Courses

Baseball, Society, and US History
In this course we will use baseball as our lens to examine a broad range of issues in U.S. history from the Civil War to the 20th Century. Baseball’s past will allow us to understand social and cultural change by delving into topics such as capitalism, class, gender, identity, immigration, labor rights, and race. We will read autobiographies, box scores, newspaper accounts, and scholarly monographs that trace the evolution of America’s pastime from a leisurely activity to a multimillion-dollar industry. Class activities will allow students to develop reading, writing, and presentation skills, receiving feedback on their progress throughout the term.

Writing Women's Religious Worlds
In this course we will examine how we can understand and recognize what “counts” as religion—perhaps in new ways—by focusing on the religious lives of women. Our primary texts will be ethnographic studies of women in various religious traditions around the world, including Hindu women in North India, Muslim women in Egypt, and a Vodou priestess in New York. We will examine how women construct their religious identities and negotiate religious authority as public leaders, ritual experts, and healers, and consider how what women say about their own lives and practices may challenge our assumptions of what religion “is” or “does.” We will also consider the ethics of ethnographic approaches to studying religion, particularly in terms of the “self” and “other,” as students develop their own ethnographic practices and writing.

Meaningful Writing
What makes writing meaningful (to audience as well as authors)? In this course we will explore meaningful writing through literary analysis, educational research, and personal engagement. We will read personally revelatory texts written by authors like Eula Biss, Alison Bechdel, and Oliver Sacks, we will learn about educational research from the Meaningful Writers Project, and we will define meaningful writing for ourselves through exploring our positionality as writers (not just as readers). To do this, we will both read and write about topics and genres beyond the academy including writing over a lifetime, medical narratives, journalism, and community writing.

Marvel Comics & Society
Comic books and graphic novels are a powerful storytelling medium that often connects to both contemporary cultural issues and human emotions. Marvel Comics has long used their pages to tackle issues of race, poverty, gender, identity, science, and justice, either indirectly or head-on. In this course we will analyze both the source material and scholarship related to Marvel comics, as well as learn to communicate our own analysis and stories in both written and oral forms. Note: This course will focus on the comics, not any of the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. Enrolled students must purchase a subscription to Marvel Unlimited (https://www.marvel.com/unlimited) for the duration of the term.

Abolitionism(s): Then and Now
In this course, we will explore the intersections between historical campaigns to abolish the transatlantic slave trade and chattel slavery throughout the British empire and contemporary American movements to abolish policing and prisons. We’ll pay particular attention to the roles that literary and artistic representations, political speech, and activist organizing play in these processes, and consider how they complement or clash with on-the-ground resistance. We’ll ask: what does the history of abolitionism tell us about the horizons of an abolitionist future? Our guides will range from Olaudah Equiano and Mary Prince to Mariame Kaba, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, and Olúfẹmi Táíwò.

Arabian Oral Poetry
The Arabian Peninsula enjoys a rich legacy of oral poetry and written poetry with oral roots. In this seminar, we will explore how the oral poetic traditions of the Arabian Peninsula have evolved over time, starting with pre-Islamic odes from the 6th century CE and ending with contemporary poetry circulated on social media. In addition to reading, analyzing, and enjoying individual poetic texts and performances, we will consider how the concept of oral literature emerged with Milman Parry’s Oral Formulaic thesis, giving rise to new ways of reading historical texts, understanding the art of performance, and reckoning with the cultural implications of literacy.

Seeing and Being
Photography has evolved rapidly and is now pervasive in our daily lives. How do photographs influence our experience of time, space, ourselves, and each other? This course focuses on these four areas central to understanding its incredible impact. Studying fine art and vernacular usage, students will discover how art, science, media, and personal histories are shaped by photography. By learning how to read images of their own and of others, students will develop the critical skills necessary to interpret images and their use. In addition to producing their own visual projects, students will read, research, analyze and write about photographs.

Environmental Intimacies, Injustice and the Politics of Care
Pleasure activism is a framework for social and environmental change. It is an invitation to better know ourselves and see how embracing what brings us joy is central to dismantling sexist, racist and homophobic structures of oppression. This course explores how self-love, healing and harm reduction are necessary for our liberation and survival on an unjust and warming planet. This course asks what it takes to move from a place of despair to action, and how might new avenues of connection and consent be forged across social and geographic difference? We will read Adrienne Maree Brown’s Pleasure Activism, Sarah Jaquette Ray’s A Field Guide to Climate Anxiety, and a suite of other scholars and activists focused on related work including climate justice, queer ecology, ecosexuality, solidarity work, feminist ethics of care, and re-imagining human-nature relations.

Fascinating Rhythm: Rhythmic Analysis
Swing, groove, pocket, grid…these and many other terms like them are used to describe the musical element known as rhythm. Though often deemphasized in musical criticism and analysis in relation to pitch/melody, rhythm is inextricable from the musical experience. In this course we will discuss the underrated but undeniable importance of rhythm in the music to which we love to dance, study, or exercise. Through journaling, analysis, performance, and listening, students will develop tools to describe rhythm with greater nuance and depth. Though music from all cultures will be welcomed, the primary focus will be music influenced by the African Diaspora. Open to all musicians and enthusiasts alike.

Teaching ‘The 1619 Project’: Battling Miseducation, Engaging Freedom Dreaming, and Regaining Hope
In August of 2019 The New York Times launched the 1619 Project, created by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones, explores the history of slavery in the United States. In this course we will explore various ways to approach teaching The 1619 Project and examine how the project pushes against miseducation within the U.S. education system. We will also delve into various states' bans against teaching the 1619 Project and scrutinize how Critical Race Theory became wrapped in these bans.

College Life Through Literature (in Spanish)
In this seminar students will read fiction and nonfiction related to university life, including topics such as attending college in a rural area, studying abroad, equity and inclusion in higher education, and the first-generation experience. Our focus will be on the literary representation of university life. We will examine these narratives through theories and perspectives such as the (post) pandemic scenario, critical race theory, critical pedagogy, the #MeToo movement, etc. Readings may include Leaving the Atocha Station by Ben Lerner, On Beauty by Zadie Smith, Todas las Almas by Javier Marias, and Historia de Una Maestra by Josefina Aldecoa. Texts will be in English and Spanish. This seminar will be taught in Spanish (appropriate for native speakers, bilingual speakers, or through placement test equivalent to SPAN 0300).

Watching the Wire: Urban America and Serial Television
Frequently hailed as one of television’s great masterpieces, The Wire shines a light on urban decay in 21st-century America, creating a dramatic portrait of Baltimore’s police, drug trade, and other institutions over five serialized seasons. In this course we will watch and discuss this remarkable—and remarkably entertaining—series twenty years after its debut, placing it within the dual contexts of urban American society and television storytelling. This is a time-intensive course (60 hours of TV!), focused on close viewing, critical analysis of race and policing, and research into The Wire’s social contexts, aesthetic practices, and politics of representation.

Introduction to Black Epistemologies
In this class we will explore the rich traditions of black thought and aesthetics in the post-colonial Atlantic world. Using Stuart Hall’s views on diaspora, we will survey various black ontologies from the Haitian Revolution to Black Lives Matter, from jazz and candomblé to junkanoo. We will study different strategies that African descendants such as Claude McKay, Arturo Schomburg, Zora Neal Hurston, Abdias do Nascimento, and Manuel Mendive utilized to document black struggle, solidarity, justice and beauty. Steve McQueen, Francoise Ega, Sidney Poitier, Audre Lorde, Maryse Condé and Solange will provide insights on black emancipation and joy. We will necessarily consider the tensions between creolization and decolonization to gain an appreciation of embodied black knowledge sui generis.

Politics and Delusion in Francophone Literature
How does politics shape identity? What roles have politics played in shaping the French Caribbean culture and imagination, and how have they impacted people and landscapes? Are these policies challenged? By whom? In this seminar we’ll explore such questions by reading, writing about, and discussing several francophone novels. We will focus on the significance of historical experiences such as colonization, departmentalization, and dictatorship through themes of alienation, assimilation, and emancipation. The analysis of these imagined or experienced accounts by Césaire, Chamoiseau, Chauvet and Juminer will help us further understand notions of power, privilege, and justice. No knowledge of French is required.

The Feminine Heroic
In this class we will explore the hero’s journey in literature as it relates to women and the natural world: who gets to go on the adventure, and who arrives home, transformed? How do race and gender complicate the traditional man-versus-nature narrative? We will discuss character agency, narrative authority, and structure — and look at texts where women undertake the journey, including work by Annie Dillard, Camille Dungy, Rachel Carson, Anne LeBastille, Rahawa Haile, and Pam Houston. We will work on reading critically, editing, and practicing the art of giving and receiving feedback. This class will provide students with opportunities to create both critical and creative work.

Ancient Women on Stage: Tragic and Comic
As soon as theater was born in Ancient Greece around 500 BCE, it embarked on a radical examination of social institutions and cultural values. By adapting myths and rituals for the stage, tragic and comic playwrights invited their audiences to reflect critically on their own communities. In this seminar we will meet some of the women they put on stage to challenge traditional gender roles and push the boundaries of acceptable thought and behavior. Employing modern theoretical approaches and close reading, we will study tragedies by Sophocles (Antigone) and Euripides (Medea, Hecuba, Helen) and comedies by Aristophanes (Lysistrata, Assemblywomen) to explore what the prominence of female characters means for Athenian society but also for the art of theater.

Town-Gown Lands of Middlebury
In this course we mix methods to investigate lands that connect Middlebury College and Vermont towns. We will study the natural and human histories of land and investigate relationships between Middlebury College and local human and natural communities. We ground these themes at field sites along a transect from the Champlain Valley to the Green Mountains where college and non-college communities overlap in space and time. Students explore questions from multi-disciplinary perspectives, learn to interpret and integrate different kinds of evidence, including texts, images, maps, and direct observations, share their work with peers to help contextualize field excursions, and produce a short research article linked to a web map of Middlebury town-gown lands.

