THEA 363 - Narrative Improvisation and Storytelling
An advanced improvisation course building on the skills and techniques acquired in THEA 353. Students will develop and acquire new collaborative theatrical improvisational skills through the addition of long form improvisation, storytelling and public performance.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites:THEA 353 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Focuses primarily on the development of choreography to be performed at the Spring Dance Concert. Includes rigorous movement practice, the study of choreographic devices and concepts, and work with a guest artist. Students progress as artists, both as dance-makers and performers. Aims to develop high-quality works with strong conceptual and formal structures, performed by corporeally intelligent dancers.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites:THEA 271 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Building on playwriting skills and techniques introduced and practiced in THEA 276: Playwriting, students will study and practice the art and craft of writing and revising the one-act play (45-60 minutes in length). The course will be run as a workshop and is intended for students with playwriting experience.
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
The course in the art and craft of theatre directing is a continuation of THEA 354, focusing on expanding students’ directorial experience and expertise. Through reading, writing, exercises and practical assignments students develop the ability to analyze and interpret dramatic text, communicate and implement a directorial vision. Students perform technical and artistic requirements toward the completion of a theatre production.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites:THEA 354 or ENGL 354 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
English drama from the mid-16th century to the closing of the theaters in 1642, including plays by Kyd, Marlowe, Jonson, Middleton, Webster, and others of Shakespeare’s contemporaries.
Credits: 1.00 Crosslisted:ENGL 458 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
A studio course that brings together all senior majors and minors in a conceptual, creative project. THEA 495 is the culminating experience of the Colgate theater student. Students in the seminar create a piece of theater as an ensemble, developed not only through work with text but also through close attention to the raw materials of theater-making: time, space, and the body. Research and critical writing assignments form an integral part of the seminar, which may also include visits by guest artists and trips to see theater and performance beyond the Colgate campus.
Credits: 1.00 When Offered: Fall semester only
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Theater Majors and Minors Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None Formerly: ENGL 495
THEA 496 - Special Studies for Honors Candidates in Theater
Creation and presentation of a significant work of playwriting, directing, design, and/or performance. With permission of the director of the theater program, theater majors who wish to pursue an honors project in the spring semester of their senior year may enroll in this course. Honors projects must be proposed in the fall semester of senior year. The project may also take the form of a long-form critical, historical, or theoretical essay.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
UNST 106E - In the Footsteps of Galileo (Extended Study)
An extended study course that follows a semester-long exploration of the development of modern scientific inquiry and knowledge, the conflict between science and religion, and the Galileo Affair in Saving the Appearances: Galileo, the Church, and the Scientific Endeavor and of Italian language and culture in Elementary Italian. The extended study course synthesizes a historical narrative that entangles the evolution of Catholic Church doctrine, the foundations of the epistemology of modern science, and Italian firebrand whose work left a lasting imprint on both endeavors and the language and the culture of the region he inhabited.
UNST 130 - Scholarship: Independent Research Design and Development
Scholarship takes many different forms, depending on the disciplinary field, the individual conducting the scholarship, and the place in which the scholarship occurs. Students in the scholar community are asked to explore what it means to be a scholar, examine scholarship from a variety of disciplines, and begin the process of developing their own independent project. As a part of the course, students begin the process of writing their own project proposal.
Credits: 0.25 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Studies the intersection between food and culture, and serves as a lens by which to understand a people and their location in the world. This extends beyond the question of “what is eaten” to where food is obtained, how it is produced, prepared and distributed, and the ways that food shapes identity and sustains communities. How these change over time provide insight into a people’s lived history, and the economic and environmental forces associated with location. Foodways provides insight into current identity, past history, and future aspirations. By focusing on the foodways of a specific culture or nation-state, students also gain a better understanding of their own cultural assumptions.
