First-Year Seminars are designed to stimulate intellectual curiosity, introduce academic expectations and engage you independent of future major or minor choices. The seminar topics vary each year, as do the professors who teach them, so the classroom discussions are always fresh and interesting.
Each Seminar is constructed around a different interest, like flight, consumerism or rock and roll music, and Seminar classes are small - usually about 15 students – which helps students feel more comfortable in a new environment and allows the students and faculty members to develop close working relationships.
Below, you'll find a list of the First Year Seminars being offered during the fall 2011 semester. This year's Seminars cover a wide-range of topics and disciplines, and we're sure you'll find several that interest you. After you've looked over the list and identified the courses that you find appealing, log in to the Orientation website and complete the Academic Direction Task no later than May 23. (Please note: the task will not be available until early May.)
Please note: We provide the listing below as a resource for students and families, not as a complete listing. As courses fill up with students, they will be removed from the Academic Direction form, but they may still appear on this page. The Academic Direction task is the most up-to-date source of currently available courses.
Hidden Country
Assistant Professor Ron Gerrard
For the majority of Americans who live in cities and suburbs, rural America is "hidden country", usually out of sight and out of mind. This course explores rural America by examining one of its most distinctive cultural products, country music. In particular, it examines similarities and differences between rural people and the varied images of them which country music portrays. Country music is said to express traditional family values, for example, but is notorious for songs about drinking and cheating. It is created by plain simple folk, who just happen to wear brightly colored rhinestone suits. It is deeply religious, but also historically deeply violent. How can such contradictory images to be understood? Where do they come from and what purposes do they serve? With a closer look, neither country music nor country people are as simple as they first appear. The music itself is a blend of European, African-American, and urban influences, not the 'pure' product of rural white southerners that many suppose. Beneath the 'simple values' it expresses lie complex realities of rural poverty, social divisions of class, race and region, and mutual misunderstanding between city and country folk. The course will examine these issues, exploring how country music reflects but also distorts rural life. Disentangling myth from reality, stereotype from substance, is the key to a deeper appreciation of both country music and country people.
Dinosaurs and Their World
Assistant Professor David Kendrick
The Mesozoic bestiary teems with a colorful assortment of creatures great and small, feathered, furred, and scaled, terrestrial and marine, toothy and timid. In this course, we'll use dinosaurs (and some relatives) to investigate a variety of questions about Earth history (e.g. How has climate varied throughout Earth history? or How does dinosaur distribution reflect the shifting arrangements of continents?), biology and ecology (e.g. Could you outrun Utahraptor? or Did the giraffe-sized flying reptile Quetzalcoatlus act like a giraffe?!, and how are dinosaurs presented in popular media over time and what that might tell us about ourselves.
In the Name of Love
Instructor Lisa Salter
What do we mean when we talk about finding our "passions?" We might think of "passions" as activities, like playing or following sports, learning, helping others, or exploring the world. Or we might think of "passions" in terms of relationships with people, such as friends, family, coaches, people close by and people we'll never meet. One way to talk about "passion" is through the idea of "love" and its movement in our lives. When we speak in terms of love, the questions we ask include, what does it mean to love learning, to love others, to love movement, to love nature? We might ask what is worthy of love, whom should I love, and whether someone else truly loves me? And we might be forced to think about what we do with the more painful emotions the love often brings in its wake, like jealousy, hatred, fear. This course explores the many forms of love from multiple perspectives. Readings in biology, the social sciences, Western philosophical and religious traditions, poetry, novels, music and art, will complicate and illuminate what we understand as love. Along with reading texts closely and trying a variety of writing assignments, students will propose and carry out an interactive project to ask and answer their own pressing questions about love.
Hunger
Assistant Professor Brenda Maiale
In 1826 Brillat-Savarin wrote, "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are." But what can we tell from studies of not eating? This course will explore the hungering of fasting ascetics, anorexic girls, medieval saints, crash dieters, occasional cannibals, professional athletes, TV contestants, strategic political fasters, and famine and environmental disaster victims among others. Our subject will be cravings, desires, uneasy sensations, and weakened conditions as occasioned by the lack of food or some other unmet need. We will examine the myriad ways that hunger is constructed cross-culturally to critically analyze what it means in relation to other features of daily life. Using multidisciplinary accounts such as fiction, history, ethnography, biography, and film, we will examine how in particular contexts what we gloss as hunger can inform larger issues, such as the relationship between the individual and society, society and culture, and the local and the global.