Love and Death in Western Europe, 1300-1900
History is not just names and dates; it also encompasses how ordinary people lived and felt. Emotions have a history because they have changed over time. This seminar deals with aspects of the history of desire and fear in Western Europe from the Middle Ages to the industrial era. Topics will include sex, marriage, child-rearing, disease, suicide, and the belief in immortality. In addition to works of historical analysis, we will read literary and theoretical sources, including Dante, Goethe, and Freud. Our aim is to understand how common emotions have been altered by social and cultural circumstances. 3 hrs. sem.

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly: Gods, Goddesses, and Demons in Indian Art
Indian mythology and epic literature abound with stories of conflicts between the forces of good and evil. There are multiple forms of Hindu gods and goddesses who battle an array of evil and colorful demonic foes, and each cosmic battle embodies a profound philosophical lesson about relative values and complex moral choices. We will explore the meanings and myriad creative expressions of this rich terrain through a lively variety of artistic depictions—in mythological literature, painting, sculpture, drama, dance, television, film, graphic novels, and contemporary arts.3 hr sem.

Shakespeare's Rome
Throughout his career, William Shakespeare wrote several plays set in ancient Rome. Why did he and his contemporaries find the dramatization of events from Roman history so appealing? Why do we continue to do so today? In order to address these questions, we will read Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra, and Coriolanus. We will also consider Shakespeare’s ancient sources, such as Senecan drama and Plutarch’s biographies, as well as contemporary stage and film adaptations. In addition to exploring the complex ways in which Rome has served as a mirror for later cultures, we will pay close attention to the relationship between republic and autocracy, public and private life, and drama and history.

Herodotus and the Writing of History
Dubbed ‘the Father of History’ by Cicero, Herodotus saw himself as presenting the results of an investigation in order to preserve human achievements, grant them renown, and above all to explain why the Greeks and Persians came to fight one another. We will read the whole of Herodotus’ Histories, considering the place of story-telling, ethnography, and divine intervention in explaining the past, and exploring how Herodotus’ inquiry spawned historical writing. Ancient and modern discussions about historical writing will supplement the central text. 3 hrs. sem.

Identity and Difference
How do we use categories of identity and difference? How does culture determine how we perceive and perform gender and ethnic identity: male/female, gay/straight, East/West, black/white? We will look at constructions of gender and sexual identity in various cultures and consider how they intersect with national and ethnic identity. Literature and film will be our primary focus. We will read Euripides’ Bacchae, Forster’s Passage to India, and Hwang’s Madame Butterfly and view films like Kiss of the Spiderwoman and Europa Europa that problematize sexual and gender identity. 3 hrs. sem.

Questions of Evidence: Historical, Legal, and Psychotherapeutic
How do historians marshal evidence and to what ends? How does this intersect with psychotherapeutic and legal approaches? In this seminar we will ask “questions of evidence.” What is evidence? How do we find it? How do we decide to believe it? In the first half of the course we will examine the role of social and institutional power in shaping what we understand to be evidence. In the second half of the course, we will explore a recent historical controversy or a single historical study for its argument and presentation of evidence. Readings include works by historians, philosophers, legal scholars, psychotherapists, journalists, and activists. 3 hrs. sem.

Models, Contexts, and Afterlives of the Bayeux Tapestry
In this course we will look closely at the late eleventh-century Bayeux Tapestry (also known as the Bayeux Embroidery), examining its historical and literary sources, the details of its creation, and its reverberations throughout the arts of the medieval and modern eras. We will also consider how this embroidered textile entangled its medieval and modern viewers in the stories it tells and those it avoids. We will discover that it can tell us much about attitudes toward gender and masculinity, the taming of the natural world, and the terrors of war. Hands-on assignments will familiarize us with some of the techniques and materials used to create this monument of medieval European Art History.

Collaborating Across the Arts
Collaborating Across the Arts invites students to playfully research and practice cooperative methodologies. This course centers on the idea that interdisciplinary dialog sparks original thinking and generates creative material. During the semester, we will participate in live interdisciplinary performance events through workshops, performance viewings, and reflective writing. The semester will culminate in a student performance. By studying and practicing cooperative tools for artistic creation, we engage a sense of enthusiasm and curiosity for what can be discovered when we collaborate. Both experienced artists and beginners are welcome.

Agatha Christie
In this course we will explore the work and life of Agatha Christie, one of the world’s best mystery writers. We will read several of her novels published between the 1920s and 1950s, and place them in their social and political contexts. We will learn about prevailing class, race, and gender relations in Britain, imperial archaeology in the Middle East (Christie participated in, and wrote about, digs organized by her second husband), and the impacts of the two world wars. We will also explore the craft of mystery writing by presenting our own outline to a mystery. 3 hrs. sem.

On Time
Time is at once familiar and confounding. After eighteen years (568 million seconds) of existence, you know it intimately. But what is time, really? The truth is, we don’t know. Time doesn’t even appear in the most fundamental laws of physics. In this course we explore the history of time-keeping from mechanical clocks to atomic clocks, human perceptions of time, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and present-day theories on time. Readings include Longitude (Dava Sobel), Simply Einstein (Richard Wolfson), The Order of Time (Carlo Rovelli) and selected articles from neuroscience. We will also look back in time using the College Observatory. 3 hrs. sem.

Mindfulness in Education: Radical, Holistic Models of Learning
What is mindfulness? And how is it useful in reframing approaches to education for engaged, critical learning? In this course we will explore the impact of contemplative practices in education, considering such questions as: what is learning and how does divergent or mindful thinking influence how we learn? For example, is there a connection between mindfulness and creativity, attention, memory? We will engage in contemplative practices to consider mindful learning from a personal perspective and review research in the fields of education and psychology that suggests a positive correlation between contemplative practices and the intellectual, emotional, and psychological growth of students.

Symmetry in the Physical World
Beyond the familiar symmetry of human-made objects, there are fundamental symmetries that underlie the laws of nature. In this course we will explore how these symmetries impact the nature of matter and forces. We will investigate the life and ideas of Emmy Noether, the 20th century mathematician who formulated our modern understanding of symmetry in physics. Our discussions will touch on a wide range of physical concepts, including the principle of conservation of energy, the Big Bang, superconductivity, and the recently discovered Higgs particle. Our readings and discussions will be based on historical and scientific texts and popular science books.

Questioning Technology
In this course, we will critically approach and think deeply about the ways in which we shape, and are shaped by digital technologies of the 21st century. What does society give up for the benefits of a given technology? Who is harmed and who benefits from the technology? What are the unexpected impacts of the technology? Informed by texts such as Weapons of Math Destruction, Automating Inequality, and Race After Technology, we will explore contexts such as surveillance, privacy, exploitative tech, discriminatory design, and AI. We’ll also explore speculative futures as a framework for imagining a different future with technology.

Social Issues and Public Policy
This course examines current social issues and potential public policy remedies. We will use the tools of economics to explore important social issues such as income inequality, poverty, welfare reform, access to food, health care, housing, and education, climate change, and crime. While the text and lectures will focus on social issues at the national level, students will have the opportunity to explore social issues in Vermont through a semester-long research project. 3 hrs. sem.

First Contact: Language in Science Fiction
In this course we explore how humans conceptualize communication with extraterrestrial beings and artificial intelligence. Through fiction and film works in the “first contact” subgenre of science fiction, we will reflect on how language functions as a device in these narratives to reveal our own limited perspective, sense of in-group and out-group, and anxieties about the “other” and our own future. Students will learn critical analysis skills by dissecting the works of writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin and Ted Chiang; additionally, students will engage in thematic gameplay and creative writing in the genre.

Deserts: Myths, Mystery, Magic
From the Mojave to the Atacama to the Kalahari, Earth’s deserts are as fascinating as they are mysterious. In this course we will explore the unique biology of deserts, how humans interact (and have interacted in the past) with these ecosystems, and examine how deserts are portrayed in media and popular culture. Critically, we will evaluate the many myths that surround deserts (e.g. they are all lifeless, hot, best as solar farms) and dispel them with evidence from primary and secondary scientific sources.

Ethics in the MCU
The movies of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) are fun entertainment, but they also deal with a range of important ethical issues. Using Marvel films and streaming series as springboards, we will discuss topics like artificial intelligence, bodily enhancement, racial justice, gender equality in the workplace, the obligations of power, and the relationship between intention and culpability. In the process of analyzing the MCU, we will learn the fundamentals of ethical theory and develop skills necessary to make and respond constructively to moral arguments, contributing to our maturation as moviegoers and ethical citizens.

History, Representation, and the Graphic Novel
In this course we will read several graphic novels dealing with historical atrocities in the non-Western and Western context during the early modern and modern periods. In particular, we will examine many of the ongoing central issues in atrocity and genocide studies as well as in the historical field more generally regarding inclusivity, representation, accessibility, and accuracy. The growing concern over the gap between academic history and the “real world” will also be examined. Students will gain increased knowledge about historical injustices as well as their integral connection to and impact upon the present. This course is part of the Public Humanities Labs Initiative administered by the Axinn Center for the Humanities./

Exercise Biochemistry and the Limits of Human Endurance
In this course we will investigate the biochemical, biological, genetic, and psychological factors associated with athletic performance. We will begin by discussing the origins of exercise physiology in the early 1900’s, introducing topics such as metabolic fuels and their utilization, oxygen and water, metabolism, and physiological adaptations to training. Special attention will be paid to muscle (power) and pulmonary organization and function (VO2 max), and how psychology and the brain (the master regulator) contribute to achieve maximum performance. We will bring these topics to the present by reading and discussing papers from the popular and primary literature. Films and guest lectures by experts will provide a personal perspective. The seminar will conclude by considering controversies such as performance enhancing drugs and sex determination.

