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Winter Quarter Description

Evolving Communication: Winter quarter, 2008Winter quarter we will not accept new students unless they have prior coursework in evolutionary biology and linguistics.  As a result, we will be able to move on in our work, building on what we have studied fall quarter, and there will be the possibility to do upper division work. Your work will, naturally, need to be of very high quality to get this credit designation.  We envisage some students receiving full credit, but not receiving upper division credits.  There will be a possibility of 8 upper-division credits in biology or 8 upper division credits in linguistics, but not both because your project will be worth 4 credits and it must be centered in biology or linguistics.  Readings for Winter quarter.
  • Burr, Chandler. The Emperor of Scent. Arrow. ISBN-10:  0099460238
  • Cheney, Dorothy L. and Seyfarth, Robert M. Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind.  U of Chicago Press. ISBN-10: 0226102432
  • Ehrenreich, Barbara. Dancing in the Streets: a history of collective joy. Holt. ISBN-10: 0805057242 (to be released Dec. 27, 2007)
  • Fox, Margalit. Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals about the Mind. Simon & Schuster. ISBN-10: 0743247124
  • Grandin, Temple & Johnson, Catherine. Animals in Translation. Scribner. ISBN-10: 0743247698
  • Marzluff, John M., Angell, Tony,  and Ehrlich, Paul R.  In the Company of Crows Yale U. Press. ISBN-10: 0300122551
  • Johnston, Barbara. Discourse Analysis. Blackwell. 2nd ed. ISBN-10: 1405144270 (This is the text for sociolinguistics)
  • Hauser, Marc D. The Evolution of Communication. We will continue to read this text for evolutionary biology.
Themes:
  • Nonverbal communication (humans)
  • Interspecies communication (animals)
  • Evolution of Social Behavior (continuing in evolutionary biology)
  • Conversation analysis (sociolinguistics)
Required Work:
  • Field work: in both evolutionary biology and sociolinguistics, you will be gathering information from the field: outdoors, in coffee shops, in friends’ homes, from the Internet and/or television.
  • Labs: we will have sound labs to examine bird and frog calls and conversation.
  • Seminars and Seminar essays: these will be based on our reading list above.
  • Quizzes: there will be fewer than in Fall quarter, but some will still occur.
  • Projects: Produce an extensive research paper worth 4 credits (possibly upper-division) in biology or linguistics.  You will present this work orally at the end of the quarter using PowerPoint.
o        For Biology:  You will work primarily in pairs if you incorporate biological field work (with at least one member having experience in research methods).  You may also decide to write a literature review that investigates a still open question in biology, or that tests a hypothesis; this work would be done alone.  For either type of paper, you will make extensive use of the primary literature. More details about this work will be forthcoming.o        For Linguistics: Everyone will learn a few research methodologies for studying conversation, so it is possible to work individually. If you want to work with another student, a good way to do that would be to look at one phenomenon from more than one perspective.  You will analyze conversation (your own recording, from U Tube, or other sources) and do library research on primary literature.  
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