Freshman Seminars in the Residential Colleges

FRS 102 Revolutions and the Era of American Independence  HA
James Dun
Professor Whitney J. Oates ’25 *31 Freshman Seminar in the Humanities

FRS 104 The Literature and Politics of Encounter  LA
Natasha Lee
Peter T. Joseph ’72 Freshman Seminar in Human Values

This course examines how our encounters with other human beings, through love, travel, commerce or conflict, prompt us to reflect upon who we are and how our identity is always part and parcel of our relations to others. Why, and how, do individuals form communities? How do literary texts stage different modes of sociability – from appeals to a democratic compact to the Early Modern defense of the polite ideal? How do historical circumstances and material conditions, such as European explorations of the ‘New World’ or the rise of a global economy, shape the ties that bind people together? Lastly, what notions of the individual do different models of community presuppose – and how does fiction, in staging relations between persons, invite us to question such foundations? 

FRS 106 Sound, Music, and ... Physics  ST
Pierre Piroué
Richard L. Smith ’70 Freshman Seminar

This is a seminar for students who love music and want to learn more about how it is made. The traditional way to teach the physics of music is to start with basic physics—vibration, waves, Fourier analysis, resonating and radiating systems, etc.—followed by applications to musical instruments, acoustics, scales, recording, and reproduction. In other words, theory first and applications later. The trouble with this approach is that it really only suits scientifically minded students. Another approach is to develop the physical concepts and the musical applications together, and this is the approach taken in this seminar. Although it will make for a somewhat unusual ordering of the material, it is more accessible to non-scientists and better explains the interplay of music and physics.

Musical scales and consonance will be discussed first because it requires only very simple scientific observations. Brass instruments will also be discussed early because a lot about them can be understood with relatively little physical knowledge. On the other hand, woodwind instruments, acoustics, human ear, voice, etc., are subjects that require considerably more physics for their comprehension, and hence must wait until the end.

FRS 108 Art and Science of Motorcycle Design  ST
Michael G. Littman
Donald P. Wilson ’33 and Edna M. Wilson Freshman Seminar

FRS 110 Transformations of an Empire: Power, Religion, and the Arts of Medieval Rome  LA
Nino Zchomelidse

This freshman seminar investigates the impact of political, religious, and social change for the making of art and architecture in the city of Rome from Constantine the Great (ca. 274–337 CE) until 1308, when the papal court moved to Avignon. From being a thriving metropolis and the political center of an empire in a pagan, multi-ethnical society, Rome became a small town of a few thousand inhabitants dwelling in the ancient ruins under the spiritual leadership of a powerless Christian bishop and unprotected from the invasions of the migrating peoples from Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Later transformations concern the rise to political power of the popes, achieved by the military alliance with the Frankish dynasty of Charlemagne around 800, and the controversy over the superiority of power between the German emperors and the Roman popes.

How did the transformation from worldly to religious power affect the architecture of public buildings in the city? What strategies were developed to visually promote the new religious leaders of the city, the popes, and the new Christian God? How did the new status of Rome as one of the most important Christian pilgrim sites (with its countless bodies of Early Christian martyrs in the catacombs outside the city) influence urban development? And finally, what impact did the economic ups and downs in these periods of transition have for the arts? As we try to reconstruct the “image” and the appearance of medieval Rome, this seminar discusses ideas and concepts behind different forms of leadership, both political and religious, as they intersect with the power of the arts and the self-referential character of a city that is obsessed with its own past.

A mandatory field trip to Rome is planned for the week of spring break, when students will visit the sites that are discussed in the classroom. All costs of the spring break trip are covered by the University. (Wednesday, 1:30-4:20 p.m.)

FRS 112 The Globalization of Domestic Courts  SA
Ralf Michaels
Dean Eva Gossman Freshman Seminar in Human Values

The most significant effect of globalization on courts has not been the proliferation of supranational courts and tribunals. Instead, the most significant impact concerns domestic courts, especially (but of course not exclusively) U.S. courts. Whether they want to or not, U.S. courts are active participants in global governance. This is a new role compared to their traditional domestic role, and one that is not always fully understood and perhaps not always fully appreciated.

