Courses

FIST 224 – COL 224 – ITAL 224 – MDST 223

Prof. F.M. Aresu – faresu@wesleyan.edu | Monday and Friday, 10:50 AM – 12:10 PM | FISK210

Foundations of Modernity:  The Cultures of the Italian Renaissance

In this course we will critically explore the intellectual achievements of the Italian Renaissance through a detailed analysis of some of its literary masterpieces. We will inquire into the rediscovery and emulation of classical literatures and civilizations. We will examine the revalidated notions of beauty, symmetry, proportion, and order. We will analyze the ways in which this rebirth fundamentally changed the languages, literatures, arts, philosophies, and politics of Italy at the dawn of the modern era. We will also approach often-neglected aspects of Renaissance counter-culture, such as the aesthetics of ugliness and obscenity, and practices of marginalization (misogyny, homophobia). In a pioneering quest for the fulfillment of body and soul, self-determination, glory, and pleasure, Italian scholars, philologists, poets, playwrights, and prose writers contributed to the development of new and increasingly secular values. Through a close reading of texts by authors such as Francesco Petrarca, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Michelangelo Buonarroti, we will investigate continuities and ruptures between their quest for human identity and ours.

* Fear not! Course conducted in English. All primary and secondary sources in English.

For more information: https://iasext.wesleyan.edu/regprod/!wesmaps_page.html?crse=014560&term=1171 and do not hesitate to contact Professor F. Marco Aresu <faresu@wesleyan.edu>.

This spring, the Center for the Study of Public Life (CSPL) is showcasing several classes taught by some exciting and unusual visitors, in addition to some wonderful classes taught by Wesleyan professors. The following courses still have seats available:

• Community Research Seminar (SOC 316), cross-listed with ENVS, the Civic Engagement Certificate, and the Environmental Studies Certificate
• Taught by Rob Rosenthal (1.5 credit, meets M/W 10:50 am-12:10 pm) – contact Course Assistant Maddie Scher for the application and with any questions Teams of students learn the theory and practice of doing community research while carrying out research for local nonprofits, community organizations, and activist groups.  1.5 credits.  Highly challenging, highly rewarding. This year’s projects include research on how institutional and systemic racism effects of Communities of Color in Middletown (for the Middlesex Coalition for Children) and the long-range effects of service-learning courses (for the Wesleyan Service-Learning Program).

• Group Psychology in Politics: Local, State, and National Perspectives (CSPL 206)
• Taught by Middletown’s Mayor Dan Drew (0.5 credits, meets Friday 1:20-4:10 pm) – open to first-years! This course is an introduction to the use of group dynamics to understand the deep personal and systems-level issues at play in the body politic. This framework is applicable at the local, state, national, and international levels. Often, if not most of the time, these issues play an outsized role in any public policy initiative, debate, vote, action, deliberation, and discourse, though they are rarely acknowledged. This class will examine group dynamics as it is practiced in the field of organizational development (OD), a branch of organizational psychology used to implement cultural changes across social systems. The application of OD to politics is not widespread, but its tools are useful in understanding the dynamics in political situations and in the understanding of how power is exercised. The course will introduce concepts in open systems theory and will introduce three models to hold the data in our case studies: the Burke-Litwin Model, BART, and GRPI.

• Topics in Journalism: Writing, Wit, and the Natural World (CSPL/WRCT 250K)
• Taught by Koeppel Fellow Richard Michael Conniff (1 credit, meets T/R 2:50-4:10 pm) This course will engage students as readers and writers of essays, opinion pieces, and long form articles about the natural world. We live in the shadow of climate change and the sixth great extinction event. So when is outrage effective, and when does wit or irony allow a writer to find a more persuasive voice? What’s the role of objectivity in a world where everybody seems to be shouting? We’ll consider the work of such writers as Gerald Durell, David Quammen, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Peter Matthiessen. Students will also write regularly and collaborate together in class to critique and improve one another’s work.

• Collaborative Cluster Initiative Research Seminar II (CSPL 321)
• Taught by Sean McCann and Charles Barber (0.5 credit, meeting time TBA) – POI (open to any interested students) Students participating in the Collaborative Cluster Initiative will take this course in the spring semester. They will continue with projects started in the fall semester. This is a continuation of CSPL320. This course will supplement the seminars providing historical and cultural background of the prison system in the United States. The emphasis will be on the practical application of topics engaged in the other seminars and contemporary concerns related to the prison system in the U.S. We shall follow current debates at both the national and state level, including legislation, media, and university initiatives. Students will also visit local sites. Speakers will visit the class to share their experiences and expertise. Students will conduct individual research projects and present them in workshop fashion.

