Spring 2008 Class Schedule - updated May 09, 2008

Given the importance of the 'body' as a critical term in the study of art history and religion, how does one investigate representations of the body in Buddhist art, scripture and literature? This course addresses this question by examining visual and textual representations of the human body in Buddhist sources as a site of idealization, mutilation, sacrifice and relic making, among other cultural practices. Interdisciplinary in scope, this course is neither limited to a specific tradition nor to a specific time period. Rather, it encourages students to explore individual interests in Buddhist art, practice and ritual in a seminar setting. Readings include modern theories of the body and recent scholarship on Buddhist visual and material culture. Permission of the instructor required.

This course considers Greek vases as documents of ancient society. Using historiographic, stylistic, semiotic, contextual, and scientific approaches, we will discuss the production, trade, and functions of Greek vases in funerary and ritual contexts, in particular the symposium. We will discuss the development of black- and red-figure painting, and learn how to 'read' the iconography of Greek vases. Field trips include visits to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts as well as a working potters' studio.

Students will be assigned readings by the instructo

Students are required to read the Wall Street Journal, and readings that will be assigned by the professors. There will be weekly write-ups required of the students summarizing what they learned from the guest and how it is connected to economics they were taught. There will be a final paper on a research topic to be discussed - with the students working in 2-person teams. There will be one final exam. Students will be expected to participate in out-of-class lunches, dinners and/or seminars with some of the guest speakers. Course Prerequisite: Minimum of 3 courses in Economics, or permission of instuctor

Students are required to read the Wall Street Journal, and readings that will be assigned by the professors. There will be weekly write-ups required of the students summarizing what they learned from the guest and how it is connected to economics they were taught. There will be a final paper on a research topic to be discussed - with the students working in 2-person teams. There will be one final exam. Students will be expected to participate in out-of-class lunches, dinners and/or seminars with some of the guest speakers. Course Prerequisite: Minimum of 3 courses in Economics, or permission of instuctor

Poetry, creative nonfiction, and fiction each have their own set of traditions and rules, but what happens when those traditions and rules are shared, blurred, and our assumptions about literary genres become upended? This course will introduce creative writing as an ongoing investigation into lyric and narrative experimentation through encounters with writing we can¿t easily define at first glance.

Reading as a writer, with an eye for the details of craft, is essential to producing, evaluating, and revising your own creative writing. We will read and discuss works by contemporary authors, such as Sherman Alexie, Charles Baxter, Anne Carson, Louise Glück, Robert Hass, Terrance Hayes, Denis Johnson, Jamaica Kincaid, Claudia Rankine, and many others, to examine craft decisions these authors make to create desired effects.

While reading as a writer, we will be constantly devoted to the process of writing - the first glimmer of an idea, the practical

What makes a voice "American"? What are the relationships between different kinds of writing and different "American voices"? How do different literary forms enable writers to find their "voice," to tell stories about themselves and the "America" in which they live? In this course we will seek answers to these and other questions by reading a range of poems, novels, short stories, and plays that tell varying - and often contradictory - stories about the lives and experiences of people in the United States. Some of our authors will include Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Israel Zangwill, W.E.B. DuBois, James Baldwin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Leslie Marmon Silko, and Lan Cao.

In this course we will explore the emergence and development of the novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and investigate the transformations of the genre in the twentieth century. We will pay special attention to the proliferation of novelistic subgenres such as the sensation novel. Our inquiries will also focus on the ways in which literary and artistic developments such as realism, modernism, and postmodernism mark the historical trajectory of the novel. Students will read literary theory and criticism in addition to novels. They will write three formal papers and three informal response papers. The reading list includes novels by authors from the U.K., the Caribbean, the U.S., and South Africa, all writing in English in the original.

This course will examine the genealogy of the gangster film within the United States and its adaptations in French New Wave, Japanese yakuza, and more recent British, Irish, Asian, and African contexts. We'll build a technical vocabulary for how to discuss film as an audiovisual art form (camera work, perspective, framing, editing, lighting, soundtrack), while also examining the signature visual style of particular genres that surface within the gangster film (German expressionism, film noir, detective genre, war/espionage film, Western, documentary). We'll ask: What were/are the underlying representational politics of the gangster film? Historically, how did the nationalist and/or anarchist politics of immigrant mafias become allied with the enterprise of American capitalism? How do specific films present the relationship between organized labor and organized crime? The Organization and the Family? What role has religion, particularly Roman Catholic

