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IAH 211-241 Courses - Summer 2009

Our section will focus on sacred music of the Asia-Pacific region. Through readings, musical selections, and video clips, we will explore the ways in which people of Asia and the Pacific Rim have expressed their spiritual lives through music. We will investigate how cultural beliefs and practices have flowed through the Silk Road connecting the Middle East to East Asia and around the Pacific. In order to make sense of contemporary Asian religious practice, we will trace historical links between Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and Islam across the region.

This section will focus on emigration from East and Southeast Asia, and the immigrant experience in the United states, as well as in South America and the Caribbean. Through readings, popular culture, musical selections, and video clips, we will explore the ways in which peoples of Asia have interacted with other expatriates, as well as examining their assimilation?and exclusion?experiences. We will investigate how cultural beliefs and practices have affected the journey. This is an online course. Students must maintain the capability to connect to the Internet using a high-speed connection.

The course examines the relationship between selected work of Latino Theater and art created in the Americas during the twentieth century, and the social context in which they were created, and in which they are received.

This course offers students opportunities to explore the changing urban cultures in two of the fastest growing U.S. metropolises, New York and Chicago, during 1880s-1920s. Through the study of a variety of primary source readings (visual, historical, sociological, literary) and other materials students will look more closely at the changing work and living conditions, the opportunities and misfortunes afforded by the new industrial order, changes in men's and women?s cultures and politics in the two cities. The course is designed to broaden students? understanding of cities as physical, political, and social environments.

This course provides an overview of the development of labor in the Americas and workers' response to the conditions of labor. Themes include government-employer relations; worker exploitation; foreign relations; nativism; craft-unskilled worker relations; the state of organized labor in the Americas; and race, ethnicity, and gender. Students will examine and analyze visual, musical, and literary expressions of workers. This is an online course. Students must maintain the capability to connect to the Internet using a high-speed connection.

This course focuses on Arab Americans and their history, settlement patterns, experiences, culture, literature and arts. The course is intended to provide basic cultural competency skills and fill the gaps in knowledge concerning this macro ethnic group by providing: an overview of the Arab-American culture, settlement patterns, history, religions, socioeconomic diversity, the challenges and stereotypes they face, and their contributions through Arab-American literature, arts, and music.

This course will not only view a variety of Hollywood films that depict Indians, but also analyze (and interpret) them in terms of larger trends and developments to make sense of events and people too often included in a romantic haze. The iconic 'Indian' and the study of the 'Indian' has been a subject of radical reinterpreting in recent years in its role in American history and its place in American society and culture. This course will examine the Indian as iconic image, historical subject, critical foil, dramatic protagonist and two-faced symbol of innocence and savagery. Academic discourse in the form of critical essays central to the theme of interpreting 'Indian' primary source material and two major historical treatments of 'Indian' subjects will serve as the foundation from which students will build an interpretative methodology of examining and interpreting American Indian images in Hollywood films and then be able to learn how to read and interpret cultural texts, like oral traditions, song, dance, ritual, performance and architecture within a diachronic frame.

Ireland made itself a nation in the twentieth century, becoming one of the earliest of the postcolonial cultures. Establishing a national cultural was a vital part of making a nation: literature, drama, poetry, film, painting, music.

This interdisciplinary course examines major features of Modern Greek Society and Culture presented in a global perspective and focusing its interaction with Balkans, Europe and US. Located in the Mediterranean region, and continuing to keep strong ties with its antiquity, Greece is becoming part of a contemporary and global community; this unified culture is simultaneously becoming more diverse along with its society.
Emphasizing significant moments of Modern Greek history will help students to analyze features of Greece?s political, social, religious, artistic and cultural expression, explore ancient values surviving in modern times along with the adaptation to a changing world. Students will be exposed to a variety of sources such as texts, articles, literature, poetry, music, works of art, films and documentaries that speak for images of Greek identity. Special emphasis goes to Greek American Diaspora and its cultural artifact.

What is the meaning of life? Whether life has any meaning at all, and what that meaning might be, is related to the question about the ultimate nature of the universe and the place of humanity in it. We will look at three broad approaches to these issues: western Monotheism, western non-theistic views, and Buddhism, a non-western, non-theistic religion. Sources will be short stories, philosophical essays, religious texts, and films.

Who are we? What are we? What does it mean to be a human being? This integrative studies lecture class will discuss selected aspects of the human condition. After introducing briefly traditional answers to the question of what human beings are, from the perspective of Theology, Existentialism, and Marxism, we will - from a general human point of view - reflect on central aspects of the human condition, such as religion, history, culture and language. We will investigate the role that biology plays in this picture by focusing on some basic aspects of contemporary approaches to defining human nature, such as cognitive psychology and ape research (Tomasello). Finally, we will discuss two films: "Stalker" by Andrej Tarkovsky, as well as "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" by Werner Herzog.