Nature and Society
This seminar is sociology for nature lovers. We often behave as if nature is independent of social life, but the two are profoundly interconnected. In this course we will explore this paradox through short excursions in the natural world—hikes, walks, field trips, outdoor meetings—and classroom-based learning. Drawing on practices of naturalism, social science, ecology, and philosophy, we will investigate the social construction of the natural world under capitalism. Course material will focus on studying Vermont’s ecological communities, the environmental movement, cultural geography, and natural literacy. Students will learn to “read the landscape” through the critical lens of sociology, and to challenge concepts of “natural” and “wild,” as well as “race” and “gender.” The course emphasizes an approach to writing based on observation, reflection, and evidence.

The Lives of the Buddha
What is a buddha? How does a person become one? The life of the Buddha is one of the most influential stories ever, but it was not the focus of the earliest Buddhist literature. When narratives of his life (and previous lives) first appear in word and image, which concerns dominate them? How and why do later groups of Buddhists tell, interpret, and ritually enact his life story differently? We will focus on the telling and retelling of these lives over the long span and wide spread of the Buddhist tradition - and what they reveal about doctrine and practice as well as issues of gender, authority, and religious aspiration.

Myth and Cosmology
The course will trace the early development of thought and meaning, introducing some of the fundamental concepts underlying ancient ways of approaching the world. We will approach the subject with a comparative view, studying, for example, the Chinese, Judeo-Christian, Hindu, Navaho and Maori creation traditions, Chinese cosmology, divination systems of East Asian and African nations, and the rich symbolism that emerged out of some of the major centers of ancient civilization. Through our reading of myths, scholarly writings, and literary works, we will explore the ways China and various other cultures understood and dealt with the world around them, from flood myths to astrology, from the Yijing to omens and geomancy. We will learn about the place of story in the formation of worldview, particularly in notions of the place of humans in the world. 3 hrs. sem.

Filling in the Blanks-Reading between Words
Not only written words, but also the spaces that connect them, influence and determine literary readings. In this course we will analyze the cultural as well as the personal assumptions that enable us to create specific meanings in texts. Applying theoretical concepts to known works of literature, and reflecting on their own cultural and personal assumptions, students will gain an understanding of how culturally situated their readings are. Literary works by Shakespeare, Lessing, Choderlos de Laclos, Kafka, Walker, Tawada, and others create a canon to which we will apply various theoretical approaches. 3 hrs. sem.

The Russian Idea
In 1866, poet Fedor Tiutchev claimed “Russia cannot be understood by the mind […] Russia can only be believed in”. This mystical interpretation of Russian history and culture is a common trope employed by scholars, artists, and political actors. But why did this conception emerge, how has it evolved, and why does it hold such appeal? We will explore various iterations of the “Russian Idea” in literature, art, philosophy, and politics. In addition to reading excerpts from influential interpreters (Dostoevsky, Tolstoi, Solovev, Berdiaev), we will explore contemporary official and unofficial Russian discourse. Questions we will consider include: What different iterations of the “Russian Idea” have been offered and how have they been connected to state policy (historical and contemporary)? What relationship exists between cultural/artistic production, philosophical ideas, and politics?

K-pop & Transcultural Fandom
K-pop fandom is multilingual and spans cultures and nationalities. Fans gather online and in person all over the world, commenting on live streams, making videos, buying merchandise, voting in competition shows, and participating in online communities. In vastly different contexts, fans find meaning through music, fashion, dance, identification with favorite artists, and parasocial engagement with group members and fellow fans. What draws fans from different contexts to k-pop? How can we understand the cultural work of k-pop fandom across national and cultural boundaries? If you’re a fan yourself, how has k-pop fandom informed your sense of self, identity, and community?

Understanding Johnny Cash
From his first appearances as a performing artist to his present lionization, Johnny Cash has always had a tremendous impact on American culture. While his significance has been persistent, its his nature has rarely, if ever, been consistent. Creatively, spiritually, politically, and personally, Cash lived a life marked by contradictions—making him a figure that fans and scholars alike have struggled to understand. This course will enter into that process, working to develop a rounded, comprehensive assessment of the man and his music by setting his life, his work, and creative and critical responses to him in their historical contexts.

Transforming Traditions
How do traditions transform when they expand beyond the time and place of their origin? In considering this question, we will interrogate the value of authenticity and preservation, and we will examine the impacts of bringing new perspectives to existing practices. Course material (readings, videos, and recordings) will focus on artistic practices that originated in Korea, and in particular, we will study and learn to play a percussion genre, samulnori. However, students will also draw on their own traditions, interests, and experiences for discussions and assignments. No prior musical experience is needed; a willingness to bang vigorously on drums in a group is helpful.

Shaping Earth: Past and Future
This course will explore the fundamental processes that have shaped Earth and its atmosphere over time, including plate tectonics, glaciation, rivers, and soil-forming processes. Most scientific content will be presented in a series of place-based field trips to experience examples of these processes and better understand how scientists study them. Research, writing, and speaking skills will be developed through interactive exercises and a series of assignments, each one including multiple revision cycles.

Documentaries & Social Justice
In this course, students will explore how contemporary documentaries perform social justice via different rhetorical filmmaking styles—including direct cinema, verité, and investigations—and specific social justice tactics—including explicit and implicit calls for change, social pressure, and activism. After watching documentaries and reading reviews, interviews, and theories of filmmaking, students will write various analyses and codes of ethics for documentary films. The final project has students either produce or storyboard their own short social justice-oriented films.

The Politics of Hope
We are frequently told we must “never give up hope,” but what is at stake in hoping? In this seminar we will interrogate this ubiquitous demand to hope. We will explore contemporary debates about the possibility of hope in the face of uncertain planetary futures to consider the politics of how, in what ways, toward what ends, and why we hope. At what point does hope become misplaced, turning into a “cruel optimism”? How is hope mobilized politically? How are different futures—optimistic and pessimistic, utopian and dystopian, redemptive and apocalyptic—distributed among different groups? And what might happen if we let go of commonly held yet narrowly conceived hopes and tried imagining something different?

Photography of the Middle East
In this course, we will work closely with Special Collections and the Middlebury College Museum of Art to survey 19th and 20th century photography of the Middle East. We will consider indigenous studios as well as foreign photographers who traveled to the region and circulated their photographs as visual knowledge of distant cultures, peoples, monuments, landscapes, and experiences. Looking at a range of materials, including travel photography, studio portraits, and government- and commercially-commissioned photographic albums, we will examine how photographs visually construct notions of race, gender, class, religion, and cultural otherness. We will then turn to the ways in which contemporary artists are archiving historical photographs and appropriating them in contemporary practices.

Creative Power
In this course students will have the opportunity to dig deeply into their own creativity and explore the processes by which ideas emerge and are given shape in the arts. This is an experiential course, integrating cognition and action, mind and body. Students will create projects exploring sound, movement, text, and visual art. Students will engage a range of modes of discovering, knowing, and communicating, which are designed to push them beyond their present state of awareness and level of confidence in their creative power. Practical work will be closely accompanied by readings, weekly writing assignments, journaling, and will culminate in the creation of a short performance project as well as a final research paper. 3 hrs. sem.

The Artistry of the Maya Scribe
The Maya produced what was arguably the most beautiful script of the ancient Americas—a true combination of art and writing. This course explores Maya history and the fundamentals of their writing system, but with a twist: instead of just focusing on reading comprehension, we explore how scribes learned to write. Using ancient painting techniques and natural pigments, students will discover how to combine words and images in playful ways and, in so doing, understand why this system evolved as it did. They will explore the stylistic choices made in the first millennium CE—and perhaps make those same choices again. This course is part of the Public Humanities Labs Initiative administered by the Axinn Center for the Humanities./

Sexual Dissidence in the Francosphere
What is the relationship between sex, power, and subjectivity? Why are certain forms of sexuality worthy of protection while others are subject to political regulation? In this seminar, we will examine non-normative representations of sexuality in contemporary French and Francophone cultures. Through the study of primary sources ranging from fiction and film to social media and graphic novels, students will learn about the ways in which sexuality intersects with gender, race, social class, and citizenship. In addition, we will seek to develop comparative perspectives on sexual politics between the United States and the French-speaking world. The course is taught in English and requires no knowledge of French.

The Information State: from the Library of Alexandria to the Snowden Files
How do states see and know the world? Our sources will shuttle back-and-forth between recent examples like the United States’ surveillance apparatus, and historical phenomena like the Inka khipu record-keeping system of knotted strings. We will see that administrators have long dreamt of ruling rationally through the collection and mobilization of data. Whether we are dominated by the ‘information state’ or live under ‘surveillance capitalism’ – some deeper context on the ways various institutions have used information as a means of control in the past can help us understand controversial phenomena today: from authentication and metadata to surveillance, searchability, and planned obsolescence.

Segregation in America: Baseball and Race
In this course, we learn essentially about life in baseball's Negro Leagues, and the great Black players and teams, and consider how this institution reflected American values and history. We address important questions about sports and their cultural significance. What do sports tell us about ourselves and our past? Can we understand our cultural heritage by looking through the lens of sports, baseball in this case, and Black baseball specifically? We also examine the relationship between art and sports by reading works of fiction and poetry, and also consider the visual arts.

Digital Platforms and Social Change
/Google/, Airbnb, Etsy, Meta, and Netflix: what do they all have in common? They are digital platforms, aka business applications that run services, which theoretically make our lives easier. In this course, we will examine the social, political, and historical aspects of digital platforms. We will gain good practice in reading, writing, and speaking at the college level by using news articles, book chapters, and scholarly research on digital platforms. We will examine the organizational features of digital platforms where often hidden decisions shape content and services. We will also explore affordances and constraints of these applications in our lives. Finally, we will pause to consider the ways that digital platforms might transform our thoughts and actions and how they might give rise to social change.