• Music Movements in a Capitalist Democracy (CSPL 333)
• Taught by singer/songwriter Dar Williams (1 credit, meets Wednesday 1:20-4:10 pm) This course will focus on music movements that have used the presentation, expression, and production of music and music events to facilitate sociopolitico transitions. The vital context of these movements is the United States in particular, where the speed and power of commerce, as well as the concentration of capital, present unique opportunities for progressive values and goals in music. We will look at huge events, like the Newport festivals, Woodstock, Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, Lillith Fair, and Bonnaroo, and examine how these movements have both evolved and spread their tendrils into the world (if they have). We will also spend some time on smaller, grassroots venues and music series in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, and New York and see how blues, folk, punk, and “Americana” venues have affected and interacted with their communities. We will look at how music scenes evolved and grew and sometimes became institutions, like the Chicago Old Town School of Music.

• Topics in Education, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: Social Entrepreneurship in Education (CSPL 341B)
• Taught by Harber Fellow Bernard Dean Bull (1 credit, meets T/R 10:20-11:40 am) This seminar focuses upon educational innovation and entrepreneurship as a form of social entrepreneurship, some of society’s greatest challenges in education. Learners will survey critical issues in contemporary education and explore innovative and entrepreneurial efforts to address these issues. Learners will explore how diverse education startups, non-profit organizations and NGOs, individuals and grassroots groups, K-12 schools, Universities, foundations, professional associations and others are responding to these issues in innovative ways. As the course progresses, learners will explore the roles of foundations, corporations, and government policies and regulations upon educational innovation and entrepreneurship. As part of this course, learners will work individually or in groups to research solutions to a pressing contemporary educational challenge and propose/pitch a means of addressing that challenge through social entrepreneurship.

**NEW AND TIMELY COURSE FOR THIS COMING SEMESTER!**

FIST229: POLITICAL TURMOIL: “What just happened? What’s going to happen? What do we do now?”

Prof. Meg Furniss Weisberg <mweisberg@wesleyan.edu>

Tuesdays and Thursdays, 1:20-2:40pm

https://iasext.wesleyan.edu/regprod/!wesmaps_page.html?crse=014857&term=1171

Political turmoil, while disconcerting to say the least, is nothing new. This course will look at case studies from different times and regions (the creation of the US; the 1960’s in the US, France, Italy, and elsewhere; Brazil’s and Chile’s dictatorships; Italy in the 90s; the Arab Spring; post-Revolution Iran; the Great Leap Famine in China; contemporary Mali and D. R. Congo; and the U.S. just before the Civil War, among others) to see how others have responded to periods of political oppression and upheaval. After an initial period of discussion based on readings, we will hold conversations with members of our campus community who have experienced various forms of political turmoil.

The goal of the course is ultimately project-based: as we gain perspective on the issues, we will turn what we learn into well-informed, measured, concrete action. In particular, we will workshop several writing exercises related to the topic and destined to make an impact (letter to the editor, letter to an elected official, public service announcement for the radio, etc). All students (including those whose first language is not English) are welcome in the course and will receive individualized attention to their writing.

The structure of this course will be somewhat unusual: after the first few meetings, the first session of each week will be devoted to discussing the week’s reading and collectively brainstorming questions; during the second session, we’ll ask those questions of the week’s invited guest (often, but not always, another faculty member). We will write and workshop pieces related to the topic and/or destined to make an impact (letter to the editor, letter to an elected official, public service announcement for the radio, etc). We are also going to make a radio program interviewing our guests, so that the course can reach a wider audience.

This course is going to be an experiment: it will operate more like a working group than a regular academic course, and I will be learning beside you, rather than imparting information. My role will be to teach about effective writing, deepen your critical thinking and analytical abilities, solicit guest speakers who will suggest readings, and facilitate discussions. The class will be graded CR/U, and would likely be fine to take in addition to a normal course load—though it goes without saying that you should check with your advisor.

More info,  contact:  Meg Furniss Weisberg, Visiting Assistant Professor of French and Interim Director of Academic Writing,

New Teaching Evaluations Update

Wesleyan is implementing a new teaching evaluation form this fall.  The majority of classes will use the new teaching evaluation form, with new questions.  However, a small number of classes will continue to use the old form for a few more terms, so some students will complete a different form for certain classes.  There will be one landing page for all student course evaluations, with a link to the correct form for each course.

Sheryl Culotta, Associate Provost, Academic Affairs

PSYC 341:  Psychology of Learning and Memory

Instructor: Dr. Kyungmi Kim, Department of Psychology

Class meetings: F 1:20 – 4:10PM, Location TBA

How is holding in our mind a seldom-­used phone number just long enough to dial it different from our memory for our own birthday parties in the past? Why and how do our memories sometimes get lost? How do our emotions affect what/how we learn and remember? How do culture and language shape our memory for our own past?

If any of above questions interest you or if memory was one of your favorite topics in any of the Psychology classes and you want to more about it, this new course would be a great match.

This course is designed to orient students to the fascinating world of human memory.  Students will gain an in-­depth understanding of the psychological and neural processes underlying human learning and memory. Topics to be covered include, but not limited to, different memory systems and frameworks (e.g., working memory, episodic memory), remembering and forgetting (e.g., phenomenal experience of remembering, various mechanisms of forgetting), reality/source monitoring (e.g., true and false memories), and the influence of emotional and social factors on learning and memory (e.g., social remembering).  Students will explore these topics through critical reading/discussion of theoretical and empirical research articles in the fields of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience.

