Honors Colloquia: Spring 2011

Click on a course name to read a description.

All course materials can be purchased at Shakespeare & Co. Booksellers, located at 939 Lexington Avenue.

Course Descriptions

Language and Racism

Professor Angela Reyes (English)

This course examines the role of language in the production of racism. We will critique folk theories that link racism to the intentions of individuals and to the meanings of words, and explore the implications of fastening racism to marginal outliers of society, rather than to a widespread contemporary project in which we are all engaged. Focusing largely on how racism is reproduced in the US, we will interrogate the role of colorblind and post-racial ideologies in the maintenance of unequal social structures and power relations. Along with covering overt racist language (e.g., slurs and gaffes), we will discuss the more covert forms that can be even more powerful through their veiled, subtle, or elusive nature: for example, private racist talk among whites behind closed doors (Myers 2005), avoidance of racial labels by muting them (Pollock 2004) or by substituting euphemisms like "culture" (Urciuoli 2009), rhetorical moves such as "I am not a racist, but " (van Dijk 1984; Bonilla-Silva and Forman 2000), and linguistic appropriation, such as Mock Spanish and language crossing (Hill 1993; Bucholtz 1999; Chun 2001; Reyes 2005). Key texts include Jane Hill's (2008) Everyday Language of White Racism and Rosina Lippi-Green's (1997) English With an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States.

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Gender, Power, and Art in the European Renaissance

HONS 201.61                     Professor Francesca Canade Sautman (Russian)
Section 51 - Code 4190     Tuesdays and Thursdays 5:35-6:50 p.m.
3 hours, 3 credits               Room 412 HW

The last thirty years have generated a wealth of scholarship in a variety of disciplines showing a remarkably rich presence of women during the time referred to as “the Renaissance.” For the purposes of this course, the term Renaissance designates the period in European history ranging from the middle of the 15th century to the first few decades of the 17th. And while “power” is usually taken to mean political power, gender theory allows us to inflect the term and impart more flexibility to it. The course will then consider a broader scope of the term for women living at a time when severe constraints limited their access to learning, their public life, their professional options, and their control over their own persons, especially within marriage and the family.

The “power” wielded by Renaissance women can thus be direct or indirect, public or private, and enacted individually or by groups, for instance within families, religious communities, or even trades. It can take the form of influence translated into architectural and monumental projects, into patronage of the arts, and into intervention into a variety of economic and political situations, sometimes fraught with imminent danger. Thus, women were active participants in the Reformation, and in France, during the Religious Wars, were vocal and fearless in the service of both sides of the conflict. And of course, a number of famous Renaissance women indeed did rule, exercising political power in many guises and in many variations, in large realms as well as smaller kingdoms and regional states. Tensions between gender and power also created particular forms of conflicts in early colonial situations.

Basing itself on the contributions of contemporary gender theory and the achievements of feminist social and cultural history, the course will thus reflect on the many meanings of “power” in relation to gender during the Renaissance. We will be reading and discussing a wide selection of interpretative scholarship, as well as historical biographies and primary sources, including writings by some of the women we study.

During the semester, we will examine the particular contribution of Renaissance women to shifting notions of power, and especially, their impact on the development and reach of the arts during their time. We will pay careful attention to individuals, situations, contexts, and social categories that lead to complex formulations of gender and to the exercise of power by women, in spite of the many restrictions they faced.

Course requirements: Weekly readings and regular attendance in class. An in-class midterm consisting of a choice of written questions given out a week ahead of time. A short paper discussing a choice of one of the critical readings (4-5 pages). A substantial term paper with complete bibliography and use of both primary and secondary sources,  15 to 20 pages, to be worked on in draft sections, with one final draft of the whole before the final version is turned in. These are not graded individually but overall regularity and draft quality are recorded and factored into the final grade.

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Human Life History: A Course of Study

HONS 201.85                     Professor Timothy Bromage (NYU College of Dentistry, Biomaterials & Biomimetics)
Section 51 - Code 4191     Tuesdays  7:00-9:30 p.m..
3 hours, 3 credits               Room 412 HW

Age at weaning, age at sexual maturity, age at first reproduction, brain and body size, and lifespan.  These are just a few variables that characterize an organism’s rate and pattern of life that may be studied at many levels.  They constitute the events and processes of maturation of individuals.  Life history variables are highly correlated with one another and distinguish species within major orders of mammals.  So, for instance, while a definite but limited variation exists in the patterning of life history events between individuals of a species, it transpires that species themselves are patterned along a "live fast, die young" to "live slow, die old" continuum.

