General Education Curriculum:

4.00 Credits
Analysis of readings in intercultural communication focusing on verbal and nonverbal customs of various cultures as information from both cultural and language perspective. Each semester focuses on specific topics or cultures. Background in other cultures helpful but not essential. Fulfills General Education Global Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
The course will focus on learning to "see" and "hear" the form and music of the art of dance across world cultures. We will focus on specific dance ethnographies (such as Native American dance, Inuit/Eskimo dance, Sufi Dervishes, Bharata Natyam [India], WEst African, Cambodian, Spanish Flamenco, Argentine Tango, Polynesian and American Tap dance) to understand cultural difference through a study of dance and human movement and to explore contemporary anthropological concerns about representation, globalization, history, and identity. Throughout our study we will focus on various theoretical models in anthropology for studying dance/performance. This will entail analyzing dance in terms of semiotic or symbolic approaches (i.e. tradition, spirituality, and ritual), political-economic approaches (i.e. national/gender identity, and commodities and sites of resistance) and aesthetic/critical approaches (i.e. an examination of the dance elements of space, time, energy/force, body, mvoement and form).

4.00 Credits
An interdisciplinary study of the origins of Islam and the role of Mohammed, the global expansion of the faith, the theology and thought of the Koran and Moslem traditions, and forms of art and architecture generated by the teachings of the prophet. The course also explores the impact of the renewal of Islam and its increasing role in the modern world. Fulfills the Historical Perspective and the General Education Global Diversity requirements.

4.00 Credits
What is Africa? Where is Africa? Who is African? These are geographical, cultural, and existential questions. Does Africa end at the coast or include the Islands and the Diaspora? What is the meaning of a white Africa and a black Africa in relation to Western civilizations? If Africa is the cradle of humanity, are we all Africans? This course provides a general introduction to interdisciplinary African studies considering aspects of history, archaeology, anthropology, politics and literature. We shall discuss such topics as religion and cultural life; political and economic history; diasporas; and post-coloniality. The course will be divided into three main sections. First, ?Ideas of Africa? will focus on how Africa is represented?geographically, politically, psychologically?and how Africans have responded; second a historical and geographical focus on a number of ?African Civilizations? will counter the nineteenth century philosophic idea that Africa has no history; and third, by reading modern West African writers and film makers we will consider African public intellectuals as critics of colonialism and post-colonialism.

4.00 Credits
Since the time of the encounter and conquest of the Americas by European powers, historians, writers, and later filmmakers, have taken on the challenge of revising and commenting on ?the official story? written about the populations residing in the Western Hemisphere. This course concentrates on how Latin American writers and filmmakers, particularly from Mexico, Cuba, Argentina and Brazil, counteract the forces of censorship and political repression within their countries to create their own versions of national literatures and film industries. Their literature and film productions deal with the topics of revolution, gender, and the place of intellectuals and creative minds in their own construction of a history not dominated by censorship. The course also presents a history of the foundation and development of literacy and film genres that engage issues of local and national concerns at specific times of crises in the seventeenth (colonialism) and twentieth (post-colonialism) centuries. Fulfills the General Education Global Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
This course examines the historical, socio-economic and ideological contexts within which twentieth-century post-colonial cultures have been produced and are negotiated. Providing both geographical coverage and theoretical frameworks, it examines cultural production from formerly colonized nations. The aim of the course is to familiarize students with both the primary material and the critical contexts within which those materials can be read and understood. Possible topics in the Post-Colonial Cultures course include: 1) African and African-Diaspora Film, 2) Transnational Chinese Cinemas, 3) Latin American Testimonial Literature, 4) West-Indian Literature, 5) Transnational Culture Studies. Fulfills the General Education Global Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
Global Studies promotes an understanding and appreciation of the peoples, cultures, and diversity of the world. Topics in Global Studies courses include an examination of the causes and consequences of globalization viewed from an interdisciplinary perspective. The focus of these courses includes an assessment of the impact of globalization on the economic, political, social, cultural and natural environments of nations, regions, and the world. Issues addressed in these courses will include the impact and uses of technology (such as contemporary media) on cultural production, cultural diversity and ?multiculturalism," and disparities in power and control among nations and peoples. Approaches to these issues may include human responses to globalization, including the ways we think about the world, as well as regional and cultural differences in responding to globalization. Topics may differ from year to year. Past topics have included: Global Cities, Third World Women, Media and Globalization, Globalization and Its Discontents, and The Global Event. Satisfies the General Education Global Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
This course will help students understand the mass media in other countries. What are they like? What are their differing philosophies? How do their practices differ? The course will examine concepts of press freedom, media conglomeration and globalization, and the use and impact of new media technologies. Students go online to communicate with other journalists around the world and to monitor international news and issues. Fulfills the General Education Global Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
This course considers how Latin American authors use poetry, drama, essay and fiction to provide alternative versions of national foundations, revolutionary movements and political repression.  We will view literary writing in relationship to the languages of scientific inquiry, myth, history, sociology, psychology and journalism. 

