Critical Inquiry
Critical Inquiry ( course) is a program of seminars for first-year students in their first semester at the College. Seminars are taught by faculty from across the disciplines and engage students in rigorous reading, writing and discussion on varied topics. The goal of course is to prepare students to participate fully and successfully in the intellectual community that is Pomona College. Critical writing is an essential component of that participation and to that end, course is a writing-intensive course. All sections of course focus on writing as a recursive process of drafting and revision and must be taken for a letter-grade (the Credit/No Credit option is not available for this requirement.) The seminars all meet from 11:00 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Seminars for 2024
1. French Enlightenment Fiction & 20th-Century Film. During the French Enlightenment (1713-89) many philosophers used forms of fiction to convey and propagate subversive ideas. In this course we will read, discuss, and write about 4 exemplary Enlightenment novels: Denis Diderot’s The Nun & Jacques the Fatalist and his Master, Françoise de Graffigny’s Letters of a Peruvian Woman, and Choderlos de Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons. In conjunction with these novels, we will also watch and discuss related 20th-century movies by Jacques Rivette (The Nun, 1968), Robert Bresson (The Ladies of Boulogne, 1945), Jesús Franco’s (Love Letters of a Portuguese Nun, 1977), and Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, 1988). All these novels and movies ask fundamental questions about freedom and necessity, tyranny, personal and social identity, and the nature of power and desire. Trigger warning: materials contained in this course treat mature subjects in an explicit, sometimes cruel and disturbing manner, and this is all the truer of the movies.
2. What is Time? Is time real or an illusion? Is time linear, cyclical, or both? Is time singular or multiple? Does the “arrow” of time move left to right, right to left, or some other way? Can we speed up time and slow it down? Can a week have 10 days, instead of 7? Why does Monday feel different than Friday? Why is Friday the 13th bad luck? Does everyone think time is money? Why do we “kill” time? Why do we measure our ages by the number of times the earth has revolved around the sun? Do astronauts living in the International Space Station age differently? How did people tell time before clocks? What is a leap second? Does time flow like a river or swing like a pendulum? When did time become so important to human beings? Time is a tricky concept because it is both real and constructed. It is both natural and cultural. Cultures think about time in different ways. Cultures vary in how they talk about time. Indeed, some languages do not even have a word for time. Cultures measure and represent time differently. Cultures vary in how they punctuate time. Cultures ascribe different meanings to time. Time is one of those concepts that everyone thinks they know what it is until they are forced to define it. This course will explore a wide range of views on time and offer some tools to help you use time more wisely.
3. Digital Protest and Algorithmic Control. Should you bring your smartphone to a march? Should governments ban social media platforms? Is your data being collected and used in your best interests? How biased is the AI that decides whether your resume lands on the desk of a real person? This class will examine the ways that emergent technologies of the twenty-first century mediate relationships between people. How do they enable community, collaboration, and social justice? How do they foster oppression, surveillance, and alienation? We will study recent scholarship on a wide variety of topics ranging from hashtag activism and participatory culture to weapons of math destruction and government surveillance strategies. By the end of the semester, you will be familiar with the conventions and expectations of Media Studies, and you will be more comfortable participating in college-level intellectual conversations, but perhaps most importantly you will have honed a critical understanding of the ways in which media and technology are far from neutral tools that depend on how they are used.
4. Iconic Iconoclasts: Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí. A cut eye; flying tigers on a poster; poems about the Roma people and the moon. Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dalí all simultaneously represent Spain’s artistic mastery in the early to mid-twentieth-century and, at the same time, embody the boundary-pushing force of the avant-garde. In this seminar, we will explore what it means for poetry, plays, paintings, and films to be iconic and iconoclastic, controversial and co-opted. How does the success of particular artists overshadow their political, social, and aesthetic complexity? Examining the literary, visual, and cinematic works of these artists in detail, we will consider how all three push aesthetic and social boundaries within and beyond Spain’s borders, exposing the margins of society, the self, and our sensory perceptions of the world. In research papers, students will be able to explore and frame works from multiple artists in depth; the final paper provides the occasion for you to imagine and design an exhibit of all three artists and their work.
