1. Mapping Health and Disease
09W: 10A
There is an increasing interest in understanding how health and disease are impacted by geographic location. Monitoring epidemics, tracking disease outbreaks, identifying environmental factors that may promote or hinder health, and studying geographic impediments in accessing health care services are important in preventing future illness and achieving wellness in a population. This interdisciplinary course provides an introduction to the principles and methods used to understand health and disease in the geographical context, drawing actual examples from the literature. Concepts presented in lecture and discussions are explored in sessions using a geographic information system (GIS). Learning takes place through lecture and discussion, readings of selected manuscripts, hands-on experience in the GIS lab, assignments, and completion of a term project. Previous course-work in geography or a health-related discipline are recommended, but not required. Dist: TAS. Berke, Shi.
2. Alcohol and Addiction Medicine
09S: Tu 1-4
In this survey course we consider symbolic and substantive roles of alcohol use in the lives of diverse individuals, families and societies. We look at symbolic aspects of alcohol use as we read and discuss selected literary works, and examine substantive aspects of use through reading and discussion of medically-based and social science texts. Students also become familiar with models of recovery for those individuals, families or societies harmfully affected by the use of alcohol and/or other drugs. During the first weeks of the term, Dartmouth College and Dartmouth Medical School faculty present their respective interpretations of selected research findings and literary works and engage with students in discussion. During the last weeks of the course, students conduct their own research into particular aspects of alcohol or other drug use and present key findings.
3. Physics, Technology and the 21st Century
09W: 10
Why does an MRI work? What is an X-ray? Is all radiation bad? Is my coffee radioactive after it has been “nuked” in the microwave? What about my luggage after it has been through an airport? We use a lot of technology which is based on modern physics, including the silicon chip, radar, GPS, lasers, nuclear technologies and many, many other examples. This class starts with a descriptive introduction to a large range of modern physics topics including what is radiation and what is quantum mechanics. We will then describe new technologies which have evolved from these physics principles, taking some of the mystery out of these technologies. Finally, society is affected by these tools, and in some cases even actively debating the use new technologies. For example what should be the roles of MRIs, GPSs and nuclear weapons? As informed members of society, the course will give you some insight into the physics underlying these technologies. Finally we will look at what future technologies may evolve, and what is simply “quantum fiction”. Dist: TAS. Smith.
4. Crusades and Jihad: The Mediterranean Experience 1095-1350 (Identical to History 6 in 09S at 10)
09S: 10
The Crusades, launched in 1095 by European Christians to secure military control over Jerusalem and the Holy Land, led to a period of sustained and largely hostile contact between Christian and Muslim cultures. The result engendered important and often unintended changes in religion, politics, and cultural life in both Christendom and Islamdom, and largely defined Muslim-Christian understanding and self-understandings through the present day. This course, co-taught by a specialist in Islamic Religion and a specialist in the European Middle Ages, takes a comparative perspective. Dist: SOC or INT; WCult: CI. Gaposchkin, Reinhart.
5. Inside Out: Prison, Women and Performance (Identical to Women’s and Gender Studies 59)
08F: 2A
Hidden in our midst is an ever-growing incarceration system, which has become increasingly privatized and retributive, especially for already marginalized groups. Some critics are calling for the “abolition” of prisons. Yet, most of us know little about prisons, the prisoners in our communities or the issues they face inside and outside prison. This course offers students the unique opportunity to study the prison system from two distinct perspectives: theoretical and practical. For one class each week, students will study the history of prisons and women’s incarceration in the traditional classroom. For the other half, students will travel to Valley Vista, a substance abuse center in Bradford, Vermont, which offers a performance program for women clients. Our goal is the creation and performance of an original production that will facilitate the clients’ voices. The final project for the course will combine critical analysis and self-reflection on the effectiveness of service learning and performance in rehabilitation. Open to all students. Dist: SOC; WCult: CI. Schweitzer, Hernandez.
6. Bubonic Plague: Past, Present, and Potential
09S: 3A
This course examines history’s worst biomedical disasters and society’s responses; reservoirs and outbreaks of plague in the world today; and its potential as a weapon of bioterrorism. Topics: epidemiology of plague; role of molecular biology in identifying diseases of the past; ecological disasters as precipitating events; effects of demographic collapse on the value of labor and on social relations. Cultural responses: images of St. Sebastian, Islamic martyrdom, Chinese boatburning rituals, Camus’ The Plague.
