Core Curriculum
Contact Information
Please contact us at corecurriculum@smcm.eduElizabeth Nutt Williams, Ph.D.
Dean of the Core Curriculum and First Year Experience
St. Mary's College of Maryland
18952 E. Fisher Rd.
St. Mary's City, MD 20686
Phone: (240) 895-4467
Email: enwilliams@smcm.edu
Ruth Feingold, Ph.D
Assistant Dean of the Core Curriculum and Advising Program
(contact for Experiencing the Liberal Arts in the World)
Phone: (240) 895-4388
Email: rpfeingold@smcm.edu
Administrative Assistant:
Diane Wimberly
Phone: (240) 895-2185
Fax: (240) 895-2234
First Year Seminars for Fall 2011
Click here to learn about Registering for the Seminars
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12:00-1:10pm
Elvis Presley, McCarthyism, Beaver Cleaver: Popular Culture Post-World War II Era
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Death but were Afraid to Ask (Well, Not Everything)
Galileo and the Birth of Modern Science
Gasoline and Glaciers: Going, Going, Gone
Hard Times, Good Times: Boom and Bust in American Literature
Jane Austen and the Dating Game
Songs of Protest and Social Change
Where Am I? Who Am I? Navigating the Politics of Difference at St. Mary's
Why We Fight? Film, Foreign Policy and the Cold War
Tuesday/Thursday 12:00-1:50pm
American Mutant: Modified Bodies in Literature and Film
"ATTA Way," Anthropology, Travel, Tragedy, and Adventure
Education and the American Dream
Entrepreneurs: Open for Business
Looking at Quilts: History, Art and Folklore
Winston Churchill and the Twentieth Century World
Tuesday/Thursday 6:00-7:50pm
Seminar Descriptions:
Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12:00-1:10pm
Elvis Presley, McCarthyism, and Beaver Cleaver: Popular Culture in the Post-World War II Era
(With Dr. Charles Holden)
This seminar will examine the fascinating and problematic interaction between a growing post-World War II middle-class, Cold War politics, and the explosive power of popular culture at this time. Questions we will consider include: what was the relationship between popular culture and consumer behavior? Was Elvis Presley “good” because he sold a lot of records or “bad” because he seemed naughty? Did television bring families together or did it keep neighbors isolated in their homes? How did the fear of communism work its way into the popular culture? We will use fiction, nonfiction, poetry, music, television, and movies to explore these questions.
Prof. Holden is an Associate Professor in History whose courses focus on 19th and 20th Century U.S. history. He earned a Ph.D. from Penn State University and his research interests include southern history, intellectual history, and the history of academic freedom.
Email: cjholden@smcm.edu
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Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Death but were Afraid to Ask (Well Not Everything)
(With Dr. Cynthia Koenig)
The United States is sometimes described as a “death denying” culture. Even though we see many images of death & dying in media, do we truly connect those images to our own possible deaths or the deaths of those we know and love? How does the death and dying experience differ as a function of the age of the person who died, the type of death experienced, our relationship to the deceased, and religious and cultural influences on attitudes toward death and dying? How do we grieve and what factors impact our grief process? How can grief be expressed through biography, poetry, storytelling, film, and music? In this class, we will explore a variety of questions about death and dying through readings, films, music, and more.
Email: cskoenig@smcm.edu
Galileo and the Birth of Modern Science
(With Dr. Charles Adler)
The course covers three main areas: the history of the times and Galileo's life, the philosophy of science as it was then and is today, and the science itself, as displayed through Galileo's writings and ideas. There is much more to the class than just Galileo, however. In order to understand his contributions, we must understand the world he was born into, that of the late Renaissance Europe, and how it got to be the way it was. This entails two different threads: first, there is the development of science (particularly physics and astronomy) from ancient Greek beginnings, and second there is the development of the culture of the late Renaissance and the Reformation, particularly the culture of Italy.
This is the course I enjoy teaching the most, because it brings together the science, history, culture and religion of Medieval and Renaissance Europe. We also get to compare contemporary opinions of Galileo from scientists, churchmen and politicians of his time, to modern ones, particularly those of the playwright Bertolt Brecht: to start off the class we will do a dramatic reading of his play The Life of Galileo.
Dr. Adler is Chair and Associate Professor, Physics Department.