5. Cold Places. From snow-covered peaks to the circumpolar tundra, from the Arctic sea ice to the frozen landscapes of Antarctica, cold places evoke images of rugged wilderness and vast spaces. Far from being pristine or empty, however, cold places have been the home of diverse communities as well as the setting for dramatic cultural, political, and environmental encounters. In the twentieth century, they became geostrategic locations and treasure troves of natural resources. In the twenty-first century, they are vulnerable places and indicators of the health of our planet. What makes cold places unique, and how are they changing as a result of global warming? How have cold places shaped cultures and societies? What have been the impacts on cold places of industrialization, colonialism, and modern science and technology? In this seminar, we explore the past and present of cold places through a variety of lenses. Our journey takes place through films and documentaries, fiction and memoirs, and works of history, sociology, and anthropology centered on Iindigenous livelihoods, science, and the environment. We exercise our creative muscles through critical essays and research into the human dimensions of cold places.
6. In Dependence. A profound practice in any aspect of our lives—personal, professional, political—is to be true to ourselves while remaining connected to others. In this seminar, we consider the textures and challenges and joys of commonality and difference. What does it take to be the one juror out of twelve who votes innocent? What are the complexities of living with people who agree with you? How does a scientific community confront troublesome new ideas? A religious community? Is it weak to compromise? Do you enjoy being right? Do you prefer being wrong? How do you create space for others to be different? to disagree with you? How do you learn to see what is obvious to others but has always been invisible to you? Participants will be invited to engage with the wider college community as we play with these questions.
7. Power! Across Space and Time. Power is the most elemental component of political conflict. This political theory course will introduce students to aspects of power that are: covert and overt; governmental and non-governmental; and scale from individual to global as well as situational and culturally specific to universal. The interdisciplinary readings of the course draw from the humanities and social sciences that span time, location, and culture so as to better understand truisms, tendencies, contingencies, and varieties of power and conflict. Students will become proficient at diagnosing power relations in the political arena and aware of how power is exerted on them and how they have agency to manifest power upon others.
8. Queer Desires: The Cinema of Pedro Almodóvar. In this course we will explore the life and work of the Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, one of the most renowned filmmakers in the world today. We will begin by delving into the history of 20th-century Spain to contextualize Almodóvar’s emergence during the movida—a countercultural movement in the 1980s that was spurred by the country’s transition to democracy after nearly four decades under the authoritarian dictatorship of Francisco Franco. We will then trace Almodóvar’s evolution as an artist from the iconoclastic nature of his early films to the award-winning mastery of his later ones, watching and discussing his work across nearly 40 years of creative production. Through detailed visual analysis, we will dissect Almodóvar’s thematic trademarks: the creation of complex female characters; the exploration of gender and sexuality; and the entanglement of melodramatic plotlines. Throughout the semester students will engage with scholarly and popular criticism of Almodóvar’s films, cultivating a deep understanding of his artistic vision and its reception over time, both within Spain and globally. We will also consider the international film industry in general, teasing out the tensions between creative and commercial commitments. (Students interested in this course should know that some of Almodóvar’s films include explicit scenes of sex, violence, and/or drug use.)
9. Modern Jewish Literature. We will read short stories and novels by Jews written in the diaspora in the 20th century. The goal of the course is not to try to define the nature of the modern Jewish experience, but to consider the literary qualities of each text and the questions each raises, often concerning the meaning and purpose of human life in the context of persecution, political and existential exile, and social alienation. Authors studied will include Franz Kafka, I.B. Singer, Stefan Zweig, Cynthia Ozick, and Judy Blume.
