FT 011-L Walking the Wasteland: Humanity and Civilization in a Post-Apocalyptic World
William Oprisko, Associate Dean of Students
It’s the end of the world and you are one of the few people left on the planet. Modern civilization with all of its benefits has been wiped away leaving behind only a bleak hope for existence. The source responsible for this cataclysmic event remains a mystery, but its affects are ever present before your eyes. From what you can tell, everyone you ever knew or loved is gone and there is no one else around. Surrounded by a desolate world, you are left with figuring out what to do next.
This course will explore what it would be like to live in a world devastated by plague, biological disaster, or nuclear war. In addition to examining prevalent themes of post-apocalyptic fiction, specific attention will be given to analyzing morality and human nature within a catastrophic environment. Students will read several short stories and novels depicting a variety of doomsday scenarios as well as different human responses to surviving the apocalypse. The readings will be supplemented with a series of movies selected to expand the motifs touched upon in the texts. Course assignments will primarily consist of reflective essays and journal entries. The final project will involve students taking on the perspective of person living in a ruined world by playing Fallout 3 and presenting their experience to the class.
Prior to their arrival on campus, students will read Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. Other books selected for this course will include, The Machine Stops by E. M. Forster, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr., and The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Lastly, a few of the movies students will watch are Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior (1981), 12 Monkeys (1995), and Last Night (1998).
Credits: 1
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FT 011-K Art and Religious Expression in World Culture
Elizabeth Morton, Department of Art
Throughout history, people have expressed their religious beliefs and values through architecture, monuments, sculptures, painting and other forms of art. In fact much of what we know about many past cultures is from the objects they left behind. In this Tutorial we will explore the many ways that religion has been conveyed through visual forms in the non-western world, from prehistoric days until present. To gain some insight we will read novels set in India, Egypt and Peru, which reimagine histories using visual objects and historic records. We will also visit museums in Indianapolis, Bloomington and Chicago to interact with objects from the cultures we study. In addition we will participate in a workshop with a Native American artist.
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Morton, Elizabeth
Credits: 1
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FT 011-J Speaking in Tongues: A History of Human Language
Stephen Morillo, Department of History
What makes us human? One answer is the capacity to ask that question — not just to have the concepts, but to express them through arbitrary combinations of sound combined according to rules that give groups of those sounds meaning. This course will introduce students to the history of that capacity unique to our species, language.
We will start with the evolutionary origins of language, including an attempt to figure out at what point in our evolutionary history we started talking the way we do now — that is, with separate words and syntax that lets us make up an infinite number of sentences from a finite number of words. What evidence do we have? What did language enable us to do? Is our language capacity connected to our capacity to make music? Where did language start?
We will then look at the mechanics of language change, the basis of historical linguistics. Language change has created the thousands of languages spoken today, and continues to operate all the time. But how? Are languages getting simpler over time? The descendants of Latin have lost most of their case endings, for example, as did Anglo-Saxon as it became English. (And why do the French use a word for “today” that means “the day of this day of this day”?) On the other hand, if language keeps getting simpler, where did those endings come from in the first place, and why aren’t we all speaking in monosyllabic grunts by now?
Historical linguistics leads us to language history, or the history of different languages globally. What have been the most widely-spoken languages in the world? How did they get that way? Will English remain the world’s most widely spoken language fifty years from now? This will also engage us in questions about the link between language and culture — does how we speak affect how we think, for example? We will finish by considering language death in recent decades, as modern communications ties more people together into larger language groups. This process threatens to reduce the world’s languages from thousands to hundreds in the next century. Do we lose unique knowledge when a language dies?
Class will be conducted entirely with non-verbal vocalizations and gestures. (No, not really.) Acquaintance with at least one spoken language is necessary. Don’t worry, English counts.
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Morillo, Stephen R.
Credits: 1
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FT 011-I The Lord of the Rings
Martin Madsen, Department of Physics
You are about to set foot on the road that will lead you through the most important quest of your life. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “It’s a dangerous business going out of your door. You step into the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.” In this tutorial we will focus on what is arguably the best quest novel ever written: Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. We will explore major themes of brotherhood, courage, and loyalty that will be an important part of your quest at Wabash.
We will examine some of the many unanswered questions Tolkien left both in and about the book. What did Tolkien mean when he called his book a “fundamentally religious and Catholic work”? What is the role of fate in the book? What is the meaning of the One Ring? There have been many contributions to the lore of Middle Earth since Tolkien wrote the book, most notably Peter Jackson’s film adaptation. How do the films and other scholarly essays enhance our understanding of the book?