Soccer and Society
Whether it goes by soccer, football or futbol, the beautiful game is not only the world’s most popular sport but it is also intertwined with social, economic, political and cultural forces. In this course, we will use soccer as our lens to examine important sociological questions. We will study soccer’s relationship to nationalism and collective identity, globalization and migration, commercialization and labor rights, issues of race, class, gender and sexuality, and the role of soccer in social change and movements for social justice. Reading academic studies about soccer’s players, fans, leagues, mega events and governing bodies, students will develop skills to think critically about the role of sports in contemporary society, and they will conduct their own research project about one aspect of the beautiful game.

Psychological Diagnosis
Psychological disorders do not typically manifest in the body and are not detectable through blood tests or biopsies the way many medical conditions are. Rather, psychological disorders are expressed through patterns of behavior, mood, and interaction. Diagnosing them therefore involves human clinicians making judgments about others’ behavior and well-being, and about what counts as normal or abnormal. Is that as it should be? Why are some behaviors considered just “unusual” while others are labelled “disordered,” and who gets to decide which is which? Who benefits and who suffers from the biases inherent in clinicians’ diagnostic judgments? We will consider these and related questions as we critically examine the process of psychological diagnosis. 3 hrs. sem.

The Cultural Psychology of Happiness
Why are Danish citizens among the happiest people in the world? What is happiness, and what are the conditions for human flourishing? How are psychology and culture related? In this first-year seminar we will explore research from both cultural and positive psychology in a Danish context. We will read and discuss psychological perspectives on the topic, conduct interviews, take field trips, connect ideas and research to our own lives, and write and present what we are learning. The goal of this course is to develop a broader understanding of the role of culture in psychological processes and how societies can support or restrain human satisfaction, as well as to address implications for ourselves and for a global, multicultural society. (This seminar is only open to first year students in Copenhagen./)

The Climate Crisis, Place, and Mindful Photography in Copenhagen
Copenhagen, one of the world’s most livable cities, is not immune from the impact of global forces. We will examine the city’s response to three issues associated with the climate crisis: microbursts, migrants, and burning fossil fuels. In this course we will follow a systematic process to create a deeper, more meaningful, and lasting personal connection with Copenhagen as a place. We will study the climate crisis, geographic theories of place and space, and the literature on “mindful photography.” We will conduct photo shoots at locations identified with our three issues and discuss and write about theory, process, and the subsequent connections we make to places in Copenhagen. The course will culminate in an exhibition of photos and oral presentations. (This seminar is only open to first year students in Copenhagen./)

"The Ancient Quarrel": Greek Philosophy, Tragedy, and Comedy
In Plato's day there was a “quarrel” between philosophy and poetry, a rivalry for the ethical education of citizens. How do the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles communicate ethical dilemmas? Does Aristophanes in The Clouds suggest a serious critique within his comic satire of Socrates? Why does Plato banish the poets from his ideal city in The Republic, but develop his own philosophical poetry? Why does Aristotle in the Poetics emphasize the catharsis of the tragic emotions? Finally, we will consider Nietzsche's interpretation in The Birth of Tragedy: Socratic rationalism deals the fatal blow to tragedy, yet Plato transforms Socrates into a tragic figure. 3 hrs. sem.

Democracy in America Reconsidered
This seminar’s ultimate aim is for students to grasp the evolving relationship between the public controversies in American politics and theoretical writings on liberty and equality that have influenced the course of American political development. Special attention will be paid to the gaps between the principles and practices of US democracy. The course has no doctrine to advance. It seeks to provide the materials and framework for lively and inclusive discussion about the challenges of institutionalizing freedom, democracy, and equality, ideals that inspire other governments around the world. 3 hrs. sem.

The Poet’s ‘I’: Poetry and Autobiography
In this seminar we will work to discover the sometimes subtle connections between the "objective" events of a poets’ lives and the poems that they produced. Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins are known as reticent, self-concealing poets; nonetheless their poems tell their life stories. John Berryman is a "confessional" poet; yet questions about the relationship between his poems and his life are similar. Lyn Hejinian is a postmodern poet who complicates all of those questions. We will read a great many poems, as well as letters, diaries, drafts, published biographies, and autobiographical prose by each poet. 3 hrs. sem./disc.

The U.S. American Left: Past, Present, and Future
This course is an introduction to the politics, ideas, and institutions of the U.S. American Left. We will cover the labor movement, the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the New Left of the sixties, and the academic Left that has paid increasing attention to race and gender. Later we turn to the protest movements against climate change, free trade, and growing inequality. The course also focuses on contemporary resistance to Trump, and the resurgent popularity of Marxism and socialism in the United States. Students will leave the course with an understanding of the complex history and possible futures of Left politics today. 3 hrs. sem.

Earth Resources: Origin, Use, and Environmental Impacts
The global economy world politics, and many aspects of our daily lives are dependent on the extraction and use of materials taken from the Earth. Unfortunately, within our lifetimes, we will be faced with significant shortages of many of these resources. In this course we will focus on how resources such as oil, coal, aluminum, and even gem minerals are generated by geological processes, how they are extracted and processed, and how these activities impact the environment. Several field trips will allow us to view first-hand the impacts of resource extraction and use in the local area. 3 hrs. sem.

Faith and Reason
In this seminar we will explore perennial and contemporary questions in the philosophy of religion: Is there a God? Are objective proofs of God possible, or is religious belief founded on subjective feelings? What is faith? The modern period has been a time of unprecedented crisis for religion, and we will focus in particular on these challenges and responses to them. Is religion, as Freud thought, just wish-fulfillment? Is religious belief compatible with science? Can any religion claim to be the true religion given the plurality of religious faiths? Readings will include works by St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Kant, Kierkegaard, William James, Freud, and contemporary philosophers. 3 hrs. sem.

Euripides and Athens
Was the tragic genius of Euripides (480?-406 BC) corrupted by the atheistic rationalism of the sophists and the philosophy of Socrates (470-399 BC), as their Athenian contemporary, the comic poet Aristophanes, alleged? Nietzsche makes that view the basis of his attack on Socrates in The Birth of Tragedy (1872). Or, was Euripides in fact "the most tragic of the poets," as Aristotle argued in his Poetics, written during the half century after Euripides' death in 406 BC? In this course we discuss twelve of Euripides' extant plays in the context of 5th c. BC Greek political and intellectual history, with the help of Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and some modern critics. 3 hrs. sem.

Shakespeare's Characters
Shakespeare’s reputation owes much to his characters; yet well-known as they are, they remain mysterious. What did they mean in Shakespeare’s time? How do they still succeed as characters? What explains idiotic Bottom’s charisma? What does Henry V’s flirtation with Princess Katherine or Othello’s jealousy about Desdemona reveal about Elizabethan—and our own—understandings of gender and race? Such questions will help us develop skills in speaking, writing, and critical inquiry. Texts will include at most three plays from among the following: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Much Ado About Nothing, Merchant of Venice, Henry V, Measure for Measure, Hamlet, Othello, Lear, as well as contextual readings. We will also study a film of one of the plays. 3 hrs. sem.

Printmaking in the Time of Rembrandt
In this course we will study a selection of seventeenth-century Dutch prints from the collection of the Middlebury College Museum of Art, which includes etchings and engravings by artists such as Hendrick Golztius, Rembrandt van Rijn, Adriaen van Ostade, Nicolaes Berchem, and Cornelis Dusart, among others. Students will learn and write about the history of printmaking in the Dutch Republic by working virtually with the objects in the collection, as well as other primary and secondary sources. Students in this course will also write short essays to be included in an online catalogue of the Museum’s collection of seventeenth-century Dutch prints. 3 hrs. sem.

J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth
In this course we will explore the philology, philosophy, ecology, and theology of J.R.R.Tolkien as expressed in his Middle-earth Legendarium. We will begin with close readings of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, looking at the literary aspects of the storytelling and exploring important sources and influences including Beowulf and Norse mythology. We will then turn to the specific tasks of exploring the four subjects mentioned above, making use of secondary scholarship such as: Shippey’s J.R.R.Tolkien Author of the Century and Kreeft’s The Philosophy of J.R.R.Tolkien. Some emphasis will be given to Tolkien’s environmental vision. 3 hrs. sem.

The Beast in the Jungle
In this course we will explore some literary texts in which the practice of exploration itself yields a complex confrontation with, and often breakdown of, identity and will. Westerners’ longing to separate themselves from home and make contact with a foreign “other” arises from the high purposes that set imperial adventures in motion in the first place. Readings will include Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Forster’s Passage to India, Waugh’s Handful of Dust, Bowles’ Sheltering Sky, Stone’s/ Dog Soldiers/, Duras’ The Lover, Greene’s A Burnt-Out Case. 3 hrs. sem.

Your Brain at College
You are embarking on a four-year journey in which the actions you take, material you study, and people you interact with will collectively produce lasting changes to your brain (and by extension, fundamentally alter who you are). Utilizing research from psychology and neuroscience, our course will explore a diverse set of mechanisms (e.g. sleep, learning/memory, emotion/stress) that contribute to persistent changes in brain structure and function. In doing so, you will develop 1) an appreciation for the complexity of the brain and 2) strategies to help your own brain successfully navigate the college experience. 3 hrs. sem.

Cities in Crisis
“I imagine the American city to be a growing tree,” the historian Sam Bass Warner has written. “As it bursts forth each spring, it is set upon by clouds of parasites.” In this seminar we will expand upon Warner’s insight and explore how American cities have coped in the past with natural disaster, the flight of capital, racial and class tensions, injurious planning, and the COVID-19 pandemic. We will turn to case studies of individual cities in crisis, including New York City, New Orleans, and Detroit, in the quest for an understanding of patterns of vulnerabilities and resilience in urban American history. 3 hrs. sem.

