| HC 2 | Comparative Genocide |
| HC 4 | Immigrants and the American Dream - Cancelled |
| HC 10 | Colonial Legacies: Childhood and Islam in Francophone Africa - Cancelled |
| HC 14 | The Interaction of Science and Society |
| HC 16 | Science of the Singing Voice |
| HC 18 | Trial of Socrates - Cancelled |
| HC 25 | Artificial Intelligence: Machines as People, People as Machines |
| HC 27 | Theories of Exchange: Social Life of Gifts and Commodities - Cancelled |
| HC 29 | Critical Vision: History of Art as Social and Political Commentary |
| HC 34W | Construction and Migration of Knowledge: Rhetoric and Media for the Information Age - Moved to Spring 2006 |
| HC 35 | The Scientific Method: A Critical Inquiry into the Question of Extraterrestrial Life |
| HC 40W | Transformations of Cultural Stories Across Disciplines and Texts |
| HC 48 | The Politics of Reproduction - Newly Added |
| HC 49 | Evidence in Law, Science, History, and Journalism |
| HC 55 | Culture and History of Utopias |
| HC 56 | Language as a Window to the Mind |
| HC 60 | Discovering and Explaining Anomalies of English |
| HC 62 | Community and Self-Interest in the History of American Culture |
| HC 70A | Genetic Engineering in Medicine, Agriculture, and Law |
| HC 78 | Gender and International Development |
| HC 81 | Eastern Christianity in Comparative Perspective: History, Doctrine, Culture |
| HC 82 | Community and Labor Development from the Ground Up |
| HC 83W | Politics and Rhetoric of Literature |
| HC 86 | Psychology of Fear |
| HC 108 | Transnationalism, Diasporas, and Homeland-Hostland Politics |
| HC 109 | Language, Meaning, and the Making of Poetry |
| HC 114 | Architecture from Los Angeles: The Works of Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Greg Lynn |
| HC M116 | Art Alive: Art and Improvisation in the Museum |
| HC 139 | African Americans and Africa in Perspective |
| HC 142 | Madness in the Enlightenment: Care and Cure of Mental Illness - Moved to Spring 2006 |
| HC 144 | Stigma: Anthropology of the Dangerous Other |
| HC M150 | Formal Modeling and Simulations in the Social Sciences |
| HC M152 | Collapses of Past Societies and Their Lessons for Our Own Future |
| HC 153 | International Flash Points - Moved to Spring 2006 |
| HC 158 | Justice and Moral Responsibility in Literature |
| HC 163 | Civic Engagement and Public Use of Knowledge |
| HC 164 | Pushkin and Russian National Identity |
| HC 165 | Women and Literature in Southeastern Europe |
Director: Richard G. Hovannisian, History
Genocide is an extreme manifestation of conflict in racial, ethnic, and religious interrelations. Its study in a comparative interdisciplinary perspective is illuminating for an understanding of more peaceful group relations, the processes by which these might eventuate in group conflict, and the possibilities for preventative action. The latter concern is particularly significant given the failure of the United Nations to act under the provision of the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the increasing pressure of population on scarce resources, the ready availability of highly destructive weapons, and the habituation of mass killings.
The course is based on a number of case studies presented in theoretical perspective. The case studies are viewed comparatively to measure similar and dissimilar circumstances and aspects, and to test certain suggested characteristics of the victims and the perpetrators, such as differences in religion, race, or nationality, and the effects of both colonializing and decolonializing processes. The issues of intent as well as consequences are to be considered.
Major topics will include theory of genocide, structural analyses of the societies involved, processes of polarization of group relations, and the role of ethnic, racial, and religious differences and of ideological commitment in genocidal conflict.
Application on General Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Social Sciences-Historical Analysis or Social Sciences-Social Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - None.
Richard G. Hovannisian, Professor of Armenian and Near Eastern History at UCLA, received his BA and MA degrees from UC Berkeley and his Ph.D. from UCLA. A Guggenheim Fellow, he has received distinguished honors for his scholarship, civic activities, and advancement of Armenian studies. He is the author of many articles and books, including Armenia on the Road to Independence; The Republic of Armenia (four volumes); and The Armenian Holocaust. He has also edited and contributed to several other works, including the Armenian Image in History and Literature, The Armenian Genocide in Perspective, and The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics. In 1987, he was appointed the first holder of the Armenian Educational Foundation Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History at UCLA.
HC
4: Immigrants and the American Dream - Cancelled
Director: William A.V. Clark, Geography
This course is about the process of attaining the "American Dream". Even though the notion of the American Dream may be intangible to many Americans, it is almost palpable to those who struggle to make the passage across the Rio Grande or on a cargo ship from China. These immigrants are drawn by the allure of upward mobility and the belief in its possibility. It is a translation of a "seeking their fortunes" psychology into migration and a new beginning.
Two competing perspectives characterize the many studies of immigration to the United States. One celebrates the contributions of immigrants to their new societies; the other anguishes over the trying circumstances with which immigrants grapple every day. The positive accounts regard Latinos as the next Italians, certain to succeed through hard work and determination. The more negative would close the door to poor and unskilled immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Clearly, strongly competing agendas inform these differing perspectives on immigration, among them the desire for cheap labor, or the need for skilled technicians, or even the humanitarian concern to afford opportunities for as many as possible. Who is right? What is the evidence for achieving the American Dream?
Application on General
Education Requirements: None
HC 10: Colonial Legacies: Childhood and Islam and Francophone Africa - Cancelled
Director: Dominic Thomas, French and Francophone Studies
This course introduces students to the rich and diverse literatures and cultures of francophone sub-Saharan Africa. Through a broad range of novels and films from Guinea, Cameroon, Senegal, and Mali, students are encouraged to appreciate and understand some strikingly original cultural productions. We shall explore such key issues as colonialism, polygamy, education, female circumcision, and racism—key objectives being an exploration of France’s colonial project, the significance of the civilizing mission, and the role of the colonial schools and missionaries in attempting to create French cultural prototypes around the world. We shall also examine the impact of France’s assimilationist policies on the people of Africa, the challenge to Islam, and the various ways in which these societies have reconfigured themselves during the postcolonial era.
Application on General Educational Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Humanities-Culture and Civilization; New L&S GE (Fall of 2002) – Arts and Humanities-Literary and Cultural Analysis; GE Seminar/GE Writing II - Yes
Dominic Thomas received his Ph.D. from Yale University and is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies at UCLA. He specializes in the literature and cultures of sub-Saharan Africa and the African Diaspora in France. His teaching and research interests include African literature, cinema, and immigration and racism in contemporary France. HC 14: The Interaction of Science and Society
Director: Jeffrey H. Miller, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics
This course addresses the interaction of Science and Society and examines how this interaction affects history. The course is aimed at bringing together both science and nonscience majors for discussions on topics that affect all of society. We shall deal with case histories, such as Mad Cow Disease and related diseases in humans, and the spread of the Ebola virus, and AIDS. The course will include topics of current relevance, such as the issues posed by genetic engineering and by the possibility of cloning animals and human beings; the debate over how society is reacting to and needs to react to the prospect that we are losing the war against infectious disease; and issues posed by the possibility of biological weapons. One of our texts, The Coming Plague by Laurie Garret, deals with newly emerging diseases. Another, Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared Diamond of UCLA, looks critically at the fates of human societies.
This course should be of interest to science, history, philosophy, and political science majors, among others. No special scientific background is assumed.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 002) - Life Sciences; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - Scientific Inquiry-Life Sciences; GE Seminar/GE Writing II - Yes
NOTE: There is an enrollment restriction for this course.
Jeffrey H. Miller received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. After two years as a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows, he joined the faculty of the University of Geneva, Switzerland, where he headed a research group involved in understanding the molecular basis of mutagenesis. He is a recipient of the Friedrich Miescher Award of the Swiss Biochemical Society. After eleven years of teaching and research in Switzerland, he subsequently joined the faculty at UCLA where he is currently Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. He is author of over 150 research articles and of six books, including textbooks in Introductory Genetics and Advanced Molecular Genetics. His most recent book, Discovering Molecular Genetics, was published in 1996. He has been honored for his distinguished contributions to the Honors Collegium.
