W	4:00-6:40	Mutombo M'Panya	CH 37
		T	9:00-11:40	Nelson Kellogg	CH 60
		M	4:00-6:40	Ben Frymer	CH 55
		W	1:00-3:40	Francisco Vazquez	CH 34

This is a course required of all incoming upper division students to acquaint them with the specific skills and concepts basic to a Liberal Studies education: 1) analysis of assigned readings, 2) participation in seminar discussions, 3) development of writing skills, 4) introduction to the Portfolio, 5) researching of materials leading to the completion of an Independent Study Project, and 6) application of these skills to issues developed in LIBS 304.

Hutchins Portfolio is available on the web. The divider categories are: Major & Portfolio, Introduction to Liberal Studies, Core Areas, Senior Synthesis, and Advising Keys.

SUCCESSFUL COMPLETION OF LIBS 302 IS REQUIRED TO CONTINUE IN THE HUTCHINS PROGRAM. Students earning a grade of C- or lower will not be allowed to continue in Hutchins. [top]

		M	4:00-6:40	Stepanie Dyer	CH 68
		W	9:00-11:40	Les Adler	CH 68

This first course in a two-semester sequence (304 & 308), is designed to examine the fundamental beliefs, assumptions, and "self-evident" truths that serve as the foundation for American culture, and then to consider those truths in light of challenges provided by multicultural perspectives. [top]

Contract course. Must use form to register. All tenured or tenure-track faculty.

May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: LIBS 302 and consent of instructor. Contracts available in department office (#16 in rack). Students propose a particular study they want to do, and advisors assist with completion of agreement. Form with advisor's signature is then left in Director McGuckin's mailbox (top right, outlined in blue) for signature. [top]

W

4:00-6:40

Ben Frymer

CH 68

This course is an interdisciplinary examination of the American Educational System. The course reviews the history of American schooling, philosophical issues that continue to shape its foundations, the effect of ethnicity, gender, class and disability on it, and the ways in which curriculum affects it. Appropriate readings and papers will explore these areas. In addition, students will perform forty five hours as volunteers in public school settings. This will allow students to complete their volunteer prerequisite requirement of the School of Education. Students will share their experiences from volunteering with the class. [top]

Contract course. Must use form to register. All tenured or tenure-track faculty.

See additional information under LIBS 310. [top]

T

1:00-3:40

Ianthe Brautigan Swensen

CH 68

Intended for elementary credential students, this course introduces the language arts as they are taught in grades K-6. Related topics - e.g., the history of the English Language, language acquisition, basic elements of linguistics - are briefly considered. [top]

Intended for elementary credential students, this course introduces the language arts as they are taught in grades K-6. Related topics - e.g., the history of the English Language, language acquisition, basic elements of linguistics - are briefly considered. [top]

Developmental processes do not simply unfold-they are constructed in real time through processes of living. Child development, then, is the examination of individual change within a particular context. This course will be a close inspection ofthe pathways child development through the windows of Western culture, emphasizing relevant behavioral, social, linguistic and cultural factors as well as major theoretical views of perceptual, cognitive, physical, emotional, and personality growth. We will contrast subjective views of childhood experiences with objective methodologies and will use a variety of disciplinary approaches and levels of analysis to shape our understanding. There will be a service learning assignment as well as some work in the Hutchins Pedagogy Project. [top]

Intended for students seeking an elementary credential and wishing to assemble resources in children's literature projects. [top]

Intended for students seeking an elementary credential and wishing to assemble resources in children's art projects. [top]

Intended for students seeking to participate in the creation of a Hutchins Community Art Show.
[top]

A capstone course required for students who are developing portfolios and are Hutchins majors. Drawing on the papers collected for their portfolio, students will write a major paper synthesizing aspects of their own intellectual development, and will also write and present a senior synthesis study at the end of the semester.(3 units with 1 unit of non traditional) [top]

This course provides studetns with an opportunity to enhance their facilitation skills through serving as a seminar leader in large lecture/discussion courses. Requires the consent of instructor. [top]

The Modern Censorship Lectures examine the nature of information distribution in the United States today and consider the potential for censorship in the most powerful media system that has ever existed. The lecture series provides a forum for investigative journalists and researchers, allowing them to give an "insider's perspective" on the hard-hitting news reports that fell through the cracks of the mass media. [top]

NOTE ABOUT LIBS 310, 315, 410 AND 415:
May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: LIBS 302 and consent of instructor. Contracts (Independent Project Form - #13 in rack) are available in department office. Advisors assist with completion of agreement. Completed form with advisor's signature is then left in Provost's mailbox for signature (top right). Approved forms will be hand carried by staff to Admissions & Records.

