The Media and Society

Shahnaz Rouse
Mondays, 2 – 4 p.m.
January 26 – May 11

In today’s world, we are all aware of the media and its pervasive nature. Each day, we draw on the media for information and deeper yet, for making sense of political, social, and economic phenomena and realities. This seminar is designed to encourage its participants to critically engage with the myriad ways in which we interact with this very important and ubiquitous phenomenon. The objective of the course is to help us better understand the “nature of media culture by examining its production, construction and the meaningmaking processes” through which media imagery and/or messages inform our sense of self and the world, and contribute towards the shaping of our individual and collective perceptions.

In this seminar we will look at various media including the ‘mass’ media (i.e. commercially produced and disseminated media) which includes print, television, film, and advertising, as well as ‘alternative’ media which are frequently (although not entirely and not always) noncommercial. We will conduct our analysis by drawing upon scholarly works on the media, as well as engage in a concrete analysis of specific media sources (including newspaper and magazine articles, advertisements, and film). The aim of the seminar is to make us more media savvy thereby enabling us to take back the process of media making as active citizensubjects of a democratic polity.

For conference, students could look at particular mediums, either visual or print, and/or compare and contrast how these very different mediums cover the same ground yet produce discrepant realities. Other conference project possibilities include media coverage of political campaigns and/or coverage of the Iraq war in film, advertising campaigns, blogs and the internet as new, potentially more democratic forms of media production and dissemination, documentary film, and/or gender and sexuality in the media.

Fiction Bee (one credit)

Mary LaChapelle
Every other Wednesday, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.
January 21, February 4, 18, March 4, April 1, 15

This is a hands-on craft-of-fiction course. We will practice the basic elements of fiction: points of view; character, plot and structure; dialogue and exposition; setting and detail, through weekly assigned exercises. We will discuss the student writings each week in workshop. The final objective for the course is to generate and submit one completed story.

The Art of Reading Modern Poetry

Neil Arditi
Tuesdays, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
January 20 – May 12

Modern poetry has multiple origins and a vast array of modes and variations. But one feature that tends to unify the fragmented legacy of modern poetry is a kind of difficulty — an art of omission or understatement — which requires the reader to complete the artist’s act of creation. To some degree, all poetry makes similar imaginative demands on its readers. But modern poets, with their penchant for compression and ellipsis, and their self-conscious commitment to “make it new,” test the limits of their reader’s cunning. Even the most literal level of interpretation often requires a considerable degree of invention, intuition, and guess work. Our readings will be drawn from a range of influential modern and contemporary poets writing in English, including W.B. Yeats, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, T.S. Eliot, Marianne Moore, Hart Crane, and Elizabeth Bishop, among others. Our goal will be to appreciate the peculiar strengths and idiosyncrasies of each of the poets — indeed, each of the poems — we encounter. Our generalizations about modern poetry will grow out of our close, imaginative reading of texts. Poets not read in class will be available for study in conference.

Social Conscience in Modern Dance

Rose Ann Thom
Wednesdays, 6 – 8 p.m.
January 23 – May 15

From its very beginnings in the solo dances of Isadora Duncan in the early part of the 20th century, to the provocative landscapes created by John Jasperse in this decade, modern dance has reflected its social and political environment. Each generation absorbs the influences of its time, resulting in altered aesthetics and changing bodies. While we trace the development of the art through the century, we will focus on eras when heightened artistic expression in dance parallels political and social turmoil: the depression of the 1930’s; the civil rights and anti-war activities of the 1960’s; the feminist movement of the 1970’s; the AIDS crisis of the 1980’s and 1990’s; and global warming today. Live and recorded performances — as well as important documentaries — will supplement historical, biographical, and critical readings. Dance experience is not required.

Introduction to Political Philosophy

David Peritz
Mondays, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
January 26 – May 11

Political philosophy consists of a tradition of thinking about the nature of political power, the conditions for its just and unjust use, the character of human flourishing and its relation to social and political life, the rights of individuals, minorities, and majorities, and the nature and bounds of political community. Rather than tackling pressing political problems one at a time, political theorists seek systematic solutions in overall visions of just societies, or comprehensive diagnoses of the roots of oppression and domination in existent political orders. In this course, we focus on writers who shaped the political imagination of the West and, increasingly, the world, by developing the conscious and unconscious ideas about rights, power, justice, democracy, community, and the like that we use to make sense of our political lives. Thinkers to be considered include: Plato, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Rousseau, Marx, Mill, and Nietzsche. In studying their work, we will seek answers to the following questions: What is the nature of political power? What is the content of social justice? Does democracy threaten basic individual rights? Is it more important to respect the individual or the community when the interests of the two conflict? Is a market economy required by or incompatible with democracy?