Space, Time, and Measurement
The ability to precisely measure distance and time is essential to modern science and technology. Improvements in the technology of measurement made possible scientific discoveries that then redefined our fundamental understanding of space, time and measurement themselves. We’ll follow this process, from Galileo’s pendulum through Einstein’s theory of relativity to modern applications in quantum mechanics and cosmology, using historical and scientific texts, analytic writing, and a few hands-on activities to understand these ideas and their impact on science and society. 3 hr. sem.

Mathematics of Board Games
People have been playing games since as early as 2000 B.C. Since then, avid players have devised strategies to maximize their chances of winning. In this course we will dissect a variety of modern board games and analyze various strategies for each game using mathematics, computers, and intuition. We will further discuss whether an optimal strategy exists for each game and propose modifications to existing rules and scoring schemes. The course will culminate with a project to construct a board game. All are welcome regardless of mathematical background. 3 hrs. sem

Political Consumerism and the Consumerization of Politics
In the United States, we fashion our identities through the purchases we make. We form communities based on shared loyalty to particular brands and consumer lifestyles. Political campaigns are commercialized and voters choose among prepackaged candidates. For many, the way to participate in social activism is to buy something. But can we solve problems such as globalization, environmental degradation, and excessive consumption through more or different consumption? Our study of current issues in U.S. consumer culture will include culture jamming, boycotts, and the anti-sweatshop and Fair Trade movements, as well as greenwashing, cause branding, and other corporate practices.
3 hrs. sem/disc

Communication: From Analog to Digital and Back Again
In this seminar we will undertake an interdisciplinary study of the nearly ubiquitous process of communication—that is, the transmission and receipt of information. This will run the gamut from oral to written to digital language; from humans to cells to subatomic particles; from hearing to sight to touch; and from its first origins into the modern day. Throughout, we will observe the interplay between the analog world in which we physically live and the increasingly digital world that humanity has created through modern technology, and we will attempt to gain a larger perspective on the transformation that has taken place, along with its effects. 3 hrs sem.

The Malleable Human
The human body is a remarkable product of evolution, but too often it fails to function as we might like. The genome is essential in determining the body’s characteristics, known as its phenotype, but its influence is not unalterable. In this course we will examine physical, chemical, and genetic modifications to the human body and genome and how they might influence our current perceptions of concepts such as therapy, enhancement, and even humanness itself. We will use non-fiction books, film, scientific literature, and essays to explore how the human genome intersects with external modification. 3 hrs. sem.

Cinema and Memory
Depicting the experience of memory is a challenge filmmakers have returned to repeatedly throughout cinema’s history. In this seminar we will screen films from around the world to explore the ways in which individual and cultural memory have found expression in cinema. We will screen narrative features, documentaries, and experimental films as we compare the various aesthetic strategies filmmakers from different periods and cultures have used to portray the complex relationships between past and present, real and imagined. Films screened will include After Life; The Bad and the Beautiful; The Long Day Closes; Hiroshima, mon amour; La Jetée; Shoah. 3 hrs. sem.

Everyday Life in South Africa, 1948-Present
In this seminar we will explore some of the social worlds of South Africans amid the country's recent decades of turbulent and dramatic change. We will look at how different groups within the nation's diverse population have understood and experienced the rise of the apartheid system, its demise, and its legacies in their "everyday" lives and interactions. We will draw from various sources - non-fiction, fiction, film, music, and other forms of popular culture - to interpret these social dynamics and their ongoing significance in a post-apartheid society. 3 hrs. sem.

First Language Acquisition
All human children have the potential to acquire any human language in the right environment, yet it is much more difficult for adults to achieve native proficiency in a second language. Why? In this course we will explore questions such as: How does first language acquisition happen? Is it effortless? Are humans “hardwired” with language? Is it true that after the “Critical Period,” i.e., the onset of puberty, humans have lost this capacity? We will also explore social and cultural constraints on language acquisition, and learn basic techniques for collecting and analyzing data in language acquisition research. 3 hrs. sem.

Transitional Justice: Reckoning with the Past
In this seminar we will examine how emerging democracies reckon with former authoritarian regimes and their legacies. In contrast to stable democracies, societies in transition that seek to overcome a legacy of large scale human rights violations—and minimize the risks of their recurrence—must search for a delicate political compromise that will bring some justice without undermining the new order. Several case studies from Asia, Latin America, South Africa, and postcommunist Europe will help us understand the forces and factors that shape the dilemma: to prosecute and punish versus to forgive and forget. Course readings will be supplemented by documentaries and fiction films. 3 hrs. sem.

Mountains of the Northeast
The mountains of the northeastern U.S. are an integral part of the cultural and natural history of this region. In this seminar we will consider topics germane to northeastern mountains including the geologic origin of the northern Appalachians, characteristics of mountain environments, changing perceptions of northeastern mountains over time, mountains as resources for modern society, and challenges facing these environments today and in the future. Readings and discussion will be combined with field excursions to enhance our understanding of mountains from a variety of perspectives. 3 hrs sem.

Political Theory of the Black Diaspora
In the 1900s, horrified by the expansion of European colonialism into Africa, a global network of Black intellectuals emerged to explain major developments in world politics. As they argued, the racial project of colonialism, which included replacing indigenous systems with European-style states, shaped the international political economy. We will read works by scholars including DuBois, Amilcar Cabral, and Walter Rodney, to address the following: How did racism shape capitalism? Can Black people find emancipation in imperial states? We will see how pan-African philosophy adapted to international events, such as the end of WWI, the establishment of the UN, and eventual independence from colonialism.

The True Believer
When he published The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements, social thinker Eric Hoffer sought to explain exactly what inspires people to commit themselves passionately to causes defined by their unyielding belief. Like Hoffer, we will examine not only what has motivated individuals over time to join extremist social, political, and religious movements, but also the psychologies of those who have led them throughout history. We will try to determine precisely who the true believer is, and whether true belief is generally of greater benefit or harm to the believer and to broader society.

The Philosophy of Human Rights
What are human rights? What duties, if any, flow from them, and who is morally obligated to bear those duties? In this course, we will investigate the philosophical origins and development of the concept of human rights. We will critically analyze both historical and contemporary moral perspectives on the existence and nature of human rights. What does it mean to say that one possesses a human right? In addition to examining the existence and nature of human rights, we will take a closer look at the issue of human rights related to world poverty and humanitarian intervention. 3 hrs. sem.

The Moral of the Story: Exploring Ethics through Literature and Music
Ethics is the study of how we ought to live, as individuals and in society. For millennia theologians and philosophers have constructed ethical arguments, but for much longer people have shared songs and stories to convey and contest moral values. In this course we will study selected English-language novels, poems, and music as moral expressions. We will explore the ethical issues they raise, including considerations of what it means to be human, what justice demands, and how we should balance individual freedom and social duty. Works we will examine include Shelley’s Frankenstein, Asimov’s I, Robot, and the African-American spiritual tradition. 3 hrs. sem.

Anthropology and Climate Change
Climate change has become one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, and much of the discussion about its causes and consequences is based on the biophysical sciences and is strongly influenced by political and economic interests. Anthropology offers a wider set of perspectives on climate change. In this seminar we will examine cross-cultural case studies of past and present responses to climate change. We will look at how technological, economic, social, political, and spiritual dynamics shape the way people understand and react to climate change. Key themes will include gender and vulnerability, social-ecological resilience, climate ideologies, development policy, social scale, and ethnometeorology.

Reading Africa
What do we know about Africa? In this seminar we will explore this vast continent through novels written about it. African and non-African writers will help us discover the continent’s geographies, histories, cultures, and politics. We will study particular phenomena affecting Africans over the centuries including colonialism, dictatorial rule, humanitarianism, the women’s rights movement, and racism. With the help of films and student presentations, we will focus on Algeria, Nigeria, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. 3 hrs. sem.

Time Around A Table: A Culinary History of Italy
Food is a window into the culture and values of any society. In this seminar we will explore the history of Italian culture by investigating the ever-changing issues relating to food, through books, articles, films, recipes, and cooking. How did production and consumption change over time? What did the Ancient Romans eat? What was Italian cuisine like before pasta and tomatoes? What triggered the Italian appetite to change? Such questions allow us to examine what culinary choices reveal about today’s Italy. 3 hrs. sem.

Singing Communities
Humans have used their voices in expressive communication for thousands of years, singing for work, comfort, love, praise, and many other purposes. In this course we will explore the role of singing in human communities to address questions about human need. Why do people sing together? Can singing enhance quality of life,and build community? We will sing, research singing traditions, and lead singing engagement activities in the Middlebury community. We will discuss our work with each other, and write about our experience. Interest in group vocal music is encouraged. No prior vocal experience required. 3 hrs. sem

Disability, Difference, and Society
In this course we explore the varied and evolving meanings of disability—as category, lived experience, and way of interpreting the world, as well as the contexts that shape these meanings. As a First Year Seminar, primary attention centers on critical reading, thinking, writing, and collaborative skills. Course materials and assignments offer different disciplinary approaches and writing styles, fostering both individual and collective work. Films, on-line exhibits, music, advertising, popular media, and the material world reflect the wide range of sources on which this course draws. Dominant issues, including representation, education, employment, bioethics, institutions, community, policies, access, and justice serve as touchstones for research, analysis, and learning. Sustained attention to interlocking identities, including disability, race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, socioeconomic class, gender, sexual orientation and identification, and age define the field of disability studies and this course. While the United States is highlighted in this class, transnational and global components figure into our work as well. 3 hrs. sem.

Immigrants and the U.S. Economy
The demise of national origin quotas for U.S. immigration in 1965, and its replacement with an emphasis on family reunification, opened the gates to a large and increasing flow of immigrants from the developing countries. Accordingly, this seminar will focus, within an interdisciplinary framework, on such currently pressing immigration issues as: are native-born low-skill workers displaced by recent immigrants? Is English language proficiency crucial for immigrant assimilation in the labor market? What is the role of close-knit communities in facilitating immigrant entrepreneurial activities? The mixture of perspectives should help shed light on diverse immigration policy options. 3 hrs. sem.

