Summer Symposium
Credit/No Credit Degree Requirement for all Concentrations
Moderator: Don Pease
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Webinar: What Next for US?, an interesting discussion on the European reaction to Biden's inauguration, featuring Professor Pease!
All courses that are team-taught meet the interdisciplinary core requirement.
Credit/No Credit Degree Requirement for all Concentrations
Moderator: Don Pease
Research Methods
Instructor: Klaus Milich, MALS
Writing a research paper requires the knowledge of the scope, the genesis, and the methods of the discipline one is engaged in. The goal of this workshop is to make students aware of their own approaches to help them develop their own research projects. It will cover methods of practical implementation, skills and strategies to obtain better results in research and class performance. Apart from learning how to apply and integrate different genre such as excerpts, protocols, reports, summaries, or charts that help preparing a presentation, writing a paper, or finishing a thesis, discussions will address the following questions:
In order to practice how to plan or carry out research and how to build an argument, students will be asked to bring in their own work in progress, be it an initial idea for a final paper, a proposal for an independent study, or a chapter of their thesis.
Research Methods
Instructor: Ted Stratton, Undergraduate Dean's Office
Qualitative and quantitative data provide different kinds of information to the researcher. Quantitative research measures the reactions of large numbers of people and provides generalizable data. Qualitative research produces detailed data on a small number of cases for an increased depth of understanding. Conducting research in the social sciences requires knowledge of both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Numerous qualitative methods exist with a great diversity of theoretical models. This workshop will focus on ethnographic research, often used by sociologists, anthropologists, and educators to look at the culture of groups and settings. The primary focus of this workshop will be on qualitative methods with discussion on survey methods.
Students will design their own research projects based on their scholarly interests (generated by previous classes) that they would like to further pursue for the basis of their thesis research.
Students will investigate a social phenomenon that interests them. They will create their own projects and actively engage in the necessary components of conducting research in the social sciences. This requires students to develop fieldwork plans, identify interviewees, write interview questions, conduct numerous interviews, take observation notes, and learn survey skills.
Students will need to purchase a tape recorder for interviews or plan on borrowing one from the Jones Media Library. In addition, students should come to class with a three ring binder with page dividers.
Research Methods
Instructor: Anna Minardi, MALS
This is a discussion based course focused on the preparation and discipline writers need to develop as they progress in their chosen genres. The text selected as the basis for class conversations offers a discussion of various writing concerns that all writers face as they consider such questions as audience, goal, use of language, placement of oneself. The text will be supplemented by short student pieces that may reflect the issues raised by Todd and Kidder in the book.
The course goal is create a sense of familiarity with the writing process for students who are starting to write. For students with more experience, the goal is to articulate the questions related to the areas they want to develop. The exchange between beginning and more advanced writers will be valuable in creating an awareness of the questions that propel writers at all levels and in all genres.
The class will be enhanced by visits from MALS writing professors and creative writing thesis students.
Creative Writing
Instructor: Saul Lelchuk, MALS
This writing course uses a workshop-centered approach to allow both novice and experienced writers to develop their abilities in fiction and particularly the form of the short story. Weekly reading assignments will draw from both past and contemporary writers across numerous genres, with the intent of exposing students to a wide variety of voices and styles. Regular writing assignments will involve both new work and revision, and students will complete several stories throughout the term. A secondary focus of the course will be to provide an overview of the publishing industry, and past guest speakers have included literary agents, film/TV agents, and editors. A formal background in writing is not required or expected, but students should have a strong interest in creative writing and a willingness to share, and accept critique on, their work.
Creative Writing
Instructor: Saul Lelchuk, MALS
This creative writing course uses a workshop-centered approach to allow students to develop their abilities in fiction and particularly the genre of mystery/suspense. Weekly reading assignments will draw from both past and contemporary authors in order to expose students to the wide variety of voices and styles that the genre of crime fiction has birthed in the last hundred-plus years. The course will approach these books primarily with the purpose of examining the internal elements that make them succeed and, crucially, the intentions and decisions of their authors. Writing assignments will focus primarily on producing new work but also include revision; a formal background in writing is not required or expected but students should have a strong interest in creative writing and a willingness to share, and accept critique on, their work. Students will have the choice of producing either several short stories or a novella throughout the term.
As a secondary objective, this course will offer a look at the fiction publishing process, including pitches, agent queries, magazine / lit journal submissions, and an overview of the publishing landscape. Past guest speakers have included literary agents, film/TV agents, editors, and authors.
