HUMW-011 Humanities and Writing

Faculty

An intensive-writing seminar (enrollment of no more than 20) centered on the analytic study of complex cultural texts. These courses will be taught in English and will be offered only by language and literature departments in Georgetown College. Students should take this course as early as possible and no later than the end of the sophomore year.



INDIVIDUAL SECTION TOPICS AND DESCRIPTIONS ARE LISTED IN THE COURSE CATALOG.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

Course syllabi
The following syllabi may help you learn more about this course (login required):

Fall '13: Pavesich M (file download)

Fall '13: Morris, M (file download)

Fall '13: Linkon, S (description)

Fall '13: Hanlon, A. (file download)

Fall '13: Ebenbach, D (description)

Additional syllabi may be available in prior academic years.

HUMW-011-01 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Mahdi, Nadia

"War Plays: Visions & Revisions"

Why are great playwrights of every age drawn to revise and adapt the war plays of Sophocles, Euripides and Brecht? What can be learned by comparing structural similarities and differences of the originals and the revisions? How do the war-inflected contexts of classical Greece, early 20th century Europe and the various adaptations enrich our understanding of the writer's structural and thematic choices? In this introductory level course, students will develop their own writing as a tool for engaging the revision and adaptation process. Through a variety of writing exercises, students will generate, revise, and adapt their own expository work in a critically engaged process of inquiry that highlights and enriches the writing process. First Years.
Credits: 3
Prerequisites: None

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-02 Critical Reading and Writing

Faculty:

Murphy, G. Ronald

The Germanic Christian Hero

This course is aimed at the cultural transformation of the hero/protagonist over the course of time. The interactions and poetic syntheses of the Germanic and the Christian imagination of the human person will be examined from their origins to the nineteenth century in reading the following works: the Heliand, (the Dark Ages); Parzival (the time of the Crusades); Simplicissimus (30-yrs War); and Mother Courage (the Twentieth Century). This course does not count toward the German major, but it does satisfy the humanities requirement.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-03 Big Brother & the Other

Faculty:

Fedorova, Lioudmila

Sadowska, Iwona

How did Soviet Russia represent its relations with other nations? How did it appear from the perspective of the Other – Poland? To what degree do relations with the Other determine the self-perception and self-representation of a nation and an individual? The course “Big Brother and the Other” will examine the concepts of freedom and identity – national and personal – in Russian and Polish cinema. Through feature films and documentaries, we will study how these concepts changed over time, yet preserved their universal significance. The course is team-taught by Polish and Russian professors in English.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-04 Russian Devils

Faculty:

Morris, Marcia

“Russian Devils” will examine the role and function of the devil and demons over the course of four centuries of Russian literature. It is often said that, in spite of their tortured quest for visions of the divine in the world of human affairs, Russian authors portray devils much more convincingly than they do God or his advocates. The tradition of depicting devils and demons in Russia begins in the earliest medieval period and continues unbroken throughout the twentieth century. In fact, studies of the demonic in Russian culture emphasize that Russia developed a highly elaborated demonology, featuring many varied emanations of the evil spirit. In this course we will read and analyze representative works in which the demonic plays a decisive part, and we will trace the evolution of the Russian demonic tradition.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-05 The Great Russian Novel

Faculty:

Mihaychuk, George

Russian writers produced some of the greatest novels of Western literature: everyone knows the names of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. Yet at the beginning of the 19th century Russians had no national literature to speak of, and prose was struggling for legitimacy as literature. How did the Russian novel rise from obscurity to world-class status? How did the great works of Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy manage to embody Russian issues and also resonate on a universal level? These questions will be considered within the literary movements of the time (Romanticism and Realism) and the larger European context

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-06 Humanities and Writing (COL)

Faculty:

Debelius, Margaret

Welcome to HUMW 011, the first year writing course required for most students at Georgetown. This semester we’ll explore the theme “Nice Work” by reading several pieces of fiction and nonfiction about the concept of work (both academic and professional). Through frequent in-class writings, draft essays, careful revisions, and boisterous exchanges, we will come to an understanding about what constitutes nice written work in a variety of contexts.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-07 Humanities and Writing (COL)

Faculty:

Pavesich, Matthew

Rhetoric has a bad reputation for being more manipulative, deceptive, and shallow than other forms of language-use, but this course begins from an alternate view: that all writing represents a rhetorical act, which is to say that it is fundamentally social.  Because writing is social, meaning that the act itself and its success are highly dependent on one’s sense of others, no class can prepare you with one-size-fits-all writing skills.  This class aims to provide you with a conceptual framework for approaching different writing situations, and the time and opportunity to practice.  Therefore, we will pursue writing as a people- and place-based technology: considering what rhetoric is and how it works by examining others’ rhetoric and jumping into complex local conversations ourselves.  In doing so, be prepared to write in multiple genres and multiple technologies!

