| HC 2 | Comparative Genocide |
| HC 5 | Representing Cleopatra: History, Drama, and Film |
| HC 14 | The Interaction of Science and Society |
| HC 20 | What Is this Thing Called Science? A General Introduction to the Nature of Modern Science |
| HC 23 | Political Dissidence Today and in Ancient Greece: The Trial and Death of Socrates in Its Classical and Legal Context |
| 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 70A | Genetic Engineering in Medicine, Agriculture and Law |
| HC 82 | Community and Labor Development from the Ground Up |
| HC 83w | Politics and the Rhetoric of Literature |
| HC 105 | Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare |
| HC M116 | Art Alive: Art and Improvisation in the Museum |
| HC 121 | Psychoanalysis Before Freud, and A Little After |
| HC 137 | Political Satire: The Offensive Art |
| HC M150 | Formal Modeling and Simulations in Social Science |
| HC 153 | International Flash Points |
| HC 165 | Women and Literature in Southeastern Europe |
| HC 171 | Rationality and the Emotions |
| HC 173 | Lincoln and the American Political Tradition |
| HC 173A | Liberty, Government, and Society in European Thought |
| HC 177 | Biotechnology and Art |
| HC 178 | Secret Coups, Imperial Wars, and American Democracy since World War II |
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 5: Representing Cleopatra: History, Drama, and Film
Director: Robert Gurval, Classics
Who was Cleopatra? How was the legendary queen of Egypt seen by her contemporaries? When did the myth(s) of Cleopatra originate, and how did subsequent cultures and eras imagine her? This seminar will seek to answer these and other questions in a critical study of the literary, visual, and cinematic representations of Cleopatra from classical antiquity to the modern era
Students will first evaluate the ancient evidence that documents Cleopatra’s rise to power and political associations with two of Rome’s greatest leaders, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. Plutarch’s Life of Antony will be a starting point for a consideration of ancient attitudes. We will also examine the evidence of coins, sculpture, and inscriptions in an effort to understand how Cleopatra represented herself in Egypt and the Greco-Roman world.
The second part of the course will examine the emergence of Cleopatra as a figure of seduction and exoticism in post-classical literature and drama. Readings will include the biographies of Cleopatra by the Italian humanist Giovanni Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women (ca. 1355-59) and by Geoffrey Chaucer, Legend of Good Women (ca. 1380) who place the queen prominently in their chronicles of famous women of history. Boccaccio brands the Egyptian queen as a beautiful but entirely wicked, cruel and lustful woman. Chaucer, on the other hand, heads his list with Cleopatra, surprisingly and perhaps ironically, as a paradigm of feminine virtue. In the Renaissance plays of William Shakespeare (Antony and Cleopatra ca. 1607) and John Dryden (All for Love 1678), Cleopatra appears on stage as a tragic figure of excess and passion. Centuries later, Bernard Shaw (Caesar and Cleopatra 1912) mocks the romantic characterization of Cleopatra which had been popularized in his own era.
The final weeks of the course will focus on visual and cinematic representations of the queen. A marble sculpture of Cleopatra by William Wetmore Story (1860) offers a distinctively American conception of Cleopatra. An ardent advocate of emancipation at the outbreak of the Civil War, Story depicted the queen with ostensibly African physiognomic features. In the twentieth-century, the new medium of cinema transformed the queen into the modern femme fatale, smart, sassy, and sexy. The film Cleopatra, starring Claudette Colbert in 1934 and Elizabeth Taylor in 1963, will be examined as new appropriations of Roman history and as constructions of femininity.
