From ancient to contemporary times, constructed narratives are embedding values prized by the culture. This course considers narrative examples in epic, saga, film, song, and short story from several global cultures in order to examine the creative process of self-definition embodied in hero myths. From the Gilgamesh epic to the Volsunga Saga to Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali to contemporary films such as Lone Star and Hero, it creates a context within which to examine heroic storytelling in song and the cultural implications of “hero” presented in short stories and drama. Students will study literary and cultural texts selected from traditional literature to contemporary media and culture (e.g. literature, film, graphic novels, television, advertising, anime). Students will analyze these texts from a variety of perspectives and become familiar with current debates about literature and/or culture as arenas of human experience. This course will fulfill a humanities core requirement.
 

This course focuses on writing about place, specifically about the Mississippi River region. The course will explore how the Geography of one of the Great Rivers of the World has influenced the History, Society, Environment, Economics, and Culture of the people who live along its banks, from the origin of the "Father of Waters" to where the great river empties into the Gulf of Mexico. Texts will include maps, early explorers' journals and reports, literary works, engineering and environmental reports, historical texts and socio-economic texts. As we reach the virtual end of the River in New Orleans and the present day Mississippi Delta, students will have completed three journal reports (modeled on the great journals of river explorers – Joliet, Marquette, Lewis and Clark). Two research papers will be required. In these two papers, students will develop their ability to become independent writers and will able to write about "place" from multiple perspectives.
 

Ludwig Wittgenstein famously claimed that the limits of our language are the limits of our world. How can we re-think these limits, bend or break these boundaries? This is a nontraditional writing class structured around a series of multi-disciplinary "wreading" experiments: students will explore the possibilities of creative work in transforming, deforming, reforming and free-forming texts in various disciplines, including literary (and not-so-literary) texts. Our starting point will be Hazel Smith's, “The Writing Experiment, ” a source of theory as well as practice for innovative writing. Students will keep a weekly journal in which they record their experiments and respond to the assigned readings drawn from scholarly as well as popular sources, from reports and reviews to lipograms and libretti. Overlap between response and experiment is welcome. Each student will be required to share one to two pages of weekly writing experiment or response with the class each week. Visual text, performance, and work in new media may be included as appropriate. At the end of the quarter, each student will submit a completed manuscript, sufficient in length for a short chapbook, of his or her own most successful experimental writing.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227. This course fulfills a Liberal Arts requirement.

They come in all shapes and sizes--these other animals with whom we share the planet--and our relations with them vary widely: some we cuddle and call pets, others we stick a fork in and call dinner, still others we rely on for medical research. The debate about what our proper relations with animals should be—call it “the burden of beasts”--has raged across the centuries and the disciplines: philosophy, law, ethics, business, theology, literature, and modern-day environmentalism. The question holds special relevance for those planning careers in science and technology who one day may have to decide whether new products should be developed and tested using animals. In class, we will study a range of texts across the disciplines, engage in debate--maybe attend the circus, visit a laboratory, or tour a farm—and wrestle with questions as old as the Bible and as fresh as your lunch.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227. This course fulfills a Liberal Arts requirement.
 

Terrorism may be defined as the systematic and deliberate use of violence as a political weapon, often directed against the civilian population of a country, to demoralize and intimidate its governing body in order to bring about political change. Often the terrorist group is small, secret, and highly organized. Sometimes, but not always, it has the support of the society whose governing body it seeks to change. For this course we will read several major works of fiction and drama and view motion pictures which depict terrorist groups and individuals. We will discuss and write about our perceptions. Our purpose will be to try to understand the nature of terrorism and some of its methods. Texts include: The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad, Man's Fate by Andre Malraux , The Shadow of a Gunman by Sean O'Casey, The Informer by Liam O'Flaherty, TERRORIST by John Updike, and The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Prerequisite of Writing Seminar 0502-227. This course fulfills a Liberal Arts requirement.

This course involves studying concert performance videos and the book Musicophilia by Dr. Oliver Sachs to explore the basis for our enjoyment of music. Current neuroscience research of synesthesia will help illuminate why there is such variation in tastes for the arts. Students will deepen their appreciation of the arts by writing a research paper, choosing topics for discussions, and writing a critical review. We will also explore why societies often undervalue their artists, and how the conflict can paradoxically hone art. Critical theory will be applied to music and to selected poetry by Wallace Stevens, Issa, and others.

