New Courses, HP Courses, Honors Courses and IDS Courses Descriptions

Please check class schedule for days and times.

New Courses

BIOL 111: INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY: MOLECULES AND CELLS

Melanie Lee-Brown, Tom Tucker, Corinth Auld, Brian Brendley

This course will focus on the molecular and cellular aspects of Biology, including the molecular building blocks of life, genetics and DNA, cellular structure/function, reproduction and the energy pathways of photosynthesis and respiration. In the laboratory, the students will become familiar with the scientific method, applying the concepts they are learning in class through inquiry-based laboratory exercises. Fulfills NSM requirement.
Note: Biology majors who have taken 114 or 115 should take 111 as their second introductory course. (BIOL 114 - General Zoology is no longer being offered.)

BIOL 112: INTEGRATIVE BIOLOGY: ORGANISMS, ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION

Lynn Moseley, Corinth Auld

This course introduces the principles and concepts of the Animal and Plant Kingdoms, including protists and fungi. Emphasis includes: evolution, taxonomy, ecosystems, communities, population and population changes, development, anatomy, physiology, genetics, organs and organ systems. Fulfills NSM requirement.
Note: For traditional student non-science majors, BIOL 112 is recommended to fulfill the NSM requirement. CCE student non-science majors can take BIOL 112 or 115 to meet the NSM requirement. (BIOL 114 - General Zoology is no longer being offered.)

ENGL 250: Contemporary Latin American Literature in Translation

Kaylene Swenson

This seminar-style class will explore the changing face of Latin American literature in recent decades, focusing on novels, short fiction, poetry, and film. Works and class projects will examine on the tension between fantastic literature and literary realism and what this tension reveals about Latin American Culture and ways of being. Readings will be drawn from various authors, such as Fuentes, Esquivel, Garcia Marquez, Borges, Mistral, Vargas Llosa, Paz and others. We will also pay particular attention to emerging Latina/o writers like Allende and Cisneros.

ENGL 250: Crafting the Essay: This Time, It's Personal

Jenn Brown

Study and practice of the art of the personal essay, a flexible and inventive form with a long history and many worthy practitioners. Readings and critiques of published work with an eye toward feeding the central activity, the writing workshop, in which students will offer each other their own inventions for critique and their critiques of classmates' inventions.

ENGL 309: EARLY MODERN LITERATURE

Heather Hayton

This semester's course will be devoted to "Sexual Violence on the Early Modern Stage" and will explore the intersection of gender, violence, power, and sexuality in the drama of Queen Elizabeth I and James I's courts. We'll focus on Shakespeare's contemporaries--Marlowe, Webster, Middleton, Rowley, Jonson, etc--as well as reading important secondary criticism and theoretical essays. We'll read heavily, write a research paper, and grapple with historical and theoretical issues throughout the semester...if we're lucky, we'll also watch a few plays or movies. If you ever wondered why we seem to be attracted to tv, movies, plays, and video-games filled with violent or sexual content, this course is for you!

ENGL 350: FILMING THE 19TH CENTURY

James W. Hood

If recent novels and films are any indication, late 20th and early 21st culture seems to be having a love affair with 19th-century narratives. British writers like Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and others have had their novels filmed and re-filmed, with an especial flourish in the last fifteen years. This course will examine late 20th- and early 21st-century re-constructions of Victorian Britain through film adaptations (like Clueless, a remake of Jane Austen's Emma) as well as relatively recent novels set in the 19th century (like The French Lieutenant's Woman and Possession). We'll ask questions along the following lines: How are we constructing the Victorian past? What does our fascination with filming the 19th century say about us? What 19th-century problems fascinate us now? Requirements include various forms of writing (film review, analytical essay), presentations, discussion leading, and a filming project.

