Supplement Spring 2008—Added Courses
AAAS 192	ST:Crossroads—The Black Public Sphere	0.50 unit, J. Tazewell/T. Mason
This course seeks to examine the existence, nature, and viability of a Black public sphere starting from the idea of the “public sphere” put forth by Jurgen Habermas and the existence of many interacting spheres, both counter-public and subaltern. This specific topic has been developed through the Crossroads Faculty Seminar made up of Kenyon Faculty across disciplines teaching and interested in areas of African and African-American studies. The teaching of this First-Year seminar will be divided among seven faculty members, with each instructor teaching a 2-week module. Two instructors will share the coordination of the class. The assignments for this course will include discussion, critical writing, and public performances or presentations with a capstone project at the end of the semester. An exploration of the cultures and influences on the global culture by the African Diaspora; a deeper understanding of the meaning and value of a liberal arts education; and a focus on analytical writing, scientific investigation, and public vocal expression are primary goals of this class.
ARHS 239	Chinese Art Since 1949	0.50 unit, Y. Zhou
The year of 1949 is the watershed of twentieth century’s Chinese art due to foundation of People’s Republic of China. The art experienced one of the most dramatic changes in the period of 1950s to the present. We will, in this intermediate-level course, investigate the journey from ideology-oriented art to the art of the Cultural Revolution, from post-Mao period, the avant-garde movement, to the art in an era of urbanization in a global context. Pre-requisite: ARHS 111 or ARHS 114 or permission of the instructor.
ARHS 375	Early Renaissance Sculpture in Tuscany	0.50 unit, K. Van Ausdall
This seminar will be taught in Italy as part of the Kenyon in Florence program. It will focus on early Renaissance sculpture in the region of Tuscany, with special emphasis on fifteenth-century Florentine sculpture. Students will examine the foundations of Renaissance classicism, both in the antecedents of late medieval sculpture, and in the inspiration provided by ancient Roman monuments. The city of Florence itself will provide a rich source for study of this material, and seminar members will develop an every-day familiarity with artists like Donatello, Ghiberti, and Nanni di Banco. This seminar will correlate scholarly readings and primary sources with first-hand visual experience of the monuments. In addition to the daily exploration of the city of Florence, site visits to Tuscan towns like Pisa, Siena, and Lucca, will give a broader scope for understanding the function and meaning of early Renaissance sculpture. Requirements of the course include exams, short papers, a term-long research paper, and a presentation. Prerequisite: Permission of instructor and enrollment in the Kenyon in Florence program
ARTS 320	Color Photography	0.50 unit, M. Hackbardt
This course is intended to develop an understanding of color photography as a medium for contemporary art, and as a ubiquitous messaging system doubly bound to veracity and deception. Students will take their own traditional or digital photographs and then utilize various digital photography techniques, including image scanning and color digital printing. Color theory, correct exposure of color slide and negative films, color balance management, use of color as an element in photographic design, and the psychology of color will be covered. Prerequisite: Arts 106, 107 or permission of the instructor.
CLAS 222	ST:Archaeology of Sicily	0.50 unit, Z. Kontes
In this course we will explore the archaeology of Sicily and neighboring islands from the Neolithic period through Roman times. Sicily’s central Mediterranean location allowed for significant contact and interaction among various peoples throughout its history, which makes for fascinating and widely varied material remains. We will discuss the native cultures, evidence of trade with the Mycenaeans, Phoenician settlements, Greek colonies and cities, and Roman occupation. We will examine architecture, sculpture, pottery and numismatics in their social and political contexts, with the goal of understanding how local and foreign cultures influenced each other and how this is reflected in the archaeological record. No prerequisites.
DANC 192	ST:T’ai Chi/Holistic Healing	0.13 unit , TBA
DANC 322	Dance Kinesiology	0.50 unit, J. Brodie
This course studies the science of movement as it relates to dance. Basic anatomy and physiology, the physics of dance, and the mind-body connection responsible for producing and controlling movement are explored to provide students with a deeper understanding of the structure and function of the human body. Lectures, discussions, and movement labs focus on practical analysis and application of material in order to increase movement efficiency, with the ultimate goal of enhancing performance and preventing injury.
