HC 12: Sacred Form: Literature and Poetry in India from the Bronze Age to Pre-Modern Times
(4 units)

Director: Hartmut Scharfe, East Asian Languages and Cultures

This course examines the literature of Indian culture and civilization through the development of the early religious poetry (prior to 1,000 BC) to a broad range of literary styles and diverse religious and philosophical movements through the classical, medieval, and pre-modern period (the time before the arrival of the British).

Through translations, we shall examine some important hymns of the Veda and crucial sections of the Upanishads to trace the intellectual development, the heights of Vedic mythology, and the subsequent transformations of it as it develops into what is commonly called Hinduism. The material studied will include poetry of the Rigveda, a documentary film of Vedic ritual, and lyrics of the bhakti movement. The various forms of Hinduism are profiled with sections from the great epics, the popular sectarian writings called Puranas, and selections from tantric works that accent the polarity of the female powers. In a parallel development, the Buddhist and Jain reform movements attained prominence for a while. Buddhism has virtually disappeared from India but it had a major impact on the rest of Asia and maybe the world. Modern Hinduism has a very complex texture that incorporates many of the past ideas and tendencies and tries to define its positions versus other religions that have impacted India in the last centuries.

Application on General Education Requirements: four units of Social Science credit (Historical Analysis). Not applicable on GE for students entering in Fall 2002.

Harmut Scharfe, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, was born and educated in Germany. After teaching and studying in India, he came to UCLA in 1965. He is the author of several books, three on the Indian grammarians and two on the Indian state. He has also published dozens of articles dealing with linguistic development in India, Ãurveda, and Indian philosophy. He is currently completing work on a book on education in ancient India.

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HC 15: Acting Myth
(4 units)

Directors: Sandra Caruso, Theater
Miriam Robbins Dexter, Women’s Studies

This is a course in both the study of mythology and in improvisational acting. The course introduces students to a range of mythology and texts from a variety of Indo-European and Near Eastern sources, using the best available translations of original texts. This multi-cultural approach includes presentation of background material which contextualizes the myth both culturally and historically and allows students to explore linguistic analysis and related archeological and historical data.

To understand the living aspect of myth, students will embody these stories by acting them out in directed scenes, to see and feel how these figures represent powerful human responses to the challenges of life we still face: sexual attraction, marriage, love, power, inheritance, and war. The acting exercises offer a chance for students to reinterpret and process the mythic material emotionally and sensorially and provide a rare opportunity for Letters and Science students to learn acting and directing techniques.

Sandra Caruso, Adjunct Professor of Theater, teaches acting in the School of Theater, Film, and Television at UCLA as well as a course for screen writers 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).

Miriam Robbins Dexter holds a BA in Classics and a Ph.D. in Indo-European Studies, both from UCLA. Her doctoral dissertation on Indo-European female figures, along with courses she taught at UCLA and USC in ancient goddesses and heroines, evolved into her book, Whence Goddesses: A Source Book. She is the author of several journal and encyclopedia articles on ancient female figures. She has written the new introduction to O.G.S. Crawford’s seminal work, The Eye Goddess (Delphi Press, 1991) and co-edited an anthology of articles entitled Varia on the Indo-European Past: Papers in Memory of Marija Gimbutas (1997), as well as a monograph of Dr. Gimbutas’ own collected articles and an edition of her book, The Living Goddesses, published posthumously. Dr. Dexter has taught courses in Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit and currently teaches in Women’s Studies.

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HC 21W: The Rise and Fall of Modernism
(6 units)

Director: Richard Creese, Writing Programs

This course studies the early and middle 20th century's attempt to find, construct, or reconstruct "deep significance." Modernism was the revolt against industrialization, rationality, science, urbanization, industrialization, materialism--in a word, against the modern. The Modernists sought ways to counter their disillusionment with 20th century history with the hope that significance might be found somewhere beneath the grim, modern surface. To complicate the Modernists' program was a rejection of conventional notions of religion. If they were not materialists, neither were they usually spiritualists. It is this search for significance somewhere between materialism and religion which defines Modernism.

First, we shall establish the modern world view, which Modernists were reacting against. We shall then examine the Modernism of D. H. Lawrence, W. B. Yeats, and Virginia Woolf and artists and architects discussed by Robert Hughes in The Shock of the New.

The course will conclude with a look at Postmodernist writers such as Karen Tei Yamashita, and Nabokov, to see how they critique, attack, and parody the Modernist project in their novels. We shall also look at Modernist and Post-Modernist art and plays by Pinter and Frank Chin.

Application on General Education Requirements: six units of Humanities credit (Literature). For students entering in Fall 2002, application on GE is pending (still in committee).

Satisfactory completion of this course with a grade of "C" or better will satisfy the Writing II requirement.

Richard Creese received his BS and MA degrees from the University of Colorado and a Ph.D. in English Literature from UCLA. His major field is Twentieth Century British Literature, more specifically the Novel. He has published articles on Alain Robbe-Grillet, Graham Greene, Ford Madox Ford, and Jane Austen, as well as poetry and fiction. He is the co-author of Currents of Power, a college writing text in publication.