10. Language On the Fence. Language, like borders, can connect people as well as separate them. This course draws on ethnographic writings, in addition to literature and media pieces, to explore how people deploy the myriad resources of language to navigate ambivalent spaces, including: fences, colonial-era frontiers, borderland regions, asylum courts, transit hubs, seas and oceans, among others. Can language connect people across formidable differences and obstacles? Can new metaphors and linguistic hybridity empower those whom others construct as peripheral? Can telling differentnew narratives unsettle inequalities and right wrongs? Fadiman (1997: viii) writes of peripheral spaces that “there are interesting frictions and incongruities in these places, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one.” As part of their writing practice in this course, students will ethnographically engage with one such ambivalent space, asking themselves “which language practices do people rely on to navigate and make sense of it?” Our goals will be to ease and polish our writing through practice, to grasp the rich functionality of language, and to experiment with ethnography, guided by anthropological readings.
11. Mathematicians of the African Diaspora. Many of us have heard of Mary Jackson, Katherine Johnson, and Dorothy Vaughn as three African American mathematicians from the book “Hidden Figures.”. However, not as many have heard of Elbert Frank Cox (the first African American man to receive a doctorate in mathematics), Cavell Brownie (the first African American woman to receive a doctorate in statistics), or Vivienne Malone Mayes (the fifth African American woman to receive a doctorate in mathematics and the first African American professor at Baylor University).
Indeed, there are many stories yet to be told. In 1997, Scott Williams (SUNY Buffalo) founded the website “Mathematicians of the African Diaspora,” which has since become widely known as the MAD Pages. Williams built the site over the course of 11 years, creating over 1,000 pages by himself as a personal labor of love. The site features more than 700 African Americans in mathematics, computer science, and physics as a way to showcase the intellectual prowess of those from the Diaspora. Soon after Williams retired in 2008, Edray Goins (Pomona College), Donald King (Northeastern University), Asamoah Nkwanta (Morgan State University), and John Weaver (Varsity Software) have been working since 2015 to update the Pages. Dozens of Claremont College students have aided in this ambitious project to continue Williams’s legacy.
In this course, we will learn more about the lives, experiences, and research done by African American mathematical scientists. We will dive deeper into barriers faced by these individuals, celebrate their past accomplishments, and read through contemporary accounts of current obstacles. We will also spend time uncovering new “Hidden Figures" by writing new biographies to be featured in the aforementioned MAD Pages.
12. Pomona Goes Green. The Earth Charter (2000) states: “We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future.” How do our choices—as individuals in our daily lives, and as members of the planned community of Pomona College—affect this future? How does the concept and goal of “sustainability” unite academic, artistic, pragmatic, and social endeavors? In this course, we will investigate these questions, using Pomona College as our case study: how can we make this a more sustainable “campus,” and how can and should our campus be a model for our global future? In our search for answers we will read authors, including Italo Calvino, Leo Marx, Alan Trachtenberg, and William McDonough; write about campus spaces, student organizations and initiatives; and engage the dynamic interdisciplinary field of “Environmental Analysis.”
13. Education as Freedom: Education as Capture. Education is often described as “the great equalizer,” especially in any society that likes to view itself as a meritocracy. It is certainly true that in the United States and elsewhere, some people are able to gain education, and leverage that gain into better lives - great lives even. This is the logic of Education for All, a global effort of 164 nations to guarantee every child born on planet earth access to a basic education (currently around 250 million children have no access to schooling at all). On the other hand, some would argue that these same systems of education actually take things from their students: limiting their imaginations, perspectives, culture and even their very identities, in a massive project of forced assimilation and enclosure. Which is it? In this critical inquiry seminar, we will explore and examine this question via works in Psychological Science and Ethnic Studies on the role of education in the US and globally.
14. Can Zombies Do Math? Mathematics is a field of knowledge commonly associated with objectivity and universality, and yet, doing it well requires a certain comfort with ambiguity and a deep desire for elegant simplicity. Furthermore, mathematicians claim, its main appeal is not its applicability and power, but instead, its aesthetic beauty. Does this make it a particularly human endeavor? In other words, could zombies do math? Could they appreciate it? Our investigations in this seminar will progress along two parallel paths. In one path, we will examine what it means to be human rather than a zombie, and how we define “humanness” in opposition to the various qualities we attribute to monsters and Others. In the second path, our inquiry will involve several cases made in defense of the human nature of mathematics. The readings of the course will include fiction and poetry as well as essays and articles in cognitive science, philosophy, and computer science. We will also look inside ourselves and engage with our own mathematical and creative impulses as we seek to understand what makes us human and how math relates to our humanity.