DRAM 292	ST:Beyond Brecht: The New Music Theater	0.50 unit, M. Rice
The American Musical has long been a capital-driven genre fueled by popular music, the star system and dazzling spectacle. But after World War II, partly due to the work of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, new applications of and approaches to music in theater and performance began to take shape-- and are still forming today. This course will explore how the use of theatrical music has evolved to complicate and illuminate modern texts beyond the simple reinforcement of plot and character, expanding and/ or reinventing the Aristotelian notion of musicality as an auxiliary theatrical element. Readings will include theory on Brechtian theater, new music theater, New Opera, and modern cabaret, as well as texts and recordings of plays/performance since the late 1940?s (selections may include the work of Chuck Mee, Maria Irene Fornes, Suzan-Lori Parks, Laurie Anderson, Stephen Sondheim, Steven Sater (Spring Awakening), David Schein, Ruth Margraff, and Kiki and Herb). Prerequisite: DRAM 111Y-112Y.
ENGL 292.01	ST:Modern Novel:Woolf and Naipaul	0.50 unit, J. Matz
This course studies the modern novel through the work of two of its most significant practitioners: Virginia Woolf and V. S. Naipaul. We will read Woolf's breakthrough modernist novels alongside the essays through which she helped to innovate modernism and alongside some of the fiction of her contemporaries. We will observe the modern novel's subsequent development—its later styles, its cultural problems, its postwar and postcolonial politics—in Naipaul's nobel-prize-winning fiction, his (often notorious) cultural criticism, and the work of other recent writers. The course aims to read Woolf and Naipaul both as individual artists and as representatives of larger trends in modern fiction. Text will run from Woolf's early novel Jacob's Room (1922) to Naipaul's latest biographical novel Magic Seeds (2005), including also shorter fiction and criticism by Henry James, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Richard Wright, George Orwell, Vladmir Nabokov, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Philip Roth, Nadine Gordimer, and others. This course is open only to sophomores and first-year students with advanced placement credit. Enrollment limited for sophomores. Permission of instructor required for first-year students.
ENGL 292.02	ST:Representations of House and Home in Postcolonial Literature	0.50 unit, K. Fernando
The home has been represented as a common site of contest and struggle in colonial and postcolonial fiction. In this course, we will attempt to understand how women writers from South Asia, the Caribbean and Africa represent and negotiate the image of the house and home in terms of their social history. Our concern will be to investigate how, through representations of the home, women writers elaborate their positions on nation, gender, race, and class; and how they contribute towards either hegemonic, or emergent, counter-hegemonic national imaginaries. Towards this end, our textual analysis will consist of querying the form and content of these textual representations, as well as interrogating the archives women writers draw on, in the production of these imaginaries.
ENGL 292.03	ST:Beyond Borders	0.50 unit, I. Garcia
This course examines the literatures of the Americas through the critical lenses of contact zone, border, and transnational theories. From Laura Esquivel's Malinche to Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo to Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima to Esmeralda Santiago's America's Dream this class explores the clashes between races, cultures, genders, classes, nationalities, and worldviews that characterize this richly creative region, both in the hemispheric and U.S. sense of "America." By examining mostly novels but also poetry, including the love poems of Pablo Neruda, we will seek a better understanding of this richly creative and fascinating area of literary study.