Sections of HUMW - 011 described as colloquia (COL) are organized as writing intensive workshops, involving a team of instructors and close coordination with advanced under-graduate tutors.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-08 Humanities and Writing (COL)

TBA

FALL 2013
TBA
HUMW 011.08

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-09 Humanities and Writing (COL)

Faculty:

Linkon, Sherry

Translator Gregory Rabassa claims that “Every act of communication is an act of translation.” As writers and speakers, we have to be aware of the gap between what we want to communicate and the perspective of our audiences, and based on that awareness, we “translate” our ideas in ways that will help readers understand what we mean. In this course, you will develop your understanding of that gap and hone your ability to bridge it by studying cross-cultural communication, both as an idea and as a practice. You will also gain insight on how communication works across cultures through experience, by participating in online discussions with college students from the Middle East and Europe. You’ll apply what you learn from readings and discussions to writing for public audiences, for professional and academic settings, and in online settings.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-1 True Fictions

Faculty:

Morris, Marcia

This is a course that examines the tension between literature and history and asks how we ascertain and convey what “really” happened in the past. The focus will be double-pronged: on the one hand, we will ask of each literary text how it allows its readers to revisit the past and re-imagine it in a different – maybe even a more adequate – way from a more straightforwardly “historical” text. On the other hand, we will examine the inherently ambiguous nature of time as presented in historical fiction – to what extent does a given text relate to the particular era that it ostensibly re-presents and to what extent does it relate to the time in which it is written?

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-10 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Rifkin, Libbie

This course uncovers a hidden side of Washington--the diverse literary communities that have flourished in the shadow of the Capitol for the past 150 years. We'll begin with the poetry and prose Walt Whitman wrote while nursing Civil War wounded in the hospitals that crowded the city. Then we'll focus our attention on the New Negro Renaissance in the 1920s and 30s, reading such writers as Sterling Brown, Jean Toomer, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and Langston Hughes. We'll look critically at poetry read at presidential Inaugurations and political protests, and we’ll read, listen to, and visit with poets and editors working in DC today. Students will participate in literary historical walking tours of DC neighborhoods and will incorporate these experiences into their writing for the course.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-11 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Kaplan, M. Lindsay

In this course we will read a variety of texts in which opposing ideas are presented and explored. We will attend carefully to the expression of varying opinions in these works and use them to develop our own arguments about our readings. You will be encouraged to develop and articulate strong opinions, consider opposing views, respond rigorously and respectfully to them, and employ persuasion by presenting compelling and coherent evidence. The course is reading- and writing-intensive and will concentrate on: developing close reading skills in order to learn how to analyze and explain texts; using evidence to prove claims and persuade a reader; formulating a powerful argumentative thesis based on textual evidence; and responding to objections to one’s argument. Students will be introduced to basic library skills and will be required to research and present their findings in a short group presentation to the class. Active participation in class discussion is required. Papers will take the form of frequent short analyses of the reading, one short paper, two 5-page papers and a final longer essay; drafts for each of the three longer papers will be required.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-12 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Fuisz, Lisbeth

This course examines various ways adolescence has been represented in popular culture over the past twenty years. In the 1990s, for example, the image of the wounded girl gained currency while a sense of youth in crisis pervaded American society. Critics have observed that adolescence has become a vehicle for debates over the impact of cultural change. We will look carefully at coming-of-age narratives, which describe the development of young people as they learn societal conventions and norms. These narratives appear across genres and media: in novels, memoirs, young adult fiction, popular psychology books, and movies – all of which will be texts for us to analyze. Assignments in this course will center on the writing process (prewriting, drafting, responding, revising, editing, and publication) in order to develop critical thinking skills that can be used in a variety of disciplines.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-13 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Fuisz, Lisbeth