Virginia Woolf in Context
In this seminar we will focus on the novels, essays, and short stories of Virginia Woolf, considering them in the light of her social, political, and artistic contexts and commitments. We will explore in particular the tension in her work between Victorian values and aesthetics and the progressive goals of the modernist movement. Our readings will take us from the early novels (Voyage Out, Night and Day) to the later experimental works (To the Lighthouse, Orlando, The Waves). Some of the topics central to the seminar will be Woolf’s engagement with modernism and its key figures (such as James Joyce); her treatment of gender and sexuality in her essays and elsewhere; and her struggles with mental illness. We will intersperse our reading of Woolf’s prose with consideration of some film versions of her work, and we will conclude the seminar with a reading of Michael Cunningham’s 1998 creative homage to Mrs. Dalloway: The Hours.

Postwar Japanese History in Film and Literature
In this seminar we will study the history of postwar Japan (1945 to the present), focusing on how literature and film have engaged the defining historical and political questions of this period. The seminar is organized around
specific themes, including: trauma and war memory, the Allied occupation, the cold war in East Asia, high economic growth in the 1960s, political protest, post-coloniality, and a resurgent nationalism. Students will learn postwar Japanese history while also considering the possibilities of pursuing historical analysis through translated literature and narrative film. 3 hrs. sem.

American Environmentalisms After 1960
In this course we will examine the emergence of multiple threads of environmentalism in the United States since 1960. We will examine popular media portrayals of the environment in crisis through critical analysis of photographs, advertisements, and popular magazines, and environmentalism on college campuses. We will pay particular attention to emerging criticisms of environmentalism for both its failures to address issues of social inequality, particularly those of class and race, and its threat to conventional ideas of economic growth and prosperity. Student work will include essays, independent and group research projects, and collaborative digital projects.

Art and the Environment
“The land is not the setting for the work but a part of the work.” So did the artist Walter de Maria describe The Lightning Field (1980), a site-specific, environmental work of art built in an isolated part of western New Mexico. In this seminar we will discuss the different ways that recent artists have used, commented upon, and at times altered their surrounding environment. We will take an expansive view of the term "environmental" in our seminar as we explore natural, urban, media-based, and conceptual artistic environments. 3 hrs. sem.

Language and Social Justice
In this seminar we will explore questions such as the following: What is the relationship between language and power? How does linguistic prejudice contribute to social inequality? Is language a human right, and if so, what are the implications? We will engage with scholarly, journalistic, and literary works, including writing by Julia Alvarez, James Baldwin, John Baugh, Lisa Delpit, Rosina Lippi-Green, Jamila Lyiscott, Richard Rodriguez, Debora Tannen, and others. Students will develop a range of reading, writing, and oral presentation skills, and will receive feedback on their work throughout the semester. 3 hrs. sem.

Gender and the Making of Space
In this seminar we will investigate the complex relationship between gender and architecture, examining how the design of the built environment (buildings, urban spaces, etc.) can reinforce or undermine ideas about the respective roles of women and men in society, from the creation of masculine and feminine spaces to the gendered nature of the architectural profession. By looking at both visual evidence and textual sources, we will also uncover how the social construction of gender roles and gendered spaces are—and continue to be—inflected by race, class, and sexuality.

Science and Democracy: Philosophical Perspectives
The scientific method has been heralded as inherently democratic, based as it is on observation rather than authority. Yet the relationship between science and democracy is much more complex: what happens to our own relationship to democracy when we find ourselves needing to rely on expert scientific knowledge to make informed decisions? In this course we will explore the work of philosophers and science studies scholars to help us understand the many challenges of integrating science and democracy. We will consider what might be required for scientific and technological research to be objective, trustworthy, just, and able to serve the needs of a diverse society well, and we will examine challenges such as the commercialization and politicization of science. Topics such as climate change, health policy, medical research, AI, and food safety will help frame our considerations of the appropriate role of science in developing sound public policy.

Sexuality and Power on Stage: Female Trouble, Closet Homos, and Shameless Queers
What do Sophie Treadwell's Machinal, Martin Sherman's Bent, and Tony Kushner’s Angels in America teach us about the history of sexual marginalization? In this seminar we will study a selection of US American plays in which gender, desire, and sexuality constitute a problem for society and the state. Students will learn how to analyze dramatic texts from the director’s and the actor’s perspectives with a focus on action, structure, characterization, and space in addition to genre and larger themes. Cinematic renderings of the plays and in-class staging exercises will help us engage the embodied dimension of performance 3 hrs. sem.

Biology of Attraction
Why is one person attracted to another? We will explore both the evolutionary origins of mate choice and the physiological mechanisms that underlie attraction. The process of sexual selection, first proposed by Charles Darwin, shapes the mating decisions and courtship displays in all animal species, and we will consider how the same process shapes human preferences and potentially human intelligence more broadly. Based on recent research with rodents, we will also consider how neural connections and hormone levels influence feelings of love and lust. The Evolution of Beauty and The Chemistry Between Us will be our primary texts, supplemented by journal articles. 3 hrs sem

Language and Ethnic Identity
Language is a central feature of human identity. In this seminar we will explore the multiple ways in which language is used in society to express, create, and perform these identities. We will analyze—from a sociolinguistic perspective—how variation in speakers’ linguistic resources (e.g., pronunciation, syntax, word choice, language choice) can serve as tools to shape, stereotype, or subvert national, regional, and other types of ethnic identities. We will draw examples from linguistic research, literature, film, television, political discourse, popular songs, the internet, and other media in the United States as well as in other societies. 3 hrs. sem.

Karma
Why do things happen to us as they do? For many throughout Asia, the answer has been or is karma, the ancient Indian notion that over multiple lifetimes individuals reap the effects of past actions. We will examine this powerful idea of moral causality in depth, considering striking variations in classical Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, and compare it to other theories of causation, both religious and scientific. We will also study the wealth of practices believed to improve future lives (and ultimately lead to liberation) and investigate diverse, surprising consequences of karma in some Asian societies, including justification of social hierarchy, mistreatment of some groups, and vegetarianism. 3 hrs. sem.

Pyramid Schemes, Bubbles, and Crashes
In this seminar we will study the anthropology of exchange, then use it to analyze ethnographies of financial speculators, labor migrants, microcredit borrowers, and other agents and victims of global capitalism. We will focus on conflicting obligations to kin and to creditors, on how people in different cultures and social classes juggle these obligations, and how the growth of financial debt can turn social relationships into commodities. Studying debt and how it is leveraged in different societies and historical eras will show why capitalism is so vulnerable to speculative booms, swindles, and collapses. 3 hrs. sem. )

Money, Morals, and Madmen in Global Politics
Non-state actors bring resources (money), new norms (morals), and revisionist aims (madmen) to global governance. In this seminar we will look at how private actors, including corporations, non-governmental organizations, and terrorist groups, have shaped development and conflict around the world. Throughout, we will reflect on how these groups represent societal interests and work to improve or undermine state sovereignty and global governance. 3 hrs. sem.

The Empire Writes Back: Politics and Literature from Postcolonial Africa, the Caribbean, and South Asia
A hundred years ago, Britain ruled about a quarter of the world’s population, and the British Empire covered approximately a quarter of the earth’s land surface. Though most of the colonies have won formal independence, the effects of global imperialism continue to be felt, and arguably Empire has taken on other forms. In this seminar we will discuss fiction, poetry, and drama by postcolonial writers such as J. M. Coetzee, Derek Walcott, Daljit Nagra, Wole Soyinka, Mahashweta Devi, Jean Rhys, Arundhati Roy, Edward Said, and Frantz Fanon, addressing questions about the nature and effects of colonization, anti-colonial resistance, representation, agency, and power. 3 hrs. sem.

Poetry and Poetics
This seminar is an introduction to the formal and generic aspects of lyric poetry in English. We will work to develop sensitivity to the various strategies of meaning available to poets—meter, rhyme, sound, diction, imagery—in order to read poems more closely, thoughtfully, and with pleasure. We will also attend to the historical, cultural, and biographical contexts of poems and poets, but our emphasis will be on lyric poems by a variety of poets from a range of periods and traditions. This is a literature, rather than a creative writing, course; but student poets are welcome to join. 3 hrs. sem.

Marx and Marxism
Is Marxism still relevant in a world that has witnessed the collapse of most self-declared Marxist states? To address this question, we will explore the development of central Marxist concepts (including class struggle, alienation, revolution) both in Marx’s own words and in the writings and actions of those he inspired. Central to our inquiry will be consideration of the historical relationship between Marxist theory and practice (in a range of geographic and cultural contexts) and the adaptation of Marxist ideas for cultural and political critiques in the West. 3 hrs. sem.

Memory Matters
In this course, we look at Holocaust memory cultures that have evolved in the US and Germany and at the processes that have shaped our collective imaginations of the Shoah across time, space and genres. Students will develop critical awareness of the power of stories and the importance of memory work in all of our lives. They will also reflect on their own roles in the transmission of memory and the formation of collective and national memory cultures. We will examine documentary and feature films, read survivors' testimonies and fictional accounts, comics, poetry, theoretical and historical reflections, and examine monuments, counter-monuments and commemorative sites.

Shakespeare's 'Nasty' Sonnets
Of the love triangle that structures William Shakespeare’s enigmatic series of sonnets, Stephen Booth has quipped: “Shakespeare was almost certainly homosexual, bisexual, or heterosexual.” Of the 154 poems, most people know only one or two of the most innocent (“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”), but the series as a whole has scandalized prudish readers for centuries with its confessions of heterosexual lust, homoerotic love, envy, jealousy, misogyny, racism, abjection, pride, and some moping—all in some of the most exquisite verse ever composed in English. In this course we will examine, discuss, and write about the language of Shakespeare's sonnets and their literary historical context as well as the range of critical theories (and sometimes utterly wacky notions) about their mysterious contents, including those from the likes of Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Shaw, and William Wordsworth. This is a feminist, queer-friendly, sex-positive course. 3 hrs. sem.