NOTE ABOUT PORTFOLIO: Don't forget to include your major essays and projects under the corresponding core in your Portfolio at the end of the class. [top]

Courses in this area address the following issues and themes:

• Problems and possibilities before us at the start of a new century as we move toward a genuinely global culture.
• The relationship between the individual and all kinds of human groups, the context of human interaction in which the individual finds many of the dimensions of the self.
• Ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that flow between society and the individual and which result in the political and economic arrangements that make life-in-common possible.
• Historical and economic developments, geographical facts, analytical models, and moral questions necessary to understand the dynamics of individuals and their communities.
• Moral and ethical underpinnings of our patterns of social interaction and how these affect issues such as race, gender, and class.
• Questions concerning whether the goals of human dignity, political justice, economic opportunity, and cultural expression are being enhanced or destroyed by specific historical developments, cultural practices, economic arrangements, or political institutions. For example: How, in the face of that compelling force, do we shape the kind of society that values and protects the individual? How do we become the kinds of individuals who understand and help foster the just society?

This is a study of a historical and continental quest for democracy as manifested by English and Spanish Americans. Using three different kinds of analyses of power (liberalism, Marxism, discourse) and a comparative framework, we explore the historical presence and issues of major Latino groups in the United States and similar struggles currently taking place in other parts of the world. We examine definitions of politics, class, democracy, will of the people, colonialism, patriarchy, the State, global economy and their impact on issues like immigration and sustainability and, ultimately, on human bodies.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Water, the most indispensable substance for all life on earth, has always played a vital role in the development of human society and culture. Today, our understanding of and the choices we make about this “Blue Gold” are increasingly central to the future of both human civilization and the natural world on which it ultimately depends.  This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the changing meaning and use of water in various eras and cultures as well as its pivotal role at present as the most vital natural ingredient capable of helping reestablish a healthy and balanced human relationship with the natural world.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Contact professor for description.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]

Contact professor for description.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]

Courses in this area address the following issues and themes:

• Science and technology and their relationships to the individual and society.
• The methods of science and important information that has been discovered through their applications.
• Some of the crucial issues posed by our cultureís applications of science and technology and, adversely, the cultural consequences of a materialist world view.
• How science and technology impact all areas of our lives.
• How, for better and for worse, as inheritors of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, we intervene in our material world technologically.
• Scientific aspects of particular social issues, or an issue of personal concern, the sense of science as a social endeavor.
• The values implicit in a particular technology.

This course will provide a multi-faceted analysis of the system of food production and distribution in the modern world, and its implications for both human and environmental health. We will explore the global food web through a variety of lenses, including economics, politics, health, ecology, chemistry, aesthetics, and psychology. We will examine the consequences of industrial agriculture and developments in genetic engineering, as well as the recent emergence of farm to school projects in our local community, which are building stronger connections between schools and local farmers, and integrating food and gardens into all aspects the curriculum. We will explore a variety of perspectives on diet and nutrition. The course will include a service learning or community-based research component, and will hopefully add new meaning to the notion that “you are what you eat.”

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 LIBS 101-202
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Mechanization and automation, concepts born of the industrial revolution, continue to dominate our lives and economic means of production well into the information age. We need to understand the human fascination with the construction of devices and the aesthetic of the artificial if we are to avoid greater "dis-integration" with our present and future roles in society. This course will survey the spectrum of responses to the artificial landscape in the ninetheenth and twentieth centuries, from the "Zen of machine" consciousness of the practitioner to the fearful jeremiad of the alienated observer. Several up-close class activities with both the artist's and gadgeteer's perspectives will complete the reconnaissance.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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The application of science to technology has had a significant impact on the evolution of modern societies.  Often this impact can be perceived as positive and even liberating, as suggested by thinkers of the European enlightenment.  It is also clear that television, computers, atomic bombs and chemical products have been used to control and even damage both human and natural environments.

