PENN SUMMER - University of Pennsylvania

This course will look at gender in Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism.
By using historical, psychoanalytical, and anthropological tools, we
will explore the various ways in which religion shapes gender roles
and vice-versa. Aspects considered will include the representation of
the divine, the role of women in religious institutions, and rules regarding
the human body, marriage, and sexuality. We will also take
into consideration contemporary women’s self-representation in religious
literature, art, and film.
rels 173 910 MTWr 9:00am–10:35am Mcdaniel
Introduction to Buddhism
This course seeks to introduce students to the diversity of doctrines
held and practices performed by Buddhists in Asia. By focusing on
how specific beliefs and practices are tied to particular locations and
particular times we will be able to explore in detail the religious institutions,
artistic, architectural, and musical traditions, textual production
and legal and doctrinal developments of Buddhism over time and
within its socio-historical context. Religion is never divorced from its
place and its time. Furthermore, by geographically and historically
grounding the study of these religions we will be able to examine
how their individual ethic, cosmological and soteriological systems
effect local history, economics, politics, and material culture. We will
concentrate first on the person of the Buddha, his many biographies
and how he has been followed and worshiped in a variety of ways
from Lhasa, Tibet to Phrae, Thailand. From there we touch on the
foundational teachings of the Buddha with an eye to how they have
evolved and transformed over time. Finally, we focus on the practice
of Buddhist ritual, magic and ethics in monasteries and among lay
communities in Asia and even in the West. This section will confront
the way Buddhists have thought of issues such as “Just-War,” Women’s
Rights and Abortion. While no one-quarter course could provide a
detailed presentation of the beliefs and practices of Buddhism, my
hope is that we will be able to look closely at certain aspects of these
religions by focusing on how they are practiced in places like Nara,
Japan or Vietiane, Laos.
rUSSian
russ 197 910 Tr 5:00pm–8:10pm Vinitsky
Madness and Madmen
Fulfills Humanities & Social Science Sector
This course will explore the theme of madness in Russian literature
and arts from the medieval period through the October Revolution of
1917. The discussion will include formative masterpieces by Russian
writers (Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Bulgakov), painters
(Repin, Vrubel, Filonov), composers (Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky,
and Stravinsky), and film-directors (Protazanov, Eisenstein), as well
as non-fictional documents such as Russian medical, judicial, political,
and philosophical treatises and essays on madness.
russ 434 910 MW 4:30pm–7:40pm Todorov
Media and Terrorism
This course draws on fictional, cinematic, and mass-media representation
of terrorism based on Russian as well as Western examples.
We study how the magnitude of the political impact of terrorism
relates to the historically changing means of production of its striking
iconology. The course exposes students to major modes of imagining,
narrating, showing, reenacting terrorism and forging its mystique.
We examine the emergence of organized terrorism in nineteenthcentury
Russia as an original political-cultural phenomenon. We trace
its rapid expansion and influence on the public life in the West, and
on the Balkans. Historical, political, and aesthetic approaches converge
in a discussion of several case studies related to intellectual and
spiritual movements such as nihilism, anarchism, populism, religious
fundamentalism, and others. The public appearance of the terrorist
activism and its major attributes are viewed as powerful intensifiers
of its political effect: self-denial, ascetic aura, and stratagem of mystification,
underground mentality, and martyrdom. The pedagogical
goal of this course is to promote and cultivate critical view and analytical
skills that will enable students to deal with different historical
as well as cultural modes of (self-) representation of terrorism.
Students are expected to learn and be able to deal with a large body
of historical-factual and creative-interpreted information.
SCienCe, TeChnoloGY, & SoCieTY
sTsC 001 910 Tr 5:30pm–8:40pm schlombs
The Emergence of Modern Science
Crosslisted with: HSOC 001 910 / May be counted toward Humanities/Social
Science or Natural Science/Math Sectors
This course examines the development of humanity’s understanding
of the natural world, from the dawn of Homo sapiens to the beginning
of the 21st century. We will explore the history of scientific
ideas, the social contexts that gave rise to them, and their social and
human implications. Topics will include: ancient Greek and Roman
learning; Medieval thought and the rise of universities; the age of exploration;
the Copernican revolution; Galileo, the telescope, and the
Church; Newton and the mechanical worldview; Enlightenment and
Romantic science; industrialization and the rise of modern chemistry;
Darwin and evolution; discoveries in electricity and magnetism;
atomic physics, Einstein, the Bomb, and its aftermath; the emergence
of modern genetics; the DNA revolution; computers and the information
age; the exploration of space and the seas; and science and the
human future.
sTsC 003 910 Tr 5:30pm–8:40pm hintz
Technology and Society
Fulfills Society Sector / Crosslisted with: HSOC 003 910
This survey course examines the ways that technology has shaped our
societies and our relations with the natural world. We will trace the
origin and impact of technological developments throughout human
history and across the globe–from ancient cave paintings, primitive
stone tools, and the pyramids, to medieval European cathedrals and
windmills, to Victorian-era steam engines and railroads, to the atom
bomb, the Internet, and genetic engineering. Throughout the course,
we will consider the aesthetic, religious, and mythical dimensions of
technological change, focusing on the circumstances in which innovations
emerge and their impact on social order, on the environment,
and on the ways humans understand themselves. This course fulfills
the Society sector of the General Requirement, is a core course for
the Science, Technology and Society major, and an elective for the
Health and Societies major.
SUMMER SESSIOn I • MAY 24–JULY 2, 2010 25