This course examines various ways adolescence has been represented in popular culture over the past twenty years. In the 1990s, for example, the image of the wounded girl gained currency while a sense of youth in crisis pervaded American society. Critics have observed that adolescence has become a vehicle for debates over the impact of cultural change. We will look carefully at coming-of-age narratives, which describe the development of young people as they learn societal conventions and norms. These narratives appear across genres and media: in novels, memoirs, young adult fiction, popular psychology books, and movies – all of which will be texts for us to analyze. Assignments in this course will center on the writing process (prewriting, drafting, responding, revising, editing, and publication) in order to develop critical thinking skills that can be used in a variety of disciplines.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-14 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Hanlon, Aaron

In the definitive line of Jay-Z’s 2004 single, “99 problems,” the prolific rapper taunts “If you’re having girl problems I feel bad for you son / I got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one.”  Despite that Jay-Z explains in his book, Decoded, that “bitch” in these lines refers to a police dog (the song itself is about a racist police officer making an illegal stop and search of Jay-Z’s vehicle), the lyrics allude to one of the rap industry’s central problems: misogynistic content.  Indeed, Jay-Z is among the more saliently self-conscious popular artists in his negotiation of one very important problem: whether to write primarily for commercial success or whether to take writing and rapping as didactic occasions for conveying an ethical message.  Jay-Z accomplishes both in various ways, but often at the expense of one approach or the other.  This course takes the idea of “99 problems” as a guiding framework for linking the process of writing with the negotiation of real-life problems.  Starting with Jay-Z’s texts themselves (lyrics and memoir), we will explore the problems of misogynistic and violent imagery in rap culture, and how writing is used to address these problems.  We will proceed to investigate, through the form of the personal essay, a different “suite” of thematically arranged problems each week, from dealing with loss or failure to understanding selfhood and identity, and how people from a range of periods and cultural backgrounds use writing to tackle such problems.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-15 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Scahill, Andrew

Humanities 011 is an advanced writing course that focuses on critical thinking, textual analysis,
and research methods. In this course, we will examine how knowledge is constructed through a variety of genres.

We will practice analysis of literary and cinematic texts concerning the theme of “The Frankenstein Mythos.”

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-16 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Barnett, Mary Jane

Utopian Ideals and Dystopian Disappointments

Our Utopias are always already utopias lost. Through a set of questions that we will develop together through discussion and writing, we will try to figure out why this is true.  The Greek writer Hesiod and the biblical Book of Genesis both describe a lost Golden Age. That is where we will begin. Our questions will then guide our reading of Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s 1984.  (Which is the dystopia from which we have the most to fear?) Also included will be two or three short nonfiction readings, such as John Rawls’ essay “Justice as Fairness” (1958), an early version of many of the ideas presented in A Theory of Justice (1971). We will also view and discuss two dystopian films—Blade Runner will be one of them, Gattaca most likely the other.  As a course also about writing, research skills and critical thinking, “Utopian Ideals” requires three short papers (four-to-five pages) with revisions, a handful of even shorter preliminary assignments along the way, and one longer research paper.  Students will also attend individual conferences and participate in small, mostly in-class workshops.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-17 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Barnett, Mary Jane

Utopian Ideals and Dystopian Disappointments

Our Utopias are always already utopias lost. Through a set of questions that we will develop together through discussion and writing, we will try to figure out why this is true.  The Greek writer Hesiod and the biblical Book of Genesis both describe a lost Golden Age. That is where we will begin. Our questions will then guide our reading of Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Huxley’s Brave New World, and George Orwell’s 1984.  (Which is the dystopia from which we have the most to fear?) Also included will be two or three short nonfiction readings, such as John Rawls’ essay “Justice as Fairness” (1958), an early version of many of the ideas presented in A Theory of Justice (1971). We will also view and discuss two dystopian films—Blade Runner will be one of them, Gattaca most likely the other.  As a course also about writing, research skills and critical thinking, “Utopian Ideals” requires three short papers (four-to-five pages) with revisions, a handful of even shorter preliminary assignments along the way, and one longer research paper.  Students will also attend individual conferences and participate in small, mostly in-class workshops.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-18 Humanities and Writing

TBA

FALL 2013
TBA
HUMW 011.18

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-19 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Tomlinson, B.