HIS 350: EUROPE BETWEEN THE WORLD WARS

Philip Slaby

This course focuses on one of the most turbulent and significant periods of modern European history: the period between the two World Wars, from 1919 to 1939. Politically, these two decades witnessed a fierce battle of ideologies as liberal democracy squared off against revolutionary Soviet Communism on the left, and Italian Fascism, German Nazism, and authoritarianism on the right. Socially, the period witnessed deep class tensions, ethnic/national strife, and social dislocation and misery due to economic and political developments. Economically, the era was punctuated by both periods of prosperity and deep economic depression, trends that fueled social and political strife and change. The course will examine these political, social, and economic trends by focusing on topics such as the treaty of Versailles and its consequences, the Russian Civil War and the establishment and development of Soviet Communism, the rise to power of Italian Fascism, the collapse of German democracy and the establishment of Nazi rule, the crisis of democracy in Europe, the experience of the Great Depression, and the diplomacy that strove to preserve peace but which paved the way for World War II.

HIST 250: Indians in American History

Damon Akins

This course will examine the relationships between Indians and non-Indians on a variety of levels between the American Revolution and the present. The course will proceed from the recognition that during this time, Indians were not only adapting to and resisting an emergent and expansive United States, but also negotiating a path through the dying colonial enterprises of France, Britain and Spain. Some of our primary concerns in the course will be the development and changing meanings of tribal sovereignty; dispossession, conflict and Indian resistance; assimilation, "civilization," popular culture and the construction of identities; race and citizenship; authenticity and appropriation; and reservations, land tenure, resource management and sustainability.

HIST 250: Popular and Elite Culture in Renaissance Europe

Katherine Tucker McGinnis

In the study of Renaissance history, an important distinction can be made between elite and popular culture. In our theoretically classless modern society, we tend to underestimate the social divide taken for granted, even seen as divinely ordained by people in early modern Europe. In this course, we will apply a sensitivity to the distinctions between and within these groups as we consider music, dance, literature, and the visual arts. By exploring their tastes, pleasures, and means of expression, we will investigate ways in which both lower and upper classes perceived and commented on one another and on themselves.

JPS 250: POWER, POLITICS, AND PUBLIC SCHOOLS: COMMUNITY AND YOUTH ORGANIZING FOR REFORM

Sherry Giles

Over the past twenty years, a growing movement of community and youth organizing groups around the United States has been taking action to address inequities in their public schools. These grass roots initiatives engage local youth and adults who come together to identify the critical issues in their schools and to develop the knowledge, power, leadership skills, and strategies to address them. In this course, students will learn the stories of these groups, and the emerging concepts and theories of education organizing. Students will have an opportunity to connect these concepts and theories to observations of local community organizations working to transform public education in Guilford County.

PSCI 350: POLITICS OF GENDER

Maria Rosales

An opportunity to critically examine the role of gender in politics. We will use works from political history, political theory, and political psychology to investigate what gender is and how gender relates to politics, with a focus on the politics of gender in the U.S. We will discuss the ways that people use gendered categories to make political decisions, as well as the ways that gender intersects with other major political categories such as race, class, and sexuality.

THEA 250: ACTING 2: PLAYING THE ACTION

David Hammond

The course will examine the actor's pursuit of objectives through spontaneous interaction with others. Techniques explored will include sending and receiving; eliciting response; identifying progressive change in oneself through what is received from the partner; discovering and being prompted to actions in the moment while maintaining objectives evolved from given circumstances; the effect of obstacles; the influence of object concentrations, activities, and place; the use of the personalized super-objective; scoring a role in preparation for discovery; further development of intention, objectives, action and super-objective from moment-to-moment involvement in rehearsal. Exercises will investigate action utilizing speech, song, gibberish, physicalization and improvisation. Scene work will concentrate on contemporary American realism.

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HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE COURSES

ENGL 151: HP: BLACK WOMEN'S HISTORY AND LITERATURE

Carolyn Beard Whitlow

In this history, literature and writing course, we will read/hear/view/discuss/write about the historical conditions affecting the empowerment of black women spanning the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries: via their own voices in audio-taped interviews, oral histories and a documentary history with pictures; via historical analysis in standard history texts, film, and essays on literary history; and via characters and omniscient narrators in modern historical fiction and two canonical novels in the African-American literary tradition, namely, Iola Leroy and Jubilee. We will stress black women's perceptions of their own history.
This course is designed to meet two days per week, with sessions focused on either discussing the history and literature, or viewing films, preparing and conducting group presentations, or working on writing, organizing, research, revision and editing skills. A third day requiring reading will be necessary each week to meet the requirements for a 4-credit course. In order to facilitate completing the assigned readings, I have scheduled the reading assignments throughout the week instead of listing them as all due on one day. This course fulfills the Diversity in the U.S. and Historical Perpsectives requirements, and can be used toward the African American Studies or Women's Studies concentration or major. Proper footnote formatting will be required throughout the course.