FRS 114 "Bleed in Sport": Theater, Sacrifice, and Culture  LA
Oliver Arnold

We will study the relation between blood sacrifice and theater in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England, France, and Mexico; to give ourselves some literary historical and generic contexts, we will also devote some attention to the theatrical cultures of ancient Greece and fifteenth-century England and to the way contemporary dramatists have rethought the relation between theater and sacrifice. We will attend closely to the various kinds of religious work that theater has often done—disseminating doctrine, staging exemplary religious narratives—but our largest concerns will be the proposition that theatrical experience replaces blood sacrifice and the ways in which the logic and structure of sacrifice converges with and diverges from the logic and structure of compassion, revenge, political representation, the incest taboo, and theatrical representation itself. Sacrifice will be our central problematic, but we will also consider theatrical representations and appropriations of communion, purgation, idolatry, iconoclasm, and scriptural exegesis. The course will be comparativist in a double sense: we will attend to religious, political, and aesthetic difference as we move through time and across national borders; and we will consider the different ways in which anthropologists, philosophers, literary critics, and scholars of religious culture approach sacrifice, the relation between art and religion, and the interpretation of sacred texts.  (Tuesday, 1:30-4:20 p.m.)

FRS 116 Neuroethics: The Intersection of Neuroscience with Social and Ethical Issues  EM
Charles Gross

FRS 118 History and Cinema: Fascism in Film  HA
Gaetana Marrone-Puglia
Peter T. Joseph ’72 Freshman Seminar in Human Values

In October 1922, when Benito Mussolini completed his semi-legal seizure of power in Italy, the Fascist era began in triumph and was cheered by the crowds. It ended two decades later in the Piazzale Loreto at Milan, where the bodies of Mussolini and his mistress were strung up by the heels by the partisans as silent evidence that the Fascist regime was indeed over.

FRS 120 Life on Mars—Or Maybe Not  SA
Michael Lemonick and Edwin Turner

A few years ago, the headlines screamed with the news that scientists had discovered evidence of fossilized bacteria in a rock that had come from Mars. Over the next several months, independent researchers examined the claims carefully and concluded that the evidence was poor at best—but that negative assessment, which remains the consensus among experts, was barely reported at all, with the result that most people still think the question of life on other planets has already been settled. More recently, the New York Times carried a headline declaring that “Cloning May Lead to Healthy Pork.” But a careful reading of the story made it clear that “may not” would probably have made for a more accurate, though obviously a less enticing, headline. And virtually everyone is familiar with the endless news stories that declare a particular vitamin or food or physical activity to be good for the health, inevitably followed a few years later by a story saying that the very same food or activity is in fact bad for you.

Most people learn most of what they know about science through the popular media. Yet as these examples make clear, media reports, even in respected national publications, are frequently confusing, incomplete, or even just plain wrong. Even when they’re accurate, moreover, they convey an idea of science that Albert Einstein himself skewered half a century ago. From such episodes, he wrote, “the reader gets the [mistaken] impression that every five minutes there is a revolution in science, somewhat like the coups d’etat in some of the smaller unstable republics.”

So how reliable is science news? In this seminar, we’ll investigate this question from the perspectives of both science and the media, led by one instructor from each camp. We’ll analyze several major news stories that have dominated the media at various times over the past few years—life on Mars, intelligent design, possible cancer cures, the “discovery” that some stars appear to be older than the universe, global warming, and more. We’ll also address science news as it arises, as it inevitably will during the semester.

In each case, we’ll work to understand the actual science that led to these reports. Then we’ll look in detail at the forces at play in shaping media coverage, and how they tend to distort the science. Garbling and oversimplification by reporters is one factor, but this, as we’ll see, is only part of the story. Other factors include the competition for funding among scientists, the politics that lead universities and government agencies to hype their successes, the competition between scientific journals—all flavored with plenty of ego on all sides.