Application on General Educational Requirements: New L&S GE (Fall of 2002) – Arts and Humanities-Literary and Cultural Analysis; GE Seminar - Yes; GE Writing II - No
Robert Gurval Associate Professor in the Department of Classics, received his B.A. in Classics from Brown University and his Ph.D. in Classics from the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on issues of politics, literature and culture in the early Roman imperial period. He is the author of the book, Actium and Augustus: The Politics and Emotions of Civil War, a study of the public ideology of the victory of Caesar Augustus over Mark Antony and Cleopatra. He has published articles and reviews on various aspects of Augustan literature and politics, including a forthcoming essay on the topic of Cleopatra and the asp. His current book project, Tokens of Authority: Politics, Culture and Ideology on the Coins of Augustus, examines the political imagery of coinage in the first century BCE. In 1996-97 he was the recipient of the Rome Prize in Classical Studies at the American Academy in Rome. He has been honored for his distinguished teaching in the Honors Collegium and is a recipient of UCLA’s Distinguished teaching Award.
HC 14: The Interaction of Science and Society
Director: Jeffrey H.
Miller, Microbiology and Molecular Genetics
This course addresses the
interaction of Science and Society and examines how this interaction affects
history. The course is aimed at bringing together both science and nonscience
majors for discussions on topics that affect all of society. We shall deal with
case histories, such as Mad Cow Disease and related diseases in humans, and the
spread of the Ebola virus, and AIDS. The course will include topics of current
relevance, such as the issues posed by genetic engineering and by the
possibility of cloning animals and human beings; the debate over how society is
reacting to and needs to react to the prospect that we are losing the war
against infectious disease; and issues posed by the possibility of biological
weapons. One of our texts, The Coming Plague by Laurie Garret, deals with
newly emerging diseases. Another, Guns, Germs, and Steel, by Jared
Diamond of UCLA, looks critically at the fates of human societies.
This course should be of interest to science, history, philosophy, and
political science majors, among others. No special scientific background is
assumed.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 002) - Life Sciences; New
L&S GE (Fall 2002) - Scientific Inquiry-Life Sciences; GE Seminar - Yes; GE Writing
II - No
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.
To apply for a spot in this course, please follow these instructions HC
20: What is This Thing Called Science? A General Introduction to the Nature of Modern Science
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.
HC 23: Political Dissidence Today and in Ancient Greece: The Trial and Death of Socrates in Its Classical and Legal Context 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 Analysis
(5 units)
(4 units)
(5 units)
(5 units)
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 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
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) - None.
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.
(4 units)
(4 units)
HC 70A: Genetic Engineering in Medicine, Agriculture, and Law
(5 units)
Director: Bob Goldberg, Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology
For the first time in human history we have control over our biological destinies by using powerful genetic engineering technologies. What is genetic engineering and how has it affected our lives and society? The class will explore the basic concepts of genetic engineering and its applications in medicine, law, and agriculture. The goal of this class is to put genetic engineering into a scientific and historic perspective so that we can make objective decisions about how this technology should be used in the future.
Questions that will be addressed include: How are genes isolated, reprogrammed, and put back into living cells in order to change their genetic destiny? How has genetic engineering helped push back the frontiers of basic knowledge, created a multi-billion dollar biotechnology industry, and become part of our daily lives? Who owns our genes and can they be patented? How has our ability to manipulate DNA changed our concepts of privacy and made an impact on the criminal justice system? What federal and state laws govern our ability to manipulate living organisms, and what does the Constitution say about science? What is the potential for using genetic engineering to create and combat bioweapons? How is genetic engineering being used to create the livestock and crops of tomorrow? What are the ethical issues related to producing genetically engineered food and powerful new drugs? How does genetic engineering affect the lives of people in the developing world and offer great benefits for their well being in the future? What are the implications of using genetic engineering to diagnose and cure diseases as well as enhance human life?
I will use lectures, films, and discussions to provide a basic understanding of how genetic engineering is carried out and what societal issues are raised by the use of this powerful technology. We will trace the history of genetic engineering technology, learn about the scientists who invented gene splicing techniques, and read Scientific American papers that describe first-hand how genetic engineering has changed our lives. We will also engage in debates about the ethical and societal issues that have arisen as a result of genetic engineering technology and act these debates out in "docudramas" to make them come alive.
At the end of the class, students will have the opportunity to have a "real-life" SRP experience in my laboratory using many of the genetic engineering technologies that they have read about and discussed.