ENGL 292.04	Literature and the Modern City	0.50 unit, T. Hawks
In this class, we will explore how cities are written, by which we will mean both how they are written about, but also how they themselves are constructed as cities, both imaginatively and concretely, through disciplines ranging from poetry to architecture and urban planning. Cities have long held an ambivalent place in the European cultural imagination; Babel and Jerusalem, Rome built and Troy burning— the city offers a site for projecting both utopian visions and repressed anxieties. This ambivalence about urban life continues into the modern period. By exploring three cities—Paris, London and New York—we will try to understand how cities give rise to modern literature and to modernity more generally. In the works of novelists like Dickens, Balzac, Woolf and Ellison, we will examine urban landscapes that offer unprecedented heteroglossic diversity, as well as significant economic, political and intellectual opportunity. At the same time, however, new organizations of urban space, such as the grid, the skyscraper and the subway, impose ever greater levels of control and surveillance, calling for new tactics in both literature and daily life. In poets like Apollinaire, Ashbery, Baudelaire, Cullen, Eliot, Hughes, McKay, O’Hara, Williams and Whitman, we will explore how urban landscapes shape and are shaped by poetry and how pastoralism both persists in and is supplanted by urban topography. We will consider flaneurism as well, and the economic and sexual implications of simply walking in the city. To frame and to enrich discussions of literary texts, we will read theoretical works by Jean Baudrillard, Houston Baker, Walter Benjamin, Michel De Certeau, Ann Douglas, Jane Jacobs and Lewis Mumford We will conclude the course by looking at what Baudrillard calls hyperreal cities—Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Disneyworld and Dubai—and consider how urbanization continues to shape postmodernity.
ENGL 320	Shakespeare:Sources and Afterlives	0.50 unit, E. Mankoff
Although Caliban cursed Prospero for teaching him language, most of us respond differently as we struggle with and profit from the rich treasure of Shakespeare’s  language and legacy.  In this course, we will encounter five plays in editions that include sources, cultural backgrounds, and a variety of responses--both critical and creative--from Shakespeare’s day to our own.  We will read what Shakespeare read as he created The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, King Lear, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest, and explore responses as varied as Akira Kurosawa’s great film Ran—a gender-reversed Lear set in feudal Japan, filmed when the director was 75-- and W.H.Auden’s haunting collection of lyric poems The Sea and the Mirror: A Commentary on Shakespeare’s The Tempest.  We will study the figure of Shylock then and now; read Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, produce a class performance of his Fifteen Minute Hamlet, and watch Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 In the Bleak Midwinter (aka A Midwinter’s Tale); explore the differences between the Quarto and Folio versions of King Lear, and discuss Nahum Tate’s highly popular 1681 version of the play (happy ending!), Edward Bond’s 1971 play Lear (called “the most violent drama ever staged”), and Peter Yates’s 1983 film The Dresser; investigate how Sir Thomas North's eloquent 1579 English translation of Plutarch's Lives informs Antony and Cleopatra and how John Dryden responds in 1678 with All for Love or the World Well Lost.  We will explore the postcolonial critique of The Tempest and other critical controversies engendered by that play, and watch Peter Greenaway’s magical 1991 film Prospero’s Books.  Prerequisite: permission of instructor.
ENGL 392.01	ST:Milton’s Paradise Lost	0.50 unit, P. Lentz
A close reading of Milton’s epic. The guiding critical principle will be Horatian: that great literature can "teach and delight." The guiding critical aspiration will be Arnoldian: "to see the object"– the epic– "as in itself it really is." No prerequisite, although some familiarity however modest with the classical epics, Homeric and/or Virgilian, is strongly recommended.
ENGL 392.02	ST:Textual Variation and Reception:Medieval Poetry, Renaissance Drama, and the 19^th Century Novella	0.50 unit, E. Boeckeler
“To be, or not to be, I there's the point,/ To Die, to sleepe, is that all? I all...” In the Quarto version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, that really is all. Can this version of the most famous soliloquy of all time really be deemed a legitimate part of Hamlet?  If other lines from the Quarto have become a recognizable part of the play, why not these? What is Hamlet? We are not accustomed to dealing with textual variation, even though multiple variants of the “same” stories existed and still persist as the norm of writing rather than the exception.  If we gather evidence for our arguments from the individual words of a text, what do we do when words vary widely among multiple, equally authoritative texts? How can we conscientiously perform a close reading of only one text, knowing full well that other variations could undermine a tight argument?  This course investigates questions about textual production using three different genres from three different time periods. We draw on textual variants to inspect shifting notions of authorship and audience, manuscript vs. print production, the performativity of texts, content and its visual representation, attitudes towards textuality, authorial control, the critical concepts of orality and literacy, and historical contexts for the dissemination of narratives. Our goal is to become proficient at productively exploiting variation, rather than being overwhelmed by it. Texts include medieval German and French poetry; Chaucerian manuscripts; the Folio and Quarto versions of Shakespearean plays; short stories by Tolstoy, Gogol, and Charlotte Perkins Gillman; and selected theoretical texts (e.g. The Singer of Tales, “What is an Author?”). Prerequisite: permission of instructor.
