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Spring 2001 Arts and Humanities (E103)
E103 The Vietnam War in Literature and Memory
(Wiles)
The Vietnam War was a turning point in American history-our longest war, our anti-Communist war, the only war we
lost-and it has had a great influence on literature, film and popular culture in the decades since the 1960s. This
course will investigate how the war has been remembered in various artistic media, and it is designed to bring
students from the present generation into closer contact with the legacy of the Vietnam era. We will read fictional
accounts and factual memoirs of the war; most of these books were written by combatants themselves, and a few of the
authors are Vietnamese. We will also discuss several popular films that depicted the war, and contrast them with other
visual images that have become imprinted on our culture's collective memory-images ranging from wartime photography to
the "look" and the iconography of war memorials, such as the Vietnam Veterans Monument in Washington.
Several class sessions will be devoted to a historical survey of the war, to provide a context for our literary
readings. The class will read Jerold M. Starr's history text. The Lessons of the Vietnam War and each student will
also research an individual topic from Vietnam era history. The midterm and final exams will contain both factual
questions and essay-style questions.
While we will do extensive reading in this course, a good deal of our class time will be devoted to your own writing.
Students will write short response papers to analyze sections of Vietnam era fiction and film. You will also do
historical research for a factual paper on one aspect of the war, and write a second paper on literary and/or cinematic
depictions. For the final paper, you will have the opportunity to draw on your own memories, family histories, and oral
histories, to write an account of ways in which the Vietnam War has come down into your own generation and your decade;
your goal here will be to deal with some legacies of the Vietnam War in our own time.
The class format will be a combination of lectures, discussions, and writing and editing sessions conducted with
student partners. One of the main ways in which we will use writing in this course is through "writing to learn,"
which means finding out more about the subject in the process of writing about it. Readings include:
O'Brien, The Things They Carried; Mason, In Country; stories by Vietnamese and American writers found in the
collection, The Other Side of Heaven; oral history and memoir writing such as Santoli's, Everything We Had; and
Wolff's, In Pharaoh's Army; and films including Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon.
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E103 The Hero in History : Russian Fiction
and Social Context (Durkin)
This course will present works of Russian literature, from the earliest period of Russian culture to the twentieth
century, selected for their relevance to a central concern of much of Russian culture, the definition of a heroic
figure and the relation of such a figure to the historical development of Russia. In the context of the Russian
cultural tradition, the attempt to define a hero or heroine has often drawn on figures derived from earlier Russian
literature and culture.
In historical and political developments in Russia including the emergence of the
individual, the rise of political opposition, and the question of sexual roles, these prior literary models are often
re-introduced, sometimes in modified or disguised form, to support an answer to the recurrent question of "What is to
Be Done?", that is, what sort of heroes and heroines, what values, and what course(s) of action are best suited to
Russia's historical situation at a given moment. In examining various responses to this problem, works by Pushkin,
Tolstoi, Dostoevskii, and others will be examined. Literary and historical topics will be supplemented by visual
material especially painting and film.
In various short written projects, students will have the opportunity to explore the interrelations not only among
works of literature but also between the readings and non-literary materials.
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E103 Folklore in Video and Film (Johnson)
Americans get much of their beliefs and understanding of the world, including scientific from television, VCR videos,
and films at movie theaters. Even the Learning Channel broadcasts programs about UFOs and other ideas and concepts
very questionable scientifically. This course deals with a number of issues of folk belief and world view reinforced,
debated, propagated, and spread by video and film, and it will also explore ways of critically viewing and examining
belief on tape and film. Students will examine videos of their choice for critical examination, including such topics
as Atlantis, the Ark of the Covenant, Bigfoot, the Shroud of Turin, the Bermuda Triangle, Ghosts, UFOs, Alien
Abductions, the Alien Autopsy, Loch Ness, and Near Death Experiences. As Mulder says, "The Truth is out there." Perhaps
you can find it in this class.