15. Cinema of Iran Before the Revolution. This seminar explores the history of film and cinema in Iran. It focuses on how to interpret and read a film and analyzes Iranian film in the context of developments in history, art, and literature. The course examines how the dilemmas, aspirations, and paradoxes of the modern world were expressed in Iranian films and traces the effects of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on the cinema of Iran. Through documentaries, popular genres, and art films, it details developments from the new-wave cinema of the 1960s to the time of the revolution, when films were censored and many movie houses burned down, and yet an extraordinary film culture emerged.
16. The Original Television Series. The course explores how a television series (as one instantiation of media production more generally) makes meaning in the context of U.S. culture. We will watch Season 1 of the AMC original series Mad Men and explore the theories and methodologies fundamental to analyzing media in contemporary culture.
The “critical inquiry” aspect of the course encourages us not only to consider various ways of analyzing cultural production, but also to examine our own positions relative to the material we study—and, more broadly, to discuss the positions that are available to us in the world we inhabit.
The “writing-intensive” aspect of the course aims at developing familiarity with several skills and tools applicable to a career in college and beyond, regardless of the field one chooses to pursue. We will discuss a range of writing styles and genres in various media environments, but we will practice with a variety of English traditionally described as “Standard American (Edited) English”—a code that is commonly used in writing in U.S. academia. Written assignments will be central.
17. Orientalism in Media: The Legacy and Today. This course will focus on Orientalism as understood by Edward Said in his monumental 1978 book, Orientalism: So, we will focus on key readings such as the latter book and Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth as well as media examples ranging from early 20th century films (The Sheik), media productions (the TE Lawrence story) and printed matter. Another module will focus on writing and films related to the Algerian War of Independence and include The Battle of Algiers and Viva l'aldjerie as well as a pairing of Camus' L'etranger with a recent Algerian novel, The Meursault Investigation. A third module will bring us up to date linking the Iraq Wars and the war on Gaza--the legacy of Orientalism in a range of texts, print and visual.
18. “Earthen Explorations”: Understanding Humans and Our Environments. This course delves into the intricate relationship between humanity and the natural world. This interdisciplinary course integrates insights from various fields to examine how human societies interact with and shape their environments.
Students will embark on a captivating journey through time and space, exploring diverse cultural perspectives on land use, resource management, and environmental stewardship. From ancient civilizations to contemporary societies, we'll analyze the ways in which cultural beliefs, technological innovations, and socio-economic factors influence human-environment dynamics.
Through case studies, field trips, and critical discussions, students will gain a deeper understanding of the complex interconnections between humans and their surroundings. By fostering ecological literacy and cultural empathy, this course empowers students to become informed global citizens capable of navigating the challenges of sustainability and environmental justice in the 21st century. Join us as we embark on a transformative exploration of our place within the Earth's intricate web of life.
19. Moby-Dick. In 1851, Herman Melville wrote a giant book about a giant whale. We're going to read it, slowly. As we do, we'll talk about American politics, power, friendship, sex, race, religion, madness, obsession, authority, obedience, fate, free will, democracy, greatness, weakness, manliness, enmity, desire, leadership, risk-taking, prophecy, oil, water, ships, disaster, literature, writing, reading—and, of course, whales.
20. Technologies of Art. Why do artists choose a specific medium? How do artists communicate specific ideas? Engaging extensively with the holdings of the Benton Museum of Art, students will become familiar with a variety of techniques such as woodcuts, photographs, sculpture, and conceptual approaches in order to better understand how artists make their work successful. Through a series of case studies, we will look at the works of Albrecht Dürer, Andy Warhol, the Guerrilla Girls, and Hirokazu Kosaka to think critically, conduct original research, write interpretive essays, and reflect on the role of technology in art from the past and the present.
