Spring 2010 Seminars

Professor Wyanza Acosta
Self-Care and Over-the-Counter Products
From common ingredients to advertising analysis, this course will familiarize college students with self-care and available nonprescription drug products.

Professor Dean Almy
Towards a Sustainable Urbanism: Designs on the Future City
This course will examine factors affecting the changing status of the 21st century city and the tactics used to mediate the effects of rapid urbanization by leaders in the environmental design professions.

Professor Anthony Ambler
Engineering: Inputs on Design
This course will discuss system design as it relates to technologies we encounter and interact with in our everyday lives. Students will examine how human factors as well as technical constraints influence design in engineering.

Professor Lisa Cary
Social Justice and Issues of Equity
This course will provide an opportunity to study issues of social justice and equity through historical and contemporary lenses in order to deconstruct the populist and stereotypical understandings of difference that lead to injustice and inequity in society.

Professor Eugenia Costa-Giomi
Debunking a Myth: “Music makes you smarter”
We will look at the recent development of a myth by tracking down the original source (a research study) and the subsequent events leading to the popularization of the notion that listening to Mozart makes you smarter.

Professor Douglas Dempster
Offensive Art
What motivates so many artists to offend their audience and patrons? What does it mean for a work of art to be “offensive?” Can offensive art be good? Should public funds be allowed for offensive art? The course will take a case-study approach to answer these and other questions. Unavoidably, the course will consider images, objects, texts, plays, music, and movies with offensive content that may challenge the religious, political, sexual, or ethical sensibilities of students.

Professor Yoav Di-Capua
Arab Experience of Enlightenment
By analyzing foundational texts by leading Arab intellectuals, we try to understand the forces that brought down the project of Arab Enlightenment and replaced it with the intellectual xenophobia for Islamic radicalism. The aim of this class is to provide and intellectual panorama of Arab civilization in modern times and to introduce students to the basic parameters of Arab thought as manifested in today’s Middle East.

Professor Oloruntoyin Falola
Africa in Films: History and Knowledge
With the aid of visual materials, this interdisciplinary seminar will introduce students to major themes in African history and culture from earliest times to the present. Readings and projects will focus on the ability of students to connect Africa with their own experiences and cultures.

Professor Kathryn Hansen
Exploring India through Visual Culture
In focusing on India and its contemporary visual culture, the course is centrally concerned with how visual culture functions in developing societies and how its impact may differ in the developed world.

Professor David Heymann
How to Read Buildings—An Introduction to Architecture
How could it be that buildings—so bound up with the resolution of pragmatic considerations —could be as vital a form of cultural production as literature, art, dance, film, or music?

Professor Joan Hughes
The Role of Technology among Youth in Society and Education
This course will engage students in discussing and writing about specific sociological, anthropological, psychological, and educational perspectives that shape current controversies concerning youth’s uses of digital technologies.

Professor Robert Jansen
Genetically Modified Organisms: Environmental, Ethical, and Political Issues
This seminar will initially cover the biology behind the production of genetically modified (GM) organisms then move onto environmental, ethical and political issues associated with the production of genetically modified food and drugs.

Professor Jacqueline Jones
Classics in American Autobiography
In this course we shall consider several classic American autobiographies and evaluate them as historical texts and as literature.

Professor LeeAnn Kahlor
Public Relations Cases
Through Public Relations cases, this class will explore social responsibility and ethics, race and cultural issues, current events, AIDS, wildlife conservation and gender equality—all within the context of public relations.

Professor Wayne Lesser
Ideas and Methods: How to Inquire
This course explores how disciplines, especially within Liberal Arts, recognize, understand, and discuss ideas such as American “individualism,” American “values,” and American “exceptionalism,” through close readings of literary, critical and political writings.

Professors Stephen Marshall and Juliet Hooker
Race, Nation, and Empire
We will explore race, nation and empire as they are formulated as political projects; and as these issues are confronted and theorized by thinkers from formerly colonized and/or formerly enslaved peoples.

Professor Tadeusz Patzek
The Finite Earth and Energy Resources: What is the future?
The course purpose is to investigate the broad issues related to the major energy supply sources on Earth. We will consider how new thinking might improve gas recovery, limit environmental impacts, and improve the economy.

Professor Arthur Sakamoto
Poverty and Rising Inequality in the U.S.
In this seminar we will study the sociological approach to understanding poverty and rising class inequality in contemporary America. Our objective is to understand how social science can inform debates about poverty and inequality, and hopefully promote the formulation of more effective public policy.

Professor Sonia Seeman
Music Identity and Difference
This course will investigate the question of how music has been used to mark communities and places as “different” from the majority, the expected and historically accepted. The larger goal of the course is to guide students in understanding music as a vehicle for creating a sense of self, community and other.

Professors Eric Taleff and Joseph Beaman
The Engineered World: Systems and Materials
Through the study of historical and modern applications of engineering materials and engineering systems, students will learn the fundamental bases of engineering, how to intelligently use and apply technical information, and how to effectively and accurately convey technical information to others.

Professor Deborah Volker
Ethics of Health Care
This course focuses on ethical issues in health care. Particular emphasis is given to the resolution of ethical dilemmas through ethical reasoning, ethical obligations in health professional-patient relationships, and just allocation of scarce health care resources.

Professor Karin Wilkins
Privilege and Prejudice
In this seminar we will explore the complexity of contemporary power dynamics in terms of privilege and prejudice.

Professor John Yancey
Issues in Contemporary Art: Plurastic Voices or Cross-Cultural Sampling
The course will examine issues related to and impacted by cross-cultural dynamics in contemporary art. This course will incorporate tightly focused and in-depth critical examinations and discussions of select works that represent distinctive conceptual, iconographic, and pictorial perspectives and strategies significant to these issues.