Art Spiegelman once stated that, “Even in schools, one’s taught to read. One’s rarely taught to look.” In this course we are going to do just that—“learn to look” by focusing on the graphic novel. We will investigate/deconstruct the relationships between the concepts of “graphic novel” and pop culture, with each of us bringing our unique socioeconomic identities to our readings and discussions. Through in-depth studies of several primary texts, including Watchmen, Maus, V for Vendetta, and The Dark Knight Returns, we will learn how the graphic novelists use and manipulate historical and contemporary social issues as the foundation of their art. A research-based presentation on a (pertinent) topic of the student's choice will be required.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227. This course fulfills a Liberal Arts requirement.

The course will center around the issues of censorship in literature and culture. Studying a number of “dangerous texts” and “dangerous films” the class will raise questions such as these:

-What features of political and cultural regimes do artists tend to single out for criticism? -What is the range of expressive tools they use?
-What is it that makes intellectuals in general and imaginative writers in particular so potent a threat to established power?
-Do issues like these matter only in totalitarian regimes, or can we learn something about the text-banning pressures in our own society?

This class will examine how suppression of information has been orchestrated throughout history in different contexts. We will view the process of suppressing information in perspective – we will recognize acts of censorship in relation to their social settings, political movements, religious beliefs, economic conditions, cultural expressions and/or personal identities.

Note: This class involves a considerable amount of reading.
 

The course will center around the issues of censorship in literature The course emphasizes writing practices within or across disciplines, recognizing the role writing plays in the formation of knowledge and the framing of academic specializations. This course highlights the processes and practices of written expression and the production of research, whether in the sciences or the arts or the humanities. Faculty design specific approaches to the study of the writing of a discipline, field, or program. Students have the opportunity to develop a critical understanding of important conversations within a particular area of study, and within a larger culturally-diverse context. Depending on the focus of the instructor, the course will engage one or more modes of disciplinary expression(s) such as films, written texts, photographs and other images, oral history, and ethnography. Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227. This course fulfills a Liberal Arts requirement.

This course emphasizes the essay as genre within and across the disciplines, recognizing the role the essay plays in the formation of knowledge and the framing of academic and social debate. This course highlights the processes and practices of the essay as a genre unto itself and the production of research across the academic disciplines. In this section of Arts of Expression, students will engage in the study of professional essays which deal with social and academic argumentation. Students will read professional essays and endeavor to develop their own voice within the context of their disciplines, broadening their critical understanding of the important debates within their field of study. Students will recognize how their discipline is located within a larger culturally-diverse context.

A female child born in 2000 or later stands an excellent chance of living to the age of 100 and beyond, and with a viable lifestyle, experts tell us. Many Americans have come to expect every service to be provided and every treatment available to be applied to every condition in every locale all the time at little or no cost. Many of these expectations are realistic: the true miracles of modern medicine have brought us understandably to this attitude. Medicine: First, Do No Harm explores various facets of medicine, including history, beginning with primitive medicine and moving ultimately to significant advances in contemporary times; the triumvirate of patient care, education and research; medicine as a political instrument; economic factors; landmark accomplishments; technology; ethical considerations; and medicine in the media (including film and television). The Instr. spent 30 years in the health care field in administration, public relations, marketing, and fund development, including positions with the University of Rochester Medical Center, St. John’s Home, and Fairport Baptist Homes.

This course introduces students to a broad range of art forms (primarily literature) emerging from the environmental imagination. Students will examine vital connections between literature and environmental values; they will refine and articulate their own values through reading, observing, writing, and conversing with one another; they will experiment with various modes of expression strengthening their communication skills, primarily through writing papers and presenting projects to the class. Hopefully students will delight in coming to know and respect the wilderness of their own imaginations. In the past, students have presented projects on The Hudson River School of Painting and Transcendentalism. They have researched diverse topics such as contemporary environmental challenges and the photography of Edward Burtynsky. Readings may include authors such as Jon Krakauer, Gary Snyder, Mary Oliver, Barry Lopez, John Muir, and Henry David Thoreau.