Cultural Studies
Instructor: Alan Lelchuk, MALS
Jackie Robinson was born in Cairo Georgia, in January 1919 into a sharecropping family, and was quickly transported (age one,) with his 4 brothers and sisters, by his mother to Pasadena, California. There he was raised and went to high school and then UCLA. By the time he died early (of diabetes) at age 53 in October 1972 he had become one of the most famous and honored Americans. Posthumously he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
When Jackie was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, in 1962, the first Black man to be voted in, it was Martin Luther King who gave one of the celebratory speeches at the Waldorf Astoria, where he declared, "All of us Negroes, Jackie, stand on your shoulders." When President Dwight Eisenhauer was thrown a large party celebrating his Election victory, in the ballroom of the Waldorf, and he heard that Jackie Robinson was there, he wanted to meet him, and instead of one of his handlers bringing Jackie over to the President, normal protocol, Eisenhower said no, he'd walk over himself. He did, and, tapping Jackie on the shoulder, he said, "Hello Jackie, I am delighted to meet you in person." Such was the magnetic power and national importance of Jackie Robinson, who was already moving from baseball player to civil rights icon.
Jackie was the first black man to break the all white barrier of the Major Leagues, in 1947. Immediately he excelled in the white Big Leagues, despite being subject to open racism and vile insults on and off the field, earning Rookie of the year Award. Thus began his amazing 10 year career with the Brooklyn Dodgers, culminating in Brooklyn winning the World Series for the first time in 1955, and earning the huge admiration of all of Brooklyn, and the nation as well.
Now, who was this unusual man? How did his play on the field excel, and make him a unique sort of great player? How did he go from his success in football and basketball and long jump, his first three sports, to becoming one of the two greatest second basemen of all time? How was he able to produce the most exciting baseball of his era and beyond, on the field? How did he—and later Willie Mays—transform the dull routine game of baseball into a truly exciting sport? And how did he transform himself from a beloved baseball player into a true folk hero in Brooklyn culture, and beyond?
All of this will be investigated in this course, using books, a few movies, You Tube sequences, the professor's own knowledge of the game, and his own personal viewings of his games in Ebbets Field in 1947 especially. (Plus his memorable meetings with Jackie when he was a boy.)
Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Harriette Yahr, MALS
Oral Histories and Digital Storytelling introduces students to the field of oral history and explores how digital tools are invigorating its practice. In this course students will create oral histories while digging into the digital toolbox. Digital storytellers "write" with a larger toolbox than words, adding power and dimension to the stories they tell by combining media, such as text, images, narration, animation, or interactive elements. Digital storytelling includes podcasts, videos, visual journalism, story maps, social media projects, websites, electronic publishing, virtual reality and more.
It is also important to sharpen critical understanding of the digital medium's immediacy and global reach and examine how voices can be amplified in our hyper-connected world. How do we harness digital tools to best preserve and disseminate oral histories? What storytelling choices can we make to best engage audiences with oral histories including narratives that have been neglected? Students will be encouraged to mine the resources of Dartmouth and the local community for content (options will be presented), though students are free to focus on the histories and stories they choose. No previous media experience is required. Bring your curiosity and willingness to explore.
Cultural Studies or Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Alan Lelchuk, MALS
How has the Holocaust been seen and viewed in literary works and in films? How well can works of art represent the nightmare of 20th century history? Can books and films, the world of the aesthetic, dramatize the history of the Holocaust, and sustain the memory adequately?
This course will consider those questions, by means of analyzing some of the major writings and movies trying to come to terms with the unimaginable history.
In literature, we will read the fiction of Ida Fink, Teodor Borowski, Ilona Karmel, Elie Wiesel, Aharon Appelfeld, among others. In cinema, we will look at films such as Orson Welles ("The Stranger"), Sidney Lumet ("The Pawnbroker"), Vittoria de Sica ("The Garden of the Finzi-Continis"), Marcel Ophuls ("The Sorrow and the Pity"), Roman Polanski ("The Pianist").
Single-taught Interdisciplinary, Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, Globalization Studies
This course will look at environmental issues around the globe through the eyes of journalists to critically examine how the scientific, cultural and political dimensions of environmental sustainability are portrayed in the media. We will explore not only the issues themselves--impacts of climate change, biodiversity, clean air and water, energy, toxic chemicals, agriculture and more–but how media coverage affects public perception in different countries, and how policies are formulated to address these critical problems.
Environmental issues encompass a wide range of topics at different scales around the globe. Global issues, like climate change, affect disparate parts of the world differently. There are regional and local effects of drought, sea-level rise, or threats to endangered species. Media coverage of these issues and solutions involves a complex mix of science, ecology, politics, business, human health, sociology and culture.
The very definition of journalism is evolving rapidly, as are the norms, ethics, and roles of the journalist in different countries. Traditional print media, television news, and documentaries must compete with digital media, computer-generated graphics, and citizen reporting on social networks. How does this evolution and competition play out in the global media with respect to environmental topics?