Credits: 1.0 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
UNST 330 - Health and Healing Practices (Wales Study Group)
Humans have always been concerned with their health and have used various healing methods since ancient times. Focusing on Wales and beginning with an examination of the healing traditions of ancient Celtic people, the impact of successive conquerors and of contact with merchants on medical practices in Wales will be explored. New diseases which arose as human population increased and cities grew and industries developed will be examined. Also numerous scientific discoveries and inventions have changed healing practices. This course will examine changes in the concept of health and in the practice of medicine over time, ending with a consideration of the state of the current health care system in Wales, comparing it to the US health care system, and of future prospects for health care systems.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
A methods seminar designed to prepare students to complete interdisciplinary research. Students become familiar with how one designs and conducts research in the humanities and social sciences, learning different research methods that can be applied in multiple areas of inquiry. Beyond hands on experience in research design and methods, students will gain familiarity with key readings within the specific interdisciplinary program(s) with which the faculty instructor is associated.
Credits: 1.00 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Recommended: Students in humanities and social sciences who are preparing to conduct independent interdisciplinary research. Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
UNST 410 - Seminar: Area, Regional, and Global Study
The University Studies research seminar in area, regional, and global studies aims to provide an interdisciplinary senior capstone experience for majors in the Africana and Latin American Studies, Asian Studies, and Middle East and Islamic Studies. Based on the style of a graduate-level seminar, this course offers students the opportunity to explore and understand a trans-regional topic selected by the instructor. The seminar also provides a senior thesis workshop that helps guide the students through the process of developing a significant work of undergraduate scholarship.
Credits: 1.0 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Asian Studies, Middle East and Islamic Study, Africana & Latin Amer Studies Majors and Minors Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
WMST 202 - Women’s Lives: An Introduction to Women’s Studies
This survey course examines the roots of and topics within the feminist project and explores how gender is shaped and mutually constituted by bodies, systems, and ideologies. Students explore gender through a variety of frameworks, and in tandem with race, ethnicity, class, religion, sexuality, and other markers of identity. By enrolling in WMST 202, students agree to engage in an interdisciplinary and transnational journey that investigates gender as ever-evolving, cultural, sociohistorical, and differentially read and experienced in varying contexts. Students develop the language and analytical tools to speak and think critically about oppression, patriarchy, and social change, to unlearn common assumptions about the world and people around us.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Senior Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
WMST 205 - Queer Latina Visualities: Art, Theory, and Resistance
An introduction to queer Latina art as a field of interdisciplinary feminist inquiry, with a focus on art by Chicana, Xicana, Indigenous, Central American, Puerto Rican, Dominican, and Cuban artists. Students examine the synergetic relation between queer Latina feminist art, theory, and resistance. Students learn how queer Latina visualities are shaped by historical, social, and political forces - like colonialism, racism, and globalization - and how queer Latina artists, in turn, act upon and shape the social world. Students investigate queer Chicana/Latina feminist texts, asking how artists challenge existing power dynamics and embody decolonial knowledge.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
An interdisciplinary journey into historical and emergent intellectual contributions engendered from navigating, refusing, and subverting systemic gendered oppression. As an homage to the distinct and layered legacy of Black feminist thought, students will learn concepts (i.e., interlocking systems of oppression, misogynoir), methodological tools (i.e., outsider within, blended scripting), and practice/organizing orientations (i.e., interdependence, homegirling). With a focus on contributions from the late 20th and 21st century, students historicize contemporary conversations by tracing conceptual and pragmatic topics back to key historical developments of Black feminist thought. Black feminists have always sought to understand how Black sexualities have been used to maintain gender and racial hierarchies. Such scholarship is the foundation of Queer of Color Critique and Black queer and sexuality studies. At the end of the course, students will have explored and had discussions about counter-hegemonic concepts, practices, and theory at the heart of Black women’s embodiment, labor, and creativity.
