| HC 2 | Comparative Genocide |
| HC 14 | The Interaction of Science and Society |
| HC 23 | Political Dissidence Today and in Ancient Greece Voice |
| HC 24 | Three African Civilizations |
| HC 25 | Artificial Intelligence: Machines as People, People as Machines |
| HC 29 | Critical Vision: History of Art as Social and Political Commentary |
| HC 40W | Transformations of Cultural Stories Across Disciplines and Texts |
| 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 59w | Literature and Culture of the American South |
| HC 81 | Eastern Christianity in Comparative Perspective: History, Doctrine, Culture |
| HC 82 | Community and Labor Development from the Ground Up |
| HC 86 | Psychology of Fear |
| HC 109 | Language, Meaning, and the Making of Poetry |
| HC 110 | Marxist and Post-Marxist Approaches to Cultural Studies |
| HC M116 | Art Alive: Art and Improvisation in the Museum |
| HC 121 | Psychoanalysis before Freud, and a little after |
| HC 139 | African Americans and Africa in Perspective |
| HC M150 | Formal Modeling and Simulations in the Social Sciences |
| HC M152 | Collapses of Past Societies and Their Lessons for Our Own Future |
| HC 165 | Women and Literature in Southeastern Europe |
| HC 166 | Stories of Cultural Distance and Imposed Assimilation |
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 14: The Interaction of Science and Society
(4 units)
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 23: Political Dissidence Today and in Ancient Greece: The Trial and Death of Socrates in Its Classical and Legal Context
(5 units)
Director: Frances Olsen, Law
This course makes the trial and death of Socrates relevant to today by (1) showing its significance to the public response to and legal treatment of dissent and civil disobedience in contemporary America and (2) relating the trial and death to a variety of contemporary theories and strategies of dissent. The course also offers a compelling introduction to the Greek legal system and the values that animated that system. It introduces new ways to think about the roles of law, and places law into a social context.
Finally, the course teaches critical analysis through a careful examination of multiple conflicting approaches scholars have taken to resolving what most commentators consider to be a sharp contrast between the Socrates presented in The Apology and the Socrates presented in The Crito.
Application on General Education Requirements: New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - Arts & Humanities - Philosophical Analysis OR Society & Culture - Historical or Social Analysis -- PENDING (approval date not known)
Frances Olsen, Professor of Law at UCLA, received her J.D. from the University of Colorado Law School and her S.J.D. from Harvard Law School. A renowned scholar, she has held visiting professorships in universities around the globe, including universities in Israel, Ethiopia, France, Japan, Germany, Italy, and England. She has also held visiting professorships at Harvard, Cornell, and Ann Arbor-Michigan. She is the author of many articles and books and a specialist in feminist legal theory. When she practiced law, she represented Native Americans at Wounded Knee.
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.
HC 29: The Critical Vision: A History of Art as Social and
Political Commentary
(4 units)
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 40W: Transformations of Cultural Stories across Disciplines and
Texts
(5
units)
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 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: There is 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 59W: Literature and Culture of the American South
Director: G. Jennifer Wilson, Honors Collegium
This course examines the historical imagination as it shapes, out of one of America's most bloody experiences, a sometimes romantic, sometimes ironic myth. The particular study of the South provokes a general study of the creative process: the way in which artists, through their rhetoric, submit to the pressures of the past and fashion out of history designs for the future. We shall look at such writers as William Faulkner, James Agee, Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Allen Tate, and Toni Morrison, obsessed with or possessed by the proverbial nightmare of history from which we never awake. We shall examine the Civil War photography of Mathew Brady and photographs from the WPA and FSA collections of the 1930's. And we shall analyze Southern rhetoric and political documentary. The course will conclude with a discussion of the moral problems raised by the artists' attempts to distinguish myth from political and social realism.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - six units of Humanities credit (Literature); New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - Arts and Humanities - Literary and Cultural Analysis.
Satisfactory completion of this course with a grade of "C" or better will satisfy the Writing II requirement. 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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.
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 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 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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