The Accidental Scientist: Mysteries of Experience
Instructor Vinita Prabhakar
Some things need not be taught: our very own sense of wonder, our lush imaginations and simple, enduring curiosities. These are tools we are born with. Or are we? We begin with the willingness to ask questions, big and small, about the nature of Life and this thing we call Experience. Why Accidental Scientist? Because we do not set out to read a textbook on Sociology, Biology or Etymology; but still we want to know: the evolution of a kiss; the chemistry of memory, pain, loss, and of lies; where, in the brain, the memories live, the lies are kept; why some kinds of music lift us to ecstasy, but not others; whether our personalities reflect biological mechanisms; the puzzle of smell; the origins of our words, accents, sounds; the delicate connections across Art, Biology, Music, Psychology, Poetry and Philosophy. Crucially, we want to know of these, and more, in plain-speak, in accessible ways that will not erode that first, polished sense of wonder, but fuel it. As cartographers of our experiences, we ourselves are, perhaps, the most important texts, but we will also be aided by information from a wide variety of genres and disciplines. We shall look for, and find, mystery and meaning in the most personal and idiosyncratic places.
Hip-Hop Culture
Assistant Professor Mark Olivieri
One of the most influential cultural movements of the late 20th century has been the hip-hop phenomenon. It is a complex social movement whose audiences are as diverse as the music. The "Hip-Hop Nation" comprises a community of artists and adherents who espouse street performance aesthetics as expressed through various elements of hip-hop. While students are going to be introduced to the history and evolution of the movement, a great part of the seminar will be dedicated to examining the interdisciplinary nature of hip-hop, in which poetry, drama, music, art, and dance are inextricably linked. Ironically, the marketing of hip-hop culture to mainstream America has contributed to the erosion of the very fabric at the core of its movement. This seminar will address the catalog value of hip-hop and the "commodification" of the movement from its inception in the Bronx River District in 1979 to the present.
Nautical Humanity
Assistant Professor Caroline Manring
What do Odysseus, Mark Twain, the decline of the British aristocracy, sword-fishermen, and Russell Crowe have in common? Map your answer on the wide waters of the world, after consulting your compass (or sextant, if you please). Human spirituality, ingenuity, and creativity can in many ways be traced to the oceans, seas, rivers and lakes of planet Earth. Are we really the masters and commanders of the high seas? How have we prevailed in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges that our waterways present? Where must we admit defeat, and how does that affect who we are? From Odysseus and Winslow Homer to Claude Debussy and the HWS sailing team, people of all cultures and eras have been drawn to and intrigued by the power, treachery, and life-sustaining force of great bodies of water. Using material from such texts as Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander, prose by Mark Twain, Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm, Homer's Odyssey, Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, Wells Tower's Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, and poems by Matthew Arnold, Elizabeth Bishop, and GM Hopkins, as well as feature films, documentaries, visual art, musical recordings, and firsthand experience, this seminar will explore how we have found our way on this great big watery planet (both literally and figuratively) what the consequences and fruits of our seafaring endeavors have been, and how the literature, science, and art of the high seas can help us better understand who we are.
America in the 60s
Instructor Stephen Frug
Large but (for most of us) vaguely-remembered events from that era still haunt our lives: Obama mentions how he couldn't have been elected without the earlier work of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement, while critics of the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan compare them to Vietnam. In their current incarnations, the Feminist Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, and the Conservative Movement date from that decade. And most of us would recognize images and sounds of protests, hippies and classic rock music. But what really happened in that decade that so bitterly divided this country, and whose memory divides us still? What caused the multiple cultural upheavals that so changed the nation? And where is Vietnam, anyway? In this course we will study the history of America in the 1960's, carefully examining its central events and looking at the lives of some of the major historical figures from that tumultuous decade. We will examine the cultural changes that occurred and the music, art and writing that grew out of them. And we will look at the ways the decade is both remembered and misremembered today, and what the multiple meanings of "the sixties" are in our contemporary culture.
