HUMAN STUDIES
█ FUTURES STUDIES ALICE ANDERSON PRESENTS HER SENIOR PROJECT
Gray Cox Cost: $25
The course examines classic and contemporary texts in French literature, philosophy, and anthropology and their relationships to current life and culture in France. Contemporary institutions, cultural practices, and conflicts are looked at in context of classic texts and framed ideas in French intellectual and cultural history. For example, in current debates about feminism, postmodernism, immigration, “laicité,” ecology, and crisis, what are French understandings of these issues, and how are they informed by classic works of Descartes, Rousseau, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Lacan, Derrida, and Cixous? An important element of the course is to examine challenges and opportunities presented when working with texts in two languages. History of translation/philosophy theories and the difficulties peculiar to cross-language literature are of special interest. This course is open to students at all levels of French. Prerequisites: permission of instructor. *The course fee will be factored into the total cost of the Vichy study abroad program.
█ FROM NATIVE EMPIRES TO NATION STATES Todd Little-Siebold This course is a history of Latin America from Native American contact cultures, through the contemporary period covering socio-political processes. An emphasis is placed on the fusion of pre-contact societies into a new socio-cultural formation in the colonial period, and then the shared yet divergent history of the region after the collapse of colonial rule. In the second half the class emphasizes the rise of the nation state in Latin America with particular emphasis on dictatorship and rebellions. The course uses traditional texts, novels, and film to explore this huge geographical and chronological expanse.
Are we approaching a point of radical change in human history in which exponential technological change will result in a singularity, a transformation so rapid and fundamental that we will not be able to comprehend it? What will be the principal features of life on Earth in the mid-future — 20 to 40 years from now — and how should we best plan to deal with them? To what extent will they be the result of unavoidable historical trends, human planning and invention, or random contingencies? What skills and methods can we learn to imagine the future, invent it, predict it, plan for it, and/ or cope with it? This is a very advanced, interdisciplinary course in human ecology. It includes readings in public policy by social scientists and futurists like Ray Kurzweil, Alvin Toffler, Otto Scharmer, and James Martin as well as works in fiction and film. Classes combine a seminar format for critical discussions of readings with exercises in using different methods for dealing with the future. The course includes a weekend workshop in futures invention using methods developed by Warren Ziegler and Elise Boulding. This workshop will be open to public participation. Members of the COA community interested in renewing the College curriculum are especially encouraged to participate. Students are expected to take part in leading seminar sessions, develop reports on alternative approaches to dealing with the future and visions of it, and do a final project. The final project should be a vision/description of some key features of a desired, possible future, and strategies for promoting it. It may use interdisciplinary theories, predictive models, narrative, visual art, or other creative approaches to develop it. Evaluations are based on intermediate to advanced levels of competency in disciplines used in the final project. There will be a weekly lab session. Prerequisites: signature of instructor.
POLITICS, AND SCIENCE █ GENDER, IN FAIRY TALES OF THE WORLD Katharine Turok Course limit: 15 Why do fairy tales capture the attention of adults and children all over the world and endure in popular literary and cinematic forms? What do they reveal to psychologists, biologists, historians, linguists, artists, anthropologists, and educators? Do they politicize or de politicize? Socialize or subvert? What is the postfeminist, postmodern response to the Brothers Grimm? What do fairy tales convey about animal behavior, entomology,
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