Honors Collegium Courses
Spring 2010

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HC M152: Collapses of Past Societies and Their Lessons for Our Own Future
(5 units)

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.

Notes: (1) This course has an enrollment restriction; (2) Click here to access the course syllabus.

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.

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Director: Robert Hill, History

This course will attempt to explore the question of impostureship as a window through which to view national identity in the context of cultural modernity and the anxiety that accompanies its demotic quality. If, as the great African American scholar W. E. B. Du Bois once observed, where black and colonized peoples are concerned modernity stands as a fraud, then the very concept of modernity comes already tinged with imposture.

Imposture is one of the most universal of human phenomena and re-emerges with a vengeance, one might say, in the context of modernity, where personal and social dislocation is the norm and the expanded resources of communication afford the individual new opportunity to try on the almost limitless possibilities of transformation. In this sense, imposture might be viewed as a cultural performance in pursuit not only of survival but also of the exploration of new meanings.

The course strongly emphasizes the cross-cultural approach to studying the phenomenon of imposture. Thus, the course will examine imposture is several sites: Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, the Near East, and South Asia. Course materials include historical narratives, fiction, essays, and films.

Application on General Education Requirements: None

Robert A. Hill, Professor of History at UCLA, was educated at the University of Toronto in Canada and the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica. He is also Editor-in-Chief and Project Director of the Marcus Garvey Papers at the James S. Coleman African Studies Center at UCLA. As well as his stewardship of the Garvey Papers, he is author of articles and books on West Indian history and is recipient of the Gold Musgrave Medal of the Institute of Jamaica for Distinguished Contribution to History.

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HC 172: French Thinkers of Society
(5 units)

Director: Malina Stefanovska, French and Francophone Studies

This course is intended as an in-depth study of the French theorists who wrote on society and on its impact on the individual.

We will start by studying early modern philosophers who examined justice and might from the point of view of its social effectiveness, as well as that of individual equity (Pascal), and who described the transformation of an individual into a citizen in the act of accepting the social contract (Rousseau). A reading of French anthropologist Marcel Mauss and sociologist Emile Durkheim would then touch upon a view of society as a whole rather than as a sum total of individuals, with particular emphasis on “the sacred”, or the “total social fact” as objects of their study. Having thus set a historical and theoretical framework for contemporary thinkers of the social realm, we would then read in depth Michel Foucault whose “genealogy” of the modern individual traces that notion in the organization of power systems as different as the judicial system, apparatuses for controlling sexuality, or disciplinary institutions as school, army or hospital. Michel de Certeau will allow us to deepen our understanding of the interaction between society and the individual in the realm of everyday life, as well as in non-discursive strategies related to the body and its expressive culture. Pierre Bourdieu, a French sociologist, will further enrich our notion of the ways in which the social realm penetrates the individual, through his study of social class dynamics in France and the role of taste and cultural capital in social conflict. Literary autobiographies by French authors Simone de Beauvoir and Annie Ernaux will serve as illustrations of the sensibilities of bourgeois or working class childhood in their particular historical contexts.

Finally, two thinkers crucial for post-modern theories, Guy Debord and Jean Baudrillard, will provide us with a social critique of the contemporary “society of spectacle” and its formative impact on the individual. All works will be read in translation.

Application on General Education Requirements: None

Malina Stefanovska is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of French and Francophone Studies at UCLA and UCLA Clark Professor for 2007 -2008. She has also taught for two years as a Visiting Professor at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. She received her Ph.D. in French Literature from Johns Hopkins University and her special interests include memoirs, historiography, autobiography and other non fictional prose forms; seventeenth century theater; early modern culture and society; and contemporary French critical theory and social thought. She is the author of many articles as well as books in the field.

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HC 174: Rationality and the Emotions
(5 units)

Director: James K. Gimzewski, Chemistry & Biochemistry

Nanotechnology is typically discussed using a metric called the nanometer, which is a billionth of a meter. Certainly, one can classify many technologically and biologically important objects on the scale of the nanometer (nm). For instance, a virus has a diameter of around several tenths of a nanometer. DNA is around a nanometer in diameter but is over a half a meter long. Proteins have dimensions of a few nanometers. A cell is typically several thousand nanometers. In the technological world, the insulating gap in a transistor is nanometric. Molecules that we use every day, such as pharmaceuticals and gasoline, are a bit more or less than a nanometer, and polymers or plastics are made of long spaghetti-like molecules less than a nanometer in diameter but several thousand nanometers long. Terms such as nanoparticles and nanomedicine are used here to describe situations in which critical aspects of the whole or parts of the system are determined by nanometric dimensions in the range of 1--100 nm. The anticipated markets for nanotechnology, on the other hand, are measured in billions. Nanotechnology's economic impact in the coming 15--20 years is fragmented into many areas in units of $US billion per year and indicate a $1-trillion-per-year market. The science behind nanotechnology (nanoscience) is usually lumped under the rubric nanotechnology, and the evolutions of nanoscience and resultant technologies run hand in hand. The conception of the technology is frequently ahead of the science. In many cases, "nanotechnology" is merely used to describe the future in a fictional sense. It is a subject about which everyone, be they artists, scientists, politicians or housewives, doctors, scientists and engineers have their own “dreams and nightmares”. Nanotechnology, is materialism's “endgame,” meaning that it is at once about materiality, in the sense of “controlling matter at a molecular level,” and also presents the potential to undermine that way of thinking altogether. Roy Ascott summarizes this way of thinking: “Materialists may see working in the nano field as the end game, but it is not necessary to embrace a radical transcendentalism to see that nano is located between the material density of our everyday world and the numinous spaces of subatomic immateriality”. In this sense there is an important role for humanists and artists also to reflect upon and participate in the creation of what is also a philosophical transformation for humankind.