FRS 122 The Everglades Today and Tomorrow: Global Change and the Impact of Human Activities on the Biosphere  ST
Anne Morel-Kraepiel
Richard L. Smith ’70 Freshman Seminar

“The Everglades are a test. If we pass the test, we get to keep planet Earth.” —Marjorie Stoneman Douglas

Global warming and global change are perhaps the greatest threats to the future of our planet. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts a doubling of atmospheric CO ₂ by the end of the century. Our life, and that of our children, will be affected by the impact of human activities on the planet in ways that we are just beginning to understand.

The Everglades, a unique “River of Grass” in South Florida, has long been emblematic of humankind’s complicated relationship with the environment. The taming of the Everglades, once considered a national symbol of the progress of civilization, has had vast unintended consequences for the entire region. What remains of the original Everglades ecosystem is increasingly threatened as urban and agricultural expansion in South Florida compete for the available water while adding excess nutrients and contaminants to this fragile system. The people of South Florida are simultaneously dependent upon the fertile lands of this region while causing irreparable damage to the fragile ecosystem upon which they depend. This struggle between dependence and disturbance of one’s environment is not unique to the Everglades; a similar scenario plays out in habitats across the globe.

In this seminar we will study the scientific basis of aquatic and terrestrial biogeochemistry, the very processes that sustain life on our planet, and we will use the Everglades as an example to explore how human activities affect natural cycles. In the first half of the semester we will link lectures and laboratory instruction to introduce the scientific concepts underlying the global cycles of nutrients and contaminants in the context of global change. We will also design research projects for a seven-day excursion during spring break to the Everglades. During the trip, we will apply the general concepts learned in the first half of the course to the Everglades ecosystem. We will gain direct knowledge of the geology, chemistry, and biology of the system. We will also explore the social and political aspects of managing such a fragile ecosystem and spend time contributing to the restoration effort. We will collect samples throughout the field trip to address the specific research projects that we designed prior to our trip. During the second half of the semester we will analyze the samples we collected on our trip and synthesize this new information into our existing knowledge of the Everglades.

FRS 124 When Cows Go Crazy: The Inextricable Links between Human and Animal Health  SA
Laura Kahn
Agnew Family Freshman Seminar

Since 1940, more than 330 infectious diseases have emerged into human populations. The majority of these have been caused by zoonoses, which are diseases of animals that infect humans. Examples of zoonotic diseases include HIV/AIDS, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (e.g., mad cow disease), West Nile virus, ebola, and avian influenza. Many of the agents of bioterrorism are zoonotic, including anthrax, plague, and tularemia. Since the conditions that promote zoonotic disease emergence and spread persist, we should anticipate that more of these diseases will continue to threaten global health.

In the 19th century, there was considerable communication and collaboration between physicians and veterinarians. Medical luminaries such as doctors Rudolf Virchow and William Osler recognized that understanding and improving animal health improved human health. In the 20th century, these collaborative efforts waned and the two professions have moved apart. However, the growing challenges of the 21st century demand that the barriers that have developed between them be broken. Students will be introduced to the “One Health Initiative” concept, which seeks to integrate human, animal, and ecological health.

In this seminar, we will explore the history of veterinary medicine and how its initial mission was primarily to enhance human health. Animals will be divided into four categories: companion (pets), livestock, exotic/zoo, and wildlife. Who owns the animals determines how governments respond to crises, so we will examine the government infrastructures that are responsible for animal health.

FRS 126 Architects in Quest of the Ideal City  LA
Ivan Zaknic

The visionary city has preoccupied architects throughout history and no less in our own time—from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Broadacre City to Le Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse to Paolo Soleri’s community of tomorrow, Arcosanti. The growth of cities has been the one unchanging factor in the march (if not “progress”) of civilization throughout the world. As people become more alert to environmental and ecological damage, these mega-cities appear to generate more problems than solutions, and, in fact, the new urban settlements now being built might no longer rightly be called cities.

