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Fall 2000 Social and Historical Studies (E104)
E104 Coping with War (3 cr.) McGinnis
Conflicts in remote areas of the world erupt onto the public agenda without
warning and fade as quickly, only to resurface a few years later. If you rely on
political leaders or the news media to inform you about international crises,
then you condemn yourself to a life of confusion. Thanks to the World Wide Web,
a vast amount of information on international conflicts is available to anyone.
However, it is difficult to interpret information from Web sites, since each has
its own biases and distortions. This course is designed to learn how to use this
information to understand wars and crises. The class will be divided into
working groups, each examining a different conflict. Each group will prepare
reports on the issues and what the international community can do to encourage
resolution of differences peacefully. Individual students will specialize in
understanding the positions adopted by one or more participants, including U.N.
agencies and humanitarian aid organizations.
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E104 Disorganization and Organization :
Perspectives on Social Problems (Maynard, D., )
The overall aim of this course is to supplant our tendency to think in
"social disorganizational" terms about social problems with the
ability to understand such problems from the standpoint of "social
organization." To do this, we will study language and social interaction in
social-problem environments. These environments include street life, mental institutions,
criminal subcultures, but also "mainstream" home and institutional
environments as well. Students will read research-based monographs (not
textbooks) and debate one another in discussion sections.
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E104 African Lives (3 cr.) Clark
Learn how Africans view their own cultures and families, from the inside, by
reading life histories and novels written by Africans themselves. For four
different African locations, you will read two books whose authors show
contrasting attitudes toward education and modern social changes, and see a
video presenting still another point of view. You will begin to understand the
different perspectives and problems of African people from several countries,
from rich and poor families, and from cities and villages. Many authors also
include what they think about white outsiders and whites' ideas about Africa. We
will talk about how each author might have developed the opinions he or she
expresses, and we will each figure out our own point of view on these important
issues. Course requirements: eight books, four papers.
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E104 : From Captain Cook to
Captain Kirk: Modern Scientific Voyages (3 cr.) Sorrenson
As European and American scientists traveled into the Americas and the
Pacific in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they saw peoples,
landscapes, plants, and animals that surprised and amazed them. Their journals
give us a vivid sense of what it was like to discover and analyze those new
worlds and you will, in one assignment, write your own journal imagining you are
voyaging with one such expedition. By the twentieth century, voyagers left
behind inhabited realms, plunging beneath the oceans, climbing Mt. Everest, and
eventually probing space. We will visit the Lilly Library to handle rare and
valuable original journals (and some "Star Trek" scripts) as well as
spend several weeks looking at the images and artifacts (including some at the
IU Art Gallery) that the voyagers produced or collected. Readings will be drawn
from various journals including: Bougainville, Lewis and Clark, Humboldt,
Darwin, and Hillary.
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E104 From the Apocalypse to
Star Trek: A History of the Future (3 cr.) Pace
A medieval preacher prophesying the end of the world, a nineteenth- century
scientist predicting an age of universal prosperity, a model of the city of the
future at the 1920s World Fair, a 1950s civil defense film, and the bridge of
the Starship Enterprise3/4each of these is a historical document offering
invaluable evidence about the hopes, fears, and values of a particular era. In
this course you will have the opportunity to see how projections into the future
are used by historians to reconstruct the mindset of earlier periods. You will
work directly with such materials, producing your own historical analyses, and
you will learn about the historical context in which these cultural products
were created.
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E104 Families in Former Times (3 cr.) Alter
In every era the family has served as the most basic human institution, but it
has always been subject to other forces in society, such as religion, politics,
the economy, and the tragic consequences of high death rates. This course traces
the history of the European family from 1500 to the early twentieth century. We
will examine changes in relationships within the family (parents/children,
husbands/wives) and the changing role of the family in society. Among the topics
to be discussed are courtship, marriage, childbearing, child labor, the origins
of family limitation and birth control, the definitions of male and female
roles, and the effects of other institutions (community, church, schools, state)
on the family.
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E104 Megamurder: The Politics of Genocide (3 cr.) Bielasiak
Throughout history, people have turned against other racial, ethnic, or
political groups and committed mass murder in the name of a better tomorrow.
What are the justifications for such acts of human destruction? Who bears
responsibility for crimes against humanity? Should the international community
intervene to prevent genocide? To find answers, we enter the world of the
perpetrators, the hell of the victims, and the silence of the bystanders. In
each case of genocide, the Holocaust, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, we confront
political, sociological, and psychological issues that arise in the process of
mass murder.
We will use a variety of sources, historical studies and
survivors' testimonies, documentary and fictional accounts, films and poems.
Assignments will go beyond the typical examinations so that we can personalize
the issues through reaction essays, an oral history report, and an advocacy
paper. The point is not only to understand genocide, but also to confront our
humanity and our commitments to become more than bystanders to history.