Email: cladler@smcm.edu
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Gasoline and Glaciers: Going, Going, Gone
(With Dr. Al Hovland)
This seminar provides an exploration of the role of petroleum in contemporary society and the need to prepare for the exhaustion of this resource. It's hard not to be aware of the mounting evidence for the consequences of burning massive amounts of oil. Al Gore's movie and book "An Inconvenient Truth" brought the issue to the attention of the general population. The 4th report of the IPCC released in 2007, while not reaching as broad a segment of the population, showed the consensus concern of the scientific community. In this Seminar, we will look at the science associated with the use of petroleum and its impact on society and the environment.
Dr. Hovland is an Associate Professor of Chemistry who received his Ph.D. from Wayne State University. Dr. Hovland just finished a 3-year term as the President of the Faculty Senate.
Email: akhovland@smcm.edu
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Hard Times, Good Times: Boom and Bust in American Literature
(With Dr. Bert Ifill)
People from all walks of life ride the waves of economic prosperity or privation; some are submerged beneath them. In two eras of American history—the Great Depression of the 1930s and the Reagan Boom of the 1980s—creative artists strove to capture the struggles and the triumphs of individuals caught up in the tides of economic change. This seminar will consider a few of the classics from these eras in literature, film, music and art in the attempt to address some of the following questions:
--How do these creative works depict economic conditions and their impact on the characters they portray?
--What judgments do they make about the American economic system in both good times and bad?
--How well do the protagonists in these works cope with poverty or prosperity, and which seems to be the greater moral and psychological challenge?
--How might we apply lessons from these works to our own recent economic history, whether it is the boom of the nineties or the current economic troubles?
Prof. Ifill is a visiting assistant professor of Economics at St. Mary's. When he's not expounding upon the wonders of supply and demand, he sings in several ensembles in Washington, DC, writes poems, and chases golf balls all over the countryside.
Email: rnifill@smcm.edu
(With Dr. Roger Stanton)
Many people embrace the notion that thoughts, beliefs and feelings are only experienced by humans, and they can be resistant to claims that a machine could possess qualitatively similar experiences. We acknowledge that machines can complete tasks that require intelligence, but are unwilling to call machines intelligent and deny their potential for having truly human-like experiences. Are machines incapable of human thought or is this resistance to artificial intelligence a form of anthropocentrism? Given our intimate connection with technology and our use of computers to solve problems, communicate and even plan our days, haven't we become human-machine hybrids-are we cyborgs? This course will approach the study of thought from the perspective of cognitive science, an interdisciplinary study of cognition. The primary goal of this course will be to view thinking processes, whether instantiated in humans or machines, through several different lenses: psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics and neuroscience.
Dr. Stanton is an Assistant Professor of Psychology who earned his Ph.D. from Indiana University. His interests include categorization, theories of similarity, neurological bases of category learning, mathematical models in psychology and artificial intelligence.
Email: rdstanton@smcm.edu
Jane Austen and the Dating Game
(With Dr. Robin Bates)
Novels in the 18th and early 19th century were like Twitter accounts and Facebook pages today-which is to say, communication mediums loved by teens and viewed with incomprehension and even alarm by many parents. Thus, the courtship novels of Jane Austen speak directly to the challenges that young men and women were encountering during the Regency period, including ineffective or tyrannical parents, uncertainty about the future, sexual urges, peer pressure, and identity confusion. The equivalent of throwing a wild party while your parents are away was putting on a home production of Elizabeth's Inchbald's salacious melodrama Lovers' Vows, as occurs in Mansfield Park. Catherine Moreland in Northanger Abbey loves the gothic novels of Anne Radcliffe for many of the same reasons that teens love Twilight today. It makes sense, then, that a novel like Emma would lend itself so readily to a modern teenpic version (Clueless). We will read four, maybe five, of Austen's novels and look at the world that the young people had to negotiate. Expect a full immersion in early 19th century English social customs. We will also look at the Jane Austen "industry" of the past two decades and figure out why she is currently as popular as she has ever been.
Dr. Bates is a Professor of English who received his PhD from Emory University in 1980. He is interested in how readers use literature to negotiate their life journeys and has taught such courses as "Couples Comedy in the 18th Century," "Madness and Literature," and "Adolescence and Film." He writes daily on literature and life issues at betterlivingthroughbeowulf.com.
Email: rrbates@smcm.edu
(With Dr. Jingqi Fu)
Language is an integral part of human experience. It is intimately tied with history, groups and individuals. One can hardly stay neutral about other people's accent. In this seminar, we will examine speakers' linguistic behavior and attitudes against a social and cultural background. Among the topics covered are: social class, gender, age differences; regional dialects; language contact; and bilingualism.