HC 16: Science of the Singing Voice
Director: Patricia Keating, Linguistics
SSinging is an instance of human voice production, and as such can be studied in the way that speech is studied by speech scientists. The scientific study of singing is a small but growing field that uses methods from speech physiology and acoustics to characterize differences among singing voices and performances. The classic work is by Johann Sundberg of Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, e.g. Sundberg (1989), and in this country by Ingo Titze of the National Center for Voice and Speech in Denver. Some of this knowledge has begun to be known to singing teachers: from the research side, by the work of the Center, and from the singing side, through books such as those by Miller (1996) and Nair (1999). Leaving aside the needs of the serious professional-level singer, amateur singers - especially those with an interest in science and experimentation - often find this sort of study of the voice fascinating. The course will introduce students to methods for quantifying aspects of voice production, so that voice samples can be compared across singers, styles, etc. Every aspect of voice presented in class will be explored through hands-on lab work in the computer classroom. We will look at the students’ own vocal productions as well as recorded samples of famous singers.
The resources of the Linguistics Department Phonetics Lab, developed for the study of speech production and acoustics, are well-suited to quantitative learning about the singing voice. Programs for acoustic analysis, used in phonetics courses, are already available in the CLICC, and specialized equipment used to study speech physiology can easily be brought into the CLICC classroom. Application on General Education Requirements: None
Patricia A. Keating is Professor of Linguistics at UCLA and Director of UCLA’s Phonetics Laboratory. She received her BA in Russian and French from Wellesley College and her MA and PhD in Linguistics from Brown University. She is the author of many papers and publications on phonetics and phonology and is a member of the Council of the International Phonetic Association and an elected Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America. She is a UCLA Distinguished Teacher.
HC 18: The Trial of Socrates - Cancelled
Director: David Blank, Classics
This course examines the figure of Socrates and the trial, which led to the execution of “the best and most just man of his day.” In order to get a fix on Socrates, the course will come at him from different directions. First, we shall look at the intellectual environment of Athens in the fifth century, so as to get an idea of the “intellectual revolution” of which Socrates was a part. For it was as part of this allegedly immoral and atheistic enlightenment that Socrates was charged and condemned, as will be seen when we read Aristophanes’ wicked comedy on intellectuals, The Clouds.
Next, we begin to look at the activity of Socrates as it is portrayed by his associates Plato and Xenophon. They take care to distinguish Socrates from intellectuals, whom they think of as phony or airy. Plato in particular gives us a picture of Socratic philosophy not as a kind of wise doctrine, but as a way of life, which consists in questioning.
Finally, we come to the crucial event, Socrates’ trial. We begin by examining the nature of the Athenian criminal trial: to what extent was it an attempt to establish the truth about alleged violations of “black-letter law,” and to what extent was it a forum for the staging of social conflict and a stage on which powerful individuals could establish themselves as leading players? How is Socrates portrayed as thinking about trials, and his own trial in particular, before the event? Next, we look at the sources, which recount the trial, particularly Plato’s Apology of Socrates and Xenophon’s Apology and Memoirs of Socrates. Our examination of these texts will culminate in a staging of the trial in class, in which we can reach our own verdict as to his innocence, or his guilt and punishment.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 002) - Humanities-Philosophy; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - Arts and Humanities-Philosophical and Linguistic Analysis; GE Seminar/GE Writing II - Yes
David Blank, Professor of Classics at UCLA, received his B.A. in Philosophy from Yale College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Classical Philosophy from Princeton. He has written numerous reviews and articles on ancient philosophy, including many articles on Plato and Aristotle. His most recent book is Sextus Empiricus Against the Grammarians (Clarendon Later Ancient Philosophers), Oxford 1998. With other scholars from around the world, he currently serves as Director of The Philodemus Project an international effort, supported by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the generous contributions of individuals and participating universities, which aims to reconstruct new texts of Philodemus' works on Poetics, Rhetoric, and Music.
HC
25: Artificial Intelligence
Director: Dario Nardi, Human Complex Systems
Do we control technology or does it control us? Are we just machines or are we more than that? Human abilities can be programmed into computers and robots in order to make machines act like people. But what are these human abilities? Some are self-evident. People see, hear and walk, for example. Others are subtle. How do we store, arrange, edit and retrieve memories? How do we know when someone is lying or joking? Is there a theory for how to tell stories? Two deep and long-standing philosophical divisions have arisen in response to these questions. One school is that of “brain in a box”: mind and body are separate and we can build a machine that is intelligent and aware without a body or emotions. The other school argues for “Situated Action”: intelligence and awareness “emerge” only in the context of a body, a physical environment, and social relationships. We shall explore these two schools and examine current approaches in artificial intelligence, as well as the many ways people perceive, act, react and believe. Class projects and assignments include observations of our mental processes at work and group presentations that demonstrate how patterns in learning, intelligence and communication can emerge from a seemingly disorganized and unstructured situation, whether among people, in the mind, or potentially in a computer.
Application on General
Education Requirements: None
Dario Nardi, Adjunct Assistant Professor in Human Complex Systems, received his Ph.D. in Systems Science and Industrial Engineering from the State University of New York at Binghamton. He has also studied as Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, and is certified in psychological testing. His focus is artificial intelligence, undergraduate education and curriculum design, and human factors in general. As an author and speaker on human behavior, he is particularly interested in how “normal” people experience the everyday world in different ways, and how machines can be made to interact socially in ways that mirror and complement these differences. Fiction writing, music, and a number of other part time hobbies complement these otherwise theoretical approaches, and he is a strong advocate that learning should be interactive and fun. He is also a fellow at the Temperament Research Institute.
HC
27: Theories of Exchange: The Social Life of Gifts and Commodities
Director: Gail Kligman, Sociology
This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the theories of exchange. In this seminar, students will explore basic, and often taken-for-granted, aspects of gift and commodity exchange in everyday life. Gift exchange is generally associated with non-market economies and social exchange. In market economies, commodities are often presented in the form of gifts. The classic works that constitute the basis for discussion are Marcel Mauss’s The Gift and Karl Marx’s writing on commodity fetishism. We shall discuss how the creation, maintenance, and also dissolution of social and political relations are modulated through the exchange of gifts and/or commodities in different contexts and different societies. Major topics covered include: the meaning of exchange; marking kinship and class; gender, power, and hierarchy in exchange relations—ritual relations; gifts of life—organ donation, surrogacy; and the politics of “gift giving” and influence.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 002) - Social Sciences-Social Analysis
Gail Kligman, a professor in the Department of Sociology at UCLA, received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research interests include socialist and post-socialist Eastern Europe, gender, and culture. Her most recently published book is The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics and Popular Culture in Transylvania (1988). She is currently working on another titled Politics of Duplicity: Women, Abortion and the State in Ceausescu's Romania. Professor Kligman is also the co-organizer of a comparative, international research project on "Women, Gender and the Transition in Eastern Europe."
HC 29: The Critical Vision: A History of Art as Social and Political Commentary
Director: Paul VonBlum, Center for African American Studies
For several centuries, the visual art forms of painting, graphic art, photography, and sculpture have been used as vehicles for social and political commentary. Our course explores this tradition, with an emphasis on modern art in the twentieth century. We shall focus particularly on the value of art as social, political, and historical inquiry and on its effectiveness in communicating political ideas and criticisms. Art works from Europe, the United States, Africa, and Latin America treat such themes as war, poverty, persecution, alienation, racism, bureaucracy, and political corruption. The seminar incorporates current research on contemporary social and political art, including art works such as Latino and African American mural art, poster and cartoon art, women's issues in visual art, and new forms of public art such as assemblage, guerrilla, and conceptual art.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Humanities-The Arts, Social Sciences-Social Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - None.
NOTE: There is an enrollment restriction for this course.
Paul Von Blum taught at the University of California at Berkeley from 1968-1979, where he headed the interdisciplinary social science major for six years and where he has been honored for his distinguished teaching. He has taught at UCLA since 1980, serving in several social science and humanities departments and programs and receiving a UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award in 1986. He has also taught as a student-recommended faculty member at UC Irvine. Author of four books and more than fifty articles and reviews on the relationship of art, culture, and society, he has lectured widely in the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America.