Application on General Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Life Sciences; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) – Scientific Inquiry-Life Sciences
NOTE: This course is NOT for students who have taken the following courses: Life Sciences 3, Life Sciences 4, or Microbiology 7.
Bob Goldberg is a Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology and has been on the UCLA faculty since 1976. He received his undergraduate degree in botany from Ohio University and his doctoral degree in plant genetics from the University of Arizona. Professor Goldberg's research focuses on the genes that control seed formation and how to use these genes to make the "super crops" of tomorrow. He has received numerous awards for his contributions to the field of plant molecular biology, including election to the National Academy of Sciences, the National Order for Scientific Merit from the President of Brazil, and being listed as making one of the "Top 20" Professors in UCLA's 75-year history. He has received Distinguished Teaching Awards from the Department of Biology and the Department of Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology, and he has received the Luckmann Distinguished Teaching Award and the Gold Shield Prize for Excellence in Research and Undergraduate Education from the Academic Senate. Recently, Professor Goldberg was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute University Professorship, which is sponsoring this Honors Collegium class.
HC 82: Community and Labor Development from the Ground
up Director: Jacqueline
Leavitt, Urban Planning
Grassroots groups are making a
difference in their residential neighborhoods and work environments, especially
through economic development projects that impact housing, employment, and
health and the environment. This course will introduce students to case studies
about practical applications of community development and outreach office in the
Los Angeles area. These projects will be drawn from the Community Outreach
Partnership Center (COPC) of the Advanced Policy Studies Institute within the
School of Public Policy and Social Research and involve faculty, students, and
staff at UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning and the Center for Labor Research
Education. Experienced community leaders and trainers in the areas of housing,
economic development, environmental education, labor organization, and health
education will join UCLA faculty in course presentations of their work and
efforts in the Los Angeles area as well as drawing case study material from
around the globe. Special attention will be directed toward analyzing and
recommending actions regarding the housing needs of low-income workers in Los
Angeles. Class projects will include student interviews of community leaders and
representations of government agencies.
Application on General Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall
2002) - Social Sciences-Social Analysis; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) -
None Jacqueline Leavitt is
Professor of Urban Planning at UCLA and co-author of From Abandonment to
Hope: Community Households in Harlem and The Hidden History of Low Income
Housing Cooperatives. She is Principal Investigator for a U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant called the Community Outreach
Partnership Center program. Her research focuses on housing and community
development with a particular emphasis on public housing and women. She is a
recipient of a Fulbright award to work in New Zealand, where she has been
studying the privatization of state-subsidized housing. Kent Wong of
UCLA’s Labor Center will act as a primary advisor to students and organize a
group of faculty and staff from the Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC)
who will participate in different class discussions and presentations.
HC 83W: Politics and the Rhetoric of Literature
Director: G. Jennifer Wilson, Honors Programs
This course examines the relationships among literature, rhetoric, and politics. Drawing on texts from the classical to the present, it examines the way in which art and language become didactic vehicles for the didactic expressions of a culture. The examination of literature and politics will broaden into a general discussion of the development of political discourse in Western thought, in particular, the relationship between the society and the individual, between the politics of the self and the politics of the state, between personal freedom and social obligation, between ideology and the practical business of living, between one nation's or person's values and another's. The course focuses on literary texts which are ostensibly didactic: they examine social ills with the primary aim of exposing them and sometimes with the covert aim of suggesting ways in which we can ameliorate the apparently tragic relationship between human beings and their societies. The class will spend some time practicing close rhetorical analysis as a way of discovering that language, including what Sartre calls "inauthentic" language, is the shaper of both the self and the state; that writing, whether it be propaganda, exposition, of fiction, is always a political, and therefore ethical enterprise.
Satisfactory completion of this course with a grade of "C" or better will satisfy the Writing II requirement.
Application on General
Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre Fall 2002) - Humanities-Literature or Humanities-Language and Linguistics; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) - Arts and Humanities-Literary and Cultural Analysis; GE Seminar/GE Writing II - Yes
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.
