Glendening Hall 220
Core Curriculum
Contact Information
For general questions or submission of forms and petitions, please contact us at corecurriculum@smcm.eduFax: (240) 895-2234
St. Mary's College of Maryland
18952 E. Fisher Rd.
St. Mary's City, MD 20686
Elizabeth Nutt Williams, Ph.D.
Dean of the Core Curriculum and First Year Experience
Phone: (240) 895-4467
Email: enwilliams@smcm.edu
Dr. Williams will be on sabbatical in Fall 2012: please direct all questions and correspondence to Dr. Feingold, Ms. Wimberly, or the Core Curriculum mailbox.
Ruth Feingold, Ph.D
Assistant Dean of the Core Curriculum and Academic Advising
Phone: (240) 895-4388
Email: rpfeingold@smcm.edu
Diane Wimberly
Administrative Assistant
Phone: (240) 895-2185
Email:dfwimberly@smcm.edu
First Year Seminars for Fall 2013
Click here to learn about Registering for the Seminars
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12:00-1:10pm
Kids Who Kill: Guns, Drugs, and Soldiers
Liberation Rhetoric: In the Beginning Was The Word
Modern HeroesMythbusters: Exploring the Common Misconceptions about the Human Mind and Behavior
Pimp My Ride: Materialism in Human Life
Songs of Protest and Social Change
Tuesday/Thursday 12:00-1:50pm
American Mutant: Genetics in Literature and Film
Are Entrepreneurs Born or Taught?
Can We Save the Chesapeake Bay?
Critical Views of Communal Space: The Politics of Public Art
Japan Cool: Japanese Popular Culture
Literature of the American Civil Rights Movement
Morals vs. Markets: An Inquiry into the Nature of Greed in Economics
Theory and Practice of Non-Violence
Where Am I? Who Am I? Navigating the Politics of Difference at St. Mary's
Tuesday/Thursday 6:00-7:50pm
A Softer Energy Footprint
Caudillos and Populists: Myths and Realities of Latin American Political Styles
Morals vs. Markets: An Inquiry into the Nature of Greed in Economics
Theory and Practice of Non-Violence
Seminar Descriptions:
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12:00-1:10pm
(With Prof. Debbie O'Donnell)
This course explores definitions, explanations, and treatment approaches for mental illness from a cross cultural perspective. The course will focus on cross-cultural comparisons of ideas surrounding "deviance," "abnormality" and "madness." How do different cultures define "normality" and "abnormality"? What strategies do a variety of worldviews use to control those who deviate from normal? What are the ritual, symbolic, experiential, and social-cultural aspects of healing practices in the world today? Attention will be paid to the impact of ethnicity, class, and gender on the construction of, explanations for, and interventions developed to treat mental illnesses from a global perspective.
Email: daodonnell@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Katsunori Mita)
We live in a digital age, surrounded by all kinds of digital gadgets: smart phones, tablets, laptops, computers, MP3 players, CD players, DVD players, digital TVs, sound recorders, cameras, video recorders, and, of course, the Internet. Digital technology enables us to stream music and movies and whatever information we want to transmit to each other. But what does the word “digital” mean? “Digital” as opposed to what? To answer that question we have to explore the nature of information technology before the onset of the digital age. Then we will understand why digital technology, by comparison is so powerful. In this course, we will explore how each of these things works, and try to understand the underlying framework of the Internet. This exploration will be done in a way accessible to anyone interested in the subject.
Email: kmita@smcm.edu
WebpageKids Who Kill: Guns, Drugs and Soldiers
(With Prof. Elizabeth Applegate)
Some of the most moving and distressing stories are those that represent suffering children: children who have been displaced, orphaned, wounded, "caught in the cross-fire," raped, or murdered in the course of conflict. Such stories are often used to illustrate extreme misery, and to convince us of the unacceptably high human cost of war and societal violence. But how are we to react when children themselves perpetrate violence? Child soldiers, some as young as eight years old, fight, kill, and die in conflicts throughout the world. Although these children are casualties of war, some are also looters, rapists, and killers. These acts of brutality abroad mirror violence in the United States, where children and adolescents join gangs, participate in drug trafficking, and use firearms against one another and themselves.
How can we understand the experiences of these violent children? Who is responsible for their actions? To what extent can the actions of child soldiers abroad help us to understand violence in the United States? How do these violent children represent themselves, and how are they represented in newspapers, fiction, film, and advocacy campaigns? What are the ethical implications of such representational choices? In this class, we will think about these questions through a study of various written works, film, and television.