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E103 The Living and the Dead (Campany)
Members of human societies, when they die, do not completely and immediately disappear. From the perspective of the
living, the dead live on in a number of ways, and the living engage in many sorts of relationships and interactions
with them from the moment of death onward. Religious traditions have sought to characterize the state of being of
dead persons and often provided ways for the living to relate to them. The main question to be asked in this course
is: how are the dead conceived of, represented, and given a voice in religions and cultures? Other questions follow
from this one, such as: What sorts of relations have the living engaged in with the dead? What is each side of these
complex relationships seen to want or need, and why? How are conceptions and images of the dead related to other
aspects of religions and cultures? Through what variety of media have cultures expressed their views of the dead? Are
there explanations for the many similarities (and for differences) in the conception and treatment of dead humans
across cultures and religions?
The course explores these and similar questions through a series of case studies drawn from a wide variety of religions,
cultures, and historical periods. Materials include samplings from religious scriptures and ritual texts (for example,
the Tibetan Book of the Dead, or a scene from the biblical book of Samuel); scholarly studies from disciplines such as
religious studies, history, anthropology, folklore, and archeology; excerpts from the literary works, folk narratives,
and journalistic accounts (for example, the Odyssey narrative of the hero's journal to the underworld, or ghost stories
and "near-death" narratives both recent/local and ancient/Chinese); audiovisual sources (scenes from movies as well as
field footage and slides of religious activities and tomb architecture); and a bit of local fieldwork. A primary goal
of the course is to introduce students to increasingly sophisticated and interesting ways of thinking, speaking, and
writing about such materials, thus equipping them to think and write about other complex aspects of religions and
cultures.
Teaching methods range from lectures to participatory exercises in small groups. The course meets for two lectures and
one discussion section per week. Requirements usually include three examinations (short-answer plus essay), five short
(1-3 page) papers or "microthemes," participation in discussion, and regular attendance.
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E103 Magic, Science & Art in Africa (McNaughton)
Why do so many Americans and Europeans see science as being very different from art while so many Africans find those
differences negligible? This class will explore the complex and extremely interesting interconnections between
science, magic and art in Africa, and examine how they have become disconnected in the West. Our point of departure
is the vast array of African art types that so many books and museums call fetishes and spirit manifestations. All
those sculptures with nails and knife blades sticking in them seem like magic to Westerners, but they are something
quite like Western science to Africans, and this class will explore why. We will meet a spectacular array of deities
and spirits and hopefully gain a richer comprehension of how humans deal effectively with life's important experiences.
In the process we will expand our sense of art's roles in the world, and see how complex societies plan social and
spiritual strategies and make sense of the world and respond to intellectual and social challenges aesthetically.
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E103 The Meaning of Life: Existential Perspectives
(Spade)
This semester we will concentrate on two important figures in the existential tradition: Soren Kierkegaard and
Jean-Paul Sartre. Main themes will include: human freedom and "criterionless choice," the existence or non-existence
of God, the nature of belief, the structure of human consciousness, the notion of an "unconscious" mind, human
emotions, self-deception and morality. Two lectures and one discussion section per week.
Readings will be from: Kaufmann, Existentialism From Dostoevski to Sartre (a collection); Kierkegaard, Fear and
Trembling, Sartre's weird novel, Nausea. There will be short weekly quizzes, two essay-type examinations and several
short papers.
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E103 Hallelujah Hallelujah: Language and Religion
(Port)
This course will encourage students to critically examine the various ways in which language and religion influence
each other. We hope to provide students with the analytical tools to critically synthesize and analyze religious
discourse. Along the way, they will learn something about both the major components of human language and also
something about human religious practice.