"Monsters in Literature, Film and Culture"

This course turns to the figure of the monster as a critical lens for reading the value systems and anxieties of modern culture. As social outcasts and as embodiments of endless interpretative possibility, monsters resist “normal” categories and encourage us to examine the relationship not only between self and other but also between conventional and unconventional reading practices. What makes monsters both terrifying and fascinating? How do monsters challenge what we often take for granted as “natural” and is this challenge destructive, productive, or both? How do monsters provoke important discussions about gender, race, class, and species? In order to engage these questions we will read and view works by a wide range of writers and directors, including, but not limited to, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, H.G. Wells, Julio Cortazar, George Romero, Gore Verbinski, and Philip K. Dick, In this intensive writing course, students will learn the value and pleasure of close reading and will also learn theoretical tools for deepening their understanding of literary, filmic and image-based texts.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-2 Germanic Christian Hero

Faculty:

Murphy, G. Ronald

This course is aimed at the cultural transformation of the hero/protagonist over the course of time. The interactions and poetic syntheses of the Germanic and the Christian imagination of the human person will be examined from their origins to the nineteenth century in reading the following works: the Heliand, (the Dark Ages); Parzival (the time of the Crusades); In Praise of Folly (the Humanist Renaissance); Faust I (the Classical Period); and Mother Courage (the Twentieth Century). This course does not count toward the major, but it does satisfy the humanities requirement.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-20 Humanities & Writing

Faculty:

Boylan, Rebecca

VIOLENCE: Humanity’s Obsession with Danger, Decadence, and Derangement

This course takes the participants into the wild, the savage, and the dark – into those experiences and perspectives of human nature that intriguingly produce both longing and loathing – the territories of violence. We’ll be confronting the monstrous along with the beautiful, the horrific along with the uncannily cathartic, and the cruel pushing compassion to the edge. The course also offers its participants several opportunities to practice and perfect the ability to write lucid, coherent, and provocatively persuasive responses in a variety of genres about these encounters with the violated and the violent. We begin with the premise that writing effectively for a given audience is both a science and an art. Developing a voice to convey one’s impressions and ideas is the cornerstone of every intellectual’s power to interact with others, whether at the seminar table, in the workplace, in the political arena, or in a social gathering’s debate. In order to stir our critical, imaginative, and (com)passionate thinking en route to these responses, we will read and ponder several narratives of violence, including poetry, film, journalism, photography, painting, and the novel. Violence, eerily, repels as well as compels us. Its signs include chaos, fury, force, destruction, abusive and intrusive passions, and vulgar lack of restraint. Violence frightens and tortures us at the same time that it strangely reminds us that as human beings, we desperately desire to know and to live by experiencing our wildest dreams and imaginings. Facing the violence that is part of being human, as well as our medley of responses to this violence, is to begin to understand the significance of this trait and force within our culture. While the violated are those whose rights we want to re-claim, violence often precipitates more violence – even in the secret places of our minds. It can also disturb us into a false or debilitating peace, for violence is not always loud; its subtle quiet can distract, disarm and deform. From capitalism’s raging and mesmerizing abduction in Christina Rosetti’s “Goblin Market” to Francis Bacon’s deranged human portraits to HBO’s uncanny justice in Dexter and The Wire, to films of war, lust, and jealousy, to chilling documentaries of poverty, our exposure in this course to the many faces of violence will allow us to contextualize anew such historical happenings as U.S. slavery and the 1960’s Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., contemporary abuses of bullying, trafficking, and workplace marginalization, the modern soldier’s alienation, oppression of women in the Middle East, psychological jazz age scandal in the wake of WWI, the mad disquiet of poverty’s injustice, the lonely chaos of mental illness, and perceptions and politics sparked by abuse of private and public rights and responsibilities in the face of maiming outbursts of anger and hate. Texts include the D.C. thriller, Hard Revolution (George Pelecanos), The Great Gatsby (F.S. Fitzgerald), Katherine Boo’s journalistic narrative, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a recently published soldier’s story, The Yellow Birds, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich (A. Solzhenitsyn); select films, such as Argo, Avatar, Silver Linings Playbook, A Separation, Skyfall, and Django Unchained, and documentaries, such as Bully, The Gatekeepers, and The Interrupters, and perhaps a live theatre experience. Students will learn and practice writing in a medley of genres, including the expository essay, the argumentative essay, the journalistic review, a socio-political petition, and a poetic or narrative response piece, and a short argumentative research paper.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-21 Humanities and Writing

TBA

FALL 2013
TBA

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-22 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Bass, Randall

FALL 2013
Professor Randall Bass

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-23 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Tomlinson, B.