Email: ejapplegate@smcm.edu
Liberation Rhetoric: In the Beginning Was The Word
(With Prof. Garrey Dennie)
This course examines how in key historical moments the written and spoken word have played a pivotal role in advancing the cause of human freedom. These include but are not limited to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and Martin Luther's 95 Theses, Thomas Jefferson's authoring the American Declaration of Independence and Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Winston Churchill's speeches against Nazi aggression and Haile Selassie's stand against Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, Mahatma Gandhi's condemnations of British colonialism and Nelson Mandela's challenge to apartheid, Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" and Barack Obama's visions of constructing a new post-racial America. The course requires students to engage the competing ideas of freedom across time and space and contemplate how and why at particular moments in time the rhetoric of liberation possessed the power to bend the arc of history towards the cause of human freedom.
Email: gmdennie@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Brian O'Sullivan)
This course will examine transformations of the idea of the hero since the beginning of the Twentieth Century. How have world wars, technological advances, changes in gender roles and attitudes towards class and race, and other developments affected the ways in which we think about heroes? In answering this question, we’ll turn to traditional literary genres like novels and poetry but also to popular media like comic books and movies. Most of our examples will come from English language sources, but we’ll also include some works in translation, and students with knowledge of other cultures will be invited to consider those cultures’ heroes in their projects. We’ll also explore how we define and emulate non-fictional heroes in our own lives.
Email: bposullivan@smcm.edu
Mythbusters: Exploring the Common Misconceptions about the Human Mind and Behavior
(With Prof. Anna Han)
Is it true that we only use 10% of our brains? Can subliminal messages persuade us? Do dreams possess symbolic meaning? Do opposites attract? People often use their personal experiences and common sense to develop beliefs about the human mind and our behaviors, yet many of these beliefs are not supported by scientific evidence. In this seminar, we will debunk the most common myths in psychology and examine why people believe in such falsehoods. We will analyze these myths in the context of psychological research, learn what counts as scientific evidence and how it is produced, and sharpen critical thinking. In the end, we might realize that truth can be even stranger than myths!
Email: hahan@smcm.edu
Pimp My Ride: Materialism in Human Life
(With Prof. Iris Carter Ford)
The unprecedented scale of contemporary materialism and consumption raises disquieting questions about wealth and poverty, character and equality, and collective and individual identities built on ethnicity, class, and gender. This seminar will address complex issues of materialism and consumption - through space and time - to reveal cultural, political and ethical consequences. Students will explore a brief history of early Western attitudes towards commerce and consumption that continues to influence thinking today, an overview of the many and diverse claims and critiques of capitalism and consumption, and a synthesis and analysis of materialism and cross-cultural consumption practices from a contemporary context. Why *do* we wear our bling on our sleeves? Do the things we make and own, make and own us? The lamentation of materialism and its minion conspicuous consumption is loud indeed - but is it all bad?
Email: icford@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Alex Meadows)
Is the God Hypothesis compatible with a scientific worldview? What can science say about the value of religious life? Science and religion consider life and the universe from different perspectives, and with sometimes different purposes. This course will explore the possible relationships, tensions, and cohesions between them. We will read and critique perspectives from philosophers, scientists, theologians, and popular media. Along the way, we will learn about the big bang theory, biological evolution, and the basic tenets of Buddhism.
Email: ammeadows@smcm.edu
Songs of Protest and Social Change
(With Prof. Barbara Beliveau)
What does the music of the 1960's and 1970's say about the cultural changes that swept America during that era? Were these songs merely reflections of social change or were they themselves agents of change? While songs have a long tradition in the area of civil rights (We Shall Overcome", "John Brown's Body", "Strange Fruit") during this era they extended their influence into other areas of our common life. Drugs, sex, war, violence, social justice and the perception of women are major themes in this music. We will explore both the conditions that produced the music and the responses elicited by the music and consider what both tell us about the culture of the period. Songs to be explored include "Eve of Destruction", "The Times They Are A-Changing", "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall", "White Rabbit", "We Gotta Get Out of This Place", "With God on Our Side" and "Ohio".
Email: bcbeliveau@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Jordan Price)
Why do animals do things that appear to be against their own self interests? For example, why do individuals risk their lives to warn others of danger or forego reproduction themselves in order to help others raise offspring? Such striking examples of altruism have long puzzled evolutionary biologists. In this seminar we will explore the mechanisms underlying these and a variety of other interesting animal traits, with a particular focus on the wildlife we see regularly here on the St. Mary's College campus. In the process, we will cover a range of topics related to the processes and consequences of biological evolution, including the evolution of humans.