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E103 Literary Classics in Popular Culture:
Beauty and the Beast (Julien)
This course examines twentieth-century popular culture (movie, TV adaptations, musicals, plays and even comic strip)
versions of literary classics. We will explore these remakes in terms of the socio-historical context in which the
adaptations are made. We will address the fact that most remakes are movies-ours is a visual culture and cinema was
the invention of our century-and we will ask ourselves the question "What aesthetic or thematic changes does the
alteration in the medium of expression trigger?" Many of the literary "classics" were popular in their time moreover.
So we will ask ourselves "what constitutes a classic?" and "what is popular culture?," and we will define the
relationship between the two. We will be reading classics by Shakespeare, Victor Hugo, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley,
and Anton Chekhov and we will view famous remakes such as Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Batman, Kenneth
Branagh's Frankenstein, Nikita Mihalkov's Dark Eyes, and Clueless.
Requirements: students are required to keep a journal; three four-page papers and a final essay exam. Participation
in class discussion is also a must.
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E103 Electronic Zen: The Sound of One Hand Clapping
(McRae)
Zen Buddhism is often described as a kind of religious experience that cannot be understood by the ordinary rational
mind. Intentionally illogical sayings such as "what is the sound of one hand clapping" are used in order to force the
religious practitioner to dispense with rational analysis in favor of some type of profoundly intuitive and
non-discriminating understanding.
This is a public university, however, where we work to explore difficult issues by reading, research, discussion, and
writing, and just because Zenheads say what they're doing is beyond rational analysis doesn't mean we shouldn't go
ahead and try to understand what they're up to after our own fashion. In fact, the academic study of Zen presents us
with some very interesting problems. First, obviously, how do we go about studying the irrational using the rational
mind? Looked at in this way, the study of Zen has a lot in common with the study of other forms of religious mysticism,
although we'll have to decide, of course, how useful it is to think of Zen as mysticism. Second, are there any strategic
benefits that lead the proponents of Zen to declare it irrational, beyond culture and history? That is, what do such
claims do for the people who make them, and do they mask rational patterns they might prefer to have hidden? Third, how
do claims for the irrationality of Zen relate to assertions that bind the religion to Chinese or Japanese (or Korean)
culture, i.e., that Zen represents the very heart of Asian culture (or one of the East Asian cultures), or that Zen
cannot really be understood unless you're Chinese, or Japanese, or Korean?
Over the course of the semester we'll move through a series of questions designed to explore the problems described just
above. Each week lectures and readings will introduce a basic problem in the understanding of Zen by rational, academic
means, presented in an order based on logical and methodological concerns rather than historical sequence.
There will be no tests, and all grading will be done on the basis of section participation and the completion of
assignments. In addition to their role at discussion meetings, sections will be led by AIs as exercise and cooperative
work labs. In fact, students will have the option of participating in a monitored and guided electronic mail discussion
section rather than a conventional "face-to-face" meeting.
Assignments will be designed to maximize mutual assistance and collaboration, and they will include exercises intended
to achieve mastery of basic skills of library and archival research, expository writing and editing. All assignments
for this course will be designed so as to create contributions for a World Wide Web site for the study of Zen Buddhism.
Students will be required to master the ordinary use of Netscape Navigator and to communicate by electronic mail; all
assignments will be written for use on the Web and to be submitted electronically. However, students will not have to
learn any kind of programming or computer-related technology beyond the ordinary use of mouse and keyboard, and lots of
assistance will be made available.
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E103 What Do Dreams Really Mean? (Chaitin, G.)
The intensely personal yet mysterious character of dreams has provoked people from ancient times to the present
to devise varying methods of explaining and interpreting them, and even of evoking them. In this course we will
study the writings of philosophers, poets, novelists and psychologists who have debated whether dreams are warnings
from a divine source, the results of indigestion and other bodily functions, messages from the unconscious mind, or
the random operation of the sleeping brain. We will see how modern artists, novelists and film-makers have used dreams
to portray people's most powerful emotional experiences and to question who we are. Through studying theories and
examples of dreams, the course will introduce students to problems in determining meaning, methods of interpretation,
and the representation of experience through the figurative use of images and language pertinent to the humanities and
to their lives.