ENGL 392.03	ST:Essay as Literature	0.50 unit, D. Glancy
There is still discussion, is the essay or creative nonfiction literature? In this course, we look at the history, development and purpose of the essay. We discuss its technique. We ask questions, how does the essay hold up to the workmanship of the novel, short story or poem? What exactly comes under the heading of essay? The requirements of the course will be two papers and a creative research project. Permission of the instructor required.
FREN 361	Symbolism to Surrealism and Beyond	0.50 unit, M. Guiney
The period extending from the belle epoque to World War II saw the birth, ascendancy, and worldwide influence of French avant-garde literature. We will study this phenomenon chronologically, beginning with the Symbolist "cult of literature" represented by poet Stephane Mallarme, moving on to "anti-literature" such as the Paris Dada movement, and ending with the Surrealist period, when the literary avant-garde established itself as a powerful institution in its own right. We will study poems and some shorter prose texts by a range of authors including Paul Valery, Guillaume Apollinaire, Tristan Tzara, and Andre Breton. We will also discuss the relationship between literature and other arts such as painting and film. The course will be conducted in French. Prerequisite: FREN 213Y-214Y or equivalent.
HIST 192.03	ST:Islamic World, 1800-Present	0.50 unit, N. Kilic-Schubel
This course will examine the social, economic and political transformations of the Islamic world in the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the topics we will explore are: the legacy of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, the impact of European imperialism and the changing global economy on Muslim societies, the emergence of nationalism and nation-states, various forms of modernization and reform movements, the role of religion in political and cultural life, and the continually changing nature of gender relations. An overarching theme of the course will be the interplay of internal and external dynamics in shaping modern Islamic societies and the diversity of Muslim responses to the transformations inevitably brought about by the rise of modernity. The course will include examples from Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, North Africa and the central Arab lands. A central goal of this course is to help students understand the contemporary Islamic world by contextualizing current issues within a broader historical perspective. There are no prerequisites for this course.
HIST 292.01	ST:China’s Borderlands	0.50 unit, L. Kim
Sharing borders with more than ten other states, the government of the People’s Republic of China contends with many issues regarding the land and peoples around those boundaries. Territorial disputes, ethnic conflict, and economic development are especially prominent issues. This course will examine the historical background and elements contributing to the perceptions and policies directed at the borderlands during the late imperial period (1650-1911) to the present. The borderlands of Manchuria, Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet, Yunnan, and Taiwan will be visited in turn to understand topics such as environmental determinism, voluntary and involuntary migration, tribute as a form of trade, local autonomy, as well as the development of frontier cultures and identities. Students interested in international relations, ethnic minorities, or the comparative and interdisciplinary study of borders and frontiers are encouraged to participate.
HIST 292.02	ST:American Manhood and American Womanhood, 1860-Present	0.50 unit, B. Jordan
Feminist scholars correctly argued in the 1960s that existing accounts of American history focused on the activities of men at the expense of those of women.  Women’s historians have made great strides in rectifying this discrepancy.  The following decade, sociologists and cultural critics began studying the history of men as men to illuminate changes in men’s experiences.  Recent works have overcome the shortcomings of early men’s studies by concentrating on how gender has worked in conjunction with race, class, and age norms to determine the allocation of power and resources in American society.  This course will encompass the best findings of men’s and women’s histories and articulate the connections between the lives of men, women, and those that defy binary categorization.  We will give particular attention to gender dynamics in politics, war, work, leisure, family, and religion.
