College Courses
Office: 216 Taylor Hall, Phone: (845)
437-5226
College Courses deal with important questions about human
nature and culture, and our relation to the natural world,
to technology, and to our own work.
In College Courses, students explore significant books,
works of art, and other expressions of the human spirit,
past and present, Western and non-Western. Because College
Courses are interdisciplinary and integrative, they expose
students to different instructors, disciplinary approaches,
and major research techniques in order to illuminate a text,
a human dilemma, or a major institution from many
directions. Students thus enrich their comprehension of the
topic, and enhance their ability to think from multiple
perspectives. They also develop an awareness of the
connections among bodies of knowledge by crossing the
borders that separate disciplines, and by examining
relations among diverse works and across cultures and
centuries.
Because of the foundational concerns of the College
Courses, students gain a framework of knowledge and
questions that can help orient and integrate their other
studies at Vassar. Freshmen may find these courses
especially valuable because they introduce a variety of
disciplines and provide the broad historical and cultural
perspectives for later, more specialized courses. Sophomores
and juniors may wish to take a College Course involving
their major field in order to discover how it relates to
other disciplines. Seniors may find the courses useful as a
way of integrating their coursework and reflecting on
critical issues.
[101a. Civilization in Question] (1)
This course undertakes to question civilization in
various ways. First, by looking at texts from ancient,
medieval, and renaissance cultures, as well as texts and
films from our own, it introduces students to major works of
the Western tradition and asks how they bring under scrutiny
their own tradition. In particular we examine how identity
is constructed in these texts and how political and social
roles limit and strengthen people's sense of who they are.
Second, because the course is team-taught by faculty from
different disciplines, we explore the ways a text is
interpreted and how different meanings are found in it
because of the different perspectives brought to the class
by its faculty. Finally, we reflect on the role questioning
plays in the process of a liberal arts education and the
different kinds of attitudes and intellectual outlooks we
learn to bring to the study of any text, which impels us to
consider the ways we allow the past to inform and question
the present and the present to inform and question our
understanding of the past. Readings for the course may
include: The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Homer's
Iliad, Aeschylus' Oresteia, Europides'
Bacchae, Wolf's Cassandra, Calasso's
Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, Winterson's Sexing
the Cherry, and essays by Campbell, Hillman, Jung,
Neumann, and Nietzsche. Ms. Darlington (English), Mr. Shive
(College Course).
Open to all classes.
Two 75-minute lecture periods and one 50-minute
discussion section.
182a. The Mythic Imagination: Texts and Enactments
(1)
Who needs myths? What are they? Why do human beings
create them? Where do they come from and what functions do
they serve? What keeps them alive within a cultural
tradition? What happens to a culture when the old myths lose
their power and die, and what becomes of the psychic energy
that they once carried? To explore these questions we study
a variety of myths, primarily from the classical world. We
examine their archetypal patterns, considering as well how
mythical motifs appear in our own lives and dreams and how
mythical subjects can be consciously embodied and enacted.
The class is experimental and includes personal writing,
storytelling, creation of ritual, movement, and
image-making. Readings include Homer's Odyssey,
Aeschylus' Oresteia, Euripides' Bacchae,
Robert Graves' Greek Myths. the homeric "Hymn to
Demeter", "Eros and Psyche" from Apuleius'
Metamorphoses, C.S. Lewis' Till we Have Faces,
Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry. and selected
poems and essays. Ms. Darlington and Mr. Greene.
Open to all classes.
Two 75-minute lecture periods
([201a. African Conceptions: The Shaping of
Freedom] (1)
(Same as African Studies 201 and History 201) In Africa
and the United States contemporary modes of thought about
and the struggle for HUMAN RIGHTS reach back to Africa's
"Golden Age" (before the European Renaissance and before the
period of European Navigation). This course recreates a
public memory that counteracts the caricature of the
enslaved African who could never be a symbol of freedom. It
examines how African and African American experiences
reflect the struggle for a social contract that creates and
protects the human rights of all members of the world
community, with regard to economic guarantees of food,
clothing, shelter, education and recreation. As creative
intellectuals, we must be concerned with how the cultural
system can allow for the most profound development of each
individual's personal human dignity. Materials are drawn
from African and African American history, literature and
film. Authors may include Ibn Khaldun, Peter Abrahams,
Margaret Walker, Lorraine Hansberry W.E.B. DuBois, Nelson
Mandela and others. Ms. Berkley (Africana Studies), Mr.
Rashid (History/Africana Studies).
Two 75-minute meetings weekly.
Taught in alternate years. Not offered in 2000/01.
281b. The Novel in History (1)
This course examines the European novel from the late
seventeenth century to the eve of World War I. It does not
offer a history of the novel but instead explores how the
novel functions in history: it traces the fluid boundaries
between literary texts and their historical contexts. By
mapping out the political, social, cultural, and national
histories of various English, Irish, French, Russian, and
German novels, the course explores how these works reflected
and influenced the evolution of modern European history
itself. Over the semester we consider reading and writing
practices (i.e., publication, reception, censorship, the
novel's move from elite spaces into popular culture) in
order to uncover the larger cultural meanings (i.e.,
"European-ness," citizenship, gender) embedded in these
discursive practices. Readings may include: The Princess
of Cleves, Oroonoko, Pamela, The Nun, The Sorrows of Young
Werther, Le Père Goriot, Jane Eyre, Madame Bovary,
The Double, Heart of Darkness, and The Portrait of
the Artist as a Young Man. Students have the option of
collaborating in a serialized web-novel. Ms. Choudhury
(History), Ms. Zlotnick (English), and Ms. Hiner
(French).
Two 50-minute lectures and one 50-minute discussion
section per week.
330b. The Intellectual Roots of the Twentieth Century
(1)
(Same as Science, Technology, and Society 330b)
380a Nietzsche and His Umbrella (1)
(Same as Philosophy 380) This seminar examines the impact
of Nietzsche's work on contemporary thought. Debates over
postmodernism often pivot around the place of Nietzschethis
is especially true of philosophy, literary theory, and
cultural studies. His thought provides many of the axioms of
this discourse. This course examines the most important
interpretations and appropriations of Nietzsche's work by
thinkers such as Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, de
Man, and Kofman. Among these key texts are The Birth of
Tragedy, "Truth and Lie in the Extra Moral Sense," "The
Use and Disadvantages of History," the early essays on
rhetoric, The Genealogy of Morals, selections from
The Will Power, and Ecce Homo. We explore the
conflicts and complementaries among these different
interpretations and assess their importance. Mr.Chang
(English), Mr. Murray (Philosophy).
[381b. The Decadent Imagination at the Fin de
Siècle] (1)
(Same as Music 381b) This seminar explores some of the
relationships between literary aestheticism and music at the
fin de siècle (1875-1914). Highlighting formal and
thematic correspondences between the arts, the course takes
stock of the cultural scene in which decadence flourished as
one of the most alluring and disreputable of the high arts.
Authors include Poe, Baudelaire, Swinburne, Pater, Wilde,
Huysmans, Nietzsche, Gautier, D'Annunzio, and Mann.
Composers include: Wagner, Debussy, Strauss, Schonberg, and
Berg. Ms. Graham (English), Mr. Mann (Music).
Not offered in 2000/01.