Email: jjprice@smcm.edu
American Mutant: Genetics in Literature and Film
(With Prof. Karen Anderson)
In this class, we’ll analyze literature and film that challenges to “natural” human limits: advertisements that reflect our obsessions with perfecting our bodies, superheroes, and fantasies about future worlds in which our bodies morph to accommodate a changing environment. The idea of challenging such limits will also frame our approach to our own intellectual work as we develop strategies for writing, thinking critically, presenting work orally, and researching a final project. As we explore the parameters of the human—in practices and disciplines ranging from accounts of genetic modification to cyborg writing—we will seek to understand the connections between forms of literary, cinematic, and bodily change.
Email: klanderson@smcm.edu
Are Entrepreneurs Born or Taught?
(With Prof. Elizabeth Osborn)
Entrepreneurs are the engines of the economy, captains of business and leaders of social change. They are both romanticized and criticized and often misunderstood. Social scientists analyze entrepreneurs’ personalities, their backgrounds, their business acumen, their successes, and their failures. Economic theory of entrepreneurship concentrates on economic decision-making. Political scientists study the institutional base and the normative foundation of entrepreneurship. Sociologists are most interested in factors that lead people to undertake entrepreneurial activities. In this course, as we test our own entrepreneurial spirits, we will look at the overlap of entrepreneurial perspectives and how they complement one another.
Email: eaosborn@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Andy Koch)
Energy is an interesting thing; is it free? Certainly one could argue that it is; like water, we find it all around us, just there for the taking. However, there is a hidden cost to energy, even hidden from those who pay an electric bill or fill up their gas tank. Should we be paying for these hidden costs? Can we even figure out what these hidden costs are? This course will guide students through an understanding of their energy needs, both personal and societal, and how everyday choices affect the world around us.
Email: askoch@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Julia Bates)
The current exploration of what babies can do, from the moment of their birth until toddlerhood, has produced new insights for child rearing and deepened our understanding of the roles that parents and others in the child’s world do to lay the foundation for a child’s future learning. Reading to children, from infancy on up, is a major bonding activity between adults and children. Books also capture themes and images from a culture that are part of the foundation of knowledge for both the child who listens and the adult who reads. In this first year seminar, we will study texts that describe the abilities of babies at different stages of development. We will read dozens of children’s books. We will watch young children respond to texts at a local library, and finally we will create new books for babies and toddlers that are designed to appeal to both children and adults. This seminar should appeal to those who are interested in neuroscience, education, children, writing, and art.
Email: jrbates@smcm.edu
Can We Save the Chesapeake Bay?
(With Prof. Bob Paul)
Despite increased restoration efforts throughout the watershed, the overall health of the Chesapeake Bay did not improve in 2008, according to a Chesapeake Bay Program report released in March 2009. The nation’s largest estuary continues to have poor water quality, degraded habitats and low populations of several key species of fish and shellfish. Based on these conditions, the Chesapeake Bay’s health averaged 38 percent, with 100 percent representing a fully restored ecosystem. Population pressures continue to mount with close to 17 million people currently living in the watershed and nearly 20 million projected by 2030. Yet, in 2012, submerged grass beds made a drastic comeback in the Susquehanna Flats, and we have met some restoration objectives. By 2009, the Chesapeake Bay Program exceeded its goal for land preservation with 7.3 million acres permanently protected from development. Is this enough? And if not, what will it take? What are the problems still facing the Chesapeake Bay, what can we do about these, and should we be hopeful that we can save the Chesapeake Bay?
Email: rwpaul@smcm.edu
Critical Views of Communal Space: The Politics of Public Art
(With Prof. Diana Boros)
Art and politics have long shared a much-debated relationship. Artistic experience can influence and critique our political language, our cultural beliefs, and our shared spaces. This seminar will provide students with an introduction to the many links between art, creativity, political life, revolution, and community building. Public art- art that is created, enacted, or placed, in our communal spaces- in particular is interesting to consider, as it brings the experience of art to everyday life. In this course, you will explore and reflect on art and creativity through a political and philosophical lens.
Email: dboros@smcm.edu
Japan Cool: Japanese Popular Culture
(With Prof. Holly Blumner)
In this course, we will be examining Japanese Popular Culture to explore ideas about nationalism, globalization, gender and sexuality, and consumer culture. We will study different aspects of Japan through anime, manga, literature, film, music, theatre and food. We will also be looking at popular culture at different points in history to compare how society and material culture have changed over time. Of course, popular culture is constantly changing. Students in class are encouraged to share their knowledge of contemporary Japanese culture. If you know nothing about Japanese popular culture but want to learn more, you are welcome. No knowledge of Japan is necessary to take this course. Classes will be structured through readings, films, and discussion.