HIST 292.03	ST:United States Environmental History	0.50 unit, B. Jordan
In the inaugural 1996 issue of the journal, Environmental History, William Cronon argued that wilderness has been a profoundly human creation and a product of civilization rather than a pristine sanctuary devoid of human presence.  He argued that the wilderness concept has masked the contrasting ways in which different cultural groups have understood and been affected by nature.  Cronon’s article on “The Trouble with Wilderness” and the responses of other historians to it will serve as a starting point for our examination of changing American environmental ideas and practices from the colonial era to the present.  Our readings and discussions will analyze how race, class, gender, and regional factors have influenced people’s visions of and behaviors toward nature.  The course will also emphasize the key role government officials have played in determining the access different groups have to natural resources and public lands.
HIST 392.02	ST:The Atlantic World	0.50 unit, S. Coulibaly
As a field of study the Atlantic World transcends national borders. The Atlantic World is a very large geographical area that encompasses four continents, North and South America, Western Europe and Western Africa. Atlantic World Studies compares how these regions developed intricate and closely linked economic, cultural, and political systems on the eve of the 16th century. This course will examine the history of the Atlantic World from its beginnings to the present by emphasizing economic, cultural and intellectual exchanges between these four geographical regions and their peoples. Particular attention will be paid to European colonization in the Americas and in Western Africa, on the rise of slavery and of the plantation economy, on religious exchanges, and on migrations throughout the Atlantic littoral.
HIST 392.03	ST:Childhood and Youth in American History	0.50 unit, B. Jordan
American ideas about childhood and youth have changed dramatically from the colonial era to the present.  Social and legal conflicts have erupted over the contrasting childrearing styles of different cultural groups.  Notions of what it meant to be a proper girl or boy and a good mother or father often served as lightning rods for these tensions.  This course will explore how education, work, play, parenting, and youth organizations have reflected both changes and continuities in American ideas about children’s role in the family and society.  Particular emphasis will be given to late nineteenth and early twentieth century trends, when models of childhood with which we are familiar today coalesced.  We will also devote significant time to analyzing the emergence of an independent youth culture and its implications for modern life.
HIST 392.04	ST:Middle East through Film & Fiction	0.50 unit, N. Kilic-Schubel
This seminar will examine aspects of the history of the modern “Middle East” and Islamic worlds as they are depicted in film and contemporary fiction.  We will examine works created by artists from a number of different countries including Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Palestine as well as examples of western imaginings of the region.  Themes to be explored will include issues of colonialism and resistance, responses to development and globalization, understandings of ethnicity and identity, images of gender relations, and the changing role of religion.
PSYC 492	ST:Research Issues in Life-Span Development	0.50 unit, S. White
This seminar will cover basic and applied research in human development through the lifespan, from prenatal development, through infancy, adolescence, and adulthood, as well as family psychology and aging. Topics may include attachment, developmental psychopathology (e.g., autism, ADHD, Alzheimer’s), precocious puberty, identity, risk and resiliency, and positive aging. There will be special emphasis on the contexts in which development occurs, including historical and cultural contexts. This course is a discussion format and students will have opportunities to lead discussions on related topics. Prerequisites: PSYC 102 and a course in development or permission of the instructor.
RLST 441	Islam in Central Asia	0.50 unit, N. Kilic-Schubel
This seminar will explore aspects of the cultural, political, and religious impact of Islam on the Turkic-speaking peoples of Eurasia. Muslim Turks have played a crucial role in world history, establishing empires stretching from Anatolia, through Central and South Asia, to the western regions of China and making major contributions to the religion of Islam—particularly the Sufi tradition. This course will examine a variety of topics, including the Islamization of the Golden Horde, the nature of Sufism in the Turkic world, the impact of Russian and Soviet imperialism on Central Asian Muslims, and the Alevi-Bektashi tradition.
Supplement Spring 2008—Cancelled Courses
AAAS 110	Intro to African and African American Studies	M. Kohlmann
AMST 382	Baseball & American Culture	P. Rutkoff
ARHS 235	Art of China	Staff
DRAM 334	Scene Painting	H. Lester
PSCI 371	WWII: Origins, Diplomacy…	A. McKeown
RLST 103	First Yr. Sem:Women in Religion	M. Dean-Otting
RLST 346	Religion and Politics in Islamic History	N. Kilic-Schubel