Trust and Betrayal
Assistant Professor Karen Frost-Arnold
Trust between people makes life worth living, and yet trusting others makes us vulnerable to betrayal. This seminar explores the nature of trust and betrayal, as well as related questions of power, morality, and knowledge: How do I know whom to trust? What makes someone trustworthy? How does prejudice influence whom we trust and distrust? By examining situations in which trust was betrayed by doctors who experimented on humans, corporations who manipulated science to make a profit, and business professionals whose conflicts-of-interest undermined the national economy, students will study the role of social institutions and personal morality. We will also study a variety of vexing questions that we find in our daily lives and in television and film... What is a trusting romantic relationship? Does it make sense to trust a vampire or a gangster? Am I trustworthy?
Monkeys, Morality & the Mind: Science Meets Philosophy
Assistant Professor Gregory Frost-Arnold
What am I? What can I know? Are my choices free? Is there any reason to be an ethical person? These are traditionally considered questions for philosophy, yet many recent scientific findings may influence how we answer them. In this seminar, we will consider the impact of contemporary science on philosophy and ask: What, if anything, does evolution have to do with morality? What do psychological findings about humans' biases show about what (and how) we can know? Is the notion that humans have free will consistent with our current neuroscientific accounts of the brain? If human actions are highly dependent on situational/ contextual factors, as several recent psychological findings have shown, what does this reveal about my identity or personality—who I am?
The Human Faces of Mathematics
Associate Professor Paul Kehle
What is mathematics? Is it discovered or invented? What does it mean to understand mathematics? Why have women been discouraged from mathematics? In what ways is mathematics like poetry or art? Why is mathematics so useful in science? What do mathematicians actually do? Students pursue answers to these questions and others by reading biographies of mathematicians and their ideas. Students employ multiple disciplines including cognitive science, psychology, philosophy, history, and mathematics. Some of these inquiries generate insights into the teaching and learning of mathematics. The goal is a deeper and broader understanding of mathematics as an integral part of human culture and contemporary society.
Art + Ideas + East + West
Associate Professor Lara Blanchard or Associate Professor Michael Tinkler
This course examines how difference is expressed in art. Students examine formal techniques of representing the real world, the effect of social class on artistic practice, the contributions of both men and women to artistic production, and representations of the "other" in both European and Asian art. Students gain experience in analyzing and writing about fine arts in the context of the multiplicity of world cultures.
Bird Obsessions: Beauty of Beast
Associate Professor Mark Deutschlander
Birds have captured the hearts and minds of people for centuries. Early texts from Chinese, Greek and other cultures discuss birds in the context of religion, the humanities, and science. Backyard bird feeding and bird watching are among the top hobbies. Conservationists advocate spending millions of dollars on saving and protecting birds from extinction. Why are we so obsessed with birds? Is it their amazing ability to fly, their almost implausible migrations, their vibrant colors, their curious personalities? In some religions, birds have been invoked as symbols of peace, power, trickery, gluttony, and intelligence. Do the lives of birds really embody these anthropomorphic characteristics? Do birds provide an avenue to connect us with our environments, the patterns of nature, and environmental issues? In this course, students examine the lives of birds, the people who are obsessed with birds, and their interactions from a variety of perspectives. They examine birds as models for conservation and science, as religious symbols, and as subjects of art and literature. Finally, students have an opportunity to connect with the environment of the Finger Lakes region by learning about and observing our local birds. This course is part of a Learning Community. Visit the Learning Community webpage for more information.
Alcohol in College: What is Truth? What is Myth?
Professor David Craig
Alcohol abuse continues to be a serious problem on college and university campuses across the nation. Students examine this problem from both natural scientific and social scientific perspectives. Readings include public health and social science research literature on the scope of alcohol use in college and the theories proposed to explain that use. The natural science literature is used to explore the pharmacologic effects of alcohol on the brain, related health risks, and the relationship of blood alcohol concentration to risk and harm. Students participate in ongoing research on the scope and consequences of alcohol use on this campus. Finally, educational models for abuse prevention and harm reduction are explored and evaluated for effectiveness.