We will examine how the tools and methods of environmental journalism are used, including factual or descriptive reporting, expert analysis, background science, or narratives that portray human interest stories and reveal insightful profiles of key people and affected communities. Beyond the written and spoken word, we will examine how photos, video, and multi-media animation are used to tell a compelling story.
We will explore the importance of environmental journalism in global society, tracing topics, trends, and key voices from the past to the present. We will consider how journalists are able to cover issues in different global cultures, and how their reporting is shaped by political forces and economic interests. We will also look at how inherent or hidden biases are manifested in the media. Are there biases in how the same issue is covered in different regions or countries? Are these biases racial, economic, cultural, or political?
Through readings, class discussion and assigned projects, students will together define the principles and practices that produce effective environmental journalism, regardless of media, and consider how those principles will carry into the future.
Creative Writing, Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Barbara Kreiger, MALS
In this nonfiction creative writing course, students will be engaged with broad questions of "otherness" that focus on their own experiences, whether home or away. As we write, we'll be introducing people who may have different assumptions, histories, daily habits, or cultural practices, and our aim is to share what we've learned by bringing readers into touch with our responses to whatever is new. Attentiveness is central to the process, and students will begin investigations that may yield unexpected insights. For some of us, the "other" is encountered at home, on every corner; for others it's associated with travel. Whatever the location, what we discover may be a great deal more than what we thought we knew.
Some of the questions we'll ask have to do with experiences we probably will never have; other questions will encourage us to find intersections between the viewer and the viewed. And then, too, what about us, at times, is also, an "other"?
Whether the setting is far away or close to home, are we different when we leave familiar ground? What is the process of disengaging from the "known" in order to open greater space for reflection on those with whom we may have little contact?
As we engage in this process, our understanding is enlarged, and this, we could say, is the essence of empathy: we read, we listen, we write, and we come away more educated.
Globalization Studies, Cultural Studies or Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructors: David Rezvani, Inst for Writing Rhetoric
This course will focus on the dynamics of international politics in modern Asia. The course will include research, writing, and debates on the relations between Asian powers and the status of sub-state zones of conflict. It will critically examine the interplay of Asian powers, including China, the US, India, Japan, and North and South Korea. It will also evaluate a number of key zones of sub-state conflict in territories such as Kashmir, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and Mindanao.
Globalization Studies
Instructor: David Rezvani
This course will examine the structure, patterns, and practices of politics in greater China. It will examine explanations for China's economic assent as well as the resiliency of its authoritarian institutions. It will critically examine issues such as leadership selection, decentralized governance, economic development, mainland institutions, and fiscal control. The course will also examine the mainland's relations with Hong Kong and Taiwan on issues such as economic dependency, corruption, identity politics, and regional peace. The course will include independent research, writing, and debates on the conditions within greater China.
Globalization Studies
Instructor: David Rezvani
This course critically examines arguments, analytical frameworks, and potential solutions for major controversies in international politics. What are the sources of state failure? How is the global system of states evolving? What should countries do to solve global warming? Should economic distributive justice only exist within nation states, or should it apply globally? Students confront these and a wide range of other key economic, security, and global controversies. The first part of the course critically examines the structure and actors of the international system. It also explores the challenges of nationalism, state evolution, partially independent territories, and global governance. The course then investigates questions of international cooperation regarding nuclear weapons, international injustice, environmental degradation, and military intervention.
Creative Writing
Instructor: Bill Phillips, Film and Media Studies
One should emerge from this course with:
No previous creative writing experience is necessary.
Whether your idea is "commercial," "artistic," or "personal" will not matter in terms of the focus of this course, but we will be concerned with your producing something that will hold up to professional scrutiny. We will emphasize the following:
Since you will be expected to write an entire first draft of a feature script within this course, it behooves you to be somewhat prepared. It would help if you have a story in mind, a protagonist, a worthy antagonist, a love-interest (if appropriate), and at least an idea of your beginning, middle and end. It also really helps to have at least 30-40 situations (scenes) to string together to support a feature-length film. We will go over all of this in class, but if you get a head start on your thinking, it will be a tremendous help to you. I can also make available some handouts ahead of time that might assist you in this work.
Globalization Studies, Cultural Studies or Team-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Klaus Milich
Robin Hood, the archetypal, courteous, and swashbuckling outlaw of the medieval era, has become an English folk hero. He robbed the rich to provide for the poor and fought against injustice and tyranny. From Robin Hood via actual and legendary robbers, pirates, and corsairs in the 17th and 18th centuries, to present day pirates, terrorists and guerilla groups in Somalia, Latin America, Italy, Germany, and the U.S., individuals have always been involved in what they considered legitimate (though illegal) resistance against poverty, authority, patriarchy, feudalism, capitalism, and imperialism. Their rebellious but criminal action evokes a question that has already been at the center of Aeschylus' Orestes: what legitimizes individual justice versus socially controlled jurisdiction; what distinguishes vigilantism from politics, or antinomianism from legalism? Starting from the political and philosophical dichotomy between legitimacy and legality—what is ethically or religiously legitimate isn't necessarily legal, and vice versa—this course will focus on representations of rebels and outlaws in different cultural contexts, historical periods, and cultural genres such as novels, movies, dramas, diaries, and operas.
