Honors Colloquia - Fall 2013
Course Descriptions
The Art and Science of Anatomy
Professor Roger Persell (Biological Sciences)
Using historical, thematic, scientific and artistic approaches, we will explore “anatomy”: the interior structure that gives meaning to our surface perceptions. Anatomy is not only the branch of biology that names bones and muscles; it’s the totality of what lies beneath everything to give the surface its form and function. Freud, for example, attempted an anatomy of the mind to uncover deeper truths about our own irrational behavior.
From the first illustrated anatomy in the 15th century to contemporary digital work in forensic, cinema, video games, and medicine, we will try to discover when anatomical analysis is art and when it’s science, but we’ll soon see that an artistic “right-brain” appreciation and a scientific “left-brain” understanding come together to form our most complete picture of ourselves. Divisions between science and art break down in the search for the fullest possible comprehension of what we are most interested in, ourselves.
There are no special prerequisites or co-requisites for this course except an eagerness to try your own hand at creating a visual work of anatomy and to read and write about occasionally challenging articles. Grading is based on timely assignments and intensive class participation. Late work is unacceptable. A background in art and skill in drawing are not requirements for a good grade, but effort is.
Students will do 3 short projects that involve both art and science (15% each). We’re fortunate in having a professional science illustrator, Ms. Robin Sternberg, join the class to help with basic anatomical renditions of expressive human structures. Each project will be accompanied by a 2-3 page essay on the relationship of the anatomy to its function. Students will also choose their own term-paper project (35%) for a fuller exploration of how science and art come together to illuminate a subject, for example the digitization of tiger anatomy in the movie The Life of Pi. Term papers will be between 12-15 pages and can include multi-media work. Since regular participation is emphasized (20%), missing more than 1-2 classes is likely to take a toll on a student’s grade.
READINGS:
1. Rifkin, BA, Ackerman, MJ, Folkenberg, J. Human Anatomy: A Visual History from the Renaissance to the Digital Age. (2006) Harry N. Abrams. (required)
2. Kandel, E. The Age of Insight. The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain. (2012) Random House. (required)
3. Regular articles will be assigned on current aspects of anatomy, for example (the list is not complete):
a. Gorman, J. (Nov 12, 2012) “Jane Doe Gets a Back Story.” The New York Times
b. Cavalcanti, DD, MD et al. (2011) “Anatomy, Technology, Art, and Culture: Toward a Realistic Perspective of the Brain.” Neurological Focus.
c. Bhullar, B-A, et al. (2012) “Bird have paedomorphic dinosaur skulls.” Nature, doi:10.1038/nature11146
d. Wood, B. (August 2012) “Facing up to complexity.” Nature (488: page 162).
Integrating the Irrational
Professor Elizabeth Beaujour (Russian)
Modernism: 1880-1930
Professor Richard Kaye (English)
HONS 201.63
Mondays and Thursdays; 4:10-5:25 p.m.
Room 412 West
3 hours, 3 credits
Modernism was a European and American literary and cultural phenomenon that was powerfully related to the energies - scientific, technological, psychological, and political - that we associate with modernity. This class closely explores five representative figures who helped transform literature, music, and painting: Pablo Picasso, Richard Strauss, D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf. We will consider Eliot's radical break with nineteenth-century poetry in such works "The Waste Land," Lawrence's boldly erotic fiction such as "Sons and Lovers" and "Women in Love," and Woolf's experiments in subjective human consciousness in such fiction as To the Lighthouse. In addition, we will focus on the modernist spectacle of Strauss's Salome, based on an Oscar Wilde play and also the subject of a work by Picasso. We will consider Picasso's scandal-generating 1907 Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, like Salomé, a work based on erotically scandalous subject matter (the painting is set in a bordello and its female figures are prostitutes). We will explore, too, how modernist artists rebelled against, but also drew from, their creative precursors (Some critics argue, for example, that Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was a response to Matisse's Le Bonheur de Vivre and Blue Nude, while advanced photographers struggled both to assimilate and reject the conventions of painting.) The class will consider such manifestos of modernism as Woolf's attack on the Edwardian novel and Eliot's defense of "impersonality" and "tradition" over "convention" in poetry. Important, as well, will be our class's examination of how new systems of thought (Einstein's advances in physics, Freud's invention of psychoanalysis, and Bergson's philosophical investigations into time and consciousness) shaped modernist works of art. When appropriate, the class will consider the writings of such critics as Walter Benjamin, R.P. Blackmur, Meyer Schapiro, Rosalind Krauss, Charles Rosen, Erich Auerbach, John Richardson, and Mary Ann Caws.