Dr. Fu is an Associate Professor of Chinese. She has pursued graduate studies in linguistics at University of Sorbonne in France and University of Massachusetts in Amherst. She has been teaching Chinese language courses and Introduction to Linguistics at St. Mary's since 1995. Her research interests include comparative syntax, language typology and second language acquisition.
Email: jfu@smcm.edu
Songs of Protest and Social change aka Drugs, Sex & Rock-and-Roll (&War & Violence)
(With Dr. 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”.Dr. Beliveau received her Ph.D. from Yale University in 1981 where she specialized in public choice theory and mathematical economics. Her current research interests include colonial financial history and the importance of uncompensated labor in economic activity. Her avocations include every fiber art known to humankind and music ranging from early chant to modern jazz.
Email: bcbeliveau@smcm.edu_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Where Am I? Who Am I? Navigating the Politics of Difference at St. Mary's
(With Dr. Lenny Howard and Dr. Jose Ballesteros)
Let's face it: the rural liberal arts honors college comes as a culture shock to most students. But it poses special 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 ...?"), and those from ethnic minority groups ("Am I really the only Latino/Asian/black student in this class?"). In this seminar, we explore the distinctive experiences, challenges, and opportunities of underrepresented students at St. Mary's. We examine the complexities of race, class, and gender differences in academic culture and consider their impact on students' identity development and academic life. The springboards for our discussions are interesting narratives drawn from a variety of sources: 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.
Dr. Howard is Assistant Vice President for Academic Services. He received his doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Pennsylvania in 2010. His teaching and research interests include access, affordability, and equity for underrepresented students. Other interests include poetry, music, soccer, and all outdoor activities.
Email: wlhoward@smcm.edu
Dr. Ballesteros is an associate professor for the Department of International Languages and Cultures. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kansas in 2005. His teaching and research interests include Early Modern literature and history, XX century Latin American and Spanish literature and film, Cultural Studies and Gender Studies. Other interests include creative writing, music, surfing and almost any type of motorized racing.
Email: jrballesteros@smcm.edu
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Why We Fight? Film, Foreign Policy, and the Cold War
(With Dr. Matthew Fehrs)
Can the Cold War help us to understand currently global politics? In this seminar we will examine this critical era in U.S. foreign policy through the medium of film. Besides discussing the elements of the Cold War that are captured by the films, we will compare their “reality” to scholarly work about the era. We will also try to use the films to immerse ourselves in Cold War crises to better understand why they unfolded the way they did. Finally, the class will examine whether lessons from the Cold War are still applicable to U.S. foreign policy problems today.
This course will use Dr. Strangelove to begin a discussion on the dangers of nuclear war. We will also read scholarship on nuclear weapons and see if the director got it right. To better understand the ethical and moral issues raised by counterinsurgent warfare, the class will view The Battle of Algiers. To highlight the issue of humanitarian intervention and human rights abuses we will watch The Killing Fields. In addition, the course will cover issues ranging from crisis decision making to anti-war demonstrations, from espionage to terrorism, and many things in between.
Email: mbfehrs@smcm.edu
Tuesday/Thursday 12:00-1:50pm
(With Dr. Laraine Masters Glidden)
Multiple disciplines contribute to the dialogue about ability and disability. History, literature, philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, economics, medicine, law, politics and others have all made contributions that enrich our understanding. In this seminar we will consider these wide-ranging perspectives as we engage in discussions about how we measure individuals and their characteristics, and how our value systems lead us to define and label people at opposite ends of the ability-disability spectrum. Topics to be covered include but are not limited to: specific abilities and disabilities such as those on the intelligence dimension (giftedness and intellectual disability), and the physical dimension (athleticism and physical disability); societal reward or stigma for those who are abled or disabled; ways in which different societies, contemporaneously and historically, have treated individuals based on where they lie on an ability/disability dimension.
Dr. Glidden is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Human Development and has been a faculty member at SMCM since 1976. She is a developmental psychologist and is widely published for her work on families rearing children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In 2008, she received a distinguished Research Award from the U.S. Arc for the positive impact of her longitudinal research on families.
Email:lmglidden@smcm.edu
Webpage
American Mutant: Modified Bodies in Literature and Film
(With Dr. Karen Anderson)
In this class, we'll take as our starting point literature and film that addresses challenges to "natural" human limits: advertisements that reflect our obsessions with perfecting our bodies, superheroes from the X-men to Ironman, 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.
