Liberal Studies Courses 2012-13
Fall 2012
COMPARATIVE DISASTERS (LS 780.80)
Edward Tiryakian
Mondays, 6:15-8:45 pm
Disasters as severe disruptions in the life of individuals, communities, and nations are an unfortunate recurrent feature of the human condition. What provides variation, besides their magnitude and duration, is how their risk may be anticipated (including in rituals as well as in insurance policies), how they are interpreted once they occur (who or what is responsible), how stricken communities and individuals respond, what are short-term and long-term psychological, social, political and economic consequences, what are common or typical patterns of response in disaster sites, and lastly, what is being done to prevent or mitigate future disasters. We begin by asking What is a Disaster? How is a disaster socially constructed?, proceed to see the evolution of disasters viewed as religious interventions to being treated in terms of “natural” causes, and go on to consider how short-term disasters often generate longer-term secondary disasters.
To get at some of the challenging issues in disaster studies, we will consider comparative and historical materials dealing with small-scale (e.g. flood) and large-scale disasters (nuclear and wars), man-made and nature-made, and the interaction between them. While recent years offers much materials of man-made (9/11, terrorism, Katrina) and nature-made (tsunami) disasters, we will also consider past historical materials (the Great Plague, the Great Influenza, the Great Depression) as well as a potential large-scale future ecological disaster, nature-made and man-made.
Readings will be drawn from a variety of historical and social science materials. Depending upon the backgrounds and interests of class members, teams will be drawn around a central theme (e.g., ecological disasters, financial disasters, terrorism/wars), gender and violence, with team members expected to prepare a report given in class at the end of the semester. The contribution of each to the team report will be an important component of the final grade; other components will include a book report and class participation. Class participation will not only take place at our weekly meetings but also online in the SAKAI course management system. No previous background in sociology is necessary but the instructor will introduce a sociological frame of reference to facilitate comparative aspects of disasters.
Edward A. Tiryakian (Ph.D. Harvard) is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Duke University and remains active professionally. He has over 200 publications in various areas of sociology, such as comparative-historical sociology, sociology of religion, nationalism and national identity, comparative social development, sociological theory. He has done research in East Asia, sub-Sahara Africa, Canada, Western and Eastern Europe. He has taught a wide variety of courses at the undergraduate and graduate level, has served as Chair of the joint department of Sociology and Anthropology, and as Duke’s Director of International Studies. He is past president of the American Society for the Study of Religion.
THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY CINEMA (LS 770.48)
Martin Miller
Tuesdays, 6:15-8:45 pm
In this course, students will investigate the pioneering film techniques used by the first generation of Soviet directors in which the cinema was transformed into a revolutionary medium. The course will center on the classics of Sergei Eisenstein, though much attention will also be devoted to the innovative films of a variety of other directors from the 1920's and 1930's, and to the propagandistic and dissident films of the Stalin and post-Stalin years. Comparisons with their Hollywood counterparts will be made. In addition to the screenings of the films, readings will concentrate on the rise and fall of the cinema’s revolutionary experimentalism as a mirror of the transformation of the Soviet Union itself.
Martin Miller received his PhD in Russian history at the University of Chicago and has taught at Stanford University and the New School for Social Research in addition to conducting visiting seminars in Paris, Venice, and Istanbul. He has been a member of the History Department at Duke since 1970. Dr. Miller has conducted archival research in Russia and Western Europe, and has been the recipient of a number of fellowships, including two from the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has published four books and numerous articles on the revolutionary movement in Russia, including Freud and the Bolsheviks: Psychoanalysis in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union (Yale, 1998), which has been translated into French and Spanish. Dr. Miller is currently completing a new book on the foundations of modern political violence.
PHOTOGRAPHY IN CONTEXT:
Photographic Meaning and the Archive of Documentary Arts (LS 770.74)
Margaret Sartor
Tuesdays, 6:15-8:45 pm
This is a research and writing seminar closely connected to the Duke Archive of Documentary Arts. This course will challenge students to think critically about photography and to frame the subject of photographic meaning historically, conceptually and personally. Students will consider how photographic imagery offers insights into subjects such as social change, sexual identity, and regional culture—and how photographs have shaped our collective understanding of these subjects. On a regular basis, photographers whose work is held in the archive will lecture and lead class discussions. Students will write about photographs held in the Duke archive, taking into consideration their own response to the images, the historical moment in which the pictures were made, the personal history and artistic sensibility of the photographer, the tools of the medium, and the ways in which all of these factors come together to create a meaningful depiction of the world.
There will be several short papers and weekly reading assignments. Each student will also write two longer papers devoting more in-depth study to one collection in the archive. The class will meet in Perkins library where we will take advantage of access to the photographic prints housed in the Duke University archive.