ENGL 151: HP: CLASSICS REVISITED

Carol Hoppe

The fearless monster-slayer of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf becomes a swaggering fool when the story is told from the monster's point of view by a modern American novelist. The noble King Lear, who withstands the storm on the heath in Shakespeare's tragedy, is transformed into a dirty old man by Jane Smiley in her novel, A Thousand Acres. How the mighty have fallen in these modern re-workings of literary classics! One might well ask how the transformations have taken place-what values of the past are being put aside by these 20th c. American writers, and what currents of modern life make those values seem quaint, if not laughable. Those are some of the questions that will guide our study in this Historical Perspectives course, which looks at three literary masterpieces and the historical forces behind their modern revisions.
One of the signs of a classic is its staying power. Though it recreates the life and culture of its author's time and place, it also speaks to later periods, other nationalities. Thus, it is a mark of greatness to be "revisited" by other readers and writers across the centuries. It means that the work's themes, form and language have established a standard against which later works will be measured, even when those later texts change the "message", as in the examples above. Those students who are interested in studying great works of the past, discussing human values, and learning about the recent decades of U.S. history that have helped shape modern literature (as well as their own lives) will be best suited for this course.
Participants should expect to do a fair amount of reading-the works mentioned above plus U.S. history from the dropping of the atomic bomb to the women's liberation movement and Vietnam. You will also write three papers and present the revision of a "classic" that you discover on your own.

ENGL 151: HP: CONSCIENCE AND MATERIALISM: READING EMERSON READING US.

Jenn Brown

Throughout our history, Americans have felt the powerful influence of two poles of thought: materialism and idealism. Although countless American citizens, from the famous to the obscure, have struggled to find meaning in lives often driven by the acquisition of material wealth, the public and private struggles of Ralph Waldo Emerson, arguably our greatest and most original thinker, to come to terms with the radical tension between the world of things and the world of ideas provide twenty-first century readers with a case-study of a life lived in search of a balance between the demands of conscience and the pressures of society. Emerson-and Transcendentalism, the intellectual movement most closely associated with him-attempted to think deeply about American life in order to invent an ethics suited to the unique demands of a culture defined by both democracy and capitalism. Our research will cover the period from 1828-1875 so that we can look closely at the Transcendentalist moment and discover what happened to this body of thought in the aftermath of the Civil War. Our questions will include the following: what is Transcendentalist thought and what was Emerson's relationship to it? How did Emerson and company address the problem (for them) of materialism? What implications does the Emersonian notion of "self-reliance" have for social activism? What are the sources of Emersonian/Transcendentalist thought, and what might those sources suggest to us in the 21st century? What effect did the Civil War and Reconstruction period have on American Idealism?
We will examine both primary documents from the period and critical interpretations of it, attentive to the rhetoric of each. Through independent work and group projects, students will hone their researching skills and develop a sense of how to use tools such as the internet responsibly. Throughout the course, we will wrestle in writing with others' writings, learning to forge, through study and practice, a clear, competent, authoritative voice in scholarly prose.

ENGL 151: HP: EXCESS AND DESPAIR: LITERATURE & HISTORY OF THE 1920S.

Rod Spellman

"Excess and Despair: Literature and History of the 1920's" asks students to confront multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives of the 1920's in the United States of America. We will start by looking at the way many currently held beliefs about the '20s have been shaped by current media depictions of the era, and we will put those beliefs and depictions in opposition to those of the authors, poets, musicians, and filmmakers who lived and worked during the age in order to analyze the way artistic media create and sustain particular visions of history. Because the 1920's were a critical turning point in American history, the class will pay particular attention to the shifts in culture, politics, and social roles of the decade-especially those that still resonate in our society: equality between races and genders; the divide between wealth and poverty; tradition versus youth culture; and the politics of morality. Students will analyze these shifts by reading competing historical interpretations and primary sources (especially novels and poetry) from the time. Students should expect to read between 50 and 100 pages per week and to write 15 to 20 pages during the semester on assignments that will help build their analytical and research skills.