4.00 Credits
A survey of contemporary world literature written in English by writers from such places as India, Africa, the Caribbean, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Fulfills the General Education Global Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
An exploration of the work of some contemporary international women writers, in its social and political context. Readings include works by such writers as Nadine Gordimer, Jamaica Kincaid, Michelle Cliff, Mawal El Saadawi, Bessie Head, Luisa Valenzuela and others. Fulfills the General Education Global Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
This course will explore the unnerving, freakish, horrifying, and comic world of the modern grotesque. Readings will include short stories and novels by writers such as Franz Kafka, Amos Tutuola, Flannery O'Connor, Patrick McGrath, Amélie Nothomb, William Gay, J.G. Ballard, and Samuel Beckett. We'll also touch upon visual representations of the grotesque with brief looks at works by artists and filmmakers such as Weegee, Diane Arbus, R. Crumb, David Lynch, Federico Fellini, David Cronenberg, and Jean Cocteau. An appreciation of modern grotesque literature and art requires a sense of humor, a taste for the bizarre, and, on occasion, a steady nerve. Concerned with what critic Philip Thomson calls "the unresolved clash of incompatibles," the modern grotesque offers an unflinchingly look at the essential dislocation of our world.

4.00 Credits
This course investigates music-making within a variety of cultures, including societies from Africa, the Caribbean, India, the Far East, and Native Americans. Musical experience is examined from both the sonic and social perspectives, including: musical form, instruments, and style, as well as music's role as a vehicle for defining and representing social values. Fulfills the Aesthetic Perspective and the Global Diversity General Education requirements.

4.00 Credits
This course explores the musical construction of film music and its non-Western or indigenous identity in film through an ethnomusicological and cultural studies perspective. We will study music and cognitive semiotics and look at referentialism, associationaism, iconism, embodied meaning (expressionism) and syntax in film music. In examining associative meaning in film music we will explore signature musical intervals, major versus minor and musical Orientalism and the generation of generic ethnic associations via instrumentation. After an examination of the ?Hollywood? approach to film scoring (from the early sound period on) and studying the musical construction of non-Western or indigenous identity in American film, we will focus on film music globally, including the former Soviet Union, India, Brazil, Japan, Korea, Northern Africa and China among other areas. Fulfills the Aesthetic Perspective and the General Education Global Diversity requirements.

4.00 Credits
This course will study the origin and development of Hinduism in India; Buddhism in India, China and Japan; Taoism and Confucianism in China; and Shintoism in Japan. The study will include the reading of original texts, the development of doctrine in each religious tradition, and the literary, artistic, and cultural impact of each religion on Eastern Civilizations. .Fulfills the General Education Global Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
An exploration of gender in a comparative and global context. Framed by interdisciplinary perspectives from sociology, anthropology, psychology, and cultural studies, this course examines the social construction of gender across cultures. Globalization is explored as a web of complex forces shaping our gender-construction activities and institutions. Students learn to analyze course readings and other media, apply these to their own gendered experiences, and compare their experiences with those in other cultures. Sites for analysis range from ordinary daily activities involving work, play and intimacy, to institutional structures such as religion, politics, military, media, and the economy. Fulfills the Social and Psychological Perspective and the General Education Global Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
This course examines the varying styles of and critical approaches to East, South, and Southeast Asian art, including China, Japan, India, and the arts of the Mideast, especially those of Islam. Major artworks and artists are presented with concern for respective cultural traditions and diverse perspectives. We shall consider how indigenous philosophical and spiritual beliefs, as well as socio-cultural and political structures, inform the artworks, and how our understanding shifts when this art is experienced within its original context as opposed to western frameworks. Fulfills the Aesthetics perspective and Global Diversity requirements.

4.00 Credits
This course examines the various artistic styles of Africa (including the Diaspora), Islam, Pacific Cultures, and America (Mesoamerica, South, Central, and indigenous North America). Major artworks are contextualized through their indigenous traditions, as well as a diversity of critical perspectives. We shall consider how respective philosophical and spiritual beliefs, as well as socio-cultural and political structures, inform the artwork, and how our understanding of art made by each of these cultures shifts when encountered in its original context as opposed through the framings of the west. Fulfills the Aesthetics perspective and Global Diversity requirements.

4.00 Credits
Mapping New Territories: Artistic & Cultural Identity in Latin American Art:This course is an exploration of modern and contemporary Latin American Art in its political, social and cultural contexts. Our study centers on the work of important artists who represent identity, culture, and politics as the complex and multifaceted expression of the experience of living within and between nations and cultures in an age of globalization. Through lectures, videos, slide presentations, artist talks, discussions, student research presentations and workshops, we will explore the common themes, disparate perspectives and changing visions of artists from the "other" Americas.