To apply for a spot in this course, please follow these instructions 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
121: Psychoanalysis before Freud -- and A Little After
Director: Irwin Savodnik, Clinical Psychiatry
What is self-knowledge? How do we conceive of what it means to be human? This course examines the different ways human beings have developed conceptions of themselves throughout history. The course is organized historically, beginning with biblical sources through the Greeks and Romans, the early Christian world, the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, scientific revolution, Enlightenment, the origins of the modern world, Freud’s fin de siècle Vienna and post-Freudian visions. In addition to garnering a deep appreciation of the understanding of self in history, students will also investigate the various iterations of these different conceptions in the present day and be encouraged to develop a critical sense of what is “right” and “wrong” about each perspective studied. The course will require considerable reading, engaged participation and high motivation on the part of students, but students will reap the reward of the course’s basic goal, which is tracing the historical development of conceptions of self. While the focus of the reading is on Western thought, this does not suggest in any way that the only approach to the problem of self-knowledge is a Western one. Should the students desire to pursue other areas, they will be strongly urged to do so.
Irwin Savodnik is an Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UCLA. He received his doctorate at New York University and his MD at SUNY, Syracuse. He has a second doctorate from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. He is both a professor in the College of Medicine and a psychiatrist in private practice. He has written numerous scholarly articles and three books. He loves to teach undergraduates.
HC
137: Political Satire: The Offensive Art
Director: Leonard Freeman, Political Science
Political Satire—the art of using wit to embarrass political leaders and comment caustically on political issues—has existed in many societies, authoritarian as well as democratic. Its purpose is deliberately offensive; typically, its tone is hostile, even cruel; and, inevitably, it exaggerates and distorts. Yet it represents a valuable challenge to abuses of power, to hypocrisy, and to overblown rhetoric. At its best, it can be aesthetically and intellectually pleasing through the deft display of wit, acute observation, and verbal dexterity.
This course studies political satire in several societies and in a variety of genres. Though the primary focus will be on the U.S. and Britain over the past century, material from a number of non-democratic countries in the modern era will also be considered, as well as examples from earlier periods. Genres reviewed include novels, plays, verse, songs, journalism, political cartoons, television and radio, movies, and satirical revues.
The first part of our course provides some historical perspective from the origins in Greece and Rome; explores the psychology of humor and satire; and reviews the socio-political conditions, which generate or constrain satire. The second part addresses some of the most common targets-- politicians, bureaucrats, the military, and the public at large—and explores some key questions. Why are politicians and politics especially vulnerable to satire? What circumstances encourage or discourage political satire? What motivates the satirists? To what extent is our response to satire affected by our personal biases.
Application on General Education Requirements: Old L&S GE (Pre-Fall 2002) Humanities-The Arts; New L&S GE (Fall 2002) None.
Leonard Freeman was born in England and received his bachelor’s degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science and his Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA where he has been a professor for many years. He has also served as Dean of UCLA Extension. His political science publications include Power and Politics in America and Politics and Policy in Britain, and he has written extensively in the field of continuing higher education. He is the recipient of the UCLA Alumni Association’s University Service Award, has acted as consultant on continuing education to universities in several countries, and has participated in a number of television and radio projects. Currently, he is working on a comparative study of political satire.
HC
M150: Models and Modeling in Anthropology
Director:
Ask two anthropologists for a definition of culture and you will get two different answers. Culture, like conscience, is one of those elusive concepts that we know is there, but we cannot easily define. Generally, culture has to do with the ideas, concepts, ideologies and beliefs that we acquire as part of growing up. It is what makes us “us” as opposed to “them” or “the other.” Sometimes the term “constructed reality” is used to underlie the fact that culture is more than a mental representation of the social world in which we live as it also constructs for us the dimensions of the social world– and even our perception of the physical world -- in which we operate.
While we have had over a hundred years of ethnographic research and numerous theories (and even anti-theories) – functionalism, materialism, structuralism, and the excesses of post-modernism—we have not yet developed a good way to represent what we mean by culture or to deconstruct culture into its basic elements to show how they combine and interact to make that whole we refer to as culture.