ENGL 151: HP: FAIRIES, REBELS, CAROBS, & WITCHES

Caroline MacAlister

Shakespeare has often been taught as a great writer whose works are universal and timeless. However, in this course we will try to return Shakespeare to his time and place, reading him as a product and producer of a specific moment in history. We will cover four plays written between 1595 and 1611, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Merchant of Venice, Macbeth, and The Tempest, along with contemporary historical documents. We will read A Midsummer Night's Dream in the context of representations of Queen Elizabeth 1. We will study The Merchant of Venice along with documents pertaining to the execution of Queen Elizabeth's Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez. We will analyze Macbeth in conjunction with the gunpowder plot and the North Berwick Witch Trials. Finally, we will study The Tempest's relationship to the discovery and colonization of America. My goal is for students to begin to question artificial distinctions between literature and history, text and context.

ENGL 151: HP: WORLD RESPONSES TO AIDS

Nicole McFarlane

The AIDS phenomenon has been understood through shifting frameworks over time. This semester we will look at AIDS through the interdisciplinary lenses of literary responses (short stories, poetry, plays), the popular media (news and magazine articles, television, movies), as well as public policy (laws, health regulations, institutional decisions and ethics). We will conduct historical investigations into the stereotypes and assumptions made explicit by the discourses that contribute to the complex interactions among local and global populations relating to the syndrome. As we look critically at the contesting narratives surrounding AIDS, we will focus on questions of class, race, gender, sexuality, and ability that affect our ability to recognize the contributions and limitations of various disciplinary approaches. By focusing on the period between 1981, the year of the first documented AIDS case, and 2003, the year of the second Bush Administration President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), students will learn how to integrate these approaches to produce a more historicized analysis of AIDS.
This course fulfills the Historical Perspectives requirement and is designed to train students in the conventions of academic research and writing, using historical methods. Students can expect to read between 50 and 100 pages per week, including scholarly overviews of the era and primary documents that offer multiple perspectives on specific issues or concern to those who helped shape it. Students can expect to write and revise between 15 and 20 pages, and to polish their final projects for public audiences.

HIST 101/HP: THE MEDIEVAL WEB, 800-1400

Tim Kircher

The course will examine the history of the European Middle Ages both as and through a "web": as a web of ideas, beliefs, and actions, that changed in the course of 600 years; and through the Web - the World Wide Web.
At the center of the web of ideas is the "imperium christianum," the "christian empire," that medieval blending of Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian traditions. How this concept changed its value, how people responded to it are worthy of our study, especially as we face questions of crumbling empires, conformity, and social dislocation. Then as now, people sought to determine ethical norms of right and wrong amid the changing arenas of politics, religion, and culture. For example, the struggle for international law and national sovereignty did not begin with the U.N. charter, but was inaugurated by the eleventh-century papacy. Students should come to see how medieval people developed rhythms of life and thought. Some medieval conceptions will appear foreign, others very related, to our own.
With regard to technology and the Internet, the course will use technology as a means of gathering information which leads to the creation of a body of knowledge. For us, this knowledge concerns the nature of the medieval past, and how it influences the present. We shall explore the range of technology applied for use in the field of medieval history, and evaluate its potential and its range of information. Students will search out and evaluate web sites on the Middle Ages, and study Web sources for class readings and essays. We'll employ the Guilford resources for class lectures, notes, presentations and research. The study of this history through technology will call on us to use logic and creativity, reason and intuition.
The course may count for the Historical Perspective requirement, Humanities requirement, the History major or concentration, and the Computing and Information Technology concentration.