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E104 Comparative Slavery (3 cr.) Assensoh
This course treats slavery as a historical and political entity. Our goals
include a thorough discussion of the peculiarity of slavery within its
comparative context, with an emphasis on socio-geographic dimensions. The
following queries are raised for discussion: How has the practice of slavery
evolved from its beginning to its present form in the modern world? Has slavery
functioned in differently in different societies? What is the relationship
between slavery and other social institutions? Is there a "classic"
form of slavery? The course is structured in such a way that students are
expected to benefit from the lectures, course readings, and the weekly class
discussions held each Friday.
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E104 Sex, Race, & Politics (3 cr.) Alex-Assensoh
Over the last two decades, the term "minority" has expanded from
its erstwhile reference to Blacks to include--in a broadened description--other
people of color, women and homosexuals. This expansion of the term
"minority" has created a host of new challenges in the American
political system. This course is geared toward helping students to understand
the political connotations of the term "minority" as well as the
manner in which different minority groups play the political game. The class
will be taught as a lecture course featuring debates, panel discussions, group
projects, videos and role-playing sessions to be based mainly on the weekly
readings. Final grades will be based on a mid-term examination, a final
examination, one-page weekly (or bi-weekly) homework assignments, a group
project, and class participation.
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E104 Freedom of Speech in
the United States (3cr.) Newman
Contrary to what many people believe, the First Amendment protection of free
'speech' (whether oral or written) is not absolute. This TOPICS course starts by
studying philosophers who first discussed the benefits of free speech, and
analyzes some of the contemporary criticisms of the concept. Next, the course
takes up major exceptions to free speech, including threats and fighting words,
obscenity, advertising, slander and libel, and copyright and trademark. Students
will utilize their analytical abilities and critical thinking by applying basic
principles to new situations, e.g., the internet, and by debating controversial
issues, such as government and university attempts to ban hate speech.
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E104 Ethnicity, Race, and Identity
in Latin America (3 cr.) Guardino
How did race and ethnicity become among the most important dimensions of
identity in Latin America? How have racial and ethnic boundaries been perceived
and enforced by European Americans, African Americans, and Native Americans? How
have ideas about race and ethnicity changed over time? How have visions of race
and ethnicity been used to construct national identities in Latin America? Why
and how have racial and ethnic identities resurged in Latin American politics
and art in recent years? This course is designed to introduce students to the
kinds of questions historians pose about identities and boundaries.
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E104 Law and Order in Cyberspace (3cr.) Herbert
Social life is increasingly taking place on line. Given the pace of
technological change, this is a trend that will continue for the foreseeable
future. It is unclear just how different life in cyberspace will be from life in
the "real" world. One area of increased attention is the challenge of
regulating deviant and criminal behavior on-line. Concerns about child
pornography, hacking, copyright infringement, fraud, and the loss of privacy
fuel debates about the future of cyberspace and its control. We will address a
central question—How can order be created in the growing world of cyberspace?
In so doing, we will consider questions of fundamental consequence to democratic
societies, including the right of government agencies to restrict free expression.
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E104 The Mad and the Bad (3 cr.) Dwyer
The chronic mentally ill and career criminals are perceived by many as
frustratingly intractable social problems. This course considers both those
labeled "mad" and those labeled "bad," as well as the ways
in which the criminal justice and mental health systems respond to the mad and
the bad. It also looks at how people move (and are moved) back and forth between
jails and hospitals, prisons and psychiatric forensic units. Specific topics
will include schizophrenia, homelessness, the insanity and incompetency legal
pleas, criminal careers, psychopathy and serial killers, recovered memory
syndrome, and violent sexual offender legislation.
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E104 Hitler, Stalin & DeGaulle:
Politics & Personalities (3 cr.) Douglas
Hitler, Stalin and de Gaulle each embody one of the three major regime types
that competed in Twentieth-Century Europe: Fascism, Communism and liberal
democracy. Each figure was also influential in the development of his own system
that questions of personality have always arisen. With Hitler, both his intense
personal magnetism and his obsessional racism have been considered key to
explaining the course of the Third Reich. With Stalin, theoretical options are
given a larger role, but Stalin’s departure from so much in the European
socialist tradition have often posed the question of the effect of his
personality on the development of the Soviet system. De Gaulle's character has
always been seen as key to his politics. Readings will be from the writings of
Hitler, Stalin and de Gaulle, biographies of all three figures and a short
general text for background.
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E104 Politics of Diversity (3 cr.) Hanks
Truth," "reality," "reason," and "values"
are notions, which are integral to the maintenance of civilized societies. We
commonly understand truth to be "the body of real things, events, and
facts." Reason is understood to be the "power of mind, which allows us
to comprehend, infer, and think in orderly rational ways." Values are
beliefs, principles, and ideals that guide behavior. Societies tend to maintain
the status quo when there is at least marginal consensus on values and truth.
When there is dissonance between what we reason or perceive as truth and what we
value, a condition for a social movement is met. This course has two foci: (1)
what is the nature and meaning of truth, reality, reason, and values?; and (2)
how does our understanding of truth, reality, reason, and values impact social movements.
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