This seminar will examine the architectural and urban principles behind several of the most famous models for the ideal city proposed over the past thousand years. By the second half of the semester, we should be able to draw up guidelines for a model city appropriate to our times. The participants will be asked to confront such questions as: Can images of an ideal city still serve as a regulative model and inspiration? Can a city be regulated without being regimented? How much does communal living or urban environment depend upon good spatial planning, “inspired design,” and how much upon enlightened personalities? What are the best ways to create enclosures and privacy, even as population density increases? With the advent of cyberspace and Internet communities, and the possible dispersal and isolation of the work force in individual homes, will the urban community of the future any longer require a concentration of people in the workspace, or are we face to face only with interface?

FRS 128 The Book of Genesis  EM
James Diamond
University Center for Human Values Freshman Seminar

The Book of Genesis is one of the fundamental documents of Western culture. The primary aim of this seminar is to cover a reading of all 50 chapters of Genesis so that by its end the students will be grounded in the text. We will examine how contemporary Biblical scholarship understands the origins, composition, and redaction of the book but the emphasis will be on identifying the ideas and themes the book presents that underwrite the values of Western culture. Some examples of the latter are the sanctity of human life, moral responsibility, and covenant. We will also take note of the issues the book holds up such as violence, fratricide, treachery, and deceit and get some idea of how three world religions read the stories that deal with them. (Tuesday, 1:30-4:20 p.m.)

FRS 130 Indigenous Peoples and Historic Injustice  EM
Anna Stilz
Professor Amy Gutmann Freshman Seminar in Human Values

The United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand are all settler societies, populated by descendants of immigrants. In each of these societies, however, the state’s territory was originally inhabited by indigenous peoples who were exterminated, displaced, or conquered as part of the settlement process. The descendants of these original inhabitants remain part of these countries today, albeit reduced in number and often economically and culturally vulnerable. What is the proper way for settler societies to respond to the unjust dispossessions of indigenous peoples that form part of their past? What do these societies owe the descendants of indigenous peoples? Do they owe indigenous peoples special rights, partial sovereignty over their affairs, reparations, affirmative action, or at least a symbolic apology? Or do they simply owe them the same treatment they extend to other citizens?

In considering the answers to these questions, we will examine some important topics in political philosophy, including the basis for rights over property and territory, the importance of preserving indigenous cultures, and the status of self-determination and self-government claims. The readings will include primary and secondary sources that examine the legal and political history of indigenous peoples, especially in the U.S., but also in other settler societies such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. We will investigate how these societies have evolved different legal frameworks to address cross-cultural differences.

FRS 132 What Can the Science of Economics Teach Us about the Theory of the State?  SA
Eli Salzberger
Kurt and Beatrice Gutmann Freshman Seminar in Human Values

When “economics” is mentioned, our intuitive thoughts turn to markets, prices, demand, supply, inflation, interest rate, and unemployment. In fact, the science of economics has broadened in recent decades to encompass analyses of areas outside the traditional economic markets. Economic analysis of law is one of the most important contemporary paradigms to examine law in a theoretical perspective. So are the economic analyses of politics and of political philosophy.

The course will introduce several tools and models from economics, especially from its subfields of public choice, social choice, and game theory, and will examine their application to the theory of the state, or to political philosophy. It will draw on some of the writings of classical political philosophers, such as Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, as well as the American founding fathers, trying to explain and evaluate their arguments in the language of economics. Some additional insights as to both normative and positive analyses of the theory of the state will be further discussed, such as the role of constitutions, separation of powers, and judicial review. (Monday and Wednesday, 11:00 a.m.-12:20 p.m.)

