***

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.

top

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.

top

HC 20: What is This Thing Called Science? A General Introduction to the Nature of Modern Science
(5 units)

Director: Eric R. Scerri, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Science is one of the most powerful forces in modern society. It provides reliable knowledge and is the basis of our modern technologies and standard of living. This course explores the difference between science and other systems of knowledge and will seek to answer the question of why science alone appears to provide reliable and objective knowledge and whether indeed it does.

We shall examine the demarcation between science and other forms of knowledge by considering first the views of philosopher Karl Popper. Older views of the objectivity of science and its supremacy have been increasingly challenged in modern times. Popper himself is also well known for having emphasized that theories cannot be proved but only refuted. We shall study this view by first considering some elementary ideas in logic to see why refutation may be a more viable option than the notion that theories can be proved.

Starting in the 1960s, philosophers of science realized that attempts to understand the nature of science would need to consider its historical development and could not rest entirely on logical and philosophical grounds. Pioneers of this "historical turn" include Thomas Kuhn, Imre Lakatos and Paul Feyerabend, all of whom have had highly influential roles on later thinkers in many fields.

The historical turn and the greater emphasis on social aspects of science, which were initiated by Kuhn in particular, have led to what many believe to be an over-emphasis on these factors. The 'Science Studies' movement has grown increasingly closer to advocating relativism to describe the nature of scientific knowledge. Scientific knowledge is sometimes described as being 'constructed' rather than discovered. The outcome of such views has been the "Science Wars" debate that has raged among from many diverse fields from the hard sciences, to science education, philosophy, literary criticism and anthropology among others. Our course will examine key readings from the Science wars literature, including the Sokal affair which dramatically brought these issues to the lay-reader.

The final third of the course will examine some specific modern issues in the study of the nature of science, including scientific explanation and scientific reduction as well as the question of whether scientific theories receive credit mainly for their dramatic predictions or their explanatory powers. Science is one of the most powerful forces in modern society. It provides reliable knowledge and is the basis of our modern technologies and standard of living. This course explores the difference between science and other systems of knowledge and will seek to answer the question of why science alone appears to provide reliable and objective knowledge and whether indeed it does.

Application on General Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre-Fall 2002) Physical Sciences; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) Foundation Categories: Society and Culture-Historical Analysis OR Scientific Inquiry-Physical Sciences

Eric R. Scerri, who teaches chemistry at UCLA, holds his Ph.D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from King’s College, University of London. He has taught at University College, London, the London School of Economics, Caltech, and Purdue University, as well as at UCLA. He is the author of numerous articles on the history and philosopy of science and is currently editor in chief of Foundations of Chemistry. He has been recognized for his distinguished teaching and is especially interested in promoting interdisciplinary discourse in the university.

top

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

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.

top

HC 25: Artificial Intelligence
(5 units)

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.

top

HC 37: Autobiography and Memoir
(5 units)

Director: Larry Grobel, English

Understanding oneself and others by looking inward. A seminar in self-analysis. Uncovering the highlights and the traumas of one’s life; shaping and structuring it into a narrative.

“A memoir,” Gore Vidal wrote in the introduction to his memoir, “is how one remembers one’s own life, while an autobiography is history, requiring research, dates, facts double-checked.”

How have writers, scientists, statesmen, soldiers, adventurers, politicians, businessmen, singers, artists looked at their own lives, reflected on the choices they made, the paths taken? And can learning about their decisions influence one’s own?

That is the idea behind this seminar: To study the memoirs and autobiographies of accomplished people, to discuss what they did and did not do in their lives, and then to try and understand one’s own life by writing about specific incidents and broader philosophical thoughts.

Larry Grobel is a freelance writer. He graduated from UCLA and teaches courses on the literature of journalism and on the art of the interview in the English Department here. He has written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Entertainment Weekly, Premiere, Reader’s Digest, and Details. He is also contributing editor on five magazines including Autograph, World (New Zealand), and Ego. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts grant for fiction and created the MFA in Professional Writing program for Antioch University. Grobel’s other books include: The Hustons; Conversations with Brando; Talking with Michener; Above the Line: Conversations About the Movies; Endangered Species: Writers Talk About Their Craft, Their Visions, Their Lives; and Al Pacino: In Conversation with Lawrence Grobel.

top