The mention of myth brings to mind the ancient oral traditions of Egypt, Africa, Greece, Rome, and India. Myths are supposed to be old texts, ancient stories that attempted to answer fundamental questions about the origin, character, and purpose of life before we had modern science to provide “rational” explanations. Yet myth is far from dead in contemporary American culture. In this class, we will look into how and why myth continues to play a pivotal role in our culture. Examining influential myths and adaptations of earlier myths in American culture, we will consider how “myth-making,” as a creative, speculative process, a mode of imagination and knowledge is carried over from oral and written narrative traditions into other art forms such as fiction, film, television, comics and graphic novels, and digital games. Our goal is to understand how myths “work,” attending to their social, textual, psychological, structural, and comparative components and, in turn, through the close analysis of specific myths in a variety of media, to shed light on American culture as it is reproduced and reimagined in these myths. Expect to read, carefully analyze, and write about a range of written and visual “texts” from American culture as well as “texts” drawn from ancient world mythology.

What do Madame Curie, Susan B. Anthony, Maya Angelou, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lucille Ball, Indira Gandhi, Betty Friedan, and Princess Diana have in common? All of these well-known women are famous for their powers of communication and for using their voices to deliver their message. Those messages inspired, persuaded, entertained, and educated during their times, and they continue to do so. Where did they find their passion for these timeless messages? How can they stir the passion in us today to use our voices to make a difference? What do you want to tell you audiences, and how can you make a difference? Students will use discussion and writing to explore the content and the context of these communications; determine the rhetorical strategies; and discover how the social, cultural, and political climates influenced these women and their messages.

Graphic novels, though not concretely defined, are essentially long-format comics and are a valid literary and visual art form. They take many forms but usually demonstrate a concern for a carefully constructed narrative structure, strong character development and plot strategies akin to much contemporary prose. Authors/artists working in this form address all manner of serious subjects worthy of study. In this course, we will explore this form as it is exhibited in several novels focusing on varied human experiences and events in an effort to learn how to read various kinds of texts and to practice different genres of writing as well as enhance critical thinking and media literacy skills.

Who Are You? What Are You Doing? Can I Play, Too? In this course, we examine some of the current trends in gaming, both electronic and otherwise, concentrating most heavily on RPGs role-playing games. We will examine how knowledge is framed and expressed in this discipline, especially concentrating on the continuing effort to legitimize and gain acceptance for game studies as an area for academic inquiry. We will utilize a variety of texts, which include critical scholarly essays, popular periodical articles, film excerpts, and actual RPGs. Prerequisite of Writing Seminar 0502-227. This course fulfills a Liberal Arts requirement.

The recent boom of movies and television shows based on the lives of spies (Bond, Bourne, Chuck, and 24, just to name a few) shows just how obsessed Americans are with spies. The focus of our quarter-long inquiry is espionage as a cultural fascination in late 20th/early 21st century America. In this course, we'll begin exploring ways popular culture represents espionage and how Americans perceive covert institutions (like the CIA and NSA) by watching movies and television shows and reading novels and/or short stories. We'll also take a first-hand look at the history and operations of the CIA through recently declassified documents. Ultimately, we'll write ourselves into the ongoing debates about the themes and issues we investigate. Writing (both formal and informal) will be the primary way we think through these topics. This class is designed to teach students multiple modes of inquiry (including ethnographic, archival, and "traditional" research methods) and strategies for academic writing, especially in the disciplines of pop culture studies, literature, film studies, and/or social history. You should leave this class not only with a better understanding of America's obsession with spies, but also with useful research and writing strategies to take to your future inquiries.

The course offers an analysis on the nature, structure and function of new media art. An important objective of this class is to create opportunities for you to learn the concept of convergence, how it’s changing the nature and focus of the “traditional” mass media, and how we’re beginning to see the emerging dominance of applied cinematic aesthetics in new media art. Before creating media content, contemporary artists often consider how fine art elements in video/filmmakers' projects shape belief systems among targeted audiences, where the media have developed into a powerful social, political, and economic force in society. Included in our papers and discussions will be the examination of theoretical approaches that scholars and critics cite to discuss cinematic aesthetics found in new media art's strategies.