Philosophy Through Literature, Drama and Film
Assistant Professor Carol Oberbrunner
How do we gain knowledge? Is truth relative to the individual? What makes me me? Am I free to make my own choices? How should I live? Is the natural world the whole of reality? These and other perennial philosophical questions about knowledge, meaning, reality, persons, morality, and society are central themes in literature, drama, and film. Short philosophical readings provide contexts for discussions of ways of knowing, the distinction between appearance and reality, problems of human freedom and responsibility, the nature of persons and machines, the problem of understanding evil, and the possibility of moral truth.
Education, Justice and Happiness
Instructor Rodmon King and Professor Steven Lee
Worried about injustice and misery in a society that had executed his great teacher, Socrates, for "corrupting the youth," Plato devoted one of the greatest books ever written to the question of how people can live in a way that leads to social justice and personal happiness. His concerns inspired him to investigate many topics that remain important today: education, the equality of the sexes, democracy and tyranny, psychological health, class divisions, censorship and the nature of art, and the nature of knowledge and reality. Plato's Republic remains one of the most interesting works about education, justice, and happiness. In this seminar, we read the Republic, cover to cover, along with modern works, and discuss the parallels between these important topics as they arose in ancient Athens and as they arise in the 21st century and in our own experience.
Reel Russia
Assistant Professor Kristen Welsh
Russians are just as crazy about movies as Americans. Classic Soviet films such as Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin and Andrei Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev have influenced Hollywood, but few Russians would choose to watch them for entertainment. This course will focus on the movies Russians love best, the ones that every Russian knows by heart. We will explore the basics of watching and writing about film, talk about each film's context by learning about Russian history and culture, and discuss topics such as Russia's role in the Second World War, comic fantasy and life in the 1970s, and the lives of Russian women and men.
Creating: Myth, Mystery, and Mind
Professor Pat Collins
This course critically examines various perspectives on the nature of creative activity in the arts, sciences, and everyday life. Students read a wide range of both descriptive and theoretical literature (psychological, philosophical, historical and sociological) while trying to articulate their own ideas on concepts such as creativity, creating, genius, intelligence, invention and problem-solving. The course also considers the relationship between creative activity and gender, class and culture. The emphasis throughout is upon analyzing concepts of the creative in terms of actual creative experience. The course places a premium on student participation: in addition to writing weekly responses to course readings, pairs of students work with the instructor in planning and directing class discussions each week.
The Hollywood Way
Associate Professor Marilyn Jimenez
As old as Aristotle and as new as Avatar, storytelling and story structure have become central to our current understanding of media. With the availability of inexpensive software and hardware, more people are able to engage in media-based storytelling than ever before. The 'digital storytelling' movement, for example, has increased interest in personal narratives. Similarly 'machinima' (the creation of animated films using existing virtual worlds, such video games) has extended filmmaking techniques to anyone with a computer and web-based distribution outlets (You Tube, Vimeo etc.) have given everyone an audience. In this course, we shall focus on how classical narrative structure and the 'rules' of Hollywood storytelling through direction, cinematography and editing come together to inform our sense of what a 'good' story is. Using common 'machinima engines' (dedicated machinima software and productions staged in the virtual world, Second Life) and Final Cut for editing, students will explore the technical, creative and theoretical aspects of media-based storytelling. This course has a lab component. This course is part of a Learning Community. Visit the Learning Community webpage for more information.
Democratic Theory
Professor Craig Rimmerman
This course will address the following questions: What does it mean to be a citizen? What should be the role of the citizenry in a democratic political system? Who should have the final say over public policy in a democratic society? Who should determine the rules for freedom of speech and expression in a democracy? Where should the line be drawn? Are there tensions between democracy and the pursuit of private property in a capitalist society? Should we aspire to ameliorate those tensions? If so, how? These questions will be addressed from both contemporary and historical perspectives by examining competing questions of the role of the citizenry generated by classical and modern theorists. Theorists under consideration include Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke, the American Founding Fathers, Mary Wollstonecraft, James Mill, John Stuart Mill, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Antonio Gramsci, Joseph Schumpeter, Carole Pateman, Anne Phillips, Samuel Huntington, Bernard Berelson, David Held, and C.B. Macpherson. We will also explore how the ideas of democratic theorists can be applied to current affairs, in the United States and in other countries throughout the world, most notably to the recent democratic uprisings in the Middle East.