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E103 From Witches to Serial Killers (Breithaupt)
Infanticide in 1780, crimes of passion in 1900, and terrorism in the 90s, what do they have in common? Each of these
crimes was the obsession of public attention at certain points in history. This course will examine why certain crimes
draw such attention at certain times while others do not and how those crimes relate to the symbolical values and
institutions that organize a society. In this course, we will work historically by looking at the notorious crimes of
the past including crimes related to gender, race, drugs, and abnormal psychological states, and will end with our
contemporary situation in the US. In all cases, we will carefully examine highly interesting works of literature, film,
and popular culture from various eras that display the notorious crime of its time. Students are expected to write a
short essay every two or three weeks and a final essay project. Classroom activities will include debates, role games,
and prepared discussions.
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E103 The Bible and its Interpreters
Despite its age, the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament remains one of the most influential texts in our culture. It is also
one of the most controversial. How did the Bible achieve this status? Why do people from different religious
backgrounds read it so differently? How is it that this text-so remote in its origins, so puzzling in its content-has
come to have such an influence on our culture?
We will address these question by exploring how Genesis and Exodus, the first two books of the Hebrew Bible, have been
interpreted over the ages. Among the interpreters we will consider are church fathers and rabbis, pilgrims and slaves,
fundamentalists and feminists, and contemporary authors and philosophers. Our goal is not only to better understand what
the Bible was meant to mean by those who wrote it but what it has come to mean for people living today.
Required Texts: HarperCollins Study Bible; John Steinbeck, East of Eden; Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale; Michael
Walzer, Exodus and Revolution; James Kugel, The Bible as it Was Course Reader (available at Collegiate Copies)
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E103 Lernu Esperanton! (Cooper)
What is "Lernu Esperanton!" (that is, "Learn Esperanto!"), and why would you want to take it? Let me explain first what
Esperanto is, then who I am (and am not), and then finally what the course is about, including its requirements.
Esperanto is an "international language." Some people call it an "artificial language," to distinguish it from
"natural languages" like English, French, Spanish, and so on. Esperanto was invented over 120 years ago. It is the only
"international language" to survive to the beginning of the twenty-first century. It has a rich original literature, a
vast library of excellent translations into Esperanto from the natural languages of the world, and a genuine culture all
its own. No one knows exactly how many Esperanto speakers there are in the world: a low estimate would be around two
million, making Esperanto one of the more widely spoken languages on planet Earth! (Most "natural" languages have fewer
than 100,000 speakers.)
I am not a professional Esperantist myself, and make no claims to speak or write the language fluently. My "day-time
job" is as chair of the IU Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, where I teach Russian, Serbian, Croatian,
Slovene and other Slavic languages and literatures. A friend of mine introduced me to Esperanto several years ago: I
learned it in a week (no big achievement, believe me!), and I have been using and enjoying it ever since.
The real purpose of this course is to introduce to you the process, the techniques, the tricks of learning a foreign
language, and to say something about why it is important to "own" a foreign language yourself in this shrinking world.
I intend to use Esperanto as a case study for language instruction.
Now in the course of learning Esperanto, I am also hoping you will also pick up some other notions as well: for
example, about the structure of language in general: how language fits together, what are its constituent parts, how do
we make language work for us to convey our meaning. And I hope you learn something about the structure of English (NOT
Esperanto, but English, your own native language) too, so that you can read, write, and speak English more correctly and
effectively. One way we will do this is through the writing of four mini-themes, which are required in the TOPICS
curriculum: no less than three, no more than five pages, on an assigned topic, which will be read for grammar, spelling,
punctuation, paragraphing, and content. These are spaced over the whole semester. If anyone gets an A on the first three,
s/he will be excused from the fourth! By the way, thanks to these assignments there is NO term paper in this course; the
only other things you have to fret over are quizzes from time to time on the materials assigned, plus a (mandatory) final
exam.