Humans are an interesting test case of life history because as individuals and as a species they exceed the tolerances of some life history variables.  Hence humans have had to invent new ways to grow up and still remain "typical" primates.  As a species, for example, because neonate brain size is proportional to adult brain size amongst all primates, the development of the modern human brain size infers a neonatal cranial capacity that is greater than can be accommodated by the pelvic outlet of human mothers!  This has meant that, unlike all other primates, the fetal growth rates of the brain must continue for one year after birth.  The consequence of this is that human neonates are born with vastly immature brains compared to other primates.  Thus human infants require a level of intense parental care and nurturing over that of other primates.

As individuals, humans also push hard on their life history.  For instance, growth and development is intimately tied to the nutritional base (quality, quantity, consistency, etc.) of a population, thus many life history variables are affected by nutritional variations that exist in various human environments (urban and rural environments, refugee camps, etc.).  Culture pushes the hardest on life history.  "Values" determine the marriageable ages of young adults, hence the start of their reproductive careers.  This determines the number of children that may be born and, thus, the demographic character of populations.  For instance, the achieved level of education is known to affect the average age at marriage and, hence, numbers of children born per woman in societies characterized by a demographic transition.  Centrally heated and air conditioned environments have disrupted the seasonality of human reproduction in the temperate zone.  Stress, exercise, workloads, lack of sleep, and many other factors, affect growth and development and reproduction.

In sum, because the individual is a principal focus, the life history approach is introspective and helps individuals understand themselves.  But, also, because life history characterizes a species, we can better understand its evolutionary significance and our place in nature.

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Music to My Eyes

HONS 301.34                     Professor Geoffrey Burleson (Music)
                                          Professor Joachim Pissarro (Art)
Section 01 - Code 4192     Mondays and Thursdays 1:10 - 2:25 p.m.
3 hours, 3 credits               Room 407 HN

This course will examine the evolution of innovative and radical art movements in the 20th century, and how music infused, informed and illustrated each of them:  Impressionism, Expressionism, the Blue Rider, Futurism, Dada, the Bauhaus, happenings, performance art, industrial art, and "anti-art."  Works of visual artists and musicians who defined these idioms will be studied and analyzed, with special attention given to the effects that their work has had on the larger movements singularly and collectively, as well as the new techniques and forms found in the pieces of music themselves.  As the artistic schools listed embrace a large number of disciplines, so will we consider the complex interrelationships of this music with the visual arts, poetry, theatre, architecture, design, philosophies of form and function, film, and technology. The class will take place in a multi-media classroom that is also equipped with a grand piano.  This will enable students to hear live musical excerpts, performed by Prof. Burleson and/or guest musicians, view projected examples of visual art works, listen and watch excerpts from relevant musical and performance pieces, and permit the instructors to analyze specific passages and musical themes.  The class will include several short writing assignments, a final paper and a live performance event in conjunction with students from the Music Department.

Prerequisites: Students who do not read music or play an instrument should have taken either MUSHL 101 or MUSTH 101 or obtain the permission of Professor Burleson.

Works of the following visual artist will be central to the course:  Russolo, Monet, Kandinsky, Léger, Schwitters, Duchamp, Schlemmer, Grosz and Rauschenberg.

Musical artists integral to the course will include Debussy, Mussorgsky, Scriabin, Schoenberg, Antheil, Satie, Hindemith, Cage, Varèse, Frank Zappa, Laurie Anderson and Trent Reznor.

Some tentative pairs of specific work to be considered would include:

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The Evolution of Mind

HONS 301.36                     Professor Roger Persell (Biological Sciences)
                                          Professor Jason Young (Psychology)
Section 01 - Code 4193     Wednesdays 10:10 - 12:40 p.m.
3 hours, 3 credits               Room C107 HN

THE EVOLUTION OF MIND is a contemporary look at highly topical (and controversial) questions about the biopsychological characteristics of rational thinking, emotional reactions and feelings, moral decision making, and social judgments.

Disciplines long steeped in the rationalist approach to understanding human thought and cognition have begun to use the new methodologies of cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology to explore the nature of thinking.  Both these approaches, and recent thinking in many other disciplines, have been thrust into the forefront of research on the mind through the profound impact of evolutionary theory, originally established by Charles Darwin.  In a prescient comment from one of his 1838 notebooks, Darwin dismissed the classical, rationalist approaches of everyone from Plato to John Locke by writing, “He who understand baboons would do more toward metaphysics than Locke.”  Needless to say, any mention of Darwin in the context of human thinking is bound to generate enormous controversy and, at times, overt hostility.