Africa: Myths and Realities
Professor Alan Frishman
Africa is the continent Americans probably understand the least. As a result, there are many myths and misconceptions about the people and the countries of this vast continent. This course examines the reality of Africa from many viewpoints: its geography, environment, demographics, and history; its social, economic, and political structures; and its art, music, and literature. Students also examine contemporary issues in South Africa, Nigeria, Senegal, Rwanda and elsewhere. Among the course's varied experiences are guest lectures, films and readings.
You Are Where You Eat
Professor Susanne McNally
Food. It's on everyone's lips these days. In this course, food will be both the end and means of study. We will read, write, harvest, cook and eat in the style of all the many groups who have lived in Geneva, N.Y. Our menus of reading and eating will include Iroquois, French trappers, settlers, Neo Europeans, recent immigrant cuisine (African, Southern Europe, the Middle East, Latin America), global and industrial food and finally the counter current back to eating from our own foodshed. We'll learn that understanding can be endlessly amplified, that knowledge is multi layered, that it accounts for change, and that it seeks empowerment.
The History of Stuff
Assistant Professor Laura Free
This class explores the history of material objects to better understand the culture and lives of people in the past. In this class we will ask what the things that humans grow, make, desire, acquire, change, produce, sell, and throw away can tell us about people's values. To examine these values and consider how "stuff" has shaped and driven human cultures, we will look at the history of such mundane objects as codfish, salt, and trash, exotic objects of desire like spices, coffee, gold, and chocolate, inventions like the cotton gin and the car, and ethereal "stuff" like advertisements. Things like these have prompted people to explore their globe, establish empires, enslave their fellow humans, stretch their imaginations and resources, and ultimately transform their world. This course is part of a Learning Community. Visit the Learning Community webpage for more information.
The Avian Persuasion
Assistant Professor Caroline Manring
If you've ever wished you could fly, join the club. If you've ever wondered why you wished you could fly, take this course. Humans have always been drawn to birds. We'll ask why as we try to understand human relationships with birds from the perspectives of writers, musicians, scientists, and back yard bird-watchers, among other types of thinkers by getting in their shoes. In doing so, can we discover and develop individual relationships with birds that will enhance our connection to the natural world? Can such a heightened awareness change our ways of being, and help change the fate of a planet? Activities include: outdoor birding, scientific and literary readings, film viewings, field trips, a falconry presentation with live birds, guest speakers, critical and creative writing, discussion, individual field observation time, and personalized, species-specific final projects. Viewings come from films such as Winged Migration, March of the Penguins and The Life of Birds; book-based readings include excerpts from Song of the Dodo, Wesley the Owl, Sibley's Birding Basics, The Goshawk, Winter World, The Birde's Conservation Handbook, Mind of the Raven, and Providence of a Sparrow, as well as articles and literary works. The course will emphasize active synthesis of firsthand experience and outside/secondary sources. Each student will need a field guide to the birds of North America (Sibley or Peterson recommended) a field notebook, and binoculars (8x recommended).
Chaos, Black Holes and Time Travel
Professor Donald Spector
This course will examine some of the most compelling and cutting-edge phenomena of science, with a goal of understanding how we have come to these ideas and what these ideas imply. We will look at the limits of knowledge imposed by chaos theory and quantum mechanics, see what relativity has to say about the origins and fate of the universe, and see whether time travel and multiple universes make sense. We will also see what the lives of scientists are like as they make their discoveries, explore the philosophical implications of scientific results, and examine how film and literature can invoke these exotic ideas for artistic purposes.
Genocide in the Modern Age
Associate Professor Richard Salter
We live in an age of genocide. Genocide is a crime against humanity because it negates human value itself. The 20th century began with the destruction of the Herrero people in what is now Namibia in Africa; there followed the genocide of the Armenians by the Turks, the mass murder of the Roma (Gypsies) and the Jews (Holocaust) by the Nazis, the cruelties of the Stalinist Gulag, the ravages of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, and the mutual genocidal massacres of Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda and Burundi. Recent genocidal events in the Balkans and in the Darfur region of the Sudan underscore the persistence of the problem. These human tragedies have the potential to undermine the value of human life, the meaning of history and modernity, the relevance and truth of religion and culture, and the significance of social organization. Students in this course will examine the history of genocide and its impact on culture, politics and religion. Together we will confront the dilemma of how to orient life, thought and action around the memory of mass death and broken cultural traditions. This course is part of a Learning Community. Visit the Learning Community webpage for more information.