This course examines some of the basic questions that are addressed in our study of what we mean by culture with new modeling methods that allow us to begin to do quasi-experimental research into the nature of culture. We will make extensive use of multi-agent simulation as a way to examine how culture can be both supra-organic yet be embedded imperfectly in the minds of culture bearers. In this course we will attempt to arrive at a better understanding of what we mean by the “us/them” dichotomy that underlies much of the racism and other forms of discrimination that exist in the world, and better understand the way in which the individual and institutional levels we use as a framework to understand human behavior are dependent upon the cultural world within which we exist and act.
Dwight W. Read, Professor of Anthropology and of Statistics, received his Ph.D at UCLA in Mathematics. His current research focuses on the interrelationship between the material and the ideational domains in human societies. He has edited two special issues of the Journal of Quantitative Anthropology (Computer-Based Solutions to Anthropological Problems (1990) and Formal Methods in Anthropology: Past Successes and New Directions (1993)); and a special issue of the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (Computer Simulation in Anthropology). He has developed a major computer program (Kinship Algebraic Expert System, or KAES) that constructs a formal (algebraic) model of the logic underlying the structure of a kinship terminology. He has received several large National Science Foundation grants and is currently a co-Principal Investigator on an NSF Biocomplexity Grant, focusing on the cultural dimension underlying cooperative behavior among Balinese rice farmers.
HC 153: International Flash Points
Director: Warren Christopher, former U.S. Secretary of State
This course concentrates on the explosive confrontation points in current international affairs: the flash points that threaten world peace or U.S. vital interests. It will not be a series of lectures, but rather a highly participatory offering to about 18 upper class men and women. The goals of the course will be to create a forum for intelligent and informed debate and to hone students’ research and presentation skills.
The first session will be devoted to discussion and selection of the international flash points that the class will focus on. Many of the flash points are fairly obvious -- North and South Korea; India and Pakistan; Israel and the Palestinians; Iraq, Russia and Chechnya; Columbia; Afghanistan and Congo. The purpose of this session will be to get a buy-in from the class as to the issues to be considered. We might also learn something from our choices.
After the flash points are selected, a three-hour seminar, meeting once a week, will be devoted to each one. Each session will begin with a brief scene-setter, then one student will make an oral presentation of the geography, history, and argumentation for one point of view (e.g. India) and another will present the contrasting point of view (e.g. Pakistan). After the initial presentation, there will be a moderated and guided discussion by the whole group. The presenters will be expected to defend their points of view, and the entire class will be expected to participate. Students will turn their presentations into written advocacy papers. In addition, as a separate matter,
Mr. Christopher will lead a discussion of media treatment of foreign policy issues on the day of the class.
Application on General Education Requirements: None
Warren Christopher has a long history of public service. After graduating from Stanford Law School, he served as law clerk to Justice William O. Douglas of the U.S. Supreme Court and subsequently as the Deputy Attorney General of the United States. He later served as Deputy Secretary of State of the United States (1977-1981), and was awarded the Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, for his role in negotiating the release of 52 American hostages in Iran. After rejoining his law firm of O’Melveny and Myers, Mr. Christopher went on to Chair the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department in the aftermath of the Rodney King incident. In 1993, he was sworn in as the 63rd U.S. Secretary of State, and served until 1997. His activities since his return to his law firm have involved consultations on a wide variety of international matters, as well as service on many boards and civic entities. He has authored two books: In the Stream of History: Shaping Foreign Policy for a New Era (published in 1998 by Stanford University Press), and Chances of a Lifetime (published in 2001 by Scribner).
For an updated course description, click here. To apply for a spot in this course, please follow these instructions 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.