Cultural Studies or Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Johannes, Voelz, Harris Distinguished Professor
In the course of the twentieth century, politics and celebrity culture have increasingly become intertwined. As a result, our world is shaped by politicians who have mastered the communication styles of the entertainment industry, as well as by celebrities from the world of entertainment who have ventured into politics. Meanwhile, research on American democracy has grappled with how to make sense of celebrity politics. Is the "celebrification" of politics a variant of mass deception, i.e., an aspect of the "culture industry" (Adorno/Horkheimer)? Or is the mixing of politics and celebrity culture a form of democratization that makes politics more accessible to broad swaths of the public? Or, finally, does politics in the age of the celebrity lead the dynamics of polarization and tribalism that characterizes many contemporary democratic societies? Clearly, celebrity culture today is a central element of American democracy. Yet, the relationship of democracy and celebrity culture remains uneasy. Has celebrity politics contributed to what many describe as today's crisis of democracy?
In our seminar we will study particular cases in the history of the merging of politics and celebrity culture and will consider these examples from diverse critical perspectives. Case studies may include the strategic employment of Hollywood celebrities by Dwight Eisenhower, the carefully scripted public persona of John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan's strategic fusion of Hollywood fame and political stardom, the phenomenon of Sarah Palin, and the "casting show politics" of Donald J. Trump. We will also investigate a range of key concepts that will help us conceptualize celebrity politics, including "personality," "star system," "charisma," "intimate publics," and "fandom/anti-fandom." Overall, the seminar will help us get a better understanding of contemporary American political culture.
Creative Writing
Instructor: Eugenie Carabatsos, MALS
This workshop course introduces students to the art and craft of playwriting. Throughout the course, each student will workshop and develop two plays—a ten minute and a one act—as well as read and analyze contemporary and classic plays.
Creative Writing
Instructor: Andras Gerevich, MALS '11, Fulbright Fellow
The Poetry Workshop is designed to inspire self-expression, refine your skills in writing poetry, and develop your creative and critical thinking. Frank O'Hara's poem, Why I Am Not a Painter, is a witty, playful and profound meditation on the creative process of writing through free associations, drawing from real-life experience, and self-reflection, essential methods to explore throughout the course.
Along the semester you will be working on your own poems and will have the chance to experiment with different forms and styles of writing. We will be reading the works of modern and contemporary poets to learn from their mastery of the art. We will also be discussing your work as a group to help one another improve. Writing is rewriting – the first version of any text is only a draft, excellence comes through revision, openness to others' feedback is essential, thus you will also learn to give, take and interpret criticism.
I encourage you to explore, experiment, and innovate in your poetry to find your unique voice. Try different styles, write lyrical, narrative, and meditative poems to discover and develop the ideal form for what you want to express.
We will be reading poems in weekly thematic selections. We will look at how modern and contemporary poets write about traditional, seemingly outdated topics such as love, nature, memory and war. We compare poems by poets coming from various traditions with different voices writing on a similar subject matter. The aim is to explore both 1.) contemporary and modern American and Anglophone poetry and 2.) poetry from different parts of the world to gain an international perspective
on modern and contemporary literature. Coming from Hungary, I will place special emphasis on Hungarian and Central- and Easter European poets. Juxtaposing various translations of the same poem is an insightful exercise that demonstrates how stylistic decisions, word choices, and formal strategies can create distinct works from the same original. Knowledge of a second language is not a prerequisite.
Creative Writing
Instructor: Rena Mosteirin, MALS
In this workshop course we will read and revise our own poetry and the poetry of our peers. We will discuss potential revision strategies and read recently published books of poetry to help situate ourselves in the present literary moment. The primary goal of this course is to develop our own distinctive poetic voice by experimenting with metaphor, lyricism, and other poetic tools. The secondary goal of this course is to explore the larger conversations going on in the poetry community right now by editors, critics, writers and readers. Toward this end, we will read recently published award-winning poetry collections and discuss them during class time.
Craft essays and writing prompts will be available as part of the materials for the course. All of the assignments for this class are creative. Student poems will be submitted to the class each week and revised three times for the final portfolio. We will discuss revision strategies as the class goes forward, working toward three successive revisions of each poem for the final portfolio. This portfolio of revised poems will be in place of a final paper or exam. Writers at all levels are welcome.