This class will examine a fundamental form of expression: storytelling. An activity that far transcends the borders of English class, we tell stories to make sense of things from relatively private moments like a car wreck to grander questions like the fate of the universe. This is thus a truly multidisciplinary enterprise, and we are going to examine narratives from a variety of fields from myth and folktale to astronomy, and psychotherapy, among others, to consider the way these stories work in their different disciplinary settings. Jerome McGann has argued that being human necessarily means being mired in what he has famously termed “the textual condition,” and so we would do well to recognize and appreciate the stories we tell ourselves. To aid us in this exploration, students will be expected to give presentations as well as write papers both in response to the reading material and develop their own independent argument. Prerequisite of Writing Seminar 0502-227. This course fulfills a Liberal Arts requirement.

American Studies invites students to make connections. It is a crossroads space where students encounter American culture and history from multiple perspectives. It offers a glimpse into a big picture of America through literary, historical, and cultural “snapshots” of American life. What did it mean, for example, to be an American in 1953 and how is it different from today? How are the ideals of America as the land of liberty and freedom perceived at home and in the world? How do national politics shape literary formations? We begin by investigating key words and selective foundational texts. Through literature, film, photographs, and other forms of cultural expression, we explore questions about democratic culture and the significance of American identity from within and beyond national borders. The focus for this version of the course is on the 1950s—that decade wedged between the end of World War II and the beginning of the psychedelic 1960s. Students will investigate, for example, how Sputnik, McCarthyism, I Love Lucy, the Civil Rights movement, the Beats, the atomic bomb, interstate highways, and Elvis converged in the formation of post-war American culture and society. Assignments include investigations of key words, literary analyses, timelines, oral history, and student presentations. Students will become modest experts on a literary text or cultural phenomena or critical event or new movement that surfaced during this decade. Invited speakers will offer their expertise about one aspect of this anything-but-dull decade. Students may take this course as Honors Literature: American Studies 0504-324, as a general education elective, American Studies 0523-400, or as a course in the Literary/Cultural Studies concentration and minor.

In Toni Morrison’s America, ghosts shed tears and save the world, language is as joyous and liberating as jazz improvisation, and our official understanding of history is only one possible way of confronting the past. These visions come to us in an astonishing array of Morrison's novels -- The Bluest Eye, Song of Solomon, Jazz, Beloved, A Mercy. Offering alternate realities of the post-Civil War era, black life in New York City during the 1920s, and the very beginning's of American slavery (and much, much more), Morrison's work continues to amaze and inspire critics and general readers alike. In this class, we will take a tour through Toni Morrison's America by reading some of her more compelling novels (including Song of Solomon and Beloved), as well as bits and pieces of her literary criticism and public writing (especially her speech upon receiving the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature). We'll also pay particular attention to the way that Morrison investigates -- and is obsessed by -- the American past. Why does she insist that opening up the past even matters (to her characters and to us)? How do we do retell complex events in both American and African American history? And what forms (literary, technological, philosophical) allow us to glimpse alternate but perhaps more truthful conceptions of the past? Class sessions will emphasize discussion. We'll also listen to music and watch films that may help further illuminate Toni Morrison’s America. And student will write medium length papers and have the option of working on a creative final project (web-based and otherwise) of their choosing.
 

Reading short stories, novels, poetry, and essays, as well as viewing films of modern Mexico and Central and South America reveals a literature and culture wherein the mythic functions as an integral part of the modern world view and the poetic functions as a political power. The impressive vitality of modern Latin American literature can be attributed to its indigenous roots and to its branches that, stemming from a common language and a shared continent, overarch national boundaries and political regimes to form an international literary community. Part of the Latino/Latina/ Latin American and minority relations concentrations; the Spanish language/culture concentration and minor; the literary and cultural studies concentration and minor; and may also be taken as an elective. Prerequisite of Writing Seminar 0502-227.

This course uses the genre of the contemporary short story to provide material for critical commentary and cultural understanding. Part of the Literary and Cultural Studies concentration and minor and the Creative Writing minor. It may also be taken as an elective.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227 or equivalent.

