sources in the library and on the web, and how to evaluate their authority and usefulness to you, the student-critic. You will learn the strategies of “close reading,” summary and paraphrasing, argumentation, methods of inquiry, and the framing of research questions. The techniques and abilities you learn in this class will prepare you for reading and writing in your next humanities or social science courses.

Students will be required to read assigned texts, attend class, and participate in discussion; to write one 10-15 page research paper and several process-oriented assignments; and to complete in-class and out-of class writing exercises.

DIANNE F. SADOFF studies nineteenth-century British literature and culture, psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory, and film adaptation.  Her books include Monsters of Affection: Dickens, Bronte and Eliot on Fatherhood; Sciences of the Flesh: Representing Body and Subject in Psychoanalysis; and the co-edited books, Teaching Theory to Undergraduates, and Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century.  She has completed a new book, Victorian Vogue: The Nineteenth-Century British Novel On Screen.  She attended Oberlin College, the University of Oregon, and the University of Rochester.  She has always been interested in interdisciplinary teaching and research.

Terror and Empire
01:090:276 Index #69740
Professor Jonah Siegel - SAS - English
F 01:10-04:10P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

What does it mean to be an empire in the modern era?  What is the relationship between fear and empire?  What is the political force of fear?  How is language affected by empire, by fear?  What is the effect of empire on the home (or "homeland”)?

From the middle of the nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth Great Britain came to know itself as the heart of a great empire.  This was also the period that saw the rise of a mass public and of an ever-broader form of national democracy.  How did literature reflect the anxieties of the imperial project?  Why do so many of the texts dealing with empire feature fearful protagonists or endangered homes?  In what ways were activities taking place at the edges of the empire related to the creation and manipulation of anxiety?

This seminar will consider texts that reflect on the project of empire, focusing in particular on the relation between fear and politics in a set of extremely effective, complex, and often moving works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Reading will include Heart of Darkness, Kim, Secret Agent, Waiting for the Barbarians, The War of the Worlds, 1984, and other novels, short stories and essays that reflect directly or indirectly on the interplay of language, terror, and empire, on the troubling relationship between the foreign and the domestic.

JONAH SIEGEL is a scholar of literature and culture from the nineteenth to the twentieth century.  His research has focused on the relation between literature and the fine arts in that period, but he also has a strong teaching interest in the literature and culture of the turn of the twentieth century, and on the complex relationship between literature and society. 


Cold War Culture
01:090:277 Index #69741
Professor David Greenberg - SCILS - Journalism & Media Studies
W 01:10-04:10P
35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Avenue Campus

The years just after World War II helped define American politics and culture in the half century that followed.  This seminar examines the Cold War that emerged, the politics of the era, and the culture that it created.  In the political realm, the topics that the seminar will explore include the origins of the Cold War, the Red Scare, domestic politics, espionage, and the civil rights movement.  Social issues examined will include the conformity of the era, the new material abundance, and feminism.  We will also look at examples of the era’s culture, including beat literature, film noir, Cold War journalism, abstract expressionist art, early television, and rock music.  By looking at the period from so many different angles, the seminar seeks to show the interconnectedness of politics, ideas, and culture; to complicate today’s clichés about the period; to locate the origins of patterns that persist in our own time; and to appreciate the differences of this era from our own.

Students will be assigned weekly readings, and participation in discussion is mandatory every week.  Students will be required to submit one short paper and one long paper.

DAVID GREENBERG is Associate Professor in the departments of Journalism & Media Studies and History.  His specialty is U.S. political history.  He earned his BA from Yale University (summa cum laude, 1990) and his PhD from Columbia University (2001); he has taught at Rutgers since 2004.  His books include Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image, and Presidential Doodles.  Before entering academia, he was managing editor and acting editor of The New Republic and he still writes for publications such as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Slate. NEXT

 

Three Modernist Cities: London, Paris, Harlem
01:090:278 Index #70982
Professor Carol Smith - SAS - English
W 09:50A-12:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

London, Paris, and Harlem have come to known as centers of 20th century modernist culture.  In this seminar we will look at the cities themselves and how they became the urban spaces that drew early 20th century writers and artists.  For each city we will examine a pair of writers, one male, one female, who were part of the city’s cultural debates and who, in most cases, used the cities themselves as a backdrop for the texts we will read.

We will look first at the London that attracted American writers such as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, as well as British writers and intellectuals who were part of the Bloomsbury Group, especially Virginia Woolf.  Next will be post World War I Paris and the expatriate literary colony centered on the Left Bank.  We will discuss the painters who attracted and influenced writers like Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway, as well as the proliferation of experimental presses, bookstores, and literary salons where writers and artists gathered.  Finally we will look at Harlem and the literary movement of the Harlem Renaissance, including the close connections between Left Bank Paris and Harlem.  Here we will focus on texts by Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison, as well as the cultural battles over the way black culture should be presented to the public.  We will end the discussion of each city with a roundtable with short reports on individual student research projects.

CAROL SMITH is Professor Emerita of English.  She has taught many courses on modernism and 20th century literature in the Department of English.  She directed the Graduate Program in English, and served as chair of the Douglass English department and as Acting Dean of Douglass College.  She is the author of T. S. Eliot’s Dramatic Theory and Practice and many articles on American and British 20th century authors.  Her special interests include the cultural backgrounds of modernism and 20th century women writers. NEXT

 



The Preposterous Universe
01:090:279 Index #69742
Professor Charles Keeton - SAS - Physics & Astronomy
MW 04:30-05:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Science is a dynamic process of discovery, not a fixed set of facts.  In this seminar we will develop scientific critical thinking skills that are central to the discovery process, by reading and writing about astrophysics.  We will focus on how astronomers have come to believe the universe is filled with exotic "dark matter" that pulls on everything (through gravity) but is invisible, and "dark energy" that produces a bizarre cosmic repulsion.  Since neither substance has been seen or felt directly, we have an outstanding opportunity to examine how scientists interpret evidence and construct arguments to support the "dark universe" paradigm.  The paradigm is still evolving—the evidence for dark energy is only a decade old—and even subject to debate, so we will see how science operates at the frontiers of knowledge.

Even before taking advanced technical courses, students can learn to evaluate scientific evidence and arguments, and to construct arguments of their own.  We will do this by engaging scientific literature directly.  We will analyze the evidence presented in the papers we read, discuss its interpretation, and critique the way the scientific arguments are presented.  We will begin with pieces from popular science publications (such as Scientific American and Science News) to set the context and give the students a familiar starting point.  We will read research literature to examine first-hand how new insights are obtained and presented, and see how they work their way into a general understanding of the universe.  Reading original works will help students realize (perhaps to their surprise) that science is primarily about what we do not know, and how we discover. 

Prior knowledge of astrophysics is not required, but willingness to be quantitative and mathematical is a must.

Students will hone their critical thinking and writing skills by composing four papers representing different styles of scientific communication:

  • News item in the style of Science News, written for an educated but general audience.
  • Commentary in the style of Nature News & Views, written for scientists but not astronomers.
  • Scientific conference presentation.
  • Scientific research paper.

For each project, I will offer comments on the strength and clarity of the argument, the depth of the analysis, and whether the paper reaches its target audience, and then return the paper for revision.  The freedom to make mistakes, receive comments, and make improvements is central to effective learning.  Plus, revision is essential to good writing, and a very real part of writing in science.

CHARLES KEETON is an astrophysicist who studies the bending of light by gravity to learn about the exotic dark matter that permeates the universe.  One of his current interests is finding the invisible dwarf galaxies that are predicted to surround each massive galaxy.  Professor Keeton combines theoretical studies with observations using the Hubble Space Telescope and telescopes in Arizona, Hawaii, and Chile; and he expects to use the new Southern African Large Telescope, in which Rutgers is a major participant.  Before coming to Rutgers, Professor Keeton was a Hubble Fellow at the University of Chicago, a researcher at the University of Arizona, and a graduate student at Harvard University.

 



Molecular View of Human Anatomy: The Human Nervous System
01:090:280 Index #69743
Professor Helen Berman - SAS - Chemistry & Chemical Biology
W 8:40-11:40A
Doolittle Annex Room 122
Busch Campus

What do proteins, DNA, and other biological molecules look like? How do they work? Where do these molecules fit in your body? This seminar will introduce you to the basics of structural biology using human anatomy, physiology, and disease as themes.

In the first half of this seminar, we will learn the fundamentals of structural biology - how proteins and DNA are shaped and how these structures are determined by scientists. Through the second half of the seminar, students will conduct research on molecules related to the human nervous system in order to understand how these molecules are involved in the workings of the human body in health and disease.

Students will learn to critically read articles, in scientific journals and in lay press. This seminar will also provide an opportunity for students to interactively use computers for self-publishing.

This seminar has no pre-requisites; non-science majors are particularly encouraged to enroll. Students will be evaluated on two written reports and one oral presentation related to structural aspects of the course theme and on participation in class discussions/activities. The main aim of the seminar is to encourage research-based learning and to familiarize students with a molecular view of biology.

HELEN BERMAN is a Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University.  Her research area is structural biology and bioinformatics, with a special focus on protein-nucleic acid interactions.  She is the founder of the Nucleic Acid Database, a repository of information about the structures of nucleic acid-containing molecules; and is the co-founder and Director of the Protein Data Bank, the international repository of the structures of biological macromolecules.  She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Biophysical Society, from which she received the Distinguished Service Award in 2000.  A past president of the American Crystallographic Association, she is a recipient of the Buerger Award (2006).  Dr. Berman received her A.B. in 1964 from Barnard College and a Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Pittsburgh.


Violence and Spectatorship: Major European Filmmakers
01:090:281 Index #69744
Professor Fatima Naqvi - SAS - Germanic Russian & E. European Lang & Lit
TH 09:50A -12:50P
German House Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

This seminar will address the issue of violence in film in the oeuvre of acclaimed director Michael Haneke. In his films, the topic of violence is the center of concern: it is both socially conditioned and, within the logic of the films, aesthetically indispensable. While his films are not violent on a visual level (indeed there is little graphic violence worth mentioning), they are so on an auditory one. Through his strategic use of aural violence, Haneke seeks to sensitize the viewer to society’s purported exclusion of violence, which only includes it within social confines all the more securely. The audience is repeatedly asked to reflect on its own stake in narrative violence and its implicit, paradoxical condoning of such violence.

In a series of close readings of Haneke’s early works (The Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video), his internationally acclaimed later ones (The Piano Teacher, Caché, Funny Games) and his literary adaptations (The Rebellion, The Castle), this seminar seeks to familiarize students with the filmmaker and to broaden their awareness of the philosophical and theoretical discussion of violence as either transgression or necessary evil.  In readings by Georges Bataille, René Girard, Paul Virilio, and recent film studies (Judith Mayne, Stephen Prince), we will develop a theoretical framework that addresses the role of spectatorship and its relationship to violence. Comparative analyses of Michael Haneke’s employment of violence vis-à-vis his avowed predecessors will place the films in context; screenings of films by Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Bresson will allow students to situate Haneke’s works within the tradition of filmic modernism and to reflect on the role of violence in avant-garde film practices. Readings of novels by Franz Kafka and Joseph Roth will deepen their understanding of modernism and facilitate a discussion of literary adaptation. Finally, issues of social critique—as it relates to the globalization, transnationalism, and societal fragmentation the films foreground—will be examined in oral reports that take the films and important readings as their point of departure (Peter Sloterdijk, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Alexander Kluge).

Students will be assigned weekly readings and film viewings; short response papers to films; and a research paper on one film at conclusion of the course.

FATIMA NAQVI is an associate professor and Graduate Director in the Department of German, Russian and East European Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University. She received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1993 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2000. Currently, she teaches courses on post-war literature and film, Vienna 1900, and the Austrian literary tradition. Her book, The Literary and Cultural Rhetoric of Victimhood: Western Europe 1970-2005 (New York: Palgrave, 2007), analyzes the pervasive rhetoric of victimhood in European culture since 1968. She has edited an issue of Modern Austrian Literature devoted to the Austrian Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, focusing on Jelinek’s more recent writing.  She has also written articles on Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý, Jelinek’s variant of post-drama, film adaptation as melancholic translation (Michael Haneke and Ingeborg Bachmann), history and cosmology in Christoph Ransmayr’s prose and Anselm Kiefer’s works, the aesthetics of violence in Michael Haneke’s films, as well as dilettantism in Thomas Bernhard’s novel Old Masters. She has published on Bernhard’s controversial play Heldenplatz and its discourse of victimhood, El Greco’s influence on Rilke’s poetry, laughter as a means of social action in Roberto Benigni’s La vita è bella, and Catholicism’s continuing presence in contemporary Austrian writing. Her next book project focuses on the films of Michael Haneke.


Reading the Bible: Early Church Fathers
01:090:282 Index #69745Professor Karl Morrison - SAS - History
TH 01:10-04:10P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Focusing on the first through the sixth centuries of the Common Era, this seminar introduces students to one of the most decisive movements in European History: the formation of the Christian Bible.  In the process, it also opens the door to another, almost equally powerful innovation: laying out the contours of doctrine in a time before there was any Bible or developed Church hierarchy.  To mention establishing the shape of doctrine is also to say preparing the field of battle over which wars of religion were fought for centuries.  Both movements began with the same challenge: being forced under pressure in debates among believers and under persecution by unbelievers–to say what Christians stood for.  We begin at that pressure point to piece together the story of how the canon of Scriptures slowly came together, structures of authority were devised to rule on authentic belief, and the creative dynamic of European culture was formed around a nucleus of conflict, not only in areas of belief and discipline, but also in art, politics, and other areas of expression.

The work of the seminar will include intensive readings of original texts in translation, two papers (one of them a term paper), and other assignments.  Classes will be conducted by discussion.

KARL F. MORRISON is a specialist in Medieval History.  He has taught at a number of universities, serving at Rutgers as Lessing Professor of History and Poetics since 1988.  He has written widely on Church History, medieval political thought, and art theory.


Sickle Cell Anemia- The Intersection of Genetics, Biochemistry, Medicine, History, Evolution and Politics
01:090:284 Index #69747
Professor Abram Gabriel - SAS - Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
W 03:20-06:20P
Center for Advanced Biology and Medicine (CABM) Room 308
Busch Campus

As our society becomes more and more specialized, the gaps in knowledge and perspectives separating scientists, physicians, politicians, and consumers from one another, become wider and the consequences more serious.  Although half the American public does not believe in the theory of evolution, advances in molecular biology, genetics and genomics, all with an evolutionary underpinning, are transforming our concepts of health and individual disease risks, with implications for insurance coverage, diagnostic decisions and treatment options.  

This seminar will concentrate on examining medical, biochemical, genetic, evolutionary, as well as historic, political, and sociological aspects of sickle cell anemia (SCA), the most common Mendelian genetic disorder of African-Americans.  SCA has been at the forefront of biomedical research, in terms of understanding its molecular basis and designing diagnostic tests and treatments.  The relationship between SCA and malaria resistance is one of clearest examples of natural selection, while the prevalence of SCA in the U.S. (>80,000 affected individuals) is the direct result of the importation of slaves from West Africa.  Diagnosis, treatment and ongoing management of patients with SCA varies among states and countries, and reflect political and cultural priorities. 

The class will consist of lectures, guest lectures, as well as class discussions and student presentations.  Students will be assigned readings from journal articles and books.  Early in the semester, students will decide on a research topic of mutual instructor/student interest related to some aspect of SCA or another genetic disorder.  During the semester, students will present their findings to the class.  At the end of the semester, students will submit a term paper on their topic, utilizing primary literature, policy reviews, and/or personal interviews.

This course is designed for students interested in majoring or already majoring in Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, History, Africana Studies, Evolution and Ecology, Anthropology, as well as for students with career interests in medicine, public health, molecular biology, biotechnology, sociology, or the history of medicine.  There are no pre-requisites. 

ABRAM GABRIEL is an associate professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and Graduate Director of the Joint Program in Biochemistry.  He received his B.A. from Harvard University and his M.D. and M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University.  His research centers on mechanisms and consequences of transposable genetic elements.  His seminar is based on his interest in making molecular genetics more widely understandable to non-scientists and making the societal repercussions of genetics better appreciated by those planning careers in biomedical science. 


Meaning & Morality: Questions About Who We Are, How People Act, And What We Should Believe About Good And Evil
01:090:285 Index #71154
Professor Larry Temkin - SAS - Philosophy
TH 09:50A-12:50P
Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

This seminar will explore some of the most profound questions humans have addressed.  Of special concern will be questions about good and evil, justice and equality, freedom and autonomy, and the meaning of human existence.  This seminar will be taught by a moral philosopher, and special emphasis will be laid on approaching these questions philosophically.  But the seminar aims to combine literary, philosophical, and historical insights and perspectives in addressing these profound issues. 

Readings may include Shakespeare’s King Lear, Pascal’s Pensees, Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave, Nietzsche’s Geneology of Morals, Glover’s Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, selected stories by Kafka, Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz, Spiegelman’s Maus, and selections from Martin Luther King Jr., including Letter from a Birmingham Jail.  All these readings are absolutely first-rate, and some are amongst the most important and influential writings in the history of Western thought. 

The seminar will require significant amounts of reading and writing, regular attendance, and frequent participation in classroom discussion.  It will emphasize critical thinking, careful writing, thoughtful expression, and deep reflection on fundamentally important issues.  Students will be required to do short homework assignments (~2 pages each) and two papers (~ 7 pages and ~ 8-10 pages).  Papers will be expected to combine rigor, analysis, and arguments with originality, insight, and depth.

This seminar should be one of the most interesting and important classes that you ever take.  With your help, it should also be a great deal of fun. 

LARRY TEMKIN is Professor II of Philosophy.  A specialist in ethics and social and political philosophy, Temkin is one of the world’s foremost experts on equality.  Professor Temkin graduated number one from the University of Wisconsin at Madison with a B.A.-Honors Degree, and received his Ph.D. from Princeton University.  Professor Temkin has received numerous honors and awards, including Fellowships from the Danforth Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the National Humanities Center, Harvard University’s Program in Ethics and the Professions, All Souls College Oxford University, the National Institutes of Health, and the Australian National University.  Before coming to Rutgers, Professor Temkin taught at Rice University, where he won eight major teaching awards, including each of Rice’s highest teaching awards, as voted on by peers, current students, and former students.  In addition, Temkin received Rutgers’s 2008 School of Arts and Sciences Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education.  Temkin is also acutely aware that none of this means diddly-squat to current students.  Nor should it!

 


Marriages Made in Heaven and Hell
01:090:286 Index# 69748
Professor Louise Barnett – SAS – American Studies
W 02:15-05:15P
RAB 018
Douglass Campus

This seminar will explore the institution of marriage, the foundation of modern society. While laws and customs surrounding marriage vary from one society to another--often enormously--historically, marriage has been an effective institution. Most human beings who have lived in historical times have married, and most marriages function more or less well from the point of view of society.  We will examine a particular subset of married couples, those whose marriages work unusually well or unusually poorly. These married couples are all well known historical or literary figures (with the exception of a few fictional couples we will read about), and all are now deceased. The marriages are complicated and interesting, which is why I chose them.

LOUISE BARNETT is a member of the American Studies Department. Her primary field is nineteenth-century American culture, which she has pursued in a number of directions, beginning with The Ignoble Savage: American Literary Racism. A later work of literary criticism, Authority and Speech: Language, Society and Self in the American Novel, investigated the relationship between authority and speech in novels from early in the nineteenth century to the 1970s. In 1996 Professor Barnett published her best known book, the biography Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, and Mythic Afterlife of George Armstrong Custer. Another excursion into military history, Ungentlemanly Acts: The Army’s Notorious Incest Trial, was selected by New York Public Library as one of the year 2000’s twenty-five best books. Her most recent book, Atrocity and American Military Justice in Southeast Asia is forthcoming early in 2010. In conjunction with this research she attended the thirtieth anniversary commemoration of the My Lai massacre in Vietnam where two Americans received medals from the government of Vietnam for their efforts to stop the massacre. Professor Barnett teaches courses on American narrative, nineteenth-century American literature, and Native American literature.

 


Self and Freedom: East and West
01:090:287 Index #74685
Professor Tao Jiang - SAS - Religion
TH 10:55A-01:55P
Loree Hall Rm 131
Douglass Campus

The point of departure of this seminar is the freedom of the will in the Western intellectual tradition. The issues to be examined in the seminar include: why is the will such a centrally important concept in the Western intellectual discourse? Why has the Christian West been so obsessed with the freedom of the will, at least since late antiquity? How are the will and its freedom conceptualized? Why haven’t the major religious traditions in India and China exhibited similar interest in the notion of the will and its freedom? What kinds of freedom do the indigenous Indian and Chinese religious traditions conceptualize and sanctify instead? Why do those kinds of freedom captivate them, or what motivates them to schematize those kinds of freedom, as opposed to the freedom of the will that has fascinated the Christian West? How do the Indian and Chinese religious traditions conceptualize freedom? What do the differences in the conceptualizations of freedom tell us about the characters and the configurations of the religious traditions as well as the cultures that give birth to them in the way they do? …

For the comparative purpose of the seminar, we will treat the notion of free will as a particular way to conceptualize spiritual freedom. In other words, free will is seen as a vital part of the broader human intellectual effort to grapple with the problem of spiritual freedom. The notion of spiritual freedom provides us with the conceptual tool to examine the family of religious ideals, and enables us to ground the free will discourse within the larger human intellectual discourse on spiritual freedom. Spiritual freedom is among humanity’s most powerful ideals. Each mature culture has formulated and enshrined its own ideal of spiritual freedom and is heavily invested in promoting such an ideal within its own sphere and beyond. Due to its potency, spiritual freedom is the locus of intense creative synergy of a culture, thus offering us a precious glimpse into a culture which postulates that particular form of spiritual freedom. This will be the focus of the seminar.

To make our case, we will carefully study some of the most representative and crystallizing texts in these traditions for their elaborations of the grounding conception of spiritual freedom in the tradition they represent.  For the Indian Brahmanic tradition, we will concentrate on the Bhagavad Gîtâ. The focus will be on the deliberation of the nature of the Self and that of freedom as identification with the Self or detachment from non-Self. Such a freedom is absolute and perfect. For the Indian Buddhist tradition, we will use Nâgârjuna’s Mûlamadhyamakakârikâ as the text which revolutionizes and crystallizes the Buddhist middle way that rejects the “extreme views” of both Self and non-Self in maintaining the dependent and empty nature of any actual or conceivable entities. For the Chinese tradition, we will use the classical Taoist text, the Zhuangzi, that points to a conception of freedom as human spontaneity in our being in the world. This conception of spiritual freedom idealizes and romanticizes the majestic movement of the natural world, hence advocating a notion of freedom as the daemonic, spontaneous and effortless navigation of the world. For the Western Christian tradition, we will focus on St. Augustine’s On the Free Choice of the Will. Since Augustine has been credited with the “invention” or “discovery” of the will in the technical sense of the word that has come to be used in the West, his arguments merit close attention as the originating moment of such a seminal notion. Special attention will be given to his using of the free will to preserve divine attributes of God, such as omnipotence, omniscience, and morally perfect, etc., on the one hand while accounting for the existence of evil in the created world on the other.

TAO JIANG is an associate professor in the Department of Religion at Rutgers, teaching Buddhism, classical Chinese religions and philosophies and comparative philosophy. He is the author of “Contexts and Dialogue: Yogâcâra Buddhism and Modern Psychology on the Subliminal Mind”(University of Hawaii Press, 2006) and a co-chair of “Religions in Chinese and Indian Cultures: A Comparative Perspective” Seminar under the American Academy of Religion.

 



The  Psychology of Religious Terrorism
01:090:288 Index #74249
Professor James Jones - SAS - Religion
M 09:15A-12:15P
Loree Hall Rm 131
Douglass Campus

The purpose of this course is to explore the role of violence and terrorism in the religions of the world and the psychology behind them. The course will be taught from the perspective of contemporary psychoanalytic theory but will also include material from social psychology and comparative religions.

Each class period will be devoted to brief lectures and discussions of the readings and the topic for the day. In addition to readings, videos may be shown in class and students may be required to do some research online involving reading foreign press reports and visiting various websites. Since this is a seminar, class participation will be the major determinant of the final grade. To facilitate discussion, at the beginning of each class, starting with the second, each student is to bring a one page reaction paper to class. These be graded and returned. In addition, each student will be required to write an 8-10 page paper on the role of violence in one of the religions of the world or, with the permission of the instructor, some other topic directly related to the material in this course. A topic proposal will be due around the 4th week of class A first draft of this essay is due at the beginning of class the day after spring break. Papers with comments will be returned. The week after the last day of class, students are to hand in both the final version of this essay taking account of the instructor’s feedback on the first draft and the first draft with the instructor’s comments. At this time they are also to hand in together all of their weekly papers. No extensions will be given on any of the written assignments.

JAMES JONES has earned doctorates in both Religious Studies and Clinical Psychology, as well as an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Uppsala in Sweden. In addition to being a professor of Religion and adjunct professor of Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center on Terrorism at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in NYC, he has also been a lecturer in Psychiatry and Religion at Union Theological Seminary in New York and a visiting professor at the University of Uppsala in Sweden. He is the author of twelve books, including /Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Religion/ (Yale University Press,1991), /Religion and Psychology in Transition /(Yale University Press, 1996), /Terror and Transformation: The Ambiguity of Religion/ (Routledge Press, 2002), and /Blood That Cries Out from the Earth/: /The Psychology of Religious Terrorism/ (Oxford: 2008) over twenty professional papers and book chapters. His books have been published both in the United States and Europe and translated in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, and Portuguese. He serves on the editorial boards of several publications both here and abroad. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association. For six years he was co-chair of the Religion and Social Sciences Section of the American Academy of Religion. He is the vice-president of the International Association for the Psychology of Religion. He also maintains a private practice as a clinical psychologist. Dr. Jones has been invited to lecture in Europe, Japan and the United States on the psychology of religious terrorism.


How to Do Things with Stories: Narratives in Everyday Conversation
01:090:289 Index #74727
Professor Jenny Mandelbaum - SCILS - Communication
MW 04:30-05:50P
35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Avenue Campus

Whether they are stories our families tell, stories from books, from the media, or the internet, the influence of narratives on our lives is pervasive and widely acknowledged.  We have come to see narrative as central to such processes as the transmission of culture, the organization of social knowledge, and the structure of experience.  Telling stories has been the object of extensive academic study in numerous disciplines, but ultimately it is generally viewed as a “monologic” literary phenomenon – something produced by an active storyteller for a passive audience.  This seminar proposes to study stories as “dialogic” social objects, dynamically and interactively constructed in communication by teller and recipient(s) working together.  This will bring students a new understanding of narrative in general, as well as insights into how and why particular stories get told.