HC 34W: Construction and Migration of Knowledge: Rhetoric and Media for the Information Age - Moved to Spring 2006
Director: Jennifer Westbay, Writing Programs
Although knowledge migrates across discourse communities in a number of ways, this courses focuses on two basic patterns: the rhetoric of popularization -- or what happens when esoteric knowledge travels to nonspecialist readers -- and the rhetoric of canonization -- how ephemeral information becomes institutionalized in various repositories of culture. At first, the focus will be print and electronic genres, both mainstream and alternative, scholarly/professional and popular, and niche markets. But students will also examine additional media (and mediums) of knowledge exchange, such as the expert witness, the library, the museum, the department store, the performing arts, consultants, advertising, and social service organizations. Part rhetorical theory, part communications analysis, part information sciences -- and all writing -- this course works to help students to research critically, using the latest techniques and technology, and to understand choices that published writers make about selecting and organizing content for targeted audiences. Moreover, along with a thorough workout in stylistic analysis and manipulation, responding to the writing of classmates in large-group workshops will develop in students an editor’s resourcefulness and respect for writers and the ways they select and organize results of research
Satisfactory completion of this course with a grade of "C" or better will satisfy the Writing II requirement.
Jennifer Westbay holds an M.A. and Ph.D in English from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She has researched, published and presented at conferences, attended seminars and taught courses on media and the migration of knowledge. She founded and for three years taught the three-quarter Community Journalism Project for UCLA Writing Programs and ASUCLA student media. She has a contract with a publisher for a composition textbook based on theme of this proposed course. HC 35: The Scientific Method: A Critical Inquiry into the Question of Extraterrestrial Life
Director: William I. Newman, Earth and Space Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, and Mathematics
Are we alone in the universe? Since the dawn of history, human beings have speculated on whether life might exist on other worlds. Presently, we have the technological capability to answer this question, an answer, be it positive or negative, that will have a profound effect on humanity. Our course will examine the question, “Are we alone in the universe?”, which will not only challenge our thinking from many standpoints, but also offer a pedagogical tool to introduce the central ideas, techniques, and limitations of critical thinking and the scientific method. The course includes lectures, discussions, films, and field trips and evokes substantial scholarly inquiry via independent research projects and papers. Guest lectures provide different points of view and specialized expertise on some topics discussed. This is a course about the scientific method and its applications to the question of whether, how, and where life may have emerged elsewhere. (It is not a course legitimizing the so-called paranormal). Course content blends elements of planetary science, astronomy, geology, atmospheric science, and other physical--as well as life--science disciplines.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Physical Sciences; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - None.
William I. Newman, Professor of Earth and Space Sciences, Astronomy and Physics, and Mathematics, is a graduate of the University of Alberta and of Cornell University. He is a former Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, a former Stanislaw Ulam Visiting Scholar at Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. A theoretician by training, he works on a variety of problems in geophysics, space physics, and astrophysics, as well as in certain areas of applied mathematics. His current research interests include the atmospheres of the major planets, the earthquake mechanism, the dynamics of solar system bodies and disk galaxies, and topics in cosmology.
HC 40W: Transformations of Cultural Stories across Disciplines and Texts
Director: Cheryl Giuliano, Writing Programs
This course is presented in two parts, each of which examines the writing and rewriting of a traditional story type: the adventure story and the “Cinderella” fairy tale. In each part, the texts will be read as individual works and as examples of transformations of these classic story forms.
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, one of the most famous, representative adventure stories of all time, has been transformed and redefined in many editions, abridgements, imitations, and remodelings. This course will trace recreations of the story from its original reporting of Alexander Selkirk’s shipwreck to Defoe’s radical rewrite of Selkirk’s devastating experience as a castaway into a survival story and spiritual biography. Defoe’s story was canonized as the archetypal modern adventure story and as a foundation myth of modern, enlightened, imperial Europe which began a series of stories motivated by conservative politics of masculinity and imperialism. Booker prize-winning writer J.M Coetzee, a white, South African enemy of apartheid, rewrites Robinson Crusoe in his short novel Foe from the perspective of a marginalized, female character absent in Defoe’s story.
“Cinderella,” one of the best-known fairy tales in the world, exists in over 700 variants. This part of the course defines and analyzes the popular motifs of the Cinderella story and studies their transformations across different genres and time periods in such texts as Shakespeare’s King Lear, Esquival’s Like Water for Chocolate, and Smiley’s A Thousand Acres. The changing motifs will be analyzed in terms of cultural values and gender transformations.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Humanities-Literature; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - pending.
Satisfactory completion of this course with a grade of "C" or better will satisfy the Writing II requirement.
Cheryl F. Giuliano has a BA in Mathematics from NYU, and an MAT in English Education and a Ph.D. in Literature from the University of Chicago. She is the author of several articles in the fields of romantic poetry and composition studies and is a UCLA Luckman Distinguished Teacher. Her most recent publication is a book of textual scholarship on Lord Byron’s attitudes toward Wellington, Napoleon, and the French Revolution (Garland Publishing, 1997), which includes transcriptions of poems from original manuscripts, descriptions of Byron’s composing process, and composition histories of the poems.
HC 48: The Politics of Reproduction - Newly Added
Director: Gail Kligman, Sociology
Human reproduction and its regulation are contemporary policy issues around the world. Government efforts to influence fertility behavior call attention to an important feature of the modern state: political intervention into private life, intimacy, and sexuality. Technological developments have facilitated the bureaucratic regulation of the body as well as of medical practice--with positive and negative consequences. The expansion of the state into the bodies and lives of citizens has blurred the boundaries between public and private interests.
In this course, we shall explore diverse aspects of the politics of reproduction. "Politics of reproduction" refers to the intersection between politics and the life cycle, or between the public sphere and private lives. We shall discuss the complex relations between individual, local, and global interests as they shape and reflect reproductive practices, public policy, and the exercise of power. Diverse topics covered by our course include the social construction of gender and reproductive practices, the relationship between nationalism and embodied politics, abortion, the politicization of motherhood and mothering, and new technologies as they impact social and biological reproduction and experience. The readings for this seminar are drawn from interdisciplinary perspectives. Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Social Sciences-Social Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - None.
Gail Kligman, a professor in the Department of Sociology at UCLA, received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley. Her research interests include socialist and post-socialist Eastern Europe, gender, and culture. Among her works are The Wedding of the Dead: Ritual, Poetics and Popular Culture in Transylvania (1988) and Politics of Duplicity: Women, Abortion and the State in Ceausescu's Romania. Professor Kligman is also the co-organizer of a comparative, international research project on "Women, Gender and the Transition in Eastern Europe."
HC
49: Evidence in Law, Science, History, and Journalism
Director: Kenneth Graham, Law
Democracy requires well-informed citizens. Politics poses many questions. Is ozone disappearing from the atmosphere? Do corporations or terrorists kill more people? Is this candidate lying? But, except in specialized courses such as historiography and epistemology, even well-educated people seldom ponder how they know what they think they know about such questions.
Courts have an elaborate set of procedures and principles for determining such disputed questions of fact. Is the law of evidence a useful model for citizens? Critics would be horrified by the suggestion; many have argued that courts themselves should abandon rules of evidence in favor of evidentiary techniques of science, history, or even journalism. Are the critics right? To answer this requires us to compare the fact-finding principles and practices of these disciplines. That is what this course is about.
Although the readings and class discussion will be cross-disciplinary, students will specialize in one of the non-legal disciplines. Working individually and in teams, they will write short, weekly essays on some evidentiary issue that arises in one of their other classes or in the media. In addition, they will write a substantial research topic in their field of specialization. Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre-Fall 2002) Social Sciences-Social Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) None
Kenneth Graham ran the mile, played the high post, and tried every position on the offensive and defensive line before his high school coaches convinced him he was more suited to academics than athletics. After receiving his BA and JD from the University of Michigan and his P.F.C. from the U.S. Army, he practiced as a corporate lawyer, in a legal service office, and as a public prosecutor. He has taught at the Army Guided Missile School, the National Judicial College, and, since 1964, at the UCLA Law School, where he received a University Distinguished Teaching Award in 1987. He has written seven volumes of a treatise on the law of evidence, but has yet to complete that or a marathon.