Course requirements include weekly reaction papers on assigned readings, class presentation and discussion and a final paper (a research proposal or a review paper).

If you are interested in taking this course in the coming Spring, please do not hesitate to communicate your interests to Dr. Kyungmi Kim via email (kkim01@wesleyan.edu).

Introduction to Dance

Check them out!

HIST 112 (FYS): Living the Latin American City: Urban History, Politics, and Culture  (T/R, 2:50-4:10) https://iasext.wesleyan.edu/regprod/!wesmaps_page.html?crse=014748&term=1169

HIST 245 (survey) Survey of Latin American History (M/W, 8:20-9:40)  https://iasext.wesleyan.edu/regprod/!wesmaps_page.html?crse=004878&term=1169

HIST 297 (seminar) Mexican History and Visual Culture from Conquest to Present (T/TH, 8:50-10:10)  https://iasext.wesleyan.edu/regprod/!wesmaps_page.html?crse=014749&term=1169

Here are two new courses in ANTH this fall:

** ANTH297 Pure Filth: Anthropology in a World of Waste (Doherty, Jacob) This course examines what the world looks like from the vantage point of its diverse waste streams. Waste is all around us. A product of everyday life, of economic activity, of regimes of bodily care and hygiene, waste is an inescapable aspect of contemporary culture and a central element in the constitution of cultural difference. Taking up classic and contemporary anthropological approaches to waste, the course asks where is “away” when we throw things away? How does the production, disposal, and management of waste contribute to the construction of social differences of race, class, and gender? Waste has also captured the imagination of contemporary artists, film-makers, journalists, activists, and humanitarians, becoming the subject of Oscar-winning films and large scale urban reforms. The course explores case stories–from the waste pickers in Rio de Janeiro and Delhi, to Food Not Bombs activists in New York, from Environmental Justice in the US South, to the Pacific garbage patch, from the sewers of 19th-century London to wastelands at the edge of empires–to animate the core concepts of discard studies: disposability, pollution, body-burdens, and externalities. Through readings, films, and independent research, students will explore and learn to critically analyze the diverse and dramatic worlds of waste. **

ANTH316 Critical Global Health (Worthington, Nancy Hayden) What does it mean to approach global health as not an applied science but an ethnographic object? This course will explore this question by bringing critical, social science perspectives to bear on global health issues and interventions. It covers three areas of scholarship. First, we will examine the processes by which social inequalities produce patterns of health and disease in globalizing contexts. This will be followed by an interrogation of the term “global health,” in which we will trace its emergence as a discourse and enterprise and unpack its contested meanings. While some view global health as a clinical practice, others conceptualize it as a business, security concern, charitable duty, or human right; yet another camp probes the term’s ideological construction. We will consider how such vantage points are underpinned by cultural assumptions and ethical agendas that, in turn, can determine how, and to whom, care is delivered. As a third area of inquiry, we will investigate the implications and unintended effects of doing global health by probing such questions as, When are good intentions not good enough? How useful is biomedicine for alleviating locally-defined problems? Under what conditions does global health exacerbate the social inequalities it seeks to overcome?

Here are two new GOVT courses being offered this fall semester:

GOVT345    Citizenship and Immigration    Prof. Liza Williams  Tues & Thurs, 1:20 – 2:40 PM  Allbritton 103 This course examines the concept of citizenship and explores its connection to immigration, ideas of membership, political rights, and processes of incorporation as well as integration. Some of the core questions we will pursue include: What responsibilities do liberal democracies have to immigrants? How should we conceive of citizenship? Should we think of citizenship as a formal political and legal status? As an entitlement to a set of rights? As active participation in self-governance? As an identity? Or, something else entirely? How have racial, ethnic, gender, and class identities and hierarchies shaped the access people have to rights and formal membership? Finally, we will evaluate how political thinkers have argued for the inclusion and exclusion of immigrants into the political community. Most of our readings for the term will be drawn from legal theorists and political philosophers; we will also read some work by historians, political scientists, and sociologists for historical context and background.

GOVT383-01    Democracy and Development in India    Prof. Susan Ostermann   Tuesdays, 7:10 – 10:00 PM, PAC 422 Much has been written and said about the link between democracy and religious/ethnic fragmentation. When India gained independence from British Rule in 1947, many observed that the likelihood of the new country remaining democratic was limited. Yet, democracy has thrived in India for almost 70 years. Other South Asian countries have recently followed suit. How do countries with multiple social, economic, ethnic, and linguistic cleavages manage democracy and what is the connection between their successes (and failures) in this area and the persistence of widespread poverty? This course focuses on the “politics of accommodation” in South Asia, examining institutions, elite bargaining, the deployment of force, accommodation of regional leaders and their political aspirations, and the constant reconfiguration of caste, party, and religious alliances to explain why Indian politics in particular is often dominated by social accommodation rather than the amelioration of poverty. In addition to focusing on India, we will examine a number of comparative cases from elsewhere in South Asia.