We examine classic and modern theories of narrative from a variety of disciplines (e.g., literary theory, anthropology, folklore, sociology, linguistics, psychology, communication) and then reconceptualize storytelling outside of a literary frame, as a dialogic, interactive activity through which experiences are shared as a way of undertaking other social activities (such as warning, complaining, joking, explaining, reminiscing, advising, educating, entertaining, etc…).  We do this by examining audio and video tapes of naturally occurring interaction in everyday and institutional settings.  Students learn to use techniques for detailed analysis of these conversations, in order to discover the communication processes through which narrative is enacted, and the social activities that telling stories is used to accomplish.  By working inductively on naturalistic materials, students learn how to challenge a paradigm through empirical work, contrasting classic theories about narrative with their own, instructor-guided, empirical research on the phenomenon.

The semester grade will be based on attendance and participation, three short exercises, a midterm, and a final research presentation and paper.  The research project would be done partly as a class project, and partly individually.

JENNY MANDELBAUM received her BA in French and Philosophy from Oxford University in England, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas.  Her research examines the organization of everyday interaction, using video and audio tapes as a resource for describing, for instance, how we tell stories in conversation and what we "do" through the stories we tell.  Her findings include accounts of how we "construct" relationships and identity in and through interaction.  Currently she and her students are working on a large database of videotaped Thanksgiving, Easter and Passover dinners.  She looks forward to the continued participation of Honors students in these projects.  She teaches classes at all levels (including Introduction to Communication), and enjoys the challenges of introducing technology into the classroom.

 

Analyzing the Post-Cold War Arena of Conflict & Economic Warfare
01:090:290 Index#77941
Professor Jack Jarmon – DIMACS
W 5:00-08:00P
CoRE Building Rm 433
Busch Campus NEXT

The seminar will delve into questions regarding the definition of national interests, security strategies, and understanding the risks and defenses of asymmetrical attack - be it the actions of a state or non-state actor.  These issues will be explored and discussed in the context of how they relate to national defense, the emerging new order in global governance, and the current financial crises.  Students will gain an understanding of the interconnectedness and tensions of globalization and what contributes to the inner rhythms of international relations, political conflict, and economic competition.  The seminar will require an independent research project on a relevant topic, and participation in a war game simulation.

JACK JARMON is currently Associate Director of the Command Control and Interoperability Center for Advance Data Analysis at Rutgers University.  He is also a Lecturer in the International Relations Program at the University of Pennsylvania, and Chief Research Officer of New Era Associates in Dallas.  His research focuses on the private/public sector partnership and issues of governance within the context of national security imperatives and frictionless trade.  His research also involves the analysis concerning the basilar societal, economic, political and cultural elements, which beget tension, and trigger and influence terrorist events.  His Ph.D. is in Global Affairs, from Rutgers University.  He was a Mid-Career Fellow at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University.  His Masters is in Soviet and Russian Affairs, from Fordham University, and his BA, in Russian & Eastern European Area Studies, is from Rutgers College.  His current book project is a core text for courses and students of security studies and international relations, to be published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.  The book is an analysis of the current arena of conflict and the competition over political and economic control by state and non-state actors.

Fall 2009 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

  • How Sex Changed: Sex Research in the 20th Century
  • Imperial Nations and Their Fictions
  • Communication and Ethnicity: Asian Americans
  • Disaster, Culture, and Society
  • Trauma and Social Memory
  • Global Warming: Policy withouth Politics
  • The Science and Life of Albert Einstein
  • Crime and the Big City
  • Enduring Questions: What is the Human?
  • Freedom
  • Introduction to Systems Thinking
  • American Regionalism
  • Energy Materials and the Environment
  • Complementarity in Physics, Life Sciences, and Philosophy
  • Physics and Photography
  • The Origins of Western Morality
  • Communications and Human Values


How Sex Changed: Sex Research in the 20th Century

01:090:250 Index #30034
Professor James Reed, SAS - History
W 04:30-07:30P   Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

This is a seminar about the relationship between scientists and human sexuality.  We will examine some of the most important efforts to understand and to control sexual behavior.  Who studied sex?  How did they define it? What methods did they use? Why did they do it?  Who paid for the work? What is the relationship between this science, gender systems, and other salient aspects of U.S. society? What can we learn from the immense discourse constructed by sex researchers?

We will begin with the "crisis in civilized sexual morality" and Freud's visit to the U.S. in 1909, and end with the emergence of the intersexed and transsexuals as self-conscious minorities successfully struggling for civil rights. We will have an Alfred Kinsey film festival, and will devote several weeks to the career of John Money, the Johns Hopkins University clinical psychologist who championed the cause of surgical sex reassignment.  Assigned readings will include: Susan Stryker, Transgender History; Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality; Deborah Rudacille, The Riddle of Gender; John Coalpinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl; and other materials provided by the instructor.  All participants in the class will be expected to make a presentation (15 minutes maximum) about a researcher, novel, autobiography, journal, or website that is relevant to our story.  There will be two short written assignments (5 pages) and a longer essay (minimum 10 pages) that will serve as a final exam.

JAMES REED has professed History at Rutgers since 1975.  He got his B.A. at Louisiana State University and his A.M. and Ph.D. at Harvard.  Among historians he is best known for From Private Vice to Public Virtue, a history of birth control in the United States  He has also written on intelligence tests, penitentiaries, and biomedical sex research.  His current writing project is a history of biomedical sex research, with the working title Sex Research in America: From Social Hygiene to Sexology.  Among Rutgers students he is best known as the instructor in Development of the U.S. I & II, as well as more specialized courses such as Health and the Environment in the U.S., Sport in History, and The IQ Controversy.”  He served as Dean of Rutgers College from 1985 to 1994. NEXT

Imperial Nations and Their Fictions
01:090:251 Index #30035
Professor Edyta Bojanowska, SAS - Dept of Germanic Russian and East European L&L
TH 09:50A-12:50P   Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Nations and empires are in many ways antithetical. Nations coalesce around the idea of sameness – constructed upon the notion of a community’s shared ethnic, cultural, political, or historical heritage – and are located in a specific, delimited territory. Empires, by contrast, demand an allegiance that transcends such similarities, and have an endless appetite for expansion. And yet both nation and empire thrived in symbiotic unions throughout much of the last two centuries. Some of the most dynamic nationalisms produced the “fittest” empires: Britain, Russia, the Unites States.

This seminar will examine the twin energies of nationalism and imperialism in an art form that was most effective in both disseminating and questioning these ideologies: the narrative. We will focus on the fiction of nineteenth-century British, Russian, and American authors: Austen, Kingsley, Kipling, Lermontov, Tolstoy, Twain, Cooper, and Chekhov. Most fundamentally, we will ask how the experience of empire shaped the national identities of imperializing countries themselves, as reflected in these fictions. We will examine these texts’ “imagined communities” and fictional geographies, asking how they combine the concerns of nationalism with the “civilizing” mission of imperialism. We will study how these works construct identities and stereotypes and will investigate the moral, political, and narrative implications of imperial encounters. Secondary texts will include key theoretical texts on nationalism, imperial history, and cultural criticism

EDYTA BOJANOWSKA is an Assistant Professor of Russian Literature at the Department of Germanic, Russian, and East European Languages and Literatures and at the Program in Comparative Literature.  She studied English and Russian at Barnard College and received her Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Harvard University.  She published "Nikolai Gogol: Between Ukrainian and Russian Nationalism" (Harvard UP, 2007) and is working on a book on empire and nation in the Russian literature of the 1850s-1910s (Dostoevsky, Leskov, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Bely)


Communication and Ethnicity: Asian Americans01:090:252 Index #30036
Professor Hui-Min Kuo, SCILS - Communication
T 01:10-04:10P   Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

This seminar will introduce the theories, approaches, and processes involved in communicating with individuals of different cultural backgrounds, specifically, Asian American, while examining potential challenges and issues relevant to this context.  The purpose of this seminar is to advance the understanding of Asian and Asian American communication in a globalized world by focusing on how the concepts of ethnicity and culture can influence everyday communication.  The seminar will explore (a) the theoretical assumptions of Asian and Asian American culture and communication, (b) the role of ethnicity and communication in Asian and Asian American cultures, (c) the perspectives and development of ethnic and cultural identities, (d) the communication patterns and styles of Asians and Asian Americans, and (e) the practical implications for interactions with Asians and Asian Americans.

Students will learn fundamental theories of Asian American cultural communication; critically assess the theoretical construct and application of various concepts relevant to Asian American cultural communication; critically compare and contrast applications of the approaches studied in interpersonal, family, or organizational settings; identify potential challenges and perceptual similarities and differences relating to Asian American communication and cultures; and complete research assignments by participating in the processes of literature review, research methods, discussion and results, and writing research reports.  Besides research, students will discuss the assigned readings, present small group projects based on contemporary films, and attend cultural events.

HUI-MIN KUO is Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Communication.  Her teaching and research interests are in intercultural communication, organizational culture, and instructional communication.  She earned her PhD in Communication from Rutgers.  With diverse professional experiences in instruction, administration, and services to students and faculty, she is interested in connecting communication perspectives to everyday practices.  As a first-generation Asian American, she is particularly fascinated by studying the development of communication norms and representations of Asian Americans in a multicultural society.  Through integrating theory and application, her goal is to enrich the learning processes of undergraduate students. NEXT


Disaster, Culture, and Society01:090:253 Index #30159
Professor Lee Clarke, SAS - Sociology
TH 01:10-04:10P   Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Katrina was a bell-weather event for American society.  Along with 9/11 it threw into bold relief just how vulnerable we can be.  Such events are intellectual opportunities, chances to look into how society works and fails to work. There will be more big disasters, and the consequences from them will continue to be severe. But the main reasons for these trends is not, as some have claimed, global warming, nor, as others have said, because nature or God are somehow punishing us. The main reasons have to do with how society is organized.

We usually think disasters are special but they are prosaic, part of rather than discontinuous with “normal” reality. In normal reality we must make sense of things. We excel at that, applying familiar categories to organize events, motives, and histories. Generically, disasters are not different from other events that need ordering. It is easy to imagine all kinds of non-disastrous things or times that must be confronted with, “How shall I make sense of this?” Big disasters, like Katrina, just do that in a big way.

This seminar will mainly be case-based, which means that I’ll organize the materials around particular events. Examples are accidents (Bhopal, Titanic, Challenger, Columbia) natural” disasters (Katrina, the threat from near earth objects) and epidemics (1918 flu). The focus will be on the interplay between culture, social institutions, and calamity. We will use video and internet resources throughout.

I will also construct exercises for students to participate in. An example might be giving groups of students a potential disaster scenario and then making them “advisors” to the President: what will you do? What do you recommend? What will be the consequences if you follow one path rather than another? We will run these exercises at key points in the semester, as knowledge about disaster accumulates.

I will ask students to write one-page “reaction memos” to readings.  Examples of what these should look like will be provided, but basically they are critical reflections on what has been read.  Students will email these memos to everyone in the class and we will use them to drive the seminar discussion on any particular day.  Students will participate very actively in the seminar, as we weave into and out of key ideas concerning culture and disaster

LEE CLARKE is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology.  His areas of expertise include leadership, culture, disaster, and organizational and technological failures.  Clarke has won two awards for his teaching and enjoys interacting with motivated and interested students. He has written or edited 6 books and over 50 articles.  He has written about the Y2K problem, risk communication, panic, civil defense, evacuation, community response to disaster, organizational failure, and near earth objects; his most recent book, Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  In August 2005 he was honored with the Fred Buttel Distinguished Scholarship Award by the Environment and Technology section of the American Sociological Association.  He has most recently appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC World News Tonight, and National Public Radio's affiliate in Irvine, CA, KUCI.  Visit www.leeclarke.com for more information.

Trauma and Social Memory01:090:254 Index #30037
Professor Judith Gerson, SAS - Women's and Gender Studies
M 10:55A-01:55P   VC 005
Douglass Campus

"Trauma" and "memory" have become key words across several fields of inquiry. The burgeoning scholarship on genocide, (Darfur and the Holocaust in particular), natural disaster (Katrina), narratives of survivors and perpetrators, the politics of commemoration, and programs of reconciliation and forgiveness all indicate a growing interest in trauma and social or collective memory.  This seminar begins with questions about what constitutes trauma, which remains a complex and vexed subject among scholars, survivors, perpetrators and bystanders, and various public audiences. Memory is never automatic nor a direct or an exact recollection of the past. In the case of trauma, this effect is further complicated because those who experience trauma are often unable or unwilling to acknowledge or speak it, even years after the catastrophe has presumably ended. Since people remember as members of groups, their social relationships shape the ways they experience, recall, forget and deny trauma. For example, various groups of women and men may have different memories because they often live their lives in distinct ways. Memories of trauma, moreover, are located in time and place, and here we will consider various legacies of trauma for the second generation. Institutional forms of memory also exist. We will pay particular attention to the public expressions and uses of traumatic memory, looking at memorial sites, museums, and commemorative ceremonies. Finally we consider various programs of forgiveness, reconciliation, restitution and reparations.

The goal of the seminar is to introduce students to a range of scholarly approaches to studying trauma and social memory rather than concentrate on the empirical specifics of any particular trauma, its aftermath and recollection. Our seminar relies on an interdisciplinary, comparative historical approach, which understands particular cases as rooted in larger transnational circuits. Several visual presentations and possibly a tour of memorial sites in New York City will supplement the readings, which form the core of the seminar. Seminar requirements include short weekly response papers to the assigned readings, an in-class oral presentation, and an original research paper.

JUDITH GERSON is on the faculty in the Departments of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies and an affiliate faculty in the Department of Jewish Studies.  Her research and teaching interests center on diaspora, collective memory, gender, and epistemology.  She is co-editor of Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories, Identities and Diasporas (Duke University Press, 2007) and is completing a book manuscript on German Jewish forced emigration during the Nazi era.  She was a recipient of a residential research fellowship at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. 

Global Warming: Policy withouth Politics01:090:255 Index #30038
Professor Sunil Somalwar, SAS - Physics & Astronomy
MW 01:40-03:00P   HLL Rm 009
Busch Campus

Everybody is concerned about energy and global warming these days. Politicians and entrepreneurs are pushing their favorite solutions, many of which are not sensible. In the meanwhile, the United States continues to use enough energy to bring the entire Lake Erie to a boil within a couple of years. Is energy consumption on such enormous scale necessary to maintain our living standards?  Is it possible that reducing our energy consumption via increased efficiency will in fact increase our technology base and living standards?  What are the European and Japanese experiences and how do they compare to ours?

In this class, we will examine the use of energy in modern society that has resulted in the dramatic increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, learn the basics of the greenhouse effect and global warming, and discuss the consequences.  We will explore how individual actions (such as commuting, housing choices, etc.) impact global warming.  We will evaluate the relative merits of various approaches, and discuss the political and public policy implications.  There are many “unintended consequences” here, so instead of proposing pat answers, we will learn how to evaluate proposed solutions critically.  For example, are solar panels cost effective?  Does the electric car make sense?

This seminar will take an interdisciplinary approach to exploring energy and climate change policy, and should be of interest to both science and non-science majors.

PROFESSOR SUNIL SOMALWAR smashes very high energy particles at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago and the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.  The protons he studies collide head on while travelling at about 99.999999% of the speed of light. These collisions create conditions that existed in our universe soon after the Big Bang and help us answer fundamental questions such as how the universe came about, what it is made of, why things attract or repel each other and where all the antimatter has gone. Professor Somalwar is also very concerned about how we humans are smashing the natural world, which is partly why he teaches classes on energy and global warming. He also runs a nonprofit to save the world's remaining few wild tigers (yes, really!) and is a volunteer activist with New Jersey's Sierra Club.


The Science and Life of Albert Einstein01:090:257 Index #30040
Professor John Hughes, SAS - Physics & Astronomy
MW 02:50-04:10P   Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

In this seminar we will explore the development of physics and astronomy over the past century through the contributions of Albert Einstein.  Students will gain an understanding of special and general relativity, the development of physics through the 20th century, and the crucial role of Einstein's theories in modern astronomy and cosmology.

We will begin with the state of physics at the turn of the 20th century and the so-called myth of the "end of physics." We will contrast the fields of physics and astronomy at this time based on a set of popular level lectures given in the 1920's. Newton's definition of absolute space and time taken from the Principia sets the stage for an in-depth review of Special and General Relativity following Einstein's popular level book from 1915. The consequences of these theories will be explored, and we will look at some of the detailed tests, including the famous eclipse expedition of 1919, that established these theories as among the most important laws of physics.

In the latter part of the seminar we fast forward to the current day and reveal why Einstein's theories are at the forefront of astronomy and cosmology. We will cover gravitational lensing, the big bang theory evidence for cosmic acceleration, and other topics according to the interests of the class.

Throughout the seminar we will look at Einstein as a philosopher, humanist, and icon in the world at large.  He was a notorious pacifist, yet he encouraged Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb.  He was deeply religious, but not in a traditional sense.

The seminar will entail weekly readings and written assignments that are expected to form the basis for extensive class discussion.  Two longer papers -- one on Einstein's life and one on his science -- will be required as well.

While some background in mathematics and physics will be helpful, this seminar is designed for non-science majors.

JOHN P. HUGHES grew up in NYC and attended Columbia University.  He was a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory until 1996 when he moved to Rutgers, where he is currently a Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Dr. Hughes uses both space- and ground-based astronomical observatories to research various topics in astrophysics and cosmology.  (For more information visit his web site http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~jackph/)

Crime and the Big City01:090:258 Index #30041 (cross listed with 01:202:388:01 Index# 36709)
Professor Patrick Carr, SAS - Sociology, Criminal Justice
MTH 11:30-12:50P   35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Avenue Campus

Why is crime, especially violent crime, predominantly a big city problem?  And why, even within big cities, is crime concentrated only in certain areas?  As homicide rates in some big cities declined in the 1990s, other similar places experienced an alarming increase in violent crime.  Why is there such a disparity between places, and what can we learn from case studies to better combat rising rates of violent crime?

This seminar will explore the phenomenon of big city violent crime by examining the experience of Philadelphia over the past two decades.  The course will combine readings, discussion, and field immersion as we get to see first hand what drives crime in a major city, and what is being done to try to reduce it.  Students will have the opportunity to visit a level one trauma center, to speak with homicide detectives and DAs, and to see firsthand some of the on-the-ground efforts to reduce violence.

In this course, students will investigate in-depth one of society's most persistent and least publicized problems.  Some of the issues we will discuss are the proximate and underlying causes of serious crime, the primary big city responses to violent crime, the Stop Snitching Movement, and the programs aimed at reducing crime that have been tried in the past two decades.  Over the course of the semester students will come to appreciate the complexities of the big city crime problem and the real difficulties in crafting a response that will actually reduce crime.

PATRICK CARR is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, and is an Associate Member of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on the Transitions to Adulthood and Public Policy.  He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago, and his research interests include communities and crime, informal social control, youth violence, and transitions to adulthood.  He is a currently a fellow at the Institute for Research on Women at Rutgers University.  He is the author of Clean Streets: Controlling Crime, Maintaining Order and Building Community Activism (2005, NYU Press), and with Maria J. Kefalas of the forthcoming Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What it Means for America (Beacon Press, 2009).  His work has been published in the American Journal of Sociology, Criminology and Sociological Forum.  He is currently working and on a multi-city study of the Stop Snitching Movement.
Enduring Questions: What is the Human?
01:090:259 Index #31447
Professor Henry Turner, SAS - English
MTH 09:50-11:10A   Murray Hall Rm 003
College Avenue Campus

From the studia humanitatis of the medieval and Renaissance periods to the modern university of our own day, the definition of the “human” has lain at the center of the “humanities” as a collection of disciplines, providing the conceptual foundation for these disciplines and acting as their primary justifying principle.  Why do we study literature, or philosophy, or history, or art, or music, or political theory?  We do so in order to understand what is “human” about ourselves and to test our intuitions against the arguments of previous centuries.  And yet we immerse ourselves so quickly in the specialized questions that define our fields that we rarely stop to consider what it means to be “human” in the first place: the notion persists as a comfortable bundle of assumptions, assumptions that allow us to launch an inquiry but that we forget to submit to scrutiny.  Arguably this task of scrutiny falls uniquely to the humanities: to Philosophy, defined as the art of asking questions, from Socrates forward; to Literature, which uses the resources of language and of fiction to explore the most difficult questions that living humans face; to History, which examines how attitudes toward the “human” have emerged over time and shows us how differently other cultures have often defined it.

Today the task of defining the “human” has become more complex than ever: advances in biotechnology have outstripped familiar systems of classification, producing chimeric substances that Darwin would never recognize.  Human populations have swollen, placing unprecedented demands on natural resources, while political conflicts have posed the question of human rights with new urgency. 

This seminar will invite students to contemplate what defines the human by participating in the process of creating definitions, and it will do so by focusing on a problem central to the humanities: what is the value of asking questions in the first place?  What is an effective mode of questioning?  And what forms have effective questions taken? 

Using the question of the “human” as an exercise in intellectual biography—a biography that is our own, as well as a biography of our disciplines, majors, and universities—the seminar will explore several forms for raising “enduring questions,” from philosophical dialogue to scientific hypothesis, from drama to novel, from historical writing to memoir and personal reflection.

The seminar will have four sections:

  • Making and Imagining: The Human Discovers
  • Thinking and Remembering: The Human Learns
  • Grouping and Classifying: The Human Defines
  • Socializing and Assembling: Humans Together


The seminar will include a trip to the Museum of Natural History in New York, and at least one evening film screening and discussion.

HENRY TURNER is Associate Professor English at Rutgers University.  He specializes in Renaissance literature, with a particular emphasis on the history of drama, literary criticism, and the history of science.  He is also interested in contemporary science and in the relationship between the arts and the sciences at the modern university and in everyday life.  Among other publications, he has written a short book entitled Shakespeare’s Double Helix (Continuum, 2007), which compares the nature of “life” and the “human” in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with modern definitions of these ideas in biotechnology.  For more information, go to: http://rci.rutgers.edu/~hsturner/

Freedom
01:090:260 Index #34181
Pofessor Andrew Murphy, SAS - Political Science
MTH 02:50-04:10p   35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Avenue Campus

The language of freedom permeates American society, from the earliest colonial enterprises to yesterday’s news. But we rarely seem to stop and contemplate what this notion is all about, and what sorts of tradeoffs or drawbacks our national obsession with freedom might entail. This seminar aims to broaden and deepen students’ understandings of this important concept, and to help them explore and refine their own views of freedom. I pursue this objective by organizing the seminar around a few basic questions.

Should we consider freedom primarily a negative notion (removing  obstacles to doing what we want), or does it necessarily involve  some sort of overarching moral, ethical, or even religious dimension?

What sorts of social or political institutions follow from different understandings of freedom?

How can the insights of a variety of disciplines and media – political thought, philosophy, literature, history, economics, film – illuminate our exploration of the many aspects of freedom?

Although my own training is in political theory and the history of political thought, the seminar is richly interdisciplinary, and I have taught it successfully several times in the interdisciplinary honors college at Valparaiso University, where it appealed to students from a variety of majors. The seminar integrates works from across the disciplines, all of which attempt to confront students with the complexity inherent in the concept of freedom, and to think through its implications for their own lives, as well as their social and political commitments.

ANDREW MURPHY received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina, and his M. A. and Ph. D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before joining the faculty at Rutgers, he taught at Villanova University, the University of Chicago, and Valparaiso University. His interests focus on the intersections between religious and political thought and practice, focusing especially on the Anglo-American tradition, in both historical and contemporary contexts. He is the author of *Conscience and Community: Revisiting Toleration and Religious Dissent in Early Modern England and America* (Penn State, 2001), and *Prodigal Nation: Moral Decline and Divine Punishment from New England to 9-11* (Oxford, 2008). He has edited *The Political Writings of William Penn* (Liberty Fund, 2002); *Religion, Politics, and American Identity: New Directions, New Controversies*, with David S. Gutterman (Lexington, 2006); and *The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence* (forthcoming). He is currently working on the life and thought of William Penn.

Introduction to Systems Thinking
01:090:261 Index #30042
Professor George Nieswand, Cook - Ecology Evolution and Natural Resources
W 02:15-05:15P   VC 005
Douglass Campus

This seminar provides an introduction to the philosophy and conceptual underpinnings of systems thinking and the systems approach, their use in developing comprehensive understandings of complex problem situations, and alternatives for their improvement.  Emphasis is placed on the qualitative, rather than quantitative, aspects of systems thinking.  Application to a broad range of problems involving environmental and human activity systems will be explored.

A singularly important goal for this seminar experience is that it have a profound impact on the manner in which you observe, question, reflect on, understand, and approach the complexity in the world of which you are a part, and particularly in terms of your introduction to the use of systems thinking and a systems approach in exploring alternatives for the improvement of complex problem situations.

My intent is that we treat this seminar experience as a journey of exploration, discovery, and learning.  I will be your tour guide, as well as a fellow traveler. While there are a number of destinations that I definitely want to visit with you, I will try to maintain some flexibility in our itinerary to accommodate a few side trips that may not have been anticipated. Along the way I will expect you to pay close attention to what you see and hear, and to spend a considerable amount of time thinking about your experiences so that you can record your thoughts, participate in discussions, and ask some good questions. Though I have been on this trip many times as a guide, I find that there is always something new to be discovered, as well as things to be learned from those whom I am guiding. I am looking forward to the trip and trust that you will find it worthwhile.

You will be expected to come to class having thought about the seminar materials and their application, and prepared therefore to ask questions, to add your thoughts to class discussion, and to demonstrate your understanding of systems concepts and their application.

The first portion of each of our class meetings will generally be spent discussing your thoughts and mine about the place we last visited. The second portion will generally be spent at a new location.

GEORGE NIESWAND has taught at Rutgers since 1965, during which time he pioneered the development of both undergraduate and graduate offerings in the field of systems thinking and the systems approach. He has also directed and participated in numerous multidisciplinary research projects and administrative assignments that have drawn on his experience with the application of systems thinking and a systems approach to a wide variety of problems. His approach to the subject matter of systems thinking is eclectic, drawing ideas freely from diverse sources which may not appear relevant at first blush to the casual observer. He also likes to challenge the established way of viewing a situation by approaching it from a number of different and often unusual perspectives. NEXT

American Regionalism
01:090:264 Index #30045 (cross-listed with 10:762:495:01 Index#34533)
Professor Frank Popper, Bloustein School
M 03:55-06:55P   VC 005
Douglass Campus

This seminar will explore the history, planning, and prospects of five large American regions: central Appalachia, the Corn Belt, the Great Plains, northern New England, and the Upper Midwest.  The instructor is now co-writing a short book on the subject tentatively titled "Great American Expectations: Why Regional Decline Can Mean National Opportunity."  Hehas been writing about the Great Plains for the last generation, and has decisively influenced national opinion about it.

The seminar will begin by exploring the concepts of regions and regionalism in American life.  We will then analyze the experiences of the five regions, and move on to comparisons between them, links among them, and the implications for other parts of the country and the nation as a whole.  The seminar will also look at the experiences of cities and metropolitan areas in the regions to see how they relate to those of the regions as a whole.  If time permits, the seminar will make cross-national comparisons, particularly with Europe and East Asia.  The seminar should draw students interested in history, planning, economics, politics, geography, literature, and American studies. The instructor intends to make the seminar maximally interdisciplinary.

