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Interdisciplinary Studies-Humanities |
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ISHU 3621 - The Biological Basis for Art
Investigates the idea of approaching art as a form of human evolution. Examines the art of several past and present cultures. Blends art and science to connect aesthetics to an understanding of human nature from the cognitive and biological sciences. Examines existing personal and cultural theories of art and art criticism.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3622 - The Situationist International
Traces the history and influence of the Situationist International (1957-1972) as an artistic movement. Examines how Situationist theses and tactics have been used widely throughout all disciplines around the world. Explores the impact of the SI on all aspects of art by examining its origins, progression, and influence.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3623 - Studio Art Seminar: Painting
Introduces painting techniques and concepts, with emphasis on the understanding of its formal language and the fundamentals of artistic expression. Explores color theory, linear perspective, pictorial composition , figure/ground relationships, visual perception, spatial concepts, and critical thinking skills.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3624 - Visual Culture and Aesthetics: The Practice of Seeing
Examines the cultural elements involved in the interactive process of defining and interpreting the meaning of visual images with regard to how art images are produced, consumed, and made meaningful. Explores images in art history and digital media to investigate the philosophical, social, and cultural influences which affect how we interpret and define the art experience.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3625 - Bruno Schulz: The Age of Genius
Explores Bruno Schulz’s two collections of short stories, as well as his letters and essays. Examines reproductions of his drawings and paintings. Engages student opinions and critical discourse with regard to his writings and paintings.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3630 - The American Presidency in Film and Television
Examines representations of government, specifically the presidency by analyzing fictional depictions of the presidency in film and tv. Allows students to grasp the language of political film and television, by its necessary manipulations, guided and misguided intentions, and its tangible results on society.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3700 - The Romans
Incorporates important Roman works, including art and architecture. Reviews the major interpretations of modern scholarship.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3800 - Important Issues in Art Since 1945
This course covers the development of high modernism, beginning with Abstract Expressionism, and continue through postmodern practices of conceptual art, feminism, performance art, and site-specific installation art.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3810 - Ethical Issues
Introduces the philosophical concept of the ethical discrimination of actions. Examines primary sources in some detail by presenting the three prevailing philosophical systems. Studies decision-making in the context of the contemporary world using the business environment and political arena as examples.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3820 - American National Identity
Examines how to reconcile national unity and cultural diversity; the responsibilities of democratic citizenship with the cultural values of a consumer society; and being a patriotic American citizen with the contemporary imperative to become citizens of the world. Explores important writings by comparing American figures and ideas of 1968 to some of the key figures and ideas of 2008.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3830 - Contemporary Ethical Issues
No course description available at this time.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3840 - The Ethical & Philosophical Primate: Evolution, Ethics and Human Altruism
Examines evolutionary explanations for the origins of morality, philosophy and religion, and their ramifications for ethics and culture. Recognizes the views of Darwinism, Social Darwinism, and Natural Selection and identifies the cultural and ethical implications of living with each view in today’s world.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3850 - Virtues and Vices
Evaluates the conceptions of the virtues and the vices that are articulated by the Epicureans, the Stoics, Plato, Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Friedrich Nietzsche and others. Explores ethical theories concerned with the relation between morality and human happiness/human flourishing.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3851 - Screening Terrorism
Examines cimematic and televisual representations of terrorism. Promotes critical awareness of the ways in which terrorism is depicted on screen and explores the complex ways in which real acts of terror involve performance and theatrics.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3860 - Faith, Reason, and Science
Explores the relationship between religious faith, forms of reasoning, and scientific explanation. Examines such questions as: What is the nature of religious faith? Is religious faith a rational, irrational, or non-rational belief? Does reasoning undermine faith or strengthen it? Are scientific and religious perspectives compatible?