Margaret Sartor is a writer, photographer, editor and curator. As a writer and editor, her four books include What Was True: The Photographs and Notebooks of William Gedney, which was chosen as one of the top ten photography books of 1999 by the Village Voice, and a memoir, Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing Up in the 1970s, which was a New York Times best-seller and a Washington Post Critics Choice Memoir for 2006. Sartor’s own photographs have been published and exhibited widely. Her prints are held in private and permanent collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Ogden Museum of Southern Art and the North Carolina Museum of Art. She has been a guest curator of photography at the International Center for Photography in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
THE DARWINIAN REVOLUTION (LS 760.14)
Jonathan Shaw
Tuesdays, 6:15-8:45 pm
Darwin’s book (1859), On the Origin of Species, shook the world. What really was the “Darwinian Revolution”? Why is Darwinism, or evolution, still so controversial? How do evolutionary ideas affect medicine, agriculture, astronomy, psychology, sociology, even religion? Is evolution and spirituality incompatible? What IS the evidence for evolution? These are some of the issues we discuss in The Darwinian Revolution.
This course consists of three (very) general and overlapping parts. The first section focuses on the history of evolutionary ideas leading up to publication of The Origin, on Charles Darwin as a person (lest we forget that scientists are people, with opinions, biases, etc.), and on reactions to evolutionary ideas over the subsequent 150 years. As we shall see, the idea of evolution was not new with Darwin. Darwin’s really original contribution was in proposing a naturalistic (as opposed to a supernatural) mechanism for evolution – that is, natural selection. First, of course, we will need to consider what we actually mean by “evolution”, what “natural selection” is, and how scientists study these topics. We will examine the “creationist” alternative to evolution in a variety of contexts from the legal to philosophical, and will consider the meaning of such terms as “fact”, “theory”, and “hypothesis”.
In the second section of the course, we will discuss some of the uses and abuses of evolutionary ideas. These include critically important applications in medicine and agriculture, as well as horrendous misapplications of (pseudo)evolutionary ideas, including eugenics and racism.
In the last section of the course we will read two books that illustrate “what’s going on” in evolutionary biology today. One describes field studies on “Darwin’s finches”, a group of birds that illustrate many of the processes that Darwin wrote about. Research on those finches is still going strong in the Galapagos Islands and the book we read gives an inside view of both the research and the people who do it. The other book we read in this section describes how recent advances in molecular biology contribute to our understanding of evolution in ways that Darwin couldn’t even dream about. The book is written in a way that is readable to those of us not trained in the technical details of molecular biology.
A couple important points about this course. You need not be a scientist or biologist! We will address these issues in a way that is accessible to all. Who might this course interest? If you are opposed to the idea of evolution on religious grounds – join us; we need to hear your voice! If you just don’t know what to think in that regard, and want more information – join us! If you are interested in biology and natural history – join is; evolution is the glue that holds all of biology together! The more diverse our class, the more interesting the course. Several years ago was the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of publication of The Origin, so the time is right!
Jonathan Shaw is a Professor in the Department of Biology. He received his Ph.D. in 1983 from the University of Michigan. Dr. Shaw's research is on the systematics, population genetics, and evolution of bryophytes. Some of his research interests have included the taxonomy and classification of particular groups of mosses, developmental anatomy, and genetic relationships among populations of very rare species. A current focus in the lab is the evolution of peatmosses (Sphagnum) and Dr. Shaw's field work tends to be in polar and high altitude environments. He has published some 115 scientific papers and has edited two books, one on the evolution of tolerance in plants to toxic metals in the environment, and one on the biology of bryophytes. Dr. Shaw taught for eight years at a liberal arts college (Ithaca College) before coming to Duke in 1996.
THE GLORY OF THE RENAISSANCE:
Music, Painting, Architecture, Religion and Politics (LS 770.73)
Thomas Brothers
Wednesdays, 6:15-8:45 pm
You can lose yourself in the magnificent Duomo of Florence, completed by the great fifteenth-century architect, Filippo Brunelleschi. You can also lose yourself in a painting by Piero della Francesca, or in Guillaume Dufay’s brilliant music for the Catholic liturgy, pieces like the Missa Se la face ay pale—lose yourself in the sense of tasting a vast and brilliant world that leaves the petty concerns of day-to-day life behind. Fifteenth-century Italy enjoyed a strong tradition of art designed with this in mind. Composers, painters and architects used the full range of intellectual and emotional power available to them to create a transcendent world, and they did so through the patronage of powerful people who expected something in return. That is how the themes of art, spirituality, intellect and politics intersect, and that is how some of the greatest artistic achievements ever known were created. Much of it is still around for us to enjoy and understand today.