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
WMST 301 - Feminist Methodologies: Theory and Praxis
Is there a distinct feminist method of conducting research? How do feminist and decolonial methodologies challenge - or complement - conventional research methodologies? This course provides a framework for thinking about methods and forms of knowledge production from a feminist decolonial perspective. The course examines how feminist scholars challenge dominant theories of knowledge through a lens that recognizes multiple, interrelated axes of inequality.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites:WMST 202 Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
WMST 302 - Special Topics: Women’s Lives in Text and Context
Offers an advanced level study of a specific and narrowed field within the interdiscipline of feminist studies. Students focus on topics that reflect on the breadth of women’s and gender studies at Colgate. Faculty teach in the area of their scholarly expertise on a rotating basis. Focus may be on particular identities, practices, histories, or theoretical frameworks, among other things provided they address the lives of women in text analysis.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No First-year Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
WMST 312 - Gender, Race and Punishment: Toward an Inclusive History of the American Carceral State
An interdisciplinary course that explores the complex history of the mass incarceration of African American girls and women within the U.S. penal system. Students will investigate the complexities of the U.S. carceral state while unearthing the harsh realities that Black girls and women endured as they faced a system that criminalized their race, gender, and social status. Students will further investigate the historical nature of African American girls and women’s lived experiences, both within and right outside of a criminal justice system that, in many ways, has worked to criminalized their very being. This course is meant to illustrate that African American girls and women have not had one singular experience within the criminal justice system while illustrating that their experiences differed over time and across lines of age, class, regional, organizational, and sexual orientation. Students will consider multiple issues that African American girls and women have faced while confined, both physical and mentally, by the United States penal system including their struggle for freedom, the exploitation of their labor, physical and mental abuse within the penal system, their personal practices of self-salvation, family life and love relationships, and their ongoing efforts to not only denounce the prison industrial complex while pushing for the abolition of carceral state.
Credits: 1.00 Crosslisted:ALST 312 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Social Relations, Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
WMST 339 - Critical and Feminist Disability Studies
Students learn about (dis)ability as a gendered, racialized, and classed category of difference. Students discuss how dominant cultural, scientific, and educational understandings of the body/mind construct the boundaries of normalcy and determine the material conditions of our lives. Students look at how different aspects of a person’s identity – their ability, their gender, their race, their sexuality, their class – intersect to position them as citizens or non-citizens, members or threats to the future of the family and the nation. Students are introduced to the theoretical, analytical, and methodological tools of feminist disability studies, and the emerging field of DisCrit (Disability studies and Critical Race Theory). Using these theoretical and analytic tools, students look to the ways that activists, artists, and scholars have re-imagined the disabled body/mind as a complex identity.
Credits: 1 Crosslisted: EDUC 339 Prerequisites: EDUC 101 or WMST 202 None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Social Relations,Inst.& Agents Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
The course is taught by the members of the women’s studies faculty, and the content of the course takes a different shape depending on the instructor. The content of the course is interdisciplinary; the course is rooted in and utilizes feminist theory; and, where appropriate, students engage in some form of praxis in the process of understanding the connection between the classroom and the world in which we live. Major and minor students are required to take this course in the spring semester of their senior year.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: Only Women’s Studies Majors and Minors Class Restriction: Only Senior Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Students pursuing honors research enroll in this course.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
WRIT 102 - Introduction to Rhetoric in the Liberal Arts Tradition
Artes liberales–the liberal arts–those arts that are proper for a free citizen, according to Cicero. These arts numbered seven in the medieval curriculum, the language arts–grammar, logic, and rhetoric–constituting the first three or trivium. While the trivium has all but disappeared in today’s college curriculum, increasingly scholars across the disciplines are discovering the integral role rhetoric plays in equipping citizens for effective participation in a democracy. Drawing upon the liberal arts tradition, the aim is to cultivate students’ capacity for eloquence through inquiry. To foster this human impulse to inquire, students will engage in a number of inquiry projects that will ask them to reflect on their personal experiences, to analyze the forces that shaped those experiences, and to look critically at the way that social and cultural identity is formed. In conjunction with the three inquiry projects, students engage in an intense amount of work on rhetorical invention (the discovery of ideas for writing), composing a workable draft, reading and revising the draft, and rereading and editing it for fluency in grammar, punctuation, and style. The course fulfills the writing requirement.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Teaches the basic elements of college writing, strategies for reading and effective note-taking, the discovery and development of ideas, thesis development, organization and coherence, and editing skills. This course meets the writing requirement.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior, Sophomore Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
WRIT 110 - Academic Persuasions: An Introduction to Rhetoric, Research, and the Academic Essay