This course will examine the narration of sexuality in nineteenth- and twentieth-century British literature, with an emphasis on representations of subversion. Which literary tropes addressed the transgression of sexual codes and the undoing of gender binaries? How did literary representations of sexuality evoke gender and class identity? How did novels and poems contribute to the policing of sexuality? How did they undermine it? We will first address these questions in the historical context of the nineteenth century, examining the literary figures of the prostitute and the libertine. As we will see, despite the presumed repressiveness of Victorian society, Victorian writing created a public discourse around sexuality. We will gradually transition into the twentieth century as we discuss the legacy of aesthetes and decadents. Our discussions of twentieth-century British literature will first address the Bloomsbury group, famous for its membe

Language does not impose order on a chaotic universe but reflects its own wildness back. Gary Snyder

In this course we'll read a wide array of poetry, along with selected creation myths, cosmologies, and essays, to consider poets¿ sense of what Gary Snyder famously called 'Earth Household.' What environs us? How do we find a dynamic and just principle of dwelling? How do poets evoke the vitality of sensory experience within elemental environments? How do places arouse strong emotions and attachments? How do people in today's environmental movements use poetry? Can poetry about environments teach specific guidelines for living? What are ecopoetry and ecocriticism, and how are they different from nature poetry? What do poets mean when they say that language itself is wild? How can studying poetry fuel or refine thinking about environmental justice? We'll read from a wide range of poets, including Li Po, T'ao Ch'ien, Virgil, Thomas Traherne, John C

This course explores many dimensions of natural and human-induced hazards. We first examine the many ways in which hazards have been and can be defined, before moving into in-depth explorations of human-hazard relationships. We will discuss the simple causative mechanisms of some geological, meteorological, biological and environmental hazards, but more importantly, we will look at how population dynamics, society at large, and external factors exacerbate (or occasionally mitigate) what we know as 'risk.' We analyze several programs designed to help society cope with specific hazards, and we pay particular attention to how populations share risk unevenly. Students will have the opportunity to participate in and critique a local hazard-mitigation initiative.

This course uses three theoretical approaches from geography to make sense of health-related issues. First, we consider ecological approaches to recognize ways in which human interactions with their environments can shape human health. For instance, how can deforestation or the development of irrigation schemes alter disease patterns? Second, we turn to social approaches, including political economy and recent humanist approaches, to ask how patterns of human organization affect health and health care. For instance, how do race, socioeconomic status, or political structures influence who gets sick and who stays healthy? Finally, we will investigate spatial approaches, which employ maps and spatial statistics to identify patterns across space. Two sub-themes¿environmental issues and international perspectives¿are emphasized throughout the course.

In the wake of Soviet collapse the geographic concept and extent of Europe is undergoing dramatic change. Merely 20 years ago the continent was split in half by ideologically opposed super powers; today it is split by an economic divide. Over the past 400 years the European map has been a mosaic of competitive nation-states; today many of these same states are attempting to forge a political union. Whereas Europe has traditionally defined itself as the epicenter of Christian faith, today Christian affiliation is on the wane and Islamic belief on the rise. And finally, after vowing "never again" to the genocidal nationalism of World War Two, the past 20-years has seen tens-of-thousands of Europeans die due to nationalist conflict. This course covers the various human geographic transitions affecting all European societies, states, and cultures since the collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989. Topics of intense scrutiny will include: (1) the expansion an

Professional sports are important economic and symbolic components of many North American cities and their significance becomes visible in myriad ways: debates over stadium building and finance, resources allocated to major event proposals and planning, displays of fan identity, and the various ?and contradictory- meanings that are attached to sport in urban centers. This course will examine the relationship between sport and the city by focusing on both the practicalities of locating sport in the city [asking questions like why do city leaders care about gaining or losing professional sport teams? What are the costs and benefits of stadium building?] and the social norms and cultural politics at work within and beyond stadiums [asking questions like how do identity categories like race, class, gender, and sexuality get expressed in and through sport spaces? What is the relationship between identity, sport, and the city?] Whether you love or hate

Heidegger's philosophy of being in Being and Time presented a key challenge to modern epistemology: unlike Descartes, who saw knowledge as something a 'subject' has of an 'object,' Heidegger rejected the subject-object dichotomy, which he saw as a derivative cognitive form that masks the fundamental qualities of what it means to be in the world. Key to this new conception of being is what Heidegger calls 'understanding,' a fundamental aspect of humankind which is prior to the kind of detached, theoretical knowledge that has formed the paradigm of truth since Plato. Unlike disinterested truth, 'understanding' is pragmatic, context-bound, limited in time, and contingent. The goal of the course is first to understand what Heidegger means by 'understanding,' looking at its place in the broader context of Heidegger's philosophy of being as presented in Being and Time. We will then pursue how these ideas were applied and developed by