Creative Writing
Instructor: Alan Lelchuk, MALS
This writing workshop focuses primarily on the longer fictional forms (the novella and the long story). Writing experience is preferred, but is not a prerequisite. Emphasis is placed on student work, but a good number of published stories and novellas are looked at as well. Classes consist of discussions, analyses, and readings. The aims of the course are to help the young writer understand and practice the longer forms of fiction, to read those forms more jurisdiciously and from a writer's point of view, and to raise his or her own levels of prose to a high literary standard.
Cultural Studies or Team-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Klaus Milich, MALS
Three decades after the end of the cold war – which seemed to prove the superiority of Western forms of government, free markets, and human rights – resurgent ultra-nationalism, parochial populism, white supremacy, anti-immigrant fervor, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, rabid misogyny and violent homophobia undermine the stability and indefeasibility of European and American democracies. Commentators and scholars identify rampant capitalism, neoliberalism, globalization, and the untamed proliferation of new media as causes for the vulnerability of the democratic project. While some consider the establishment of right-wing movements such as the Tea Party and Alt-Right, or politicians such as Silvio Berlusconi, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbàn, Mateo Salvini, Jair Bolsonaro, or Donald Trump, as expressions of a temporary populist phase or even the advent of a post-democratic age, others refer to incidents such as the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, the white-supremacist attack in Charlottesville, VA or the recurrence of the KKK and neo-Nazi groups worldwide as harbingers of a new fascism. Starting from some current debates about the state of democracies, this course will discuss the central terms, concepts, and ideologies such as imperial presidency, illiberal democracy, republicanism, fascism, neoliberalism, populism, or conspiracism as well as movements such as the Tea Party, Alt-Right, QAnon, and the Brexit, among others by way of a variety of artifacts, from documentaries, movies, and speeches via literary texts, newspaper and magazine articles to theoretical debates. Our discussions will be supplemented by various guest speakers in class and online.
Cultural Studies
Instructor: Viktor Witkowski
In this class we will look at art works, art writing and criticism from the early nineteenth to the twenty-first century. We will consider texts by national and international artists, critics, curators, and art/cultural theoreticians to illustrate how our discourse about art and culture has changed over time. Some of the questions we will try to answer are: what is the role of art criticism? What was its role in the past and what is it now? Can we identify constant values in artworks that have been created across time and geographies? What distinguishes 'good' art from 'bad' art?
Is art writing a form of art making?
One significant portion of class will be dedicated to visiting the Hood Museum's object-study rooms to view works in the flesh and learn how to critically consider works of art and their historical context through writing. Prior knowledge of art history and contemporary art is not required.
Cultural Studies or Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: James Godley
This class examines the concept of stasis, originally the Greek word for "civil war" which later came to mean, in English, "stillness" or "immobility." Like other examples of what Freud called "primal words," such as sacer (sacred, unclean), uncanny (which originally meant "familiar"), or cleave (to stick to, to cut), the meaning of stasis welds together opposite notions in a way that bypasses normal thinking. Along these lines, the idea of stasis as both standstill and unrest challenges us to think about the baseline of individual and collective action. Rather than to think of inactivity as the enemy of politics, we come to see how politics depends upon moments of radical suspension; how the momentum for important change takes place when there is a forced halt or a stoppage of production, the way that W.E.B. Du Bois, for example, described the "general strike" of refugee slaves as what led to Union victory in the Civil War. At the same time, we note how incessant activity manifests symptomatically as a general malaise, as Walter Benjamin described capitalist modernity, or the way that Lacan described Hamlet's madness. In this class, we will explore various instances of how stuckness masks strife, how social upheaval demonstrates the paralysis of societies, and how profound moments of immobility (such as a general strike) can be insurgent forces of change.
One of the key places where this idea comes to the fore is in the US Civil War. In the writings of Abraham Lincoln, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jefferson Davis, Herman Melville and Frederick Douglass, the paradoxes of civil war as foundational to the United States become apparent, as does the long afterlife of what the war was fought over—slavery and democratic sovereignty. Indeed, it is no coincidence that in the United States today, the rhetoric of a second coming of civil war is omnipresent. As David Theo Goldberg has argued, such "polarized" language indicates that civil war is not just an extreme case of conflict anymore but is now normal. We cannot overcome the trauma of the Civil War because it has never fully ended. Through readings of American literature alongside important texts of critical theory, we will see how this continuity becomes established.
Cultural Studies or Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Regine Rosenthal, MALS
Taking its point of departure from the different waves of the women's movement, this course will explore multiple feminisms, contested binary notions of femininity and masculinity, and a wide range of gender issues. It will add "color" to gender by focusing on minority groups in the US, especially African American, Latina, and Native American women and their investment in feminism as well as the intersectionality of gender, race, ethnicity, class, and nation. Furthermore, the course will address, through feminist scholarship, women's collaboration with racist and white supremacist discourse, both in the US and racist Nazi Germany. It will also examine a variety of trans/national contemporary debates within feminism, such as ecofeminism, postcolonialism, indigeneity, and religion (e.g. Islam).