FRANK J. POPPER teaches in the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, where he also participates in the American Studies, Geography, Human Ecology and Political Science Departments.  He teaches regularly as a visiting professor in the Environmental Studies Program at Princeton University.  He is author of The President's Commissions (1970) and The Politics of Land-Use Reform (1981), coauthor of Urban Nongrowth: City Planning for People (1976) and coeditor of Land Reform, American Style (1984).  His article "The Great Plains: From Dust to Dust" (Planning, December 1987), written with his wife, Deborah Popper, a geographer at the City University of New York, put forward the controversial Buffalo Commons idea that touched off a national debate on the future of the depopulating rural parts of the Great Plains region.  The Poppers are now at work on a series of articles and a book extending the Buffalo Commons concept and related approaches to other depopulating rural regions (for instance, Appalachia, the Lower Mississippi Delta and northern New England), large and mid-sized shrinking cities (Detroit, St. Louis, Birmingham [Alabama] and Camden [New Jersey]) and comparable places abroad (central Spain, eastern France and the former East Germany).

Energy Materials and the Environment
01:090:265 Index #30046
Professor Gabriel Kotliar, SAS - Physics & Astronomy
M 11:30-02:30P   Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Will we run out of energy in the next century?  How will nations deal with the increasing competition for scarce natural resources?  As the world standard of living and the energy consumption per capita increases, can we avoid destroying our own habitat?  Is there a technologically viable solution to the current energy crisis, or is the survival of our human species dependent on technological breakthroughs that have not yet taken place?  We do not know the full answers to these pressing questions, but we can learn elementary physical ideas connected to the field of energy, and discuss the constraints imposed by the laws of physics when addressing these questions.

In this seminar, then, we will look at these questions from the perspective of a physicist.  The seminar will start by asking what energy is.  We will then describe the different forms that energy can take such as nuclear, solar, chemical, electrical, chemical, and mechanical.  We will discuss the issue of conversion between the different forms of energy, how efficient this energy conversion can be, and the effects that energy conversion has on the environment.

The physics that relate to these topics will be presented at an elementary level, and should be suitable for a motivated non-science major with a good high school science education.  The goal of the seminar is to learn about energy, and to elicit discussions about the current options that we as a society have in facing the current energy and climate crisis.

GABRIEL KOTLIAR is a theoretical physicist with interests in materials science. He got his Ph.D in Princeton and is currently a Board of Governors Professor at Rutgers University.  Kotliar received the 2006 Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize for his work on strongly correlated electron materials. He is also a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a Sloan fellowship, and a Lady Davis fellowship.  He was a recipient of the 2005 Blaise Pascal Chair and has been a frequent visitor at the Physics Departments of Ecole Normale Superieure, Ecole Polytechnique, and the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.  His research interests are in the theory of materials, and his goal is to speed up the discovery of materials with useful properties  For this purpose he uses quantum field theory methods, algorithms, and computer simulations. He believes that education and scientific research are the key investments that society needs to make to ensure a better future.

Complementarity in Physics, Life Sciences, and Philosophy
01:090:266 Index #32244
Professor Sungchul Ji, Pharm - Pharmacology & Toxicology
TTH 04:30-05:50P   Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Recent developments in molecular and cell biology indicate that Bohr’s complementarity may play a fundamental role in living processes.  Complementarity-like concepts also occur in psychology, philosophy, semiotics (the study of signs), critical theories [A. Plotnitsky, Complementarity, Duke University Press, 1994], and world religions.  The universality of Bohr’s complementarity may be traced to the complementary neuro-electrophysiological functions of the human brain, including the dichotomy of the left and right hemispheres.  These findings motivated the formulation of a new philosophical framework known as complementarism in the early 1990’s, the essential content of which is that the ultimate reality perceived and communicated by the human brain is a complementary union of irreconcilable opposites [S. Ji, “Complementarism: A Biology-Based Philosophical Framework to Integrate Western Science and Eastern Tao,” in Psychotherapy East and West: Integration of Psychotherapies, The Korean Academy of Psychotherapists, Seoul, Korea, 1995, pp. 518-548]. 

In the latter half of the 1990’s, it was uncovered that living cells use a language (called cell language) whose design principles are very similar to those of human language [S. Ji, BioSystems 44: 17-39 (1997)].  This finding further strengthens the link between biology and philosophy, in agreement with the philosophies of  Aristotle (384-322 BC),  Spinoza (1632-1677), and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907-1961).  Thus, complementarism, which embodies both modern biological sciences and classical and modern philosophical systems, may provide a powerful new philosophical basis for integrating not only science and philosophy, but also seemingly irreconcilable philosophies and religions of the world.

During the first half of the semester, students will be introduced to the essentials of complementarism, and their physical and metaphysical supports derived from physics, chemistry, biology, linguistics, philosophy, and semiotics.  The second half of the semester will be devoted to students’ presentation, each 30-minute long, on topics related to some aspects of complementarism or to its application to solving practical problems in contemporary life.  The final grade will be based on classroom participation, including short talks (20%, at least one per student before the final class meeting), presentation (30%), and a written version of the presentation (15–20 pages, single spaced, including figures, tables, and references; 50%) due one week after the oral presentation. 

Pre-requisite:  A college-level introductory course (or equivalents) in biology, chemistry, or physics.    

DR. SUNGCHUL JI received a BA degree in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Minnesota in 1965 and a Ph.D. degree in physical organic chemistry in 1970 from the State University of New York at Albany. After a series of postdoctoral research and teaching experiences in enzymology (University of Wisconsin, Madison), biophysics (University of Pennsylvania), systems physiology (Max Planck Institute, Dortmund, West Germany), and toxicology (University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill), Dr. Ji began teaching pharmacology and toxicology at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, Rutgers University in 1982.  Dr. Ji founded the Theoretical Aspects of Pharmacology course in 2000 at Rutgers  and has been teaching it ever since. He recently completed a book manuscript entitled “Molecular Theory of the Living Cell: Conceptual Foundations, Molecular Mechanisms and Applications” due to be published by Springer, New York, in 2010. NEXT

Physics and Photography01:090:267 Index #32529
Professor Terry Matilsky, SAS - Physics & Astronomy
W 11:30A-02:30P   Civic Square Rm 334
Downtown New Brunswick Campus
Note: All students will be required to pay a materials fee of $25.00 to help defray the costs of film, photographic paper, and chemicals

Many fundamental aspects of physical theory concern themselves with the interaction and interrelationship of space and time, the infrastructure of our universe.  Yet surprisingly, in a totally different context, these constituents can be observed in many aspects of art as well.  In this seminar, we will explore how the photographic image depends on the control of space and time by the photographer.

We will study physical and geometric optics first, with emphasis on image formation, depth of field, resolution, magnification, and perspective.  These investigations will enable us to visualize the world around us, and to begin to control the visual impact of the final print.  At the same time, we will see how the development of the negative affects other aspects of the process, such as contrast.  Extensive darkroom work is contemplated.  While we study the physical processes involved, we will also discuss the Masters in the field.  Each week you will critique a well-known photograph, and attempt to incorporate various ideas into your own work.

Homework will be assigned dealing with both the scientific and artistic content of photography.  Of course, you will be taking pictures (indeed, we will be taking field trips - yay!! - to further stimulate our imagination), and artistic and technical critiques will be done collectively, so students at all levels can participate in the process.  I hope to have rank beginners as well as already serious photographers in the class.  Even advanced students can benefit from a "beginner's mind."

There are no prerequisites for the seminar, but you must have a desire to learn about the scientific as well as the artistic aspects of the photographic process.  You must also have a focusing camera in which shutter speeds and f-stops can be adjusted manually.  Automatic cameras are not acceptable!  If you are contemplating buying a camera for the seminar, see me and I can make some recommendations.

TERRY MATILSKY is a professor in the Department of Physics.  His specialty is in astrophysics.  He served as Director of the Rutgers College Honors Program from 1989 to 1996.  He has taken pictures from rockets from 100 miles in space (no, he hasn't been in them), but enjoys ground-based landscapes -- preferably wilderness areas like Yosemite and Yellowstone -- best.  He has sold some of his least favorite photographs to ad agencies on Madison Avenue, just to see whether it could be done, but remains almost totally undiscovered as a true artist.

The Origins of Western Morality
01:090:268 Index #32714
Professor Emma Wasserman, SAS - Religion
TTH 12:35-01:55P   Loree Hall Rm 131
Douglass Campus

The seminar treats the ways that early Christian groups appropriated Jewish and Hellenistic moral traditions and reshaped them according to their developing preoccupations.  These preoccupations came to shape the moral language, laws, politics, social codes, and sociality of Christian Europe and America.  The seminar will pay particular attention to the roles of Hellenistic philosophy, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the letters of Paul, the teachings attributed to Jesus in writings from the end of the first century C. E., and the development of ascetic practices and ideology.  This approach holds that “morals” are involved in the organization of sociality, power, economic production, distribution and consumption; cultural production, distribution and consumption.  Issues of importance to the seminar include the variety of ancient options available for thinking about ethical psychology, the concept of porneia (harlotry) and the attack on traditional Mediterranean religion, the family/household and opposition to it, wealth/poverty, usury/the market, slavery, sexual ethics and gender norms.

Communications and Human Values

01:090:271 Index #32744 Index #31671 (cross-listed with 04:189:441:01)
**Interview Required, By Special Permission.
Professor Richard Heffner, SCILS – Communication
T 09:50A-12:50P   Scott Hall Rm 201
College Avenue Campus

**Please contact Prof. Heffner at 212-799-7979 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..  Prof. Heffner will hold interviews with students on Wednesday, April 15, and Friday, April 17, roughly from 10 AM to 3 PM, Room 236 Scott Hall, College Avenue Campus.

This seminar is an intellectual inquiry into the development of American public policy as it relates to mass communications.  It is not a practicum, not a "how-to" seminar about film and television, or not about the media generally.

The seminar's purpose is to analyze how much of our sense of what it means to be an American early in the 21st century has been molded by the media -- first print and now increasingly electronic -- with particular reference to their socializing and value-legitimating content.  To learn then to deal appropriately and reasonably with such media power, students are asked first to identify their own respective approaches to the role of the state and its proper relationship to the individual through class discussion of such readings as Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, Robert Merton's Mass Persuasion, J. S. Mill's On Liberty, Herman Melville's Billy Budd, and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death; of such films as Hearts and Minds, JFK, and Fahrenheit 9/11; and of the increasingly unfair and unbalanced rants and raves of America's newer communications outlets.

Finally, class emphasis is placed on analyzing and resolving such contemporary media issues as a Fairness Doctrine (the real or imagined "chilling effect" of a requirement for media fairness and balance); cameras in the courts (do televised trials enhance justice, or instead create a "mobocracy", with trial by a new jury of public opinion?); the importance of journalistic "privilege"; and media self-regulation (can there in fact be meaningful voluntary self-discipline in a free market, free speech, mass media-driven society?).

RICHARD D. HEFFNER is University Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where he began to teach in 1948.  Trained as an American historian, Mr. Heffner is the author of A Documentary History of the United States and the editor of Alexis de Tocqueville's classic Democracy In America.  His most recent book, a collaboration entitled Conversations With Elie Wiesel, derives from The Open Mind, the prize winning television program which he began in 1956 and which he still produces and moderates each week on public broadcasting stations around the country.  In 1961, after serving on-the-air and as an executive at CBS, ABC and NBC, Professor Heffner played a leading role in the acquisition and activation of Channel 13 in New York, becoming its Founding General Manager.  For twenty years (1974 to 1994), he also commuted to Hollywood, serving as Chairman of the Board of the motion picture industry's voluntary film classification and rating system.  Professor Heffner and his wife, Dr. Elaine Heffner, live in New York City.  They have two sons -- Daniel, a filmmaker; and Andrew, an Assistant New York State Attorney General -- and four grandchildren.


  NEXT




Spring 2009 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

**NO SPECIAL PERMISSION NUMBERS WILL BE GIVEN OUT DURING PRE-REGISTRATION FOR CLOSED SECTIONS.  PLEASE CONTINUE TO CHECK THE SCHEDULE OF CLASSES FROM NOW UNTIL ADD/DROP PERIOD IN THE SPRING SEMESTER.**

 

 

Parents and Children in Verdian Opera

01:090:270 Index # 50817
Rudolph Bell, Department of History
W 06:10-9:00P            Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Giuseppe Verdi returned again and again for his dramatic plots to the theme of parent/child conflict, especially in father/daughter relationships. No other composer, or his contemporary dramatist for that matter, did so as frequently. Why this theme fascinated him, and why audiences ever since have found the subject so appealing, comprise the “state of the question” for this seminar. We may not reach a conclusion but the exploration should be interesting.

We will focus on seven operas where father/daughter issues loom large: Nabucco (1842), Rigoletto (1851), La Traviata (1853), Simon Boccanegra (1857), La Forza del Destino (1862), Don Carlo (1867), and Aida (1871). Paired with each of these operas, we will explore the father/daughter theme in related texts and venues. For example, Nabucco will trigger us to look at the biblical Lot and his daughters, Rigoletto at Renaissance chastity texts, Simon Boccanegra at historical documents, La Forza del Destino at Electra, Don Carlo at Freud, and Aida at race and class issues.

Students who speak Italian or who have a background in musicology, psychology, or history are welcome but these backgrounds are NOT required. Good armchair listeners who love the opera or want to give it a serious try are welcome in the seminar. The course will include attending a live performance of Rigoletto at New York’s Metropolitan Opera (the powerful baritone Željko Lučić will sing Rigoletto and Diana Damrau should be terrific as Gilda). Tickets are compliments of the Honors Program!

Students will write two short essays (5-7pp.). One will relate the father/daughter theme in an opera to its counterpart in one or more of the other texts we will study, for example, the treatment of incest in Don Carlo and Freud. The other will be a performance review that assesses costume, setting, theatrical, and other production issues versus voice and musicality in the Salzburg version of La Traviata that we will view in class versus the Met productions we will have seen to that point (Nabucco on DVD and Rigoletto live). There will be a final take-home essay (12-15pp.) on some aspect of the overall parent/child theme in all seven Verdian operas (plus, if students wish Ernani, Luisa Miller, even Il Trovatore, and others that we will not have time to study in class). I’m open to a take-home on other themes, such as the use of the malediction (often resulting in the death of a daughter under her father’s curse – this is opera!) in Verdian plots, or to proposals for going outside the Verdian corpus to look at Wagner’s handling of Wotan and Brunhilde…but these matters can wait until the seminar unfolds.

Please note that on DVD performance sessions, especially La Forza and Don Carlo, the class will run late, even to 10:00 P.M. and of course for Rigoletto at the Met we will not return to New Brunswick until after midnight.

RUDOLPH BELL has taught at Rutgers since 1968, including undergraduate honors seminars over the years on anorexic saints, popular advice manuals, and childrearing in history. He is the author of scholarly books related to these teaching endeavors, including Holy Anorexia and How to Do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians.  He has two daughters and three granddaughters, with all of whom he thinks he has good rapport. 

NEXT

 
Quantum Reality

01:090:271 Index # 50818
Sheldon Goldstein, Department of Mathematics
TF 10:20-11:40A         SEC-202
Busch Campus

NEXT

Without the belief that it is possible to grasp the reality with our theoretical constructions, without the belief in the inner harmony of our world, there could be no science. This belief is and always will remain the fundamental motive for all scientific creation. (Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld in The Evolution of Physics)

Quantum theory is the most successful physical theory yet devised.  Not one of the multitude of its calculated predictions has ever been found wanting, even in the last measured decimal place.  All the same, it is a bizarre theory, so much so that Richard Feynman, one of the deepest scientist-thinkers of the last century and one not known for his intellectual (or any other) modesty, once said: “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.”  According to its traditional Copenhagen interpretation, quantum mechanics marks a sharp departure from the belief and scientific ideal of Einstein, expressed by the above quotation, replacing it with the view that the aim of physics is not to grasp any objective reality but merely to describe our observations, and that, indeed, there is no quantum reality.

Many physicists have been unhappy with such an austere view of quantum physics, and they have provided us with a bewildering variety of peculiar quantum realities and quantum paradoxes, including multiple universes (the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics), observer-created reality, spooky-action-at-a-distance, reality founded upon a repudiation of classical logic, reality grounded in minds alone (the many-minds interpretation of quantum mechanics), and a reality involving transitions from irreducible potentiality to definite actuality.  At the same time, it has often been claimed that quantum phenomena are demonstrably incompatible with a more normal and less romantic account of physical reality, one in which objects of a precise and unambiguous character behave in a coherent and sensible way.  In other words, it has been claimed that the sort of reality that Einstein might have found acceptable is impossible.

In this honors seminar we shall explore these claims about and versions of quantum reality.  We shall try to judge the extent to which these strange realities and the claims denying the possibility of a more ordinary account of quantum phenomena are genuinely supported by solid evidence and analysis.  In so doing, we shall also examine some specific proposals reputedly refuting most of the impossibility claims and assertions of quantum strangeness.

To the degree that knowledge of quantum mechanics is necessary for this seminar, the relevant material will be developed as we go along.  No prior acquaintance with physics, quantum or classical, will be assumed on the part of the students---though it would of course be helpful.  Knowledge of elementary calculus, as would be obtained for example in a high school advanced-placement calculus course, will, however, be expected, as will a healthy curiosity about the nature of physical reality.

SHELDON GOLDSTEIN is a Professor of Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy. He worked for many years on probability theory and the rigorous foundations of tatistical mechanics.  In particular, he has investigated the arrow of time and the notion of entropy, why it tends to increase, and why physical systems tend to approach equilibrium.  In more recent years his main concern has been with the foundations of quantum mechanics, where he has focused on Bohmian mechanics and on nonlocality.  The goal of this research is to make sense, good clean sense, of quantum theory.

 
**CANCELLED** Public Monuments in America, 19th- 21st Centuries

01:090:272 Index # 50819
Sarah Blake McHam, Department of Art History
M 02:50-05:50P          Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

This seminar will address the issues surrounding public monuments from the nineteenth century through the present day. It will focus on sculptures commissioned to commemorate major events in the United States -- for example, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 -- but will also consider some important recent European examples, particularly those memorializing the Holocaust.  The location of these monuments in the streets and squares of cities and their construction in permanent materials like stone and steel convey official sanction and the goal of lasting into posterity.  Their public situation, durability, and universal legibility as images mean that they play a powerful role in creating viewers’ memories of what they commemorate.

Until the unveiling of Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in the early 1980s, conventional wisdom held that the public monument was a dead form, killed by the lack of common cultural associations and bonds among the citizenry.  In the intervening decades that evaluation has radically changed, and a large group of memorials have been built.  They mark a rupture with the tradition of public monuments that began as early as ancient Greece and Egypt.  Recent monuments no longer commemorate gods and heroes -- who can agree on them? -- but instead victims.  These recent monuments have occasioned vehement controversies about who and what should be remembered and honored, how the event and persons should be interpreted, where the monument should be located, and what advantages accrue to the monument’s commissioners from these choices.  At stake are crucial questions surrounding national identity and the shaping of the historical record.

Through the discussion of weekly readings about a selected group of recent memorials, the seminar will investigate how and why these groundbreaking changes occurred.  There will be at least one class trip to study a group of public monuments on site.  Students will be expected to prepare presentations of the readings, and ultimately to select a specific monument that they will study in person and do research on by reading original sources and documents, for example, through the Smithsonian inventory of American monuments and at the archives of local historical societies.  Each student will present his/her research to the class, and write it up as a 10- page term paper.

SARAH BLAKE MCHAM, an art historian specializing in the Italian Renaissance (1250-1600), has been a professor at Rutgers for most of her career.  A graduate of Smith College with a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, she has won teaching awards from Rutgers and international organizations.  She has published several books and many articles dealing with sculpture in the Renaissance period and its links to ancient Greece and Rome.  In recent years, she has become interested in the legacy of this tradition in the modern world.


Madness and Perversion

01:090:273 Index # 50820
Nicholas Rennie, Department of German
W 02:50-05:50P          Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

What thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are normal?  Which are aberrant?  This seminar looks at literary treatments (and a selection of film adaptations) of madness and perversion over the last four centuries.  Particular attention will be given to the roots and development of modern conceptions of sex and psychology as developed in the literary work of German-speaking Europe.  Topics will include the holy fool, the Romantic invention of madness and genius, sexual perversion and bourgeois normalcy, the invention of psychology, and gender and the idea of “natural” social roles. 

We will read from the following: Shakespeare, King Lear; Cervantes, Don Quixote; Georg Büchner, Woyzeck; Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, Venus in Furs; Frank Wedekind, Lulu; Sigmund Freud, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality; and Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade.  Additional readings will include selections by Foucault, de Sade, Horkheimer and Adorno, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Angela Carter, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Magnus Hirschfeld, and films or film selections by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Fritz Lang, Peter Brook.

NICHOLAS RENNIE studied at Princeton University, the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany), and Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. in Comparative Literature.  He has received numerous awards, including a School of Arts and Sciences Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education, and an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship supporting his work at the Ludwig Maximilians University Munich (2002-2003) and the Free University Berlin (2007-2008).  He is the author of Speculating on the Moment: The Poetics of Time and Recurrence in Goethe, Leopardi, and Nietzsche (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005), and has written articles on Molière, Lessing, Goethe, Leopardi, Nietzsche, and Benjamin.


Wonderful Life: Genes and Evolution

01:090:274 Index # 50821
Frank Deis, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
MW 01:40-03:00pm    ARC Rm 105
Busch Campus

NEXT

Life appears to have originated on Earth nearly 4.5 billion years ago when the oceans boiled and the atmosphere had no oxygen.  The changing conditions on our planet have defined the parameters within which life has existed.  An increase in the amount of oxygen in the air from 2.5 billion to 500 million years ago eventually permitted “modern” animals to exist.  Massive extinctions (especially at the end of the Permian Period) have narrowed the spectrum of species on the planet.

One theme of the seminar will be the origin of life, early evolution, implications for life in extreme environments, and possible life on Mars.  Students with an appreciation of chemistry will perhaps better understand the concepts in this part of the seminar than those without, but the readings are intended to be non-technical.

A second theme of the seminar is that science, as a human endeavor, is full of disagreements and political axes to grind.  One of the most controversial areas of evolutionary science is the connection between genes and behavior.  We will try to illuminate this controversy through class readings and discussions.

The reading materials throughout the seminar will be enhanced and complemented by materials in other media, especially video and film.  Books by Stephen Jay Gould and other writers on evolution and paleontology will be assigned.  Professor Deis will also bring in appropriate fossils, shells, and minerals from his collection.

Periodic papers will be assigned.  The factual content of the course will require and occasional short quiz.  Attendance and active class participation will contribute to each student’s grade.

FRANK DEIS studied Chemistry at Rice University and the University of Virginia, and Medicinal Chemistry at the Medical College of Virginia.  He has taught Biochemistry at Rutgers since 1977, and is author of Companion to Biochemistry (W.H. Freeman 2006). 


Mixing Race and Culture- US and Latin America

01:090:275 Index # 51023
Cesar Braga-Pinto, Department of Spanish and Portugese/Comp Lit
TH 04:30-07:30P         Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

In this interdisciplinary, cross-cultural seminar we will discuss processes of racial mixing and cultural exchange as they have been articulated in fiction and theory by U.S., Latin American, and Caribbean writers.  We will first discuss the issue of miscegenation in the U.S. at the end of the 19th century and the significance of anti-miscegenation laws.  We will also discuss the figure of the tragic mulatto and the theme of “passing” in U.S. fiction by writers such as Langston Hughes and Nella Larsen.  In contrast, we will try to understand how the concept of mestizaje or racial mixture developed from notions of biological degeneration to celebration of national identity in Mexico, Cuba, and Brazil.  Indeed, triumphant mestizaje has been used as a way of explaining Latin-American realities since the colonial period.  What are the differences between the representations of white/indian and white/black mestizos? What were some of the scientific theories that attempted to explain racial mixture and miscegenation?  What happens when mestizaje begins to mean mostly cultural, rather than racial mixture?  To what extent does the term mestizaje remain useful for us to think about Latin American realities, and to what extent do terms such as transculturation, (Ortiz), hybridity? (Garcia-Canclini, Bhabha), heterogeneity (Cornejo-Polar) or creolité introduce new possibilities for understanding the contemporary world?

In the last part of the seminar, we will discuss how U.S. Latinos have re-appropriated the Latin American concept of mestizaje, to propose a critical intervention in U.S. racial discourses.  We will also look at the current debate on affirmative action that has been displacing traditional forms of representing Latin American racial categories.  Our intention is to consider new paradigms for a global concept of race that transcends U.S. binary categories as well as Latin American triumphant mestizajes.

 

Shakespeare and History

01:090:276 Index # 51024
Emily Bartels, Department of English
MW 11:30-12:50P       Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

To produce "history," whether on the page or on the stage, is indeed to make it.  When William Shakespeare brings Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, and Henry V imaginatively back to life in the early modern theater, or when Raphael Holinshed chronicles the reigns of these remarkable (in some cases outrageous) kings, they - the playwright and historian alike - are not simply recording a "real" past; they are shaping a vision of that never quite recoverable "reality."  They are also setting their own terms for what history is and does - for what counts as an historical subject, an historical way of representing, and an historical agenda.  Early modern English playwrights and chroniclers were, in fact, deeply engaged with not only the matter but also the question of "history."  For them, to represent the past was to potently politicize the present, to shape the state as well as the stage, to interrogate the all important fault-line between fact and fiction, and to create brave new texts, brave new politics, and brave new worlds.  "Such is the breath of kings," as Shakespeare writes in Richard II.

This seminar will take as its subject the ways in "history" was being produced, on the stage by the indomitable William Shakespeare, and off the stage by chroniclers such as Raphael Holinshed and Richard Hakluyt.  In looking at the intersection of dramatic and non-dramatic writers in a period 400 years before our own, our aim will be to "historicize" the notion of what history is and does, to think seriously about how "history" evolves within a particular historical moment, and to understand how the form of an historical story defines its content.  We will learn how to ask questions of dramatic and non-dramatic historically loaded texts, how to account for historical differences, how to read an historical moment through textual lenses, and how to read texts in their history moment.

Our primary readings will include: a selection of Shakespeare's plays (likely among them Richard III, Julius Caesar, Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2, Henry V, The Tempest) as well as other plays (John Ford, Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck; Christopher Marlowe, Edward II; Bertolt Brecht, Edward II; Aime Cesaire, A Tempest) that provide useful temporal and generic contrasts; and selections from William Warner, Albion's England; Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, John Stowe, Summary of English Chronicles, and Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations of the English Nation.

Students will work on one extensive research project of their own design through the term, and will keep a reflective critical journal summarizing and analyzing their readings-in-progress.

EMILY BARTELS (BA Yale 1979; PhD Harvard 1987) is an associate professor in the English department and a specialist on early modern literature and culture.  Her publications include: Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation, and Marlowe, an edited collection of essays on Christopher Marlowe, and a number of essays on Shakespeare and questions of race, gender, and cross-cultural contact.   She is currently completing a book, Staging the Moor: From Alcazar to Othello.