4.00 Credits
In this course, Asian "national" cinemas are examined and problematized in the contexts of media and economic globalization. More specifically, this course will explore transnational Asian cinemas with the following foci: 1) the politics of transnational film practices 2) issues surrounding filmic representation and diasporic identities 3) the construction and negotiation of national, gender, and genre differences 4) local-regional-global dynamics and 5) questions of the postcolonial in Asian contexts.

4.00 Credits
This course investigates the historical, socioeconomic, and ideological contexts of film production, distribution, and exhibition of post-colonial films that explore and challenge Hollywood and Western notions of identity, narrative, history, and oral traditions. Cinemas to be considered include those from Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Prerequisite: VM 200.

4.00 Credits
Critical examination of prominent rhetorical texts and events that have shaped political processes and relationships. Application of insights to contemporary contexts and issues. Fulfills the General Education U.S. Diversity requirement. Prerequisites: OP200 and OP263 or OP266.

4.00 Credits
A study of how the disabled are portrayed in film, theatre, and literature in contrast with the realities of society. This course examines the issue of disability as a culture and, as such, fulfills the General Education U.S. Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
An examination of the political movements of industrial and agricultural workers, the unemployed, and the poor to gain power and economic rights since the Great Depression. The course chronicles movements that shaped the policies of the New Deal and the Great Society, and analyzes the ways in which these movements fostered a conservative response late in the century. The history is presented in the context of the ideals of democratic liberalism, the emerging power of corporate capitalism, and the modern conservative political coalition. Historical texts and a variety of cultural sources (literature, films, photographs, songs and museum exhibitions) are examined. Fulfills the Historical Perspective of and the General Education U.S. Diversity requirements.

4.00 Credits
A survey of sub-Saharan history of the pre-colonial era, and the history of African-Americans from the slave trade through the Civil War to the present. Fulfills the Historical Perspective and the US Diversity of the General Education requirements.

4.00 Credits
The First-Year Honors Seminar introduces students to the interdisciplinary study of literature and cultural theory while addressing issues of power and ideology in various multicultural contexts. Fulfills General Education requirements.

4.00 Credits
This course addresses the issues of Culture, Interculturality, Multiculturalism and Transculturality in the contemporary societies of the United States and Eastern Europe. It focuses on two issues: the rise of the nation in Eastern European societies, and cultural pluralism in American society. While in the United States a nationalistic paradigm has often existed in productive tension with a multicultural one, in Eastern Europe, this paradigm has led to nationalistic and often mono-cultural societies. This course adopts a perspective that is both multicultural and interdisciplinary in an attempt to question some of the leading assumptions underlying cultural identity and the constitution of ?the West.?

4.00 Credits
This course is an exploration of topics in U.S. social history and race relations, and of blues culture as a reflection of social change. The course will present historical and literary materials relevant to African American social and economic development, as well as white American cultural and social development in 20th century America. The blues songs of a broad range of artists and bands will enhance these historical and literary materials. They will underscore the oral-expressive nature of African American culture, its relationship to social experience, and its influence on mainstream American culture. At the end of this course, students will have a better appreciation for the connections between the history and the songs of a people, and of the way in which American social/musical culture developed from a shared experience. This course will promote an understanding of a range of historical topics, including the plantation South, migration, urban adaptation, experience of women, New Deal and 1960s Counterculture politics, and the influence of blues culture internationally. This course also will explore a range of humanities themes in the blues, including alienation, sexual assertion, despair, and resistance. Satisfies the General Education U.S. Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
This course helps future journalists learn to function and thrive in America's culturally diverse society. Students analyze media coverage of a wide spectrum of under-represented groups, and challenge stereotypes ? including their own. Guest speakers, readings and videos give insight into the realities of different groups as well as into the job of journalists trying to cover them. Fulfills the General Education U.S. Diversity requirement. Prerequisite: JR 204 or JR 205.

4.00 Credits
This course is an introduction to some of the poetry, fiction and other genres produced in the multicultural U.S.A. Focusing on four major American literatures we will examine the ways that writers from disparate communities have used various literary forms to articulate resistance, community and citizenship. We will situate these literary texts in their historical contexts in order to better understand the writing strategies of each author. We will broaden our understanding of literature to include essays, journalism, and films, so that we can learn how diverse cultural texts work to represent America. Fullfills the Literary Perspective of the General Education requirements and the U.S. Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
Latino Literature explores the idea of borderlands or living on the hyphen by American writerswho identify themselves as tradling two cultures.  We will read poetry, essays, fiction and theater by authors in the following traditions:  Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban and DominicanAmerican literatures. Fulfills the Literary Perspective and the General Education U.S. Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
Fiction, poetry, and other genres by 19th- and 20th-century American women such as Harriet Jacobs, Emily Dickinson, Kate Chopin, Maxine Hong Kingston, Eudora Welty, Adrienne Rich, and Toni Morrison. Fulfills the Literary Perspective of the General Education requirements and the U.S. Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
A study of works in several genres, including consideration of how traditional myth, story and ritual contribute to contemporary fiction and poetry, and how the literature reflects and responds to historical and contemporary conditions. Readings include works by such authors as Leslie Marmon Silko, N. Scott Momaday, Simon J. Ortiz, Joy Harjo, and Louise Erdrich. Fulfills the General Education U.S. Multiculturalism requirement.