FRS 134 Political, Allegorical, and Mythical Narrative Cycles in Roman Art  LA
Hugo Meyer

FRS 136 Science and Policy of Global Environmental Issues  SA
Denise Mauzerall
Bert G. Kerstetter ’66 Freshman Seminar

The Earth is currently undergoing extraordinarily rapid environmental change. How we negotiate the next few decades will have a large influence on future life on Earth. Since 1990, when many of Princeton’s entering freshmen were born, the world population has grown by approximately 1.6 billion people—approximately the total number of people alive in 1900. Between 2000 and 2050, global population is expected to grow more than another 50 percent (from about 6 billion to more than 9 billion people). In addition, global affluence has increased, which has led to larger per capita consumption of food, energy, and natural resources. In order to supply everyone with goods and services, the global emission of greenhouse gases and air pollutants has increased, as has the conversion of forests and grasslands to agriculture and urban use, the extraction of minerals and fossil fuels, the use of freshwater, and the depletion of global fisheries. Global consumption and emissions has resulted in the pollution of air, water, and land, accelerating climate change and the extinction of species. Profound changes to the surface and atmosphere of the Earth are visible from satellites in space.

In this seminar we will examine a number of interconnected global environmental issues including population growth, climate change, air pollution, energy use, land surface change, and biodiversity loss. In each case we will first examine their underlying scientific basis and will then explore current and potential future policy responses. In light of the increasing threat of climate change we will examine alternatives to the conventional use of fossil fuels and ask how society can best develop and utilize them. We will discuss how society can ethically balance present demands for natural resources with the needs of future generations. We will explore equity issues between developed and developing countries and examine possible routes toward future sustainable development. For most topics, we will both examine the portrayal of these issues in current international and domestic reports as well as in the media; we will then explore the relationship between the report findings and domestic and international government action. In addition to classroom discussion, three short papers, one longer paper, and a classroom presentation will be required. (Monday, 1:30-4:20 p.m.)

FRS 138 Children and War  EM
Irena Gross
Class of 1976 Freshman Seminar in Human Values

FRS 140 Willa Cather and Company  LA
Lee Mitchell

FRS 142 The Artist as Idea—From Leonardo to Warhol  LA
Bridget Alsdorf

FRS 144 Inside Out: Setting and Interior Space in the Making and Interpreting of Art and Literature  LA -- CANCELED
Karl Kusserow
Professor Whitney J. Oates ’25 *31 Freshman Seminar in the Humanities

FRS 146 Into the Woods! What Disney Didn’t Tell You about Fairy Tales  LA
Volker Schröder

There is much more to fairy tales than the simplified and sanitized versions for children that we’ve all grown up with. This seminar will attempt to explore the complex history of the fairy tale genre and to address the many critical questions it raises: What exactly is a fairy tale? How does it differ from other types of folk tales and, more generally, from myth and legend? Who used to tell those enchanting stories, and to whom? When did they come to be written down and printed, and for what audience? How have their forms, meanings, and functions evolved over time and across cultures? We will examine issues such as gender roles, family dynamics, social structure, and the relations between humans and animals. While the disturbing “darker side” of fairy tales—sadism and cannibalism, incest and infanticide—will have to be courageously confronted, their humorous, playful, subversive, or utopian dimensions will not be neglected.

The readings for this seminar will revolve around the most famous “tale types” (Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, etc.), but also include slightly lesser-known but no less intriguing narratives such as Bluebeard, Rapunzel, Rumpelstiltskin, and Puss-in-Boots. We will study the canonical texts by the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault and discover a number of other versions, ranging from ancient Rome to the Italian Renaissance and the French 18th century. We will also read a selection of diverse and often conflicting interpretations of these stories by historians, folklorists, psychoanalysts, and literary critics. Although the primary focus will be on the European fairy tale tradition, attention will also be paid to its counterparts in non-Western cultures. The second half of the course will examine the literary fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen and Oscar Wilde and conclude with contemporary Anglo-American retellings of the classical narratives (by Anne Sexton, Angela Carter, Robert Coover, etc.). Throughout the semester, we will consider the ways fairy tales have been illustrated over the centuries as well as their presence in opera, ballet, and musical, and watch various video clips and feature films such as Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête and Neil Jordan’s Company of Wolves.

