Guilford College

New Course Descriptions, Historical Perspectives, Honors, New IDS Courses and Additional Course Descriptions

Fall 2011
as of July 25, 2011
Please check class schedule for days and times.

ART 250: DRAWING, PRINTMAKING, AND COLOR
Roy Nydorf
Learn the art of etching that Rembrandt. Fransisco Goya, Picasso, Kathe Kollwitz, and Mary Cassatt so enjoyed. What does this centuries-old method have to offer artists of today, such as Kiki Smith, Lucien Freud, Sue Coe, or Tony Fitzpatrick? Students will explore the conception and fabrication of black and white and color prints from drawing and watercolor to the etching process on metal plates. Students will learn and practice printing multiples of their imagery on a hand-operated press. Personal subject matter and content will be developed, considering the graphic tendencies in historic and contemporary fine arts.
Prerequisite: Art 104
Requirements filled: Art Major (Drawing or Printmaking focus), Visual Arts Minor/Concentration (Drawing or Printmaking focus), elective

ENGL 350: POSTCOLONIAL LITERATURE
Diya Abdo
In this course we will study an array of 20th century literary texts (poetry, drama, short fiction, and novels) written by African, Caribbean, Asian, Arab, and Irish writers, among others. We will begin by studying postcolonial theory to focus our readings of the literary texts on postcolonial themes and literary techniques within a historical context. We will explore each writer’s unique voice while mindful of how she or he shares fundamental experiences with other writers. Topics include colonization and decolonization; writing in the colonizer’s language; linguistic and narrative strategies as resistance; Orientalism; the legacy of colonialism; the conditions of diaspora; and issues of race, sex, and gender. This course fulfills the requirements for Humanities and Intercultural and counts towards the English major and minor.

GST 150: TEACHING AND LEARNING IN CLASSROOMS AND BEYOND
Barbara Boyette
Brief Description: A class for teaching assistants of FYE 101/102
The purpose of this class is to educate teaching assistants in the FYE classroom about the mechanics of course content, engaged teaching and learning, peer leadership, and the transitions first-year students’ experience. This class will prepare teaching assistants and help them process the teaching experience while gaining support for transitioning first-year students. Instructor permission required.

GST 150: INTRO TO PEER TUTORING (1 CREDIT)
Melissa Daniel Frink
The Intro to Peer Tutoring course provides students with the conceptual & experiential foundations needed to work effectively as peer-collaborators in student-to-student tutoring sessions. Tutors examine and analyze key theoretical & pedagogical approaches to peer-to-peer learning. They also practice & reflect on the wide range of tutoring strategies that develop from relevant theories & pedagogies. The primary goal of this course is to help peer-tutors develop the knowledge & experience needed to guide and support a diverse population of students seeking academic help in various courses.
Instructor permission required for registration.

GST 250: PEER WRITING TUTORING (1 CREDIT)
Melissa Daniel Frink
This course provides students with the conceptual & experiential foundations needed to work effectively as peer-collaborators in student-to-student writing tutoring sessions. Tutors examine and analyze key theoretical & pedagogical approaches to peer-to-peer learning. They also practice & reflect on the wide range of tutoring strategies that develop from relevant theories & pedagogies. The primary goal of this course is to help peer writing tutors develop the knowledge & experience needed to guide and support a diverse population of students seeking academic help in their courses.
Instructor permission required for registration.

JPS 335: RECLAIMING DEMOCRACY: DIALOGUE, DECISION-MAKING, AND COMMUNITY ACTION
Sherry Giles
This highly innovative course will bring together diverse students and faculty from six educational institutions–Bennett College, Elon University, Greensboro College, Guilford College, North Carolina A & T State University, and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro—as well as the Greater Greensboro community. Professors from the disciplines of communication, philosophy, religious studies, and psychology, and a community activist/public intellectual from the Fund for Democratic Communities, will be the core faculty for the course. Framed within Greensboro’s rich history, both of struggles for civil rights and social justice, and its often even more powerful desire for civility, students and faculty will draw on interdisciplinary academic inquiry and the performing and visual arts to study the following broad questions: How do we reclaim our Democracy–as a humane, inclusive process of decision-making that meets the needs of all members of our community? What does this endeavor require of us? In an effort to not only study, but to model democracy, students and faculty will work together to identify pressing contemporary issues related to public education, to critically understand them, and to devise strategies to address them. In August, we will meet on campus at Guilford College. Beginning in early September, we will meet in downtown Greensboro at the Elon University School of Law. The Law School has a HEAT bus stop near its front door and ample free parking nearby.