Reason, Morality, and Cultural Difference
Different cultures have different standards of what counts as true, rational, and moral. Are all of these standards equally good? Which considerations could possibly support this position? Furthermore, should we accept the consequences that follow from the claim that all of these standards are equally good—for example, that the structure of the universe changes in accordance with a culture’s commitments to modern science, or that it is morally acceptable for some cultures to engage in genocide? By reading, discussing, and writing about contemporary philosophical readings on these topics, we will address these questions.

Playing Dead: Feminist Readings of TV Crime Drama
Our television screens are populated with crime dramas, some focusing on the independent investigator, others on the police, and still others on the technicians who help secure evidence. In this course we will explore the cultural beliefs and biases implicit in these shows. Using a feminist lens, we will explore the grammar of this genre in terms of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Who gets defined as the criminal, who the victim, and why? What makes crime dramas pleasurable, and why do we watch them even when they are formulaic? How have they changed over time? 3 hrs. sem.

Once Upon a Time – Folk Fairy Tales of the World
Tell me a story! We will examine the complex, inter-connected folk fairy tale traditions found in every society. Comparing fairy tale variants from around the world, we will explore their convoluted and fertile relationships as observed in the rise of fairytale collections in 15th Century Europe, reaching a culmination in the Brothers Grimm collection, often synonymous with the fairy tale itself. To attain a more dispassionate critical stance we will explore theoretical approaches to the fairy tales by such authers as Jack Zipes, Ruth Bottigheimer, Maria Tatar, and Kay Stone, and conclude by examining modern variants in prose, poetry, and film. 3 hrs. sem.

Reading and Writing Contemporary Art
How do we understand art produced in the present day? How does this art help us understand the world? In this course we will consider multiple objects designated by the term “contemporary art:” a global industry, an art-historical discourse, a set of cultural practices evolving in dialogue with technology, a symbolic arena for the consideration of political values. We will familiarize ourselves with notable works in contemporary art’s unfinished canon, and pursue the challenge of writing about the visual. Goals include: writing and revising college-level essays, learning effective research techniques, and analyzing the culture of the contemporary art world. 3 hrs. sem.

Refugee Stories
“Stories are just things we fabricate,” says a character in Viet Nguyen’s The Refugees. “We search for them in a world besides our own, then leave them here to be found, garments shed by ghosts.” In this course students will find stories by and about a paradigmatic modern figure: the displaced refugee seeking asylum in unfamiliar lands. Highlighting literary and visual representations, we will also draw from history, sociology, anthropology, environmental studies, and feminist critique. Beginning with the Syrian refugee crisis, we will circle back to the Vietnam War and the lingering questions it poses to today’s social justice movement. 3 hrs. sem.

Literature and Moral Choice
Literature’s subject is almost always morality; that is, how human beings treat one another. We will read and discuss difficult moral and ethical decisions made by characters in fiction and poetry, including works by Toni Morrison, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky among others. We will also acquaint ourselves with major theories of moral development and moral reasoning, and through reading, writing, discussion, and preparing oral presentations, we will explore how human beings, including those portrayed by writers who are great students of the human spirit, try to do the right thing in a complex modern and postmodern world.

Natural History of Addison County
In this course, we will forge a sense of place through attention and connection— learning to see the relationships within the region's ecological communities and cultivating relationships within its human communities. To this end, students will engage in a series of field trips in Middlebury and surrounding parts of Addison County. We will use Natural History as a structuring principle, building an understanding of the ways that current landscapes are shaped by influences from bedrock geology to human history to plant and animal assemblages. Our goal over the course of the semester is to help each other find our own places within the wider community, and by so doing, to help make Middlebury feel more like home. Be ready to venture outside. [One 50-min lec. + one 3 hrs. sem./lab]

Writer's Decathlon
One of the best skills a writer can hope to cultivate is flexibility—the ability to write for different audiences, different situations, different media, and with different goals in mind. In this course we will develop our skills as flexible writers by tackling ten different writing exercises, including the op-ed, several sub-genres of the traditional academic paper, personal essays, creative fiction, the persuasive essay, business communications, modern tech-based genres, and more—we may even try our hand at writing an old-fashioned love letter with a quill pen. We will workshop our writings in class regularly, and examples of these various genres will be our course readings. 3 hrs. sem.

Invention of Nature: Global and Local
In this class we take a deep dive into the nineteenth century archive where students will discover how Middlebury’s first professor, Frederick T. Hall, institutionalized the scientific study of nature here at a time when most colleges emphasized seminary studies. We will compare the careers of two of his students: Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and Edwin James, both of whom became explorers of the western territories and experts in Native American languages. We will look at their expeditionary writings and examine how these were taken up and used by a diverse audience that included scientists, industrialists, legislators, poets, clergy, and adventure-seekers. We will explore how these writings and their subsequent use help to invent a natural history for the new nation. We will also examine the ambivalent implication of James and Schoolcraft’s writings for the status of the Native Americans with whom they worked. 3 hrs. sem.

Literary Borders
In this course examines imaginative possibilities of the border in literary and visual texts. We will consider how writers portray cultural, national, temporal, and linguistic frontiers; how literature embodies the experience of crossing or dwelling within borderlands; how texts reinforce or transgress the boundaries at which we are positioned as readers; and how writing itself can construct and bridge differences. Reading poems and stories of liminal figures—em/immigrants, expatriates, exiles, animals, misfits, racial others, queers, and adventurers—we will analyze how borders challenge our ideas about place, body, identity, language, and text. In encounters with hybrid genres and multimedia texts that disrupt the way we read, we will explore the edges of language. For a broader picture of the border in the human imagination, we will also turn to films and other arts. Texts may include Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Justin Torres’ We the Animals, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, and Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, among others. 3 hrs. sem.

Reward for Being: Emily Dickinson and her Influence
In this seminar we will focus on Emily Dickinson, the 19th century American poet whose work, as scholar Susan Howe writes, “penetrates to the indefinite limits of written communication.” We will immerse ourselves in the letters and poems of Dickinson, with a particular focus on her relationship to her own literary vocation. We will also investigate the influence Dickinson has had on American poets in the 20th and 21st centuries. Texts will include primary sources as well as a biography of and critical work on Dickinson. 3 hrs. sem.

It's not you, it's me. Autobiographical Explorations in Film
In this seminar we will study a range of autobiographical practices in audiovisual media to examine how filmmakers have used the self as a starting point to explore universal issues like the essence of family bonds, finding love, or understanding their identity. Experimental practices (like Jonas Mekas’ Diaries), fictionalized accounts (Mike Mills’ Beginners), and documentary strategies (Daniel Khan’s My Architect and Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell) will inform our own creative processes and explorations. Through close readings, critical papers, and our own pieces, we will attempt to better understand the world and who we are in it. Note to students: this course involves substantial streaming of films for assigned viewing. 3 hrs. sem.

From Godzilla to Totoro: Monsters in Japanese Culture
In this course we will examine a series of Japanese monsters (foxes, badgers, demons, vengeful spirits, and others), which populate Japanese myths, tales, folklore, art, and popular culture, in order to understand how the fear of the Other leads to marginalization and demonization and how monsters are created to contain undesirable figures. We will also explore the literary expressions of cultural anxieties generated by lack of understanding or misunderstanding of phenomena, such as the powers of nature and the afterlife, as well as the existential terrors resulting from trauma and war. 3 hrs. sem.

Fighting for Justice
How do people overcome injustice? In this course, we will study historic justice movements, including abolition and the fight against Jim Crow. We will then analyze two contemporary movements: the fights against mass incarceration and against climate change. After comparing and contrasting these fights with past movements and with each other, we will study ideas for accelerating the pursuit of justice in our time. Our reading will include the work of Frederick Douglass, Ella Baker, Bryan Stevenson, Michelle Alexander, Van Jones, and Mary Robinson. During our final two weeks, students will present their ideas for overcoming current forms of injustice. 3 hrs. sem.

Gut Check: Exploring Microbiomes
Imagine there were an organ in your body with a mass similar to that of your heart, which trained your immune system, affecting your weight and perhaps even your behavior. Wouldn’t you want to know? There is such an organ — your microbiome, the collection of microbes in and on your body.
You are not alone; corals, squid, beetles, and many other organisms harbor microbiomes that generate nutrients, produce light, and defend their host organisms in the environment. Increasingly, we also understand microbiomes to be intrinsically and deeply embedded within social and environmental (in)justice. We will read I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong, as well as other popular science and research papers to investigate these fascinating microbes.

How do I Improvise?*

American Revolutions: Reacting to the Past
In this course we will be examining three moments of intellectual and cultural conflict in the United States, which will likely include 1) The Revolution in NYC, 1775-76, 2) Greenwich Village, 1913 (Suffrage, Labor and the New Woman) and, 3) Chicago, 1968. We will dive deep into these revolutionary moments via Reacting to the Past games, in which you will present the perspectives of historical characters—sometimes with values quite different than your own--in lively debate. These games do not have a fixed script: you’ll find yourself researching historic documents, collaborating, making public speeches, plotting—and in the end, perhaps even rewriting history.

Education in the Anthropocene
Traditionally, a liberal arts education has placed humans at the center of study. But, what if we decentered humans in order to explore how to live not as overseer, but as an embodied expression of a much larger, shared Earthscape? What is the balance of liberty and social justice in such a paradigm? What if this new, required spacing between us is not a barrier to our engagement, but the opening possibility of a larger, shared consciousness? Using a conceptual framework of land-body-spirit-mind, we will engage learning at the crossroads of these questions. Is six feet really the distance between when your breath ends and mine begins? 3 hrs. sem.