Special Note: Students that sign up for this Tutorial must be able to participate in the immersion trip during Fall Break, October 13-14. We will be taking an overnight trip to Marengo Cave and the Hoosier National Forest.
Credits: 1
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FT 011-H Get Up, Stand Up: Civil Rights in Text and on Screen
Jill Lamberton, Department of English
In their song “Get Up, Stand Up,” Bob Marley and the Wailers sing, “You can fool some people sometimes, but you can’t fool all the people all of the time. So now we see the light, we gonna stand up for our right.” But what exactly are our rights? And what does it mean to stand up for them? “Civil Rights” refer to the rights of citizens, that is, the freedoms people are granted by their own governments. Yet while many believe that civil rights are guaranteed by governments, history repeatedly tells stories of citizens who needed to assert these rights in order to enjoy them. Our own country has frequently debated what types of freedoms civil rights encompass: the right to vote, the right to religious freedom, the right to speak freely, and what our own Declaration of Independence calls the God-given, “unalienable” rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
In this course, we will examine different moments in the history where citizens of several countries have engaged in a struggle for civil rights. For example, we will begin with political documents that discuss the British revolution of 1688, the American Revolution that began in 1776, and the French Revolution that began in 1789. We will then turn to films, speeches, music, and literature from the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 60s—spending most of the semester with authors such as James Baldwin, W.E.B. DuBois, Fannie Lou Hamer, Zora Neale Hurston, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Wright, and Malcolm X. Films and music in which artists have encouraged fellow citizens to “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize” of freedom—such as The Long Walk Home and the ballads of Billie Holiday and Nina Simone—will also shape our discussions. At the end of the course we will consider how current struggles for civil rights in our own countries and in the countries of Egypt and Tunisia compare to historical movements for freedom. Assignments in the course will emphasize the reading and writing skills necessary for college success, and there will also be one oral presentation. The summer reading for this course is the play Fences, by African American playwright August Wilson.
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Lamberton, Jill
Credits: 1
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Freshman Tutorial
General Description of Freshman Tutorials
During the fall semester of his freshman year, every Wabash student enrolls in a Freshman Tutorial. This class, limited to fifteen members, introduces you to academic experiences characteristic of the liberal arts at Wabash College and emphasizes academic skills basic to your Wabash education. Instructors (note: your tutorial instructor may also be your academic advisor) select topics of importance to them and ones they judge to be of interest to students.
You need not have had previous experience with the topic in order to enroll in a particular tutorial. Although the topics, often interdisciplinary and non-traditional, vary among the tutorials, all students engage in common intellectual experiences and practice both written and oral self-expression. Reading, speaking, research, and writing assignments, of course, will vary with individual instructors, but the goals of every tutorial remain the same: to read texts with sensitivity, to think with clarity, and to express one's thoughts (orally and in writing) with precision and persuasion—all in terms of each tutorial's particular subject.
Nineteen tutorials will be offered in the Fall Semester, and all tutorials will meet on Tuesday-Thursday at 9:45 a.m. The schedule of your other classes will be set so as not to conflict with the tutorial. Tutorial Assignments are determined in the order of electronic selection (first respond-first assigned).
Tutorial Selection
Read the following list of available Tutorial Titles and Instructors. Click on a title to read a full description of the tutorial’s content, readings, and class activities. Click here for a printable list of all tutorials with course descriptions.
Select a tutorial that is interesting to you, regardless of your concerns about possible majors. Once assigned to a tutorial, you will not be able to register for another tutorial, so before making your final decision, read the course descriptions for several of the tutorials whose titles interest you. SELECT CAREFULLY AND RESPOND PROMPTLY! IF YOU DO NOT REGISTER FOR A TUTORIAL, YOU WILL BE RANDOMLY ASSIGNED TO ONE. As each tutorial is filled, the title and description will be removed from the following list.
To select a tutorial, click on the tutorial’s name, read the description, and click on “Sign Up For This Course.” If you get into the course or the course fills up, you will be notified immediately.