Cold War Culture

01:090:277 Index # 51025
David Greenberg, Department of Journalism and Media Studies
M 01:10-04:10P          35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

The years just after World War II helped define American politics and culture in the half century that followed.  This seminar examines the Cold War that emerged, the politics of the era, and the culture that it created.  In the political realm, the topics that the seminar will explore include the origins of the Cold War, the Red Scare, domestic politics, espionage, and the civil rights movement.  Social issues examined will include the conformity of the era, the new material abundance, and feminism.  We will also look at examples of the era’s culture, including beat literature, film noir, Cold War journalism, abstract expressionist art, early television, and rock music.  By looking at the period from so many different angles, the seminar seeks to show the interconnectedness of politics, ideas, and culture; to complicate today’s clichés about the period; to locate the origins of patterns that persist in our own time; and to appreciate the differences of this era from our own.

Students will be assigned weekly readings and participation in discussion is mandatory every week.  Students will be required to submit one short paper and one long paper.

DAVID GREENBERG is Associate Professor in the departments of Journalism & Media Studies and History.  His specialty is U.S. political history.  He earned his BA from Yale University (summa cum laude, 1990) and his PhD from Columbia University (2001); he has taught at Rutgers since 2004.  His books include Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image and Presidential Doodles.  Before entering academia, he was managing editor and acting editor of The New Republic and he still writes for publications such as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Slate.
 
Energy Materials and the Environment

01:090:278 Index # 53301
Gabriel Kotliar, Department of Physics and Astronomy
MW 01:10-02:30P       Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

Will we run out of energy in the next century?  How will nations deal with the increasing competition for scarce natural resources? As the world standard of living and the energy consumption per capita increases can we avoid destroying our own habitat? Is there a technologically viable solution to the current energy crisis or is the survival of our human species dependent on technological breakthroughs that have not yet taken place?

We really do not know the full answers to these pressing questions but we can learn about the physical ideas connected to the field of energy, and we can discuss the constraints imposed by the laws of physics when addressing these questions.

In this seminar we will look at these questions from the perspective of a physicist. The course will start by asking the question of what is energy. It will then describe the different forms that energy can take, such as nuclear, solar, chemical, electrical, chemical and mechanical. We will discuss the issue of conversion between the different forms energy, how efficient can this energy conversion be, and what are the effects that energy conversion has on the environment. The physics that relate to these topics will be presented at an elementary level.  It should be suitable for a motivated non-science major with a good high school science education.

The goal of the course is to learn about energy and elicit discussions about the current options that we have, as a society, to deal with the current energy and climate crisis.

GABRIEL KOTLIAR is a theoretical physicist with interests in materials science and a Board of Governors Professor at Rutgers University.  Professor Kotliar received the 2006 Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize for his work on strongly correlated electron materials.  He is also a recipient of a Guggenheim and a Sloan fellowship.  His research interests are in the theory of materials, and his goal is to speed up the discovery of materials with useful properties.  For this purpose he uses quantum field theory methods, algorithms, and computer simulations.  He believes that education and scientific research are the keys for a better future.


The Preposterous Universe

01:090:279 Index # 51026
Charles Keeton, Department of Physics and Astronomy
TTH 09:50-11:10A      Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

Science is a dynamic process of discovery, not a fixed set of facts.  In this seminar we will develop scientific critical thinking skills that are central to the discovery process, by reading and writing about astrophysics.  We will focus on how astronomers have come to believe the universe is filled with exotic "dark matter" that pulls on everything (through gravity) but is invisible, and "dark energy" that produces a bizarre cosmic repulsion.  Since neither substance has been seen or felt directly, we have an outstanding opportunity to examine how scientists interpret evidence and construct arguments to support the "dark universe" paradigm.  The paradigm is still evolving—the evidence for dark energy is only a decade old—and even subject to debate, so we will see how science operates at the frontiers of knowledge.

Even before taking advanced technical courses, students can learn to evaluate scientific evidence and arguments, and to construct arguments of their own.  We will do this by engaging scientific literature directly.  We will analyze the evidence presented in the papers we read, discuss its interpretation, and critique the way the scientific arguments are presented.  We will begin with pieces from popular science publications (such as Scientific American and Science News) to set the context and give the students a familiar starting point.  We will read research literature to examine first-hand how new insights are obtained and presented, and see how they work their way into a general understanding of the universe.  Reading original works will help students realize (perhaps to their surprise) that science is primarily about what we do not know, and how we discover. 

Prior knowledge of astrophysics is not required, but willingness to be quantitative and mathematical is a must.

Students will hone their critical thinking and writing skills by composing four papers representing different styles of scientific communication:

•    News item in the style of Science News, written for an educated but general audience.
•    Commentary in the style of Nature News & Views, written for scientists but not astronomers.
•    Scientific conference presentation.
•    Scientific research paper.

For each project, I will offer comments on the strength and clarity of the argument, the depth of the analysis, and whether the paper reaches its target audience, and then return the paper for revision.  The freedom to make mistakes, receive comments, and make improvements is central to effective learning.  Plus, revision is essential to good writing, and a very real part of writing in science.

CHARLES KEETON is an astrophysicist who studies the bending of light by gravity to learn about the exotic dark matter that permeates the universe.  One of his current interests is finding the invisible dwarf galaxies that are predicted to surround each massive galaxy.  Professor Keeton combines theoretical studies with observations using the Hubble Space Telescope and telescopes in Arizona, Hawaii, and Chile; and he expects to use the new Southern African Large Telescope, in which Rutgers is a major participant.  Before coming to Rutgers, Professor Keeton was a Hubble Fellow at the University of Chicago, a researcher at the University of Arizona, and a graduate student at Harvard University.


Causality and Causal Inference

01:090:280 Index # 51027
Itzhak Yanovitzky, Department of Communication
W 09:50A -12:50P      35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

Are genes the cause of obesity?  Does exposure to televised violence cause viewers to be violent?  And is Speedo’s newest high-tech swimsuit the only possible explanation for swimmer Michael Phelps’s amazing achievement (8 gold medals, 7 world records) in the 2008 Olympic Games?  Wondering why something exists or how something came to be is in our nature as humans.  Not surprisingly, then, the central aim of many scientific studies is the elucidation of cause-effect relationships among variables.  However, while most people possess an intuitive understanding of causality as it appears in everyday life, scholars and philosophers, at least as far back as Aristotle, have been debating the notion of causality and the best ways to describe and assess it.  In recent years, with the emergence of clearer semantics for causal claims across scientific fields and with the mathematical advances in the modeling of causal relationships, the study of causality and causal inference seems to have reached a point of maturity while developing into a scientific field in its own right.

This seminar will introduce students to the topic of causality and causal inference – perhaps the most crucial element of any scientific inquiry.  The first part of the seminar will be a historical overview of causality as it evolved through the work of scientists in different fields.  The second part of the seminar will center on the two most fundamental aspects of causality, namely the empirical evidence needed for making legitimate claims about cause-effect relationships and the appropriate causal inference from such evidence.  Special emphasis will be given to the role of theory, the importance of deriving well-explicated empirical (logical) statements and employing rigorous tests, practical methods for elucidating potentially causal relationships from data, and the critical evaluation of causal evidence.  Students will have ample opportunities to consider and debate different aspects of causality through class discussions and small group assignments.  They will also work individually to apply the insights and knowledge they gain in class to a real-world problem involving a cause-effect relationship.  

ITZHAK YANOVITZKY is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication where he teaches courses on persuasive communication, communication and change, and research methods.  Dr. Yanovitzky joined Rutgers in 2001 after earning his doctoral degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication.  His primary research interests include health communication (particularly the use of communication campaigns to promote healthier behaviors and lifestyles) and the strategic use of communication to support social change.  He is also an expert in the area of program evaluation, which inherently deals with issues of causality and causal inference.  


Romantic Love East and West

01:090:281 Index # 51028
Ann Choi, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
TTH 01:10-02:30P       Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

What is love?  Why are people attracted to it?  What were the thoughts of the ancients regarding it and how are they different from our modern conceptions?  This seminar explores the phenomenon of love found in selected twentieth century Western and East Asian literary works.  We will first examine romantic love as it occurred in the two civilizations.  The European imagination and its longing for Asia will also be examined in the light of their histories interweaving during the age of colonization and empire.  We will look at the different historical background of each work and the socio-cultural milieu from which it was written.  After exploring some commonalities and differences among the literary works, we will look at how love as desire for that which we do not yet have continues to fuel our globalized twentieth first century imagination.

ANN Y. CHOI is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures.  She works on the intersection of poetry, memory, and history and is finishing her book manuscript titled Letting You Go Without Tears:  Modern Korean Love Poetry. She is also a poet and a recipient of  Wallace Stegner Fellowship in Poetry from Stanford University.  Also interested in diasporic and anglophone postcolonial literatures, she explores the notion of globalization of literatures in English as she continues to teach literatures in translation.


Maritime Culture

01:090:282 Index # 51029
Angus Kress Gillespie, Department of American Studies
W 02:15-05:15P          RAB 018
Douglass Campus

This seminar is an interdisciplinary course for students with a strong academic and personal interest in the sea.  No maritime experience is necessary.  This will be an ocean and coastal studies course combining maritime history, environmental policy, and the folklore, films, and literature of the sea.  We will use a number of academic disciplines to explore the influence of the sea on American life.  Readings and classroom discussions may come to life with a field trip to a nearby seaport.  We will begin with a study of maritime history; this factual material will be supplemented with weather lore, maritime art, and folklore, including stories of mermaids, monsters, sea serpents, and enchanted isles.  At the same time, we will study marine policy through lectures and guest speakers whose topics embrace economic and environmental issues as well as current policy regarding world trade and regulatory reform, conservation and fisheries, national defense and admiralty law. 

ANGUS KRESS GILLESPIE is a folklorist with a strong interest in the traditions and legends of people who live by the sea.  He has studied their beliefs and superstitions about boatbuilding, the weather, creatures real and legendary, as well as the ghosts and saints and demons that influence their lives.  In the 1990s, Gillespie served on the Board of Trustees of the New Netherlands Museum, whose principal attraction was an 85-foot replica of the Half Moon, the ship Henry Hudson sailed while exploring the Hudson River in 1609.  Presently, Professor Gillespie is an active member of the Central Jersey Council of the Navy League of the United States, a civilian organization dedicated to the support of the men and women of the sea services and their families, founded in 1902 with the encouragement of President Theodore Roosevelt. 


The Tragedy of American Diplomacy

01:090:283 Index # 51030
Lloyd Gardner, Department of History
T 01:10-04:10p            35 College Ave Rm 102
College Avenue Campus
*BY APPLICATION ONLY** If you are interested in taking this seminar, please submit a short statement explaining your interest to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

How did we get into this mess?  Seven years and more since 9/11, five years and more since Gulf War II, the United States finds itself entangled in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, challenged by the Iranian nuclear program as well as Pakistan's growing unwillingness to tolerate American  attacks on the Taliban near its borders.  At the end of the Cold War, American power and  prestige seemed unassailable, but that is clearly no longer the case.  What can we learn about America's current predicament from historians?  2009 marks the 50th anniversary of the appearance of the most important (and most controversial) book published on foreign affairs, William Appleman Williams' The Tragedy of American Diplomacy.  We will read that book along with Reinhold Niebuhr's equally penetrating essay, The Irony of American History.  Williams and Niebuhr are both critics of American policy, from quite different perspectives.  They offer much to think about and discuss.  We will also read books by a famous diplomatic historian of today, Walter LaFeber, on Michael Jordan and globalism; an investigative journalist, Stephen Kinzer, on American interventions in the Third World; and a former government analyst, Chalmers Johnson, on the increasing power and influence of the military in political life.  The highlight of the course will be a conference to be held on April 24-25, 2009, when Andrew Bacevich, who writes op-eds as well as penetrating studies of American imperialism, and twelve historians will present papers discussing Williams' book and its relevance to today's predicament.  Students will have an opportunity to engage these scholars, both formally and informally, and to exchange opinions with them and one another.  The principle requirement for the course is a "term" paper on a topic of interest related to American foreign policy and its historiography.

LLOYD C. GARDNER has taught at Rutgers since 1963.  He holds the Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin, and is the author of more than a dozen books on American foreign affairs, including most recently, The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of American Foreign Policy Since 1970.  He has taught at universities in Finland and England, and is a past president of the Society of American Historians of American Foreign Relations.


Artists and War in Historical Perspective

01:090:284 Index # 51031
Temma Kaplan, Department of History
T 2:50-05:50p  Van Dyck Rm 301
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

History can be recounted in pictures and monuments as often as in words.  Like other forms of history, photographs, graphic novels, paintings, memorials, pageants, and architecture provide their own interpretations, and this is never more compelling than in accounts of war.  During periods of massive political and social change that accompany wars, artists frequently choose images from their repertoires and develop new imagery to advocate their views or express their horror.  Through an examination of a variety of historical art forms in Africa, Mexico, Iran, Japan, post-War Europe, and the United States, and the artists who created them, this seminar will consider how to refine interpretations of how we come to believe certain accounts and challenge others.
 
Students will read a group of books and articles in common and then formulate questions of their own that will enable them to write interpretive essays dealing with some aspect of the relationship of art and war.

TEMMA KAPLAN is an historian and a feminist social critic who has written about art and politics, social movements, environmental struggles, and human rights campaigns in Latin America, Africa, the U.S. and Europe, especially Spain. She is concerned with creativity in the pursuit of justice and civil rights, and writes about political demonstrations and popular arts.  She has written four books, including Red City, Blue Period: Social Movements in Picasso’s Barcelona (on demand with the University of California Press).  She is presently writing a book called Grotesque Humor that deals with the racism and sexism of Spanish and American cartoonists in the 1890s.


Creating Art and Discovering Science Through Visualization in Polynomiography

01:090:285 Index # 53504
Bahman Kalantari, Department of Computer Science
M 06:10-09:00p           Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

NEXT

This seminar will introduce a novel and interdisciplinary field, polynomiography, the fine art and science of visualizing a polynomial equation through computer-generated images.  Students will learn the basics of the underlying mathematical and algorithmic foundation of polynomiography aimed at solving a polynomial equation, a task present in every branch of science and mathematics.  However, through polynomiography and its software students will also learn to create art and design by turning the polynomial root-finding problem upside down.  While polynomiography allows virtual painting using the computer screen as its canvas, it also inspires new artistic styles and actual paintings, whether originated directly from polynomiography software, or indirectly from its concepts.

In this seminar, students will be introduced to a range of possible course projects to be carried out either individually or in small groups.  Sample projects consist of: 2D or 3D artwork using polynomiography software, e.g. as prints or video productions; visualizations or animations, as art or as means in conveying a mathematical property or concept; comparison of polynomioraphic images and traditional human art and design.  Students may also propose their own creative projects.

The mathematical prerequisite for the course includes Calculus, and interest to explore.

BAHMAN KALANTARI is a professor of computer science and the inventor of the U.S. patented technology of polynomiography.  His research interests lie in theory, algorithms, and applications in a wide range of topics that include mathematical programming; discrete and combinatorial optimization; polynomial root-finding and approximation theory; and polynomiography.  Professor Kalantari's polynomiography has received national and international media recognition that include Science News, the Star-Ledger, DISCOVER Magazine, New Jersey Savvy Living Magazine, Tiede (popular science magazine of Finland), Muy Interesante (popular science magazine of Spain) and more.  His artworks have been exhibited in such venues as a traveling art-math exhibition in France, SIGGRAPH Art Gallery in LA, as well as at Rutgers and around New Jersey.  His artworks have also appeared on the cover of publications such as Computer Graphics Quarterly, Princeton University Press book, art-math conference proceedings, and in science magazines.  He has delivered numerous lectures, including invited presentations in Paris, Vienna, Rome, Montreal, Puerto Rico, as well as in middle and high schools in the United States.


Physiological Adaptation: Heart, Stress and Exercise

01:090:286 Index # 51032
Roseli Golfetti, Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience
MW 5:00-06:20P         ARC Rm 107
Busch Campus

This seminar will take an integrative approach to physiology.  We will discuss our understanding of the body’s ability to adjust and adapt to internal and external environmental challenges in a historical perspective.  We will examine when the body was first analyzed as a whole system, one that interacts and maintains its functional integrity even when it is submitted to disturbances.  We will consider the body view of the early 1900’s as well our present day understanding and the remarkable contributions of eminent scientists.  We will focus on the heart and vessels as a physiological system and will examine their relation to stress and exercise.

The cardiovascular system plays an important role in providing oxygen and nutrients for the human body (and mammals in general).  Under physiological conditions, the heart beats without fatiguing throughout life.  When there is a need, the heart speeds up to keep up with oxygen and nutrients body demands.  However, during calm conditions the heart slows down to economize energy.  Intricate physiological mechanisms underlie these conditions.  Physical and mental stressors promote both short- term adjustments and long- term body adaptations.

The class will consist of lectures, seminars, student presentations, and class discussions.  Students will be assigned readings from journal articles and books.  Students and Instructor will decide on a topic of mutual interest relating aspects of cardiovascular adaptation to stress and physical activity/ inactivity.  This course is designed for any honors student with an interest in the subject; you do not need to be planning to major in a science.

DR. ROSELI GOLFETTI is interested in the cardiovascular physiology and its responses to challenges such as exercise, stress and conditions including ischemia and reperfusion.  Prior to coming to Rutgers University, her research focused on the adrenergic responses of the heart to acute and chronic stress.  She also conducted research on the autonomic regulation of the heart during rest, exercise and the effects of physical training in various physiological states (men and women, adolescents, pregnancy and athletes).  At Rutgers, Dr. Golfetti’s research focuses on the effects of acetaminophen on the heart during ischemia and reperfusion.  She taught physiology to undergraduate and graduate students for many years at The State University of Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil.

Read more ...

Fall 2008 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars


How Sex Changed: Biomedical Sex Research in the 20th Century
01:090:250:10982
James Reed, Department of History
W 6:10 PM - 9:00 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

This is a seminar about the relationship between scientists and human sexuality.  We will examine some of the most important efforts to understand and to control sexual behavior.  Who studied sex?  How did they define it? What methods did they use? Why did they do it?  Who paid for the work? What is the relationship between this science, gender systems, and other salient aspects of U.S. society? What can we learn from the immense disseminar constructed by sex researchers?  
    
We will begin with the "crisis in civilized sexual morality" and Freud's visit to the U.S. in 1900, and end with the emergence of the intersexed and transsexuals as self-conscious minorities successfully struggling for civil rights.  We will have an Alfred Kinsey film festival, and will devote several weeks to the career John Money, the Johns Hopkins University clinical psychologist who championed the cause of surgical sex reassignment.  Assigned readings will include: Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality; Deborah Rudacille, The Riddle of Gender; John Coalpinto; and other materials provided by the instructor.  All participants in the class will be expected to make a presentation (15 minutes maximum) about a researcher, novel, autobiography, journal, or website that is relevant to our story.   There will be two short written assignments (5 pages) and a longer essay (minimum 10 pages) that will serve as a final exam.

JAMES REED has professed History at Rutgers since 1975.  He got his B.A. at Louisiana State University and his A.M. and Ph.D. at Harvard.  Among historians he is best known for a book titled From Private Vice to Public Virtue, which is a history of birth control in the U.S.  He has also written on intelligence tests, penitentiaries, and biomedical sex research.   His current writing project is a history of biomedical sex research, working title—Sex Research in America: From Social Hygiene to Sexology.    Among students he is best known as the instructor in Development of the U.S. I & II, as well as more specialized courses such as Health and the Environment in the U.S., Sport in History,  The IQ Controversy, and an honors seminar on “How Sex Changed.”  He served as Dean of Rutgers College from 1985 to 1994.
...................................................................................................................

 

Identity and Culture in an Age of Uncertainty
01:090:251 Index #10983
Arlene Stein, Department of Sociology
M 05:00-08:00pm    LSH A215
Livingston Campus

“Identity” signifies both individuality and community.  It suggests a connection between our subjective understandings of the world and the cultural and historical settings in which we find ourselves.  To have an “identity” is to possess a sense of oneself as relatively stable over time, even as the world around us is constantly in motion.  This seminar explores the relationship between identities and social/cultural change.  We will explore some of the challenges facing us in a world where risk, uncertainty, and flux are an indelible part of life.

As individuals, we are products of our time, and of the events that shape our worlds.  Yet we are not prisoners of time or of the culture and society in which we live.  As C. Wright Mills once said, a central task for sociology is to imagine how three dimensions—history, biography, and social structure—combine to create social reality.  This is one of our primary tasks this semester.  Toward this end, we will ask: what is identity - is there even such a thing?  How are identities socially constructed, maintained, and transformed?  Is identity a life story, a narrative?  If so, how do we tell the story of a life?  How has identity evolved across time and space?  How does it become transformed across the life span, and through the activities of social movements, and in response to war and social unrest?

In the second part of the seminar, we will discuss the ways in which traumatic events such as rape and war can challenge the integrity of the self, and call one’s identity into question.  We will try to understand how traumas shape individual and collective memories, how different groups have tried to commemorate past traumatic episodes, and how/with what consequence traumatic images circulate through mass media, affecting us all.  Finally, we will consider the ways that globalization, as a cultural and economic process, leads to greater opportunities for some while introducing a new set of risks, and bringing new inequalities.  How is globalization shaping identities today?  How and why have some ethnic and religious groups responded to globalization, and the uncertainties it introduces, by turning to religious/ethnic fundamentalisms?  What are the prospects of moving beyond such defensive forms of identification?

ARLENE STEIN teaches courses on the sociology of gender, sexuality, culture, religion, and identities. She is the author of three books and the editor of two collections of essays. Among them is The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community’s Battle Over Sex, Faith, and Civil Rights (Beacon), an ethnographic study of a conservative campaign against gay/lesbian rights and its impact upon one community. The book won the American Anthropological Association’s Ruth Benedict Award and an Honor Award from the American Library Association. Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation (University of California), an earlier work, examines the impact of feminism on women’s sexual identities. A collection of her essays, Shameless: Sexual Dissidence in American Culture (NYU), was published in 2006. She received the Simon and Gagnon Award for career contributions to the study of sexualities, given by the American Sociological Association. She has two current research projects: the first is a study of trauma and family memories; the second concerns religious expression in public schools. She serves on the graduate faculty of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Rutgers, and previously taught at the University of Oregon and the University of Essex.
...................................................................................................................

 

Communication and Ethnicity: Asian Americans
01:090:252 Index #10984
Hui-Min Kuo, Department of Communication
T 01:10-04:10pm    Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

This seminar will introduce the theories, approaches, and processes involved in communicating with individuals of different cultural backgrounds, specifically, Asian Americans, while examining potential challenges and issues relevant to this context.  This seminar aims to help advance the understanding of Asian and Asian American communication in a multicultural society and global world by focusing on how the concepts of ethnicity and culture can influence everyday communication behavior and outcomes.  The seminar will explore (a) the theoretical assumptions of Asian and Asian American culture and communication, (b) the role of ethnicity and communication in Asian and Asian American cultures, (c) the perspectives and development of ethnic and cultural identities, (d) the communication patterns and styles of Asians and Asian Americans studied in the literature, and (e) the practical implications for communication and interaction with Asians and Asian Americans.  

In this seminar, students will explore fundamental theories of Asian American cultural communication; critically assess the theoretical construct and application of various concepts relevant to Asian American cultural communication; critically compare and contrast applications of the approaches studied in interpersonal, family, or organizational settings; identify potential challenges and perceptual similarities and differences relating to Asian American communication and cultures; and complete a research project by participating in the processes of literature review, research methods, discussion and results, and writing research reports.  Besides research, students will engage in discussion of assigned readings, small group projects based on contemporary films, and exposure to cultural events.

HUI-MIN KUO is Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Communication.  Her teaching and research interests are in organizational culture and intercultural communication.  As a first-generation Asian American, she is particularly interested in studying communication norms and behaviors of Asian Americans when they interact with others.  She earned her PhD in Communication from Rutgers.  With diverse professional experience in instruction, administration, and services to students and faculty, she is interested in connecting communication theories to everyday practices.  Through teaching and research, her goal is to integrate theory and practice to enrich student learning and the communication discipline.
...................................................................................................................

 

Globalization in Historical Perspective
01:090:253 Index #11152
Michael Bordo, Department of Economics
TH 09:50a-12:50p    Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

In the past two decades, globalization -- defined as the integration of goods, labor and financial markets -- has been a powerful force in the global economy.  It has led to heated controversy.  Debate has been engaged between proponents who see the benefits of globalization as a better global allocation of resources, more rapid economic growth, and the opening up of parts of the world that have previously been left behind. Opponents view globalization as disruptive of the existing economic and social order and as transferring resources from the losers in the globalization game to the winners.  This debate has played vociferously into the political arena at the International Institutions and at the domestic political level across the world.  In the US and EU, concern has mounted over the loss of jobs to the emerging countries.  In the emerging countries there is concern over financial instability and financial crises consequent upon capital flow reversals.

The recent era of globalization is not unique. The world saw a similar phenomenon a century ago, in the period 1870 to 1914.  Evidence on migration, trade flows, and capital flows suggests that integration was in some dimensions as extensive or more so than in the present.  However, just as in the current era, capital flows were fickle, leading to waves of financial crises in the emerging countries of the day.

The earlier era of globalization was also rife with debate and political controversy.  Indeed a backlash by labor in the new world countries of the US, Canada, Australia, and Argentina against the massive flows of labor from Europe led to very restrictive legislation against immigration in all these countries.  In the old world land owners objected to the decline in their rents in the face of cheap new world agricultural products.  This led to a rise in tariffs in the 1890s.  These forces some have argued contributed to the rise of nationalism leading to World War I and the end of the first era of globalization.

Students will write papers and give presentations on the facts of globalization then and now; the costs and benefits of integration; the political debates in both eras ; and the policies taken and not taken.  Finally it would discuss the present debate and the challenges for the future.
...................................................................................................................

 

Heroism
01:090:254 Index #10985
Steven Walker, Department of Asian Languages and Cultures/ Comp Lit
T 09:50a-12:50p    Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

A critical investigation into the phenomenon of heroism in both men and women, as represented in complex ways in literary texts and mythology, and also as occurring in real life events both contemporary and historic.  The seminar will examine various older narratives involving heroes and heroines in order to consider (in cultural context but also in terms of universal human potential) these and other questions:

1. What motivates people to risk their lives and welfare in order to engage willingly in some form of heroic action? Is there a hero archetype?

2. Is there a dark side to heroism?

3. Can one extend the idea of heroism to include intellectual heroism (Socrates, Oedipus, Faust) or psychological and spiritual heroism (Inanna, Odysseus, Nachiketa)?

4. Does heroism present a gendered dimension in some cultures? To what extent can one distinguish male and female forms of heroism?