MUS 250: “FIDDLIN CLASS”
Scott Walker
The purpose of this class will be to explore and perform music in a variety of “fiddle” styles and genres. There will be an emphasis on traditional Irish fiddle music, including a survey of the music of the Irish composer, Turlough O’Carolan’s. Depending on our instrumentation and student interests, other styles will also be explored, including American old time and Texas swing, and possibly experience on their instruments, and have the ability to read music (or a chord chart) in a relatively fluent way. We are looking to develop flexible musicians. No beginners or “advanced beginners” accepted. If you are fluent on one instrument, a secondary instrument in the beginning stages is allowed at times. Instruments welcome will include: violin, viola, cello, bass, acoustic guitar, tin whistle, flute, and harp.

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Historical Perspective Courses

ENG 151-004 & 005: HP: MYTHS OF THE SOUTHWEST, 1865-1895
Martin Arnold
In “Myths of the Southwest, 1865-1895,” students will explore various ways the Southwest has been depicted by historians, by politicians, by ideology (such as Manifest Destiny), through pulp fiction (dime novels), and through the biographies, letters, and journals of its inhabitants. We will begin by exploring the value of the Frontier through the work of Frederick Jackson Turner; we’ll then move on to discussions of how various ideologies came to rationalize and justify agendas for westward expansion. East of the Mississippi, many Americans came to embrace depictions of the Southwest as an unpopulated expanse of limitless resources, occasionally interrupted by a gunslinger in a brothel. Exploring myths of the Southwest, therefore, requires that we examine both the experiences and the stereotypes of the Native Americans and Mexicans who inhabited the newly established Territories of New Mexico and Arizona. We will investigate the shifting identities and nationalities of those inhabitants and the legacy of Spanish Colonization, as well as trace the development of American settlement in the region. Students will analyze these shifts by reading competing historical interpretations and primary sources of the time.

ENGL 151-002: HP: THE POLITICS OF HORROR: BRITISH & AMERICAN GOTHIC LIT, 1789-1848
Jim Hood
The convergence of so-called Gothic literature and the political revolutionary fervor that swept France, England, and America at the turn of the 18th century into the 19th begs the following question: In what ways do these tales of monsters, confinement, and horror reflect the cultural anxieties attendant upon the creation of new nations and the radical realignment of political enfranchisement? The purpose of this course will be to examine Gothic stories primarily as nightmares dreamt by British and American culture, expressions from the unconscious of the anxieties that accompany political change. We will read some of the classic British Gothic novels that inaugurated the tradition, including Matthew Lewis’s The Monk and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. We will also read Wieland, an early American novel by Charles Brockden Brown, and finish with some of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. The writing assignments will focus on developing argumentation skills, particularly in research-supported writing that blends analysis of primary source material (in this case, mainly literary texts but also philosophical and political tracts) and secondary commentary on those primary sources. Students will do an extended research essay on a Gothic text (a novel, story, film, etc.) of their own choosing in which they examine the interplay of causality between cultural artifacts and history.

ENG 151-001 & 003: HP: FAIRIES, REBELS, CARIBS & WITCHES
Caroline McAlister
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, Othello, 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 Othello as a play that reveals English fears and insecurities as they came into contact with Africa and the Ottoman Empire. 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.

ENG 151-007: HP: History & Literature of the 1920s
Rod Spellman
“Excess and Despair: Literature and History of the 1920s” asks students to confront multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives of the 1920s in the United States of America. We will challenge our currently held beliefs about the ’20s by putting them in opposition to those of the authors, poets, musicians, and filmmakers who lived and worked during the age. Part of our study will be how art—particularly literature—creates and sustains particular visions of history. Because the 1920s were a critical turning point in American history, our 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 from the time.

This course is designed to train students in the conventions of academic research and writing, using historical methods. Students should expect to read at least 100 pages per week, including scholarly overviews of the era and primary documents that offer multiple perspectives on the specific issues and changes that define the 1920’s. Students can also expect to write at least 20 pages of polished academic writing during the semester on assignments that will help build their analytical and research skills.