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3900 - Identity and Culture in Contemporary Dance
This course examines the ways in which dance creates and expresses ideas of personal and cultural significance in ritual, theatrical, and social contexts. By observing dance on film and reading ethnographic, historical and theoretical texts, students explore the emergent meaning of dance from the perspective of both performers and spectators.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3901 - Dance: Anthropological Origins of Dance and Music in World Cultures
Examines the anthropological origins of dance history in world cultures. Discusses the importance of dance to define and preserve the historic traditions within a culture. Explores the inherent relationship between dance and music within both the socio-cultural and folk aspects, as well as the ceremonial, religious, and ritual aspects of a culture.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3902 - Dance: Origins, Ethnology, and Evolution
Examines how dance is the human expression of communication through movement. Explores how dance is used as a universal language to express such things as emotion, entertainment, storytelling, or representation of religious or ritualistic ceremony. Follows the history of dance, its origins, ethnology, and the evolution of dance to present day.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3950 - Acting
This course will introduce students to the craft of acting. Students will learn fundamental techniques for the actor, including defining the character through text analysis, creation of subtext, analysis of the structure of the text (beats) and of the character motivations (objectives and obstacles).
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3951 - Discovering the Art of Acting
Studies the fundamentals of acting. Focuses on textual analysis, personalization, objectives, and characterization. Uses some of the basic techniques of pivotal acting teachers, Constantine Stanislavski, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, and Sanford Meisner, in scene work and in performing short plays.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3952 - Exploration of Theatre as an Art Form
Studies the people of the theatre: actors, directors, designers, and backstage personnel and topics that include the core and characteristics of a script; theatrical forms and styles; acting and theatre history. Gain a deeper appreciation for the various tools, techniques and collaborative styles required when producing theatre in a team setting.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3953 - African-American Theater, Music and Dance from the 19th - 20th Century
Explores the historic perspective of the influence of African-American culture on theater, music and dance of 19th-20th Century U.S. Examines the socio-cultural aspects of the integration of West African slaves into America. Probes the evolution of early American theater beginning with minstrels, for example, and continues with the development of both music and dance of the Jazz Age.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 3960 - The Elements of Action
This course explores the concept of Action, the basic fundamental tool of all theatrical art, and how it informs the creation of performance for the stage. Through games, improvisations and scene work, ranging from Shakespeare to Sam Shepard, students experience and develop the idea of what it takes to be fully Alive in the Present Moment, and connect that with the imaginative craft of acting.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4000 - Writing the Unwritten
Since the Romantic era, writing has often been motivated by the desire to say what has not been said, whether through neglect or through social censorship. Reading works by American and British novelists from the 19th century to the present, students will explore changing definitions of the unwritten during this period as well as write their own personal narratives, analytic essays and prose fiction as a means to discover and bring forth the unwritten in their own experience.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4010 - Art in Society: Myth, Music, and Merriment
Art in Society: Myth, Music, and Merriment
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4011 - That Devil Music: A Cultural History of Blues Music in the U.S.
Examines why many scholars claim that Blues formed the basis for Rock n’ Roll, Classic Rock, and even some of today’s music. Analyzes the sophisticated art form known simply as the Blues. Formulate your own questions, or investigate topics within the scope of the course that are of particular interest to you.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4012 - Popular Music and Media
Examines how media technologies have impacted the production, dissemination, and consumption of popular music. Considers the economic and legal issues that intersect this ongoing history.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4013 - The Documentary Impulse: A Multi-Media Exploration of Journalism
Develops effective communication with fluency in several media including writing, audio, video & photography. Instruction is project-based & technologically immersive. Trained in the basics of a medium, students undertake rigorous assignment. Builds ability to organize information and craft arguments while exploring narrative, rhetorical, and aesthetic tools.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4030 - Religion and the Quest for Meaning
This course examines the religions of the world as ways of finding patterns of meaning and value for our personal and social existence. Students will survey the major religions of the world, using both primary and secondary sources.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4031 - Critical Matter: Questions of Materiality in Our Age
Uses a selection of critical literature to ask relevant questions with regards to the presence of materiality in human life, its contingency and obstinacy as things surround and affect us until it becomes unclear to what extent who ‘we’ are is separated from ‘what’ we have, and ‘where’ we are.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4032 - Writing the Self: The Art of Personal Discovery