Texts (to be read and discussed, or on occasion to be presented by the professor) will include most of the following: Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the Tyrant (along with Jean-Joseph Goux’ Oedipus, Philosopher); Plato’s Apology and its presentation of the figure of Socrates; the Sumerian myth of The Descent of Inanna; Odysseus’ journey to the Land of the Dead in the Odyssey; the Katha Upanishad’s story of Nachiketa and Yama the god of Death; the Iliad’s portrayal of Achilles; the Bhagavad Gita’s presentation of Arjuna’s dilemma; Joan of Arc and her myth; Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage; Aristotle’s anatomy of the virtue of courage in the Nicomachean Ethics; the thematically parallel stories of Alcestis (in Euripides’ serio-comic play) and Savitri (in the Mahabharata); Joseph Campbell’s anatomy of the heroic quest; figures from Robert Segal’s anthology of hero myths.

The second part of the seminar will dedicated to the presentation of individual student projects, the goal of which will be to discover and discuss in a complex fashion (using the theoretical perspectives established earlier in the seminar) heroic actions in real life, whether contemporary or in the past.  

STEVEN F. WALKER is Professor of Comparative Literature, and has taught frequently in the Rutgers Honors Program. After majoring in Greek at the University of Wisconsin, and receiving a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (French, Greek and Sanskrit) from Harvard University, he went on to teach at Rutgers, where he has been ever since.  His professional interests range from the discovery of significant but covert subtexts (some of them classical) in modern literature to the Jungian study of mythology, as manifested most recently in a book Jung and the Jungians on Myth (Routledge, 2002) and in articles on Proust and the Mass, the hypothesis of the Greek invention of world theater, and the Faustian subtext of Nabokov’s Lolita.  His other interests include classical piano music, the 1920s jazz of Bix Beiderbecke, spending time in France, Jungian psychology and Hindu mysticism.
...................................................................................................................

 

Global Warming: Policy without Politics?
01:090:255 Index #10986
Sunil Somalwar, Department of Physics and Astronomy
MW 01:40p-03:00p HLL Rm 009
Busch Campus

Everybody is concerned about energy and global warming these days. Politicians and entrepreneurs are pushing their favorite solutions, many of which are not sensible. In the meanwhile, the United States continues to use enough energy to bring the entire Lake Erie to a boil within a couple of years. Is energy consumption on such enormous scale necessary to maintain our living standards?  Is it possible that reducing our energy consumption via increased efficiency will in fact increase our technology base and living standards?  What are the European and Japanese experiences and how do they compare to ours?

In this class, we will examine the usage of energy in modern society that has resulted in the dramatic increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, learn the basics of the greenhouse effect and global warming, and discuss the consequences.  We will explore how individual actions (such as commuting, housing choices, etc) impact global warming.  From a public policy standpoint, we will evaluate the relative merits of various approaches and discuss the political implications.  This area is fraught with “unintended consequences”, so instead of proposing pat answers, we will learn how to evaluate proposed solutions critically.  For example, are solar panels cost effective?  Does the electric car make sense?

This seminar will take an interdisciplinary approach to exploring energy and climate change policy, and should be of interest to both science and non-science majors.  

SUNIL SOMALWAR smashes very high energy particles at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) near Chicago and the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland.  The protons he studies collide head on while travelling at about 99.999999% of the speed of light. These collisions create conditions that existed in our universe soon after the Big Bang and help us answer fundamental questions such as how the universe came about, what it is made of, why things attract or repel each other and where all the antimatter has gone. Professor Somalwar is also very concerned about how we humans are smashing the natural world, which is partly why he teaches classes on energy and global warming. He also runs a nonprofit to save the world's remaining few wild tigers (yes, really!) and is a volunteer activist with New Jersey's Sierra Club.
...................................................................................................................

 

Sickle Cell Anemia-
The Intersection of Genetics, Biochemistry, Medicine, History, Evolution and Politics
01:090:256 Index#10987
Professor Abram Gabriel, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
W 03:20-06:20P CABM Rm 308
Busch Campus

As our society becomes more and more specialized, the gaps in knowledge and perspectives separating scientists, physicians, politicians, and consumers from one another, become wider and the consequences more serious.  Although half the American public does not believe in the theory of evolution, advances in molecular biology, genetics and genomics, all with an evolutionary underpinning, are transforming our concepts of health and individual disease risks, with implications for insurance coverage, diagnostic decisions and treatment options.   

This seminar will concentrate on examining medical, biochemical, genetic, evolutionary, as well as historic, political, and sociological aspects of sickle cell anemia (SCA), the most common Mendelian genetic disorder of African-Americans.  SCA has been at the forefront of biomedical research, in terms of understanding its molecular basis and designing diagnostic tests and treatments.  The relationship between SCA and malaria resistance is one of clearest examples of natural selection, while the prevalence of SCA in the U.S. (>80,000 affected individuals) is the direct result of the importation of slaves from West Africa.  Diagnosis, treatment and ongoing management of patients with SCA varies among states and countries, and reflect political and cultural priorities.  

The class will consist of lectures, guest lectures, as well as class discussions and student presentations.  Students will be assigned readings from journal articles and books.  Early in the semester, students will decide on a research topic of mutual instructor/student interest related to some aspect of SCA or another genetic disorder.  During the semester, students will present their findings to the class.  At the end of the semester, students will submit a term paper on their topic, utilizing primary literature, policy reviews, and/or personal interviews.

This course is designed for students interested in majoring or already majoring in Biology, Biochemistry, Genetics, History, Africana Studies, Evolution and Ecology, Anthropology, as well as for students with career interests in medicine, public health, molecular biology, biotechnology, sociology, or the history of medicine.  There are no pre-requisites.  

ABRAM GABRIEL is an associate professor of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry and Graduate Director of the Joint Program in Biochemistry.  He received his B.A. from Harvard University and his M.D. and M.P.H. from Johns Hopkins University.  His research centers on mechanisms and consequences of transposable genetic elements.  This is his first SAS honors seminar, and is based on his interest in making molecular genetics more widely understandable to non-scientists and making the societal repercussions of genetics better appreciated by those planning careers in biomedical science.
...................................................................................................................


The Social Psychology of Gender
01:090:257 Index #10988
Laurie Rudman, Department of Psychology
MW 01:40-03:00p    LSH A215
Livingston Campus

From birth onward, female and male individuals are perceived to be fundamentally different -- so much so that whether a newborn is a boy or girl is usually the first question people ask. Further, young boys and girls largely segregate themselves and develop very different styles of interaction.  Yet, adult men and women typically seek an intimate partner of the other sex and, increasingly, work together in a variety of occupational settings.  This seminar will emphasize the challenges that women face as they strive toward gender equality, and that both sexes face as they strive toward harmonious relations.  We will address fundamental questions about how people think about and behave toward others because of gender categories.  How and why are women and men conceived to be different, and to what degree are these beliefs a matter of explicit ideologies versus implicit (nonconscious) beliefs?  What are the social consequences of these perceived gender differences?  What happens to people who deviate from gender stereotypes and roles – when is this tolerated versus punished?  How do men and women negotiate the complexity and contradictions of gender relations in heterosexual romance and at work?

This seminar will assign primary readings to accompany a book on gender that was written by the instructor (with Peter Glick; see reference below) and was conceived in the spirit of a new look at gender.  The materials will emphasize how two basic aspects of gender relations – male dominance and intimate interdependence – combine to foster a complex relationship between and attitudes toward men and women.  These basic structural facts can be used to make sense of many otherwise puzzling and seemingly contradictory aspects of gender conceptions and relations.

Course requirements will include weekly written assignments based on the readings, a final term paper, and thoughtful and informed class participation.

Rudman, L. A., & Glick, P. (2008). The social psychology of gender: How power and intimacy shape gender relations. New York: Guilford.

LAURIE A. RUDMAN is a Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  Her research interests are inter-group relations and implicit social cognition.  The author of over 40 professional publications, she is currently Associate Editor of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.  Her honors and awards include a National Science Foundation Fellowship, National Research Service Award (National Institutes of Health), and winner (with Eugene Borgida) of the Gordon Allport Prize for the best paper on inter-group relations, given annually by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.  Dr. Rudman is an honorary fellow of the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, and the Society for Experimental Social Psychology, for which she currently serves on the Executive Committee.  She also serves on the Advisory Council for the National Science Foundation and is a representative on the board of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, and Cognitive Sciences.
...................................................................................................................


That's Not Fair! Inequality and Opportunity in America
01:090:258 Index #10989
Patricia Roos, Department of Sociology
M 01:10-04:10p    Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Issues of inequality are central to the research that many social scientists do.  Sociologists have long studied how inequality gets produced and reproduced, and how ascriptive inequalities shape our access to a wide range of opportunities.  These core issues will be the focus of this seminar.

We begin with an overview of why class still matters in contemporary American society.  In a general way, we’ll assess how important class remains in defining our life chances, and our opportunity to pursue the American Dream.  More specifically, with respect to the workplace we'll see how people come to work in the jobs they do and what factors affect the promotions and salaries they earn.  We will examine how inequality has been rising in recent years, and the effects rising inequality has on that quintessential group, the American middle class.  We’ll focus on categorical (i.e., group) inequalities, especially the "big three" (race, class, and gender), but address other forms of inequality (such as immigrant status) as well.

As more overt forms of discrimination have declined, researchers have begun to examine the more subtle ways in which inequality is reproduced, especially in the workplace.  We'll talk about these more subtle mechanisms of inequity, and discuss the ways they are often embedded in interactions among people and in the policies and procedures of our societal institutions.

There are no prerequisites for this seminar. Although many of the readings come from a variety of disciplines, an important goal of this seminar is to introduce you to the sociological perspective and imagination.  

Students are required to attend each class session.  Because this course is a "seminar" and not a "lecture" course, there will be less lecturing, and more discussion.  The success of the seminar depends on active participation, and the small class size should facilitate this goal.  Assigned readings should be completed prior to class meetings, and you should come to class prepared to ask questions.

PATRICIA ROOS is a Professor of Sociology.  She received her BA and MA in sociology from the University of California, Davis, and her Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA.  She teaches courses on work; inequalities; work, family, and politics; gender and work; and research methods.  She won both the President’s and Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching while at SUNY Stony Brook.  Professor Roos has published widely in gender and work, the feminization of traditionally male occupations, and work and family.  Three projects are currently front and center on her research agenda:  (1) gender equity in higher education, (2) race, class, and gender differences in work/family behavior and attitudes, and (3) a collaborative project with Rutgers colleagues on how to move toward real gender equality among women and men.
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~roos/
...................................................................................................................


Extraterrestrial Life
01:090:259 Index #13320
Andrew Baker, Department of Physics & Astronomy
MW 04:30-05:50p    Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

For centuries, humans have looked at the night sky and wondered whether we are alone or whether we share the universe with advanced extraterrestrial civilizations.  In recent years, this question has begun to move from the realm of speculation to the arena of scientific inquiry, thanks to new discoveries about planets orbiting stars other than our Sun, about potential habitats for life in our solar system, and about the possible development of life in extreme environments on Earth.  This seminar, intended for students from all academic majors, will examine the prospects for the emergence of extraterrestrial life (intelligent or otherwise) and our detection of it from a scientific perspective.  A familiarity with basic mathematical and scientific concepts will be assumed; moderately sophisticated mathematics (e.g., calculus and Fourier analysis) will be discussed but not assigned for homework.  Course meetings will be principally devoted to discussions -- led by students (selected at random at the beginning of each class) and guided by the instructor -- of weekly reading assignments.  Background material from a single textbook will be supplemented by popular books and articles, as well as selected papers from the research literature.  Grades will be based on leadership of and participation in discussions, short weekly writing assignments, a mid-term research mini-project, and an end-of-term paper.

ANDREW BAKER is an observational astrophysicist working in several areas of extragalactic astronomy at optical, infrared, and radio wavelengths.  His principal interests center on the formation and evolution of galaxies in the nearby and distant universe: how they form stars, how they grow in mass, and how they coevolve with their central black holes.  Professor Baker expects to make extensive use of the new South African Large Telescope, in which Rutgers is a major participant.  Before coming to Rutgers, he was a Jansky Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory and the University of Maryland, a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics outside Munich, and a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology.
...................................................................................................................


The Invention of Romantic Love in Medieval France
01:090:261 Index #10991
Mary Speer, Department of French
T 03:55-06:55p    RAB- Rm 207
Douglass Campus

Around the middle of the 12th century, French aristocrats learned how to “fall in love” and how to express their love--a completely secular, (mostly) heterosexual love--in words, deeds, and images.  This revolutionary concept, sometimes called “courtly love,” represents a major cultural transformation that continues to influence the way we think and talk about being “in love” today.  Crucial to teaching the new languages of courtly love and the remapped gender identities it produced were popular literary works performed at courts throughout Western Europe, before audiences of men and women eager for the latest entertainment and for instruction in the refined manners that confirmed their elite social status.

In this seminar we will look first at two important pre-courtly conceptions of love: feudal male relationships celebrated in the well-known Song of Roland; and the church-sanctioned rejection of earthly loves exemplified in early saints’ lives.  Then we will explore major literary models that shaped the new discourses on love: intricate troubadour songs in which skill with words and music demonstrates prowess in both loving and singing of love; other lyric genres that exploit the tensions between idealized poetic love and real sexual desire, as well as class differences between aristocrat and commoner; the Tristan legend of tragic adulterous passion; Arthurian romances in which knights seek out perilous adventures to prove themselves worthy of love; and the internalization of the love quest through allegory.

All works will be read in English translation.

Readings:
The Song of Roland
The Song of Saint Foy (packet)
Troubadour songs (selection: packet)
Beroul, The Romance of Tristan
Chrétien de Troyes: The Knight with the Lion (Yvain), The Knight of the Cart (Lancelot)
Guillaume de Lorris, The Romance of the Rose

Requirements:
Regular attendance, preparation of readings, and participation in discussions
3 oral presentations based on written reports (1-2 pp.) of assigned readings
1 research paper (12 pp.) and oral presentation based on research
1 museum trip

MARY B. SPEER (BA Duke, PhD Princeton) is a Professor in the French Department.  In her 31 years at Rutgers she has taught courses on medieval French and comparative literature at many levels, including undergraduate seminars for Honors and Medieval Studies students.  Her research focuses on medieval narrative and lyric works of the 12th and 13th centuries, recently with an emphasis on literary constructions of gendered identities.  She is also particularly interested in the ways medieval texts are transformed both by the inevitable alterations introduced by scribal copyists and by conscious reworkings for new audiences, including modern readers who use printed and electronic editions
...................................................................................................................


Gender, Power and the Development of Black Politics and Thought
01:090:262 Index #10992
Nikol Alexander-Floyd, Department of Women's & Gender Studies
T 09:15a-12:15p    Voorhees Chapel Rm 005
Douglass Campus

This seminar offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Black politics, focusing on the central role of gender power in the development of contemporary Black thought and politics.  Students in this course will assess the gendered norms and practices animating key social and political movements, as well as various modes of popular cultural production.  While previous exposure to feminist theory may be helpful, it is not essential.

Upon completion of this course, students should:
(1) be familiar with recent revisionist interpretations of the civil rights and Black power movements and the role, scope, and participation of the women therein;
(2) be able to define gender and explain how gender power has operated within and affected these various movements;
(3) be conversant with the dominant perspectives and debates on Black female sexual assault in the U.S. and in international conflicts;
(4) be positioned to critically interpret narrative practices in film and media in terms of their race, gender, class, and sexual politics.

NIKOL G. ALEXANDER-FLOYD, an interdisciplinary scholar whose work and teaching integrate the study of politics, law, women's studies, and Black studies, joined the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers in Fall 2007.  Holding both the JD and Ph.D., Dr. Alexander-Floyd teaches courses on race, gender, and the law, Black women in the U.S., and feminist theory. Her current research explores the gender politics of contemporary Black nationalism, and has appeared in such journals as Frontiers, the International Journal of Africana Studies, and Meridians. She is Co-Founder, along with Rose Harris, of the Association for the Study of Black Women in Politics.  Her first book, Gender, Race, and Nationalism in Contemporary Black Politics, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2007.
...................................................................................................................


Imagining Self/ Imagining Other: The Politics and Poetics of Hollywood Film
01:090:263 Index #10993
Fran Mascia-Lees, Department of Anthropology
W 02:15-05:15p    Voorhees Chapel Rm 005
Douglass Campus

King Kong, Tarzan, Bird of Paradise, Lawrence of Arabia, Aladdin, Dances with Wolves, the Piano, The Gods Must be Crazy, The Constant Gardener: these are just a few of the Hollywood films that draw on “the West’s” long-standing fascination with non-Western peoples.  Yet such films are not, as is often claimed, just innocent forms of entertainment.  With the rise of the Hollywood studio system at the beginning of the twentieth century, film assumed the role of mediator of cultural difference helping to shape the very notion of a Western “self” and non-Western “other.”  This course focuses on the representation of non-Western cultures in the genre of Hollywood film, placing it within the context of the larger “primitivist project.”  This project helped fashion a mythological past for “the West”—a past imagined as, at once, savage and repulsive, pastoral and erotic.  We will explore how this imagined past has acted not only to fashion a distinct identity for “the West,” but also to guide and justify its economic, social, and political aspirations.  The distinctive role film has played in the construction of a “Western imagination” will be illuminated by placing Hollywood films within historical context and comparing them to other forms of cultural representation (e.g., literature, painting, opera, world’s fairs, museums, and “freak” shows).  We will draw on work in anthropology, history, cultural studies, feminist studies, film studies, and post-colonial studies to analyze filmic representations of the exotic/erotic, primitive, savage, diseased, ethnic, and romanticized “other.”  Our effort will be to read Hollywood films as cultural documents to uncover the role of film in the construction of culture.

There are no prerequisites for this seminar.  Students are required to attend each class session, which will be run as a seminar, as well as special screening sessions.  Students can expect to watch 1-2 films per week and to write short, weekly film critiques.  Students should come to class prepared to present their analyses and listen carefully to others’ ideas.

FRAN MASCIA-LEES is Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology.  She has written widely on the body, consumer culture, and the relationship of cultural representation (in ethnography, film, literature, and museums) to forms of cultural encounters (e.g., colonialism, tourism, anthropology).  Mascia-Lees was Editor-in-Chief of the American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) from 2001-06.  She has won several national awards, including AAA’s President’s Award (2005) and the AAA/Mayfield Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Anthropology (1998).  She has conducted fieldwork at multiple sites in the United States, and has researched tourism and cultural representation in the British Virgin Islands and Mexico.  She has just finished a book on gender and difference in a globalizing world, and is beginning one on the anthropological study of the body.
...................................................................................................................


Evolution and the Human Language Faculty
01:090:264 Index #10994
Ken Safir, Department of Linguistics
MW 04:30-05:50p    35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Ave Campus

The goal of this seminar is to expose students to current reasoning and knowledge about the emergence of the human language faculty (HLF) as part of human evolution. Although many animals have the potential to communicate with others of their species, no animal communication system remotely approaches the expressiveness and complexity of human language.  Indeed, the universal core of any natural grammar is so complex that there is substantial evidence that its essential properties cannot be learned - rather they must be inborn.  

The question that we will explore in this seminar is how this complex inborn capacity could have evolved.  Darwin’s theory of natural selection is an interesting theory precisely because it purports to explain, on the basis of simple and consistent principles, how complex biological structures could arise from small advantages accumulating in populations adapting to environments over long periods of time.  Having a human grammar is a great adaptive advantage, but there is no plausible reason to believe that subject-verb agreement phenomena arose because people who could make the verb agree were more successful at reproduction.  If HLF did not develop from selective pressure alone, or if it is possible that it did not arise from selective pressure at all, how then can we explain why the human language faculty has the particular complex properties that it does?  Put more succinctly, how can this form of biologically based mental complexity be a product of evolution without the pressure exerted by natural selection?  

Interesting answers to this question are only just beginning to emerge, because evolutionary biology and genetic studies have only recently and spottily taken into account what is actually known about the structure of HLF.  Moreover, much more sophisticated, fine-grained accounts of other human capacities, and the capacities of other primates, have led to a reassessment of what it is that humans have and other species do not.  The connection between the latter factors and the design of the language faculty are currently quite speculative, but some interesting hypotheses have emerged that we will begin to explore in this seminar.

This inquiry cannot be solved without an interdisciplinary approach.  If we are to understand what the modern HLF is, we must first understand the fundamental organization plan of HLF grammars, including phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics as well as general knowledge of the course of language acquisition and language diversity.  We also need to understand evolutionary reasoning about how complexity arises by natural selection.  The first part of the course addresses these issues, but then interdisciplinary questions have to be addressed that will broaden our discussion.  Then the class will break up into working groups that will each focus on a different part of the problem and the contributions to the debates that come from that perspective.  

Ken Safir received his Ph.D. in linguistics from MIT in 1982 after many detours from academic life.  He has been teaching at Rutgers since 1984.  He is best known for his work on language typology, syntactic theory, and the syntactician’s view of the syntax/semantics interface, but his work has also touched on questions of language acquisition and the philosophy of language.  He has linguistic expertise in Romance, Germanic and African languages, and he is currently editing a website for the study of African languages supported by the National Science Foundation.  His most recent work touches on evolutionary questions with respect to the origin of the human language faculty and more specifically, to the origin of human syntax.  He is also interested in exploring the relation between linguistic semantic distinctions embedded in grammar and the semantic distinctions more typically discussed in psychological and philosophical accounts of the theory of mind.
...................................................................................................................


Telling Stories: Oral History and Performance
01:090:265 Index #10995
Jeff Friedman, Department of Dance
M 3:55-6:55pm    Corwin Lodge Seminar Room
Douglass Campus

For thousands of years, human beings have been dancing, making music, and putting on plays.  It could be said that the purpose of these endeavors has been to tell the stories of our lives.  Artists such as Anna Deavere, in theater, and Steve Reich, in music, currently serve as models for approaches to this effort.  These methods of presenting “oral history” are fascinating to view and to examine, and that is what we will do in this seminar.

 

This Honors Seminar will combine experiences in the classroom and in the studio, using a variety of activities.  In the classroom, students will view, via video/cd and live, several performance works based on oral history in a variety of genres; read and report on theoretical articles, method-oriented books, and performances scripts.  In the studio, students will work on projects incorporating dance, music, theater, and video/media.

 

Students will develop skills in qualitative methods of research inquiry with an emphasis on the performing arts.  Further, students will acquire oral history interviewing skills, including a solid foundation in human subjects-based research ethics and practices, and will apply that primary research data to the creation of several performance works in a variety of genres. 

 

JEFF FRIEDMAN is a dancer and choreographer who has been based in San Francisco from 1979 to 2003. He received a professional degree in architecture from the University of Oregon and specializes in the creation of multidisciplinary site-specific performance events.  He holds a Ph.D. in Dance History and Theory from the University of California, Riverside where he was Jacob K. Javits United States Department of Education Fellow. His research areas include oral history theory and methodology, narrative theory, phenomenological approaches in philosophy and Futurist photography. A certified Laban/Bartenieff Movement Analyst, Jeff's current research is a qualitative study of oral history interviews with former members of the Twyla Tharp Dance Company. His work extends cognitive science theories of language production through metaphor toward a more sophisticated apprehension of embodied channels of communication. His research has been published in Sounds and Gestures of Recollection: Performing the Art of Memory (Cándida Smith, Routledge); The Oral History Research Handbook (Baylor University, AltaMira Press); Historia, Antropologia y Fuentes Orales (University of Barcelona) and The Oral History Review.
...................................................................................................................

Complementarity in Physics, Biology and Philosophy
01:090:266 Index #14456
*Pre-Requisite: A college-level introductory course, or AP credits, in Biology, Chemistry or Physics*
Sungchul Ji, Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology
TTH 4:30-05:50p    Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Recent developments in molecular and cell biology indicate that Bohr’s complementarity may play as fundamental a role in living processes as in quantum mechanics.  Complementarity-like concepts also occur in psychology, philosophy, semiotics (the study of signs), critical theories [A. Plotnitsky, Complementarity, Duke University Press, 1994], and world religions.  The universality of Bohr’s complementarity may be traced to the complementary neuroelectrophysiological functions of the human brain, including the dichotomy of the left and right hemispheres.  These findings motivated the formulation, in the early 1990’s, of a new philosophical framework known as complementarism, the essential content of which being that the ultimate reality perceived and communicated by the human brain is a complementary union of irreconcilable opposites [S. Ji, “Complementarism: A Biology-Based Philosophical Framework to Integrate Western Science and Eastern Tao,” in Psychotherapy East and West: Integration of Psychotherapies, The Korean Academy of Psychotherapists, Seoul, Korea, 1995, pp. 518-548].

In the latter half of the 1990’s, it was uncovered that living cells use a language (called cell language) whose design principles are very similar to those of human language [S. Ji, BioSystems 44: 17-39 (1997)].  This finding strengthens the link between biology and philosophy, in agreement with the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1907-1961) and Spinoza (1632-1677).  Thus, complementarism, which embodies both modern biological science and modern philosophical traditions, may provide a powerful new philosophical basis for integrating not only science and philosophy on the one hand but also seemingly irreconcilable philosophies and religions of the world on the other.

During the first half of the semester, students will be introduced to the essentials of complementarism and their physical and metaphysical supports derived from physics, chemistry, biology, linguistics, philosophy, and semiotics.  The second half of the semester will be devoted to students’ presentations, each 30-minute long, on topics related to some aspects of complementarism or to its application to solving practical problems in contemporary life.

The final grade will be based on classroom participation, including short talks (20%), presentation (30%), and a written version of the presentation (15 – 20 pages, single spaced, including figures, tables and references; 50%) due one week after the oral presentation.  Pre-requisite: a college level introductory course (or AP credits) in biology, chemistry, or physics.

SUNGCHUL JI received a BA degree in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Minnesota in 1965 and a Ph.D. degree in physical organic chemistry in 1970 from the State University of New York at Albany. After a series of postdoctoral research and teaching experiences in enzymology (University of Wisconsin, Madison), biophysics (University of Pennsylvania), systems physiology (Max Planck Institute, Dortmund, West Germany), and toxicology (University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Chapel Hill), Dr. Ji began teaching pharmacology and toxicology at the Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy, Rutgers University in 1982.  Dr. Ji founded the Theoretical Aspects of Pharmacology course in 2000 at the Ernest Mario School and has been teaching it ever since. He recently completed a book manuscript entitled “Molecular Theory of the Living Cell: Conceptual Foundations, Molecular Mechanisms and Applications”.
...................................................................................................................


Infertility in Contemporary American Society
01:090:267 Index #15116
Helane Rosenberg, Department of Graduate School of Education
TH 1:40-4:40p    ARC Rm 212
Busch Campus

This seminar will focus on the social, psychological, medical, legal, and ethical issues involved with infertility and its resolution in contemporary American society.  Students will learn about the causes of infertility, the prevalence of infertility, and the choices faced by infertile individuals and couples.