Creative Writing or Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Barbara Kreiger
Nonfiction Creative Writing: This course is aimed at those with a special interest in travel writing, a subgenre, we could say, of memoir, and related to "writing the other." A few of the questions that will propel us are: What is travel writing? How far do you "have to go" before you've gone somewhere to write about? How does the time element factor in?
Students will be focused on narratives of encounters with unfamiliar places and peoples, with an emphasis on the highly subjective nature of the experience. Aspects of their writing that we'll be alert to include the construction of a narrative, the role of the narrator, and the physical and cultural territory, as well as narrative voice, the development of themes. and the meaning of the journey. To what extent is travel writing descriptive, and to what extent inventive? How do the author's own needs and assumptions affect the record of his or her journey? What is the relationship between the viewer and the viewed? How is the narrative both a window and a mirror?
Writing experience is preferred but not a prerequisite. Class time will be devoted to both student and published work. Authors to be read will include Freya Stark, Robert Byron, D.H. Lawrence, and Edith Wharton.
Cultural Studies or Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Regine Rosenthal, MALS
This course will focus on the question of erecting, crossing and/or transcending borders and boundaries in relation to race, gender, and the human. Thus, it will critically address and theorize the tendency to shift and cross borders in a way that runs counter to the constraints implied in traditional models of gender and race. In terms of gender, it will emphasize the contemporary fluidity of concepts of masculinity and femininity, deconstruction of hierarchical gender models, and the fierce debate around transgender issues examined, among others, by Judith Butler. In terms of race, it will address the paradigm's contested definitions and boundaries, the current political debates on its social implications, and the special facets of Indigeneity in the American context. It will discuss the issues of exclusion and inclusion, the third space, post-colonialism and the ideology and policy of race/racism by focusing, among others, on creative non/fictional narratives as well as on theoretical texts by Frantz Fanon and W.E. DuBois. As a third angle of questioning borders, it will explore the aspect of the human or in/humanity—both in and beyond its relation to race and gender, and the concurrent devastating effect of dehumanization—in texts by Hannah Arendt, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida on human and civil rights, crimes against humanity, sovereign power vs. bare life, and man in relation to animal.
Globalization Studies or Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Peter DeShazo, LALACS/MALS
The course will provide students with the opportunity to think critically about the variables that propelled the United States to unipolar power status as a result of the Cold War, the nature of how U.S. foreign policy is formulated, and the challenges to the power status of the United States in an increasingly globalized world. Students will examine in greater detail the history of the Cold War, the transformation of the global power dynamic following the collapse of the Soviet Union, growing expectations for the spread of capitalism and democracy in the post-Cold War, the key challenges to liberal democracy and security today, the rise of China, and prospects for the future global leadership of the United States. The course will underscore the value of historical analysis to the interpretation of current events and demonstrate the confluence of forces that influence the making of foreign policy. The course will also encourage students to think like policy-makers, in part by drafting a series of short "policy memos" on specific recommended policy decisions and to advocate for these decisions in oral presentations.
Following an introductory class discussing prospects for future U.S. global leadership, the course will examine the conduct of the Cold War, the transition from a bipolar power dynamic to a unipolar world led by the United States following the end of the Soviet Union, and then trace key themes and developments in U.S. foreign policy from the administrations of George H.W. Bush through Obama. Subsequent classes will examine the spread of market-based capitalist development and liberal democracy in the post Cold War, the ideology and driving forces of these movements, and the reactions to them. Global issues challenging both security and development, such as international terrorism and crime will be examined in detail. One class will be specifically dedicated to China's potential as a power rival to the United States. The final two classes will look ahead to future prospects for democracy, capitalist-led growth and the growing transition away from uni-polarity to a new multi-polar global order. Readings for the course will cover a variety of currents and viewpoints, with special focus on materials prepared for the consideration of policy-makers rather than academicians.
Medical Humanities, Creative Writing or Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Judith Hertog
How do we, as mindful beings, relate to our bodies and to the sensory world?
The 1st century BCE Buddhist text Satipatthāna Sutta urges practitioners to contemplate one's body within the world in order to attain Nirvāna, a state that, according to Buddhist philosophy, transcends the suffering and limitations of life. This text became one of the sources for Buddhist meditation techniques that today are practiced as "mindfulness." In this writing course, inspired by the practice of mindfulness, we will explore our relationship to our body, our mind, our senses, and the world. Inspired by ancient and contemporary literature you will write about topics such as the senses, the body, the mind, illness and health, and our physical existence in the world. You will write 3 short essays and one longer, final essay.
The course meets once a week for 3 hours.
