YOUR TELEVISION WILL BE COLORIZED: BLACK TV COMICS' RIFFS ON RACE
Walt Jacobs, African American & African Studies
AFRO 1902, Section 001
3 credits
CLE: Cultural Diversity
TuTh, 2:30 - 3:45 p.m.
Twin Cities West Bank
90080

In this seminar students will learn to identify and decode racial critiques of American society found in TV shows featuring African American comics. From the overt commentary offered in sketch comedy shows such as Chappelle’s Show and In Living Color, to the more subtle discourse of a situation comedy like The Cosby Show, African American comics have a long history of using television as a stage to address the continuing significance of race in the United States. We will explore both historical and contemporary uses of humor to explain and reorganize our understandings of American racial dynamics. Using a variety of cultural studies methods and online technologies (including blogs, podcasts, and WebCT), students will develop “critical media literacy”—the ability to be rigorously analytical about the information and understandings we draw from the mass media—without diminishing the pleasure gained. For the seminar’s final project, students will create, perform, and analyze comedic skits.

Walt Jacobs is the author of Speaking the Lower Frequencies: Students and Media Literacy, which examines how students use popular culture to form critical understandings of their social world.

BOOMTOWNS AND BORDERLANDS: LIFE ON THE U.S. - MEXICO BORDER
Bianet Castellanos, American Studies
AMST 1905, Section 001
3 credits
MW, 1:25 - 2:40 p.m.
Twin Cities East Bank
90641

Why have more than 2,000 people died crossing the U.S. – Mexico border in the past decade?  Why have Americans spent more than $20 billion to patrol this border, but only half this amount to patrol the U.S.-Canadian border?  This seminar is an introduction to the contemporary issues and problems of the U.S. – Mexico border region. Students will learn about the lives of the people who reside on both sides of this thousand-mile fence and consider questions such as: How are borders produced historically, politically, and geographically? How do they change over time? What is the impact of globalization on the border?  We will examine issues of: the growth of the border patrol, the disappearance and murder of women in the Mexican border town of Juárez, the struggles for environmental and social justice in border boomtowns, and the emergence of free trade agreements like NAFTA. Through a study of music, art, and film, students will learn about the new forms of artistic and cultural expression that result from the mixing of U.S. and Mexican cultures.

Bianet Castellanos has worked with Maya communities in Mexico for over fifteen years. Trained as an anthropologist, she focuses her research on internal and international migration, indigenous communities, and tourism development. Before moving to Minneapolis, she lived along the U.S. – Mexico border in the city of San Diego.

CHANGING HUMAN ADAPTATIONS
Martha Tappen, Anthropology
ANTH 1907W, Section 001
3 credits
CLE: Cultural Diversity and Writing Intensive
Tuesday, 1:30 - 4:00 p.m.
Blegen Hall 430
90420

In this seminar we will explore the evidence and scientific methods for studying human evolution, and look at how humans, like other mammals, are adapted to the environment. We will emphasize behavioral reconstruction, functional anatomy and physiology, and past and present human adaptations to the environment, the influence of climate change on the origin of Homo, our own impact on the planet, and the peopling of the globe and global warming.

Martha Tappen’s interests lie in the reconstruction of early human behavior, especially from the time of the earliest archeological record. She has worked in the Congo, Ethiopia and South Africa, and in recent years has concentrated her work on the earliest site found outside of Africa, Dmanisi, in the Republic of Georgia, studying the fossil mammals from the site.  Tappen teaches courses on human evolution and the interpretation of ancient bones.

MEMORIALS AND THE POLITICS OF MEMORY
Andrea Berlin, Classical and Near Eastern Studies
CNES 1905, Section 001
3 credits
Wednesday, 1:30 - 4:30 p.m.
Nicholson Hall 315
90415

What do the Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt have in common? All are (or have been) commemorated by physical memorials on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Memorials have come to be the standard response to all manner of events in modern America, especially large-scale tragedies such as the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11. Yet we have not always or even regularly built national memorials – nor do we agree on which events deserve commemoration, or indeed how to commemorate. In this we are no different from other societies, past or present. The ancient Greeks and Romans also had an on-again, off-again relationship to the idea of physical memorials. In this seminar, we’ll study the who, what, where, and why of memorials, looking both at modern times and at classical antiquity. We’ll analyze form and message, consider successful and unsuccessful memorials, and, most importantly, work to understand why people build memorials when and where they do.