HC 171: Rationality and the Emotions
Director: Warren D TenHouten,
Sociology
In the last two decades, there have been remarkable advances in theory and research on the emotions. Emotions have become an important topic in economics, decision theory, management science, political science, education, history, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and in philosophy and other cognitive sciences. There have also been breakthroughs in understanding emotions and feelings in affective neuroscience, stimulated by neuroimaging technologies showing the distribution of activity across various brain structures as emotions are experienced amidst cognitively demanding tasks. These parallel developments have spawned many interdisciplinary fields, including neuroeconomics, neurophilosophy, neuroethology, neuropolitics, neuroanthropology, and neurosociology. Emerging interdisciplinary research efforts are intense, accelerating, and global.
An important topic for such multi-disciplinary investigation is the relationships between emotions and rationality. This relationship has been a contentious issue in the social scientific literature. Rationality has long been a fundamental problem in both classical and contemporary social theory. Many social scientists have considered rationality to be undermined by, or to exclude involvement of, the emotions and emotionality. That is, they have viewed the relationship between emotions and rationality as a negative one. Others, in contrast, have viewed emotions and rationality as interacting synergistically, or as exercising complementary effects. Indeed, recently, in fields ranging from the sociology of emotions to affective neuroscience, there is growing recognition that emotions can positively influence rational decision making and contribute to, or enhance, rationality. It is this emerging consensus -- that there is a positive relationship between emotions and rationality -- that this course proposes to examine. We shall look first historically at philosophers writing on the subject, from the ancients (Aristotle and the Stoics for example) to the Age of Reason (Descartes and Spinoza) and to late 19th and 20th century thinkers such as William James, John Dewey, and Max Weber. We shall then look at more recent work on the relationship between reason and emotions by various cognitive thinkers, neuroscientists, and primatologists. Contemporary experimental studies increasingly show that emotions are not merely correlates of rational thought, but that they are integrated with cognitions in the attainment of effective decision making.
Warren D. TenHouten
is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at UCLA. He received his Ph.D from Michigan State University. A prolific scholar, his forthcoming work is entitled: Emotional power: On the affective foundations of success in love and work. He also recently published A General Theory of Emotions and Social Relations, London and New York: Routledge, 2007 and is author of a many articles on emotions, social relations, time and society, and neurosociology.
HC 178: Secret Coups, Imperial Wars, and American Democracy since World War II
Director: Maurice Zeitlin, Sociology
Since the end of World War II, the government of the United States has waged expeditionary wars in Korea and Vietnam, where U.S. forces intervened in these countries’ civil wars allegedly to defeat “Communist aggression,” and, currently, in Iraq, allegedly to halt the Hussein government’s supposed development of “weapons of mass destruction,” including nuclear weaponry. The US has invaded or overtly sponsored invasion forces against, most notably, the sovereign governments of Cuba, under JFK, the Dominican Republic, under LBJ, and Nicaragua, under Reagan. And covertly, through the CIA or Pentagon, or both, it has intervened to subvert and overthrow the governments of (among others) Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Angola, and Chile. A number of these wars and covert actions will be studied in detail, from both primary sources (e.g., Congressional Hearings) and published works. A theme running through the course will be the implications of these covert actions and expeditionary wars for the vitality of American democracy.
Maurice Zeitlin is a Distinguished Professor of
Sociology at UCLA. His latest book (with Judith Stepan-Norris) is “Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions” (2003) (which won the 2004 “Max Weber Award,” conferred by a section of the American Sociological Association, for an outstanding book published over the past three years). His other books include “Cuba: An American Tragedy” (with Robert Scheer) (1963); “American Society, Inc.”(edited, 1970); and “The Civil Wars in Chile (1984),” and (with Judith Stepan-Norris) “Talking Union” (1996). He is the author of very many scholarly articles. Professor Zeitlin is the winner of two “Project Censored” journalism prizes for reportage on inequality in America, two Ford Foundation fellowships, a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, and other awards for distinguished scholarship, as well as the 1995 UCLA Mortar Board (National Senior Honors Society) Faculty Award.
(4
units)
(6 units)
(4
units)
(4 units)
(5 units)
(5 units)
(5 units)
(5 units)
(5 units)
(5 units)