Students will learn abut the biological mechanisms involved in infertility, and about treatment options including basal body temperature monitoring, the use of ovulation predictor kids, “natural” remedies, medicated and non-medicated insemination, and assisted reproductive technology.  Students will also learn about third party options: sperm donation, egg donation, traditional surrogacy, gestational carrier pregnancies, and embryo adoption.  Students will learn about adoption and so-called “child-free” living options.  Students will learn about motives for wanting children and emotional reactions when one is unable to conceive, and about counseling strategies used to assist infertile persons. They will explore the difficult decision that infertile persons must make, and consider the legal, financial, emotional, medical, and ethical concerns they must deal with in attempting to resolve the infertility.  Guest speakers will include a reproductive endocrinologist, an attorney who specializes in third party pregnancy legal issues, an egg donor, and an adoptive parent.
...................................................................................................................


Neuroscience & Stem Cell Research:
The Known, The Unknown, and The Process of Discovery
01:090:268 Index #15361
**Open to Sophomores, By Application**
Patricia Morton, Wise Young, Martin Grumet, Department of W. M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience
T TH 5:00-6:20p    Nelson Labs D251
Busch Campus

Enrollment is limited, and open only to SAS Honors Program Sophomores.  Students who are interested in enrolling in this seminar should contact the SAS Honors Program at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to request an application.

The W. M. Keck Center holds an upper level seminar entitled Topics in Cellular Biology and Neuroscience (146:464) taught by Dr. Martin Grumet, Director of the W. M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, and Dr. Wise Young, Founding Director.  Five top-rated sophomores specifically interested in neuroscience and/or stem cell research will attend these lectures and do the required readings.  However, while the juniors and seniors give a final PowerPoint presentation, the Honors Seminar students will write a paper.  In addition to working with top-rated faculty, these high-quality sophomores will benefit significantly from interacting with upper class students and seeing the quality of their final presentations.  The Honors Seminar students will work with Dr. Patricia Morton during the course and on their final papers.

This course will focus on topics and concepts of early vertebrate development that are essential to understand functions and potential therapeutic applications of stem cells.  Discussions will include embryonic stem cells and their restriction into various kinds of precursors, methods and criteria for identifying stem cells and assessing their fate, and properties of neural stem cells and their applications in the nervous system.  The first half of the course (6-7 lectures) will involve textbook-based material and original research articles. Students will be taught how to read and critically evaluate papers. Political, social, and ethical questions will be raised and discussed. 

PATRICIA MORTON is Director of Planning and Development for The Spinal Cord Injury Project, W. M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience, Dr. Morton has extensive contact with people with spinal cord injuries and their families, and works in collaboration with the major spinal cord injury research institutions and organizations in the United States and internationally.  Dr. Morton has planned and organized seminars, symposia, and major meetings, has developed programs to bring injured persons and their families into partnership with scientists, and is coordinating Quest for the Cure, a state-by-state movement to pass legislation to increase funding for spinal cord injury research.  She is responsible for corporate and governmental relations, corporate sponsorships and fund-raising activities, and the building of cooperative efforts between various organizations involved in spinal cord injury research.  She serves as a founding member of the New Jersey Commission on Spinal Cord Research.

WISE YOUNG, M.D., Ph.D. is the Chair of the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience.  Before coming to Rutgers, Young was director of neurosurgery research at New York University and part of the team that discovered and established high-dose methylprednisolone as the first effective therapy for spinal cord injuries. That 1990 work upended conventional wisdom that such injuries led to permanent damage, refocused research, and opened new vistas of hope for the quarter-million Americans paralyzed by an injury to the spinal cord. At the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience of Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Young has assembled a team of researchers who collaborate with more than 100 laboratories worldwide in the search for cures to spinal cord and brain injuries and disorders. He recently embarked on an initiative to set up a clinical network of more than a dozen spinal-trauma centers in China capable of performing state-of-the-art clinical trials.

MARTIN GRUMET, Ph.D. is Director of the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience and a  professor at Rutgers, is acknowledged to be one of the leading researchers in spinal cord and brain injury repair.  Dr. Grumet obtained a BS degree in Physics from the Cooper Union and a doctorate in Biophysics from The Johns Hopkins University.  In 1999, he was appointed Professor of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Rutgers University and joined the W.M. Keck Center as its Associate Director.  In 2002, he became Director of the W.M. Keck Center of Collaborative Neuroscience.  Dr. Grumet’s work has applied expertise in cell adhesion to problems in brain tumor biology and, more recently, in spinal cord injury research.  He isolated the first cell line with radial-like properties and has demonstrated the feasibility of implanting such cells into the central nervous system to improve recovery following injury.  These results provided the catalyst for his recruitment to the W.M. Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience to focus his research on repairing the injured spinal cord.
...................................................................................................................


History, Material Culture and the Rutgers University Collections
01:090:269 Index # 15386
Virginia Yans, Department of History
W 1:10-4:10 PM
Case Room, Alexander Library, College Avenue Campus

The Special Collections and University Archives of the Rutgers University Libraries contain rich archives of maps, photographs, broadsides, coins, Rutgers memorabilia, oddities (a cat mummy, for example) and many other material culture artifacts.  Historians, who routinely consult written documents, also use material culture artifacts like these to narrate the past.  Researchers in several other disciplines including geography, cartography, archaeology, earth science, architecture, jazz studies, race and ethnicity studies also draw upon material culture remnants of the past.

This Honors Seminar will explore the challenges presented to researchers seeking to interpret these artifacts.  The course offers students an opportunity to engage "hands-on" with these material culture artifacts under the guidance of experts who regularly interpret, classify, and preserve them.  Professor Yans, an American historian, documentary film maker and museum exhibit consultant will be joined by Special Collections staff and other experts within the Rutgers community who oversee these materials.  Thomas Frusciano, University Archivist; Fernanda Perrone, Curator of the William E. Griffis Collection; Bonita Grant, New Jersey Bibliographer; and Paul Israel of the Edison papers are among these experts.  While the Library's Special Collections emphasizes New Jersey artifacts (many of them of local and national significance), students will also have the option of exploring material artifacts in other university collections.  The Thomas Edison papers, for example, document Edison's extraordinary technological innovations and the artifacts they produced.  The campus Geological Museum contains in addition to its geological materials, artifacts relating to New Jersey dinosaurs and mines.  Newark's Institute for Jazz Studies may be of interest to class participants interested in sound technology and reproduction.  We welcome students from across the disciplines including history, geology, photography, architecture, jazz studies, urban planning, geography, engineering, technology and communications.  The direct contact with the past that material culture artifacts offer will assist in bringing a new dimension of understanding to their studies.

VIRGINIA YANS is Board of Governors Distinguished Service Professor of History.  Her research focuses on United States cultural history, women's history, and the history of immigration.  She is currently working on a biographical study of the anthropologist Margaret Mead.  Her documentary on Mead aired as a PBS Special.  She is actively involved in a number of public history projects including the Ellis Island National Museum, the Women's History Museum and Leadership Center planned for lower Manhattan, and the International Women's Museum in San Francisco.  Newer interests include the history of gender and technology and the history of collecting.  Along with Professor Rudolph Bell, she conducted two one-year research projects at the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis in 2004-05, one on single women and another on the gendering of children.
...................................................................................................................


Shakespeare and His World
01:090:270    Index #15407
*Open to 1st Year and Sophomores
Professor Maurice Lee, Department of History
TH 09:15a-12:15p     Voorhees Chapel 005
Douglass Campus

This seminar, Shakespeare and His World, deals with Elizabethan and Jacobean England as Shakespeare saw it during the two decades of his active career as a playwright, from approximately 1592 to 1611.  The approach will be historical rather than literary.  Shakespeare wrote about two things: love and marriage (the private sphere), and power, kingship, and war (the public sphere), and sometimes about both at once.  We will read ten plays, four about politics and war, four comedies of love and marriage, and two which deal with both.  We will read the plays for the most part in the order in which Shadespeare wrote them.

You will be asked to get two books, a copy of the plays, and L.B. Smith, This Realm of England, for the necessary historical background.  There will be three papers, two shorter ones during the semester and longer one at the end.

MAURICE LEE is a Margaret Judson Professor of History Emeritus.  He taught at Rutgers for thirty years before retiring.  He is a specialist in the history of early modern Britain, and has written a total of ten books on the period.
...................................................................................................................

The course described below is cross-listed with the Communication Department as 04:189:441:01.  The total stop point for the two “versions” of the course is 15, with 10 spaces available in the SAS Honors Program version of the course, and 5 available in the Communication version of the course.

Communication and Human Values
01:090:271 Index#15408
Professor Richard Heffner
T 9:50a-12:50p   Scott 201
College Avenue Campus

Honors Program students who are interested in enrolling in this seminar should contact Dean Lord at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with a short statement of their interest.

This seminar is not a practicum, not a "how-to" course about film and television, or about the media in America generally.  Rather, it is a fact-based intellectual venture in the development of communications public policy.  Its purpose is to analyze how much of our sense of what it means to be an American early in the 21st century has been molded by the media -- first print and now increasingly electronic -- with particular reference to their socializing and value-legitimating content.  To learn then to deal appropriately and reasonably with such media power, students are asked first to identify their own respective approaches to the role of the state and its proper relationship to the individual through discussion both of such readings as Walter Lippmann's */Public Opinion/*, Robert Merton's */Mass Persuasion/*, J. S. Mill's */On Liberty/*, Herman Melville's */Billy Budd/*, and Neil Postman's */Amusing Ourselves to Death/*, and of such films as "Birth of A Nation," "12 Angry Men," "Hearts and Minds," "JFK," and "Fahrenheit 9/11".  

Emphasis will be placed on analyzing and resolving such contemporary media issues as a Fairness Doctrine (the real or imagined "chilling effect" of a requirement for media fairness and balance); cameras in the courts (do televised trials enhance justice, or instead create a "mobocracy", with trial by a new jury of public opinion?); and media self-regulation (can there in fact be meaningful voluntary self-discipline in a free market, free speech, mass media-driven society?).

RICHARD D. HEFFNER is University Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, where he began to teach in 1948.  Trained as an American historian, Mr. Heffner is the author of A Documentary History of the United States and the editor of Alexis de Tocqueville's classic Democracy In America.  His most recent book, a collaboration entitled Conversations With Elie Wiesel, derives from The Open Mind, the prize winning television program which he began in 1956 and which he still produces and moderates each week on public broadcasting stations around the country.  In 1961, after serving on-the-air and as an executive at CBS, ABC and NBC, Professor Heffner played a leading role in the acquisition and activation of Channel 13 in New York, becoming its Founding General Manager.  For twenty years (1974 to 1994), he also commuted to Hollywood, serving as Chairman of the Board of the motion picture industry's voluntary film classification and rating system.  Professor Heffner and his wife, Dr. Elaine Heffner, live in New York City.  They have two sons -- Daniel, a filmmaker; and Andrew, an Assistant New York State Attorney General -- and four grandchildren.

Spring 2008 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars

 


Parents and Children in Verdian Operam
01:090:270 Index #72921
Professor Rudy Bell, Department of History
W 6:10-9:00P  Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Avenue Campus

Giuseppe Verdi, perhaps uniquely among operatic composers, returned again and again to the theme of parent/child conflict, especially in father/daughter relationships, for his dramatic plots. Why he did so, and why audiences ever since have found the theme so appealing, is the subject of this seminar. We may not reach a conclusion but the exploration should be interesting.

We will focus on seven operas where father/daughter issues loom large: Nabucco (1842), Rigoletto (1851), La Traviata (1853), Simon Boccanegra (1857), La Forza del Destino (1862), Don Carlo (1867), and Aida (1871). Paired with each of these operas, we will explore the father/daughter theme in related texts and venues. For example, Nabucco will trigger us to look at Lot and his daughters, Rigoletto at chastity texts, Simon Boccanegra at historical documents, La Traviata at fathers-in-law, La Forza del Destino at Electra, Don Carlo at Freud, and Aida at race and class issues.

Students who speak Italian or who have a background in musicology, psychology, or history are welcome BUT these talents are not required. Good armchair listeners who love the opera or want to give it a serious try are welcome in the seminar. The course will include attending live performances of La Traviata at New York’s Metropolitan Opera (Violetta will be Ruth Ann Swenson’s last role at the Met) and a semi-staged fully-costumed version of Rigoletto at the State Theatre in New Brunswick with a pre-performance Insight session – both tickets compliments of the Honors Program!

Each student will write two “program notes” (5-7pp.) relating the father/daughter theme in an opera to a counterpart in the other texts we will study. There will be a final take-home exam on the overall theme, with a focus on the large question of why father/daughter conflict fascinated Verdi and the opera goers who flocked to his see and hear his works.

RUDOLPH BELL has taught at Rutgers since 1968, including undergraduate honors seminars over the years on anorexic saints, popular advice manuals, and childrearing in history. He is the author of scholarly books related to these teaching endeavors, including Holy Anorexia and How to do It: Guides to Good Living for Renaissance Italians. He has two daughters and three granddaughters, with all of whom he thinks he has good rapport.

 

 

Molecular View of Human Anatomy
01:090:271 Index #72922
Professor Helen Berman, Department of Chemistry
T 05:00-08:00P  Doolittle Annex Rm 122
Busch Campus

What do proteins, DNA, and other biological molecules look like? How do they work? Where do these molecules fit in your body? This seminar will introduce you to the basics of structural biology using human anatomy, physiology, and disease as themes.

In the first half of this seminar, we will learn the fundamentals of structural biology – how proteins and DNA are shaped and how these structures are determined by scientists.  Through the second half of the seminar, students will conduct researchl on molecules archived in the Protein Data Bank (PDB), and review literature in order to understand how these molecules are involved in the workings of the human body.

Students will learn to critically read articles, in scientific journals and in lay press. This seminar will also provide an opportunity for students to interactively use computers for self-publishing.

This seminar has no pre-requisites; non-science majors are encouraged to enroll. The main aim of the seminar is to encourage research-based learning in students and to stimulate interest in structural biology.

HELEN BERMAN is a Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University.  Her research area is structural biology and bioinformatics, with a special focus on protein-nucleic acid interactions.  She is the founder of the Nucleic Acid Database, a repository of information about the structures of nucleic acid-containing molecules; and is the co-founder and Director of the Protein Data Bank, the international repository of the structures of biological macromolecules.  She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Biophysical Society, from which she received the Distinguished Service Award in 2000.  A past president of the American Crystallographic Association, she is a recipient of the Buerger Award (2006).  Dr. Berman received her A.B. in 1964 from Barnard College and a Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Pittsburgh.

 

 

Ancient Greek and Hindu Philosophical Thought: Comparative Perspectives
01:090:272 Index #72923
Professor Edwin Bryant, Department of Religion and Dean Julio Nazario, SAS Honors Program
W 10:55A-01:55P  Voorhees Chapel 005
Douglass Campus

This seminar will consist of a sampling of some of the most important philosophical writings from classical Indian and Greek sources.  The material from the Indian side will include extracts from the Upanisads, the ancient mystico-philosophical texts of the Hindus, as well as the later Vedanta tradition which stems from it.  Both texts deal with the nature of the world, the soul, reincarnation and the ultimate Truth which is thought to underpin them.  We will read part of the Yoga Sutras, the classical treatise on meditation, as well as the Bhagavad Gita, perhaps the best known Hindu text, which features devotion to God and speaks to how the liberated soul should act in the world.  Readings from Greek philosophy will include the pre-Socratic philosophers, such as Parmenides, Zeno, and Heraclitus, who deal with the nature of the world, knowledge, and the soul.  Additionally, we will read Plato's Republic with an emphasis on Book Ten, which touches on reincarnation and the immortality of the soul; Aristotle's De Anima, which deals with the nature of the soul; and selections from Plotinus, the neo-Platonic “mystic.”  Students will be exposed to some of the most influential philosophical writings of the ancient world, East and West.

Requirements: TBA

EDWIN BRYANT received his Ph.D in Indic languages and Cultures from Columbia University. He taught Hinduism at Harvard University for three years, and is presently the professor of Hinduism at Rutgers University.  He teaches courses on Hindu philosophy and religion. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, published six books and authored a number of articles on Vedic history, yoga, and the Krishna tradition. In addition to his academic work for the scholarly community, Professor Bryant’s Penguin World Classics translation of the Srimad Bhagavata Purana, the traditional source for the story of Krishna's incarnation, is widely read by Indology specialists as well as by students and those interested in Hinduism from the general reading public and the yoga community.

JULIO NAZARIO coordinates outreach and co-curricular programs for the SAS Honors Program.  He is also an amateur philosopher (he has read widely in the field and earned his B.A. in Philosophy from Queens College, CUNY) and is famous on campus for being the only dean with the distinction of having an MFA (from Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers).  He exhibits his photography all over the country.  He also served in Vietnam, and says that art can be socially therapeutic, because it makes us really look at the world, and teaches us something important about being human.

 

Philosophy and Cosmology, Ancient and Modern
01:090:273 Index #72924
Professor Alan Code, Department of Philosophy
W 02:15-05:15P  Voorhees Chapel 005
Douglass Campus

This is a course on the concept of potentiality and its place in nature.  Living things exhibit all sorts of potentialities.   The acorn is potentially an oak, the egg is potentially a chicken, and the tadpole potentially a frog.  These are examples from familiar parts of the world we inhabit.  However, we sometimes wonder whether other parts of the universe have the potential for life, and when we push this question back through time we consider such things as what it is for stars to have a potentiality for producing elementary atoms.  How far can the search for potentiality go?  What are the ultimate origins of all of these potentialities?

In this course we will approach these questions through an examination of cosmology in both an ancient and a modern setting.  On the ancient side we will examine the general principles and assumptions discussed in Plato and Aristotle concerning the basic structure of the physical universe and its physical elements. For Plato and Aristotle, the basic structure of space and time is due to the potentialities of substantial bodies, and the activity of a divine agent.  On the modern side we will consider recent developments in astrophysics in an attempt to see how they are related to the ideas that shaped the early cosmological debates in antiquity.  Particular emphasis will be given to questions about the overall size of the world, in both space and time, and about whether and how there can be boundary conditions for the entire universe.  What is a ‘baby universe’ and how does it develop over time from its earlier conditions?

Rather than studying the ideas in chronological order, we will start with Stephen Hawking’s recent book, A Briefer History of Time, to see one view as to how modern cosmology deals with these issues.  Among other topics, we will consider such things as how cosmic microwave radiation provides empirical evidence for the claim that we live in an expanding universe that originates from a hot Big Bang, as well as problems involved in providing a quantum theory of gravity that applies to the early universe during the so-called ‘Planck era’.  It is during this extremely short period of time that Einstein’s theory of general relativity breaks down. 

We will then use this vantage point of modern developments in cosmology to explore some of the main ideas about the nature and origin of the universe that were developed in classical antiquity.  We will attempt to understand the ways in which the contemporary developments share common ground and the ways in which the have rejected earlier assumptions.  This perspective can enhance our understanding and appreciation of the character of the contemporary scientific achievements and some of they ways they impact on traditional philosophical questions about the nature of the world.

Reading List:
Aristotle,  On the Heavens and The Physics
Plato, Timaeus
Richard Feynman, The Character of Physical Law
Stephen Hawking, A Briefer History of Time

Students will be required to write a term paper based on ongoing research and seminar discussion.

ALAN CODE (BA Wisconsin 1972; PhD Wisconsin 1976) is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy.  He specializes in ancient Greek philosophy, with an emphasis on Aristotle. His works include the following forthcoming publications:  The Philosophy of Aristotle (Oxford 2008), Collected Papers on Aristotle’s Metaphysics and Logic (Princeton 2008).

 

Wonderful Life: Genes & Evolution
01:090:274 Index #72925
Professor Frank Deis, Department of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
MW 01:40-03:00P  ARC Room 105
Busch Campus

Life appears to have originated on Earth nearly 4.5 billion years ago when the oceans boiled and the atmosphere had no oxygen.  The changing conditions on our planet have defined the parameters within which life has existed.  An increase in the amount of oxygen in the air from 2.5 billion to 500 million years ago eventually permitted “modern” animals to exist.  Massive extinctions (especially at the end of the Permian Period) have narrowed the spectrum of species on the planet.

One theme of the seminar will be the origin of life, early evolution, implications for life in extreme environments, and possible life on Mars.  Students with an appreciation of chemistry will perhaps better understand the concepts in this part of the seminar than those without, but the readings are intended to be non-technical.

A second theme of the seminar is that science, as a human endeavor, is full of disagreements and political axes to grind.  One of the most controversial areas of evolutionary science is the connection between genes and behavior.  We will try to illuminate this controversy through class readings and discussions.

The reading materials throughout the seminar will be enhanced and complemented by materials in other media, especially video and film.  Books by Stephen Jay Gould and other writers on evolution and paleontology will be assigned.  Dr. Deis will also bring in appropriate fossils, shells, and minerals from his collection.

Periodic papers will be assigned.  The factual content of the course will also require and occasional short quiz.  Attendance and active class participation contribute to each student’s grade.

DR. FRANK DEIS studied Chemistry at Rice University and the University of Virginia, and Medicinal Chemistry at the Medical College of Virginia.  He has taught Biochemistry at Rutgers since 1977, and is author of Companion to Biochemistry (W.H. Freeman 2006).

 

The Mind of the Young Child
01:090:275 Index #73199
Professor Rochel Gelman, Department of Psychology
F 10:20A-01:20P  Psy A139
Busch Campus

There is a seachange regarding what researchers and citizens assume about the cognitive and language abilities of young children.  One of the goals of this seminar is to have students learn about the research and theory that challenges traditional theories, for example, Piaget’s.  The coverage would be related to earlier views of the young child, including examples of paintings.

Another goal is to relate the findings to the various writings in the press about what young children can and cannot do. In a related way, it would be interesting to take trips to toy stores to see how the research has made its way into the economy of child rearing.

Requirements: TBA

ROCHEL GELMAN is Professor of Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS) and Psychology and a Co-Director of RuCCS.  Dr. Gelman’s research brings together longtime interest in learning and developmental cognitive science, including: the theory of concepts; domain-relevant concept learning and conceptual change; causal principles and their relation to perceptual information about the animate-inanimate distinction; verbal and non-verbal representations and re-representations of arithmetic; representational tools; the acquisition of math and science literacy.  Studies ongoing in her lab include: adult’s nonverbal knowledge of quantity and number; preschool children’s knowledge about the deep differences between separably moveable animate and inanimate objects; an in-class preschool science learning curriculum; and adult innumeracy/numeracy and its relation to decision making.  Dr. Gelman is the recipient of many honors, including membership in the National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Science, and awards for her scientific and mentoring successes.

 

 

Science, Technology, and Society
01:090:276 Index #73200
Professor Michael Geselowitz, IEEE History Center
MTH 0810-09:30A  Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

Science and technology are the human activities that perhaps most define the modern world.  Certainly many of the greatest challenges to 21st century society—global warming, weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, the spread of exotic disease, information privacy—have a strong basis in science and technology, what might be called technoscience.  Many social scientists have labored to understand the relationship of science and technology to each other and to the rest of human society, and yet other scholars have ignored them, and the social scientific study of technoscience has struggled to emerge as a discipline. 

This seminar introduces SAS honors students to the range of approaches and issues involved in the study of science, technology, and society.  Topics include:  the history of the study of science and technology; science and technology as social systems; the relationship of science and technology to each other and to other aspects of society; disciplinary approaches to science and technology; and the culture and politics of scientific and technological decisions.  Readings will include primary studies from a variety of different social science disciplines as material self identifying

Course requirements will include weekly written assignments based on the readings, quizzes, a final term paper, and thoughtful and informed class participation.

MICHAEL N. GESELOWITZ is Director of the IEEE History Center at Rutgers University, and a co-adjutant professor of history of technology and of science, technology, and society. He is affiliated with the Rutgers-New Brunswick History Department and Director of the Rutgers-New Brunswick School of Arts and Sciences extradepartmental, interdisciplinary (minor) Program in Science, Technology and Society.  Dr. Geselowitz holds S.B. degrees in electrical engineering and in anthropology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in anthropology from Harvard University. His research focus has been on the history and social relations of technology. Dr. Geselowitz has worked as an electronics engineer for the Department of Defense, and he has held teaching and research positions relating to the social study of technology at M.I.T., Harvard, and Yale University, including a stint as Assistant Collections Manager/Curator at Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.  Immediately prior to coming to Rutgers in 1997, Dr. Geselowitz was Group Manager at Eric Marder Associates, a New York market research firm, where he supervised Ph.D. scientists and social scientists undertaking market analyses for Fortune 500 high-tech companies. He is also a registered Patent Agent.

 

 

Cold War Culture
01:090:277 Index #73201
Professor David Greenberg, Department of Journalism and Media Studies
M 01:10-04:10P  Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

The years just after World War II helped define American politics and culture in the half century that followed. The course examines the Cold War that emerged, the politics of the era, and the culture that it
created. In the political realm, the topics that the seminar explores include the origins of the Cold War, the Red Scare, domestic politics, espionage, and the civil rights movement. Social issues examined include
the conformity of the era, the new material abundance, and feminism. We will also look at examples of the era’s culture, including beat literature, film noir, Cold War journalism, abstract expressionist art,
early television, and rock music. By looking at the period from so many different angles, the seminar seeks to show the interconnectedness of politics, ideas, and culture; to complicate today’s clichés about the period; to locate the origins of patterns that persist in our own time; and to appreciate the differences of this era from our own.

Students will be assigned weekly readings and participation in discussion is mandatory every week.  Students will be required to submit one short paper and one long paper.

DAVID GREENBERG is assistant professor in the departments of Journalism & Media Studies and History.  His specialty is U.S. political history.  He earned his BA from Yale University (summa cum laude, 1990) and his PhD from Columbia University (2001) and has taught at Rutgers since 2004. His books include Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image and Presidential Doodles. Before entering academia, he was managing editor and acting editor of The New Republic and he still writes for publications such as The Atlantic, The New Yorker, and Slate.

 

 

How to Do Things with Stories: Narratives in Everyday Conversation
01:090:279 Index #73203
Professor Jenny Mandelbaum, Department of Communication
W 01:10-04:10P  Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

Whether they are stories our families tell, stories from books, from the media, or the internet, the influence of narratives on our lives is pervasive and widely acknowledged.  We have come to see narrative as central to such processes as the transmission of culture, the organization of social knowledge, and the structure of experience.  Telling stories has been the object of extensive academic study in numerous disciplines, but ultimately it is generally viewed as a “monologic” literary phenomenon – something produced by an active storyteller for a passive audience.  This seminar proposes to study stories as “dialogic” social objects, dynamically and interactively constructed in communication by teller and recipient(s) working together.  This will bring students a new understanding of narrative in general, as well as insights into how and why particular stories get told.

We will examine classic and modern theories of narrative from a variety of disciplines (e.g., literary theory, anthropology, folklore, sociology, linguistics, psychology, communication), and then re-conceptualize storytelling outside of a literary frame, as a dialogic, interactive activity through which experiences are shared as a way of undertaking other social activities (such as warning, complaining, joking, explaining, reminiscing, advising, educating, entertaining, etc…).  We will do this by examining audio and video tapes of naturally occurring interaction in everyday and institutional settings.  Students will learn to use techniques for detailed analysis of these conversations, in order to discover the communication processes through which narrative is enacted, and the social activities that telling stories is used to accomplish.  By working inductively on naturalistic materials, students will learn how to challenge a paradigm through empirical work, contrasting classic theories about narrative with their own, instructor-guided, empirical research on the phenomenon.