HC 55: The Culture and History of Utopias
Director: Russell Jacoby, Political Science
Utopian ideas have longed served to record the hopes and dreams of society. They have raised perennial philosophical and ethical arguments about the quest for a perfect society; and in the more recent past—the 19th century, they both inspired efforts to create communities of freedom and brother hood and served as engines of social and political reform. In the 20th century, however, utopian energies have dwindled. Utopian visions, even, have been denounced as totalitarian and violent.
In this course, we shall consider the culture and history of utopia by studying major utopian writings, from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) through Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888) and beyond. We shall be concerned both with texts and contexts, history and philosophy. We want to understand these utopian writings; we want to situate them in their historical context and consider their strengths, weaknesses, impact, and politics. We shall also examine the reasons for the collapse of utopianism; and to this end, we shall consider dystopian or anti-utopian literature. Ultimately, however, utopianism is not obsolete, and the course will conclude with some recent ecological and feminist utopian writings.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre-Fall 2002) Humanities-Literature or Social Sciences-Historical Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) None.
Russell Jacoby, Adjunct Professor of History at UCLA, attended the Universities of Chicago, Wisconsin, and Rochester, where he received his Ph.D. He has taught at numerous schools in the United States and Canada and has held a Guggenheim and NEH Fellowships. His books have been translated into eight languages and include Dialectic of Defeat: Contours of Western Marxism; The Repression of Psychoanalysis: Otto Fenichel and the Political Freudians; The Last Intellectuals: American Culture in the Age of Academe; Dogmatic Wisdom: How the Cutter Wars Divert Education and Distract America; and an edited collection, The Bell Curve Debate: History, Documents, Opinions. His new book, The End of Utopia, was published in 1999.
HC
56: Language as a Window to the Mind
Director: Susan Curtiss, Linguistics
What is language? What are some of the properties that human language has? Why is human language as it is? What must be the mind be like if language has the characteristics that it does? This course covers these and other questions considering the nature of human language and the clues it gives us about the nature of the human mind. Topics include: the formal nature and character of human language (phonetics, syntax, etc.); differences and similarities between sign languages and spoken languages; language acquisition in the child; language representation in the brain; the relationship between language and other mental abilities; the autonomous nature of language as a system of knowledge; and other cognitive domains, including body representation and vision.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre-Fall 2002) Humanities-Language and Linguistics; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) None.
Note: This course has an enrollment restriction Susan Curtiss, Professor of Linguistics at UCLA, received her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley and her Ph.D. from UCLA.. She has carried out a program of research on the critical period for language development and the relationship between language (principally grammar) and non-language cognition. In this work, she has studied language development in linguistic isolates, normally developing children, mentally retarded children, and children with pre-school language impairments. She has also studied language breakdown in adults with acquired aphasia and in adults with Alzheimer’s type dementia. She is currently carrying out research to map grammar onto the brain by studying language development in children with temporal lobe and intractable epilepsy who undergo different cortical resections to alleviate their seizures. Her published works include a book on a case of language acquisition outside of the critical period and numerous articles on language development and language breakdown, and dissociations between language and other aspects of the mind. She teaches general Linguistics, language development, neurolinguistics, and psycholinguistics, is co-director of the Psycholinguistics/Neurolinguistics Laboratory in the Department of Linguistics, and directs several funded research projects on language development the brain.
HC 60: Discovering and Explaining the Anomalies of English
Director: Robert P. Stockwell, Linguistics
The English language is filled with anomalies and unpredictable irregularities. Obvious examples: In the inflectional system of the language the irregular verbs like sing-sang-sung, bring-brought-brought, write-wrote-written, and about 80-odd others; in the spelling system benign/ knight/ nine, deny/denies, rough/stuff, and several hundred others; in the pronominal system himself but myself (not hisself, meself); in the lexicon, numerous pairs of words that are obviously related semantically but appear not to share any formal properties: e.g., podium/foot, cordial/heart, tenuous/thin, tooth/dental, guest/host, hearth/carbon, eke-augment. Some of these come from language contact and borrowing (kirk/church, skirt/shirt, sky/heaven, poke/pouch, pocket/poach, swine/pork, freedom/liberty, petty/petite) whereas others come from internal historical change (glass-glaze, goose-gossamer, gild-gold, day-dawn, have-behave, cone/conical, sane/sanity, holy/holiday, claim-clamour).
The aims of this course are three: (1) to develop a clear understanding of the notion “linguistic anomaly,” which is another way of saying, “How do we know what is regular?” “What defines the notion ‘regularity in a language’?”; (2) to acquire a grasp of the historical facts of English which brought about these irregularities – not to undergo a chronological course in the history of English, but to bring in just enough of the relevant history to explain the anomalous behavior that we discover together; and (3) to develop a sense of the equality of variation, i.e., to become conscious that these variants which are all over the language are okay not because some rule book says they are okay, but because common usage makes them so. The notion of “standard English” is highly controversial, and this course will help students understand the artificiality of the notion. Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Humanities-Language and Linguistics or Humanities-Culture and Civilization; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - Arts and Humanities-Philosophical and Linguistic Analysis; GE Seminar/GE Writing II - Yes
Robert P. Stockwell, Professor of Linguistics at UCLA, received his BA in English and Greek, his MA in English, and his Ph.D. in English Philology from the University of Virginia. At UCLA, he has served as founding Chair of his department and he is the recipient of several Distinguished Teaching awards. Under contract with Oxford University Press, he and Professor Donka Minkova of UCLA’s Department of English are currently writing a new history of the English language organized on the principles of etymology—but an etymology of construction types and sound types rather than of word origins. Professor Stockwell is also a specialist in early English metrics, especially the prosody of Beowulf. He is a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies and is the subject of a Festschrift in his honor: On Language: Rhetorica, Phonologica, Syntactica edited by C.K. Duncan-Rose and Theo Vennemann. HC
62: Community and Self-Interest in History of American Culture
Director: Ruth Bloch
The history of American thought has been marked by an effort to reconcile contradictory sets of values-- hierarchy and equality, institutional constraints and the spirit of voluntarism, a collective sense of mission with a belief in the autonomous, self-improving individual. At critical points, events have borne down hard on these ambivalent affirmations and forced American intellectuals to address the internal tensions in their culture. In this course, we shall explore the historical origins and development of the values and beliefs that form the poles in the magnetic field of American faith. We shall also trace these basic themes culturally as the United States changed from a novel republic in the age of the revolution to an industrial nation and finally to a proselytizing world power.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Social Sciences-Historical Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - None
Ruth Bloch, Professor of History at UCLA, has also served as Chair of Women’s Studies. She attended Radcliffe College and received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1980, prior to joining the faculty here at UCLA. She is especially interested in the relationship between religious ideas and social change in early American history, and has published works about women’s history and the history of the American Revolution. Her current work is on history of early American marriage.
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HC 70A: Genetic Engineering in Medicine, Agriculture, and Law
(5 units)
Director: Bob Goldberg, Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology
For the first time in human history we have control over our biological destinies by using powerful genetic engineering technologies. What is genetic engineering and how has it affected our lives and society? The class will explore the basic concepts of genetic engineering and its applications in medicine, law, and agriculture. The goal of this class is to put genetic engineering into a scientific and historic perspective so that we can make objective decisions about how this technology should be used in the future.
Questions that will be addressed include: How are genes isolated, reprogrammed, and put back into living cells in order to change their genetic destiny? How has genetic engineering helped push back the frontiers of basic knowledge, created a multi-billion dollar biotechnology industry, and become part of our daily lives? Who owns our genes and can they be patented? How has our ability to manipulate DNA changed our concepts of privacy and made an impact on the criminal justice system? What federal and state laws govern our ability to manipulate living organisms, and what does the Constitution say about science? What is the potential for using genetic engineering to create and combat bioweapons? How is genetic engineering being used to create the livestock and crops of tomorrow? What are the ethical issues related to producing genetically engineered food and powerful new drugs? How does genetic engineering affect the lives of people in the developing world and offer great benefits for their well being in the future? What are the implications of using genetic engineering to diagnose and cure diseases as well as enhance human life?