HIST 103: HP: THE US TO 1877

Anore Horton, Sarah Malino

In History 103 we will explore Native American, European American and African American societies and cultures in North America from earliest settlement to the end of Reconstruction. We will examine the heterogeneity of American life as many peoples with diverse dreams, ambitions, and historical traditions created a new nation. One goal in this introductory course is to unsettle the notion that there is one true history of the U.S. Instead, we will use competing historical interpretations and a variety of sources from the period, to emphasize the ways that identity, experience, perspective, and interpretation are socially and historically constructed, both for the historical subjects we study, and for us as interpreters of the past.
As we examine our early history, we shall also examine the historian's methods and source materials. Because every historical account argues for a particular interpretation of a historical moment, the emphasis in this course is on learning how to compare and evaluate historians' efforts to reconstruct America's past, and how to use sources from the past to craft our own interpretations of the critical events that continue to shape our lives and identities in the United States. Through class discussions and readings-and especially through writing-you will become critically engaged with the history of the United States, and hopefully also with its present and its future.
This course fulfills the social justice critical perspective requirement by emphasizing a central contradiction of the first one hundred years of United States history: that even as American colonists were crafting some of the most inspiring documents in world history, granting to some a wide range of political, economic, religious, and social freedoms, they were also barring most who occupied American soil from those same freedoms through enslavement, extermination, removal, coverture, disfranchisement, and economic inequality.

HIST 221: HP: THE CHANGING FACE OF THE AMERICAN SOUTH: A DEMOGRAPHIC HISTORY OF NORTH CAROLINA

Alvis Dunn.

In this course we shall explore the demographic history of North Carolina from before the European invasion to the present. In the process we shall grapple with the idea and definition of immigrant, foreigner and outsider. Some historians contend that over time in the United States a ruling class has attempted to set the parameters of what is considered American, what is Southern, and even what is North Carolinian. These scholars suggest that as this ruling class has evolved, so have the definitions applied to those included as well as those excluded. In History 221 we will read articles, books, websites and primary sources in order to evaluate that claim. Early on in North Carolina Native Americans vied with one another for control and power. Later on groups of Europeans joined that battle. More recently African Americans, Hispanics and other groups have struggled with these issues as regionalism, race, class, gender, religious difference, and ethnicity have served to foster alliances and divisions within the state. We will explore these themes through varied written assignments culminating in a final research project on a topic which fits within the broad definition of demographic change over time.

THEA 151/ENGL 151: HP: BIRTH OF THE AVANT-GARDE

Tim Hanna

This course focuses on the theatrical avant-garde that grew out of Romanticism and Europe's failed Revolutions of 1848. Our study progresses from the birth of Realism/Naturalism in the late 19th century to the resulting anti-Realism/Naturalism counter reactions of the early 20th century. Finally, we finish by examining contemporary works that utilize avant-garde stylistic elements. Readings and class discussions link the style of each period to social and historic currents, individual people and watershed events. Primary and secondary source documents, music, art and videos/films aid in developing a deeper understanding of the unique performance nature of each style in this dynamic period that marks the beginning of the modern age.

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HONORS COURSES

FYE 101-008 CRN 30389: THE GREEKS IN LOVE AND WAR

Carol Hoppe

It is a commonly held notion that ancient Greece provided the foundation of the Western world. We give the Greeks credit for our political democracy, athletic contests, judicial system, philosophy, art and science. Their plays and treatises are part of our literary and philosophical canon, and we find countless references to their gods and heroes in literature and music. Despite this cultural debt, many aspects of the Greek way of life look strange to modern eyes. We know, for example, that the cradle of democracy excluded women and foreigners from full citizenship, that athletes performed in the nude to honor the gods, that some forms of homosexuality were honored and promoted, and that actors wore masks to avoid offending the gods by showing their own faces on stage. Who were these strange people who helped shape our world? We will study them this semester through the double lens of their religion (mythology) and literature.
The stories people tell about themselves reveal a great deal about their values and the everyday pattern of their lives. Like visual art and philosophy (which we will also look at briefly), Greek stories paint pictures and outline questions that preoccupied the leaders of that culture - questions with which we still struggle today. Who, or what, created the world? What is a good citizen? Are men and women equal? When are war (and revenge) justified? Is there life after death? Are we free or controlled by fate? We will examine their answers to these and other questions in texts that deal particularly with love and war (the Trojan War, in this case): Homer's Iliad, Aeschylus' and Euripides' tragedies, Sappho's lyric poetry, and Plato's Symposium. In the process, we will discover more about the beliefs and values of our own time.
Though this is an Honors course, non-Honors students with some background and a strong interest in the subject are encouraged to contact the instructor for permission to enroll. You can contact her by e-mail at choppe@guilford.edu and by phone at (336) 605-9706. Meets the FYE requirement