21. Geomythology: Geologic Observations Recorded in Traditional Indigenous Narratives. In this course we will explore how Indigenous traditional narratives are expanding scientific insight into geological processes and disasters that have occurred throughout human history across the globe. There are many examples to draw upon; for instance, the Quileute and Hoh people of the Pacific Northwest describe a tumultuous fight between Thunderbird and Whale during which the ground trembled and the ocean rose up to cover the whole land. This tribal narrative is informing our geological understanding of events surrounding the great Cascadia subduction zone earthquake of 1700. How do narratives such as these improve our interpretation of geohazard events that were not witnessed by the geoscientists currently seeking to understand and explain those events? What range of geologic processes is recounted by these stories? What details can we glean about such events, from the micro to the macro scale? What responsibilities do we have to recognize, support, and advance the use of Indigenous Knowledge? We have much to learn from traditional Indigenous narratives, sociologically, historically, and scientifically as well.
22. Science and Religion. Are science and religion enemies, friends, or strangers? In current American culture, they are often seen to be in conflict, but historically, science and religion have had a rich and complicated relationship that transcends simple categories. In this course, we will carefully examine what we mean by “science” and “religion,” probe how they operate as systems for creating meaning, and explore the broad range of human thinking about how they are related. We will also review the long history of their relationship, especially in the Christian West (where science took on its present shape), but also in ancient times and in the Islamic Golden Age. Studying that history will help us better understand why what we now call science arose when and where it did and why the idea that science and religion are in conflict is prevalent in America but not so much elsewhere. Finally, we will also consider a variety of issues that currently lie on the boundary between science and religion, and come to see how words such as “faith,” “reason,” “fact,” and “theory” have complicated, time-dependent, and politicized meanings. Ultimately, this journey will help you construct a deeper and more nuanced understanding of your personal views concerning these two foundations of human thinking about how to best appreciate and thrive in the universe in which we live.
23. Chicana/o Latinx/e Los Angeles. This seminar unmasks narrow representations of Los Angeles by focusing on the often-overlooked heterogenous Chicana/o-Latina/o histories and communities in the greater Los Angeles-area. Beginning with the Pomona Valley, we start the course with a discussion of the historical and structural factors shaping Los Angeles. We then consider legacies of inequality and resistance from the 1960s to the present, including suburbanization, criminalization, illegalization, gentrification, education, activism, and connections with other communities. In addition to reading and writing about Chicana/o-Latina/o Los Angeles, we will also learn from local communities by leaving campus several times throughout the semester to extend our learning beyond the classroom walls.
24. Trees and Wood. Trees are amazing and wood is cool. This course is about exploring the wonder of trees and wood from distinct perspectives to reflect on how we know. What does a framework of knowing endorse? What does it marginalize? Trees as living organisms and wood as a cultural material fascinate because of the many disciplines they touch: scientific, historical, economic, and cultural. We will employ a range of writing forms to parallel the same breadth of disciplines that make their claim on trees and wood. As we engage this subject matter, we will negotiate incommensurate perspectives, reflect on what we care about and embrace the incompleteness of knowing.
25. Feminist Experiments in Living Otherwise. Capitalism and colonialism have long been critiqued for their deadening and alienating forces draining our societies, bodies, imaginations, and relationships to each other of their vibrancy, their literal and metaphorical aliveness. That deadening is also ongoing in the impulses of those systems to suffocate and eliminate racial, gendered, sexual, classed, abled, and other kinds of difference. In response, feminist thinkers and artists across space and time have explored and created avenues ancient and new toward cultivating aliveness, connection, practices of mattering, and life lived differently or otherwise than what has been prescribed for us by systems of power. Through this course, reading, writing, and discussion will be a way to gather and rally with each other as well as with feminists of color, queer feminists, and more-than-human kin. Together, we will endeavor to experiment with possibilities for living otherwise as a vital component of liberatory being and becoming, feminist praxis, and abolitionist worldmaking.