I will use lectures, films, and discussions to provide a basic understanding of how genetic engineering is carried out and what societal issues are raised by the use of this powerful technology. We will trace the history of genetic engineering technology, learn about the scientists who invented gene splicing techniques, and read Scientific American papers that describe first-hand how genetic engineering has changed our lives. We will also engage in debates about the ethical and societal issues that have arisen as a result of genetic engineering technology and act these debates out in "docudramas" to make them come alive.
At the end of the class, students will have the opportunity to have a "real-life" SRP experience in my laboratory using many of the genetic engineering technologies that they have read about and discussed.
Application on General Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Life Sciences; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) – Scientific Inquiry-Life Sciences
NOTE: This course is NOT for students who have taken the following courses: Life Sciences 3, Life Sciences 4, or Microbiology 7.
Bob Goldberg is a Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology and has been on the UCLA faculty since 1976. He received his undergraduate degree in botany from Ohio University and his doctoral degree in plant genetics from the University of Arizona. Professor Goldberg's research focuses on the genes that control seed formation and how to use these genes to make the "super crops" of tomorrow. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to the field of plant molecular biology, including election to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Order for Scientific Merit from the President of Brazil, and being listed as making one of the "Top 20" Professors in UCLA's 75-year history. He has received Distinguished Teaching Awards from the Department of Biology and the Department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, and he has received the Luckmann Distinguished Teaching Award and the Gold Shield Prize for Excellence in Research and Undergraduate Education from the Academic Senate. Recently, Professor Goldberg was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute University Professorship, which is sponsoring this Honors Collegium class.
HC 78: Discovering and Explaining the Anomalies of English
Director: Sule Özler, Economics
This course is designed as an overview of the field of gender and economics, with an emphasis on developing country expericences in a globalizing world economy. The course has four components: 1) We shall look first at the theoretical debates within the gender and economics field; and 2) make an overview of gender inequalities such as gender division of labor in paid and unpaid work, patterns of employment and unemployment, and wage gaps between men and women in different regions of the world economy with emphasis on developing countries; 3) we shall then focus on specific topics within the gender and development field such as structural adjustment, feminization of the labor force, and poverty; and finally 4) we will discuss a wide range of efforts and proposals (by governments, international policy making institutions and civil society organizations) to make economic policies and economic structures gender-equitable (“gender-mainstreaming” of economic analysis and policy).
Sule Özler, Associate Professor of Economics, received her BS in Economics from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey and her Ph.D in Economics from Stanford University. She has taught at Koç University and at the Kennedy School at Harvard as well as UCLA; and she has served on the Advisory panel for the Human Development Report of the United Nations Development Program. Her research interests include inequalities/differences in a globalizing world as manifested in gender relations, productivity growth, and international private capital markets; and psychoanalytic perspectives on the methodology and theory of the individual in economics.
HC 81: Eastern Christianity in Comparative Perspective: History, Doctrine, Culture
Director: Ronald Vroon, Slavic Languages and Literatures
This course introduces students to Eastern Christianity, the third major branch of Christendom, particularly in comparison with Roman Catholicism and the major Protestant denominations that dominate the American religious landscape. Though it is the second most populous branch of Christianity in the world, with 250-300 million followers, Eastern Christianity remains unfamiliar to most American students of religion. Its institutional centers and the majority of its adherents are found in areas of the globe that, until a decade ago, were at a substantial political and cultural remove from the West. By the same token, although the Eastern churches are numerically well-represented in the United States, they are still camouflaged by the mask of their ethnic origins. Our course will seek to explore the common philosophical and metaphysical beliefs and mentality that lie behind these masks, comparing and contrasting the Eastern churches to those that dominate in the West. We shall examine how a specifically Eastern Orthodox outlook has developed alternative and unique perspectives, within the broader Judeo-Christian tradition, in addressing metaphysical, ethical, cultural, and social issues. Two goals emerge: an awakening of the significance of alternative views on the nature of the divine, the cosmos, and the human condition; and an understanding of the socio-political context of nations and cultures that have had no experience of a Renaissance or Reformation and whose approaches to the role of religion in political life, the function of art in society, and the role of the individual and the collective are fundamentally different from that of the Western mainstream.
Application on General Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Social Sciences-Historical Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - pending. Ronald Vroon, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UCLA, received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He specializes in Russian Literature and has published on both eighteenth century Russian literature and Russian modernism. His research interests include the history of the Poetic Sequence in Russian literature, especially the poets Derzhavin, Sumarokov, and Tediakovskii; the influence of the Old Belief on Russian culture; and the writings of Velimir Khlebnikov whose Collected Works he has edited.
HC 82: Community and Labor Development from the Ground up
Director: Jacqueline Leavitt, Urban Planning
Grassroots groups are making a difference in their residential neighborhoods and work environments, especially through economic development projects that impact housing, employment, and health and the environment. This course will introduce students to case studies about practical applications of community development and outreach office in the Los Angeles area. These projects will be drawn from the Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) of the Advanced Policy Studies Institute within the School of Public Policy and Social Research and involve faculty, students, and staff at UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning and the Center for Labor Research Education. Experienced community leaders and trainers in the areas of housing, economic development, environmental education, labor organization, and health education will join UCLA faculty in course presentations of their work and efforts in the Los Angeles area as well as drawing case study material from around the globe. Special attention will be directed toward analyzing and recommending actions regarding the housing needs of low-income workers in Los Angeles. Class projects will include student interviews of community leaders and representations of government agencies.
Application on General Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Social Sciences-Social Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - None. Jacqueline Leavitt is Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA and co-author of From Abandonment to Hope: Community Households in Harlem and The Hidden History of Low Income Housing Cooperatives. She is Principal Investigator for a U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant called the Community Outreach Partnership Center program. Her research focuses on housing and community development with a particular emphasis on public housing and women. She is a recipient of a Fulbright award to work in New Zealand, where she has been studying the privatization of state-subsidized housing. Kent Wong of UCLA’s Labor Center will act as a primary advisor to students and organize a group of faculty and staff from the Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) who will participate in different class discussions and presentations.
HC 83W: Politics and the Rhetoric of Literature
Director: G. Jennifer Wilson, Honors Programs
This course examines the relationships among literature, rhetoric, and politics. Drawing on texts from the classical to the present, it examines the way in which art and language become didactic vehicles for the didactic expressions of a culture. The examination of literature and politics will broaden into a general discussion of the development of political discourse in Western thought, in particular, the relationship between the society and the individual, between the politics of the self and the politics of the state, between personal freedom and social obligation, between ideology and the practical business of living, between one nation's or person's values and another's. The course focuses on literary texts which are ostensibly didactic: they examine social ills with the primary aim of exposing them and sometimes with the covert aim of suggesting ways in which we can ameliorate the apparently tragic relationship between human beings and their societies. The class will spend some time practicing close rhetorical analysis as a way of discovering that language, including what Sartre calls "inauthentic" language, is the shaper of both the self and the state; that writing, whether it be propaganda, exposition, of fiction, is always a political, and therefore ethical enterprise.
Satisfactory completion of this course with a grade of "C" or better will satisfy the Writing II requirement.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Humanities-Literature or Humanities-Language and Linguistics; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - Arts and Humanities-Literary and Cultural Analysis; GE Seminar/GE Writing II - Yes
NOTE: There is an enrollment restriction for this course.
G. Jennifer Wilson received her BA at the Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham in England, and her MA and Ph.D. at the University of California, where she has received many awards for her distinguished teaching. Her special field is literature of the American South, and she is the author of articles on the uses of history and politics in literature as well as on honors pedagogy. As Assistant Vice Provost for Honors in the College of Letters and Science, she has a special familiarity with and concern for honor students. She has been recognized by Honors Programs for her outstanding contributions to the Honors Collegium and is a UCLA Luckman Distinguished Teacher.