Focuses on the ‘voice’ of the Self in literature and visual representations. Explores the meaning of using ‘first person’ in a narrative, life account, or other forms of representation and who is the ‘self’ that is being represented? Includes readings from both creative fiction and creative non-fiction.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4040 - Authenticity: American Literature and Culture
This course scrutinizes several theoretical, dramatic and fictional responses to this crisis. We’ll read from Walter Benjamin who examines what happens to art in an age of mechanical reproduction. We’ll see how Oscar Wilde not only accepts but embraces in authenticity as a way to mock repressive late Victorian sexual and social norms. We’ll examine Jean Hegland’s scathing novelistic attack on modernity while pondering her radical solution: a return to primitivism. This class will take place in seminar form and will have a substantial writing workshop component.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4041 - Crime, Misery and Vice: The Victorian Underworld
Explores in their original contexts the social, cultural, economic and political themes of works such as The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Time Machine, and Dracula, through a combination of class discussion and written assignments. Examines the attitudes, ideals and values associated with the Victorian era.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4050 - Knowledge, Truth, and Objectivity
This course examines some of our most basic beliefs about the world we think we know and the nature of our knowledge about that world. The goals of the course are to understand what these philosophers took to be the important questions concerning the nature of knowledge and then see to what degree these insights are relevant in our own everyday dealings with the world.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4060 - Knowing and Being: The Work of Michael Polanyi
Explores the interdisciplinary philosophical contributions of Michael Polanyi, The Father of tacit knowledge. Performs a close reading of the philosophical system of Michael Polanyi through focusing on the primary source “Personal Knowledge”.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4061 - Kipling’s Raj: The Cutting Criticism of British Ex-Patriot Society
Explores the marvelous world depicted in Kipling’s Indian Tales from the perspective of the commentary they provide on British Ex-Patriot society. Discusses how Kipling has often been viewed as a critic of Indian society, when in fact he is as critical of the British. Examines the work of Clifford Geerts and other anthropologists to provide a rounded picture of Kipling as an analyst of cultural systems.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4063 - Hell’s Angel: How Hunter Thompson Kept America Honest
Examines the work of Hunter Thompson in a study of how ‘Gonzo’ changed greater American journalism as a whole. Demonstrates how Thompson’s role as a public intellectual spread into wider journalism, such as Doonesbury. Portrays Thompson as a premier political critic of each administration who exerted near unparalleled social influence.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4070 - Principles of Criminal Law
Examines basic principles of Anglo-American criminal law. Evaluates ethical and philosophical questions that emerge from legal issues such as the justification of punishment, the nature and extent of criminal liability, strict liability statutes, victimless crimes, the insanity defense, legally mandated hospitalization for mental illness, and capital punishment.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4075 - Literature of Business: Insights on Management from Great Literature
Examines values, biases, and preconceptions about the world through the study of business literature. Studies models on how to come to an understanding of basic needs such as the need for self-esteem, identity, power, acceptance, security, and recognition. The student will see that it is only through self-definition that we can begin to understand human motives.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4080 - Religion and Politics
Explores the relationship between religion and politics. Examines how the relationship has changed over time and place, what the relationship should be, and how prior religious and/or political commitments affect how answers to these questions are structured.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4090 - Writing: Comfortable as a Hearth Rug
Writing: Comfortable as a Hearth Rug
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4100 - Writing Narrative
This course focuses on developing the techniques of prose narrative. Students work on a short story, novel, memoir, or any combination of these. The course is structured as a workshop: each week, four or five works by students are discussed in full-class workshop led by the instructor. Issues to be addressed include characterization, voice, creating and sustaining tension, plotting in long and in short narratives, and the skills of critical response.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4105 - Creative Writing and the Literature of Nature
Explores the process, form, and voice of creative writing in three genres: fiction, poetry, and essay. Includes site visits to several natural areas in and around Charlottesville. Focuses on student work with in-class group critiques, but also offers students the chance to read widely in contemporary literature. Culminates with a portfolio of student work and a reading.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4110 - Fiction Writing
Provides total immersion in the fiction writer’s experience. Explores the ability to connect to creative sources, to overcome the inner critic, to read as a writer, to respond constructively to others’ work (and to one’s own), to discover the possibilities of different fictional genres, and to master the basics of writing a story.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4120 - The American Short Story: The Writer and Tradition