Single-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructor: Kristin O'Rourke, Art History
What are the differences between telling a story in written form vs. in visual? This course would examine translations between the visual and the literary, using the concept of translation and reinvention to look at written texts and their visual versions, particularly in film, and think about how stories are told and what gets lost or changed through translation and over time. We will examine theories of the sister arts (ut pictura poesis) and the paragone controversy in the early modern period. Additionally, we will utilize film theory, literary theory, theories of translation and adaptation, and narrative.
Cultural Studies or Team-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructors: Don Pease and guest lecturers
Perhaps because of its capacity to cut across social and political interests and transgress disciplinary boundaries, Cultural Studies has provoked highly contradictory descriptions of its politics and academic location. Cultural Studies has been described as the academic location where the politics of difference—racial, sexual, economic, transnational—can combine and be articulated in all of their theoretical complexity. It has also been depicted as an academic containment strategy designed to tame cultural otherness through the universalization of the "idea" of culture and the resistance to theory. In this course we shall analyze the work of scholars—bell hooks, Douglas Crimp, Janice Radway, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Homi Bhabha, Andrew Ross, Meaghan Morris, Elsbeth Probyn, Michael Warner, Rey Chow, Cornel west, Kobena Mercer, Judith Butler, among others—who explicitly reflect upon the importance of conceptualizing and defining this diverse and often contentious enterprise. In addition to examining the social and institutional genealogy of the field, we shall deploy disparate methodological practices developed within the field of Cultural Studies to analyze a range of cultural artifices, including film noir, television soap operas, rap music, Hollywood blockbusters, borderlands discourse, whiteness studies and postcolonial theory.
Globalization Studies or Team-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructors: Evelyn Lechner, MALS and Peter DeShazo, LALACS
Globalization and the pursuit of market-led development have become two crucial concepts that re-emerged full-blown in the wake of the Cold War, as the West triumphed over the Soviet Union and the Marxist model. With the United States as the sole remaining superpower, liberal democracy and market-led economies were widely considered by policy makers in the West to be the inevitable cornerstone of a new global order. Yet, the process of globalization since the early 1990s has produced unpredicted results. The end of the Cold War has not generated a prolonged "Pax Americana" marked by an end to intra-state warfare, insurgencies, or violence, nor has economic development resulted in the consolidation of democracy. The strongest economic performer in the post-Cold War period has been China, still an authoritarian Marxist regime, and the Russian Federation that emerged from the former USSR is evolving in a decidedly anti-democratic direction.
The end of the Cold War in the Americas appeared to usher in the potential for greater hemispheric unity, the strengthening or representative democracy and sustained economic growth. While economic development has been historically strong, it remains uneven and the fruits of economic success often distributed in a skewed pattern favoring elite groups. In several countries in the region, a strong reaction to liberal democracy and market-led economic growth gave rise to the consolidation of proto-authoritarian regimes such as that of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela promoting a 21st century brand of revolution and a revival of anti-U.S. sentiment. Countries in the region still contend with problems such as insurgency, organized crime, and high levels of violence.
This course will examine the links between democracy, market-led development, and globalization in greater theoretical depth as well as in practice since the end of the Cold War. It will use Latin America as a particular point of focus in highlighting macro trends in politics and economic policy-making since the 1990s as well as case studies digging deeper into these variables.
The first part of the course focuses on globalization in general, its impact on the world economy and the economies of specific countries and on international business. The tension between globalization and moral questions will be elaborated on. Intellectual/ideological responses to globalization will also be discussed.
The second part of the course will trace trends in Latin America's links to the global economy and the relationship between paths of economic development and political structures. Specific attention will be paid to the transition from military dictatorships to civilian democracies, the challenge of illegally armed groups and criminal organizations to stability in the region, and the current bifurcated development path between countries pursuing market-oriented growth policies and those engaged in inward-led growth and resource nationalism.
Creative Writing or Team-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructors: Barbara Kreiger, MALS and Anna Minardi, MALS
This course is aimed at those with a special interest in exploring their relationship with the natural world through short pieces or longer narratives. Why do we say we "go into" nature when we're leaving our urban, suburban, or interior spaces? How far do we have to go before we've "arrived"? Can we stay where we are, gaze out the window, remember, imagine, wonder? What happens when we look down at stones or up at stars? What is the difference between grand vistas and commonplace ones? Or those that are new and those that are familiar? In other words, what does our relationship rely on, how does it shift, and what does it tell us. And because this is a creative writing course, the question of how we make our experience accessible to others is crucial, so we'll address the story itself, style, voice, and the use of reflection as we consider what is probably an evolving or shifting relationship with previously unarticulated aspects of experience. The course is called "Writing Nature," not "Nature Writing," to remove the implicit hyphen that suggests a genre and emphasizes the inquiry that writing offers us. A broad selection of readings will include works of well known writers and others less well known but no less intuitively linked to the world we inhabit.