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HC 37A: Ethnicity, Gender, and Social Class in the United States and Other Societies
(4 units)

Director: William Mason, Sociology

In this course, students learn about the population of the U.S. and many of the contemporary challenges facing the nation by juxtaposing readings form the social science literature on social class, social mobility, ethnicity, and the absorption of immigrants with analysis of data dealing with these issues. Moreover, by contrasting the U.S. with other nations, we shall discover how social scientists go about determining what is unique to particular times and places (e.g. the U.S. at the end of the twentieth century) and what are instances of more general phenomena. Instructional software provides hands-on access to census and sample survey data with a minimum of technical knowledge. Through these data bases and our readings, we shall examine inequality based on class, race, and ethnicity, and trends in patterns of inequality; changes in the level and pattern of immigration over time; and the relation between social class and attitudes regarding major social issues such as immigration and poverty. Course activities will include in-class discussions of students’ tabulations and interpretations prepared from one of several data sets and course readings.

The course is run as a seminar and there are no prerequisites. Preparation for each class will involve a mix of reading and computer work. Effective participation depends upon our willingness to subject our own--and each other's--beliefs to the possibility of empirical refutation.

Application on General Education Requirements: four units of Social Science credit (Social Analysis). Not applicable on General Education for students entering in the Fall of 2002.

William Mason, Professor of Sociology and Social Statistics, is a sociologist, demographer, and statistician. His past research has included studies of voting behavior, political alienation, cohort analysis, human fertility, and inbreeding in human populations. His current research is on infant mortality in China and the statistics of multilevel analysis. He received his B.A. from Reed College and his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago; he has been a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation; and he taught for nearly twenty years at the University of Michigan before coming to UCLA in 1990.

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HC 54: Improvisation and Acting Techniques
(5 units)

Director: Sandra Caruso, Theater

Application on General Education Requirements: Not applicable on General Education for students entering in the Fall of 2002.

Sandra Caruso, Adjunct Professor of Theater, teaches acting in the School of Theater, Film, and Television at UCLA as well as a course for screen writers 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).

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HC 73: Elementary Particles and the Universe
(4 units)

Director: David B. Cline, Astronomy and Physics

The interplay of cosmology and elementary particle physics is one of the most interesting scientific phenomena and is also extremely beautiful. The early universe consisted of elementary particles such as quarks, electrons, neutrinos, and intermediate vector bosons. These particles, the building blocks of nature, left an imprint on the universe as we know it today.

The course will concentrate on the present aspects of the universe that provide information about the big bang and the early evolution of the universe. It will show how the large-scale properties of the universe were determined by its early evolution and how elementary particles controlled that evolution. Recent observations of the relics of the Big Bang by the COBE satellite and by other techniques will be described, as will the existence of dark matter in the universe and the efforts to detect this matter in laboratories around the world. Einstein’s vacuum energy seems to have been detected, implying that the universe may expand forever. The search for the Dark Matter Elementary Particles that make up at least 90% of the matter of the universe is an exciting project now. Some of this Dark Matter could be in the form of the mass of the relic neutrinos. Finally in 1998, a new component of “dark energy” was discovered. This energy seems to be part of the vacuum of the universe and is perhaps the greatest mystery of all. Where did it come from and why? All we know is that the combined energy and mass seems to give rise to geometry of the universe that is Euclidean or “Flat.” We shall discuss the paradoxes of black holes and the anthropic principle that possibly connects the universe and life. We shall also discuss the role of symmetry and asymmetry in the laws of nature and examine how this relates to the universe.

The course will serve as an introduction to elementary particles as they are studied in various laboratories around the world, such as the laboratory at Fermilab or the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland, and to some aspects of astronomy. Students will be introduced to the detectors that are used to observe these particles and to examine real particle events. Course material is presented in a fairly non-mathematical way and no special prior mathematical knowledge is required.

Application on General Education Requirements: four units of Physical Science credit. Not applicable on GE for students entering in Fall 2002.

David B. Cline received his Ph.D. in experimental elementary particle physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1965. He became Professor of Physics in 1968 and, in 1973, participated in the discovery of Weak Neutral Currents at Fermilab. In 1974, he was one of the first observers of Charm particles. He initiated, along with C. Rubbia, the search for the Intermediate Vector Boson; and he helped start the current search for proton decay. He is Associate Editor of the Nuclear Physics B Journal. Dr. Cline joined the faculty at UCLA in 1986, holding a professorship in the Astronomy and Physics Departments. His programs of research include B Physics studies, ICARUS, Accelerator R&D, Astroparticle Physics, development of a Massive Supernova Observatory, and the construction of a Phi Factory at UCLA. He is Director of the UCLA Center for Advanced Accelerators.

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HC 84: Conflicts Between Languages
(5 units)

Director: Robert Kirsner, Germanic Languages

This course [i] introduces students to the potentially conflict-ridden language situation in three foreign countries and then [ii] discusses various aspects of minority languages in the United States.

The course begins by exposing the student to basic concepts of language, dialect, pidgins, Creoles, and to the social and political problems which can arise when a country contains populations speaking different languages.