This course examines the American short story from the perspective of the both reader and writer. Defining recurrent themes and conventions of the genre by reading major stories spanning the last 200 years of American literature, students explore the importance of tradition to the writer analytically in critical essays and experientially in their own short stories.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4121 - How to Write a Screenplay: From Short Story to the Big Screen
Teaches students how to develop and write screenplays from idea through story and script, to notes for rewrite. Studies screenplay writing methods. Produce an original feature length script adaptation of his or her short story.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4130 - Film Noir
Focuses on the genre of film noir, styles noir has brought into mainsteam cinema, themes, and characters throughout the genre. Includes class, gender, and the historical context of noir.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4140 - Novel Movements: Modernism, Post-Modernism, and the New Media
Examines two great movements in 20th century Western literary thought and practice: Modernism and Postmodernism. Explores texts that began to rewrite literary and philosophical beliefs and progress through the decades. Examines how both movements pave the way for ongoing literary revolution; a new media enabled by the explosion of digital technologies.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4141 - Multi-Genre Writing
Explores, analyzes and practices the genres of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and screenwriting. Strengthens reading and writing skills and explores the relationship between content and form. Examines and analyzes writer’s skills at all levels. Applies literary theory and critical analysis for a more in depth understanding of the connection between form and content.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4142 - Marriage and Maturity
Presents the two dominant narrative forms in the nineteenth century, domestic fiction and the novel of development. Analyzes how these two genres shape the protagonist in Emma, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, and Portrait of a Lady.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4150 - Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman
This course compares the work of America’s two 19th-century poetic giants. Reading substantial selections from the work of each poet, students will examine their visions of the nature of consciousness and the individual’s changing relationship to God, death, nature, society, love, and art. The course also examines the influence of the Enlightenment, Puritanism, Romanticism, and Transcendentalism, and considers each poet’s work in the context of an America transformed by the Civil War, increasing commercialism, the influx of immigrants, the decline of Calvinism, and ascendancy of science.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4160 - American Film Studies: Early Horror
Explores the roots of early American horror films to answer such questions as: Why do we fear desire? What does it mean to be male or female, or are the two interchangeable? Is there something a little monstrous in all of us? What role does shame play in our lives? Analyzes essays to guide responses and fine-tune academic writing through argument, style, and clarity.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4161 - Art Historical Fictions: Historical Art in Recent Film and Fiction
Explores recent movies and novels with art historical themes and references. Questions the boundaries between history, criticism, and fiction. Examines the necessity of narrative frameworks for understanding visual art and attempts to gain new perspective on today’s culture by characterizing its distinctive attitude toward historical art.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4162 - The Hero’s Journey: Batman and Spider-Man, A Closer Look at Current-Day Ci
Studies films which feature heroic myths to see how they all tell the same story. Explores the Hero’s Journey through films like Batman and Spiderman. Examines Joseph Campbell’s and Carl Jung’s views on archetypes, the constantly repeating characters or energies which occur in the dreams of people, and the myths of all cultures, i.e., the “collective unconscious.”
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4165 - American Directors
Investigates the work of contemporary filmmakers, each with a unique style and an approach to film that combines stylistic innovation with a particular cultural vision.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4170 - African-American Novels
African-American Novels
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4171 - African-American Literature: 1845-Present
Explores African American Literature beginning with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845) and concluding with Edward P. Jones’ Lost in the City (2004). Surveys works of fiction, poetry, and plays by well-know authors. Examines portrayals of race and gender relations, families and communities, and individual quests for justice and acceptance.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4175 - Great Works of Appalachian Literature
Examines 20th Century Appalachian literature and attempt to define this culturally diverse mountainous region. Readings will serve as links to the past and help us comprehend the continued evolution of a people and a place. Explores how oral storytelling, folklore, displacement, and isolation have been and are still portrayed in writing from, and outside of, Appalachia.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4176 - The Civil War Novel
Studies how 150 years later, the American Civil War remains ingrained in the American psyche. Examines novels and explores how and why writers portrayed the causes, characters, and consequences of a war that carried America toward modernity, created and remodeled national myths, and redefined the idea of freedom. Seeks to define the roles and obligation of historical fiction.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4180 - The Hero in Literature