FRS 148 Design, Craft, and Ethical Value  EM
Guy Nordenson
Paul L. Miller ’41 Freshman Seminar in Human Values

A work of design, as opposed to an artifact that has evolved over a long time—say a modern carbon composite kayak as compared to a native Aleutian kayak—is generally thought of as the work of an individual, not that of a collective or a society. In a similar way, art and craft are contrasted as being either the unique, sometimes radical, works of individual genius on the one hand, or the incremental and conservative manifestation of a traditional technique on the other. This difference is in effect a version of the social tension between individual expression and material and social continuity—a tension that is often argued (whether explicitly or implicitly) in strongly moral terms. The idea of buying locally grown food instead of industrialized or imported alternatives, as evidenced by the locavore and slow food movements, is an example of this tension as is the “craftavism” movement. The 19th-century reform and social movement of Arts and Crafts associated with William Morris and John Ruskin has had echoes through the 20th and 21st centuries in the work of important architects and engineers, from Frank Lloyd Wright to Renzo Piano and from Félix Candela to Peter Rice.

FRS 150 Reform and Revolution in Chile  SA
Paul Sigmund
Barrett Family Freshman Seminar

FRS 152 Backstage Dramas: Survival Strategies in the American Theater  LA
Janice Paran

Is the play really the thing? In an entertainment environment dominated by film, television, the Internet, and all manner of downloadable diversions, does the theater matter? Historically, the American theater has had its work cut out for it. No sooner had the United States, in the century following independence, begun to develop a distinctly American theatrical identity than the invention of film permanently altered the cultural landscape. By the mid-20th century, the American theater—especially its musical theater—had found its footing on Broadway, but by the 1960s, artists and audiences leery of Broadway’s commercial focus began to look elsewhere for sustenance, fueling the establishment of Off- and Off-Off-Broadway companies and repertory theaters in cities around the country. Fifty years on, many of those “alternative” venues have, in turn, become part of the theatrical mainstream, subject to increasing commercial pressures and concerned about dwindling audiences. Where do we go from here?

FRS 154 Our Struggling Schools: Race, Culture, and Urban Education  SA
Noliwe Rooks
High Meadows Foundation Freshman Seminar in African American Studies

For his February 2009 address to Congress, the newly elected president, Barack Obama, invited an eighth-grade student from South Carolina, Ty’Sheoma Bethea, to attend and occupy a place of honor next to the first lady, Michelle Obama. Ty’Sheoma attained this honor by writing a moving letter to the president, urging him to provide government funding to repair her aging and dilapidated school. She wrote that though the students in her school were poor, she and her classmates wanted to be doctors and lawyers and presidents too, but that the run-down state of her school building and the lack of resources available to the students and teachers made the possibility of realizing those dreams hard, if not impossible to imagine. The situation that Ty’Sheoma described in her letter is a reality in far too many schools in this country, particularly those with student populations that are overwhelmingly black and Latino/a.

Using film, legal briefs, memoir, and social history, this course will explore the history, present, and future of urban education in America. We will begin by discussing the ways in which such schools are products of the social, economic, and political history that led to the creation of the urban environments in which they reside. We will then look at issues of internal migration, immigration, historical, and contemporary efforts to reform urban education, and the relationship of school reform movements to social justice movements. Throughout the semester we will explore social, economic, and political issues, with an emphasis on how race and class realities have impacted the access minority and poor students have to the promise of an equal education in the United States. (Wednesday, 1:30-4:20 p.m.)

FRS 156 The Chemistry of Magic  ST
Kathryn Wagner
Donald P. Wilson ’33 and Edna M. Wilson Freshman Seminar

Have you ever been fascinated by fire or mesmerized by a magic effect? Throughout history, fire, fog, phosphorescence, and color changes have evoked fear, amazement, wonder, delight—and curiosity. In this seminar we will explore the chemical basis of phenomena associated with magic while preparing magic programs for teachers and middle school students.

This seminar will also briefly explore the concepts of “magic” and “science.” What is magic, and how is it perceived? What is science, and how is it practiced? We will also discuss attitudes toward science and magic. Are stories of Prometheus and Faust ubiquitous? Do attitudes affect technological development? Can science solve all of our problems?