Tutorial Titles and Descriptions
FT 011-A 9/11 and American Culture
Crystal Benedicks, Department of English
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The worst terrorist incident to occur on American soil, the 9/11 attacks were a transformational event. They took the country into “The Global War on Terror,” land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the curtailment of civil rights. The attacks brought new terminologies into our lexicon, like “Al-Qaeda,” “National Threat Level,” and “Homeland.” 9/11 is one of a select few moments in modern American history—the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Challenger disaster are others—that is etched in our collective cultural memory, carved into our national soul. We still live today, as Art Speigelman put it, “in the shadow of no towers.” In the aftermath, people sought to express their grief, rage, bewilderment, and love as people always have: through art. As a result, 9/11 has also had a seismic effect on our culture. In novels (Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), films (World Trade Center, United 93), plays (Anne Nelson’s The Guys, Neil LeBute’s The Mercy Seat), graphic novels and media (Art Speigelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón’s The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation), and poetry, (Seamus Heaney’s “Anything Can Happen”), artists and writers sought to make sense of an event that rendered even the idea of artistic representation problematic to some. Drawing on these texts, some of which were written while the towers still smoldered, we will also try to make sense of an event that transformed all of our lives, and confronts us with questions every day. How shall we commemorate the dead? How is the omnipresent threat of terrorism represented in culture? How do art, literature, and performance represent trauma? In this course we will ask: ten years later, what does 9/11 mean?
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Benedicks, Crystal
Credits: 1
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FT 011-Q Global Health and Development
Eric Wetzel, Department of Biology
Even though we tend to think of it as how we are feeling, “health” is determined by a variety of factors including biology, income, education, social status, sex, and access to health services. Dramatic advances in improving health have been made over the last several decades, although it is clear that this progress has been very uneven as there exist huge disparities in health status both within and among different countries. In this tutorial we will examine global health as a liberal art, i.e., as a multi-faceted topic that involves problems which cut across socioeconomics, politics, religion, ethics and the sciences. Through readings and a few films we’ll consider HIV/AIDS and other communicable (as well as non-communicable) diseases that afflict hundreds of millions of people on the planet, particularly poorer people in low and middle-income countries who continue to get sick, become disabled or disfigured, or die from preventable illnesses. So what does it mean to “act responsibly” and to “live humanely” in the face of such problems?
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Wetzel, Eric J.
Credits: 1
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FT 011-P The Theology of C. S. Lewis
Stephen Webb, Departments of Religion and Philosophy
C. S. Lewis was one of the giants of twentieth century theology. He wrote many books in a variety of genres. He is probably best known for his Chronicles of Narnia series, but he was much more than a writer for children. He was a scholar of medieval literature, a novelist, a theologian, a philosopher, a linguist, and many other things as well. Above all, he was a great writer who tried to make sense of what it means to be a Christian in the modern world. Indeed, judging by book sales, he is one of the most popular writers in the world. Students will read Perelandra, the second novel in his Space Trilogy, over the summer. Perelandra takes place in the distant future but it depicts a new Garden of Eden on the planet Venus as well as a new Adam and Eve and a new serpent figure. It raises the question of whether the fall of humanity into sin had to occur by imagining an Eve who successfully resists her tempter. We will read a range of his books, from arguments about miracles to discussions of love and mediations on sin, heaven, and education. We will also visit the Wade Museum at Wheaton College where many of Lewis’s papers and artifacts are kept.
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Webb, Stephen H.
Credits: 1
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FT 011-O Me, My Self, and My Brain
Neil Schmitzer-Torbert, Department of Psychology
Imagine you’ve created a machine that is able to make an exact, physical copy of any object. However, the process of making the copy requires that the machine destroys the original. So, if you put your iPad in and turn on the machine, the iPad is instantly vaporized. But, in another compartment you find an exact duplicate of your device. Such a machine would be quite interesting, but we might imagine that it has little practical value.
However, what happens if you step into the machine, and turn it on? You are instantly vaporized (and, let’s assume painlessly!), and out of the second compartment steps your exact duplicate. Who is this duplicate? Does he think he is you? If he does, then are you actually dead? What if the machine malfunctions and you are not vaporized: are you and your duplicate both “you”? If you then kill your duplicate, was there in fact a murder? What if he kills you?
In this class, we will take these types of thought experiments seriously, and use them to look carefully at the problem of self. We’ll try to locate our “I”, our sense of self, using a variety of sources, ranging from philosophical thought experiments, to stories about the lives of humans with brain damage, to science fiction writing and film.
Some of the texts we will read include Ramachandran & Blakeslee’s Phantoms in the Brain, selections from Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Brok’s Into the Silent Land and a number of short works of science fiction. We will also watch several films in the course, including The Thirteenth Floor and The Prestige.