4.00 Credits
A survey of African-American literature from Olaudah Equiano through Toni Morrison. This course will study African-American literature as part of the field of diaspora studies. Readings will encompass prose, poetry and drama, as we examine the connections between African-American and Caribbean-American literatures, conceived as literatures of the African diaspora. Fulfills the General Education U.S. Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
A study of the evolution of jazz, a continuously evolving form synthesizing many different music styles. Attention is given to its African-American origins, historical identifications, anti-social tendencies, political aspects, and subjective effects which have affected cultural change. Emphasis is placed on listening to the works of Armstrong, Ellington, Davis, Gillespie, Parker, Monk, Coltrane, and Mingus. Fulfills the Aesthetic Perspective and the General Education U.S. Diversity requirements.

4.00 Credits
The course is a review of the United States Constitution, congressional legislation and Supreme Court cases affecting and controlling minority rights from 1776 to the present. Fulfills the Historical Perspective and the General Education U.S. Diversity requirements.

4.00 Credits
Examine how Americans have cared for themselves and others in times of need. Take a long view, starting with the Puritans, at the debate in America as to the proper way to deal with epidemics, poverty, old age, infirmity, unemployment Explore causation, focusing heavily not simply on what has existed, but more importantly, why. Develop and use analytical tools needed to understand American social policy and the welfare state. Fulfills Historical Perspective and the General Education U.S. Diversity Requirements. (Semester varies)

4.00 Credits
We live in a country of diverse social groups. This course explores attitudes towards men and women from different racial and ethnic groups from a social-psychological perspective. To this end, it will explore three components of attitudes (stereotypes -- social perceptions, prejudice -- affective reactions, discrimination -- behavioral actions) and how social, cognitive, and emotional factors contribute to these components. Fulfills the General Education U.S. Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
A study of the history and sociology of racial and ethnic groups in the United States, including a consideration of group tensions and aggressions. The course will provide an overview of the social experiences of major ethnic groups who entered the U.S. as well as of selected Native American societies. Modern issues of inter-group relations will also be examined. Fulfills the Social and Psychological Perspective and the General Education U.S. Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
African-American drama and theatre in Africa and America are studied from their origins in African ritual and in early Nineteenth Century America to the present. Lectures and discussions focus on traditional and modern drama and theatre, as well as significant periods of dramatic activity such as the Harlem Renaissance, the Federal Theatre Project, and the Black Arts Movement, and on representative works by major contemporary African and African-American dramatists. Fulfills the General Education US. Diversity requirement.

4.00 Credits
This course is designed to examine the depiction by and of African Americans in cinema from the inception of the film industry through the 1950s and the transition to television. Special emphasis is given to the historical, cultural, political, social, and economic influences that have shaped and/or determined the cinematic depictions about and by African Americans, beginning with the reconstruction era and continuing chronologically through the Harlem Renaissance, ?race films,? Hollywood productions of the 1940s, and concluding with the pre-civil rights era ?problem films,? the decline of Hollywood in general and African-American involvement in particular. Students will emerge from the class with a richly contextualized understanding of African Americans by independents and Hollywood. Prerequisite: VM 200.

4.00 Credits
This course begins with the resurgence of Hollywood cinema, beginning with ?blaxploitation? films of the 1970s, the concomitant impact of racial turbulence, and the emergence of a new African-American independent filmmaking tradition. Landmark films and filmmakers whose work explores and challenges Hollywood and western notions of identity, narrative, history, and oral traditions will be presented, including works by women, the ?L.A. Rebellion? filmmakers, and contemporary Hollywood productions about and/or by African-Americans. Prerequisite: VM 200.

4.00 Credits
Ethical issues, including racial and ethnic prejudice, discrimination and stereotyping, are inspected both from a philosophical and case study approach. Topics such as privacy, piracy, censorship, ethnocentricity, pornography, racism, confidentiality, fairness, and hate speech are investigated in a variety of communication media?computer technology, photography, video, speech, audio, film, and print?both in international and U.S. domains. Prerequisite: VM 200 or permission of instructor. Fulfills the General Education U.S. Diversity requirement. VM 200 or permission of instructor.