PDF of the 2012-2013 Academic Catalog - Scripps College

Scripps College Catalog
Courses of Study
Core Curriculum in Interdisciplinary Humanities
65
religious, and pop culture perspectives, we will investigate death. R. Weinberg.
002 DB. The Detective in the City. In the dark corners of the popular imagination, crime virtually
defines the modern city. We will go back to the nineteenth-century origins of detective fiction
(Poe’s Paris, Conan Doyle’s London), before looking at classic and contemporary versions of
“noir.” By combining literary and urban history, we consider how city settings shape the moral
imagination—in particular, our sense of private and public life. M. Katz.
002 HA. Historical Fictions: Contemporary Representations of Gender, Sexuality, and Race
in Nineteenth Century America. This class will examine the genre of historical fiction and the
cultural uses of history in contemporary fictional texts. Looking specifically at representations of
19th-century America in late 20th- and 21st-century U.S. literature, film and art, we will analyze
what such representations say about our relationship to the past and how we use the past to address
contemporary concerns. In critically analyzing cultural texts, we will build a theoretical framework
that is informed by feminist, queer, and critical race theories while also attending to intersectional
analyses that consider the relationship between gender, sexuality, race, class, and national
belonging. C. Guzaitis.
002 IA. Incentives Matter: The Economics of Gender and Choice. This course will explore
how gender construction and perceptions about gender have evolved over time and how current
perceptions affect the choices that individuals, institutions, and governments make. We explore the
very ideas of choice, gender roles, the relationship between social and biological functions, and
the notion of equity that economic participation may promise. These are issues we will examine
as we look at how economic opportunities for women are linked to issues of race and class and
how education plays a key role in changing the economic calculus of women’s lives. S. Flynn, N.
Macko.
002. JA. James Joyce’s Ulysses: Politics, Culture and the Law. Through a close reading of
James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, the most famous of all of the texts of modernism, students will be
introduced to a number of key political and cultural issues. Topics to be considered may include
gender, identity, racism, nationalism, colonialism, high and popular culture, normativity, sexuality
and censorship. T. Crowley.
002 LA. Lights, Camera, Murder! Crimes and Trials in France and the U.S. This class takes a
historical approach to the understanding and construction of different types of criminal personalities
and crimes in eighteenth- to twentieth-century France and the United States. It examines current
and past crimes from the points of view of serial killers and victims, the media, courtrooms, and
capital punishment. Through fictional and non-fictional narratives, court transcripts, sociological
studies, films and documentaries, it traces the historical and cultural approach of each nation to
justice and, ultimately, seeks to bring to light the definition of human nature upon which each legal
system is built. J. Groscup, F. Lemoine.
002 NA. Nationalism and Culture. Cultural forms that both affirm and create a sense of national
identity sustain the modern nation-state. This course begins with a study of contemporary national
representations and excavates into the past to explore how music, visual arts, film, and other
cultural forms from the last two centuries in Europe, China, and the United States represent and
construct nations, prescribe their membership and identity, and encourage participation in their
perpetuation. Y. Kang, J. Koss.
002 NB. The Nature of “Nature.” What concepts about the nature of “nature” and about the
natural landscape are revealed in the gardens and collections at Scripps College? This course will
examine how concepts of nature developed between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries in
Western Europe and the United States, and interrogate the representations of nature in the visual
and performing arts and in botanical studies. Through such investigation we will come to analyze
how concepts of nature and representations of the natural landscape in the Western traditions of arts
and sciences point to social, political and moral issues within particular contexts of time and space.
B. Coats.
002 OA. “Once Upon a Time”: Psychological and Literary Approaches to the Fairy Tale. Fairy
tales explore social conditions, families in crisis, the human search for the meaning of life, coming
of age, the path to the self. A critical analysis of familiar categories such as gender, sexuality, race,
and class can demonstrate how fairy tales both support and subvert the dominant ideology implicit