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Schmitzer-Torbert, Neil
Credits: 1
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FT 011-M Rebel without a Pulse: Life Lessons from the Undead
Lon Porter, Department of Chemistry
The undead have once again shambled into a prominent place in popular culture and contemporary fiction. This course will focus on the origins and evolution of the undead in folklore, literature, popular art, games, and film. Students will explore a number of readings and films that portray the undead in a variety of ways. We will uncover how undead fiction addresses the mystique, power, and fear associated with the supernatural, science, authority, disease, morality, sex, and violence. Critical discussion of these fictional works will reveal a great deal about ourselves and the hopes and fears of society. The course will challenge students to dig deep and use their Braaaaainss as they tackle engaging stories about zombies, vampires, ghouls, etc.
Students will explore several examples of the undead in short stories, novels, films, and games in order to identify defining characteristics, while revealing and deconstructing the social commentary and themes central to each work. Course assignments and activities are aimed to help students develop critical reading, writing, discussion, and oral presentation skills that are essential to success at Wabash College. For example, students will form small peer reading and writing groups. In addition, the class will host an undead film festival in October, where small student groups introduce each film and moderate an audience discussion at its conclusion. As a final assignment, students will work to craft original short stories that will be compiled into a publication to share with classmates. Other activities may include a field trip to Hanna Haunted Acres, located in Indianapolis, and a local Halloween haunted house community service project.
Examples of undead fiction we will explore include, but are not limited to: (Readings) Richard Matheson’s, I am Legend, Max Brooks’, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, Bram Stoker’s, Dracula, and various short stories; (Films/TV) Daybreakers (2010), 30 Days of Night (2008), Shaun of the Dead (2004), 28 Days Later (2003), and episodes of The Walking Dead (2010-2011) and True Blood (2009-2011); (Games) the Dead Rising series, Left for Dead series, and Last Night on Earth.
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Porter, Lon
Credits: 1
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FT 011-N Theory and Lore of Running
J. Gregory Redding, Department of Modern Languages
Human beings were born to run. That, at least, is the theory proposed by contemporary evolutionary scientists Dan Lieberman and Dennis Bramble, and it is the premise with which we will begin our liberal arts inquiry into the theory and lore of running. We will use tools from biology, anthropology, history, literature, film, coaching and more to understand how and why people run. And we will also run! We will supplement our classroom knowledge with actual running activities that are appropriate to our abilities, and we will write and discuss how our own running experiences inform our theoretical understanding of the subject.
Today we are in the midst of an unprecedented recreational running boom. People are not just running in greater numbers than ever before, but they are also running farther. Nearly half a million people will complete a marathon this year in the USA, and twice that number will run a half marathon. We will attempt to understand this mania by participating in it. All students in this course will be challenged (but not required!) to complete a half or full marathon by running, jogging, or walking. Our target race will be the Veterans Marathon and Half Marathon in Columbia City IN, which allows 6 hours to finish the marathon and 4 hours for the half. Oprah Winfrey once completed a marathon in 4 hours and 29 minutes. If Oprah can do it, then so can you!
Participants in this course will NOT be evaluated on running ability. Final grades will be based on written and oral work. Texts for the course will include Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, Why We Run by Bernd Heinrich, The Four-Minute Mile by Roger Bannister, and Once a Runner by John L. Parker. Films will include Endurance, Without Limits, Saint Ralph, and excerpts from documentaries.
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Redding, J. Gregory
Credits: 1
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Ivette Wilson, Department of Modern Languages
This course will explore the cultural diversity of Brasil - the largest South American country and the only one in the Americas to have Portuguese as its official language. Brazil, as known internationally, is an emerging global economic powerhouse and the chosen site for two large-scale global events: The Olympics in 2012 and the World Cup in 2014. From soccer to carnival we are going to have a multifaceted cultural experience interrogating how Brazilian culture, as internationally marketed, affects current social issues within the country. We will explore the intersection of cultural and social issues through History, literature, cinema and music produced by and about Brazilians.