Odyssey and Enlightenment
Assistant Professor James McCorkle
"Odyssey" is often defined as a long voyage, usually marked by changes in fortune, or, in a figurative sense, it can be an intellectual or spiritual
wandering. This first-year seminar is a voyage, or odyssey. Students begin by reflecting on their own experiences, trips, journeys, and learning to date, and further consider these topics through viewing and discussing the film The Wizard of Oz. Students then read, analyze, and discuss works as seemingly diverse as an ancient Greek epic (Homer's Odyssey); a medieval chivalric romance (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight); an end-of-the-nineteenth century novelia set primarily in Central Africa (Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness); a
supposed children's book set in a invented world and time (J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit); and a product of the 1950's American Beat Movement (Jack Kerouac's On the Road). These are complimented with films such as Apocalypse Now, Willow, and Thelma and Louise, as well as with Christopher Vogler's text The Heroes Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. Our ultimate goal is to consider how our personal odyssey, which is not yet over, leads us towards enlightenment, awareness of others, self-discovery, and freedom.
Why Aren't All Countries Rich
Assistant Professor Jennifer Tessendorf
Why are some countries rich while others remain poor? The answer matters because 'rich' versus 'poor' translates into significant differences in the quality of life of the 'average' person in these countries. The history of the post-WWII period is littered with the corpses of 'big ideas' that purported to answer this question and thus provide the key to growth. Colonial exploitation, low investment rates, inadequate spending on education, insufficient financial liberalization, among others, all failed to answer the question by themselves and certainly didn't provide the magic elixir for growth. We will examine the merits and the failings of these big ideas and consider some newer proposals as well. We'll particularly look at the roles of geography and of political, social and economic institutions and the incentives they create. There may be no single big idea that will work for every country, but we will identify some characteristics that clearly separate the 'poor' from the 'not so poor.' This course is part of a Learning Community. Visit the Learning Community webpage for more information.
Fields of Play: Improv in Life and Art
Professor Cynthia Williams
Quick! Make a hat out of rubber bands, an old sock, and a map of the Northeast! Add on an unfinished sentence and take it in a new direction. Move across the room staying connected to someone else's earlobe...sing a nonsense song...draw your autobiography..Sound strange? We use improvisation everyday when we talk with friends, react without thinking to something new, or walk our own pathway to dinner. Artists use improvisation deliberately, to create new melodies, discover unique movements, or create spontaneity on stage. Scientists use improvisation to test new theories, or to go beyond known limits. Business managers use improvisation to encourage creative thinking, solve problems, or to design products. The ability to improvise is innately human, but many of us find it intimidating. We don't like to be "on the spot," we worry about looking foolish, we like to feel in control, and the unscripted possibilities of "anything goes" seem more terrifying than liberating.Fields of Play: Improvisation in Life and Art is a course for students who want to challenge themselves, and to free their minds and bodies from doing the same-old, same-old routines every day. Improvisation is a practice; a discipline that has many forms but one prerequisite: the courage to let go of preconceived plans and trust your words/actions/expressions are absolutely right for the moment. Each class involves improvisatory which demand total participation as a thinking, breathing, moving, emoting self. Improvisation reveals who you really are.
In addition to the doing of improvisation, students study its theoretical underpinnings and how improvisation; techniques and theories are applied to the arts, education, politics, and sciences. It's fun, stimulating, and rewarding.
Face to Face Interrogating Race
Assistant Professor James McCorkle
This course examines the parallel structures of segregation in the U.S. and apartheid in South Africa. The basic premise is that through the lens of another culture and history, we can come to examine our own. The causes and effects of segregation and apartheid on race relations are the central focus. How race affects gender, class, and social spaces is explored throughout the readings. Taught from the perspectives of professors from South Africa and the United States, the course provides unique insights into the histories of these two countries.