Texts and films may include Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake," Andrew Niccol's "Gattaca," or Alfonso Cuaron's "Children of Men."Email: klanderson@smcm.edu
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"ATTA Way", Anthropology, Travel, Tragedy and Adventure
(With Dr. Bill Roberts)
Exploration, adventure, discovery – these typical travel terms today are used to characterize “educational tourism” (aka study abroad), but also characterize the past achievements of individuals and disciplines such as anthropology. In this seminar we employ, with all due respect to C. Wright Mills, the “anthropological imagination” as a means to examine the stories of individual anthropologists, explorers and seamen. Their adventures epitomize the triumphs and tragedies of their times. Our twin goals are to critically examine their stories at the intersections of biography and history, and imagine our own future travel aspirations or adventures in light of what we have learned from them.
Prof. Bill Roberts is an applied cultural anthropologist who joined the SMCM faculty in 1991. He is director of SMCM's PEACE program in The Gambia, co-editor of the journal Culture and Agriculture, Food and Environment, and incoming chair of SMCM's Department of Anthropology.
Email: wcwilliams@smcm.edu
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(With Leon Wiebers)
This seminar will examine the AIDS epidemic through theatre, film, art and literature. Using texts such as The Normal Heart, Angels in America, Rent and And the Band Played On, the class will study the artists and their response to AIDS. Comparing the historical information, the protests of ACT-UP, governmental legislation and popular culture with the artistic work of Robert Mapplethorpe, Bill T. Jones, Keith Haring and others will focus this investigation of the disease on the often violent personal-cum-political struggle that forcefully opened the closet door; fuelling massive social change and the modern gay movement.
Leon Wiebers is an Assistant Professor of Theater, Films, and Media Studies who earned his M.F.A. in design from University of California. He has designed numerous productions in Europe and America for the California Musical Theatre, the San Francisco Opera Center, English National Opera, Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, Sacramento Opera, Getty Museum and Portland Center Stage.
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Education and the American Dream
(With Julia Bates)
We become educated through the efforts of our parents, our schools, and our communities. The common assumption in our country is that citizens use education to develop the skills to get the jobs that earn the money that allows us to buy into our dreams. Or less crassly, education gives us the skills we need to make an impact on the world so that it becomes the world of our dreams. In this course we will look at the interplay of those three forces that educate us, our parents, our schools, and our communities, and ask ourselves the following essential questions: What are the dreams I have for my life, Where did those dreams come from, How can I use educational opportunities to move toward my dream, and What barriers do I see to reaching my dreams? We will use the tools of the disciplines of anthropology, sociology, biology, and learning theory as we study autobiographies of people who have used education to reach their dreams. We will interview our parents and other members of our communities about their dreams for themselves and for us. We will do research to understand the world that surrounds us as it both supports and limits our dreams. We will explore images and rhythms that charge our imaginations and help define our dreams. We will take action in our local community to mentor younger students and come to understand their dreams and our role in supporting their aspirations.
Julia Bates is an educator and community organizer. Over the past twenty-five years she has taught at all levels of education, written grants, and initiated community programs to increase access to high quality educational opportunities. In her role as Education Facilitator at the College, she creates ties between college course work and opportunities for experiences in public schools and community organizations.
Email: jrbates@smcm.edu
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Entrepreneurs: Open for Business
(With Dr. Elizabeth Osborn)
Entrepreneurs are the engines of the economy and captains of business. They are both romanticized and criticized and often misunderstood. Social scientists analyze entrepreneurs’ personalities, their backgrounds, their business acumen, their successes, and their failures. The 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 we will look at the overlap of these perspectives and how they complement one another and test our own entrepreneurial spirits.
Dr. Osborn is a Professor of Sociology who earned her Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. Her research interests include social stratification and class formation, economic and political transition of post-communist societies and the study of entrepreneurship.