Andrea Berlin is an archaeologist who has worked in Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Cyprus, and Egypt.  Her research focuses on daily life in antiquity, and she is especially interested in studying the relationship between political events and people’s everyday lives.  She is a specialist in ancient pottery, which she can identify and date even without putting all of the pieces back together.

GAME THEORY AND HUMAN NATURE
Aldo Rustichini, Economics
ECON 1905, Section 002
3 credits
TuTh, 2:30 - 3:45 p.m.
Blegen Hall 135
83750

Game theory involves the systematic analysis of behavior in strategic environments, like wars among states, competition among firms, and relationships between husband and wife. Together with the application of experimental methods, it is now providing a tool to understand some fundamental aspects of human nature, from sympathy to envy.  This seminar will provide the basic tools for a good understanding of game theory and experimental analysis of human behavior in strategic situations.

Aldo Rustichini teaches in the areas of microeconomic theory, game theory, mathematics for economists, decision theory, and political economy. His current research focuses on decision theory (economic decision making), microeconomic theory, models of bounded rationality, economic dynamics, and microeconomic theory.

THE LIMITS OF MARKETS AND THE LIMITS OF GOVERNMENTS
V. V. Chari, Economics
ECON 1905, Section 001
3 credits
TuTh, 9:45 - 11:00 a.m.
82382

In this seminar, we will examine how markets work, both when they work well and when they work poorly. We will trace how human well-being is intricately tied into how governments intervene in markets, and when such interventions are desirable. We will analyze how the government despotism has contributed to human misery and how limits on government power can help promote prosperity. Our readings will range from John Locke, Adam Smith, and Milton Friedman to current Internet blogs on economic issues.

V. V. Chari teaches in the areas of macroeconomics, public finance, and development economics. His current research includes macroeconomic theory, fiscal and monetary policy, and financial intermediation.

RACE AND SPORT
Sara-Jane Mathieu, History
HIST 1907W, Section 001
3 credits
CLE: Cultural Diversity & Writing Intensive
TuTh, 2:30 - 3:45 p.m.
Twin Cities East Bank
90650

This seminar examines the intersection between the experiences of athletes of color and the emergence of organized sports in the United States during the 20th century. It explores the construction of manliness, gender, class, and race through such sports as baseball, basketball, boxing, football, golf, and track and field. This seminar is particularly interested in how organized sports mirror broader social and political debates about the roles of women, as well as those of African, Asian, Native, and Hispanic Americans. We will look at the contributions of Americans of color, their challenges to segregation, the integration of professional sports, and contemporary concerns over athletes of color in college athletics. We will analyze a host of sources for their effectiveness as historical tools, such as biographies, journalists’ accounts, and memoirs.

Sara-Jane Mathieu’s areas of expertise include 20th-century American history and African American history since Reconstruction, with emphasis on migration, social movements, and political resistance.

FROM MONGOL HORDES TO CORPORATE BOARDS: TURKEY PAST AND PRESENT
Giancarlo Casale, History
HIST 1905, Section 001
3 credits
TBA

Thousands of years ago, the world’s first civilization began to develop in the part of the world today known as Turkey. Ever since, the country has alternated between eras when it has flourished as the center of great civilizations in its own right, and more uncomfortable periods of flux when it has served as the crossroads (or battleground) between competing civilizations. Turkey’s current quest to become the first Muslim nation to join the European Union—a project whose uncertain outcome will largely determine the future of relations between Islam and the West—is only the latest manifestation of this repeating pattern in the long history of Turkey’s identity. In this seminar, we will study modern Turkey in historical perspective, and in the process ask some very basic questions about the relationship between the past and the present, and about what it actually means to “belong” to one civilization as opposed to another.  This seminar will focus on assessing how the internal situation of the country affects and is affected by its relationship to the outside world. We will address historical themes such as relations between settled and nomadic societies in the ancient world; early Christianity and the rise of Islam; and “multi-culturalism” in the Ottoman Empire. More contemporary themes will include Turkey’s candidacy to join the European Union; the tension between Islam and Western-style democracy in modern Turkey; the past and present of rights for women and minorities in the country; the “Armenian Question,” and Turkey’s relationship to the ongoing war in Iraq. Students completing this seminar will have the unique opportunity to travel with Professor Casale to Turkey during May term 2008 for a research experience.  Students will register for a 3 credit May term research course and will travel as a group.  Detailed information about the May term course, research areas and travel costs will be provided in the freshman seminar.  Students interested in this May term research course are encouraged to register for Turkish language courses I preparation.