By taking a rhetorical approach to academic writing, this course asks students to cultivate sustained and reasoned understandings of the relations between writer, audience, subject/text, and disciplinary contexts. Students engage in analytic essays and research projects within the discipline of rhetoric, developing facility with analytic habits of mind, discursive moves typical in academic writing, and the construction of clear, complex, and logical arguments about civic discourse. The course focuses on several essential elements of college writing and research: strategies for active analytic reading and effective note taking; compiling and critical reading of research sources; the discovery and development of a strong thesis supported by persuasive evidence; the skills of summary, definition, analysis, interpretation, and synthesis; organization and coherence; revision processes; and editing skills. This course meets the writing requirement.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior, Sophomore Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Students in this course learn critical techniques for argumentation by analyzing the arguments of other writers and applying these techniques to their own writing. Both academic and popular sources are analyzed for their use of evidence, the presence of logical appeals, and their use of rhetorical devices. Special attention is paid to problems arising from more complex critical analysis, such as appropriate ways to treat conflicting sources, detecting the biases in both primary and secondary source material, and examining the biases of the student’s own arguments.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
In ancient Greece and Rome, teachers of rhetoric taught style (L. elocutio) as one of five essential canons, or considerations, for effective language use. Students study how the stylistic choices of non-fiction writers can affect readers’ reception and interpretation of texts. With the goal of improving the clarity and power of their own writing, students closely analyze published authors’ diction, syntactical structures, punctuation, and figures of speech. Students also study conventions of mechanics and usage to make increasingly conscious, informed choices regarding varieties of English and levels of formality across genres. Readings include writing by James Baldwin, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Brian Doyle, Chang-Rae Lee, Nancy Mairs, and Brent Staples. Writing assignments include homework exercises and peer reviews, as well as three essays composed and revised for a Final Portfolio. This course does not meet the writing requirement.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Since the origins of western democracy, rhetoricians have taught the study and practice of public speaking as an essential art of public life and civic responsibility. This course fuses theory to praxis in introducing students to basic public speaking skills, including researching, organization, and writing effective oral presentations; developing skills of critical listening and audience analysis; surveying key examples of public address; and providing students the opportunity to work in different speech situations. Students develop poise and self-confidence in public speaking as they deepen their understanding of the evolving aesthetics of public discourse in the context of new media and global cultures. This course does not meet the writing requirement.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Approaches the study of rhetoric by focusing on the relationship between text and image. How does the combination of verbal and visual elements communicate different arguments to different audiences? How do verbal/visual texts reflect or even create cultural identities, norms, values, or practices? With the goal of becoming effective rhetorical critics, as well as incisive consumers and producers of visual culture, students both study and create a variety of visual texts.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None Formerly: WRIT 340
By exploring the boundary between private and public writing, students examine how personal reflection intersects with critical analysis to develop a disciplined expository essay. Drawing on examples from a variety of publications, it develops skills in autobiographical and biographical essay writing, journal writing, and expository writing, and then shows how these skills can enrich the expository essay without sacrificing its academic tone and structure.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Students are immersed in the study of narrative craft, initially grounding students in the print essay tradition, but soon departing into multi-media narrative forms, including the audio essay, the photo essay, and the video essay. At its root, the word “essay” means “inquiry” from the Latin exagere, exigere, “to weigh, try, prove, measure, adjust, ascertain, examine, inquire into.” A central premise for this course, then, is that every narrative — every story — inquires into experiences and ideas, and that writers compose not just what they know but in order to know. Thus, this course asks students to mediate the subjective and objective positions of what Roland Barthes terms the “writerly” text in an effort to invite readers to see anew and to read and experience stories through aural and visual media.
Credits: 1.0 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
WRIT 242 - Stand and Speak: Feminist Rhetorics and Social Change
As an introduction to rhetoric, rhetorical history and criticism, and feminist rhetorics, this course fore-grounds the study of how 19th-century women used both pen and voice with rhetorical precision to “stand and speak” to issues that marked their personal lives and their times. By studying women who composed and embodied what is now understood as the early years of the first wave of U.S. feminism, students access a genealogy of women rhectors who serve as exemplars - and cautions - for later waves and for their own contemporary visions of social change. By positioning the study of rhetoric as the study of language as it constitutes social relations, power, and knowledge, students become more acutely aware of and fluent in the composition, circulation, and criticism of private and public discourses, the verbal material through which they construct social worlds. The work for this course requires close reading and active discussion of course texts through a rhetorical lens and through the category of gender. This course does not meet the writing requirement.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
Until the late 17th century in Europe, nobody thought to classify or divide the people of the world by race. With no basis in biology, race is a purely social construct existing only in thought and language. Accordingly, this course will consider the many different social discourses of race and racism, how they have evolved in different ways around the globe and how they are employed today in multiple trans-national contexts. The course will adopt a multidisciplinary approach, examining a variety of texts from different intellectual perspectives.
Credits: 1 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: No Junior, Senior Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
WRIT 250 - Kairos: The Art of Rhetoric from Ancient to Modern Times
Rhetoric–the effective use of language to persuade a given audience–is as old as human speech itself. Yet attuned as they were to “kairos,” the opportune time of a fledgling democracy in Athens, the ancient Greeks were perhaps the first to codify rhetorical practice as an art. This is a course about time, about the art of rhetoric as a most effective medium of change at the right time. Students see this when rhetoric served as a vehicle for change in 5th-century Greece, when it equipped individuals to write and preach to effect change in the so-called dark ages, and when it gave women and former slaves the voice to change attitudes and institutions in the 19th and 20th centuries. Students survey the entire history of western rhetoric from the earliest treatises to the most recent theories. In addition to examining this history through a close reading of canonical texts, students come to know the rhetorical tradition through experience, by engaging in the very practices (e.g., medieval preaching and letter writing, and 18th-century exercises in elocution) associated with rhetoric in a particular historical period. The many rhetorical terms, concepts, principles, and practices covered in the course provide students the proper background for further study in the more specialized areas of rhetoric.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Examines the various ways that writers and speakers draw on the Bible for rhetorical force. Many of the works that call on the Bible for inspiration are not of a religious nature at all, raising questions about the nature of biblical style. Readings range from the Venerable Bede and Queen Elizabeth I to Bob Marley and Douglas Rushkoff, in addition to source material from the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. No previous knowledge of the Bible is needed.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Focuses on the ways that comics - often defined as the interplay of words and images - convey specific messages, whether instructional, narrative, persuasive, or other. Close analyses draw on principles of visual rhetoric, comics scholarship, photography, and related disciplines. Readings cover the theory, history, terminology, and genres of graphic narratives.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
WRIT 280 - Rhetorical “Borderlands”: Introduction to Comparative Intercultural Rhetoric
By taking a transnational comparative perspective, this course introduces students to several key questions in comparative and intercultural rhetoric, from the most basic question of “How does culture shape language, and how does language, in turn, shape culture?” to more complicated questions: How do cross-border and cross-cultural engagements constrain and influence rhetorical practices and interactions? How do cultural logics, values, and assumptions hierarchically govern different geo-political spaces? In what ways have individuals and groups both conformed to and resisted discursive structures of power and privilege? And finally, in what ways can comparative and intercultural study sharpen our own critical insights about and rhetorical agency within such dominant structures? This course will address these questions and others as students work to develop and strengthen skills in critical analysis, research, and reflective practices through the lens of transnational comparative intercultural rhetoric.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
WRIT 303 - The Rhetoric of Data Visualization & Infographics
Our world is increasingly visual; more and more of the information we consume and produce is presented in images. This course focuses on the visual presentation of numerical information — everything from box-and-whisker plots to flashy infographics — and specifically how such information can effectively persuade its readers. Emphasis will be on both analyzing and making visualizations; there will be no attention to data collection or analysis. Students can expect to improve their visual literacy skills. No facility with statistics or software packages is required.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
The study of public address has long been considered the cornerstone of a liberal arts education - meant to prepare graduates for success in public life as citizens, community members, and professionals. Students will examine public discourse on a relevant theme while familiarizing themselves with key debates regarding the theory and criticism of public address. Following that, students will engage in their own rhetorical criticism, as well as participating in speech and dialogue exercises that draw on rhetorical principles. As students immerse themselves in the history, criticism, and performance of public address, they will also consider how rhetorical dynamics inform issues of democracy and citizenship, especially as those issues relate to differences of ethnicity, race, class, and gender.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Students will explore the ways in which innovations in media have changed the shape of narrative and textuality. People often assume that new media is a 20th-century development, but this course will be a more historicized view; the printing press, after all, changed media more fundamentally than anything since. Starting with a foundation of media theory and narrative theory, the course will then work through the ages: printing; newspapers; color printing; radio; television; electronic fiction; fan fiction; hypertext; remix aesthetics; and video games.
Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None Formerly: WRIT 222
WRIT 342 - Rhetoric in Black and White: Communication and Culture in Conflict
In the nearly 400-year history of social relations between Blacks and Whites in America, rhetoric has often failed. Civil war, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, and Black Power were all actions or movements that ensued largely because words fell short of persuading persons of good will to submit to reasoned arguments. Arguably a pillar of American democracy (as in the freedom to speak and to dissent), why has rhetoric been so seemingly ineffective in securing mutual respect and understanding between America’s Black and White citizens? This course seeks to answer this question by closely examining the styles of communication that historically have shaped the cultural identities and public personas of the two groups. From slave speech to the languages of protest in the 1960s to verbal expression in rap music and social media today, the course considers why communication or dialogue involving race is often doomed to fail.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
WRIT 345 - Crafting Bodies: Movement, Gender, and Performance
This class engages with recent developments in the field of rhetoric to consider how persuasion and meaning making are impacted by movement, gender, and performance. To this end, the course will introduce students to the dominant conversations, theories, and methods for studying embodiment within rhetoric and related fields. Students will apply these ideas to case studies from sports, dance, popular culture, politics, and law to better understand how dominant narratives constrain or enable certain types of bodily behavior. Through this theoretical and practical study, students will become critically aware of the intersections of bodies and their representations and how these intersections influence our capacity for engaged deliberation and social action
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
WRIT 346 - Hip Hop: Race, Sex, and the Struggle in Urban America
Examines the ways in which language has reinforced racial and ethnic identities and divisions in post-civil rights America. It explores the conceptual origins of race, ethnicity, and other categories of difference, particularly those produced through legal, political, socioeconomic, and humanistic discourses. Recognizing that the United States is not just a multicultural society but a multilingual one, the course investigates how urban American youth have “talked back” to power and seized the power to name. It focuses in particular on uses of the Hip Hop vernacular by urban Latin Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and white Americans to give voice to their reality and the urban struggle. The course also traces the causes and consequences of historical silences, as suggested by Martin Luther King’s dictum: “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Claims that whiteness–white racial identity–is more about language than biology. Whiteness is a rhetorical construct that exists only in discourse, yet its concrete effects impact societies all over the globe. Drawing on texts from around the world, students trace the evolution of this construct from its inception up to the present day, examining the rhetorical strategies whereby whiteness is both hidden and revealed in a variety of genres: personal memoirs, philosophical essays, scientific investigations, political writings, legal documents, critical analyses, historical essays, and such mass media as television, film, newspapers, and magazines. By engaging in the rhetorical analysis of these texts, students examine how the discourses of whiteness continue to frame reality and mediate power relations. A required evening film series accompanying the class has students viewing, discussing, and analyzing feature films, documentary films, and television shows.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite:WRIT 348L Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
Credits: 0.00 Corequisite:WRIT 348 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
To engage students in both the analysis and production of public discourse through examining the rhetoric of citizenship. It is through the language and symbols of citizenship that individuals come to understand themselves as political subjectivities and engage with others as democratic agents. Students will examine how the meaning of citizenship is shaped and contested through public discourse. Students will analyze debates over citizenship, mainly in the context of immigration debates in the US and in other parts of the world.
Credits: 1.00 Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: Global Engagements
WRIT 354 - Dialogue and Deliberation in Democratic Life
Public communication is a vital part of democratic life. It is through the circulation and exchange of public speech that citizens shape the contours of public life, build community, and determine their core civic values. More importantly, it is through the work of democratic dialogue that citizens struggle with their inevitable differences and seek to find ways of working together despite those differences. The purpose of this class is to examine both the theory and practice of deliberative democracy, with the aim of better understanding how communities might use dialogue and deliberation to effectively engage across different perspectives. Students are asked to think critically about the possibilities and challenges of democratic dialogue. Students are also trained in facilitation techniques, with the major project for this class providing students an opportunity to facilitate an open forum on a campus-related issue.
Credits: 1.00 Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: Human Thought and Expression Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
Opportunity for individual study in areas not covered by formal course offerings, under the guidance of a member of the faculty.
Credits: variable Corequisite: None Prerequisites: None Major/Minor Restrictions: None Class Restriction: None Area of Inquiry: None Liberal Arts CORE: None