Email: eaosborn@smcm.edu
Looking at Quilts: History, Art and Folklore
(With Dr. Holly Blumner)
Americans have been making quilts for warmth, comfort, necessity, and artistic expression for more than two hundred years. Historians have often looked at quilts as ways women record personal and political histories. This seminar will look at how quilts reflect history, politics, culture, and social mores at the time a quilt is created.We will be examining quilts specific to region such as Baltimore album quilts, Hawaiian quilts, and the quilts of Gee’s Bend. We will be looking at history through quilts including the Civil War and WWII. We will be studying African American quilts and quilt makers. We will study the AIDS quilt and activism. We will look at quilts as a form of art and self-expression. The class will feature a variety of readings including quilt makers’ diaries, industrialization and the sewing machine, short stories, and plays to examine how the world of art and everyday objects come together. We will have at least one field trip to a major museum. We will also explore some simple quilt making techniques.
Dr. Holly A. Blumner is an associate professor of theater, film, and media studies and the current coordinator of Asian studies. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Her research areas are Japanese performance and Asian theater. She also studies and makes quilts.
Email: hablumner@smcm.edu
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(With Dr. David Kung)
Did you know that Bach used algebraic principles to compose music? That your ear performs sophisticated mathematics (a Fourier Transform) before passing auditory information to your brain? That your brain frequently tricks you into hearing sounds that aren’t there? These are many of the questions that lie at the intersection of math, music and the mind. Our explorations will help you understand the seemingly simple sound of a vibrating string, the full sound of a symphony orchestra, and even the voice of a loved one on the other end of the phone. We will explore an array of topics: vibrating strings and pitch, why a piano is never in tune, auditory illusions that trick the mind, how number theory explains complex rhythms, why some songs stick in your head, and avant garde attempts to apply the principles of probability to music. You will have the opportunity to apply this new knowledge in myriad ways, from simple mathematical assignments, to elementary compositions (the ability to read music is assumed), to the mathematical analysis of your favorite music. By the end of this course, you will hear and appreciate the world around you in entirely new ways.
Dave Kung fell in love with both mathematics and music at an early age, starting violin (at age 4) before arithmetic. Now as a mathematician, he studies, among other things, how the sounds produced by a vibrating string can be understood with advanced mathematics.
Email: dtkung@smcm.edu
(With Dr. Sterling Lambert, Dr. Deborah Lawrence)
Some pieces of music are referred to as classics - appealing to people across the boundaries of not only time and place, but also gender, 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.
Dr. Lambert is an Assistant Professor of Music who received his Ph.D. from Yale University. His research area is early 19th-century Viennese music, and he is especially interested in the songs of Schubert and the instrumental music of Beethoven.
Email: jslambert@smcm.edu
Email: dalawrence@smcm.edu
Webpage
(With Dr. Elizabeth Charlebois)
In this course we will study Shakespeare's King Lear along with other plays, films, novels, and poems that have used Shakespeare's play as a point of departure for their own imaginative variations on this legendary story. We will begin by briefly examining some of the literary and historical sources Shakespeare used in creating his version of the Lear legend and then study Shakespeare's play, paying close attention to the most provocative differences between the two versions of the text upon which modern editions of King Lear are based. We will also look at how twentieth-century critics and film directors have essentially created different versions of the play by interpreting or adapting it in a variety of ways and do some dramatic experimentation with script ourselves! (No acting experience required!) We will read Restoration dramatist Nahum Tate's 1681 happy-ending version of King Lear , a version which was so popular it replaced Shakespeare's on the English stage for over 150 years! We will see how director Akira Kurosawa re-imagined Lear in a radically different cultural context in his stunning 1985 Japanese film adaptation, Ran. We will conclude the seminar by reading Jane Smiley's 1991 Pulitzer-Prize winning novel, A Thousand Acres, which sets the Lear story on a contemporary Iowa farm , and Christopher Moore's 2009 wildly irreverent comic novel Fool written from the perspective of Lear's court jester. Throughout the course, we will pay close attention to how the themes and motifs of Shakespeare's King Lear are adapted and transformed in the hands of other writers and artists in ways that reveal their own unique cultural, political, and aesthetic visions.
Dr. Charlebois, Associate Professor of English, earned her Ph.D. in English Literature at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL and joined the St. Mary's faculty in 2001. Her teaching and research interests include medieval and Renaissance Literature and drama with a specialization in Renaissance drama and Shakespeare in performance. She is a recipient of the Homer L. Dodge Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Junior Faculty Member.Email: echarlebois@smcm.edu
(With Dr. Jordan Price)
Why do some birds sing? Why do deer flash their conspicuous white tails at predators (and at us) when they run away? And why do some animals appear to behave so altruistically, for example, by foregoing reproduction themselves to help others raise offspring? 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.
Dr. Price is an Associate Professor of Biology who earned his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research interests include animal communication and molecular evolution.