Emphasis will be on Florence and then Rome. Fifteenth century Florence provides, in addition to Brunelleschi’s buildings and a motet composed by Dufay for the consecration of the Duomo, the great tradition of painting and drawing that runs from Masaccio to Michelangelo. Our main architectural site in Rome will be the Sistine Chapel, with its splendid paintings and music, the latter including music composed by the great Josquin Desprez. Thinking about the intersection of religion and politics will lead us through a series of popes and secular rulers, and at the end of the century we return to Florence and the anti-papal protests of Savonarola—who also inspired a piece by Josquin, one written far away from the papacy and under the patronage of the sympathetic Duke of Ferrara. Each student is encouraged to select another city in Italy to work on for a term project, with the goal of seeing how themes from Florence and Rome played out there.
Thomas Brothers is Professor of Music at Duke, where he has taught for eighteen years. He regularly teaches in two areas—late medieval/renaissance and African American music. His publications include Chromatic Beauty in the Late Medieval Chanson, Louis Armstrong’s New Orleans, and Louis Armstrong: In His Own Words.
PROTESTANTISM AND NATIONAL IDENTITY IN AMERICAN LITERATURE AND FILM (LS 780.89)
Amy Laura Hall
Thursdays, 6:15-8:45 pm
In spite of increasing religious and ethnic pluralism over the last century, the default, civil religion in the United States remains a version of mainline Protestantism. The working definitions of national identity in the U.S. arguably go through a central hub of normality defined by the masculine norms of Protestant culture: a Calvinist (Presbyterian) emphasis on worldly productivity is a sign of success; a Wesleyan (Methodist) sense of historic optimism about large, social change wrought over time; and a Baptist emphasis on individualism. In this course we will consider, through literature and film, what historian Peggy Bendroth has termed “the neutral backing to the ethnic crazy quilt of American diversity.” We will consider the assumptions about gender, time, kinship, and identity that count as “normal,” as well as the negotiations non-WASPs must make in relation to what often passes as sheer, common sense. The moral/pedagogical aim of the course is for students to come to a more inquisitive awareness of the implied rules for religious and civic normality today and how they subtly shape political and personal conversations in the U.S. My methodological aim is to quicken the curiosity of students, so that we may explore ways that our parents and grandparents navigated, resisted, and/or perpetuated rules for right living from earlier eras.
Course requirements: Weekly in-class discussion of material and weekly participation online (one-two paragraphs and, bare minimum, one response to another entry), 40%; final paper or presentation, form and content to be approved by week 4 of the course, 60%. Please purchase preferred editions of texts from the Regulator Bookshop on Ninth Street. (Please note: my “close reading” method of teaching requires that we all be on the same page, literally, so please purchase the editions I have ordered.) Films will be on overnight reserve at Lilly Library, and I will be happy to arrange screenings of films on campus as students desire.
Amy Laura Hall is Associate Professor of Christian Ethics at Duke Divinity School. At Duke University, Professor Hall has served on the Steering Committee of the Genome Ethics, Law, and Policy Center and as a faculty member for the FOCUS program of the Institute on Genome Sciences and Policy. She has served on the Duke Medical Center’s Institutional Review Board and as an Ethics Consultant to the V.A. Center in Durham. She is the author of Kierkegaard and the Treachery of Love (Cambridge University Press, 2002), Conceiving Parenthood: The Protestant Spirit of Biotechnological Reproduction (Eerdmans, 2008), and numerous scholarly articles in theological and biomedical ethics. Hall has recently received a grant from the Virginia Seminar in Lived Theology for her current book project Erecting the Pulpit: Muscular Christianity from Victoria to Viagra.
THE SELF IN THE WORLD **new student requirement**
Donna Zapf and Kent Wicker
Wednesdays, 6:00 – 9:00 pm (LS 750.02)
Thursdays, 6:00 – 9:00 pm (LS 750.03)
How have people within Western culture made sense of themselves, their experience, and their place in the world of others? What new insights can we gain on those identities and meanings through disciplinary methodologies of history, the sciences, the arts, or the humanities? How are those concepts influenced by values and contexts – whether of family, region, religion, class, race, or gender – that we inherit from our culture?
In this introductory course for the MALS degree, we will read provocative texts ranging from the seventeenth century to the present, in order to discuss aspects of the modern self and what we take for granted when we think of individual identity, subjectivity, authenticity, and autonomy. Our exploration of human identity and the relationship of self to others will be informed by the perspectives of various academic disciplines. Our goal is to explore how scholars think, read, and write, with particular attention to: 1) the critical analysis so vital to graduate level work, and 2) the reading and writing skills necessary for interdisciplinary study.
Class work will include readings, discussion, short papers, and one long research project.