Program Announcement 2013 - 14 - Institute of Business ...

Description of Courses150Reading Poetry is a course designed to introducestudents to enduring works of lyric expression. Theaim of the class is to develop habits of close criticalreading, textual analysis, argumentative writing,aesthetic appreciation, and thoughtful discussion.Authors considered might include Chaucer, Donne,Rumi, Coleridge, Basho, Whitman, Dickenson, Hardy,Ghalib, Rimbaud, Frost, Tagore, and Moore.HUM353 Introduction to DramaHow do plays work? What is the relation between adramatic text and a theatrical performance? How canwe move from one to the other? How might weprofitably approach a reading of character, place,dialogue, costume, movement, sound, rhythm, spatialcomposition, and story (to name some of the elementswhich make a performance)? What makes a playdifferent from a novel or a poem, a film or a painting?Which elements represented in these other mediadoes drama also appropriate? These and relatedquestions will inform our study of canonical dramatictexts.HUM354 Introduction to Urdu LiteratureThe course presents an introduction to various genresof Urdu literature (read both in translation and in Urdu)as they developed through the eighteenth, nineteenthand twentieth centuries, with greater emphasis onfiction and poetry. We will examine the works of majorwriters with close attention to the development oftraditional narrative and poetic genres, styles, andinfluences.HUM355 Anglo-Indian Narrative and the PostcolonialSubjectThis course surveys colonial and postcolonial narrativesin English written in or about India and Pakistan.Authors considered may include Harriet Tytler, E.MForster, Rudyard Kipling,Nirad Chaudhury, Raj Anand,Ruskin Bond, Khushwant Singh, Anita Desai, SalmanRushdie, BapsiSidhwa, Aamir Husain, Sara Suleri,HanifKureishi, David Davidar, KamilaShamsie,ManizaZaqvi, Arundathi Roy, JeetThayil, and MohsinHamid.HUM356 Foundations of Philosophical ThoughtThis course will introduce students to major questionsand issues in philosophy, and its methods of inquiryand analysis. Readings include arguments articulatedby major western and eastern philosophers. Topicsconsidered include the problem of evil; free will anddeterminism; moral imperatives; the limits ofknowledge; utilitarian versus deontological ethics; faithand belief; justice and goodness.HUM357 Philosophy Logic and EthicsThis course will acquaint students with basicphilosophical and ethical concepts, and methods oflogical thinking through close readings of majorphilosophical texts.HUM358 Comparative Classical PhilosophyThrough close readings of primary classical texts fromChina, India, and Greece, students will engage majorepistemological debates as these were articulated bydifferent societies and cultures in the ancient world.Specific attention will be paid to how these debatesframe and shape how we think today.HUM359 Introduction to Comparative ReligionsThis course will give participants an understanding ofthe world's major religions: Zoroastrianism, Hinduism,Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. The coursewill examine a number of cross-cultural themes inreligion, including monotheism vs. pantheism, the soul,the sacred, peace and war, as well as the social andcultural practices of each faith. By the end of the courseparticipants will have an understanding of the historyof these religions and the issues they each face in thecontemporary world.HUM360 Creative WritingGeorge Orwell once wrote that the four great motivesfor writing were sheer egoism, aesthetic enthusiasm,historical impulse, and political purpose. In thisintroductory course, students will explore all fourmotives, and the kinds of prose, poetic, and dramatictexts these produce. Students will work on identifyingand sustaining their unique aesthetic voices, languages,and styles; learn strategies for the generation anddevelopment of plots, characters, dialogue, anddescription; discuss how substance relates to form;and explore how shifting points-of-view are crucial tothe aesthetic experience of imaginative texts.HUM361 Theater Project: The Living NewspaperThis course introduces students to techniques andstrategies of documentary performance using a formdeveloped in the US during the Great Depression.Students will research a social issue of immediatelocal and/or national concern, and then use thisresearch to write and stage a "living newspaper"performance.HUM363 Introduction to Visual CultureOur world is saturated with an extraordinary range ofvisual images: advertisements, films, televisionprograms, music videos, photographs, posters,billboards, newspapers, magazines, paintings, graffiti,architecture. Reading and analyzing visual material,however, requires a different set of approaches thanreading and analyzing text. This introductory courseinvestigates the visual in its myriad manifestations.Topics considered include the social and psychologicalconstruction of vision, the function and culturalproduction and consumption of visual images,ideologies of the visual, originality and reproduction,visual narratives and cultural specificity, and semioticapproaches to interpretation.HUM364 History of Art I: Classical Antiquity to theMiddle AgesThis course will offer students a broad introduction tothe aesthetic and social interpretation of selectedworks of art from classical antiquity to the renaissance,with an emphasis on the comparative analysis of Asian,Greco-Roman, and Medieval traditions. The courseintroduces the student to the basic terminology of thearts, the language of aesthetic criticism, and therelationship of the arts to each other and to theirhistorical context.