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86: Psychology of Fear
Director: Kenneth A. Mazey
Phobias represent how people are distressed and disabled by intense fear.
This seminar examines the structure and process of irrational fears of animals, people and places. During the course of the seminar we will learn how to identify the types & boundaries of fear & associated features of anxiety and panic; develop understanding of the phobic experience (thoughts, emotions, and behaviors); apply interview strategies to research data regarding phobias; and differentiate among clinical methods for overcoming phobias. A discussion of courage and fear reduction strategies will complete the seminar.
Kenneth A. Mazey holds a Ph.D. in Social and Clinical Psychology from The Wright Institute, Berkeley, an MA in Philosophy from UC, San Diego, and a BA in Psychology from Rutgers University. He is a practicing Clinical Psychologist and has served as Director of Psychological Services & Staff Psychologist at the Center for Health Sciences, UCLA, in the Dental Fear and Anxiety Center, School of Dentistry.
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108: Transnationalism, Diasporas, and Homeland-Hostland Politics
Director: Roger Waldinger, Sociology
At the turn of the 21st century, “globalization” appears to the order of the day, with international migration bringing the alien “other” from third world to first, and worldwide trade and communications amplifying and accelerating the feedbacks traveling in the opposite direction. Consequently, social scientists are looking for new ways to think about the connections between “here” and “there,” as evidenced by the interest in the many things called “transnational”. The excitement is particularly great among those studying international migration: observing that migration produces a plethora of connections spanning “home” and “host” societies, scholars detect the growth of “transnational” or “diasporic” communities across the globe. This course will seek to expose students to the key debates in this emerging field. Though focusing on the United States, the approach will be comparative, contrasting the two eras of mass migration, at the turns of the 20th and 21st centuries. Reading material will be drawn from across the social sciences, including anthropology, geography, history, political science, and sociology.
Roger Waldinger, Professor of Sociology at UCLA, holds a BA in History from Brown University and a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard. He has served as Chair of his department as well as Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA. A distinguished scholar in the field of immigration, he is the author of many books and articles, his most recent books including How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor, (with Michael Lichter), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003; and Strangers at the Gates: New Immigrants in Urban America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001.
HC 109: Language, Meaning, and the Making of Poetry
Director: Luigi Ballerini, Italian
Languages are not spoken by people but merely repeated by them. More often than not, communication is carried out through a depressingly small number of ready-made expressions, coined and "notarized" by the simplifiers of meaning (the politicians, the entertainers, etc.) and those who have gained control of the media (the "perverters of language," in the words of Ezra Pound). In this deplorable state of affairs, that which enables human beings to widen the circle of information also deprives them of the awareness they must necessarily have to make that information relevant.
How many people know the implications of the word "awesome"? How many can identify the origins of the simplest terms: war, villain, bellicose, etc.?
This course aims to stage a semiological warfare against abusers of language. Its strategy is twofold: a) to analyze samples of modern and contemporary speech (sound bites, sit-com dialogues, political and, in some cases, even academic addresses); b) to trace a brief history of the philosophic and poetic discourse on language and, more specifically, to highlight the difference language can make when deployed in the fullness of its possibilities. Finally, the course will stress the social and political significance of treating poetry as "first language."
Luigi Ballerini, Professor of Italian, is a widely published poet and theorist of literature. His primary interest is the way language structures morality, knowledge, and cultural philosophy. Since the late sixties, his writings have attempted to revitalize our sense of emotional and intellectual expression. He received his doctorate from the University of Bologna. His books in English include: The Waters of Casablanca (1977); Che figurato muore (1988); and Shakespeherian Rags (1996). He has translated into Italian works by William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, and Henry James amongst others.
HC 114: Architecture from Los Angeles: The Works of Frank Gehry, Thom Mayne, and Greg Lynn
Director: Ann Bergren, Classics
The goal of this course is to stimulate interest, understanding, and appreciation of architecture. It is designed to serve students with some interest, but no previous experience with the topic.
The course focuses upon the fact that within the last thirty years or so there has emerged a body of architectural work that—joining other cultural products like film and television—originates from Los Angeles and reaches the world in both material construction and aesthetic influence. This rich and influential aspect of the Los Angeles cultural milieu is represented by three architects: 1) Frank Gehry, arguably the most well-known architect in the world, won the Pritzker Prize – something like a Nobel prize for architecture – in 1989. Critical examples of both early projects and later work – each phase transformed architectural practice and thought - are here in Los Angeles. 2) Thom Mayne has practiced in Los Angeles since the late ‘70’s, is currently on the faculty of the UCLA School of Architecture, and is the 2005 Pritzker laureate. Of his many projects in Los Angeles, the Cal Trans District 7 Headquarters, 2004 joins with the Disney Concert Hall and the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels to form a trio of architectural monuments in the new downtown. 3) Greg Lynn, who is also on the faculty of UCLA Architecture, is the world’s leading pioneer in the use of computer technology for the design and construction of architecture. His work has been featured at the international level for several years. He is the acknowledged exemplar in the use of animation software (the software by which film creates elaborate animations and “special effects”) in the formation of architectural design and manufacture. Ann Bergren, Professor of Classics at UCLA, holds a Ph.D. in Classical Philology and a Master’s in Architecture both from Harvard University. She has taught Classics at Princeton, Stanford, University of Iowa, and Wellesley as well as UCLA; and Architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design and at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. In addition to her published scholarly work in the Classics, she is the author of many articles on architecture and design and is particularly interested in urban architecture and the architecture of the feminine.
HC M116: Art Alive: Art and Improvisation in the Museum
Director: Sandra Caruso, Theater
“Art Alive” is a course offered through the UCLA Honors Collegium in collaboration with the Getty Center’s Education Department. The course is designed for students to bring paintings/sculptures from the Getty Center museum collection to life through acting, dialogues, and movement. Students research the period and artist of a particular painting, investigate the lives of its subjects, and decide the mood, theme, emotion, and meaning of the piece. Students then improvise what happened before, during, and after the frozen dramatic moment a painter has captured on the canvas. The class will culminate with a performance of the students’ creations.
“Art Alive” intentionally crosses traditional boundaries imposed on the disciplines and allows history, art, and acting to coexist in one educational endeavor. The aim is to promote and enrich art in our culture and to bring an understanding of painting and acting, as well as art history, to UCLA students.
No prior acting experience is required.
NOTE: There is an enrollment restriction for this course.
Sandra Caruso, Adjunct Professor of Theater, teaches acting in the School of Theater, Film, and Television at UCLA as well as a course for screenwriters and actors. She has worked as a professional actor and has trained with distinguished acting teachers, including Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, and Uta Hagen. She is presently a member of Milton Katselas’s master acting class. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University, a Master's degree from the UCLA Theater Department, and a Teaching Credential from California State University, Northridge. She has directed many plays in the Los Angeles area. She is author of The Actor's Book of Improvisation: Dramatic Situations for the Teacher and the Actor (Penguin, 1992) and The Young Actor’s Book of Improvisation: Dramatic Situations from Shakespeare to Spielberg, Vol. I and II (Heinemann, 1998).
HC 139: African Americans and Africa in Perspective
Director: Negussay Ayele, Political Science
This course focuses on the saga of how African Americans have struggled to reattach their umbilical cord to Africa and Africans.
After enduring the ignominy of slavery—and remaining “neither African nor American” for
three centuries—blacks in the Americas started to ask themselves some critical questions. Who were they? Where had they come from? Why were they accorded a different status than other settlers around them? How should they cope with and surmount their predicaments? Their pursuit of answers to these questions led them to retrace their genesis, identity, and history to the African continent, initially referred to as “Ethiopia.” Buoyed by the Biblical reference that “Ethiopia shall soon stretch her hands unto God,” African Americans undertook a number of measures to develop their bonding with Africa: along with Afro-Caribbeans, they played leading roles in the Back to Africa, the Panafricanist, and the Colonization movements.
In the twentieth century, the momentum of African American involvement with Africa was accelerated with a series of panafrican congresses, the fascist invasion of Ethiopia in the 1930s, the emergence of independent African states in Africa, and the development of Black Power and Afrocentric paradigms and curricula in American centers of higher education.