26. Music and Food. Is music a kind of food? What kind? Writers have observed that it “feeds the soul,” that it is the “food of love,” and that it is “auditory cheesecake.” How does it sustain people? Is it essential for human life in the way that nutrients are? What makes music sweet, or syrupy, or brittle, or scrumptious, or poisonous? How does it bring about and regulate emotional health? This course will approach such questions by thinking about music from a variety of perspectives: historical, theoretical, cultural, sociological, scientific, and philosophical. Topics will include classical concepts of harmony and rhythm, timbre in popular music, music and emotion, the idea of music as an offering, musical taste, and the ethics of music consumption. Students will listen to a variety of musical performances, write research papers on topics of their choosing, and create their own music.
27. Science as a Human Endeavor. The predominant public view of science conceptualizes it as propositional knowledge, typically in the form of laws, principles, and rules, that is, the facts of science. But is science more than encyclopedic contents? Would understanding the fundamental practices of science—how knowledge is produced and assessed, and how science works—add value to the participation of the public in decision-making? To address these questions, this seminar explores science as a human endeavor as opposed to focusing on its contents. We will reflect on science from the perspective of non-scientists (or novice scientists-in-training), and we will research aspects such as the public perception of science, culture of science, science of science, and role of science in modern society and science literacy. Readings from the meta-sciences such as history of science and science education, science communication and similar will strengthen our critical inquiry as consumers of science.
28. Joan of Arc in the USA. Joan of Arc in the USA. A rethinking of the Joan of Arc legend, with special application to the contemporary United States. For centuries, Joan of Arc’s story has been a source of fascination and bewilderment: How did a 17-year-old, illiterate peasant girl lead an army into a battle, only to be burned at the stake at 19 years old, only to be canonized, 489 years later, by the church that had condemned her as a witchy heretic? The story has spurred countless retellings and creative adaptations, in novels, paintings, movies, plays, poetry, music, sculpture, fashion, tv shows, statues, and other media. A few scholars in the last thirty years have contended that a key to understanding these longstanding questions about Joan is that Joan was what we’d now call nonbinary or trans (avant la lettre). The course will examine various plays, poems, songs, films, paintings, and fashion trends, etc. about Joan, and we’ll also use Joan’s example as a springboard for examining how and why transgenderism has become such a contentious topic in American politics today. Readings from Christine de Pizan, Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Gilles Deleuze, Mark Twain, Leslie Feinberg, Monique Wittig, Bertolt Brecht, William Shakespeare, Friedrich Schiller, and Charlie Josephine; songs by Elton John, Katy Perry, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Aly & AJ, and others. We’ll take a field trip into LA to visit one of the eight public Joan of Arc statues in the U.S.
29. American Film in the 1970s. Influenced by the artistry of filmmakers in Europe and Asia and immersed in the cultural and political transformations of their times, US cinema came into its own in the 1970s. We’ll explore some of the greatest American films of that decade—from the director-centered works of the “American New Wave” to the blockbusters that captivated the masses—with a focus on “reading” film as a reflection of larger social tensions and desires. As we learn about movies, we’ll also learn about some of the major historical events that shaped the United States in the decade, like racial inequality, the Vietnam War, Watergate, and the rise of disco.
30. Aphrodite and the Power of Love. Can love transform critical awareness into empowered activism? In Greek mythology, Aphrodite sets human hearts on fire and launches a decade-long war. For Plato, love leads to philosophical enlightenment. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., proclaimed: “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” During the Covid-19 pandemic, we reimagined how to cultivate love in our own lives. It is impossible to ignore love’s awesome and ubiquitous power, but is love transhistorical and universal or socially-constructed and subjective? In this course, we will study the power and meaning of love in diverse works of literature, philosophy, and art, including Sappho, Ovid, Audre Lorde, Judy Chicago and Alison Saar. We will ask how love promotes social-justice activism and inspires creativity. In writing, through dialogue, and while working collaboratively on a creative project, we will reflect on how our personal histories shape our understanding of love. By developing relationships with people throughout the college community, including at the Pomona College Benton Museum of Art, the Queer Resource Center, and the Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity, we will aim not only to understand but also to cultivate the transformative power of love.
