Examines from a humanist perspective the shifting relationships between social and cultural practices and technologies. It explores several key interfaces, including structures of belief, aesthetic practices and identity formation.
Explores various moral, political, psychological, and metaphysical issues surrounding our nature as embodied beings, utilizing works of science fiction (novels, short stories, and films) as "thought experiments" by which we vary some aspect of our embodiment and ask what consequences would follow. Topics include: gender, personal identity, perception, emotion, the nature of mind, and posthumanism.
Addresses illness as a narrative device in film and other forms of media and by so doing, raises social and cultural concerns regarding the body, protest, transcendence and healing, as well as gender/sexual politics.
This course explores narratives of nature in a variety of fiction and nonfiction texts. It examines how different figures and understandings of nature are developed in and through diverse modes of story-telling or narrative forms.
This course explores how visual images affect our understandings and perspectives of the natural world, through the examination of a variety of technologies and practices of visual representations of nature in different cultural and historical contexts.Course credit exclusion: AP/HUMA 3226 6.00, AP/HUMA 4226 3.00, AP/HUMA 4226 6.00, SC/STS 3226 3.00 (as of FW18)
How do three-dimensional objects or artefacts - that is, matter that has been crafted or worked on by humans - embody, transmit and transform intangible aspects of culture, such as values, knowledge, or history? Over the term, students will develop intensive case studies of an object of their choice. They will gain experience with the […]
This course focuses on issues, skills and approaches to develop a critical attitude to forms of knowledge and underlie any cultural production. The course also emphasizes strategies for reading, writing, research and analysis, as ell as situating knowledge in historical and political contexts. It pays special attention to the four streams of Power, Diaspora and […]
This course focuses on issues, skills and approaches to develop a critical attitude to forms of knowledge and underlie any cultural production. The course also emphasizes strategies for reading, writing, research and analysis, as ell as situating knowledge in historical and political contexts. It pays special attention to the four streams of Power, Diaspora and […]
Students discover how local cultural production is fostered, disseminated, and in some cases restricted in and by the communities they serve. Building on cultural theories and concepts of public pedagogy, students work in small groups with partner organizations to engage in a choice of research or community focused experiential learning activities to be used for […]
This course introduces students to the theoretical study of culture, offering tools for understanding, questioning, and analyzing the social, historical, and political contexts of the media we experience on a day-to-day basis. It covers and develops the four streams of the Humanities Major: Power, Diaspora, and Race; Arts, Material, and Popular cultures; Digital, Technological, and […]