What else do I want you to get from this course? Some of the ethos of Esperanto. Esperanto, you will quickly
understand, is more than a language--it is a worldwide movement. It promotes world peace, mutual understanding among
peoples of different languages and cultures, communication, friendship, and travel. Some of the guest speakers I invite
in to the course will address those issues directly (like travel and study abroad through IU, or Esperanto on the World
Wide Web). It's not my goal to promote "belief" in Esperanto, I want you to understand at the outset: I am not out to
convert anyone. But I do want you to understand how language can motivate people, and how the knowledge of a new language
and the ability to communicate in it can really, profoundly change your life.
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E103 Myth & Meaning (Bannon)
Through readings in classical and modern poetry, we will explore how versions of myth cohere and contradict, how
different societies adapt myth to express their own meaning. While providing a general overview of Classical mythology,
the course will focus on several mythological figures, including (but not limited to) Helen, Hercules, Leda, Orpheus,
Persephone. We will discuss myths about these figures with the following questions in mind. What is the point of
revisionist myth-making? Where does myth support traditional values and how can it operate as a vehicle of change?
Students will have an opportunity to both analyze myths comparatively and to create their own modern re-tellings of a
myth.
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E103 Comedies & Tragedies of Communication
(Duquette-Smith)
This course focuses on how two attitudes toward communication intermingle in everyday life. The tragic attitude
toward communication suggests that people seldom if ever genuinely understand one another, that our attempts do
so are thwarted by external and internal forces, and that we may not even really want to understand one another.
The comic attitude toward communication suggests that misunderstanding is a resource for enjoyment rather than
fear, conflict, or aggression. Both attitudes have positive and negative implications for how we interact with
others and understand the world around us. Together we'll attempt to better understand divisions between people,
and how those differences can be met either tragically or comically. During the course we'll explore a broad array
of examples: from South Park to professional wrestling, from the incarnations of racism to the public memorializing
of tragedies, from American Beauty to disasters fostered by an overdose of agreement. A fundamental argument of
this course will be that tragic and comic attitudes toward communication foster "equipment for living," understanding,
and acting in the social world.
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E103 Myth, Legend & Popular Sciences (G. Schrempp)
Myths are colorful stories that tell about the origins of things and about the deeds of larger-than-life characters.
Myths are often set in ancient times or said to be "timeless." Legends tell of more recent and/or contemporary events
that are memorable or startling and often plausible. Popular science is a contemporary literary genre in which
qualified scientists explain recent findings to non-specialists in terms that are accessible and appealing. Myth,
legend, and popular science all present us with basic propositions about the nature of the world, addressing specific
anxieties and larger questions about the "meaning of life." In this course, we will compare these three genres, asking
what features in each might lead us to place credence in their claims.
The reading load will be approximately three books and six articles (ranging from "easy" to "difficult"). Main
requirements will be two papers of about 6 pages, a midterm and final exam, and class participation (including weekly
in-class exercises and/or quizzes).