Focuses on plot, point of view, discovery of theme, recognition and reversal, and writing in scene in the Hero’s Journey. Creates an understanding of how stories are shaped and told. Explores Joseph Campbell’s work, which distills the stories told in every culture into a framework for one’s own story.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4190 - Writing Strategies
Writing Strategies
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4200 - Homer and the Old Testament
This course covers all of Homer’s two epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey, and generous selections from the 5 Books of Moses and the historical books of the Old Testament (the Hebrew Bible). These works can be read in many ways: as history, as legend, as entertainment, as links to the unknown, unremembered and invisible, as models for imitation in art and/or life, as maps of reality. The goals of the class are: to understand the difference between the Classical and the Hebraic accounts of human origins, motives, actions, authority and meaning; to practice steering by the text, rather than by pre-conception; and to articulate thought, aloud and in writing.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4210 - Shakespeare
In this course explores the plays of Shakespeare and his non-dramatic poetry. The course considers key philosophical, religious, political, and literary milieus.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4220 - Blake and Milton
Students will read most of the poetry and some of the prose written by the two great, impolite, English poet-prophets, beginning with Blake. William Blake has many sides. Poet, painter, printer, seer, Blake regarded Isaiah, Ezekiel and company as the first poets. He also waged mental war upon the Classical tradition, from Homer on down. John Milton, the subject of one of Blake’s visionary poems, was a hero of the imagination and an opponent of tyranny. The most learned man of his age, Milton wrote as a Hebrew prophet in the guise of an English poet. Poetry has roots in song as well as prophecy, so students will read many of these musical works aloud.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4230 - Masterpieces of Russian Short Fiction
Explores the shorter translated works of Russian literary giants of the nineteenth century whose writings firmly established Russia in the first ranks of world. Examines the works of twentieth century writers who articulated the existential dilemmas of the “new Soviet man.” Provides a broad philosophical and cultural perspective on Russian short stories.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4240 - The Romantics - Poets of the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries
The Romantics - Poets of the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4245 - The Meditative Lyric
Explores the tradition of the meditative lyric with an emphasis on contemporary poetry. Includes central critical essays and readings from contemporary poets such as Charles Wright, Lisa Russ Spaar, and Mary Ann Samyn, as well as poets in the tradition such as Gerard Manley Hopkins and George Herbert. Examines the intersections between spirituality and the lyric poem through both creative and critical lenses.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4250 - Script Analysis
Students will survey classical to contemporary plays with a focus on developing the ability to read dramatic texts intended for performance. Students will investigate structure, plot, character and imagery, and scrutinize playwrights’ methods of making meaning as distinct from other forms of literature. This analysis will enrich the student’s appreciation of the play text as a blueprint for production.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4260 - Apocalyptic Tradition
This course explores early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts and their interpretation. The seminar will focus chiefly upon the ancient texts themselves, from ‘proto-apocalyptic’ texts to full-blown apocalypses, as well as some works which contain apocalyptic elements or are said to betray an apocalyptic worldview. In addition to ancient material, the seminar will more briefly treat what happens with these texts and the beliefs found therein after their period of origin. The approach will be both historical and rhetorical, examining carefully the context for apocalyptic writing as well as the way that writing attempts to form its readers.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4270 - Imagining the City: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Explores the idea of the city from an interdisciplinary perspective that begins with Plato’s influential rendering of an imaginary city ruled by philosopher-kings and continues through the urban core of modern Charlottesville. Allows students to examine the physical world by sharing ideas, observing, writing, and thinking critically.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4280 - The Other Elizabethans: Shakespeare’s Contemporaries
Presents selected works of Shakespeare along with those of his peers and rivals to enable students to grasp the English Renaissance theater as well as Shakespeare’s remarkable contributions.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4300 - Framing Modern America
This course studies the evolution of American society in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries by exploring the creation and reception of art. Students analyze selected paintings, sculptures, photographs, films, architecture, and music to understand how these art works and the artists who created them shaped and reflected some of the central political, social, cultural and intellectual developments in modern America. This course helps students deepen their awareness of key artistic developments and improve their ability to analyze various art forms critically and creatively.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4311 - History of Art Controversies in the United States