FYE 101-023 CRN 30402: MEDICINE FOR A LIVING WORLD

Becky Gibson

"Heal", "health", "whole", "holy" - These words have the same Indo-European root, as Wendell Berry reminds us in his essay "Health Is Membership." If we think about health and healing at all, we probably think first of our bodies. The ankle breaks- we call the orthopedic surgeon. The surgeon repairs the fracture by pinning it or by simply bracing it until it heals on its own. We may consider the break, though painful, simply our material selves, not really us. The real self is psyche (soul) which lives in a realm apart from our fragile limbs. Even before Plato, Western consciousness has tended to separate mind and body, privileging all that we associate with the "higher" mind (thought, reason, spirit) over that which we associate with the "lower" body (sensation, emotion, matter). In fact, we have inherited an entire set of dualisms that dog our thinking to this day: mind/body;God/nature;immortality/death;male/female.
Members of this class will seek to understand this split and how we may begin to repair it. Such a course must be interdisciplinary;no field or discipline has a monopoly on Truth. By its very nature, truth must be fragmentary;each of us holds only a slender strand of it. We will read philosophy, theology, and literature. We will practice embodied thinking. If you sign up for this course, be prepared to read, write, and move with concentrated attention.
Readings include Plato's Symposium; Carol Christ's She Who Changes: Re-imagining the Divine in the World; Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Ceremony; essays, poems, stories, and teachings by Native American poets Linda Hogan and Louise Erdrich, physicians Richard Selzer and Susan Onthank Mates, and several Zen Masters. Sessions are planned for Tai Chi, yoga, and meditation. If you can handle the challenge of reading and re-reading, thinking and re-thinking, writing and re-writing, then you should thrive in this course.
Though this is an Honors course, non-Honors students with a strong interest in the subject are encouraged to contact the instructor for permission to enroll. You can contact her by e-mail at rgibson@guilford.edu and by phone at (336) 316-2289. Meets the FYE requirement

MATH 123 CRN 30736: ACCELERATED CALCULUS

Elwood Parker

The topics to be covered are those of the traditional Calculus I and II, which include differentiation and integration of single variable algebraic, exponential, and logarithmic, and trigonometric functions. Applications to physics and various geometrical situations, and an introduction to series will be included. It will be assumed that students already know the basic techniques of differentiation and integration (or can quickly gain them) so that class times can be devoted to working on substantial and interesting problems, and to understanding the basic theory of calculus. Students will be encouraged to work on problems in groups, to invent their own problems for investigation, to write about their approaches to difficult problems, and to use available technology where appropriate and useful. The course will emphasize "doing" and "understanding" mathematics rather than "memorizing" it. All test and exams will be "open book" and will allow the use of calculators. Fulfills quantitative literacy requirement.

PHIL 200 CRN 30953: INFORMAL LOGIC

Vance Ricks

What makes an argument "good", and how do we recognize good arguments when we hear or see them? What makes an argument "bad", and how do we tell? How can we fix our (and others') bad arguments? What is an "argument", anyway? Logic addresses those questions, among many others. Logic is a part of the systematic study of reasoning. Logic focuses on arguments: their standards, creation, interpretation, and critique. Informal logic is a relatively recent sub-field of logic, and its boundaries are not yet well defined or agreed upon. Thus, a precise definition is difficult to give, but here are two preliminary descriptions: Informal logic studies the construction and evaluation of argumentation in everyday contexts (as opposed to artificial and/or strictly formal contexts), including business, news, entertainment media, and politics. Informal logic studies general aspects of argumentation and reasoning, including inference, arguments, and evidence.
This course is designed to make you a better and more reflective reasoner, which could also make you a better thinker, friend, and citizen.