Haunting Memories: Revealing the Uncanny
Associate Professor Eric Klaus
What do a diabolical alchemist, a mass-murdering spider, and a videotape that predicts your death have in common? They are all central elements of uncanny stories we will encounter in this seminar. The uncanny, as made famous by Sigmond Fraud's article the Uncanny from 1919, is feeling of fear and dread experienced by the reader or viewer of tales, in which past events return to disrupt seemingly stable and comfortable situations, Our tour of the uncanny will begin at the start of the 19th century and continue through present day and will lead us through several countries, such as Germany, Russia, and the United States. Throughout the semester we will explore how uncanny tales are constructed and how various cultural and historical contexts inform these tales of angst and horror.
Making of the Samurai
Assistant Professor Lisa Yoshikawa
Sword fighting. Harakiri. loyalty. Honor. These are some of the popular images of samurai and bushido that we have today. However, much of what we associate today with these terms originated only a few centuries ago. In this course, we will explore the history, image, and the concept of the samurai and bushido in the Japanese past and present. Students will learn when the warriorsemerged as significant actors in Japanese society, and how their roles and the perceptions of their roles evolved. We will focus especiallyon how the warriorsadapted to the relative peace of the Tokugawa period (1600-1868) and how the image created as a result was further amplified and manipulated by ideologues under the great Japanese Empire (1868-1945), especially during the Asia-Pacific War. The fall of the Japanese Empire in 1945 did not occasion the demise of the ideal of bushido as attested by works of such authors as Mishima Yukio and continuing popularity of samurai films in Japan.
The History of Everything
Professor Grant Holly
Did you know that it was not until 300,000 years after the "big bang" that light occurred, or that in the year 2000, the tenth largest economic entity in the world was Microsoft (Australia was thirteenth, to put things in prospective)? David Christian's Maps of Time is an example of a recent form of historiography called "big history," because it attempts to locate human beings from the perspective of much larger contexts than the traditional historical periods. Christian's book begins nanoseconds after the 'big bang," describes the development of the universe, the formation of our planet, the origins and evolution of life, including human life, and continues to trace human history through the origins of agriculture, the development of cities, states, and civilizations, the development of world religions, etc., up to globalization and the modern world, and then it peeks into future. What this course will do is to give us the opportunity to orient and seek to understand ourselves in relation to a variety of contexts from the cosmic to the global to the national and the local, contexts which, as Christian's book shows us, no matter how vast, or distant, or alien they may seem, create the patterns that play an intimate role in shaping our lives.
As Good As The Book
Assistant Professor Nicola Minott-Ahl
Why is it that when we go to a movie based on a favorite book, we often come away disappointed?Why is it that a film based novel can often inspire us to read the novel? This course will explore these questions. Film today is in a position in our culture analogous to the position the novel once held in literary tradition. It is still; largely a medium that belongs to popular culture, yet its sense of emotional immediacy, the persuasive power of visual storytelling, and filmmakers' ability to respond to current ideas and trends of thought often means that modern film is a useful window on the age in which the film was made. There is another focus here as well; we discuss important questions about how and by whom meaning is made in both novels and films and the role of the imagination in completing the picture. We will be reading and screening The English Patient, All Quiet on the Western Front, Dangerous Liaisons, and Wuthering Heights.
The Language of American Pop Culture
Assistant Professor Caroline Travalia
How do we speak when we are with our friends? How is that form of speech different than the one we use in the classroom or in the workplace? Often times we are not aware of what makes language colloquial or formal and why we use one register as opposed to another. In this course, we will examine the varying linguistic, cultural and social aspects of how we communicate, with an emphasis on popular modes of discourse. Our corpus of analysis will be made up of the language of contemporary American popular culture as it is presented in film, television series, books, newspapers, magazines, Internet texts and other media. We will focus on how register affects speech patterns, paying attention, for example, to how formal rules often break down at the colloquial level. Our goal is to acquire awareness of the nature of language and to build the necessary vocabulary to reflect on it on and discuss it. Another way in which we will appreciate structural and pragmatic characteristics of English is through a contrastive approach. Specifically, we will examine basic, fundamental differences between English and Spanish. This comparative analysis will serve not only to increase their awareness of colloquial American English but also to enhance their study of a foreign language and culture. Many foreign language students struggle with grammatical concepts in the target language because they are not familiar with those same concepts in their native tongue. In fact, an entire book series has been developed around this premise: "The Olivia and Hill Press" publishes a series of "English Grammar for Students of..."-- for multiple languages, including Spanish, French, Italian, German , Arabic, Chinese, Russian, Latin and Japanese. In sum, this course will examine colloquial American English in current pop culture in order to think critically about differences in language and culture. This course is part of a Learning Community. Visit the Learning Community webpage for more information.