Hands-on experiences in seminar and laboratory will be a vital part of the course. Each student will learn to prepare and perform chemical effects selected by the instructor, including various ways to make fog and smoke, different types of reactions that result in color changes, the elements of combustion, and materials that emit light. The chemical principles that govern those effects, including thermodynamics, kinetics, chemical equilibrium, chemical reactivity, and electronic structure and bonding, will be explored through observation and experiment as well as reading, lecture, and discussion. Each student will also select or invent an additional chemical effect, optimize or develop it, and (when appropriate) perform it as part of an end-of-semester program. A short written report, with a discussion of the chemical principles underlying the results of the work, will be due at the end of the semester.

Students will keep journals of procedures, observations, and results of all experiments in class and laboratory. Journals will be used in class to provide evidence of interactions at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels, and to corroborate the chemical principles that underlie those interactions. Journals will also provide information needed to organize and prepare magic programs.

Near the end of the semester, each student will design one “Chemical Magic” program for entertainment and one for instruction. The class will choose effects and activities from the individual programs to use in the programs presented by the class. Participation in both presentations is required. The class will write a handbook to accompany the instructional program that includes detailed instructions on how to perform each effect, information on chemical safety and disposal, an appropriate explanation of the science, and references.

This seminar is intended primarily for non-science majors and has no science or math prerequisite. We will spend most of our time exploring relationships between the seen (magic effects) and the unseen (electronic, atomic, and molecular interactions) in an effort to gain a deeper understanding of both. In the process, we will explore the nature of magic and science, and we will learn about the acquisition of scientific knowledge. Then we’ll share both magic and science. (Tuesday, 1:30-4:20 p.m. (seminar); and Thursday, 1:30-4:20 p.m. (lab))

FRS 158 Literature, Law, and Human Rights  LA
Simon Gikandi

What does it mean to be human? Is it possible to share the pain and suffering of others? What exactly are human rights and how do we understand their nature and meaning? How are they represented in literature, film, and legal documents? In this course we will reflect on the ethical challenges presented to the modern world by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), which recognized the “inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” and asserted that all human beings “are born free and equal in dignity and rights.” We will consider how literature and related cultural forms have played a crucial role in establishing the meaning of human rights and of enriching our understanding of what it means to be a human being entitled to freedom, life, and liberty. We will also consider the role of the law in the definition of citizenship and human rights across cultures and traditions. This course is an invitation for us to think about literature as an ethical and political project, one that raises enduring questions about the uniqueness of the human being, the relation of the self to the other, and the possibility of human understanding across cultural, ethnic, racial, and national boundaries. It is also an examination of the relationship between legal categories and the stories we tell about them.

In the course of the term, we will consider how the act of reading and interpretation helps us develop empathy and understanding of situations that are separated from us in time and space, such as slavery in the United States, the Holocaust in Europe, genocide in Rwanda, apartheid in South Africa, caste in India, and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Darfur. We will focus on some great works of literature (and film) written in response to these and other tragic events. We will read some legal documents that have helped define and redefine the meaning of human rights.

FRS 160 American Families in Comparative Perspective  SA
Ana Maria Goldani
William H. Burchfield 1902 Freshman Seminar

The dramatic changes in American families in recent decades have captured the attention of the American public: some welcome them, and others foresee major social problems. American families are increasingly diverse as they are undergoing dramatic changes produced by high rates of divorce, cohabitation, unwed motherhood, the new visibility of same sex relationships, the (re)emergence of stepfamilies and working mothers, and a sharp rise in the number of single-person households as well as demographic changes such as longer life expectancy, falling fertility, and growing immigration. The United States is not exceptional in many of these areas and many other countries are experiencing similar trends. Their experiences, like those of the United States, are shaped by their particular cultural, historic, and demographic contexts.

FRS 162 Bodies in Cultural Landscapes  LA
Patricia Hoffbauer

This is a seminar/studio course that explores the intricate history of the Western fascination with non-white bodies in motion from representations recorded in early ethnographic films to contemporary versions of the moving body framed in Hollywood films, dance videos, and urban dance documentaries. The aim of the course is to examine how the expectations projected onto those bodies have been crucial to the construction of contemporary discourses on gender, race, and culture while shaping a Western sense of identity that defines itself by designating bodies of color to a landscape of “otherness.”