Explores the most significant art controversies in the history of the United States and places them in their appropriate cultural and historical contexts. Prerequisites: Restricted to BIS Students.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4312 - The Judgment of Paris (Impressionism)
Focuses on the revolutionary decade that gave the world Impressionism. Examines the contrasting careers of Ernest Meissonier and Edouard Manet against the backdrop of the Franco Prussian War and the Paris Commune and how their success was measured differently in time. Explores the works of several other artists including Monet, Degas, and Cezanne.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4313 - Varying Contexts of Love and Relationships
Utilizes philosophical, religious, literary, and historical texts to examines the relationship between romantic love, both heterosexual and non-heterosexual, and the love of family, country, and God.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4314 - The World of Theodore Roosevelt
Explores Theodore Roosevelt’s life. Investigates key political, economic, social, and cultural developments of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that Roosevelt experienced and, in some cases, influenced.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4315 - The World of Jane Austen: Exploring the Novels in Historical Context
Analyzes the major works of Jane Austen. Explores the social, cultural, economic, and political themes of the novels in their original contexts through a combination of class discussion and written assignments. Considers the resurgence in popularity of Austen’s works in recent years, especially film and television portrayals of her novels.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4320 - Italian Renaissance Drawing
Examines the role of drawing in 15th & 16th century Florence, with an emphasis on the works of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and the artistic milieu from which they emerged. Considers when drawings ceased to be practical and attain a level of autonomy from painting and sculpture; what these works say about imagination and the creative process; and how conceptions of drawing change.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4325 - Florentine Painting of the 1470s & 1480s
Examines the works of Pollaiuolo, Verrocchio, Ghirlandaio, Botticelli, Leonardo, and others with an emphasis on relationships between these artists’ works. Looks at their respective creative processes and the circulation of ideas among works.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4350 - The Films of Stanley Kubrick
Explores the films of Stanley Kubrick and the times in which they were made. Investigates Kubrick as a means to understanding film. Examines how films are to be read, how they tell their stories, how they fit into their historical and cultural moment.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4351 - Seminar in Medieval Studies
Examines the political history, economic structures and conditions, religion, philosophy, literature, art, and music of the Medieval period.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4641 - Advanced Public Speaking
Utilizes several active learning activities when considering classical rhetorical elements, audience analysis, speech organization, and strategies for improvement in the structure and delivery of extemporaneous and impromptu speeches. Work with conceptual methods, observe exemplary models of good speech making, explore personal communication apprehension, and hone individual rhetorical style.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4810 - Religion and Technology
This course examines how technology and religion encounter each other, clash with each other, enable each other, and co-create each other. Students will take a broad view to discuss some topics: historical perspectives on religion and technology, how they function as interpretive structures, virtual communities, etc., but will also take a narrower view, examining particular issues such as genetic manipulation, or global warming and Christianity.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4820 - Readings in Religion and American Culture
Examines the ways in which the distinctively American context has shaped religious life, and also considers how religion has shaped American culture. Explores both historical and current approaches to the topic. Considers the relationship between religion and politics, religion and family life, and religion and science.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4821 - Key Concepts in Cultural Analysis
Examines the’ human’ not as a fixed and immutable category or essence, but as a result of specific historical conjunctures, differing intellectual frameworks and varying modes of social production and reproduction. Considers the transmission of ideas across cultures and historical periods and the traveling of texts-through the press, translations-as contributing to the production of the ‘human’.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4830 - A Philosophic History of American Environmentalism
The course gives a philosophic history of American environmentalism by examining some of the ‘classic’ works within this tradition which have had world-wide influence, such as Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac, and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. It will also look at how some contemporary American environmental thinkers have critically appropriated the ideas defended in these ‘classics’. Finally, we shall see how these ‘classic’ ideas connect to current American cultural values and to such current social issues as consumerism, global warming, preserving endangered species, animal liberation and achieving sustainable food production.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4831 - Four Women Activists for Sustaining Food, Water and Biodiversity in India
Examines the ethical values and interpretations of political engagement of three Indian and one American female activist (Vandana Shiva, Arundhati Roy, Medha Patkar, and Martha Nussbaum).
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4840 - God and Darwin: Friends or Foes?
God and Darwin: Friends or Foes?