Monsters in Literature, Film and Culture

Monsters in Literature, Film and Culture ////////This course turns to the figure of the monster as a critical lens for reading the value systems and anxieties of modern culture. As social outcasts and as embodiments of endless interpretative possibility, monsters resist “normal” categories and encourage us to examine the relationship not only between self and other but also between conventional and unconventional reading practices. What makes monsters both terrifying and fascinating? How do monsters challenge what we often take for granted as “natural” and is this challenge destructive, productive, or both? How do monsters provoke important discussions about gender, race, class, and species? In order to engage these questions we will read and view works by a wide range of writers and directors, including, but not limited to, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, H.G. Wells, Julio Cortazar, George Romero, Gore Verbinski, and Philip K. Dick, In this intensive writing course, students will learn the value and pleasure of close reading and will also learn theoretical tools for deepening their understanding of literary, filmic and image-based texts.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-24 Humanities and Writing

TBA

FALL 2013
TBA

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-25 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Debelius, Margaret

FALL 2013
Professor Margaret Debelius
HUMW 011.25

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-26 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Young, Joy

The so-called 'War on Terror' that began with the 9/11 attacks shows no sign of coming to an end. Neither does the unprecedented number of documentary films that continue to flood the market concerning terrorism, the middle-east, US-led invasions and governmental policies—some of which have become big box-office successes. Are we witnessing a contemporary revival of a genre that gains importance during times of crises? While much attention gets paid to the stories that the politicians and pundits have told to explain the on-going crises in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, we often overlook how cultural representations of those crises shape public understanding of their causes and consequences. In this course, we will consider the unique perspectives that film, television, online and print media offer us for grappling with the lived effects that result from the wars on terrorism. We will examine the ethical intentions and moral hazards of the various peoples involved and consider how documentaries structure the public’s view of whom or what is to blame for the dire circumstances in which the world finds itself. As a H&W I course, we will focus on close reading--how meanings arise from the specific language of a written or visual text—as well as the role of the particular cultural location of the reader.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-27 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Ebenbach, David

The Creative Process

What is creativity? Where does it come from? How does it work? In this class, we’ll be considering many perspectives in our attempts to explore and understand creativity and the
creative process. We’ll consider the explanations offered by scientists, religious/spiritual thinkers, and writers of how-to books, and we’ll hear from painters, poets and other
artists. Although the class will consist mainly of analytical work, writing about and discussing these theories, students will also apply these concepts to their own creative work, work they will produce during the course of the class.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-28 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Hanlon, Aaron

"Writing the Self"
Course Description and Objectives

This writing-centred course will explore, through the instructive examples of essayists like Seneca, Ou-Yang Hsiu, James Baldwin, and James Thurber, the relationship between the art and practice of writing and the making of the self. What examples—positive and negative—do writers give us for thinking about and fashioning our identities and worldviews? In what ways can writing help us organize our thoughts, or throw our thoughts and assumptions into total disarray? How can literature affect our real-life plans and aspirations, from the grand to the quotidian? We will read provocative essays and novellas compiled to help us think through these questions. We will work together as a community of writers to develop and refine the skills and awareness necessary to identify different types of writing and writing strategies, construct logical and sophisticated scholarly arguments without purging the self from the academic essay, and bring multiple texts and analyses into fruitful conversation. In so doing we will learn to use the revision process to produce our best results, express ourselves and structure our arguments coherently, work adeptly with print and electronic scholarly resources, and become versatile and effective writers.

At the beginning of the course we will define and respond to the longstanding form of the personal essay, emphasizing style, tone, and rhetorical movement. We will then move onto writing academic responses to fiction, emphasizing clear and logical structure, rigor of argument, and engagement with multiple scholarly and expert sources, in addition to primary texts.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-29 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Ebenbach, David

In this class, we’ll study the nature of fiction, the nature of poetry, and examine the hazy but stimulating territory that lies in between. Our readings will include work by authors who have written in both forms, plus prose poetry and short short stories, as well as how-to writing on the elements of craft (e.g., plot, character, meter) associated with these forms. We’ll also explore this material through writing—writing essays about the central issues along with writing your own fiction and poetry. Through this exploration, we will deepen our understanding of the forms available to writers, and get a handle on why they choose the forms they do.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-31 Critical Reading and Writing

Alff, David

FALL 2011
PROFESSOR DAVID ALFF
HUMW 011.31

Getting There: Literatures of Transportation

This seminar will provide you with instruction and practice in critical writing, a skill that you will use throughout your careers at Georgetown and beyond. Our class discussions and assigned papers will explore the relationship between systems of transportation and the literature they have inspired, from Robert Caro’s investigative history of the Cross-Bronx Expressway in The Power Broker (1974) to the allegorical travels of Christian in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1678). We will examine how writers from different time periods and geographical locations chose to represent modes of transit, from horse-drawn omnibuses and Victorian subways to the supersonic flight networks and high-speed rail systems of more recent decades. Through readings, writing assignments, peer reviewing activities, and collaborative groupwork this seminar will argue that your flight delay or traffic jam not only has a history, but one deserving of critical consideration.