We then present three case studies, the first two of which concern countries not well known in the U.S. – South Africa and Belgium – which each have a rich history of language conflict. The last case study concerns Israel and examines the re-development of Modern Hebrew from a literary and liturgical language to a spoken language.

Attention will then turn to the language situation in the United States, including the role of earlier waves of immigrants, speaking Italian and Yiddish as well as the role of Spanish, Korean, and Tagalog in the development of California and the West; and the role of Black English as language or social dialect.

Among the goals of the course are [i] increasing the students’ awareness of language, languages and language issues, [ii] increasing the students’ knowledge of how languages differ, and [iii] appreciating the politics involved in each language conflict, including those in the United States.

Robert Kirsner says that he wears two hats. He is both a general linguist and a neerlandicus (= Netherlandicist, or scholar of Dutch, including in his case its sister language, Afrikaans). He believes that those who have tasted the richness of Dutch literature (from Belgium and the Caribbean as well as the Netherlands) or the richness of Afrikaans literature (by both Afrikaners and "Cape Coloureds") will appreciate the value of studying modern languages related to German as well as German itself. His courses Dutch 120 and 131 provide a streamlined introduction to reading knowledge of Dutch and to Modern Dutch literature. It is not for nothing that both Dutch literature and Afrikaans literature have been fertile testing grounds for the most sophisticated of recent literary theories. The conflicts among languages in South Africa have led to his interest in similar linguistic conflicts around the globe.

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HC 108: Transnationalism, Diasporas, and Homeland-Hostland Politics
(5 units)

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.

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HC 111: Stress and Coping
(5 units)

Director: Christine Dunkel-Schetter, Psychology

This course examines theory and research on stress and coping with an emphasis on the physical and mental health consequences of stress. Stress is an everyday experience in contemporary urban life. It has been defined as demands that tax or exceed the individual's resources. These can be in the form of acute stressful events, such as final exams or relationship breakups. Or they can be in the form of longer-term chronic stress, for instance, that resulting from divorce, chronic disability, or illness. When prolonged and intense, stress is a clear-cut risk factor for physical and mental health problems. Our capacity to cope with taxing demands is important because it can reduce the adverse effects of stress on our health and well being.

Through readings, short papers, and class discussion, we shall explore the various forms of stress in contemporary life; examine evidence for its health-damaging effects; consider the different forms that coping can take and the effects of coping on physical and mental health; learn about social support--a psychosocial resource that has positive effects on health and well being; and briefly consider some dimensions of personality that may interact with stress, coping, and social support in influences on health and well being. A primary goal of the course is to provide valuable, scientifically-based information about stress and coping and their health implications.

This course is designed for juniors and seniors.

Christine Dunkel-Schetter received her B.A. from Connecticut College and her Ph.D. in Social Psychology form Northwestern University. She then held a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Berkeley, where she worked with distinguished experts on stress and coping. She joined the UCLA faculty in 1983 and is currently Director of the Health Psychology Program. She has published papers on stress and coping in cancer patients, on stress among students at UCLA, on social support in many groups including people with AIDS and diabetes and on psychosocial processes in pregnancy. She also co-authored the book, Infertility: A Stress and Coping Perspective. She is currently engaged in federally funded projects on the biochemical and psychosocial processes associated with stress in pregnancy.

Note: This course has an enrollment restriction

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Note: This course has an enrollment restriction

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HC 130: How the Cold War was Played
(4 units)

Director: Andrzej Korbonski, Political Science

The so-called “Cold War” dominated world politics for most of the post-World War II period. What triggered it and which of the two super powers—the United States or the Soviet Union—actually started it? While most agree that the Cold War came to an end in the late 1980s, does it in fact continue, albeit in a different form?

This course tries to provide answers to these questions. We shall examine why the Cold War lasted as long as it did and why the various attempts to end it sooner failed. We shall also look at the impact of the Cold War on the political and socio-economic systems of the two main protagonists; and at the potential of a “Cold War Legacy” and its influence today.

The literature of the Cold War is voluminous. The last decade witnessed the opening of hitherto secret Soviet archives, which provide an interesting insight into the decision-making process in the Kremlin. Several American and Western European leaders have also published their memoirs. We should thus be able to learn much about how the Cold War was played not only in Washington but also in Moscow and elsewhere.

Application on General Education Requirements: four units of Social Science credit (Historical Analysis); or four units of Social Science credit (Social Analysis). For students entering as freshmen in the Fall of 2002, application on General Education is pending.

Andrzej Korbonski, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at UCLA, was born in Poland resistance movement and spent the last seven months of the war in a German prisoner-of-war camp. When the war ended he remained in the West. He received his B.Sc. degree in Economics from the University of London. He came to the United States in 1950 and served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War. He then returned to school and received his MA in Economics and Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University. He was hired by UCLA in 1963 and he has remained there ever since. He has chaired the Department of Political Science, headed the Center for Russian and East European Studies, and co-directed the RAND-UCLA Center for Soviet Studies. In the early 1970s he was Officer in Charge of Soviet and East European Programs at the Ford Foundation. He is currently Editor of the quarterly Communist and Post-Communist Studies.

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