But Darwin was, as usual, probably right, and this course will take a look at the approaches that rely on evolutionary theory to explore how the mind works.

The course will be divided into three large areas:

1. An introduction to evolution and to cognitive functions of the human brain.
2. Aspects of higher brain function that have recently opened up to experimental investigation, including language and communication, perception, rational decision making, irrationality and biases, the emotional contribution to thought, and moral and religious thinking.
3. Student oral reports on a topic of cognition of their choice.
   

Readings will include background information from a recent text[1] and current papers on animal and human cognition and the methodologies used to study these questions.  Students will be divided into small groups that take responsibility for class discussions of the assigned readings on a rotating basis.  Grades will be based on class participation (10%), two short take-home essays (40%), a term paper (30%), and an oral presentation on your term paper topic (10%).

[1] Cartwright, John. Evolution and Human Behavior: Darwinian perspectives on human nature, 2nd ed. (2008) MIT Press: Cambridge, MA. Paperback (ISBN:  978-0-262-03380-0)

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Violence & Ethnic Conflict in South Asia

HONS 301.46                     Professor Ruchi Chaturvedi (Anthropology)
                                          Professor Rupal Oza (Women & Gender Studies)
Section 01 - Code 4194     Mondays and Wednesdays 4:10-5:25 p.m.
3 hours, 3 credits               Room 412 HW

This seminar will explore issues of ethnic conflict in South Asia.  Such conflict is popularly known as communalism.  The class will tackle the following major questions: what is the nature of group identity?  Why do sectarian ideologies hold power over the imagination in the subcontinent?  In what ways does communalism collude with capital and nation-state?  How does one explain the role of women and other subordinated groups in positions of power in communal organizations?  In what way do secular formations respond?  And what is the role of secularism and cosmopolitanism in the subcontinent more broadly?

Semester Projects

• Discussant 10%
  This class is structured as a seminar and requires each student to participate in the class discussions.  Additionally, you will be responsible for discussing one day’s readings in class.
  
• Cultural event/ program 20%
  Each of you is required to attend one cultural event or program on a South Asian topic during the semester.  These events may include but are not limited to a documentary film screening (this does not include those you will see as part of the class), an art exhibit on the topic, or a performance.  You will write a 3-4 page analysis of the event.
• Critical Response paper due 20%
  You are to critically respond to a set of articles from the syllabus.
  
• Final Project and Presentation 50% (35% and 15% respectively)
  Students are required to write a 10-15 page research paper for this class.  Research and writing should take place over the course of the entire semester.  Students must write a paper on a topic defined by one of 5 themes.  Choices will be approved on a first-come, first-served basis, so the earlier you decide what interests you most, the better.  Students may choose the theme (from the list of 5) on which they wish to write, but a maximum of 5 students can choose each theme.
  
  The five themes from which you may choose are:
  
  1. Violence as Phenomenon (understanding mobs, etc…)
  2. Case-studies (Assam, Telengana, Gujarat, Sri Lankan Civil War, etc…)
  3. Boundaries and Borderlands (Effects/concepts of space, etc…)
  4. Religious nationalism
  5. The Secular and Cosmopolitan Challenge
  
  In addition to writing a research paper on this topic for your final project, you will also be required to present your work at the end of the term.
  

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Interdisciplinary Independent Study

HONS 301.99      
Section 01 - Code: 1448
3 hours, 3 credits
Hours to be arranged

Students wishing to take this course will need two readers, from different disciplines, one of whom generally should be a member of the Council on Honors. In principle, the Council must approve the subject matter of such a paper before the student can register for the course. This course may be taken only once and does not count towards the three Honors Colloquia required of every member of the Program.

HONS 301.99 cannot replace any of the three required Honors Colloquia.

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Advanced Interdisciplinary Study

HONS 491.51      
Section 001 - Code: 1449
6 hours, 6 credits
Hours to be arranged

Upon completion of 90 credits, certified Honors Program students may be admitted by the Council on Honors to Advanced Interdisciplinary Studies, with the opportunity of engaging in advanced independent study under the Council's supervision. A project for a thesis or other appropriate report of the results of the student's research is presented to the Council, which must approve it the semester previous to registration. Three sponsors, from at least two departments, one of whom must be a member of the Council on Honors, will supervise the work. The final product must be approved by all three sponsors and the Council.

HONS 491.51 cannot replace any of the three required Honors Colloquia.

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