Our course explores these phenomena in historical and contemporary perspective, focusing on defining moments in the relations between Diaspora and indigenous Africans, culminating in scenarios for symbiotic relations between African Americans.
Negussay Ayele holds a BA in Near Eastern Languages and an MA and a Ph.D. in Political Science, all from UCLA. He taught for many years at Addis Ababa University in his native Ethiopia. He has traveled widely participating in many academic conferences in his field. He has also taught African Studies and International Relations as visiting professor in a number of universities including the University of Florida, the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in Washington D.C., the State University of New York at Binghamton, California State University - Northridge, and UCLA. He has numerous bilingual – Ethiopian and English – publications on the Horn of Africa, Ethiopian politics, United States and Ethiopia, and African Affairs. His recent book is Wit and Wisdom of Ethiopia (1998). He has been a Fulbright Fellow, Ford Foundation Fellow, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung Fellow and Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA. He was also Ethiopia’s Ambassador to Sweden and other Nordic countries. He is currently engaged in research on the problematics of the Horn of Africa. HC 142: Madness in the Enlightenment: Care and Cure of Mental Illness - Moved to Spring 2006
Director: Dora Weiner, Medical Humanities and History
This seminar explores the writings of physicians and reformers of the Enlightenment who studied and treated the mentally ill and recorded their theories, findings, and recommendations. We shall examine the impact of Enlightened thought on aspects as diverse as patient management, hospital architecture, and legal concepts of insanity. The care and cure of mental illness will be considered in the context of the social, intellectual, and cultural history of the time and our comparative study will encompass Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and the United States. Research papers and reports by seminar participants may focus on works that can be read in the original, in the Rare Book Collection of the Biomedical Library.
Formerly HC 52. Not open to students who have taken Psychiatry 98 H with Professor Weiner or HC 52 with Professor Weiner. Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Social Sciences-Historical Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - Pending
Dora B. Weiner holds a baccalauréat from the University of Paris, the BA from Smith College and the Ph.D. from Columbia University--all in Modern European History with major emphasis on France. Post-doctoral training in the history of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University eventually led to UCLA where she is Professor of Medical Humanities in the Medical School and holds a joint appointment as Professor of History. She is author of Raspail: Scientist and Reformer and The Citizen-Patient in Revolutionary and Imperial Paris; the translator and editor of The Clinical Training of Doctors: an Essay of 1793 and of Jacques Tenon’s Memoirs on Paris Hospitals (1788); and the co-editor of From Parnassus: Essays in Honors of Jacques Barzun and The World of Dr. Francisco Hernández. She is completing a study of the beginnings of psychiatry at the time of the Revolution and Napoleon. As a teacher, Dr. Weiner tries to foster good writing, a grasp of geography as the basis of history, an appreciation of original sources, and the use of foreign language skills in research.
HC 144: Stigma: Anthropology of the Dangerous Other
Director: Peter Hammond, Anthropology
This seminar is designed for honors students with an interest in analyzing the apparently common causes and consequences of the diverse forms of social inequality in which culturally ascribed stigma is the common factor. Our seminar discussions, readings, and research papers provide a comparative and cross-cultural perspective on forms of cultural stigmatization based on such criteria as caste and class, social race and ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation, physical and/or mental "disability," and age.
Our analytic focus will be upon the dynamics of the socio-cultural attributes common to all stigmatized groups, and upon relations between stigma and the following: 1) constraints on access to economic resources; 2) obstacles to upward social mobility; 3) exclusion from information and access to power; 4) ideologies, aesthetic forms, and systems of communication that reinforce stigma; and 5) strategies for resisting stigmatized identity.
Educated in Latin America and Europe, Peter Hammond received his Ph.D. in African Studies and Anthropology from Northwestern University. As a Ford Foundation Fellow, he conducted ethnographic field research on technological innovation and culture change in Francophone West Africa. He has served as Executive Director of the Division of Behavioral Sciences/ National Research Council/National Academy of Science and been a frequent consultant on Africa to national and global organizations. At UCLA Professor Hammond co-founded the Development Studies Program and established and directed both the UCLA Applied Anthropology Program and the Lusophone Africa Research Group. Most recently he has chaired the Chancellor’s Task Force on LGBT Studies. His current interest is in the cultural structuring of gender and sexuality, with initial ethnographic study in North Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. Five books and some sixty journal articles and book chapters are the result to date of his research. He is a recipient of the Mortar Board Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Thais-Williams Professional Achievement Award from the Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association. He is also a UCLA Luckman Distinguished Teacher.
HC M150: Formal Modeling and Simulations in the Social Sciences
Director: Dario Nardi, Human Complex Systems
Short description: Exploration of different approaches to modeling empirical phenomena of concern to social sciences. Topics include utility models, learning models, decision models, group competition models, and evolutionary models. Use of multiagent computer simulations and group exercises to explore emergent behaviors among individuals interacting according to models for behavior. Discussion of advantages and drawbacks of more traditional mathematical modeling. Review of alternative forms of formal representations of hypothesized processes and issues related to verification of simulations.
Full course description will be available soon HC M152: Collapses of Past Societies and Their Lessons for Our Own Future
Director: Jared Diamond, Geography, Public Health, and Physiology
Most of us have at some point in our lives become fascinated by the romantic mysteries posed by vanished past societies: the Maya cities, the Anasazi, Angkor Wat, and many others. These ancient societies have taken on modern importance with the recent recognition that many of their collapses were at least partly due to environmental problems similar to those that we face today, such as problems of water management, deforestation, and soil erosion. What can we learn from those societies that might help us avoid their fates?
This is a challenging problem, because collapse is not inevitable. In some areas such as Japan and Java, complex societies have persisted for thousands of years without any signs of collapse. What made certain societies more vulnerable than others? Past collapses prove to have involved not just human environmental impacts, but also climate change, a society’s relations with its enemies and friends, and how a society’s leaders chose to deal with its problems. Again, all of these questions are acute today.
The course examines several sets of pre-industrial societies that met varying fates (Polynesians on Pacific islands, societies of the Southwestern U.S., and Vikings on North Atlantic islands), as background to examining how some modern societies are coping or failing to cope with their environmental impacts (Solomon Islanders, Caribbean Islanders, Australia, China, and the U.S.).
This course will interest anyone concerned with what may happen to our societies during the next 50 years. It will specifically interest those attracted to geography, history, anthropology, public health, public policy, and environmental law. No specific background is required, other than the will and ability to read widely in history and the sciences. There will be much assigned reading, a weekly lecture/discussion, and a weekly small discussion group.
NOTE: There is an enrollment restriction for this course.
Jared Diamond is professor of geography, public health, and physiology at UCLA. His three best-selling books Guns, Germs, and Steel, Why is Sex Fun?, and The Third Chimpanzee have won a Pulitzer Prize, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and (twice) Britain’s Science Book Prize. His many other awards include the National Medal of Science, the Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement, and UCLA teaching awards. For the last 40 years, he has worked especially on biological membranes and on New Guinea birds, and is now shifting his focus to environmental history.
HC 153: International Flash Points - Moved to Spring 2006
Director: Warren Christopher, former U.S. Secretary of State
This course concentrates on the explosive confrontation points in current international affairs: the flash points that threaten world peace or U.S. vital interests. It will not be a series of lectures, but rather a highly participatory offering to about 18 upper class men and women. The goals of the course will be to create a forum for intelligent and informed debate and to hone students’ research and presentation skills.
The first session will be devoted to discussion and selection of the international flash points that the class will focus on. Many of the flash points are fairly obvious -- North and South Korea; India and Pakistan; Israel and the Palestinians; Iraq, Russia and Chechnya; Columbia; Afghanistan and Congo. The purpose of this session will be to get a buy-in from the class as to the issues to be considered. We might also learn something from our choices.