Credits: 1
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FT 011-S American Values and American Sports
Tom Bambrey, Department of English
Many people would have a hard time listing the values Americans live by. They would perhaps have a harder time connecting those American values to American high school, collegiate, and professional sports. In this tutorial we will try to do both--define "American Values" as best we can, and discuss how these values are embedded (or not) in our sports' cultures. Our readings and discussions will focus on 1) the complexity of American values, given our nations' rich multiplicity of cultures, races, and religions (etc., etc.) 2) our nation's love affair with sports, and how values reveal themselves, are discovered (or disappear) in athletics 3) how each student's developing or already internalized personal values lead him to participate in, be a fan of, appreciate, be curious about, or ignore sports. So, what are the values we live by? How do we acquire them? How do values differ among peoples and individuals? How do they affect our behavior? How (and why) do sports play such a big part in American society? Do athletes live by the same or different values than the so-called "average" American or non-athlete? Because of the attention, adulation, and benefits they sometimes receive, do athletes' values change? These, and other, questions will occupy our time. Readings for the tutorial: BLEACHERS, John Grisham; BANG THE DRUM SLOWLY, Mark Harris; HEAVEN IS A PLAYGROUND, Rick Telander; ONCE A RUNNER, John Parker; A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT, Norman Maclean; NORTH DALLAS FORTY, Peter Gent.
Credits: 1
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FT 011-Q Global Health and Development
Eric Wetzel, Department of Biology
Even though we tend to think of it as how we are feeling, “health” is determined by a variety of factors including biology, income, education, social status, sex, and access to health services. Dramatic advances in improving health have been made over the last several decades, although it is clear that this progress has been very uneven as there exist huge disparities in health status both within and among different countries. In this tutorial we will examine global health as a liberal art, i.e., as a multi-faceted topic that involves problems which cut across socioeconomics, politics, religion, ethics and the sciences. Through readings and a few films we’ll consider HIV/AIDS and other communicable (as well as non-communicable) diseases that afflict hundreds of millions of people on the planet, particularly poorer people in low and middle-income countries who continue to get sick, become disabled or disfigured, or die from preventable illnesses. So what does it mean to “act responsibly” and to “live humanely” in the face of such problems?
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Wetzel, Eric J.
Credits: 1
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FT 011-B Economics of the Popular Music Industry
Christie Byun, Department of Economics
Music entertains us, influences us, and shapes our lives. From the message to the medium to the physical experience of listening to a live performance, music has charms to soothe the savage breast.
Rock and roll used to be a way for people to stick it to the Man. Is that still possible in today’s highly corporatized and profit maximizing world? Are musicians engaged in monopolistic competition? Is it worth it to go to music festivals? Does Ticketmaster facilitate easy and convenient ticket sales, or is it a corporate entity with excessive market power, charging exorbitant fees? From the Sony Walkman to its modern day equivalent the iPod, how have physical media and technology affected the way musicians create their work and how we experience it?
This class will study the popular music industry from an economics perspective. We will use economic theory to analyze how music is made, performed, and sold, study the management and industrial organization side of the music industry, and see how music media and technology, and musical venues shape and influence musical form and expression. We’ll also look at the evolution of popular music from a historical, social, political, and multicultural context.
Musical genres to be studied may include (but are not limited to) rock and roll, hip hop, punk, soul, R&B, grunge, blues, alternative, progressive, garage, metal, and industrial. We will also view a variety of music related films and documentaries.
The class will take an overnight trip to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio during Fall Break, Oct. 13-14, 2011. The class will also attend one or two evening musical performances at local venues in West Lafayette or Bloomington, TBD.
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Byun, Christie
Credits: 1
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FT 011-C 9/11 and American Culture
James Cherry, Departmet of Theater
This year marks the tenth anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. The worst terrorist incident to occur on American soil, the 9/11 attacks were a transformational event. They took the country into “The Global War on Terror,” land wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the curtailment of civil rights. The attacks brought new terminologies into our lexicon, like “Al-Qaeda,” “National Threat Level,” and “Homeland.” 9/11 is one of a select few moments in modern American history—the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., and the Challenger disaster are others—that is etched in our collective cultural memory, carved into our national soul. We still live today, as Art Speigelman put it, “in the shadow of no towers.” In the aftermath, people sought to express their grief, rage, bewilderment, and love as people always have: through art. As a result, 9/11 has also had a seismic effect on our culture. In novels (Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close), films (World Trade Center, United 93), plays (Anne Nelson’s The Guys, Neil LeBute’s The Mercy Seat), graphic novels and media (Art Speigelman’s In the Shadow of No Towers, Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón’s The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation), and poetry, (Seamus Heaney’s “Anything Can Happen”), artists and writers sought to make sense of an event that rendered even the idea of artistic representation problematic to some. Drawing on these texts, some of which were written while the towers still smoldered, we will also try to make sense of an event that transformed all of our lives, and confronts us with questions every day. How shall we commemorate the dead? How is the omnipresent threat of terrorism represented in culture? How do art, literature, and performance represent trauma? In this course we will ask: ten years later, what does 9/11 mean?