31. Muslim Biographies. This critical inquiry seminar looks at several biographies and autobiographies of Muslims. In the beginning of the course, we will look at how both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars have pieced together the biography of the Prophet Muhammad and early Muslim figures like ‘Ali and ‘A’isha. In addition to looking at traditional sources like The Life of the Muhammad by Ibn Ishaq and The Book of Guidance by al-Shaykh al-Mufid, we also look at Maxime Rodinson’s Marxist biography of Muhammad and recent research on early Islamic history. In the second half of the course, we will look at a range of biographical and autobiographical texts: the autobiography of the philosopher Ibn Sina, a medieval biography of a Tunisian female Sufi “saint,” Ibn Fadlan’s memoir of his journey from Baghdad to Viking-era Russia, and others. We will conclude the course by considering how Muslims use new media, from television to Tiktok, to construct their autobiographies in the present. Examining Islamic biographies not only offers insight into the cultural and geographic diversity of global Islam, but also helps us understand the strategies Muslims have used to create knowledge and establish the boundaries of their identities.
Prior knowledge of Islam is not required. We will discuss the fundamentals of Islam and Islamic history along the way.
32. The Sports Effect: Power & Difference in America. An athlete’s ability to shift a paradigm – in their sport and beyond – is often described as, “The X Effect.” Consider these recent headlines: “The Caitlin Clark Effect,” “The Colin Kaepernick Effect,” “The Serena Williams Effect,” “The Steph Curry Effect,” and “The Shohei Ohtani Effect.” The impact and meaning of these effects play out differently among stakeholders. Consider these headlines, which investigate or argue about who wins out: “The Caitlin Clark Effect and the uncomfortable truth behind it,” “The Colin Kaepernick Effect: Taking a Knee, Changing the World,” “The Serena Effect changed every aspect of women's tennis,” “How Stephen Curry Is Ruining My Son's Basketball Team,” and “The Ohtani Effect: Dodgers embrace ‘learning curve’ in dealing with extra attention.”
In this class, we will seek to understand power and progress through the lens of sports. How does something or someone become “the x effect” on a sport? How do sports moments or athletes become the “the x effect” on a particular historical moment? How do axes of difference such as gender, race and class influence the business and practice of the games we know and love? We will explore arguments centered on data, imagery and storytelling– arguments which employ various paradigms for understanding the meaning of a particular body, moment or movement in sport.
33. Austen’s Comedy. Comedy is a big part of literature, but a surprisingly small part of the study of literature. Literary critics seem to feel that we might not be the friends of comedy – as though, in studying comedy, we might inevitably delete the comic element. In this course, we will try to learn something about comedy, and we will try to write about it, by focusing our thinking on the novels of Jane Austen. We will also refer to other writers who thought about comedy, including Hobbes, Burney, Trollope, Carroll, Bergson, Ellison, and Canetti.
34. Terror and Horror in Literature and Film. “Terror and horror are so far opposite,” wrote the gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe in 1826, “that the first expands the soul, and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes, and nearly annihilates them.” For Radcliffe, “uncertainty and obscurity […] respecting the dreaded evil” yield terror, while immediacy and visibility induce horror. As the scholar Devendra Varma put it, “the difference between terror and horror is the difference between awful apprehension and sickening realization: between the smell of death and stumbling against a corpse.”
In this course, we will consider such distinctions in relation to influential theories of art such as Aristotle on tragedy, Edmund Burke on the sublime, and Susan Sontag on camp. Working mainly with gothic fiction from the eighteenth century to the present as well as a few Hollywood films, we will explore how works of art elicit fear and give it meaning; the relation fear may bear to artistic excellence or convention; and cultural histories of specific objects of fear such as Satan, ghosts, dungeons, monsters, zombies, cyborgs, and parents.