A close reading and analysis of several novels selected to show the range of narrative techniques, methods of characterization and plot construction, and styles representative of the genre. Part of the literary and cultural studies concentration and minor; the creative writing minor; and may also be taken as an elective. Prerequisite of Writing Seminar 0502-227. May be taken as an elective.

Shakespeare has long been considered the pinnacle of English Literature, in this course we will be reading and discussing some of his comedies and histories in an attempt to determine the nature of his presumed greatness. What political and institutional factors account for the reverence accorded to Shakespeare? In addition to reading a range of Shakespeare’s comedies and histories, we will develop deeper understandings of contemporary literary theory and practices that allow us interpret these plays in a multitude of ways. Attention will be paid to issues of gender, historicity, iconicity and textual analysis among others.

Myths are commonly understood to be ancient stories that attempt to answer fundamental questions about the origin, character, and purpose of human cultures in the universe. The answers myths give to these questions are often perceived to be a “problem for modern rationality,” as William Doty has noted, and the study of myth, or mythology, is seen as an attempt to make sense of and decipher these “irrational” remnants of “primitive,” pre-modern cultures. Yet in spite of this commonplace view, and its assumption that modern science and rationality have displaced mythic explanations, everyday people around the world (not just anthropologists and historians) continue to read, retell, and write or rewrite myths. In this class, we will consider myths and mythic explanations from around the world as living texts that inform modern cultures in important ways. We will ask why myths continue to play such a central, though perhaps quite different, role in modern society and reflect on how myths enter into struggles over the nature of truth, religious belief, politics, cultural identity, and history in contemporary American culture, in particular.

This class will introduce you to key types of myth such as creation stories, goddess stories, hero stories, and trickster stories and to quite diverse ways of reading myths (in terms of their subject matter, their social function, their cultural origin and context, their structure, their psychological content, their narrative form, etc). While experimenting with these different ways of reading and understanding myth, we will pay special attention to myth as an expressive narrative form. In the final unit of the class we will focus in on the relationship between myth and modern literary narratives to consider exactly how and why these narrative traditions converge and diverge in texts like Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer prize-winning novel, Middlesex, as well as how myths inform other contemporary cultural texts and visual media.

Assignments include a reading response journal, a midterm, an essay analyzing a myth, and regular in class activities on our readings and on lecture materials.
 

Concentrates on literature by women, about women, primarily from the early 19th century to the present. Considers the aspirations, frustrations and achievements of women as documented by themselves, as well as the perceptions and representations of women in literature by male writers. Works are examined for their literary value as well as their documentation of broader feminist issues. Part of the Literary and Cultural Studies concentration and minor. May also be taken as an elective. Prerequisite is Writing Seminar 0502-227.

Most historians see the fall of the Berlin wall as the beginning of a new chapter in world history. With the end of Communism, the United States has become the single most powerful financial, military and (arguably) cultural force in the world. Scholars view the thrust of contemporary globalization as inexorably linked with the rise of American influence and hegemony.

This course will consider some of the key historical forces that have been bringing the globe's inhabitants into contact with and awareness of one another under the auspices of cultural, aesthetic and commercial expression. We will examine a host of artistic and popular forms that exist along the conduits and fault-lines of the global system: most of our readings will involve literary works, and in addition we will consider examples from film, television, animation, music, visual art, literature and new media. Our readings will include works from Julio Cortazar, Edwige Danticat, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Bessie Head, Jhumpa Lahiri, Yukio Mishima and Salman Rushdie, amongst others. Films will include Slumdog Millionaire and Waltz with Bashir.

Some of our course materials will be determined based on class input. Lectures and scholarly readings will contextualize our examination and analyses of cultural artifacts produced in this era of global capital. Participation in class discussion will comprise a significant component of the final grade. In addition, students will be responsible for two papers, a graded draft (of the second paper) and an in-class presentation. Individual and Group projects may also fulfill course requirements.
 

Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn. There was nothing before, there has been nothing after." Twain remains America's most famous author; he is also widely recognized as most likely America's most successful and famous stage humorist. What is less known about Twain is his late-life ranting and despair regarding "The Damned Human Race." This course will survey a broad selection of Twain's writings and oratory to develop and enhance the student's analytical tools regarding written and oral expression. There will be a mid-term and final exam, along with several short quizzes on the assigned reading, plus three papers from each student.