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Cherry, James
Credits: 1
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FT 011-D Science and Pseudoscience
Karen Gunther, Department of Psychology
What is science? What is pseudoscience? How do we know? One of Wabash’s core missions is to learn how to think critically. Do vaccines cause autism? Does aromatherapy work? How was Nostradamus so good with his predictions? Do polygraphs really uncover lies? How can we test these claims? What should we consider to be good evidence? We will examine these issues and more. This course includes a one-year subscription to Skeptical Inquirer magazine.
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Gunther, Karen
Credits: 1
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FT 011-E Flyfishing: The Liberal Art
David Hadley, Department of Political Psychology
For some, fly fishing is sport. For others, it is a diversion, a hobby, an art, something of a science, or even a religious experience. As Norman Maclean wrote in A River Runs Through It, “In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.” For students in this Freshman Tutorial, fly fishing will begin an immersion, quite literally, a baptism of sorts, into the liberal arts and a liberal arts education. Beginning with what at Wabash we call an “immersion trip” to Bozeman, Montana the week before Freshman Orientation, this course will use fly fishing as an introduction to the liberal arts experience. In the rivers and streams around Bozeman, students will learn and practice the techniques of fly casting and fishing, enjoy the beauty of the fish and the environment they inhabit, and begin to ask and explore the myriad questions that can flow over and around them as they stand in the middle of a mountain stream waiting for a fish to rise to fly. Upon returning to Wabash, they will read some of the fine literature written about fly fishing; learn more about the biology and ecology of the sport, hobby, or religion; study aspects of its politics and economics; and consider it from different philosophical and ethical perspectives. In this course the student will experience and examine fly fishing through the lenses of the humanist, the natural scientist, and the social scientist. He will develop skills of observation, careful and critical reading, analysis, and clear and creative communication. This course begins and ends with the premise that in the liberal art of fly fishing, to borrow words again from Norman Maclean, “all things merge into one, and a river runs through it.”
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Hadley, David J.
Credits: 1
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FT 011-F Winning World War II-Lessons of Character and Leadership from Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill
Scott Himsel, Department of Political Science
December 1941. The Nazis are ruling Europe, starving England, and driving deeply into Russia; Japan has largely destroyed the US Pacific fleet; and the US Army is ranked 17th in the world. Despite these terrible odds, FDR and Churchill rallied their people to win the war and built the world's most successful alliance. What lessons can we learn from them today? How do great leaders inspire us to achieve (and even exceed) our highest potential? How do they work together despite their towering egos and mistrust among their peoples? How do we decide when to cooperate with other nations and when to act alone? We'll also explore darker moments when the alliance failed to follow its principles. When did the alliance depart from democratic principles to save lives on the battlefield, and should we do the same? How did the war expose and begin to stop discrimination against women, racial and religious minorities, and the disabled on the home front? We have much to learn. FDR and Churchill not only led their nations from defeat to victory; they overcame incredible personal difficulties that would have ended the careers of lesser men. They were also extremely colorful and entertaining characters who knew how to find moments of joy and fun that helped them bear the burdens of leadership.
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Himsel, Scott
Credits: 1
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FT 011-G Science Fiction & Philosophy
Cheryl Hughes, Deptment of Philosophy
Science fiction is always a kind of thought experiment, inventing new worlds that are often inhabited by something alien or other, or extending our current science and technology into an imagined future full of tough moral dilemmas, or simply playing with some of our most challenging ideas such as the nature of space and time, the possibility of artificial intelligence, or the problems of personal identity and free will. Philosophy, too, often proceeds by using thought experiments to question what we might otherwise take for granted, to explore familiar problems in new ways, or to construct ideas and ideals and test their possibilities. Thus science fiction can be an excellent way to introduce philosophy. In this course, we will use science fiction novels, short stories, and films as well as philosophical essays to explore such topics as the limits of knowledge, relationships between appearance and reality, the nature of mind and intelligence, the paradoxes and logical problems in the idea of time-travel, problems of memory and personal identity, questions about gender and race and other social and moral issues.
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Hughes, Cheryl L.
Credits: 1
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