ENG 151-008: HP: History & Literature of New Orleans, 1900-1960
Kaylene Swenson
The particulars of New Orleans’ history are fascinating: Jazz—an original American musical art form—emerged from the trumpet of Buddy Bolden, a barber from Storyville; a mix of races, free and enslaved, plantation or city-dwelling, created a “gumbo” of rich and varied customs; Voodoo mixed with Catholicism became Hoodoo and nurtured Marie Leveau, our most famous Hoodoo priestess; the oldest running trolley system in the US connects two of New Orleans’ most famous streets: Desire and Elysian Fields, streets that only seem to deliver the goods their names promise. The City has been flooded at least twice, in 1927 and of course in 2005 because of its precarious relationship with that Mighty Mississippi River, has had its share of corrupt political figures, hosts one of the largest Carnivals in the world, is home to this nation’s most diverse population, and has produced some of the richest literary works in our nation’s history. And yet, most people in the United States know very little about the crucial influence the city has had on the economy, culture, and geography of the rest of the United States. Our ignorance was illustrated writ large in our nation’s response after Katrina. We breathed a collective sigh of relief when we realized the French Quarter remained largely untouched by the floodwaters and then turned away from the destruction of almost every other historic (though poor) neighborhood in the city.

Our aim in the course will be to create a richer understanding of New Orleans by confronting multiple, and often conflicting, perspectives of it and its history. We will start by looking at the way your current beliefs about the city have been shaped by current media depictions of it. We will then look back and work to situate New Orleans in the social and political contexts of the turn of the 20th century in an attempt to understand just how the city became so diverse, how its power structures evolved, how its distinct neighborhoods were formed. We will also juxtapose your beliefs and the historical background, with those of the authors, poets, musicians, and filmmakers who have lived and worked in New Orleans in order to analyze the way art has created and sustained particular visions of history and place. We will examine how those visions of New Orleans and its mystique aid and perhaps harm the city and its inhabitants.

ENG 151-006: HP: Black Women’s History & Literature: Resistance, Reconstruction, Renaissance
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.

HIST 103-001, 002, 004: HP: U.S. Origins: From Pre-Colonial Times to 1877
Staff
This course begins by studying Native American cultures before European contact as well as emerging tensions as European populations migrated westward. Students analyze why the colonists revolted against Britain, how new democratic political institutions evolved, the complex place of African enslavement and how Reconstruction-era politics and reform traditions fostered a new industrialized nation state. Fulfills humanities and social justice/environmental responsibility requirements; may fulfill historical perspectives requirement.

HIST 205: HP: AMERICAN IMPERIALISM, AMERICAN PROGRESSIVE
Damon Akins
The years 1890-1925 witnessed tremendous upheavals as America became a world power abroad while at home, reform movements flourished alongside anti-immigrant campaigns, the lynching and disfranchisement of African-Americans, dramatic changes to federal Indian policy, a widening gap between rich and poor and a Red Scare. Students engage in a semester-long project to define this crucial era through the public writings of those who shaped it. Fulfills humanities requirements and may fulfill historical perspectives requirement.

HIST 221-001 & 002: HP: The Changing Face of the South: A Demographic History of North Carolina
Alvis Dunn
The Ruling Ideas of a Society are the Ideas of the Ruling Class. These words paraphrase those of Antonio Gramsci (The Prison Notebooks). While Gramsci likely knew little of North Carolina this is nevertheless a phrase that I want us to consider over the course of the coming semester as we grapple with the idea and definition of immigrant, foreigner, and outsider in North Carolina History. In the interest of gaining an understanding of terms and the concepts that lay behind and beneath them, we shall explore the Demographic History of North Carolina from before the European invasion to the present. 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 yes, in the case of The Olde North State, what is North Carolinian. These writers suggest that as this ruling class has evolved, so have the definitions applied to those included as well as those excluded. In this course we shall read articles, books, websites and primary sources in order to evaluate that claim. Early on in North Carolina’s history Native Americans vied with one another for control and power, later groups of Europeans did so. More recently, so-called minority groups have struggled against this legacy as regionalism, class, race, gender, religious differences, and ethnicity have served often to foster divisions within the population of the state. I ask you to consider either the validity of this claim or whether at times those struggling have, in fact, ever overcome the ruling class.