The semester grade will be based on attendance and participation, two short exercises, a midterm, and a final research presentation and paper.  The research project will be done partly as a class project, and partly individually.

JENNY MANDELBAUM received her BA in French and Philosophy from Oxford University in England, and a Masters and Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas.  Her research examines the organization of everyday interaction, using video and audio tapes as a resource for describing, for instance, how we tell stories in conversation and what we "do" through the stories we tell.  Her findings include accounts of how we "construct" relationships and identity in and through interaction.  Currently she and her students are working on a large database of videotaped Thanksgiving, Easter and Passover dinners.  She looks forward to the continued participation of Honors students in these projects.  She teaches classes at all levels (including Introduction to Communication), and enjoys the challenges of introducing technology into the classroom.

 

 

 

A Critical Review of the Corporation and its Role in Western Culture
01:090:280 Index #73204
Professor Joseph Markert, Department of Management
W 06:10-09:00P  
35 College Avenue Room 302
College Avenue Campus

 

 

Corporations are a major component in every aspect of western society, a point that many consumers and society members both accept and resent. Society has difficulty seeing where the balance is between perceived excess profits and the need for employment and a fair wage; between degradation of the environment and the introduction of new technologies which can lead to an easier life style.

This seminar will study and assess the effect corporations have on western society, including changes in government, ethics, moral values, technology, economic conditions, and social structures.  We will review the delicate balance that exists between the needs of society and the needs of corporations, between the need for a social good and the need for profits.  We will ask several questions: What impact do new products and technology have on society and culture?  What impact does society and culture have on the creation and production of new products and technologies?  At what point does society feel industry is “out of bounds” and needs to be controlled by government?  During each class session discussion will focus on a specific product or cultural change in an attempt to define and measure how each has had an effect on the other.  We will review the delicate balance that exists between the needs of society for new products and the needs of corporations to generate a profit, between the need for social good and the need for stockholder dividends.

We will attempt to put a measure on those factors which we identify as positive for society and those which are positive for business and determine if the two sets of values can be balanced. During the semester we will explore such industries as fast food, television, automotive, electronics, and recent government laws as examples of how culture and business are intertwined.

A combination of instructor led discussions, class discussions, active exercises, and a research project, coupled with student group presentations and book reports, will give each student a thorough understanding of the subject.  Each student will submit weekly articles with written summaries that pertain to the scheduled discussion topic, and will present a research project/topic to the class.

JOE MARKERT teaches in the Department of Management and Global Business in the Rutgers Business School, and has a broad background in employee development, human resources, manufacturing, customer service and strategic planning.  He is a member of the American Management Association (AMA), Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), American Society for Training and Development (ASTD), and is currently Director of Professional Services at Datamatics Management Services Inc. Professor Markert is a member of the Rutgers University Senate and Rutgers New Brunswick Faculty council.

 

 

Violence and Spectatorship: The Case of Michael Haneke
01:090:281 Index #73205
Professor Fatima Naqvi, Department of German
T 11:30A-02:30P  Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

This seminar will address the issue of violence in film in the oeuvre of acclaimed director Michael Haneke. In his films, the topic of violence is the center of concern: it is both socially conditioned and, within the logic of the films, aesthetically indispensable. While his films are not violent on a visual level (indeed there is little graphic violence worth mentioning), they are so on an auditory one. Through his strategic use of aural violence, Haneke seeks to sensitize the viewer to society’s purported exclusion of violence, which only includes it within social confines all the more securely. The audience is repeatedly asked to reflect on its own stake in narrative violence and its implicit, paradoxical condoning of such violence.

In a series of close readings of Haneke’s early works (The Seventh Continent, Benny’s Video), his internationally acclaimed later ones (The Piano Teacher, Caché, Funny Games) and his literary adaptations (The Rebellion, The Castle), this seminar seeks to familiarize students with the filmmaker and to broaden their awareness of the philosophical and theoretical discussion of violence as either transgression or necessary evil.  In readings by Georges Bataille, René Girard, Paul Virilio, and recent film studies (Judith Mayne, Stephen Prince), we will develop a theoretical framework that addresses the role of spectatorship and its relationship to violence. Comparative analyses of Michael Haneke’s employment of violence vis-à-vis his avowed predecessors will place the films in context; screenings of films by Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Bresson will allow students to situate Haneke’s works within the tradition of filmic modernism and to reflect on the role of violence in avant-garde film practices. Readings of novels by Franz Kafka and Joseph Roth will deepen their understanding of modernism and facilitate a discussion of literary adaptation. Finally, issues of social critique—as it relates to the globalization, transnationalism, and societal fragmentation the films foreground—will be examined in oral reports that take the films and important readings as their point of departure (Peter Sloterdijk, Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt, Alexander Kluge).

Students will be assigned weekly readings and film viewings; short response papers to films; research paper on one film at conclusion of the course.

FATIMA NAQVI is an associate professor and Graduate Director in the Department of German, Russian and East European Languages and Literatures at Rutgers University. She received her B.A. from Dartmouth College in 1993 and her Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2000. Currently, she teaches courses on post-war literature and film, Vienna 1900, and the Austrian literary tradition. Her book, The Literary and Cultural Rhetoric of Victimhood: Western Europe 1970-2005 (New York: Palgrave, 2007), analyzes the pervasive rhetoric of victimhood in European culture since 1968. She has edited an issue of Modern Austrian Literature devoted to the Austrian Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek, focusing on Jelinek’s more recent writing.  She has also written articles on Czech photographer Miroslav Tichý, Jelinek’s variant of post-drama, film adaptation as melancholic translation (Michael Haneke and Ingeborg Bachmann), history and cosmology in Christoph Ransmayr’s prose and Anselm Kiefer’s works, the aesthetics of violence in Michael Haneke’s films, as well as dilettantism in Thomas Bernhard’s novel Old Masters. She has published on Bernhard’s controversial play Heldenplatz and its discourse of victimhood, El Greco’s influence on Rilke’s poetry, laughter as a means of social action in Roberto Benigni’s La vita è bella, and Catholicism’s continuing presence in contemporary Austrian writing. Her next book project focuses on the films of Michael Haneke.

 

 

Work, Family, and Politics in the 21st Century
01:090:282 Index #73206
Professor Patricia Roos, Department of Sociology
TTH 01:40-03:00P  LSH B205
Livingston Campus

Work and family issues have in recent years become inextricably linked to politics, for better or for worse. To better understand that link in the 21st century, we review the historical shifts that have occurred in the family and the workplace in the post-World War II U.S., and especially since 1970. Women now make up nearly half of the workforce, and have moved in large numbers into some occupations traditionally held by men. Dual-earner households are now the norm, reflecting in part the new economic reality faced by American families. Work has restructured such that it is more international, flexible, high tech, and service-oriented, and prosperity now coexists with rising inequalities. We will examine how these structural changes impact ongoing politics, policy discussions, civic engagement, and the economic and social opportunities available to women, men, and their families.

There are no prerequisites for this course. Although many of the readings come from a variety of disciplines (e.g., sociology, history, psychology, policy studies), an important goal of this course is to introduce you to the sociological perspective, and the sociological imagination.

Students are required to attend each class session. Because this course is a "seminar" and not a "lecture" course, there will be less lecturing, and more discussion. The success of the course depends on your active participation, and the small class size should facilitate this goal. Assigned readings should be completed prior to class meetings, and you should come to class prepared to ask questions.

PATRICIA ROOS is a Professor of Sociology.  She received her BA and MA in sociology from the University of California, Davis, and her Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA.  She teaches courses on work; inequalities; work, family, and politics; gender and work; and research methods.  She won both the President’s and Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Teaching while still at SUNY Stony Brook.  Prof. Roos has published widely in gender and work, the feminization of traditionally male occupations, and work and family.  Three projects are currently front and center on her research agenda:  (1) gender equity in higher education, (2) race, class, and gender differences in work/family behavior and attitudes, and (3) a collaborative project with Rutgers colleagues on how to move toward real gender equality among women and men.

This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
rci.rutgers.edu/~roos/

 

Studying Literature, Culture, History
01:090:283 Index #73207
Professor Dianne Sadoff, Department of English
MW 04:30-05:50P  Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

Critical thinking about literature, culture, and history inquires into the categories that “general” cultural consumers normally take for granted, such as the concepts of authorship, writing, reading, and cultural production.  This purpose of this seminar is to introduce students to the terminologies, methodologies, and writing strategies important in understanding the relationships among literature, history, and culture (and necessary to pursuing a major in the humanities or social sciences). 

Through close readings of literary works, essays about culture and cultural studies, and historical material, we will study and compare several historical and theoretical approaches to textual analysis, and explore the relationships among literature, history, and culture.  We will also screen films that adapt some of the texts we read, asking questions about how the twentieth century rewrites the cultural situations and historical texts of the Renaissance, Victorian, and modern periods.  As we learn the skills of critical thinking in the disciplines of the humanities, we will ask questions such as: “What is an author?” “What is the link between historical situation and cultural production, and is it different in different historical moments?” “What is a genre in literature or film, and how does it shape the cultural consumer’s response?”  “Who ‘makes’ meaning: the author or filmmaker, the text, or the cultural consumer?” 

There will be a strong emphasis on assignments that teach skills necessary for effective critical thinking and literary writing.  You will learn how to identify secondary sources in the library and on the web, and how to evaluate their authority and usefulness to you, the student-critic.  You will learn the strategies of “close reading,” summary and paraphrasing, argumentation, methods of inquiry, and the framing of research questions.  The techniques and abilities you learn in this class will prepare you for reading and writing in your next humanities or social science courses

Students will be required to read assigned texts, attend class, and participate in discussion; to write one 10-15 page research paper and several process-oriented assignments; and to complete in-class and out-of class writing exercises.

DIANNE F. SADOFF studies nineteenth-century British literature and culture, psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic theory, and film adaptation.  Her books include Monsters of Affection:  Dickens, Bronte and Eliot on Fatherhood, Sciences of the Flesh:  Representing Body and Subject in Psychoanalysis, and the co-edited books, Teaching Theory to Undergraduates and Victorian Afterlife:  Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century.  She has completed a new book, Victorian Vogue:  The Nineteenth-Century British Novel On Screen.  She attended Oberlin College, the University of Oregon, and the University of Rochester.  She has always been interested in interdisciplinary teaching and research.

 

 

Indians and Cowboys, Women and Family, Land and Water: The American West in Politics, Literature and Film
01:090:284 Index #73208
Professor Gordon Schochet, Department of Political Science
T 02:50-05:50P  Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

From the earliest days of the nation, ideas of “the West” and the “frontier” have loomed large in American politics and imagination. The Louisiana Purchase, the driving of the Golden Spike, the building of Hoover Dam, cattle drives along the Chisholm Trail, the mythologies of Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, “Miss Kittie” and “Marshall Dillon,” what used to be called “Custer’s Last Stand,” covered wagons on the Oregon Trail, and the buttes and mesas in automobile ads on television are all part of the popular and romanticized imagery of the West. It was the frontier that defined our national character and made us vital.

This seminar will examine these myths and attitudes along with the harsher truths of the exploitation of natural resources, the attempted destruction of native cultures, and land, mineral, and water give-aways. Course materials will include a mixture of classic western and “cowboy” films, novels, essays, memoirs about the American West, works by native writers, and studies of changing politics and political cultures. Students will make seminar presentations about the films and assignments and will complete individual research projects.

Assignments will include:
Willa Cather, O Pioneers
James Welch, Fools Crow
Ivan Doig, Dancing at the Rascal Fare
Mary Clearman Blue, All But the Waltz
Marc Reisner, Cadillac Desert
Wallace Stegner, Where the Bluebird Sings
Various essays on the West

Among the films are:
The Ox Bow Incident
High Noon
Shane
The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence
The Searchers
Sergio Leoni’s “spaghetti western” cycle:
 Fistful of Dollars
 For a Few Dollars More
 The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
 Once Upon a Time in the West
Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider, High Planes Drifter, and Unforgiven

GORDON SCHOCHET, who grew up with cowboy movies, books, and radio and without television, has been in love with the American West since the first time he saw a picture postcard of the Grand Canyon during World War II. Among his childhood heroes were Tonto and Sitting Bull. His preoccupation with the West reflects a larger interest in the relationship of geography to culture and politics.  He has been at Rutgers for 43 years, where he has taught such divers subjects as the history of political thought, philosophy of rights and justice, epistemology, science fiction, pop music, and political thought in the Hebrew Bible.

 

 

Empire Formations and Classical Education (Paideia)
01:090:286 Index #73210
Professor Sarolta Takács, Department of History
TH 06:10-09:00P  Brett Hall Seminar Room
College Ave Campus

The purpose of this seminar is to explore the world of Late Antiquity and learn about its importance in shaping our world.  The vast and multicultural world of the Roman Empire encompassed the whole Mediterranean basin.  The period under consideration is one of the great social and cultural changes.  When the 18th Century scholar, Edward Gibbon, studied Rome, he associated the Late Antique period with the fall.  Nowadays, we like to think not in his terms of “rise and fall” but along the lines of “continuation and transformation.”  But, how and why did Late Antiquity come to differ from its “classical” precursor?  How did the changes that occurred in this period determine the varied developments of Europe’ successor empires? What was the discourse of power? If Rome and its traditions still shape our world, what function did and does classical education have in this perpetuation?

Readings (provisional; the course reader will be available on SAKAI):
- Ancient Greek Education: Selections from Isocrates, Homer, Thucydides, Plato, and Xenophon
- Roman Education: Selections from Caesar, Cicero, Polybius, Suetonius, and Tacitus
- Christian Education: Selections from Alcuin, Augustine of Hippo, Basil of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Bede, Gregory of Nazianz, Jerome of Jerusalem, and Julian the Apostate
 - Founding of Universities and curricula: France, Italy, Germany, and England
   
Requirements:
3 oral presentations based on written reports (1-2pp.) of assigned readings
1 research paper (15pp.) and oral presentation based on research
1 museum trip

SAROLTA TAKÁCS studies the Roman and Byzantine world and teaches in the department of History.  Her newest book, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons: Women in Roman Religion, looks at Roman women and the role they played maintaining Rome’s socio-political structure as well as the understanding of the Roman self by means of religious rituals. A forthcoming book investigates the power of rhetoric through the traditional virtues of the ancient Romans (the mos maiorum). Professor Takács is the dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program.

Personal Identity in Philosophy and Popular Culture

01:090:294:06
Professor Tripp McCrossin, SAS - Philosophy
TH 8:10A - 11:10A
Honors College Room S124
College Avenue Campus

Read more ...

Medieval Cluny, Christendom & Islam

01:090:297:02 Index #10530
Professor Stephen Reinert
Th 11:30 – 2:30 PM
Honors College Rm E128
College Avenue Campus

Read more ...

Fall 2007 Interdisciplinary Honors Seminars


How Sex Changed: Biomedical Sex Research in the 20th Century
01:090:250:33284
James Reed, Department of History
W 4:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

This is a seminar about the relationship between scientists and human sexuality.  We will examine some of the most important efforts to understand and to control sexual behavior.  Who studied sex?  How did was it defined? What methods were used? Why was it studied?  Who paid for the work? What is the relationship between this science, gender systems, and other salient aspects of U.S. society? What can we learn from the immense discourse constructed by sex researchers? 

We will begin with the "crisis in civilized sexual morality" and Freud's visit to the U.S. in 1909, and end with the emergence of the intersexed and transsexuals as self-conscious minorities successfully struggling for civil rights. We will have an Alfred Kinsey film festival and will devote several weeks to the career of John Money, the Johns Hopkins University clinical psychologist who championed the cause of surgical sex reassignment.  Assigned readings include: Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality, Deborah Rudacille, The Riddle of Gender, John Coalpinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, and packets of documents provided by the instructor.

All participants in the seminar will be expected to make a presentation about a researcher, novel, autobiography, journal, or website that is relevant to our story but not included in the assigned reading.  There will be two short written assignments (5 pages) and a longer essay that will serve as a final exam.

JAMES W. REED is a professor of history who teaches the survey course in U.S. history as well as courses in the history of medicine, disease, healthcare and other topics in social history, such as The IQ Controversy and Sport in History.  He served as Dean of Rutgers College from 1985-1994, is the author of The Birth Control Movement and American Society: From Private Vice to Public Virtue, and is currently working on a history of biomedical sex research.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Nation Building: American Involvement in Remaking Foreign Countries Since 1898
01:090:251:33285
David Foglesong, Department of History
M 9:50 AM - 12:50 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)
                                                                  
Since the Spanish-American War of 1898, the United States has occupied and attempted to reshape many foreign countries, including the Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, Japan, Germany, and Iraq.  Those efforts have involved American economic advisers, missionaries, educators, and Peace Corps volunteers, as well as soldiers and diplomats.  In this seminar we will examine the diverse American experience with transforming or reconstructing foreign nations.  We will explore the origins and motives for American involvement in the various undertakings, investigate how successful the efforts have been, analyze the mistakes that have been made, and consider the responses of foreign peoples.

Each student will make one brief (five-minute) oral presentation to open discussion of the assigned reading for that week.  Each student will write four short (five to seven page) essays that will develop critical responses to the interpretations presented in the assigned reading.  Students will have the option to write a longer (twelve to fifteen page) research paper on a topic to be developed in consultation with the professor, in place of two of the shorter essays.

The assigned reading will include books and articles by journalists and political scientists, as well as historians, such as: 

Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War
John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II
Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua Under U.S. Imperial Rule
William Lederer and Eugene Burdick, The Ugly American
Thomas Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq

Born and raised in northern California, DAVID FOGLESONG has been teaching in the History Department at Rutgers since 1991. He has written two books: America's Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920 (1995), and The American Mission and the "Evil Empire": The Crusade for a "Free Russia" (2007).  He has also published articles on different aspects of American-Russian relations in scholarly journals such as Religion, State and Society(1997), The International History Review (1999), and Problems of Post Communism (2002) His current research focuses on American involvement in remaking foreign countries since 1898, with an emphasis on how Americans have thought about and remembered such "nation building" ventures.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Science and Life of Albert Einstein
01:090:252:33286
John Hughes, Department of Physics & Astronomy
MW 2:50PM - 4:10 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

In this seminar, we will explore the development of 20th century physics and astronomy through the contributions of Albert Einstein. Students will gain an understanding of special and general relativity, the development of modern physics through the 20th century, and the crucial role of Einstein's theories in modern astronomy and cosmology.

We begin with an examination of the state of physics at the turn of the 20th century and the so-called myth of the "end of physics." We contrast the fields of physics and astronomy at this time based on a set of popular level lectures given in the 1920's.  Newton's definition of absolute space and time, taken from the Principia, sets the stage for an in-depth review of Special and General Relativity, following Einstein's popular book from 1915.  We will explore the consequences of these theories, and will look at some of the detailed tests, including the famous eclipse expedition of 1919 that established these theories as among the most important laws of physics.

In the latter part of the seminar, we fast forward to the modern era and reveal why Einstein's theories are at the forefront of astronomy and cosmology. We will cover gravitational lensing, the big bang theory, evidence for cosmic acceleration and other topics according to the tastes of the class.

Throughout the seminar, we will look at Einstein as an icon in the world at large.  He was a notorious pacifist, yet he encouraged Roosevelt to develop the atomic bomb.  He was also deeply religious, but not in a traditional sense.

The seminar will entail weekly readings and written assignments that are expected to form the basis for extensive class discussion.  One or two longer papers will be assigned for credit as well.

This seminar is for non-science majors, although some background in physics and mathematics will be helpful.

JOHN P. HUGHES grew up in NYC and attended Columbia University.  He was a staff scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory until 1996 when he moved to Rutgers, where he is currently a Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Dr. Hughes uses both space- and ground-based astronomical observatories to research various topics in astrophysics and cosmology.  (For more information visit his web site http://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~jackph/)


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The World of Post-Colonial Caribbean "Theater"
01:090:253:33616
Camilla Stevens, Department of Spanish & Portuguese
MW 1:10 PM - 2:30 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

Numerous historical and cultural processes have made the Caribbean a distinctive and complex world area: the cultural legacy of slavery; the insular and maritime condition of its geography; the region’s multiplicity of races, cultures, and languages; and its proximity to the United States.  Cultural histories of the Caribbean identify the importance of literature in constructing and defining post-colonial collective identities, but the role of theater and performance in the cultural politics of representing the nation has been less rigorously investigated.  In this seminar, we will read plays from a variety of Caribbean theater traditions and examine performance as a human endeavor that helps imagine communities, and the theater as a space for creating and preserving cultural memory.  Some of the topics that will organize our discussions will include:

Storytelling and the Oral Tradition
Re-Playing European Classics
Ritual and Carnival
The Performance of Race and Gender
Tourism and Migration
Requirements:  Readings (most of which will be available on a sakai.rutgers.edu site for the seminar) will include contemporary plays by authors from Martinique, Guadeloupe, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic, as well as texts on history and culture and some post-colonial and theater theory.  All readings will be in English.  To familiarize ourselves with the history and culture of the Caribbean region, we will view numerous videos and listen to music and students will report on select islands and playwrights.  Students will also work in groups and present a reading of a scene of one of the plays we study (no acting talent required!).  If there is sufficient class interest, we may go to New York City to see a play.  Other coursework includes brief analytical homework assignments and an 8-10 page final paper.

CAMILLA STEVENS teaches in the department of Spanish and Portuguese.  Her main research areas include Latin American theater and Caribbean literature.  Her book, Family and Identity in Contemporary Cuban and Puerto Rican Drama (University Press of Florida, 2004) analyzes family as a metaphor for national community in Cuban and Puerto Rican theater from the 1950s to the present.  She is currently working on a Pan-Caribbean project that focuses on the theatrical representation of race.  Professor Stevens attributes her interest in the Caribbean partly to her chilly childhood in Minnesota.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jung for the 21st Century
01:090:254:33287
Steven Walker, Department of Asian Languanges and Cultures
T 9:50 AM - 12:50 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

This seminar will introduce students to a system of psychology that, after having been overshadowed by Freudian psychology in the 20th century, is coming into its own in the 21st.  The seminar will present basic principles and paradigms, and will engage students in a number of practical applications in the areas of the psychology of everyday life: the role of mythology in dreams and social life, religion, the analysis of films and literary texts, and self-analysis.  No special preparation is needed, but students should come with an attitude of openness towards what may seem at first to be somewhat uncanny and even disturbing aspects of the unconscious mind.

In the area of the psychology of everyday life, Jungian psychology makes its greatest contribution through its dynamic presentation and analysis of the shadow (the unconscious and repressed personality), the anima and animus (the repressed contrasexual personality), and typology (categories of psychological functioning).  Students in this seminar should be ready for some creative self-analysis!  We will also deal with the disturbing issue of psychopathy/sociopathy as presented by Guggenbuhl-Craig, one of Jung's most original followers. 

Jungian psychology also values the creative arts, and sees them as performing a remarkable role in the psychic life of the individual and society.  Accordingly, we will analyze several narrative and film texts from a Jungian perspective: Toni Morrison's Sula, Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Jane Campion's The Piano, and other texts chosen as the occasion arises.

The textbook will be my own recent presentation of the Jungian system and its later developments, Jung and the Jungians on Myth: an Introduction (2002).  We will also study Guggenbuhl-Craig's The Emptied Soul and Jung's autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections.

STEVEN F. WALKER, Professor of Comparative Literature, holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin (B.A. in classical Greek) and Harvard (M.A. and Ph.D. in Comparative Literature).  He teaches in both the graduate and undergraduate programs in Comparative Literature, and he is a direct descendent (really!) of Henry Rutgers.  He has been reading Jung voraciously since his undergraduate days.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Puzzle Novel
01:090:255:33288
Maurice Charney, Department of English
Th 2:50 - 5:50 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

This seminar will consider the puzzle novel in contemporary fiction.  We will concentrate of esoteric, ambiguous, highly ironic fictions by such writers as Borges, Calvino, Kafka, Barnes, Nabokov, and Perec.  The seminar focuses on literature that students are unlikely to have read before that is difficult, provocative, and original.  The aim of the seminar is to get students to write stories or essays related to the writers we are reading.  Two volumes of collected essays and stories have been published by the class with the help of the Honors Program.  In the past, students have completed non-verbal projects involving art, music, dance, or performance.

Required texts:
Borges, J. L., Labyrinths (ISBN: 0811200124)
Barnes, J., Flaubert's Parrot (ISBN: 0679731369)
Calvino, I., If on a Winter's Night a Traveler (ISBN: 0156439611)
Carroll, A. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (ISBN: 0393099776)
Kafka, F., Complete Stories (ISBN: 0805210555)
Pavic, M., Dictionary of the Khazars (ISBN: 0679724613)

MAURICE CHARNEY is Professor Emeritus of English and began teaching at Rutgers in 1956.  He has written widely on Shakespeare, including Shakespeare's Roman Plays: The Function of Imagery in the Drama (1961) and Shakespeare on Love and Lust (2001) and two books on Hamlet:  Style in "Hamlet" (1969) and Hamlet's Fictions (1988).  He has two comprehensive books offering an approach to Shakespeare:  How to Read Shakespeare (1971, 1992) and All of Shakespeare (1993).  Besides a number of editions of Shakespeare's plays and collections of essays, he has written Joe Orton (1984), Sexual Fiction (1981), and an approach to comedy, Comedy High and Low (1978, 1988).


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Physics and Photography
01:090:256:33289
Terry Matilsky, Department of Physics & Astronomy
W 11:30 AM - 2:30 PM
CSB 334 (DNB)

Many fundamental aspects of physical theory concern themselves with the interaction and interrelationship of space and time, the infrastructure of our universe.  Yet surprisingly, in a totally different context, these constituents can be observed in many aspects of art as well.  In this seminar, we will explore how the photographic image depends on the control of space and time by the photographer.

We will study physical and geometric optics first, with emphasis on image formation, depth of field, resolution, magnification, and perspective.  These investigations will enable us to visualize the world around us, and to begin to control the visual impact of the final print.  At the same time, we will see how the development of the negative affects other aspects of the process, such as contrast.  Extensive darkroom work is contemplated.  While we study the physical processes involved, we will also discuss the Masters in the field.  Each week you will critique a well-known photograph, and attempt to incorporate various ideas into your own work.

Homework will be assigned dealing with both the scientific and artistic content of photography.  Of course, you will be taking pictures (indeed, we will be taking field trips - yay!! - to further stimulate our imagination), and artistic and technical critiques will be done collectively, so students at all levels can participate in the process.  I hope to have rank beginners as well as already serious photographers in the class.  Even advanced students can benefit from a "beginner's mind."

There are no prerequisites for the seminar, but you must have a desire to learn about the scientific as well as the artistic aspects of the photographic process.  You must also have a focusing film camera in which shutter speeds and f-stops can be adjusted manually.  Automatic and digital cameras are not acceptable!  If you are contemplating buying a camera for the seminar, see me and I can make some recommendations.  Note: All students who enroll will be required to pay a materials fee of $25.00 to help defray the costs of film, photographic paper, and chemicals.