This class will introduce you to literary and cultural studies by considering a subject that though remote in time is still vividly familiar to us. When we spend our hard earned money on a vacation to stand gaping at the Grand Canyon, read a National Geographic magazine, or even watch the reality show Amazing Race, we are sharing in a distinctly medieval activity: we are indulging our appetite for awe and wonder. In order to understand the medieval idea of wonder we must recognize that in their minds we are all foreigners—exiles in search of a way home. This sets the age off from both the imperial aspirations of the Renaissance conquistador and the “proud, deep disdain” of the classical authorities. We will begin our investigation in this class by examining some classical sources that we may better understand the attitudes toward marvels, knowledge, curiosity, and desire out of which the medieval view grew. Then we will consider medieval tales of the marvelous in a variety of contexts: romance, chronicle, hagiography, and pilgrimage among others. Through these texts, we will hopefully gain a fuller understanding of this remarkable time. As we look forward, following the path that Stephen Greenblatt has famously traced, “from medieval wonder as a sign of dispossession to Renaissance wonder as an agent of appropriation,” we will emerge with a richer appreciation of the world around us, and a deeper respect for all the myriad shapes of its many faceted splendor.

Was there a time or place in history in which censorship did not exist? Was there ever a group of human beings that was able to survive without censure? This class will examine how suppression of information has been orchestrated throughout history in different contexts. The process of suppressing information – of people in power attempting to hide images, sounds and words – must itself be viewed in perspective. We must recognize acts of censorship in relation to their social settings, political movements, religious beliefs, economic conditions, cultural expressions and/or personal identities. The course is structured around a series of multidisciplinary readings, which (in addition to the novels) include a vast variety of sources: original government documents, speeches, archival materials, diaries, personal letters, press reports, historical and critical writings, and film. Students are called upon to develop their capacity for independent and critical thought, which in turn prepares them for writing effectively and persuasively.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227. This course fulfills a Liberal Arts requirement.

This new Art of Expression course will provide a forum for students to read fictional and non-fictional works on a national and local level. Students will react to these readings through research, analysis, and comparison, as these social issues affect everyone’s daily life. We will examine serial killers, sex offenders, white collar and blue collar crime, as well as underground street crime.

Drama as a genre and theater as a performing art. Intensive study of at least one major playwright or period complements a general survey of drama/theater from ancient Greece to modern Broadway. Part of the Literary and Cultural Studies concentration and minor and the Theatre Arts minor. It may also be taken as an elective.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227 or equivalent.

Examines the nature of narrative in both film and literature, the various aspects of adaptation of literature into film and the relationship between social reality and storytelling in documentary film, utilizing a non-technical approach to the study of film. Part of the literary and cultural studies concentration and minor. May also be taken as an elective.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227 or equivalent.

Co-Instructed by John Capps.  A focused, in-depth study and analysis of a selected advanced topic in literature. Specific topics vary according to faculty assigned. Part of the Literary and Cultural Studies concentration and minor. It may also be taken as an elective.

In this course, students will study Shakespeare’s unsettling tragedies as well as his surreal romances. Through class discussion, interactive activities, and examination of film, students will develop strategies both to investigate the literary and theatrical power of these works as well as to consider their cultural presence in both contemporary American culture and Shakespeare’s England. Particular attention will be devoted to Shakespeare in performance, and students may have the opportunity to engage creatively with the plays. Part of the Literary and Cultural Studies concentration and minor and the Theatre Arts minor. It may also be taken as an elective. (0502-227 or equivalent).

From Walt Whitman’s “Barbaric Yawp,” to Emily Dickinson’s “Letter to the World that Never Wrote to Me,” and Baudelaire’s “Breath of Wind From the Wings of Madness,” Modern Poetry is a body of literature characterized by bold changes in voice, form, and subject matter. This course offers a close examination of poetry of the 19th and 20th centuries, with attention to such things as the role played by technological, historical, and political developments; what it means to be “modern” and how other modern arts movements, for instance, visual arts, music, or film, have influenced poetry. Part of the Literary and Cultural Studies concentration and minor; the Creative Writing minor; and may also be taken as an elective.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227 or equivalent.