Specific readings may include:

--Pilgrim’s Progress (John Bunyan)
--Howard’s End (E.M. Forster)
--Kitty Foyle: The Natural History of a Woman (Christopher Morley)
--Death and Life of Great American Cities (Jane Jacobs)
--The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (Robert Caro)
-- Various selections from John Ruskin, George Eliot, Walt Whitman and others

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-32 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Brogan, Jacob

Queer Pleasures/Queer Pains

Recent decades have seen an explosive expansion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender figures in film, television, and fiction. Nevertheless, we continue to privilege those works that dramatize the suffering and death of such individuals over those that emphasize enjoyment, love, or happiness. In this course, we will ask why this continues to be the case by surveying the past century of queer literature and art, pairing texts that tend toward the pole of pleasure with those that feel the tug of pain. We will read plays by dramatists such as Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest) and graphic novels by artists like Alison Bechdel (Fun Home), as well as watch films by Derek Jarman (Blue) and John Cameron Mitchell (Shortbus). In the process, we will discuss important historical events like the Stonewall riots and the AIDS crisis and contemporary popular musicians like Lady Gaga, Janelle Monae and Frank Ocean. Students will write a variety of short papers such as personal reflections and close readings of music videos, along with occasional critical essays (3-4 pages) throughout the semester.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-33 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Shaup, Karen

Travel and Cultural Imagination

By the end of the nineteenth century, people were on the move. New transportation networks made it possible for individuals to travel farther and faster than ever before. In 1890, American journalist Nellie Bly circumnavigated the world in the record-breaking time of seventy-two days. Bly’s trip exemplified how travel had captured the popular imagination as an activity that embodied desires for escape, conquest, and self-growth. This writing-intensive course examines how the idea of travel has informed and transfixed cultural imagination from the late nineteenth century to the early twenty-first century. What motivates people to travel? How do people experience new places? What are the pleasures and challenges of travel? How can travel transform personal and cultural identity? Carl Thompson recently defined travel as “the negotiation between self and other that is brought about by movement in space.” As we read literary texts and watch films that meditate on travel, we will pay close attention to and write critical and analytical essays about the types of “negotiations” that travel provokes not only between the self and other, but also between a traveler’s sense of what is familiar and what is strange, what appears authentic and what appears artificial, and what the city seems to demand and what nature seems to offer. Some of the texts that we may read for this course are Daisy Miller by Henry James, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, Voyage in the Dark by Jean Rhys, The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, and Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-34 Humanities and Writing

Faculty:

Johnston, Kenneth

End of the World

Is the world going to “end” soon? Probably not, but there are plenty of indications of the idea’s enduring popularity, the Mayan calendar in the movie 2012 being one of them (and already a bit passé). This course is devoted to a somewhat more optimistic answer to these questions. Namely, that the world has always been about to end, throughout the 2000+ year history of the Western (Judaeo-Christian) world. And, though the idea is a terrible one, and all apocalyptic predictions have been wrong, some of them are quite moving and beautiful. We will read and analyze literary and other cultural texts (popular music and movies) dealing with apocalyptic or world-ending situations, broadly conceived. The course is less about speculating on what the Apocalypse will be “like,” than a series of answers to the question, “What are we talking about when we talk about the end of the world?” Though the course deals primarily with 20th century works (e.g., The War of the Worlds, Hiroshima), it begins with a brief look at two or three other markedly apocalyptic eras in Western civilization: the era of early Christian persecutions (Revelation), the millennium of ca. 1000 C.E., and the “world turned upside down” period of the American and French revolutions. Throughout, it asks how and why artists have chosen to cast their fictions in apocalyptic frameworks: what gains they make in character motivation and action, and what losses they accept in terms of plausibility and thematic range. Some other texts are: Things Fall Apart, Angels in America, The Seventh Seal, The Terminator, and a selection of rock-and-roll songs from 1958 to 2008 (“It’s the end of the world as we know it, and I’m feeling fine”).