TERRY MATILSKY is a professor in the Department of Physics.  His specialty is in astrophysics.  He served as Director of the Rutgers College Honors Program from 1989 to 1996.  He has taken pictures from rockets from 100 miles in space (no, he hasn't been in them), but enjoys ground-based landscapes (preferably wilderness areas like Yosemite and Yellowstone) best.  He has sold some of his least favorite photographs to ad agencies on Madison Avenue, just to see whether it could be done, but remains almost totally undiscovered as a true artist.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Evolutionary Approach to Social and Economic Behavior
01:090:257:33290
Tomas Sjostrom, Department of Economics
TTh 6:10 PM - 7:30 PM
Murray 112 (CAC)

Economists study competitive and cooperative interactions in small-scale face-to-face groups, as well as interactions in anonymous large-scale markets. The traditional assumption is that people behave rationally, as profit- or utility-maximizers -- that is, people are assumed to act in their own (typically narrowly-defined) best interest.1  But if we look at the real world, individuals often act in ways that economists find hard to explain. Why do tourists leave tips in foreign restaurants to which they will never return? Why do people get angry and do things that hurt themselves more than they hurt anyone else? Why do CEOs, who already earn more money than they can spend in a lifetime, risk everything by engaging in illegal accounting practices? Evolutionary psychology and game theory provide some answers.

Game theory is a framework for analyzing strategic interaction. It is a branch of applied mathematics, so it requires serious thinking (but no particular math background). Evolutionary psychology applies “Darwinian” logic to human behavior. Of course, humans aren’t robots who have been programmed by evolution to leave tips in restaurants. (Anyway, there weren’t any restaurants on the savanna where our ancestors lived.) Behavior is influenced by the social environment, norms, culture, education and many other things. That’s why behavior is different in different parts of the world. But why are we so easily influenced? And there are similarities as well as differences? Ultimately, we are trying to understand the nature of humankind.

The grade will be based on seminar participation (including attendance, discussion, and term paper presentation), several quizzes, and a 10-15 page term paper on any topic discussed in the course. The required readings include research articles, class handouts, and the following three books: The Survival Game: How Game Theory Explains the Biology of Cooperation and Competition by David P. Barash, Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner's Guide by Robin Dunbar and Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin's Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives by David Sloan Wilson. A recommended (but not required) reading is A Beautiful Mind by Sylvia Nasar.

TOMAS SJOSTROM is a game theorist interested in topics such as arms races, the Grameen Bank, and the internal organization of firms. His most recent paper reports on game theory experiments done in Japan and the US.

1. A hypothetical conversation between two economists: “My cell phone is the best.” “How do you know it is the best one?” “It must be true because if there had been a better one, I wouldn’t have bought this one.”


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Disaster, Culture, and Society
01:090:258:33291
Lee Clarke, Department of Sociology
Th 9:50 AM - 12:50 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

Katrina was a bell-weather event for American society.  Along with 9/11, it threw into bold relief just how vulnerable we can be.  Such events are intellectual opportunities, chances to look at how society works, and fails to work.  There will be more big disasters, and the consequences from them will continue to be severe.  But the main reasons for these trends is not, as some have claimed, global warming, nor, as others have said, because nature or God are somehow punishing us.  The main reasons have to do with how society is organized.
 
We usually think disasters are special but they are prosaic, part of, rather than discontinuous with, “normal” reality.  In normal reality we must make sense of things.  We excel at that, applying familiar categories to organize events, motives, and histories.  Generically, disasters are not different from other events that need ordering.  It is easy to imagine all kinds of non-disastrous things or times that must be confronted with, “How shall I make sense of this?”  Big disasters, like Katrina, just do that in a big way.

This seminar will be case-based, which means that I’ll organize the materials around particular events. Examples are accidents (Bhopal, Titanic, Challenger, Columbia), “natural” disasters (Katrina, the threat from near earth objects), and epidemics (1918 flu).  The focus will be on the interplay between culture, social institutions, and calamity.  We will use video and internet resources throughout.

I will also construct exercises for students to participate in.  An example might be giving groups of students a potential disaster scenario and then making them “advisors” to the President: What will you do?  What do you recommend?  What will be the consequences if you follow one path rather than another?  We will run these exercises at key points in the semester, as knowledge about disaster accumulates.

Students will write one-page “reaction memos” to readings.  I will provide examples of what these should look like, but basically they are critical reflections on the readings.  Students will email these memos to everyone in the class and we will use them to drive seminar discussions.  Students will very actively participate in the seminar, as we weave into and out of key ideas concerning culture and disaster.

LEE CLARKE is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology.  His areas of expertise include leadership, culture, disaster, and organizational and technological failures.  He has written about the Y2K problem, risk communication, panic, civil defense, evacuation, community response to disaster, organizational failure, and near earth objects; his most recent book, Worst Cases: Terror and Catastrophe in the Popular Imagination was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.  Professor Clarke was awarded the Rutgers Graduate School Award for Excellence in Teaching and Graduate Research, 1996-1997, and Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools' 1998 Graduate Mentoring Award. In August 2005 he was honored with the Fred Buttel Distinguished Scholarship Award by the Environment and Technology section of the American Sociological Association.  He has most recently appeared on the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, ABC World News Tonight, and National Public Radio's affiliate in Irvine, CA, KUCI. Visit www.leeclarke.com for more information about the professor.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Breath of Kings: Shakespeare and the Production of History
01:090:260:33293
Emily Bartels, Department of English
TTh 1:10 PM - 2:30 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

To produce "history," whether on the page or on the stage, is indeed to make it.  When William Shakespeare brings Richard II, Richard III, Henry IV, and Henry V imaginatively back to life in the early modern theater, or when Raphael Holinshed chronicles the reigns of these remarkable (in some cases outrageous) kings, they - the playwright and historian alike - are not simply recording a "real" past; they are shaping a vision of that never quite recoverable "reality."  They are also setting their own terms for what history is and does - for what counts as an historical subject, an historical way of representing, and an historical agenda.  Early modern English playwrights and chroniclers were, in fact, deeply engaged with not only the matter but also the question of "history."  For them, to represent the past was to potently politicize the present, to shape the state as well as the stage, to interrogate the all important fault-line between fact and fiction, and to create brave new texts, brave new politics, and brave new worlds.  "Such is the breath of kings," as Shakespeare writes in Richard II.

This seminar will take as its subject the ways in "history" was being produced, on the stage by the indomitable William Shakespeare, and off the stage by chroniclers such as Raphael Holinshed and Richard Hakluyt. In looking at the intersection of dramatic and non-dramatic writers in a period 400 years before our own, our aim will be to "historicize" the notion of what history is and does, to think seriously about how "history" evolves within a particular historical moment, and to understand how the form of an historical story defines its content.  We will learn how to ask questions of dramatic and non-dramatic historically loaded texts, how to account for historical differences, how to read an historical moment through textual lenses, and how to read texts in their history moment.

Our primary readings will include: a selection of Shakespeare's plays (likely among them Richard III, Julius Caesar, Richard II, Henry IV, Parts 1 & 2, Henry V, The Tempest) as well as plays (John Ford, Chronicle History of Perkin Warbeck, Christopher Marlowe, Edward II, Bertolt Brecht, Edward II, Aime Cesaire, A Tempest) that provide useful temporal and generic contrasts; and selections from William Warner, Albion's England, Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, John Stowe, Summary of English Chronicles, and Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations of the English Nation.

Students will work on one extensive research project of their own design through the term and will keep a reflective critical journal summarizing and analyzing their readings-in-progress.

EMILY BARTELS (BA Yale 1979; PhD Harvard 1987) is an associate professor in the English department and a specialist on early modern literature and culture. Her publications include: Spectacles of Strangeness: Imperialism, Alienation, and Marlowe, an edited collection of essays on Christopher Marlowe, and a number of essays on Shakespeare and questions of race, gender, and cross-cultural contact. She is currently completing a book, Staging the Moor: From Alcazar to Othello.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Romances of the Jungle: Lost Worlds and Last Frontiers
01:090:261:33295
Jorge Marcone, Department of Spanish & Portuguese
MW 7:40 PM - 9:00 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

In the genre of the ‘Romance of the Jungle’ along the twentieth century, the main protagonist, disappointed with the cosmopolitan city for fulfilling his expectations of emancipation and self-realization, attempts a "return to nature" in the wilderness of the tropical forests of the Amazon or the Orinoco basins. Paradoxically, this "return" reveals itself as a search for an alternative modern life style (freedom, artistic authenticity, overcoming alienation from self and others, and the renewal of gender and ethnic identity). This search usually ends in failure, or death, as the environmental, anthropological and historical peculiarities of the jungle shatters previous expectations and assumptions of the protagonist. For the reader, the ultimate consequences of this crisis are not as disappointing. On the one hand, in following the characters’ experience of wilderness, the reader realizes that such experience is interdependent with the social conditions that made it possible. On the other hand, the reader witnesses the process through which the characters reach an awareness of their own embodiment, and embedment into the environment as a condition of personal and social being. In the end, a literary genre that could be used to illustrate the problematic radical split between city and wilderness, carries an awareness regarding the interaction of society and nature that resonates with current notions of political ecology, social “metabolism,” environmental complexity, and sustainability.

Focusing on a combination of Latin American fiction in translation from Spanish and texts originally written in English, this seminar will explore, first, the variations to the basic narrative outlined above in the past century. Secondly, we will focus on the many ways in which these fictions elaborate on the interaction between the human and the non-human, such as: specific environmental crises and/or conflicts, insertion into unsustainable political ecologies, landscape and border-crossing, the impact of the non-human in the process of self-understanding, the influence of environmental awareness in the way in which literature and art are understood, etc.

Seminar requirements: a 15-20 page research paper to be developed along the semester through short written responses to primary readings, research on secondary sources, an oral presentation, and class participation.
Primary readings:

Green Mansions (1904) by William Henry Hudson (Argentina, 1841-England, 1922).
Short stories by Horacio Quiroga (Uruguay, 1878-1937).
"Los mensú" (1914, "The Contract Laborers," Cuentos de amor, de locura y de muerte, 1918).
"Juan Darién" (1920, El desierto, 1924).
"El hombre muerto" (1920, "The Dead Man," Los desterrados, 1926).
"Anaconda" (1921, Anaconda, 1921).
"El desierto" (1923, "The Wilderness," El desierto, 1924).
"El regreso de Anaconda" (1925, "The Return of Anaconda," Los desterrados, 1926)
Los pasos perdidos (1953, The Lost Steps) by Alejo Carpentier (Cuba, 1904-1979).
Keep the River on Your Right (1969) by Tobias Schneebaum (U.S.A., 1922-2005)
The Loss of El Dorado: A Colonial History (1969) by V. S. Naipaul. (Trinidad, 1932-).
El hablador (1987, The Storyteller) by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru, 1936- ).
JORGE MARCONE is an Associate Professor at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and a Core Faculty in the Comparative Literature Program. His teaching and research interests are focused on the study of ecological/environmental ideas in literatures and cultures from Latin America and incorporates such diverse fields as political ecology, environmental history, anthropology and philosophy. It also requires an understanding of the texts as responses to specific environmental conditions and changes as much as to the flow of ideas, peoples, goods, and capital across the Americas and the Atlantic. In recent years, Professor Marcone has either directed or developed the Rutgers Summer Study Abroad Programs in Spain and Peru. Additionally, Professor Marcone regularly teaches Introduction to Hispanic Literature, and Advanced Grammar and Composition.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rethinking American Architecture
01:090:262:33296
Carla Yanni, Department of Art History
W 9:50 AM - 12:50 PM
Brett Hall Seminar Room (CAC)

This seminar will focus attention on the architectural history of American buildings of the latter half of the 19th century.  Architectural history is here broadly conceived to include the entire built environment--individual buildings, city plans, parks, houses, public institutions, and infrastructure.  We will first learn the standard history of the period, and we will then rethink that standard history by conducting original research on local buildings. 

For much of the twentieth century, historians considered the second half of the nineteenth century to be a debased period, marked by stylistic confusion and rampant copying of European fashions.  By studying local buildings in their own historical contexts, by setting aside the Great Man approach to history, students will be able to create a more nuanced and accurate history of the period.  Nineteenth-century journals (many of which are available on-line) tell a rich and complicated story about the second half of the nineteenth century.

Requirements: discussion of assigned readings; short papers; a journal comprised of observations of the built environment; oral presentation; and 10 to 15 page term paper on a single building or landscape.  The seminar will include at least one field trip, probably to New York City.

CARLA YANNI is Associate Professor of Art History and Assistant Vice President for Undergraduate Academic Affairs.  Her area of scholarly expertise is nineteenth- and twentieth-century architecture; by architectural history, she refers not to the study of great monuments and architects, but rather to the intellectual, social, and cultural meanings of buildings.  She promotes the study of architectural history as a way of understanding a society’s values.  In 2000, Johns Hopkins University Press published her first book, Nature’s Museums: Victorian Science and the Architecture of Display.  Her second book, titled The Architecture of Madness: Insane Asylums in the United States, was published by University of Minnesota Press in spring 2007.  During the academic year 2002-2003 she was a Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.  In 1994 she earned the doctorate in Art History from the University of Pennsylvania.  She graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut in 1987.  She grew up in Rochester, New York.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How Should I Live?
01:090:263:33297
Ruth Chang, Department of Philosophy
T 4:30 PM - 7:30 PM
Scott 105 (CAC)

Ethical theories attempt to answer the question, How should I live? Although philosophers have offered many different types of ethical theory, the history of ethics has in large part been a debate between two main contenders, consequentialism and Kantian ethics. In his recent book manuscript, Climbing the Mountain, Derek Parfit argues that this debate, which has occupied philosophers for over two millennia, is misguided; rather than offering radically distinct views about how we should live, consequentialists and Kantians are climbing different sides of the same mountain.

This course examines Parfit’s argument via study of parts of his book manuscript, still in preparation for publication. The course begins with a nuts-and-bolts explanation of consequentialism and Kantian ethics. We will then turn to the questions central to Parfit’s argument: What is the nature of a practical reason? What is it to have a reason to do something? Do your reasons to do ‘this’ rather than ‘that’ derive from your wanting to do ‘this’ rather than ‘that’? Or do your reasons derive from the value of what you want? With a view about practical reasons in place, we explore how best to understand Kantian ethics and examine how the best interpretation of Kantian ethics might lead us to a form of consequentialist theory.

Since the material for this course will be distributed via email attachment, there are no materials that students need purchase.   Students enrolled in this seminar must have reliable and frequent access to their email and to printing facilities.

Requirements for the course include one term paper (between 20-25 double-spaced pages), one class presentation, and active class participation. The term paper will count for 50% of the final grade, the presentation and class participation will each count for 25% of the final grade. If you take this course, you should be prepared to participate in class discussion. The aim of this course is not only to learn some great philosophy but to develop certain skills of communication, in particular, how to make cogent and relevant remarks in a general discussion of difficult material.

Professor RUTH CHANG has a B.A. from Dartmouth College, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, and a Ph.D. from Oxford University. She has taught at Rutgers since 1997. Before coming to Rutgers she taught at Harvard, Oxford, UCLA, and the University of Chicago Law school.  Since coming to Rutgers, she has been a Rockefeller Fellow at the Princeton Center for Human Values, a Fellow in Ethics at the Harvard Safra Center for Ethics, and a Charles Ryskamp Fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies. She is author of Making Comparisons Count, editor of Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason, and various articles in ethics and metaethics.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Race Matters
01:090:264:33298
Leslie Fishbein, Department of American Studies
M 9:15 AM - 12:15 PM
RAB 018 (DC)

This seminar will examine the ways in which issues of race arising originally from our society’s vexed relationship with slavery have shaped subsequent social and cultural developments with respect to ethnic and racial identity, social mobility, popular culture and sexuality.  The seminar will explore these issues as they arise during the colonial era of settlement and tease out their implications through the establishment of the republic, our nation’s experience with slavery and emancipation, and during the post-Reconstruction Era in which ethnic minorities among immigrant groups also took on racialized identities. Texts may include the following books and book excerpts, essays, and films:

Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812

Eric Lott, Love and Theft

George M. Frederickson, The Black Image in the White Mind: The Debate on Afro-American Character and Destiny, 1817-1914

Mia Bay, The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 1830-1925

Peggy Pascoe, “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of "Race" in Twentieth-Century America.” Journal of American History 83.1 (June 1996): 44-69

Langston Hughes, “Passing” in The Ways of White Folks. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947. Pp. 49-53.

Nella Larsen, Passing

The Jazz Singer (1927): the Al Jolson talkie employing blackface

Ethnic Notions (1986): Marlon Riggs’s documentary film on racial stereotypes

Kevin Mumford, Interzones: Black/White Sex Districts in Chicago and New York in the Early Twentieth Century

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004): Ken Burns’ documentary film on the history of the first African-American heavyweight boxing champion

Jennifer Ritterhouse, Growing Up Jim Crow: How Black and White Southern Children Learned Race

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race

J. Guglielmo, Are Italians White?: How Race is Made in America

Renee Romano, Race Mixing: Black-White Marriage in Postwar America

An American Love Story (1999): PBS documentary film on interracial couple

Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name (fictionalized memoir of lesbian daughter of Caribbean immigrants growing up in the shadow of the McCarthy Era in the 1950s)

Cornel West, Race Matters

Spike Lee, Jungle Fever (1991): film about love affair between black architect and his working-class Italian secretary

Students will be expected to write an analytical research paper and shorter written work and to participate actively in seminar discussion.

LESLIE FISHBEIN is an Associate Professor of American Studies and Jewish Studies, a member of the graduate faculty of the History Department, and an affiliate faculty member of Women’s and Gender Studies, Urban Planning and Public Policy, and Cinema Studies.  Her book Rebels in Bohemia: The Radicals of The Masses, 1911-1917, a study of rebels and bohemians in Greenwich Village in the Teens, won the New York State Historical Association Manuscript Award. She currently is working on a book entitled Memoirs of the Sex Trade: A Cultural History of Prostitution, which examines the self-representation of American prostitutes and madams.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

French: Culture and Community; or Civilization: What's the Use?
01:090:265:33299 (crosslisted with 01:420:317)
Mary Shaw, Department of French
TTh 2:15 PM - 5:15 PM
RAB 109A (DC)

Enrollment in this seminar is by special permission only.  Please contact Professor Shaw at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for permission to register.

Developed through the university-wide CASE program, this seminar combines a study of the evolving themes of community and education in French literature with service in a particular community -- in this case, students teaching French language and culture to children at the Lord Sterling Elementary School in New Brunswick.  Readings reflect a wide range of historical periods and genres, including such authors as Rabelais, Montaigne, La Fontaine, Perrault, Rousseau, Tocqueville, and folktales from Haiti.  Participants also gain familiarity with various aspects of French and francophone popular culture through their participation in puppet theater, and in musical, artistic, and other projects around which the curriculum is planned.

REQUIRED READINGS (selections to be purchased in xerox packets)
Comhaire-Sylvain, Le Roman de Bouqui

La Fontaine, Fables
Montaigne, De l'institution des enfants
Rabelais, Gargantua
Rousseau, Du contra! Social, L'Emile
Perrault, Contes
Tessonneau, ed., Conies créoles d'Haiti
Tocqueville, De la democracie en Amerique
Barber, Benjamin R., The Civic Mission of the University
Bloustein, Edward J., Community Service
Clinton, William J., Address on National Service. March 1, 1993
Dewey, John, The Democratic Conception in Education
King Martin Luther, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail
Stimpson, C.R. Meno's Boy. Hearing his Story-and his Sister's
Principal Assignments

Student-teachers will meet with me during the Tuesday and Thursday class sessions to discuss required readings and to plan our collective cultural projects to be done with 4th-5th-grade students from Lord Stirling's After School Program French Club on Tuesdays from 3:15:-4:15. From our regular class sessions will also be drawn the French Language Lessons to be delivered by student-¬teachers in regular teaching sessions (Tuesdays and Thursdays 2:45 - 3:15) in fifth-grade classes at Lord Stirling School. Our first teaching session will be on Tuesday, September 18.

Our first Afterschool Program session will also be on Tuesday, September 18. By the end of the second week of class (September 8), each student--teacher will submit a plan (1 -2 page proposal) for a collective project (literary, theatrical, artistic, musical, scientific, culinary, geographical etc.) to be implemented during the term.  The projects proposed will form the basis of your term papers, (approx. 10 pages) which will constitute the major written assignment for the class. The term papers must in some way connect your cultural project (a description of what you did, how you did it, and why) with your teaching experiences, and with ideas from the required readings. They must also include some independent research.

There will also be a midterm focused on the required readings.

Professor MARY SHAW focuses most of her research on 19th- and 20th-Century French poetry, particularly Mallarmé, but her work explores poetry's relations with other genres (theater and various types of fictional and non-fictional prose) and with disparate art forms (music, dance, and the visual arts). She often works across centuries as well.   Much of her teaching has revolved around the Zimmerli Art Museum's fin-de-siècle illustrated book and journal collection, and she has been especially invested in the French Department's CASE program, which involves undergraduates in teaching French language and culture to children through puppet theater and other means. In recent years, she has also published poetry and a bilingual children's book. You will also find her teaching some of the beginning French literature courses. 


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Communications and Human Values
01:090:287:33300
Richard Heffner, Department of Communication
T 9:50 AM - 12:50 PM
SC 201 (CAC)

This seminar is open only to first-year and sophomore students.

This seminar assumes that much of what it means to be an American at the dawn of the 21st Century derives from the power of the mass media, with particular emphasis on their socializing and value-legitimating content.  To deal effectively with such power, to be sure, is now a major task before organized society, and students will first be asked to identify their own respective approaches to the proper relationship between the individual and the State through discussions based on such readings as Walter Lippmann's Public Opinion, Robert Merton's Mass Persuasion, J.S. Mill's On Liberty, Herman Melville's Billy Budd, and Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death, as well as a variety of relevant articles and speeches.

Seminar emphasis will then be placed on such value-laden contemporary media issues as a Fairness Doctrine (the real or imagined "chilling effect" of a requirement for media fairness and balance); cameras in the courts (do televised trials enhance justice, or instead create a "mobocracy," with trial by a new jury of public opinion?); and media self-regulation (can there in fact be meaningful voluntary self-discipline in a free market, free speech, mass media-driven society?).

Professor RICHARD D. HEFFNER is University Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers, where he began to teach History and Political Science in 1948.  He was Founding General Manager of New York’s Public Television Channel 13 in the early 1960’s, served as chairman of the motion picture industry’s voluntary film ratings board from 1974 to 1994, and continues, after nearly 50 years, to produce and moderate “The Open Mind,” the longest-running conversation program in public television.  He recently published A Conversational History of Modern America (retitled As They Saw It in its paperback edition), which brings together interviews he has conducted over the years with Martin Luther King, Jr., Thurgood Marshall, Robert Redford, Bill Moyers, Malcolm X, Donald Rumsfeld, B.F. Skinner and hundreds of others. Rutgers Magazine describes reading A Conversational History of Modern America “like being invited to the dinner party of the century.”  Professor Heffner’s A Documentary History of the United States and his edition of Tocqueville’s Democracy in America are classics of their kind.

The Troubles: Partition, Sectarianism, Peace & Reconciliation in Northern Ireland

01:090:297:01 Index# 10529
Professor Paul Blaney, SAS - English, SASHP
W 02:50-05:50P
35 College Avenue Rm 302
College Ave Campus

Read more ...

Michelangelo

01:090:293:04 Index# 15508
Professor Sarah McHam, SAS - Art History
T 09:50A - 12:50P
Honors College, Rm. N-106
College Avenue Campus

Read more ...

Guests, Neighbors, Enemies: Xenophobia, Xenophilia, and the Other in Europe Today

01:090:293:02 Index# 12064
Professor Parvis Ghassem-Fachan, SAS - Anthropology
M 12:35P - 01:55P 
TH 12:35P - 01:55P
Hickman Hall, Rm. 129
Douglass Campus

Read more ...

Inequality and Opportunity in America

01:090:296:03 Index# 10533
Professor Patricia Roos, SAS - Sociology
T 9:15A-12:15P
Hickman Hall Rm 132
Douglass Campus

Read more ...

The Food-Energy-Water Nexus in the Anthropocene

01:090:296:01 Index# 11988     01:090:296:02 Index# 10532
Professor Nirav Patel, Honors College
T 8:10-9:30A     W1 8:10-9:30A     W2 9:50-11:10A
Academic Building, Room 1100
College Ave Campus

Read more ...

Politics of Reproduction

01:090:292:04 Index# 13380
Professor Cynthia R. Daniels, SAS - Political Science
T 10:50A - 1:55P
Hickman Hall 127
Cook/Douglass Campus

Read more ...

Jung for the 21st Century

01:090:292:01 Index# 12056
Professor Steven Walker, SAS - Asian Languages and Cultures
T 09:50A - 12:50P
Honors College, Rm S120
College Ave Campus

Read more ...

Wise Fools

01:090:292:02 Index# 12060
Professor Nicholas Rennie, SAS - Germanic, Russian, & Eastern European Languages and Literatures 
TH 09:50A - 12:50P
Academic Building, Rm 4050
College Ave Campus

Read more ...

Society and Education in Contemporary China

01:090:295:01 Index# 11989
Professor Tanja Sargent, GSE-Educational Theory, Policy & Administration
T 1:10-4:10P
Honors College Seminar Room S124
College Ave Campus

Read more ...

Reading in Slow Motion

01:090:294:04 Index# 13266
Professor Richard Miller, SAS - English
MW 1:10-2:30PM
Academic Building, Room 1100
College Ave Campus

Read more ...

How Governments, Businesses, and Non-Profits Change Behavior

01:090:294:05 Index# 13383
Professor Hana Shepherd, SAS - Sociology
M 10:55A - 12:15P
TH 10:55A - 12:15P
Hickman Hall, Rm. 131
Douglass/Cook Campus

Read more ...

Cultures of American Adolescence

01:090:294:02 Index# 10527
Professor Leslie Fishbein, SAS - American Studies
M 9:15A-12:15P
Ruth Adams Building Rm 18
Douglass Campus

Read more ...

Climate Change and Energy in the 21st Century

01:090:295:01 Index# 15409
Professor Premala Chandra, SAS - Physics & Astronomy
M 01:40P - 04:40P
Tillet Hall, Rm 204
Livingston Campus

Read more ...

Bilingualism: How It Shapes Our Minds

01:090:295:02 Index# 11087
Professor Liliana Sanchez, SAS - Spanish & Portuguese
M 01:10P - 02:30P
W 01:10P - 02:30P
Honors College, Rm S120
College Ave Campus

Read more ...

Genes and Evolution

01:090:294:01 Index# 10526
Professor Frank Deis, SAS - Molecular Biology and Biochemistry
MW 1:40-3P
Allison Road Classroom Rm 203
Busch Campus

Read more ...