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4850 - The Ethics of Sustainability
The idea of sustainable development first gained currency with the release of the 1987 UN report on the environment and economic development, Our Common Future. Today many writers speak of a 21st century ‘sustainability revolution’ which aims at: 1) ‘correcting’ the negative environmental consequences of the industrial revolution, 2) continuing with but redefining ‘economic growth’, and 3) moving beyond the relatively narrow concerns of late 20th century ‘environmentalism’ by integrating environmental issues into issues of social and economic justice. All this means addressing not only such traditional ‘environmental’ problems as preserving biodiversity, upgrading air and water quality, and countering global warming, but also addressing such ‘non-environmental’ questions as how best to defend human rights, create an alternative to ‘consumerism’, restructure the contemporary corporation, combat pandemics like HIV/AIDS, alleviate ‘world hunger’, reform energy policies, and assess the welcome and unwelcome consequences of both globalization and nationalism. Indeed, some type of long term ‘social revolution’ is being contemplated under the banner of ‘Sustainability’. What would be the ethical justification for such dramatic change? Is it really necessary for human survival or the quality of human life? Is it politically feasible even in the long term? Such broad questions will be examined.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4860 - Jefferson, Lincoln, Darwin, God, and the Idea of a Human Right
Examines the idea of a human right by reading central historical documents about where the idea of a right came from and what such people as Jefferson, Lincoln, Darwin, and God thought a right to be.
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4870 - Modern American Culture War
Modern American Culture War
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4890 - America and the Ethics of Food and Energy in the 21st Century
America and the Ethics of Food and Energy in the 21st Century
Credits: 3
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ISHU 4993 - Independent Study
Independent Study for students working on Capstone Proposals and Proseminar work.
Credits: 1 to 3
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Interdisciplinary Studies-Invidualized Education |
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ISED 4450 - Methods of Teaching Reading and Reading Comprehension
Methods of Teaching Reading and Reading Comprehension
Credits: 3
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Interdisciplinary Studies-Liberal Studies Seminar |
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ISLS 3010 - Nationalism and National Identity
This seminar examines the role of nationalism and national identity in two regions of particular interest, the British Isles and the Balkans. Two key questions examined are: How can national traditions peacefully be expressed and preserved in an age of increasing supranational identities such as the European Union and the global economy? Do human rights broadly defined and enforced by international organizations supersede the right of peoples to be governed with, and ruled by, those of common language and culture?
Credits: 3
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ISLS 3020 - Critical Thinking: Why Do We Believe the Things We Do?
This course focuses on a central question: ‘Why do we believe the things we do?’ This question will drive all of the individual writing and reading assignments. In this context students consider, from a multi-disciplinary perspective, topics such as: mental models, hidden assumptions and the place of implicit beliefs in reasoning; ‘thin slicing’ and the role of the ‘adaptive unconscious’ in decision making; propaganda, public relations and the role of the media in belief formation; the identification and evaluation of arguments and the difference between persuasive and cogent reasoning.
Credits: 3
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ISLS 3030 - Critical Thinking and Creativity II
This seminar develops the ability to critically and creatively evaluate complex issues and to increase ones sensitivity to the pervasive character of deceptive reasoning in our culture. The focus is on evaluating the reasoning of others, and manufacturing consent.
Credits: 3
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ISLS 3040 - Decision Making in Public Organizations
This course addresses the question of how organizations actually make decisions and what analysis techniques the organizations use to arrive at a chosen option. The course combines the theory of decision making with actual case studies. Student or team projects allow the student to demonstrate an understanding of the analysis that goes into making a decision. Students will be allowed to choose a decision of national, state, or local interest involving either a government entity or a non-governmental organization with public responsibilities.
Credits: 3
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ISLS 3050 - Critical Issues in American Foreign Policy
With appropriate historical background, this course explores the moral, ethical, political, economic, and legal challenges and opportunities facing American policymakers.
Credits: 3
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ISLS 3070 - Honor, Honor Codes, and Civil Society
Explores the meaning of honor and why it is both a morally necessary and a potentially dangerous concept; the Christian west and the Knight’s Code of Chivalry, and the Japanese Samurai; and whether Americans can fashion a society with a renewed sense of honor.
Credits: 3
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