This course is more than the science behind nanotechnology, its about the impacts and shifts in technology and how they will potentially influence medical care, the environment and energy issues as well as military, government and economics. Like technology today it is impossible to separate nano from cultural and societal issues that are likely to change in a negative way if we continue corporate-industrial manufacture and welfare. No specialty knowledge of science or mathematics is needed to succeed in this course.

James K. Gimzewski is Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Director of the CNSI Core SPM Laboratory and Co-Director of the Art|Sci Center at UCLA. Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, he was a group leader at IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, where he was involved in nanoscale science and technology issues for more than 18 years. Dr. Gimzewski pioneered research on mechanical and electrical contacts with single atoms and molecules using scanning tunneling microscopy and was one of the first persons to image molecules with STM. His accomplishments include the first STM-based fabrication of molecular suprastructures at room temperature using mechanical forces to push molecules across surfaces, the discovery of single molecule rotors and the development of new micromechanical sensors based on nanotechnology, which explore ultimate limits of sensitivity and measurement. His current interests are in the exploration of nanoscience in medicine and microbiology. He has established extensive collaborations with the UCLA Medical and Dental Schools. He is actively involved in using Media Art and technologies to people of all ages to bring back excitement in science with a focus on nanotechnology, distant learning and remote control of experiments by the public.

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HC 175: Terrorism, Counter-terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Practical Approach
(5 units)

Directors: Michael Intriligator, Economics/Political Science/Public Policy; Peter Katona, Medicine; and Robert Spich, Anderson School

This course focuses on terrorism and its origins and examines how terrorism is or could be addressed at the local, national, and global levels. Our topics include a discussion of the variety of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, biological, chemical, and radiological weapons and their possible future use. We shall examine global approaches to quarantine, isolation and containment; terrorism, technology and the internet; protecting the infrastructure; soft targets, suicide bombers, and countermeasures; strategies for terrorist interventions; and the models that SARS and influenza might supply for how we should respond to bioterrorist threats. We shall also look at the likely motivation of terrorists (highlighting the importance of humiliation, hopelessness, lack of respect, and revenge as opposed to poverty and ignorance) as well as the role of the US military in the War on Terrorism and the legal challenges faced by the prevention of terror. The course will conclude with a discussion of the likely or ideal anti-terrorism environment of the future. The course includes guest lecturers from various departments at UCLA and from the Los Angeles and other areas.

Application on General Education Requirements: None

Note: Click here for additional information about the course.

Michael Intriligator is Emeritus Professor of Economics at UCLA. He is also Professor of Political Science and Professor of Public Policy in the School of Public Policy and Social Research, and Co-Director of the Jacob Marschak Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Mathematics in the Behavioral Sciences. He is a Senior Fellow of the Milken Institute in Santa Monica. He has taught courses in economic theory, econometrics, mathematical economics, international relations, and health economics, and he has received several distinguished teaching awards. Dr. Intriligator received his undergraduate S.B. degree in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; his M.A. degree at Yale University, where he was the recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship; and his Ph.D. in Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of more than 200 journal articles and other publications in the areas of economic theory and mathematical economics, econometrics, health economics, reform of the Russian economy, and strategy and arms control, his principal research fields.

Peter Katona is Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine in the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine (Infectious Diseases). He has trained at Cornell University, Yale University, Emory university and the University of Florida. His special areas of interest and research include clinical infectious diseases and internal medicine; epidemiology and public health; medical information technology; biological terrorism and biowarfare; and nanotechnology biodiagnostics. He is a member of the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services Center for Disease Control’s Bioterrorism Advisory Committee for Public Health Preparedness and Response; a member of the Bioterrorism Work Group Committee of the Infectious Diseases Society of America; and a member of the Emergency Medical Services Taskforce on Hospital Bioterrorism Preparedness for the Hospital Association of Southern California. Dr. Katona is the author of several review articles on bioterrorism preparedness and is currently editing a book on a global networked response to counterterrorism.

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