Requirements: One oral report, an 8-10 page mid-term paper, and a final 10-12 page paper. The course will include a class trip to the Museum of Modern Art.
Women, Law, and Literature
Professor Lynne Greenberg (English)
Professor Rosa Squillacote (Political Science)
This course introduces the interdisciplinary fields of law and literature with a particular focus on gender. We will read several genres of literary works (poems, plays, short stories and novels) spanning several centuries alongside a wide range of legal materials, including statutes, case law, and critical legal theory. Bringing together literary and legal texts, the course will examine the ways in which the two can mutually illuminate each other to provide an understanding of how social and political culture acts on gender. All of the works chosen are fundamentally concerned with questions of gender and access to law, justice and legal institutions and the historical treatment of and biases against women in the legal justice system. This class will begin by examining the legacy of the British legal system on American laws and the legacy of slavery on contemporary social and political roles, and whether this legacy of gender discrimination under the law has ongoing force and relevance in our contemporary legal system.
Several of the works chosen offer literary indictments of legal injustice, interrogating the supposed gender neutrality, objectivity and fairness of the legal system-its adjudication, enforcement and methods of punishment. The works often suggest that the idea of justice is complex and problematic and that questions of guilt and innocence cannot always be easily answered. Even the notion of "womanhood" will be complicated by some of the historic and contemporary texts assigned. Class discussions will explore such issues as: How does the work offer a critique of the law or of legal institutions? How can we critique legal institutions' responses to women's political needs, specifically? How does the law work to enforce particular cultural and social values? What roles do class and race as well as gender play in crime and punishment? Class requirements will include a midterm 5-7 page essay written in draft form and a final 12-15 page term paper with an option to revise.
Sources of Contemporary Thought
Professor Gerald Press (Philosophy)
Guest Lecturers
HONS 301.79
Tuesdays & Fridays; 11:10-12:25 p.m.
Room 410 West
3 hours, 3 credits
This colloquium will be an introduction to many of the most influential ideas, authors, and books of the last 500 years: Darwinianism and Evolutionary theory, Marxism and Revolutionary theory, Freud and Psychoanalysis, rationalism, political realism and utopianism, Reformation theology, and literary developments from the birth of the European novel to Modernism.
Guest speakers will include Roger Persell (Biology), Elizabeth Beaujour (Russian, Comparative Literature, and Chair, THHP), Diana Conchado (Spanish, and Co-chair, THHP), Nico Israel (English) Frank Kirkland, Omar Dahbour, and Alan Hausman (Philosophy), Vishwa Adluri (Religion Program)
As you can imagine, reading will be heavy and there will be high expectations for class participation; on the other hand, writing requirements will be relatively light: (1) either three 1,000 word essays or two 1,000 word essays and an oral presentation on individual books and authors that we have read and (2) a 2,500 word term paper bringing together books and ideas from different disciplinary perspectives among the books and authors read.
Readings
Cervantes, Don Quixote
Machiavelli, The Prince, Discourses on Livy (Selections)
Thomas More, Utopia
Martin Luther, Address to the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, The Freedom of a Christian, Prefaces to the New Testament
Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (selections)
Darwin, selections from The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man
Marx, selections from "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844." "Theses on Feuerbach," "The German Ideology," "The Communist Manifesto," "Onthe Jewish Question"
Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground
Freud, selections from works such as The Interpretation of Dreams, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, Totem and Taboo
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland