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2012-13 Undergraduate Index A-Z
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| Title | Offering | Standing | Credits | Credits | When | F | W | S | Su | Description | Preparatory | Faculty | Days | Multiple Standings | Start Quarters | Open Quarters |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Robert Esposito
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Program | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 12 Fall | This focused, one-quarter, movement-based program, involves progressive study in modern dance composition, theory, and technique. Prior dance experience at the beginner/intermediate level is advised.Activities will include regular classes in Laban-based Nikolais/Louis dance technique, theory, improvisation, composition, and seminar. Students will engage in vigorous physical activity based in basic anatomy and dance kinesiology, using a Pilates-based floor barre. Mind-body (somatic) work will be based on Feldenkrais’ “Awareness Through Movement” and theories of Gestalt psychology. Regular work in dance improvisation and composition will emphasize the personal and group dynamics of power-freedom-belonging-fun. Students will learn basic craft principles of composition: the formal design of space, time, shape and motion, drawing content from their own life experience and past interdisciplinary study to create original dance theatre work. Compositions will be performed weekly in performance forums that include faculty and student-centered critique and analysis.Theory, texts, and seminar will review the history, development, and methodology of dance and movement as somatic therapy, draw distinctions between art and psychology; and explore the creative process in therapy and the therapeutic efficacy of dance and other art forms. Seminar will draw on texts in psychology, art history, linguistics, poetics, and neurophysiology to develop skills in critical analysis and discourse, as well as situating texts, art and performance in their historical and sociocultural contexts. Writing will balance creative and analytical forms and research styles. The program culminates with a Week 10 showing of selected student work. | dance and theatre. | Robert Esposito | Mon Tue Wed Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall | |||
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Richard McKinnon
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | F 12 Fall | Humans are born with a wealth of information about how the world is structured, ready to develop that knowledge through experience with the environment. In this course, we'll investigate what babies know from birth and how that knowledge unfolds into mature systems such as vision, language, morality, and character. We will compare theories that emphasize the contribution of innate knowledge with those that emphasize the role of the environment. | Richard McKinnon | Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall | ||||
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Brian Walter, Susan Fiksdal and Sara Sunshine Campbell
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Program | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | F 12 Fall | W 13Winter | What can a poll tell us about the outcome of an election? Do test scores really indicate whether a public school is "good"? What do gas prices have to do with social equity? Why are food labels a social justice issue?Quantitative literacy is a powerful tool that allows one not only to understand complex real-world phenomena but also to effect change. Educator and social justice advocate Eric Gutstein says that reading the world with mathematics means "to use mathematics to understand relations of power, resource inequities, and disparate opportunities between different social groups and to understand explicit discrimination based on race, class, gender, language, and other differences."In this program, we will "read the world with mathematics" as we consider issues of social justice, focusing particularly on how quantitative as well as qualitative approaches can deepen our understanding. The program work will develop students' knowledge of mathematics and examine issues of inequity using quantitative tools. In addition, students will work on persuasive writing and develop a historical understanding of current social structures. Our goal for our students is to expand their sense of social agency, their capacity to understand issues related to equity, and their ability to take action and work toward social change.In fall, we will study presidential and congressional national elections in the United States. We'll look at quantitative approaches to polling and the electoral process, including study of the electoral college system, and qualitative approaches to campaign advertising and political speeches. We'll examine the changing role of media, such as radio, television, the Internet and social media, by studying past presidential campaigns and how they've impacted today's campaigns. This work will include workshops in statistics and other quantitative approaches; workshops in discourse analysis of ads, blogs and social media websites; writing workshops; lectures; films and other media; book seminars; synthesis seminars; and a final project including quantitative and qualitative analysis of some aspect of the 2012 national elections.In winter quarter, we will investigate common experiences students have with mathematical work by studying the U.S. education system and mathematics education in particular. Civil rights activist Bob Moses has said that mathematics education in our public schools is a civil rights issue. Economic access depends on mathematical literacy, yet many students are marginalized by the middle-class curriculum and teaching practices of our public schools. Our exploration of this issue will inform our learning as we develop our own mathematical literacy.There are no mathematics requirements for this program. It is designed specifically to accommodate students who are uncertain of their mathematical skills, or who have had negative experiences with mathematics in the past. It is an introduction to college-level mathematics in the areas of statistics, probability, discrete mathematics, geometry and algebra. The program will also provide opportunities for students who wish to advance their mathematical understanding beyond the introductory level in these areas. | Brian Walter Susan Fiksdal Sara Sunshine Campbell | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Fall | Fall Winter | ||||
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Rachel Hastings and Bret Weinstein
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Program | FR ONLYFreshmen Only | 16 | 16 | Day | S 13Spring | Human language is amongst the most complex phenomena ever to arise through Darwinian selection. The human body and brain have been heavily modified at a genetic level to allow language acquisition, processing and speech, yet the evidence is overwhelming that languages evolve and are passed on through a process that is entirely cultural. This has allowed individual languages to change rapidly as populations have spread, diverged and fused over space and time.The evolution of human language has made our species unique. Once we as individuals acquire language in childhood, massive stores of cultural content can be efficiently transmitted into our developing brains—information that ranges from the factual to the emotional, from the narrative to the instructive. We download our human programming from the living members of our tribes.Controversies abound about the origins of this language capacity in humans, the relationship between human language and the communication systems of other animals, and the relationship between language and culture. In this program we will study a variety of possible responses to these and other issues relating to the evolution of language. A major focus of our work will be to develop and use critical and analytical thinking in order to propose our own hypotheses in response to linguistic and biological data.Our study will encompass the two principal meanings of "language evolution": the evolutionary origins of language in humans, and the cultural change in language(s) over time leading to families of languages which are descended from common ancestor languages. These two lines of inquiry will require us to study evolutionary processes more generally. We will discuss ways in which genetic evolution and cultural evolution interact and we will consider theories of linguistic change. We will focus on the multiple evolutionary emergence points of written language, and investigate the cultural diffusion of this trait between populations.We will read, have lecture, and have detailed seminar and workshop discussions. Students will be expected to generate and defend hypotheses and predictions in a supportive and rigorous environment. We will spend time looking at nature and listening to spoken language to obtain primary data. The program work and assignments will be geared towards generating deep predictive insight. It is best suited to self-motivated students with a deep commitment to comprehending that which is knowable, but unknown. | Rachel Hastings Bret Weinstein | Freshmen FR | Spring | Spring | |||||
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Toska Olson and Susan Fiksdal
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Program | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 16 | 16 | Day | W 13Winter | What are the signals we learn and display to perform our gender? How do different cultures create and maintain gender differences? This program will explore these questions and others through the lenses of sociolinguistics and sociology. We will examine the ways that masculinities and femininities are socially constructed through language and other symbolic interactions within the context of a variety of social situations. We will investigate the privileges displayed through gendered performances and examine how people reproduce, contest, or redefine the categories that come to define their identities.A major component of our studies will involve weekly fieldwork exercises that scrutinize the social construction process occurring around us. Using a variety of concepts and methodologies from sociolinguistics and sociology, we will examine sources including informal conversations, advertisements, children's toys and books, and several forms of media. Students should be prepared to read a variety of texts including journal articles, academic texts, ethnographies and short fiction. In a final project, students will write a detailed research proposal based on the work we have done. | Toska Olson Susan Fiksdal | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | |||||
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Richard McKinnon
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | W 13Winter | Humans often claim distinction as unique among the animals of the world. This course examines this hypothesis from the perspective of communication. What are the parameters that describe communication systems of all species? What does it mean when bees dance, frogs croak, and humans speak? What kinds of messages do members of various species communicate to each other? Is human language qualitatively different from other forms of animal communication? If so, how did it evolve to be so different and what does that mean about humans as a species? We will employ the tools of linguistics, psychology, ethology, and anthropology to find answers to these questions. | Richard McKinnon | Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Winter | Winter | ||||
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Richard McKinnon
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Course | FR–SRFreshmen - Senior | 4 | 04 | Evening | S 13Spring | Languages are not static systems, but exhibit a life cycle just as living organisms do. They are brought into being through pidginization and creolization, grow and change as their function changes and they attain status, and they disappear (presently at an alarming rate). In this course, we'll examine these stages in some detail, acquiring a tool set along the way that will allow participants to understand the cultural, economic, and linguistic factors involved and to appreciate the policy issues in play. | Richard McKinnon | Thu | Freshmen FR Sophomore SO Junior JR Senior SR | Spring | Spring |