After the flash points are selected, a three-hour seminar, meeting once a week, will be devoted to each one. Each session will begin with a brief scene-setter, then one student will make an oral presentation of the geography, history, and argumentation for one point of view (e.g. India) and another will present the contrasting point of view (e.g. Pakistan). After the initial presentation, there will be a moderated and guided discussion by the whole group. The presenters will be expected to defend their points of view, and the entire class will be expected to participate. Students will turn their presentations into written advocacy papers. In addition, as a separate matter,
Mr. Christopher will lead a discussion of media treatment of foreign policy issues on the day of the class.
NOTE: There is an enrollment restriction for this course. Warren Christopher has a long history of public service. After graduating from Stanford Law School, he served as law clerk to Justice William O. Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court and subsequently as the Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He later served as Deputy Secretary of State of the United States (1977-1981), and was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, for his role in negotiating the release of 52 American hostages in Iran. After rejoining his law firm of O’Melveny and Myers, Mr. Christopher went on to Chair the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department in the aftermath of the Rodney King incident. In 1993, he was sworn in as the 63rd U.S. Secretary of State, and served until 1997. His activities since his return to his law firm have involved consultations on a wide variety of international matters, as well as service on many boards and civic entities. He has authored two books: In the Stream of History: Shaping Foreign Policy for a New Era (published in 1998 by Stanford University Press), and Chances of a Lifetime (published in 2001 by Scribner).
HC 158: Justice and Moral Responsibility in Literature
Director: Daniel Lowenstein, Law
This will be a discussion-oriented seminar devoted to text-oriented consideration of great or near-great works of literature containing significant themes relating to law, justice, government, or moral responsibility in a public context. While philosophy, political science, and even history and law tend to address broad general principles about government and moral responsibility, literature provides a distinctive perspective on these themes. Ideas such as right and wrong, idealism and prudence, reason and passion, and justice and injustice, take on a different character when considered in the context of particular individuals, situated in particular situations crafted by a writer capable of illuminating the ideas in their human concreteness. In addition, since the issues of concern constitute central elements of the human situation, whose exploration provides writers of stories and plays with their central mission, concentration on these topics provides a window into many of the greatest works in our literary tradition.
Daniel Lowenstein, UCLA professor of law, teaches Election Law, Statutory Interpretation & Legislative Process, Political Theory, and Law & Literature. A leading expert on election law, he has represented members of the House of Representatives in litigation regarding reapportionment and the constitutionality of term limits. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the award-winning theatre troupe Interact and regularly brings the company to the School of Law to perform plays with legal themes, such as Sophocles' Antigone, Ibsen's Rosmerholm, and Wouk's The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Professor Lowenstein's textbook, Election Law (1995), appears to be the first text on American election law since 1877. He has written on such topics as campaign finance, redistricting, bribery, initiative elections, political parties, commercial speech, and The Merchant of Venice.
HC 163: Civic Engagement and Public Use of Knowledge
Director: Kathy O’Byrne, Center for Experiential Education and Service Learning
Research and publications such as “Bowling Alone” by Robert Putnam have documented the growing isolation of citizens and the lack of community in today’s society. More time is spent connecting “online” than “in person”. Some suggest this lack of connection is related to rising levels of violence and a lack of empathy for one’s neighbors and fellow citizens. What are the implications of these trends?
This course will begin with a review and analysis of the national discussion on the role of citizens in modern-day democracy, and the balance or tension between personal gain and public good. How does civic engagement and participation in public life contribute to the overall quality of life in our communities? How closely is one’s individual success tied to issues of social justice, access to resources or the distribution of wealth? What is the role of government to address ongoing social problems and what is the role of individuals or community members in creating “grass roots” solutions?
Further, what are the implications of this debate for today’s college students? What are the rights and responsibilities of universities to create good citizens, to enhance social capital? What can or should the university do to educate students about social responsibility and living in a diverse society? Do educated persons have a duty to play a leadership role and “give back” to society with their knowledge?
Finally the course will focus on ways in which discipline-based knowledge can be applied to local or large-scale community problems, in an ethical and just way. What is the public use of knowledge? A service-learning component will be used to examine the interface between campus and community, linking classroom reflections, writing assignments and required readings.
Application on General Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - five units of Social Science credit (Social Analysis); New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - None. Kathy O’Byrne received her doctorate in Counseling Psychology from the University of Southern California. She currently serves as Executive Director of the Center for Experiential and Educational Service Learning at UCLA and promotes education that includes active field-based work as well as theory in the classroom. She is the author of articles and publications that assess the value of service learning and of transforming teaching to include internships and practical experience in the university.
HC 164: Pushkin and Russian National Identity
Director: Emily Klenin, Slavic Languages
The course will present the biography of and mythology surrounding Avram Petrovich Hannibal (1696 [?] - 1781). Hannibal changed his name and religion several times, but even at the end of his long and eventful life, spent mostly in Russia, he reminisced fondly and clearly about his childhood in Africa.
Hannibal is best known as the maternal great-grandfather of Russia's greatest national poet, Alexander Pushkin (1799 - 1837), but, aside from that, he attained a position of authority and eminence as a Russian military engineer.
What is known, and what did Pushkin know, about him? We will review the biography of A. P. Hannibal in the context of Russian culture in the 18th century. Why and in what circumstances was he brought to Russia, and how did he acquire his unusual education? He was one of the first students whose advanced studies in Paris were supported by the Russian government, and he served in the French army before returning to St. Petersburg. Hannibal enjoyed the complete trust of Peter the Great (d. 1725) and served him loyally in several capacities. His later history is interesting for his Siberian exile and ultimate return to favor.
We will also examine A. S. Pushkin's attitude toward Hannibal. Pushkin took a pronounced interest in his African ancestor by no later than his early adulthood, referring to him both in published work (including his great novel in verse Eugene Onegin) and in private letters. He made considerable efforts to obtain family documents that might cast light on Hannibal's biography. His unfinished work The Blackamoor of Peter the Great is a fictionalized account of Hannibal's years as a youth and young adult, first in France and then in St. Petersburg, and the image of Peter the Great that appears in that work is the most sympathetic and intimate portrait that Pushkin ever offered of this famous sovereign. The Blackamoor is the first of Pushkin's prose works to attain a nearly finished form, and in it he deals with the issue how a black foreigner is assimilated into Russian society through the institution of marriage. We will also see what contemporaries had to say about Pushkin's African heritage and will examine a contemporary American novel in which Pushkin's work and his ancestry play a crucial role. Emily Klenin, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UCLA, received her BA from Swarthmore College and her MA and PhD from Princeton University. Her special fields of study include 19th-century Russian literature (Fet and his circle), metrics, verse theory, Russo-German cultural ties, Russian language history, Old Russian, Church Slavonic, and IT for poets. She has served on the editorial boards of Russkii iazyk v naucnom osvešcenii [The Russian Language in a Scientific Light – organ of the Russian Language Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow], Russian Linguistics [the Western European journal devoted to Russian linguistics], and the International Journal of Slavic Linguistics and Poetics. She has published extensively in the field of Russian literature, linguistics, and poetry.
HC 165: Women and Literature in Southeastern Europe
Director: Georgiana Galateanu, Romanian Studies
This seminar examines the changing roles of women in South-East European countries (Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Turkey) in the last sixty years. Emphasis is laid on the economic, political, social, and cultural factors affecting women’s roles during the countries' transition from an agricultural to an industrial economy and from communism to post-communism (in the former communist countries). The aim of the seminar is to sensitize participants to the complexity of issues in the region and help them understand better the multiplicity of causes of the present situation. The course is interdisciplinary, drawing on sociological/women’s studies/articles and short fiction by women writers for analysis. In class students discuss and debate the topics covered in the articles, the different positions taken by the authors, and the way in which aspects of these realities are rendered in fictional form by women writers from the region. The seminar format of the class fosters active in-class participation and exchange of ideas and opinions.
Georgiana Galateanu received her bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Bucharest in Romania. Her special field includes Romanian language and culture, Romanian for heritage speakers, women and literature in Eastern Europe, and foreign language pedagogy. A former Fulbright Scholar, she is a Member of the Society for Romanian Studies (SRS) and Editorial Consultant, Paralela 45 Press, Bucharest, Romania. She is the author of many articles and translations about Romanian culture and literature.
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