Literature and Photography in America
Explores the connections between literature and photography in America from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Students will examine the impact of photography on the evolution of literary realism. Readings include fiction, poetry, and critical essays.
Icon & Ideas
Sci. & Imagination
Readings and analysis in twentieth century fiction which illuminates the politics of everyday life. This kind of politics has a more direct and lasting impact on the typical citizen than the official, more glamorous, dramatic, and public kind. The works to be read are chosen because they address questions of power and autonomy, issues of self-esteem vs. a sense of worthlessness, and matters of authority -at home, in the workplace, and in society at large.
Life in Early America
An approach to American history which examines documents of American culture about the home as an ideal, concentrating on fiction, but including essays, sermons, songs, photographs, movies, and paintings. Reveals the richness and complexity of popular as opposed to classical art forms and shows how a culture constitutes itself.
Magical Realism and Fanatasy
Great Cities of the World
This course analyzes the world influence projected by several of the largest cities of the late twentieth century (London, Paris, Mexico City, Tokyo, Rome, and Chicago, for example). Students will identify and evaluate how history, communications and economic activity contribute to the making of great cities and to the emergence of a global society.
In the twentieth century, the form and focus of conventional autobiography has been radically reshaped. Surveying a variety of continental and American modern and contemporary writers, we will seek to understand these newer modes of writing about the self, discussing such issues as identity, authority, and sincerity, as they impact upon the works in question.
Ways of Seeing
Our educational system tends to neglect the visual world, despite, our growing dependence on pictorial and visual information. Using methods from anthropology, psychology, communications theory and art history, this course will explore nonverbal communication, the built environment, photography, film, and television as culturally conditioned symbolic systems.
Intellectual H. MLA
Students who wish to enroll for Independent Study must submit a proposal written under the direction of a faculty member who will supervise the student's work. This proposal must be submitted the semester before the Independent Study is to take place. The proposal should describe the project, indicate a) works to be read, b) frequency of student-instructor meetings, c) student writing to be produced, and d) means of student evaluation.