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E103 Modern European Culture and National Identity
(Ipsen)
This course explores history through culture. We shall look at symbols and myths of French, Italian, and British
identity over the past two centuries. These symbols will be literary (including poetic), musical (from classical to
popular), journalistic, cinematic, and theatrical. Through them we shall form an idea of what it has meant to be French,
Italian or British over this period (and so what it continues to mean today). We'll follow a generally chronological
path, moving back and forth among the three nations, and so also pick up a sense of some of the major events which have
formed and transformed Europe in the period. Many issues are raised by the variety of cultural works we'll review,
including different models for male and female behavior and for the relations between men and women (in Stendhal, Sand,
Churchill, Chabrol, and Kureishi); nostalgia for a fast disappearing rural world in Wordsworth; patriotism and challenges
to it in Stendhal, Italian opera, Churchill, Silone and Rossellini; moments of national shame in the Dreyfuss Affair and
Italian Fascism; Britain dominating the world in Kipling, Churchill, and Elgar; a British cultural renaissance in Auden
and Britten; the post-war transformation of Rome and of Italy in De Sica and Moretti; and British values challenged and
transformed in Osborne and Kureishi. For last year's syllabus and course materials, see:
http://www.indiana.edu/~histweb/spring2000/ipsen/e103/index.htm
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E103 Why Do We Tell Stories? (Dolby)
We all know that stories are entertaining, but are there other reasons for telling stories? In other words, are
there functions besides entertainment that are served when people tell urban legends, fairy tales, fables, family
stories, or even our own personal experience stories? This course will explore what some of those other functions
are--along with examining why the stories are so successful as entertainment as well. Readings will include some
well-known collections such as Aesop's fables or the classic Norwegian fairy tale collection East o' the Sun and
West o' the Moon. And we shall examine some of our own family stories and some of the familiar urban legends that
circulate around campus and in the newspapers. You will have an opportunity to do a little fieldwork--collecting
some stories from friends and relatives and writing about the possible functions those narratives serve. The primary
objective of the course is to increase awareness of the many functions stories serve in our everyday lives and to
develop effective analytic strategies for writing about them.
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E103 Cultural Differences: The “Issue” of Tibet (Sperling)
The subject matter of this course is not just the issue of Tibet, i.e., an account of the current situation in Tibet
and its background. Rather, it is an examination of the values and positions that frame the Tibetan Question; i.e.,
an exploration of how different sides construct Tibet as an ˙ocissue.˙ou In this course students will be introduced
to a wide variety of materials emanating from the different sides. They will also be presented with materials from
sources not allied to or rooted in a specific polemical position. They will be expected to be able to analyze and
construct position papers from different perspectives, touching on different elements brought to bear upon the
Tibetan Issue, such as human rights, ecology, cultural rights, development, etc.
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E103 Picasso and the Creation of Modern Art (Kennedy)
A great deal of writing--some of it good and much of it bad--has been devoted to Picasso. This course, in addition to
surveying Picasso's career, provides an opportunity to consider how the Picasso lengend was formed and to sample the
various approaches to interpreting Picasso's art (art as autobiography, art as social history, more traditional
formalist approaches, and so forth). In the course of the semester we will survey various periods of Picasso's long and
extremely productive career--concentrating within each period on a few key works. Although Picasso's style changed
dramatically over the years, there are recognizable links that connect the various phases of his career. Among these
would be his use of themes and images from the art of the past, his mythologizing of women, his alternation between
"high" and "low" art, and his willingness both to maintain and to attack the classical ideal of beauty. These issues
(and others) will offer us continuity during the course of the semester.
Required readings (articles and excepts from books) will be available in a coursepack and in the Fine Arts Library).
There will be a number of short writing assignments, two exams, and one hands on project.
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E103 Life in Hell (Storey)
“Life in Hell” considers how humanity has conceived of and used Hell from the Mesopotamians to the modern state.
This course will examine notions of justice, reward and punishment, public vs. private behavior, political control,
systems of belief and our relationship to the past. Readings will include selections from numerous authors and, after
a general orientation to the topic, will focus on the development of Hell from Vergil to Dante and the moderns.
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E103 Who Am I? (Senchuk)
Our conceptions of ourselves and how we live with others in our society are powerfully influenced by notions of
race and gender. These notions and their influence upon us will be explored from a wide range of disciplinary
perspectives - especially: biological, psychological, literary, and philosophical. The aim of this course is to
help students gain insight into their own lives as members of a racially divided and gender-structured society.
Students should gain greater awareness and understanding of the racial and gender issues that confront us in our
everyday lives. Students will be encouraged to think ore critically, usefully, and - perhaps most importantly -
responsibly about those issues.
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