Why and how has the genocide that emanated from Germany become so deeply embedded in our collective imaginations? This course explores Holocaust memory cultures in both German and international contexts, from the early postwar period to the present. We will consider both the value and the dangers in attempting to generalize the Holocaust to other times and places. Materials include documentary and feature films, poetry, drama and music, art and architecture, comic books and TV shows.

Can we imagine putting an end to warfare altogether? To what extent is eliminating war a matter of pursuing justice and democracy? We examine war and terrorism and three contemporary conflicts: the "war on terrorism," the war in Iraq and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Students will be asked to present and argue for their own ideas and follow reports in newspapers, radio, or TV.

This class, on law and literature, examines the ways literature and film illuminate-or confuse-our understanding of the relationships between justice as a moral ideal and law. Both classic texts and contemporary novels and films are studied. uses materials from the arts and humanities to consider the issues raised by these topics.

This course examines a set of issues concerning health and health care, and their relation to society. To do this we study in detail the case of Costa Rica, which, despite having far fewer resources than the US, has comparable health outcomes. We address how Costa Rica’s health care system functions, and how it fits with the cultural context of Costa Rica as a small, developing Latin American nation. We also consider how we can address ethical and policy issues that arise concerning health and the provision of health care, and how these are similar and dissimilar in the US and Costa Rican contexts.

This course focuses on aspects of a theory of language, explores how it is possible for children to acquire the language system, and considers what is known about how the system is instantiated in the human brain.

This course will look at everyday language to learn about different aspects of human nature. For example, how can grammatical constructions help us understand the way we think? What can metaphors teach us about the way we perceive reality? What does swearing reveal about emotions? What can polite requests or implicit bribes tell us about the way we interact with other people?

Emphasis is placed on the primary innovators of the music, including Armstrong, Ellington, Parker, etc., as well as the creative requirements for improvisation and performance. The role of jazz within the greater arts community (reviewers, other artists, promoters, historians, etc.) is analyzed, as well as the unique and changing position of the Black jazz artist in American society. Students will attend jazz concerts outside of regular classes and write reviews/descriptions of those concerts.

A detailed study of ten major musical works of the past 300 years, with emphasis on the development of listening skills as a mode of critical understanding. Each work will be considered both in terms of its stylistic and formal construction as well as how it reflects the political, social, and aesthetic concerns of the environment from which it emerged.

This course examines the Middle Ages East and West from an archaeological and socio-cultural perspective, inviting students to consider how moments of historical, theological and religious significance find reflection and response in works of art, theater, music and literature. The course is implemented entirely online using ANGEL, a password protected learning website. Students will purchase a textbook and course pack. Additional primary and secondary readings, images, music, an interactive chat room environment will be available on ANGEL. Students will hear their lectures in MP3 format and streamed video both delivered from a remote computer and accessed in ANGEL. Students will complete tests and other graded assessments (to include quizzes, essays and exams) online using ANGEL. Basic knowledge of internet search engines, MS Word and MS PowerPoint, as well as a reliable computer and either broadband or DSL connection are required.

Part 1 of the course is a review of why people have gone to the theatre for thousands of years for a variety of purposes. Part II centers upon theatre productions, short original plays written and produced in class. Six to eight plays are required reading and viewing.

This course will introduce the students to contemporary British theatre practice paired with the study of historical theatrical traditions.Following Robert Edmond Jones’ example, students will explore the influences of today’s theatre by looking at art, fashion, culture and style in order to reflect about societal issues and write educated opinion papers on focused topics.

African/Black Diaspora Cinema takes a broad look at the many aspects of black filmmaking from around the world. The course examines film as one of the vital elements of popular and modern culture. For better or for worse, film is often our entree into other worlds, other cultures, other ways of thinking. This course is designed to examine that "other" presented in cinema from many different yet related areas, topics and points of view. With the films as our starting point, we will examine art, politics, movements, and history through cinema. The films that make up the course are from the modern era (post 1960) of black filmmaking; a time when black creative forces began to play a much greater role shaping the black image, content and stories in film.

This class will focus on the ways in which the spirit of the times affects creativity.We will explore the ways in which contemporary Western creators find and develop new ideas. We will compare these processes to those of older and more traditional societies. Then we will look at the ways in which our cultural attitudes about creativity are changing. Throughout the course, students will have many opportunities to experiment with different approaches to the creative process.