Email: hablumner@smcm.edu
Literature of the American Civil Rights Movement
(With Prof. Jeff Coleman)
This seminar will introduce you to poems, short stories, novels, essays, and plays that specifically address America’s Civil Rights Movement. You will discover how the literature of the period reflects the complex and often tumultuous social climate of the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s. You will critically engage perspectives on the relationship between social equality and cultural production by conducting research, writing essays, and presenting your conclusions orally during the course of the semester. Ultimately, we will all attempt to ascertain if and how the most transformative social movement of twentieth-century America still informs our twenty-first century lives.
Email: jlcoleman@smcm.edu
Morals vs. Markets: An Inquiry into the Nature of Greed in Economics
(With Prof. Don Stable)
For over a century in the U.S. opponents of the market economy have attacked it for the immoral behavior its stress on greed has allegedly generated. From this perspective, a moral economy is one whereby economic decisions are made with an attitude of doing what is right and fair in order to achieve social justice; markets need to be regulated or supplemented by government programs. In contrast, advocates for the market approach focus on economic incentives, that is, doing what leads to higher profits for business and higher pay for managers, workers and other employers. To them, the stress on morals as embodied in government programs assumes that the government's behavior is more moral than business. In this course we will examine critically both sides of this debate over greed.
Email: drstabile@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Deborah Lawrence)
Some pieces of music are referred to as classics - appealing to people
across the boundaries of not only time and place, but alsogender, race,
age, and religion. In this course we will explore four such works
(Monteverdi's opera "L'Orfeo," Mozart's Requiem, Beethoven's Fifth
Symphony and the Beatles' album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band")
in order to examine 1) how each one represents its unique context and
culture, 2) what each one is about, and 3) why each piece still has
profound meaning and appeal.
Email: dalawrence@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Sahar Shafqat)
The city is at the heart of the modern imagination. It serves as a home, a community, a place where production and economic activity is located, the node of a transportation and commercial network, and sometimes also a site of conflict. Recently, we have seen the rise of a new kind of city: the global city. These cities are not just embodiments of the urban ideal, but also occupy a special place in the global economy and political structure. This seminar will explore what the global city is, how it functions, how it is structured, and how it is changing the way we think about cities.Email: sshafqat@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Mark Rhoda)
I’ll show you what horror means!,” the monstrous Mr. Hyde says to the cowering Champagne Ivy in the 1931 Paramount Studio horror classic Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. From the silent era’s “horror spectaculars” of the 1920s to the teen-pic “slasher,” or “splatter,” films of the 1980s, 1990s, and beyond, horror remains one of the most enduring genres in film history and a staple of U.S. popular entertainment culture. No matter its guise—in the form of the vampire, doppelganger, werewolf, zombie, irradiated oversized creature, devil-possessed, telekinetically-empowered, avenging-revenging slasher, sci-fi alien, or just plain “evil-doer”—the horror film has filled the silver screen with fictional monsters that defy cultural categories and that arguably threaten, frighten, scare, disgust, or repel. Are these objects and affects horror’s appeal and its raison d’être? Or, do these monsters and their scarifying monstrousness signal something else? In a post-9/11 world, they certainly do! The monsters have returned! This seminar will examine how horror cinema has responded to the cultural phenomenon that is 9/11 in terms of its visual (i.e. iconographic) and story-telling (i.e. narrative) strategies. How, for example, does a film like Matt Reeves’s Cloverfield (2008) employ specific imagery evocative of the 9/11 tragedy in order to construct an apocalyptic vision of “homeland”? What does M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (2004) tell us about a politics of fear? And how, and why, does a film like 30 Days of Night (2007) position its monstrous threat as distinctly foreign, as unambiguously and aggressively different from “us”? These and other questions will guide our thinking about cinematic horror’s response to the traumatic event that is “terrorism,” that is the phenomenon of 9/11.
Tread lightly, but tread you must . . . .
Email: marhoda@smcm.edu
(With Prof. Jennifer Tickle)
Most of us are frequent consumers of mass media, including television, movies, music, print media, and electronic communication. In fact, the average teenager spends over 7.5 hours using media each day (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2009). This course will explore a variety of psychological and communication theories about the effects of media on attitudes and behavior and how we process those messages. In particular, we will critically examine controversies and current issues in the literature on media effects, including the influence of media violence on aggression and the implications of online social networking for identity, well-being, and relationships. Other topics explored may include the effects of media on stereotypes, norms, health behavior, and consumer behavior. Throughout the course students will gain an understanding of how media effects are studied and how to be more critical consumers of mass media.
