This experiential course introduces students to the theory and practice of digital archiving. Students examine the socialand political function of cultural and archival institutions through critical readings in the politics of classifying,representing, and exhibiting culture, archives and power, copyright and intellectual property, and digitizing culturalheritage.
This experiential course introduces students to the theory and practice of digital archiving. Students examine the socialand political function of cultural and archival institutions through critical readings in the politics of classifying,representing, and exhibiting culture, archives and power, copyright and intellectual property, and digitizing culturalheritage.
This course analyzes the gendered nature of modern Western scientific culture. It draws on literary, historical and philosophical sources, films and contemporary feminist writings.
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.
Probes the role of pleasure, desire and power in contemporary consumer culture, especially around objects of consumption, such as so-called designer goods or iconic products such as the Kitchenaid mixer or the Ipod.
Examines the specific role that art and artists have played in selected social movements.
Nietzsche's famous, prophetic claim that "God is dead" is often taken as describing the declining significance of God within modernity. Adopting neither a pro- nor anti- theistic stance, this course critically examines the relationship between atheism and modernity in Western thought and culture by drawing upon religious, philosophical, scientific, literary, historical, sociological, artistic, and cinematic […]