Giancarlo Casale is a specialist in Ottoman history, with a particular interest in the history of mapmaking, global exploration, and piracy in the early modern world. His research on these subjects has taken him to many countries, but after several years spent living abroad (mostly in Turkey) he’s glad to be back home in the upper Midwest.

BEIJING OLYMPICS: SPORTS AND MODERNITY IN CHINA
Christopher Isett, History
HIST 19xx
3 credits
TBA


UTOPIAS AND ANTI-UTOPIAS
George Kliger, Humanities
HUM 1905, Section 001
3 credits
Tuesday, 2:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Blegen Hall 435
89675

This seminar will explore a variety of visions of an ideal society (utopia) and its opposite (anti-utopia) in the writings of philosophers, novelists, psychologists, and social and cultural critics through the ages, from Plato to Orwell, to an example of feminist theory. With regard to each vision, we will examine topics such as fundamental assumptions about human nature, ideals and values worthy of implementation and their compatibility, and the nature of human institutions and their potentials for good and evil. A central concern of the seminar will be to assess the degrees of actual or potential correspondence of these visions to the real world of individual and social existence.

George Kliger’s research and teaching interests include philosophy, literature, and psychology with a focus on the 20th century.

MUSIC AND THE SACRED
Dean W. Billmeyer, Music
MUS 1905, Section 001
3 credits
TuTh, 9:30 - 11:00 a.m.
Ferguson Hall 213
80886

The traditional characterization of sacred music as music written for and performed (or improvised) in religious services in a church or temple serves as a point of departure for this seminar. We will explore sacred music from different perspectives, focusing not only on the rich tradition of hymns, choral, and organ music of the Western church, but also on the inherent content of religious music that somehow makes it “sacred.” Through reading, guided listening, class discussion, and observation of services and concerts, students will study and experience a broad range of music, all of which we call “sacred.” We will learn about the organ and other instruments of Christian and Jewish musical traditions, and the importance of these instruments to the development of Western music. We will take a field trip – an “organ crawl” – to notable organs in the Twin Cities to explore these instruments. We will also study music that does not connect directly to the traditional experience of the church, temple, or mosque, including hymns, chants, and choral and instrumental music, as well as jazz, popular, “new age,” and other “sacred” music.

Dean W. Billmeyer is the University of Minnesota organist. He studied at the Eastman School of Music and Southern Methodist University, and at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna as a Fulbright Scholar. Billmeyer has appeared as a recitalist and clinician throughout the United States, as well as in Austria, Ireland, Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands. His performances have included a number of premieres, and have been broadcast both in America and abroad.

BOB DYLAN
Alex J. Lubet, Music
MUS 1905, Section 002
3 credits
Tuesday, 11:15 - 12:05 p.m. and Thursday, 11:15 - 1:10 p.m.
Ferguson Hall 123
90609

Bob Dylan, a native Minnesotan who still owns a farm and spends much of his time here, is arguably the most important living musician and songwriter in the English-speaking Western world. This seminar examines his entire career, primarily focusing on his artistry and emphasizing his contributions as a musician and composer. The materials of the seminar will consist primarily of Dylan’s audio and video recordings, other recordings of his compositions, and primary source readings, that is, Dylan’s own writings and interviews.

Professor Lubet mostly teaches popular culture—music, movies, theatre—and says he almost feels guilty that he gets paid to do it. He has won both of the U of M’s distinguished teaching awards as well as the “Grapevine Award” for “Best Course at the U.” Primarily trained as a composer, he writes music that he performs himself on guitar. He does research on issues related to music and disability. In his spare time, he cooks and does word puzzles and lots of volunteer work; and he loves dogs. His wife is also a musician.

SOCRATES AND HIS PHILOSOPHY
Sandra Peterson, Philosophy
PHIL 1905, Section 001
3 credits
Wednesday, 2:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Blegen Hall 430
86084

The execution of Socrates in 399 B.C. for corrupting the youth of Athens is considered a founding event of Western philosophy. We will study Socrates as depicted in Plato’s dialogues (since Socrates himself wrote nothing). We will read Plato’s depiction of Socrates’ defense speech at his trial, a conversation between Socrates and adolescent interlocutors, and a conversation between Socrates and some professional educators of Athenian youth.  We will attempt to understand what Socrates meant when, in reaction to the Delphic Oracle’s pronouncement that no one was wiser than Socrates, Socrates said that he knew nothing important. We will also attempt to understand why those who convicted Socrates thought he was corrupting young people and to understand why reflecting on Socrates might improve us today.  Seminar readings will include Plato’s Apology, Lysis, Hippias Minor, Theaetetus, and Rival Lovers.