Students will be offered an interactive seminar atmosphere where they will view and discuss class material, and a studio component where they will engage physically with composition exercises to generate performance work inspired by and drawn from the course’s syllabus and consequent discussions. The course is designed for performers and non-performers interested in movement, performance, and theater, and is organized in three different units including early ethnographic documentaries, slapstick films, Hollywood musicals, urban dance documentaries, ballet and modern dance videos, and critical theory texts.

FRS 164 What’s the Plan? Space as a Medium  LA
Lucia Allais

Most of the spaces we inhabit every day were designed to have an effect on our behavior. Every time we walk into a building, we submit to the logic of a plan: a blueprint for individual and social action that has been laid out for us. It was not always so: before the Renaissance, “space” was not assumed to be homogeneous, and before the Enlightenment, it was conceived as static substance, a backdrop for action. It was only in the late 18th century that architects and social theorists began to think of space as a dynamic instrument—a medium that could be manipulated to shape action directly through sensation, and, by implication, modify the social order.

In this course we will examine the incredible powers with which space has been invested, as a political tool, a social instrument, and a cultural artifact, over the past 200 years. Each week we will read one text and one plan (an architectural drawing, urban design, master plan, or social program), with help from secondary sources, and some spatial experiments of our own. In all modern building types—the house, the prison, the museum, but also the university classroom—we will learn to recognize a specific social experiment. We will ask broad historical questions (did the invention of the elevator really make possible the rise of the skyscraper?); examine particular architectural projects (what does Le Corbusier’s slogan “architecture, or revolution” mean?); read authors who use space as a theoretical construct (why did Sigmund Freud call the unconscious the “antechamber of the self”?); and address the relationship of architecture to the performing arts (why did the Bauhaus require dance and theater as part of its architectural curriculum?). We will end the course by addressing the recent shift from “space” to “environment,” and ask whether the plan has become obsolete as a space-shaping medium, in an age concerned less with social control than climate control.

No background in architecture or design is required. Emphasis will be on close readings of plans and texts, and creative interpretations of space as a complex social and cultural product will be encouraged. (Thursday, 1:30-4:20 p.m.)

FRS 166 The Information Revolution: Insights into Technology, Language, and Biology  QR -- CANCELLED
Lalitha Sankar
Richard L. Smith ’70 Freshman Seminar

FRS 168 The Charms of Nature: Pastoral Poetry and Poetics in Greece, Rome, and Beyond  LA
Brooke Holmes

In the early 21st century, the natural world looms large in our collective imagination. Green, we are told, is the new black. Our understanding of biological interconnectivity grows more and more sophisticated—and urgent. Shopping for groceries has become an exercise in sifting through what the author and food activist Michael Pollan has called “Supermarket Pastoral.” This new wave of ecological awareness has focused on the inescapable inseparability of the human and the natural worlds. Yet it has also rekindled an old desire in the Western tradition, the desire to “commune” with nature, to recover a less fraught, more organic connection to our physical environment. But what does it mean to commune with nature? What are we after when we seek out this connection? What is the role of poetry is establishing this common ground?

There are many answers to these questions. Nevertheless, the tradition of imagining an intimate relationship with nature in the West is closely tied to the long-lived genre of pastoral poetry. In this course, we will explore the roots of the pastoral tradition in Greece and Rome, as well as its afterlife. We will start by examining representations of the sometimes dangerous, often enchanted spaces beyond the borders of the city in early Greek poetry (Homer, the lyric poets, and tragedy), before the genre of pastoral emerges. We will then watch pastoral take shape in two poets central to the later tradition: the Hellenistic Greek poet Theocritus and the Roman poet Virgil, whose reinterpretations of Theocritus decisively influence the tropes and conventions of later pastoral. The last part of the course creatively and selectively engages the subsequent pastoral tradition, broadly understood both as a genre of poetry and a deeply influential poetics of thinking about the natural world.