The Essence of Golf
Associate Dean Chip Capraro
What is actually at play in playing a round of golf? Game design theory [cf. Jesse Schell] suggests the game of golf is the occasion for a certain experience for the golfer, an experience shaped by game mechanics, including the rules of the game, the actions and skill of the golfer, and the space of the game, i.e., the golf course itself. Unlike a Monopoly board or a basketball court, though, each golf course is unique, built in accordance with a deeply intentional design conceived in the mind of the gold course architect; thus, Alister Mackenzie, the legendary course designer, would insist, "The essence of golf is variety." This interdisciplinary course addresses a number of questions pertaining to golf course design from a variety of perspectives: What are the basic design elements, technical components, and fundamental principles of golf course architecture in America? How do golf course architects imagine the game of golf when they design and build a golf course? What kind of experience do they intend for the golfer? What does contemporary game theory say about what goes into designing a game? There are also significant historical questions addressed: How has golf course design changed over time? What impact have the social relations of diverse people-- male and female, black and white, rich and poor-- who have played golf impacted the history of golf course design? What are the actual experiences of golfers, from a phenomenological perspective, and how have they changed over time? This course features close readings of writings and design documents (field notes, drawings, and blue prints) of golf course designers from the classic era to the present. Readings will be informed by literary (language, style, structure), historical (change over time, place), and theoretical (game theory and design theory) perspectives on writings and documents. The Finger Lakes area is rich in golf course architectural history, and the course will pay special attention to architects active in the area. Included are field trips to architecturally significant golf courses, a visit to the Robert Trent Jones "archive," and guest presentations from noted experts in the field. Students interested in the history and sociology of sport, architectural studies, game theory, and environmental studies will be especially interested in this course material. This course is part of a Learning Community. Visit the Learning Community webpage for more information.
Life by the Numbers
Assistant Professor Jonathan Forde
The modern world is built of numbers. In science, medicine, business, politics, and even culture, numbers are used to bolster claims and debunk conventional wisdom. A deeper understanding of the mathematics behind these arguments can help us determine what to trust and when to doubt, teach us how to weigh the risks versus rewards, and allow us to come to grips with the vast scale of the universe and the national debt. We will discuss how statistics can be used to clarify and mislead, how to tell if some is psychic, why the house always wins in Vegas, and how it is possible that a 99.9% accurate test for a rare disease might be essentially useless.
Paris, Je T'Aime
Professor Catherine Gallouet
This course will examine contemporary French life in the light of American points of view about France today. We will study Paris as the perceived historical and cultural "center" of the French world. French life will be studied through its multiple productions, (the life of the city, cinema, literature and cuisine). We will pay particular attention on how Americans have related to the city and its culture, and by extension to French culture, by examining the experience of American expatriated in France, and how their representations may construct stereotypes of the "city of lights" and of France.
The Science and Communication of Weather
Associate Professor Neil Laird
Few topics capture the attention and fascination of people like severe and hazardous weather. The awesome power of severe weather and the devastation and destruction it causes have made lasting impressions throughout history. The last sixty years has seen a marked increases in understanding, observation, and prediction of serve and hazardous weather systems. One of the largest improvements in an area of particular interested to the public has been the communication of weather information, forecasts, and warnings. During this seminar we will dissect observations of changing weather conditions - early methods of forecasting - and progress to present forms of communication used to rapidly disseminate weather forecasts and warnings. We will review several historical severe weather events (specifically tornado and hurricane events) and what factors led to loss of life or saving lives. Our discussions will also consider how weather forecasts have improved over many decades and what constitutes a good weather forecast (e.g. forecast skill, public awareness, and societal response). Lastly, students will have an opportunity to connect with the environment of the Finger Lakes region by learning about and observing our local weather. This course is part of a Learning Community. Visit the Learning Community webpage for more information.
You'll notice that some of our Seminars are also part of a Learning Community, a distinctive living and learning environment that enhances the connections between courses and extracurricular events.
Learn more about Learning Communities.