Dist: INT or SOC. Guest lecturers from the Departments of French and Religion, and the Dartmouth Medical School.
8. It Can’t Happen Here? The Specter of Fascism in American Culture
09S: 10
Could America ever turn into a fascist dictatorship? Politicians from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush have raised the specter of fascism as the very antithesis of American democratic politics and culture. Yet in the 1930s, a series of fascist organizations appeared in the United States. While the influence of these groups was never great, their existence speaks to larger fault lines and tensions in twentieth-century American society that this course will explore. We will read European and American texts in political and aesthetic philosophy with respect to fascism worldwide, and will place these texts in conjunction with literary writings of the 1930s and contemporary rewritings of 1930s American fascism. The literary, philosophical, political and cultural texts will be enhanced by topical films.
Dist: INT; WCult: W. Will, Milich.
9. Technology and Power
09W: 10A
Technology and power have always been intimately intertwined. If technology in general is the means by which human beings effect change beyond the reach of the unadorned body, then this is necessarily also an exercise of power. To control technology is to wield power. In the contemporary world, the relationship between technology and power is of ever-increasing importance.
We are living in an era when technology is often used not only to uphold and reinforce existing power relations but also to resist and transform them. From increasingly sophisticated surveillance technologies such as full body scans and networks of webcams to the ease with which capital and thus power flows across increasingly irrelevant national borders to the possibilities for radical participatory democracy opened up by internet technologies to the populist model of knowledge associated with wikis to the deconstruction and reconstruction of the body through technologies such as sex reassignment surgery, the contemporary world is structured through and by the complicated relationships between technology and power. This course aims to provide students with the theoretical vocabulary and critical skills necessary to understand these complex relationships. Readings will include the theories of power of such philosophers as Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Arendt, Foucault, Butler, Zizek and Agamben. Students will also conduct independent research on a particular technology, exploring its relationship to power and related concepts such as domination, oppression, agency, resistance, and the like. Allen, Evens.
10. The Silk Road
09W: 3A
The Silk Road—the ancient trans-Eurasian network of trade routes that linked Asia with Europe—spawned the world’s first great era of globalization. In our own time, the Silk Road has become a highly visible symbol of transnationalism and cross-cultural exchange. This course examines the Silk Road and its cultural legacy from a variety of perspectives: history, art, music, religion, travel literature, politics, and current affairs. Class session will feature frequent guest lecturers and will be augmented by a cultural program of films and concerts. No prerequisite. Dist: INT; WCult: NW.
11. Book Arts Studio Seminar
09S: 3A
A studio-based seminar in which students explore the relationship between text, image, and form through letterpress relief printing techniques and the creation of book structures. Lectures and readings will familiarize students with historic and contemporary literature on the book form. Students will study exemplars from the extensive holdings of Rauner Special Collections and the Sherman Art Library in historical hand press and contemporary artist’s books. Limited enrollment. Supplemental Course Fee. Dist. ART. Halasz, Hamlin, Avadenka.
12. The Creative Process
09W: 10A
Each student will experiment in weekly workshops with a variety of creative media (drawing, sculpture, animation, music, and drama), while simultaneously developing at least one medium of choice throughout the term. Students will keep journals of their own creative problems in their chosen art form(s), with a view towards integrating into their own artistic development, the insights gained through the class discussions of journals and letters by creative persons (such as Van Gogh, Gauguin, Mozart) and individual appearances by professional creative artists. Final projects will be creatively absorbed into a public multi-media presentation with an accompanying graphic portfolio. Permission of the instructor is required and given after the first day of class. Supplemental course fee required. Dist: ART. Ehrlich.
13. The Bauhaus
09S: Arrange
The Bauhaus was the innovative early 20th-century school for art and architectural (1919-1933) where—among other things—modern design as we know it was invented. Part art academy, part commercial design school, and part architectural guild, the Bauhaus sought to produce artistic polymaths who could cross disciplinary and even economic lines that had been separated since the Middle Ages. Bauhaus graduates were to be fine artists, visionary architects, hand-craftsmen, industrial designers, and social reformers, all rolled into one. This interdisciplinary course utilizes art history, architectural history, and modern European history to examine the institution that, in spite of many political opponents and obstacles, transformed 20th-century design. The Bauhaus, moreover, continues to exert a remarkable influence on architecture, applied arts, and artistic instruction into the 21st century. Jordan, Heck.