Sandra Peterson’s main research area is ancient philosophy, and her current research is on Socrates. She is also interested in philosophy of language and in the 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

FOSSILS AND PHILOSOPHY: HOW DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE PAST?
Alan Love, Philosophy
PHIL 1905, Section 002
3 credits
Tuesday, 2:30 - 5:00 p.m.
Blegen Hall 220
89795

Everyone is familiar with fossils and maybe even more familiar with their reconstructed representations in blockbuster movies. But how do we know about past forms of life, such as dinosaurs, which are now extinct?  We only have trace remains of their existence – and understanding their meaning requires tremendous knowledge and interpretation. From the perspective of historical sciences (such as geology or paleontology), how does the “scientific method” operate when you cannot go back and observe or experiment on what you are trying to explain?  By analogy, imagine if you had five pages from an ancient book. You have no idea what the book is, the pages are not in consecutive order, the ink is smudged and unreadable in many places, and the language of the writing is unfamiliar. Is there a way to use this indirect evidence to piece together a picture of the entire book (or even portions of it)? How can we be confident that our understanding of the past (“historical knowledge”), whether it be fossils or human history, is correct (even in part)?  How do historical sciences generate knowledge?  These are the philosophical questions that we will address in this seminar.

Alan Love’s research and teaching in philosophy focus on scientific reasoning and the nature of knowledge in biology.  He has written and taught on Darwin, evolution, developmental biology, and paleontology.  He is often heard talking about something called Evo-devo (not his band, though he plays guitar), or “evolutionary developmental biology,” a new area of research where he has been trying to understand the conceptual structure of explanations for evolutionary novelties.  On occasion he has moonlighted as a biologist doing research on Australian sea urchins.  In addition to this formal research and teaching, he tries to scientifically reason with his four children (success rate varies) and supervise the collecting of various insects, snakes, lizards, and frogs.  One memorable supervision moment involved prying bones from the carcass of a sea lion (these will be on display in the seminar).  When he gets spare moments, he enjoys reading various forms of fiction (from late Victorian novels to fantasy).

PSYCHOPATHS AND SERIAL KILLERS
Christopher Patrick, Psychology
PSY 1910W, Section 001
3 credits
CLE: Writing Intensive
Monday, 12:30 - 3:30 p.m.
Elliott Hall N423
82284

Psychopathic personality has been described as a “mask of sanity.”  While appearing superficially normal and personable, psychopaths exact a costly toll on society by covertly manipulating and coercing others to satisfy selfish aims and desires.  Among the general public, the term “psychopath” brings to mind the image of a crazed or sadistic serial killer.  However, psychopaths do not meet legal or conventional psychiatric criteria for insanity, and while it is probably true that most serial killers are psychopathic, most psychopaths are not homicidal.  In this seminar, we will review and discuss existing diagnostic criteria for psychopathic personality and distinctions between this and other psychiatric disorders.  Using case histories, we will examine different expressions of the psychopathic personality, including criminal and successful types, as well as the serial murderer.  Other topics will include: psychopaths in history, literature, and film; personality profiling; causal factors in criminal and psychopathic behavior; and research on emotion and thought processes in psychopaths.

Christopher Patrick’s research investigates basic emotional and cognitive processes through use of psychophysiological and behavioral measures, and the role of affect in psychological disorders.

THEATRE WITH ATTITUDE
David Bernstein, Theatre Arts and Dance
TH 1911W, Section 001
3 credits
CLE: Writing Intensive
Thursday, 6:30 - 9:30 p.m.
Rarig Center 550B
68728

This seminar will introduce non-theatre majors to the richness and diversity of live theatre, through performance and text.  We will attend performances at a variety of Twin Cities theatres and use this experience to develop a critical eye and a critical language for thinking about live performance.  Our viewing will be supplemented by in-class discussions and talks with theatre and dance professionals.

David Bernstein has thirty years of professional management and artistic experience in the nonprofit theatre world.  He is a founding member of the Attic Theatre in Detroit and founder/managing director of the Performing Network in Ann Arbor.