Course Descriptions Wintermester 2013/14

Course descriptions wintermester 2013/14

COURSE NO: 2303-001DAY & TIME: MTWRF 8.00-11.45 AM

COURSE TITLE:

INSTRUCTOR:

This course assumes that good poetry doesn’t necessarily need to draw from a (boring) past. Fine, engaging poetry may also find its material in what we all already (think we) know. For this reason, all of the poems we will read this session appeal in some manner to popular (some might call it low, but not us) culture in order to say something, if not new, then hopefully useful. So, we will read fine poems about Superman, Godzilla, Barbie, cartoon characters, all with an eye to discovering what these poems share with the poetic tradition without having to repeat that tradition verbatim.

Texts:Universal Monsters, Brian Dietrich; Kinky, Denise Duhamel; Monster Zero, Jay Snodgrass; Hurdy Gurdy, Tim Seibles; various works available in class or online

COURSE NO: 2303-002DAY & TIME: MTWRF 1.00-4.45 PM

COURSE TITLE: Ayn Rand: Fiction and/as Philosophy

INSTRUCTOR: PORTER, KEVIN

Ayn Rand, who was born in Russia in 1905 and who emigrated to the United States in 1926, is easily the most recognizable philosopher of the twentieth century—that is, if one recognizes her as a philosopher in the first place; for no other intellectual in the twentieth century has aroused so passionate and acrimonious a debate about whether her work is “worthy” of being called “philosophy” (with Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger standing as a distant second and third). The lingering controversy surrounding her legacy since her death in 1982 is perhaps befitting someone whose fictional heroes were often as uncompromising and idealistic—and repugnant, depending upon one’s point of view—as their author. In this course, we will critically engage Rand’s major fictional texts, The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged (1957). Drawing upon the work of political commentators, we will also consider whether—or to what extent—Rand’s prophetic vision of the political, cultural, economic, and moral dissolution of the United States in Atlas Shrugged is taking place before our very eyes.

COURSE NO: 2303-003DAY & TIME: MTWRF 1.00-4.45 PM

COURSE TITLE: ENVIRONMENTAL LIT & FILM

INSTRUCTOR: ALAIMO, STACY

This course will introduce you to some of the most important environmental issues of the 21st century, via an exciting array of recent literature and films. The course will cover a range of topics, questions, and issues in the environmental humanities, with a focus on American literature and film. Cultural, historical, philosophical, ethical, and political contexts and questions will be discussed, along with careful analyses and interpretations of the literature and the films. The literature will include novels, autobiography, science fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. The films will include animation, documentary, and activist films. The class features the following topics: Indigeneity and Environmental Justice; Toxins, Science, and the “Ordinary Expert”; Climate Change; and Genetic Engineering, Extinction, and Biodiversity. Students will take 3 exams, plus a final exam.