Email: jjprice@smcm.edu
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(With Dr. Chris Tanner)
How we perceive nature influences our attitudes towards exploitation of natural resources, protection of endangered species, conservation and restoration of ecosystems, and major theories on how humans are impacting the environment. Human perceptions of nature are in turn influenced by historic, scientific, cultural and religious traditions. Readings, nature photography and the study of how nature has been represented through art will be used to explore the relationships between humans and nature. This seminar includes a nature photography component so students are encouraged to bring a digital camera to college.
Dr. Tanner is a Professor of Biology who received a Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia. His specialties include marine and estuarine ecology and tropical biology. He is also interested in nature photography.
Email: cetanner@smcm.edu<mailto:cetanner@smcm.edu
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(With Carrie Patterson)
One of the oldest forms of communication is
storytelling without words. From the child’s picture book to the adult graphic
novel, from painting to photography, we want to communicate our histories,
cultures, desires, sorrows, and hopes by making images. Picturing Stories will
explore how artists from different times and cultures tell stories. What makes a
Picture Story powerful? Why do we remember some and not others? Be ready to
learn the craft of telling a good story without words.
Carrie Patterson
is an Associate Professor of Art and SMCM where she teaches drawing and
painting. She received a BFA in studio art from James Madison University and an
MFA in painting from The University of Pennsylvania. Her work as a painter has
been exhibited nationally in venues such as The Painting Center in New York City
and internationally in venues such as Museo de Arte Moderno in Bogota Colombia.
She has created illustrations for the children's book SS Bathtub and is
currently working on illustrations for a book of
poems.
Email: ccpatterson@smcm.edu
The Global City
(With Dr. 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 network, and sometimes also a site of conflict. Recently, we have seen the rise of a new kind of city: the global city. These mega-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, and how it is changing the way we think about cities.
Dr. Shafqat is associate professor of political science. She has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Texas A&M University. Her research interests are in democratization, nationalism and ethnic conflict, and social and political movements.
(With Dr. Brad Park)
This course is going to utilize a wide range of sources, from philosophical and religious texts, to poetry, prose, film, and art, to investigate the complex relationship between self-identity and the experience of the “strange,” i.e., the experience of Otherness and difference. In the interest of diversity, these sources will include both western and Asian materials. We will consider a variety of theories concerning the nature of the self (e.g., substantive self, narrative self, relational self, role theory of self, etc.) as well as analyzing different ways in which we encounter strangeness (change, death, our bodies, cultural difference, the Other, etc.). Special attention will be given to moral and existential questions about how we ought to relate ourselves towards that which is strange.
Email: bdpark@smcm.edu_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Winston Churchill and the Twentieth Century World
(With Dr. Gail Savage)
Winston Churchill (1874-1965) lived through enormous change during an active life that spanned most of the twentieth century. As a young man Churchill participated in the last, great cavalry charge at the Battle of Omdurman in 1898 and later oversaw England’s emergence as a nuclear power alongside the USA and the Soviet Union during the 1950s. Churchill’s well-documented life allows us a close-up view of twentieth century developments through the prism of one man’s experiences. In this seminar, we will study the twentieth century by learning about Winston Churchill’s role in a series of great events: World War I, economic upheaval and depression during the 1920s and 1930s, the decline of England’s imperial power, the rise of fascism, World War II, and the Cold War. In doing so, we will think about larger questions concerning the relationship between history and the individual. Can individual people actually change history? Or do events unfold, carrying people along before them? And how do we go about assembling the evidence necessary to answer these questions?
Gail Savage is a Professor of History. She received her Ph. D. in modern British history from the University of Texas in 1977.
See http://www.smcm.edu/history/faculty_staff/gsavage.html for information about her scholarly and teaching interests.
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Tuesday/Thursday 6:00-7:50pm(With Dr. Brad Park)
This course is going to utilize a wide range of sources, from philosophical and religious texts, to poetry, prose, film, and art, to investigate the complex relationship between self-identity and the experience of the "strange," i.e., the experience of otherness and difference. In the interest of diversity, these sources will include both western and Asian materials. We will consider a variety of theories concerning the nature of the self (e.g., substantive self, narrative self, relational self, role theory of self, etc.) as well as analyzing different ways in which we encounter strangeness (change, death, our bodies, cultural difference, the other, etc.). Special attention will be given to moral and existential questions about how we ought to relate ourselves towards that which is strange.