We tend to think of technology simply as tools or instruments that aid and further human endeavors. But to what extent have we become our tools, constituted by the very instruments meant to serve us? In this course we will examine an important moment in the history of technology—the birth of computing—and the resultant theories of information spawned by the rapid developments in the years immediately following the Second World War. Course readings will include works from scientists Norbert Wiener and Claude Shannon, cultural theorists Donna Haraway and N. Katherine Hayles, fiction writers Philip K. Dick and Neal Stephenson and filmmakers Terry Gilliam and Ridley Scott. This will be a reading intensive course. Though background technical knowledge in information theory is not necessary, the readings are complex and will require discipline and patience. Requirements: Journal; Two Formal Papers or a Multimedia Project; Attendance and Participation. Part of the science and technology studies concentration; the science, technology and environmental studies minor; the science writing minor; the literary and cultural studies concentration and minor; and may also be taken as an elective.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227.

Reading the myths, sagas and folktales of the Viking world reveals the values of a people that created the world’s oldest extant democratic society. Both women and men fiercely defend their honor and freedom, willing to risk death rather than to bow in submission. The sagas are analyzed as compelling narrative structures and as documents of a culture that continues significantly to shape western civilization. Part of the literary and cultural studies concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227 or equivalent.

This course, which is multicultural in approach, will survey the wealth of Irish literature from ancient Celtic sagas to contemporary poetry and fiction. The course will focus on selected early texts (in translation) as well as on selected works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers. We will study particular poems, short stories, plays, novels, and essays in the context of Irish history and culture. Part of the Literary and Cultural Studies concentration and minor and may also be taken as an elective.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227 or equivalent

Latina(o) culture is a social construct and an identity trait, both a significant ethnic group and a convenient term to refer to very different kinds of people. Ultimately, there is no real single Latina(o ) experience, but at the same time, there is a necessity to consider the various experience of Latino and Latinas in the US unified by a kind of affinity, a commonality that is true for all people regardless of history, ethnicity, gender or race. To be Latino in the US is something; it’s just not always the same something. In this class we will read text from a variety of Latina(o) authors and talk about the history of their experience in relation to the mainstream culture. We will explore issues of identity, politics, prejudice, cultural difference, and assimilation in order to make arguments about the experience of Latina(o)s in the US.

This course provides a selective survey of science fiction from its antecedents to its foundational texts and through many of its developments in the 20th and even the 21st centuries. With a variety of authors who exhibit varying intentions and effects, the course approaches these texts as literary form, as cultural artifact, as philosophical speculation, and as scientific and technological imaginary. Part of writing studies concentration and minor, the literary and cultural studies minor, and the science writing minor.

Space Speaks! Rethink space through dynamic novels, poetry, films – from Michael Ondaatje’s Burnt, talking postcolonial head in The English Patient, Annie Proulx’s Bad Dirt Wyoming stories, to Seamus Heaney’s Bog People. Explore the paradoxes of mapping as they shape the cartographic imagination and create new forms of authority and social life. Develop a final paper or digital map project. Map a communal “Reading Rochester / RIT as Text,” orienteer, or work with GIS analysis.

The end of WW2 marked a great shift in the direction of Italian literature: the explosion of Neorealism, whose earlier beginnings had been oppressed by Fascism. Social realism dominated postwar Italian literature and intellectual culture, as authors explored the repercussions of Fascism and the war, the socioeconomic plight of the southern Italian regions, and the human condition in general (e.g. Elio Vittorini’s Conversations in Sicily, Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz). Works from the latter part of the century are more eclectic and include the lively, fantastic, and cosmic tales of Italo Calvino and the rich and enigmatic work of Umberto Eco. We will also view films. All readings will be in English translation—no knowledge of Italian is needed. This course is part of the Literary and Cultural Studies concentration and minor, the Italian concentration and minor, and may also be taken as an elective.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227.

From Charles Baudelaire and Marcel Proust to Assia Djebar and Dai Sijie, modern and contemporary French writers view France and the impact of its global presence from the dominant cultural platform that metropolitan Paris affords. Part of the French language/culture concentration; the literary and cultural studies concentration and minor; and may also be taken as an elective.

Prerequisite: Writing Seminar 0502-227.