Team-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructors: Professor Min Young Godley, Professor James A. Godley
When someone expresses a desire to "serve humanity" or speaks modestly of being "only human," there is an irony that places the speaker into a position where their "humanness" becomes an idea rather than just what they are. Though this has led to a lot of powerful reflections in the history of philosophy and art, it has also had darker consequences. For centuries in Western cultures, for instance, those who have belonged to privileged castes constructed for themselves symbolic value systems that carved out the "human" from the supposedly nonhuman, inhuman, or bestial, whose quasi-existence was deemed a threat to the normative order. This concept of inhumanity was developed in multiple systems throughout history–expeditionary capitalism, the modern State, Christian theology–that reproduced in each instance the definitively excrescent, inhumanly human or humanly inhuman. In moral discourses from theodicy to racial eugenics to biomedicine, figures of iniquity or pathological excess seemed to manifest a kind of reality-altering power of degeneration or corruption that, in seeming to threaten humanity itself, also reveal the latter's hidden conditions of possibility. Hence this "inhuman" excess is not just the antagonist to humanity, but is secretly sacred to its very meaning. In this class, we will follow the work of literary writers, philosophers, critical race theorists and psychoanalysts who have attempted to shed light on the human by way of the inhuman. Authors examined include Joseph Conrad, J.M. Coetzee, Louise Erdrich, Angie Kim, Octavia Butler, Jacques Lacan, Byung-chul Han, Martin Heidegger, Sylvia Wynter, Alain Badiou, Zakiyyah Iman Jackson, Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, G.W.F. Hegel, Jacques Derrida, and Homi K. Bhabha.
Cultural Studies, Medical Humanities, or Team-taught Interdisciplinary
Instructors: Professor Min Young Godley, Professor James A. Godley
As with the other sciences, psychology presents itself as a neutral body of knowledge, which makes us forget that its findings are contestable and contingent, its theories often discarded or later found problematic. This is a particular problem with mental health discourse, because it deals with the subjective but uses objective language to do so. This gives the language of mental health an aura of mastery that conceals the partiality of its observations behind the mask of notions which seem ahistorical or even universally valid. One classic example is hysteria, which was once considered "a woman's disease" that stems from the uterus, rather than the brain, and was eventually dropped from the DSM in 1950 and once again in 1980. A more recent example would be early theories on autism, which misrecognized autistic shutdowns as a sign of sensory deficit rather than sensory overload. Such fluctuations in clinical concepts, theories, and interpretations were frequently achieved by a mutual interaction with the humanities—from autobiographical accounts where the diagnosed subject speaks about their experience, to cultural critique that exposes common biases and blind spots in our everyday interactions.
In the interchange between humanities and the clinic, both the clinician and the cultural critic provide a diagnosis that can be fateful in terms of helping (or hurting) the subject. By extracting or inventing non-preexisting ways of being, such conversations work together to question and clarify existing knowledge. In this discussion, psychoanalysis occupies a fascinating space between the clinic and the humanities by actively resisting the language of objectivity through envisioning an ethical procedure that concerns the subject as a speaking being. In this course, through reading clinical literature and psychoanalytic theory and case studies, we pursue the following questions: Are the problems of diagnosis always about misdiagnosis? What happens when diagnosis becomes a label or a reference point that promises a glimpse into one's "essence"? Does diagnosis function as a means of "taming" subjects that are deemed as social disturbances or "Other," as in, make them recognizable and thereby malleable by capitalism and state apparatuses? Or is the gap between the subject and their diagnosis not a crisis, but a site of potentiality where a different relation altogether can emerge?
Ethics
Instructor: Jill Baron, Dartmouth College Libraries
This course encourages inquiry into what constitutes the responsible and ethical conduct of research,
particularly as it pertains to MALS students. We will approach ethics with a spirit of curiosity; not as a
prescription, but rather as a framework for reflection and informed decision making, even when there
is no seemingly good or easy outcome. Drawing from a combination of short stories, academic and
news articles, case studies, podcasts, and personal experiences, we will explore some common dilemmas
that affect graduate students and consider ways to navigate and resolve them, without losing sight of
issues of power, class, race, gender, ability.
In addition to its use in conflict resolution, we will engage ethics as a means of reflecting on our work
and ourselves. Throughout the course we will apply ethical reasoning to our individual interests, in
terms of what we choose to study, how we engage with others or participate in academic communities,
and how we share our work with the wider world. Yet will stay mindful of the broader institutional,
political, social, or economic factors that intersect with our decision making and that at times may
challenge our ethical reasoning. We will explore our roles and responsibilities as graduate students and
members of a research and learning community, and throughout the course, will articulate a critical
and care-centered approach to teaching, learning, research, and writing.