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-35 Humanities and Writing

TBA

HUMW 011.35
TBA
FALL 2012

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-61 Stories of Love and Death

Faculty:

Grenier, Svetlana

In this section of HUMW-011 we will examine the idea of romantic passion that appeared in twelfth-century Europe and has reverberated through our Western culture ever since. Why were love and death linked in Western imagination for a long time? Are they still linked now? What is the relationship between love and marriage, considering that the original romance glorified adulterous love? How is passion treated in Romanticism and in 19th-century Realist novel? In this class we will read and discuss four literary texts: the twelfth-century archetypal “Romance of Tristan and Iseult”; the Romantic “bestseller,” Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774); and two Russian novels: Herzen’s Who Is to Blame? (1847) and Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877). We will also read the classic analysis of the myth of romantic love, Denis de Rougemont’s Love in the Western World.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-70 Critical Reading & Writing

Faculty:

Pedrick, Victoria

The primary goal of this course is to offer intensive instruction and practice in reading and writing to develop critical thinking. Each section focuses attention on a single problem or topic in textual or cultural studies. The course will be conducted as a seminar, with regular student participation and a concentration on student writing.

This course is for SFS-Qatar students only.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-71 Humanities & Writing

Faculty:

O'Connor, Patricia

This Literature & Writing Workshop asks students to examine and perform acts of speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Students will write expressively and transactionally in connection with themes of the “monstrous” in a variety of forms and across a variety of cultural and historical periods. Texts include the anonymously written Old English poem Beowulf, the recent A Long Way Gone Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah, the narrative, Desert Flower, by Somali refugee Waris Dirie, and an autobiography of a Los Angeles gang member -- Monster by Sanyika Shakur. Using Envision: Writing and Researching Arguments, we will study techniques of writing academic essays as well as production of advocacy materials to confront the monstrous violence depicted in such works. Students should expect frequent writing assignments that will be used to stimulate discussion of topics and drafts of the major papers & projects assigned. Students will be expected to pay close attention to grammar/style and proofreading. Students will work in groups to create a hypertextual amplification of one of the themes across course texts. Each student will keep a portfolio of the individual's writing and craft an essay on her/his writing process as part of a final portfolio.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-88 The Russian Novel of Adultery

Faculty:

Grenier, Svetlana

Through a close reading of several narratives of (actual or potential) adultery, we will explore how the eternal quest for love and happiness plays out in the cultural space of 19th-century Russia. We will investigate the varied ways in which classic Russian authors and their readers (including our contemporaries, who grow up in Russia
reading these works) pose the many convoluted questions related to the
pursuit of love and happiness. How does one define happiness? What is a (or
the) good life? How is romantic passion related to happiness and personal
freedom? Finally, how do these authors perceive the role of society, gender,
national identity, and religion within this complex equation, and how do
those issues interact with the genre of the novel and the adultery plot?
In this section we will read Tolstoy’s great Anna Karenina (1877)
and its Russian precursors: Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin (1830), Herzen’s
Who Is to Blame? (1847), and Druzhinin’s Polinka Saks (1847). All readings are in English.
Students will write tree 5 page papers and a number of shorter assignments.

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

HUMW-011-xx True Fictions

Faculty:

Morris, Marcia

This is a course that examines the tension between literature and history and asks how we ascertain and convey what “really” happened in the past. The focus will be double-pronged: on the one hand, we will ask of each literary text how it allows its readers to revisit the past and re-imagine it in a different – maybe even a more adequate – way from a more straightforwardly “historical” text. On the other hand, we will examine the inherently ambiguous nature of time as presented in historical fiction – to what extent does a given text relate to the particular era that it ostensibly re-presents and to what extent does it relate to the time in which it is written?

Credits: 3

Prerequisites: None

Other academic years
There is information about this course number in other academic years:

• 2005-2006 Fall and Spring
• 2006-2007 Fall and Spring
• 2007-2008 Fall and Spring
• 2008-2009 Fall and Spring
• 2009-2010 Fall and Spring
• 2010-2011 Fall and Spring
• 2011-2012 Fall and Spring
• 2012-2013 Fall and Spring

More information
Look for this course in the schedule of classes.

The academic department web site for this program may provide other details about this course.