Play and the Politics of Childhood
In this seminar we will examine the culture of the United States through the lens of childhood play and how it reflects and challenges mainstream conceptions of social control, freedom, and political power. This includes investigating the history of children’s rights and the social boundaries we build around young people. Drawing from the rich field of “playwork” we will interrogate the social messages conveyed by play environments and play objects (aka “toys”) and what those messages may indicate about the society from which they emerge. Through essays and texts, documentary films and podcasts, lectures, guest speakers and personal reflection we will interrogate the purpose of play in our culture. 3 hrs. sem.

Globalization Interrupted
Globalization is not inevitable, and in recent years, a wide variety of counterforces—from resurgent nationalisms to global pandemics—have worked to undermine the increased connectivity that has come with rapid technological change. In this seminar we will look at both broad concepts—such as identity formation, nationalism, and trade—and case studies—such as COVID-19, Brexit, and right-wing populism in Brazil—to understand the broad cultural, economic, and political forces at work in the current global context. 3 hrs. sem.

Native Presence and Performance: Reclaiming the Indigenous Narrative
In this sminar we will respectfully engage with contemporary Native American and First Nations theatre makers representing the nations of the Kiowa/Delaware, Onieda/Ojibwe, Cherokee, and Kana/Rappahannock. Additionally, we will meet with Abenaki culture bearers to learn how cultural expression has contributed to their nation’s reclamation and decolonization in Vermont and the Northeast. Despite centuries of attempted erasure, the Indigenous of the Americas have survived and thrived in powerful ways. Conversations with Native leaders and artists, will deepen understanding while strengthening communication skills (including listening); writing assignments will strengthen critical, sensitive, and reflexive analysis. 3 hrs. sem.

Race, Body, and Spectacle
Through an array of visual, aural, and literary materials, we will explore the many connections between racial discourses and corporeal imagery and their role in the reproduction of interwoven systems of racism, capitalism, patriarchy, cisgenderism, heterosexism, and ableism. To this end, we will pay particular attention to cultures of spectacle and performance in which the body is staged and codified in terms of race, gender, sexuality, and (dis)ability for particular audiences. Examples will include fitness culture and contests, beauty pageants, sporting events, music videos, minstrelsy, and other cultures of spectacle from around the globe. Furthermore, we will interrogate how the racial spectacle is embedded into visual arts and literature spanning different stages of empire and capitalism. 3 hrs. sem.

Rites of Passage: Buddhism
In this course we will explore the topics of symbolic death and rebirth as expressed in rites of passage and initiation, especially in Buddhism and the Blues. We will draw upon sources from religions and cultures around the world, examining them from multiple perspectives: mythology, psychology, anthropology, religion, literature, and popular music. Since the transition from childhood to adulthood is one of the most celebrated and challenging rites of passage, students will make connections with their own lives. We will also consider larger, macro-level processes, such as the transition from traditional worldviews to modernism and postmodern worldviews. 3 hrs. sem.

Race and Representation
In this seminar we explore cultural representations of race in popular and mass media. How are racial identity and racial difference represented in the media around us? What political, historical, and social contexts shape racial representations? Conversely, how might cultural representations of race shed light on its politics and histories? The foundational premise of this course is that popular culture has much to tell us about “serious” topics, such as capitalism, state violence, and structural inequities. We will commit to the idea that the pieces of culture we consume for fun or entertainment are worthy of critical study and rigorous critique. In this vein, we will critically analyze popular cultural texts that span a wide range of media, such as literature, television, film, and music. 3 hrs. sem.

The International Drug Trade
This seminar examines the political economy of drug trafficking in the Western Hemisphere. How have transnational drug markets evolved, and why? How has narco-trafficking differentially affected the political, economic, legal, financial, and social systems of producer, consumer, and trans-shipment countries? What policy responses are available to combat it? How should we weigh alternative policy options? Our focus is the cocaine source countries in Latin America's Andean region, the chief trans-shipment country (Mexico), and the principal consumer country (the U.S.). We also will examine the drug trade's effects on America’s society and criminal justice system. 3 hrs. sem

Schools and Inequality
In this course we will explore fundamental questions about the relationship between schools and society. What should be the normative goals of education? How do we explain educational disparities? We will look at theories on race, class, disability, gender, and sexuality to examine the role that schools play in reproducing or circumventing inequality in society. Drawing upon both domestic and international contexts, we will incorporate theories and methods from across the social sciences. 3 hrs. sem.

Activism and the U.S. AIDS Crisis *
The history of HIV/AIDS has much to teach us about the politics of late twentieth-century and early twenty-first century American life. Building on foundations laid by earlier generations, people with AIDS in the 1980s organized against government neglect, homophobia, and a profit-driven pharmaceutical industry to demand treatment and care. Using historical scholarship, oral history, digitized archival collections, and film, we will explore a rich yet hidden history of grassroots activism, and consider how race, sexuality, gender, and class shaped responses to HIV/AIDS. In addition to readings-based discussion, students will conduct multi-staged research projects to explore AIDS activism in historical perspective.

The Body in Question
What does literature have to say about the fact that we are “embodied” beings?—that our consciousness interacts with the world through an envelope of flesh that both weighs us down with its mundane requirements and propels us forward with its remarkable abilities and insistent desires? We know that the world at large cares deeply about our bodies, for it continually categorizes us along the lines of race, gender, age, and “normality,” but who gets (or should get) the last word about what our skin and bones declare about us? In this class we will investigate what novelists, playwrights, and poets have to say about our ability to either make peace with our flesh or to transcend it, and whether such outcomes can best be accomplished through religion, imagination, drugs, sexuality, or political action. The works we address will include Shelley’s Frankenstein, Morrison’s Sula, Beckett’s Happy Days, Silko’s Ceremony, Coetzee’s Waiting for the Barbarians, and others. 3 hrs. sem.

Architectures of Intimacy: Family in Contemporary Japan
The Japanese terms for family, kazoku, and house, ie, both contain the same Chinese character, a pictogram that registers the connection between a family and the physical dwelling it inhabits. In this course, that connection will be a central framework through which we consider the changing conditions of intimacy and family in Japan since the mid-twentieth century. We will use fiction, film, legal documents, and ethnographic studies to examine the relationship between intimacy and home, architecture and family in a rapidly transforming sphere of Japanese society.

Growing Up Other in the Americas
Who am I and how do others see me? How do I see myself? This seminar will focus on the growing up and educational experiences of individuals from a number of marginalized groups throughout the Americas. Through novels, memoirs, essays and films from the U.S. and Latin America we will look at such questions as: What does it mean to be "othered"? What does "American" mean? Where and how does one find one's voice? What is the importance of place in one's identity? We will touch on issues of race, gender, ethnicity, ability, sexual orientation, and more. 3 hrs. sem.

Writing Women's Truths
In this course we will examine how women’s lived experiences—their personal truths—have led to greater societal change. We will consider history, literature, psychology, and feminist theory as we analyze the lives and writings of creative women who have examined themselves as subject since the eighteenth century, including Mary Wollstonecraft, Kate Chopin, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Adrienne Rich, bell hooks, Maya Angelou, Isabel Allende, Amy Tan, and others. We will see how their life experiences, choice of genre, and intended audience shaped their rhetorical message, and we will examine the impact those messages had on the societies in which these women lived. 3 hrs sem.

How Money Makes the World Go Round
Our society is structured around money – how to get it, how to spend it, how to amass it. Power comes easily to those with more than their fair share of it, and powerlessness plagues those without it. In this seminar we will study key aspects of the financial system, while examining the inherent biases, inequity, and unfairness within the institutions we rely on. We will explore ideas about how to address those impediments through readings devoted to current events, personal memoirs, and essays. Our discussions will illuminate the problematic way that money makes the world go round, while we also learn to navigate our own personal financial journey. 3 hrs. sem.

Adirondack Park: Conversations about Conservation
The Adirondack Park in northern New York is considered one of the world’s greatest experiments in conservation. Throughout its ~130 year history, this experiment has attempted to balance rigorous environmental protections for millions of wilderness acres with the economic realities of residents who live in the park. We will undertake an interdisciplinary approach to explore how park conservation is affected by climate change, rural economies, recreation, tourism, slow food, and political action. Building upon course readings and discussions, and direct engagement with the Adirondack landscape, stakeholders, and local industries, students will develop practical policy recommendations to address pressing conservation issues in the park. 3 hrs. sem.

Skull Wars: Sordid True Tales of Rapacity, Revenge, and Racism in the Search for Human Origins
Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey. Richard Leakey and Don Johanson. Lee Berger and Tim White. In this course we will examine how jealousy, competition, and racism drive knowledge production and sabotage in the hunt for human ancestors. We’ll do so by exploring how these personalities, and others, have leveraged the media, from the New York Times to National Geographic, to push forward their vision and status in science. Through scientific articles, popular books, and film, we will also explore how settler colonialism and racism have plagued, and continue to plague, the science of paleoanthropology. 3 hrs. Sem

You're the Expert: Being a Public Scientist
A scientist’s work is not complete until their findings are shared. But who tells the story of science and who gets to be called a scientist? In this course we will learn the theory and practice of communicating science to public audiences. We will explore the roles of social media, comics, citizen science and science cafés in getting the public engaged with STEM learning. Through learning about audience, visual design, and storytelling, we will craft our own stories about science. Students will develop the science literacy skills necessary to research the world around us and to communicate Science to others. 3 hrs. sem.

The Poetics of Lullaby
In his lecture on the art of Spanish lullaby, poet Federico García Lorca observed that, “In melody…history’s emotion finds refuge.” The situation of lullaby, as a transitional gesture between waking life and sleep, has made it a natural depository for human wishes, terrors, and fantasies across centuries and cultures. We will investigate the seemingly universal language of lullaby in its folk and literary traditions around the world. Learning will be both research-based and experiential. Readings and papers will include scholarship on individual songs and poems within their contexts, and field work will explore lullaby as a living folk tradition.