PHYS 121-002 CRN 30220: CLASSICAL AND MODERN PHYSICS I

Donald Smith

For physics majors and others interested in physics. This course is not a survey but an introduction to the thinking and analysis processes of physics, with classroom and laboratory topics chosen from modern and classical physics to emphasize the skills needed to think like a physicist. To prepare for Phys 122, students should plan to take Math 121 (Calculus) concurrently with Phys 121. Fulfills natural science and mathematics requirement.

PSCI 318 CRN 30708: ENVIRONMENTALISM IN EARLY AMERICA

Kyle Dell

This course examines the complex dialogue between nature and politics in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century. It will focus on the complicated links between material circumstances, ideas, and politics, which affected the physical context of the American environment and the changing experience of American life. Fulfills social justice/environmental responsibility requirement.

SPST 232 CRN 30954: SOCIOLOGY OF SPORT & EXERCISE

Lavon Williams

An introduction to basic sociological theories as they apply to sport and other forms of physical activity. Students learn to think more critically about sports as a part of social life. The course uses a seminar approach to explore issues in making sports more democratic and sport participation accessible to all people.

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IDS 400 COURSES

IDS 402: BUSINESS ETHICS

Eileen Gillis and Betty Kane

This course is designed as a seminar course, which entails class discussion and requires your active participation. The main objective is for each of you to discover for yourselves the core of our moral and ethical basis for decision-making in the workplace. The course will utilize the case study approach to assist you in applying the principles discussed in class so that you will have a firm foundation for handling ethical problems when they arise (and they always do).

IDS 408: EAST ASIAN THEATRE

Jack Zerbe

This course takes as its focus four of the major classical theatre traditions of China and Japan: Beijing Opera, Noh, Bunraku, and Kabuki. Our study begins with Asian history, religion, and aesthetics in order to develop an understanding of and appreciation for the manner in which cultural forces contributed to, and embedded themselves in, particular forms of theatrical practice. In a major research project, each student contemplates the relation of some facet of the Chinese or Japanese non-theatrical artistic tradition to these cultural forces. Daily readings and class discussions will help students learn to contemplate the theatre as a living metaphor for these same cultural forces. As a consciously inter-disciplinary class on the arts, students will be challenged to think about theatre from the multiple perspectives of history, anthropology, religion, and philosophy.

IDS 409: READINGS IN GAY, LESBIAN, QUEER STUDIES.

Heather Hayton

In this course, we'll be exploring key texts in the ongoing debate over how we define sexuality, perform sexual roles, and conceive of identity. We'll read, in tandem, theoretical arguments for both biological essentialism and sexual constuctionism. Then once we understand the terminology and various definitions, we'll begin to complicate them further by choosing several interdisciplinary "texts" to which we try to apply the various theories of sexual identity. Finally, in the last weeks of the course, we'll move from theory to praxis-by "performing" various definitive acts on campus.
As an interdisciplinary course, our readings and discussions will be diverse and far reaching. And, since we will be spending the entire semester trying to define sexualities, our readings and conversations will necessarily be challenging, potentially offensive, and certainly adult. This is the real world, and we will be engaging intellectually in ideas and debates folks have died over-so we need to remember to have an open mind, patience with each other, intellectual curiosity, and most importantly, a forgiving sense of humor at times.

IDS 414: COMPARATIVE ECONOMIC SYSTEMS:
"Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, and the Political Economy of Transition"

Robert Williams

Historical analysis of the rise and decline of socialist-type economies (especially the former USSR, but cases for student research include Eastern Europe, China, Cuba, etc.) and the challenges of transition and integration into the world capitalist system. In this seminar-style course, students select a particular country other than Russia for an in-depth semester-long research project that culminates in a written report and an oral presentation. Prerequisite: ECON 221, 222, or consent of the instructor.