HIST 237-001: HP: Europe in Revolution, 1789-1918
Phil Slaby
This course focuses on the history of Europe from 1789 to 1914, a period of sweeping change that recast Europe ideologically, intellectually, and materially. The traditional order crumbled in the face of a double revolution that ushered in a new age. First, the French Revolution spawned modern political institutions and ideologies such as liberalism, socialism, conservatism, and nationalism. Second, the Industrial Revolution remade European economies and societies through industrialization, urbanization, and rising globalization. We will examine the causes and consequences of the double revolution that reshaped Europe’s political, economic, social, and cultural landscape from the French Revolution to the First World War. We will explore this period through elements of lecture, regular discussion, secondary readings, and through the analysis of primary documents.

MUS 152-001/THEA 152-001: HP: America & Its Musicals
David Hammond
Throughout its history, the American musical has embodied the ever-changing society that has produced it. The most collaborative of theatrical forms, the musical brings together teams of creative artists from many different backgrounds, all of them influenced by their own life experiences and by contemporary movements in their areas of artistic expertise. Any new development in any area of the arts will ultimately reveal itself in the collaborative process that creates a musical. More significantly, the social and cultural forces that shape the arts will manifest themselves as well, in the form and content of the script and score and in the physical realization of this material through production and performance. More than any other theatrical form, the musical is created in rehearsal, and, while the script and score may have an afterlife in subsequent productions, our sense of any new musical is inextricably linked to our impressions of its design, choreography, direction, and original performance. What we see onstage is a living distillation of our world, made manifest through the shared sensibilities of the artists who have created the work. In this course, we will examine seventy-five years of American musical theatre from many different perspectives – sociological, political, cultural, economic, and artistic. We will analyze the work of significant writers, composers, designers, directors, choreographers and performers on productions that have embodied elements of our changing national identity over a period of time. We will examine our evolving multicultural society and its interactions with the musical theatre that has reflected it, influenced it, and been shaped by it.

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Honors Courses

ART 140: HON CERAMICS I
Charlie Tefft
Introduction to ceramic processes:hand-building, throwing, sculptural forms, glazing and firing.
Fulfills arts requirement.

ENVS 101: HON ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE, POLICY AND THOUGHT: INTRODUCTION TO ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES
Angie Moore
An introductory course to the interdisciplinary approach as it relates to environmental studies. Intended to introduce students to a broad array of environmental issues and conflicts; case study, problem-solving approach.
Fulfills social justice/environmental responsibility requirement.

MATH 123: HON ACCELERATED CALCULUS
Elwood Parker
Special course in calculus covering the content of MATH 121 and 122 in one semester for students having studied calculus previously.
Fulfills quantitative literacy requirement.

MUS152/THEA 152: HON HP:AMERICA AND ITS MUSICALS: 1900-1975
David Hammond
Traces development of the American musical theatre from 1900 to 1975 with a primary focus on the years of significant transformation that begin in 1940. Studies the art from sociological, political, cultural, economic, artistic and historic perspectives. Analyzes individual artists and productions that have influenced and been influenced by the evolving American national identity.
Fulfills historical perspectives requirement.

PHYS 108: HON REALM OF THE STARS
Thom Espinola
Concentrates on the study of stars. Topics include stellar observation and the life, evolution and death of stars.
Fulfills natural science and mathematics requirement.
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New IDS 400 Courses

IDS 400: BORDER CROSSINGS
Lisa McLeod
This course will examine the concept of “the border” that has worked to exclude those seen as not properly a part of “normal” American citizenry. In understanding and challenging the construction of such borders, we will make use of “interdisciplinary cultural studies”, specifically that of critical anthropologist Renato Rosaldo. We will trace the history of such academic resistance through the rise of “outsider” knowledges that eventually entered the academy in the groundbreaking writings of Gloria Anzaldúa, Chandra Mohanty, and ongoing academic movements in disability theory, critical legal theory, and queer theory. We will focus on the use of discourses of exclusion and their redress across these fields, and conclude with a focus on the “alien” in current border controversies, specifically along the Arizona/Mexico border.