Email: jjtickle@smsmc.edu
Theory and Practice of Non-Violence
(With Prof. Katharina von Kellenbach)
The twentieth century was one of the bloodiest in human history, with millions of lives lost to two world wars, the Holocaust, genocides, and repressive regimes using lethal force to control minority and majority populations. It has also brought forth movements that used and advocated non-violence as a strategy to resist violence. We will study the philosophical, religious and political principles of non-violence, as they were developed by Mahatma Gandhi and adopted by Martin Luther King and others. We will also examine particular conflicts in which men and women risked their lives to challenge brutal governments non-violently, and asked why they were able to succeed. This course discusses the theories of non-violence and examines its effectiveness as a political strategy.
Email: kvonkellenbach@smcm.eduWhere Am I? Who Am I? Navigating the Politics of Difference at St. Mary's
(With Prof. Jose Ballesteros and Prof. Sybol Anderson)
Let’s face it: the rural liberal arts honors college comes as a culture shock to most students, but it poses unique challenges to students from urban environments (“Is there anything to do here?”), those who are the first in their families to go to college (“What the heck is …?”), those from ethnic minority groups (“Am I really the only Latino/Asian/Native American/Black student in this class?”), and students from other underrepresented groups. In this seminar, we examine the complexities of race, class, gender, and other forms of difference in America and how they may impact your college experience. The springboard for our discussions are narratives by advanced students, professors, psychologists, social theorists, public figures, screenwriters, and, most importantly, you! You will discover how you, like those who have gone before you, can maximize the benefits of your liberal arts education by cultivating self-understanding, developing critical skills, managing relationships, and much more. In this way, you become a campus leader making a difference at St. Mary’s.
Email: scanderson@smcm.edu
Email: jrballesteros@smcm.edu
Tuesday/Thursday 6:00-7:50pm
(With Prof. Andy Koch)
Energy is an interesting thing; is it free? Certainly one could argue that it is; like water, we find it all around us, just there for the taking. However, there is a hidden cost to energy, even hidden from those who pay an electric bill or fill up their gas tank. Should we be paying for these hidden costs? Can we even figure out what these hidden costs are? This course will guide students through an understanding of their energy needs, both personal and societal, and how everyday choices affect the world around us.
Email: askoch@smcm.edu
Caudillos and Populists: Myths and Realities of Latin American Political Styles
(With Prof. Adriana Brodsky)
Have you ever heard of the word Caudillo used to describe a present-day politician? Have you ever heard of Evita and her husband Juan Perón? Ever seen an Argentine gaucho, the South American cowboy of the pampas? By focusing on the development of these leaders and leadership styles in Argentina, this seminar will help us understand the rise (and permanence) of Latin American contemporary politicians like Hugo Chavez (Venezuelan President). How did caudillos and populists come to power? Why is their military legacy so important in the construction of their political personas-they, like many other political leaders, were also military men? What is the ‘spectacle of power’ they orchestrated in order to advance their causes? Who followed these leaders? What motivated the followers’ decisions? After moving chronologically from 19th to 20th century, we will end by studying the way these political figures have been used in the present to legitimate current political movements.
Email: ambrodsky@smcm.edu
Morals vs. Markets: An Inquiry into the Nature of Greed in Economics
(With Prof. Don Stabile)
For over a century in the U.S. opponents of the market economy have attacked it for the immoral behavior its stress on greed has allegedly generated. From this perspective, a moral economy is one whereby economic decisions are made with an attitude of doing what is right and fair in order to achieve social justice; markets need to be regulated or supplemented by government programs. In contrast, advocates for the market approach focus on economic incentives, that is, doing what leads to higher profits for business and higher pay for managers, workers and other employers. To them, the stress on morals as embodied in government programs assumes that the government’s behavior is more moral than business. In this course we will examine critically both sides of this debate over greed.
Email: drstabile@smcm.edu
Theory and Practice of Non-Violence
(With Prof. Katharina von Kellenbach)
The twentieth century was one of the bloodiest in human history, with millions of lives lost to two world wars, the Holocaust, genocides, and repressive regimes using lethal force to control minority and majority populations. It has also brought forth movements that used and advocated non-violence as a strategy to resist violence. We will study the philosophical, religious and political principles of non-violence, as they were developed by Mahatma Gandhi and adopted by Martin Luther King and others. We will also examine particular conflicts in which men and women risked their lives to challenge brutal governments non-violently, and asked why they were able to succeed. This course discusses the theories of non-violence and examines its effectiveness as a political strategy.
Email: kvonkellenbach@smcm.edu