IDS 426: LEGAL DECISIONS

Kelly Thompson

This course provides an upper-division introduction to the interdisciplinary study of legal decision-making. As American citizens, we understand that we have greater individual rights than citizens of most other nations. This course will explore the nature and scope of our rights as citizens and some of the legal principles and procedures that limit and guide interactions in the American legal system. The emphasis will be on legal decision-making but the course is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of the discipline of law. The hierarchy and relationship between levels of law will be addressed. We will study the attributes, structure and broad cultural, social and historical foundations of the laws, which are a part of the landscape of justice and injustice in contemporary American society. We will delve on the historical roots of common law and the different origins of the diverse rules of law. We will also analyze the political and corporate alliance in manufacturing and enforcing the laws of our country. We will use, throughout the semester, historical and contemporary sociological analysis, videos and newspaper articles in order to gain a broad perspective on the subject by putting our daily lives into context.

IDS 445: CULTURE, CONFLICT, NEGOTIATION:

Vernie Davis

The increase in global political, economic, and cultural interdependence requires awareness of the effect of cultural diversity on the creation, escalation, and resolution of conflicts. This course focuses on the role of culture in conflict and negotiation. It will address different cultural approaches to conflict and the various methods of dispute resolution, particularly the different styles of negotiation applied by different cultures; it will look at issues of communication styles, mores, values, and norms from a cross-cultural perspective; it will draw on theoretical models and concepts from different disciplinary perspectives to analyze conflict, communication, and negotiation; and it will explore the implications of this analysis for conflict and negotiation in an intercultural context. In order to learn methods and skills of dealing with intercultural conflicts, students will be encouraged to apply class material and readings to their immediate personal and professional environment.
Students taking this course for IDS 445 credit must be seniors and must be a major or concentrator in Peace and Conflict Studies and/or have worked with the Conflict Resolution Resource Center; or permission of instructor. Students taking this course for SOAN 445 credit must have taken research methods and theory in either sociology or anthropology or have permission of instructor.

IDS 458: ENVIRONMENTAL AND RESOURCE ECONOMICS

Bob Williams

Is economic growth necessary to provide the prosperity needed to pay for environmental restoration or does such growth create environmental problems we can never undo? The course uses economic theory, ecological concepts, and systems approaches to examine current management practices of our renewable and nonrenewable resources. Fulfills social justice/environmental responsibility requirement. Prerequisite: ECON 222, or consent of the instructor.

IDS 463: EXPLORATIONS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Tom Tucker

There is nothing that we know more intimately than consciousness, but there is nothing that is harder to understand. As one of the greatest unsolved mysteries, the nature of consciousness is being actively investigated through multiple approaches: the field of psychology is revealing that consciousness is inextricably tied to our perception, cognition and sense of a personal self; the field of biology is unveiling tantalizing connections between consciousness and brain activity; and the field of philosophy is developing theories that lead us to ponder the essence of our being. Nonetheless, consciousness continues to elude our grasp. In this course, we will grapple with leading philosophical theories about the nature of consciousness, probe relationships between consciousness, brain and behavior, and ultimately peer into our own individual experience of consciousness. Prerequisites: Any three courses from Philosophy, Biology and Psychology; or consent of instructor.

IDS 475: PERCEPTIONS OF MENTAL ILLNESS

Martha Lang

Mental illness is a central component of social life and social structure. Our primary purpose in this course is to develop an integrated understanding of how biopsychiatric, psychological and sociological approaches can be synthesized to comprehend mental illness in a broad, social context: In addition, we will learn about public perceptions through examination of film, music and literature and glimpse into the lifeworlds of the mentally ill through exploration of documentaries, memoirs art, music and poetry. This course will enable students to study both social scientific/intellectual components, and cultural/emotional/ expressive aspects of mental illness.

IDS 476: BEETHOVEN AND THE AGE OF REVOLUTION

Tim Lindeman

The life and work of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) bridges the classical and the romantic periods. During this time philosophical ideas contained in Enlightenment writings become transformed into manifestos of the romantic. In the political realm, the French revolution and the rise of Napoleon Bonaparte take place. This course will compare and seek connections between the philosophical, the artistic (both musical and visual) and the historical aspects of this era.

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