In this course, students will explore in depth the relationship between specific scientific theories and the sociohistorical contexts from which they were generated.  We will examine the observations behind these  theories and we will discuss existing popular beliefs surrounding them.  Students will learn about scientific methodologies and the problems and issues that led to the formulation of current scientific thinking about classical physics, relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, genetics and evolution.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Contact professor for description.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]

Contact professor for description.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]

Courses in this area address the following issues and themes:

• Why humans create literature, epics, poetry, drama, and other literary forms, the visual arts, languages, architecture, music, dance, the writings of philosophers, and the thought and literature of the worldís religions.
• The inner world of creativity and individual values as well as the questions about how we arrive at a sense of meaning and purpose, ethical behavior, and a sense of beauty and order in the world.
• Deep and significant aspects of ourselves which may otherwise remain obscure and therefore troubling.
• Important questions - and occasional answers - about life and death, about feelings, and about the ways we see things.
• The metaphors that help us recognize and become aware of the interrelations of all the areas of inquiry humanity has developed.
• Images from which we may learn about our reality or realities of other times.
• Creative and intuitive thinking processes that lead to an understanding of the aesthetic experience.
• How the arts can be an end in themselves, as well as a means to an end.

An issue of persistent theoretical concern in the humanities--and in society at large--is the representation and manifestation of subjectivity/identity. This course will survey the expression of cultural, gender, and "racial"identities in Native American art, literature, and cinema.  Representationsof identity are not always generated by the individual they claim to signify,which, as Edward Said has argued, has real world consequences: "the act of representing (and hence reducing) others almost always involves violence of some sort to the subject of the representation . . . Whether you call it a spectacular image or an exotic image, or a scholarly representation, there is always this paradoxical contrast between the surface, which seems to be in control, and the process which produces it, which inevitably involves some degree of violence."  We will also examine, then, the assimilation/industrialization efforts of the federal government, the commodification of Native American ethnicity in exhibitions and touring spectacles, the construction of the Native American in Hollywood cinema and anthropological photography, and counternarratives in cinema, architecture,and art.  What are the implications of our own attempts to understand and explicate issues of Native American identity?  Jimmie Durham once stated, "I feel fairly sure that I could address the entire world if only I hada place to stand. You (white Americans) have made everything your turf.  In every field, on every issue, the ground has already been covered . . . Inquiry and discourse itself are confined to the "experts" of whatever field . . .confined, for control by a system of power not necessarily organic to human society."  A significant aspect of the course will be the exploration of the way our own understanding and teaching resists or replicates systems of power.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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This class explores the genre of graphic novels (book-length comics) with special attention to art and storyline. The class will begin by looking at the genre of the graphic novel in general, then we will read from a variety of different graphic novels, with students facilitating seminars and finding supplementary materials to accompany the stories. Themes in the class, depending on the graphic novels of choice, may include Holocaust studies, child abuse, genetic engineering, drug addiction, urban living, modern mythology, relativity theory, greenman, human vs. machine, the Vietnam war, and postmodernism. A field trip to a local comic convention may be a required part of the course. WARNING: Some of the material we will be discussing in this class may be considered by some to be violent and/or sexual in content. If you find this kind of material offensive, this is probably not the class for you.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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In this course we will consider various examples of memoir writing, particularly in terms of the author’s use of place, that is, of a specific local as it relates to, or does not relate to, the writer’s depiction of his or her life story. We will want to ask questions such as: How has place shaped both the writer’s understanding of his or her world and, in turn, the issues themetized in the respective life story? How might the same environment be understood otherwise, say, in terms of a difference in gender, race, ethnicity, or religion on the part of the writer? How has our sense of place our coming from a particular locale shaped our reading of the memoir?

At the same time, we will be writing and workshopping our own life stories, looking for ways to develop and strengthen our craft and voices as writers. Furthermore, we will take at least two fieldtrips one to an urban locale, another to a nature preserve in Sonoma County and think about these places from our point of view as writers shaped by our background and world views.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Contact professor for description.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]

Courses in this area address the following issues and themes:

• Reality as a result of many factors, some of them psychological, some biological, some philosophical, some social and the many aspects of being or existence as reaching from the physical to the metaphysical.
• Consciousness as, somehow, the result of our gender, our ethnicity, our health, the ways in which we were reared, the social stratum in which we find ourselves, the beliefs that were engendered in us, and other factors.
• Consciousness as occurring across a spectrum of potentials (conscious/unconscious, rational/irrational, egocentric/transpersonal, masculine/feminine) that influence our personal and collective realities.
• Human needs at various levels of emotional, religious or spiritual, intellectual, and transpersonal or universal disciplines, practices, and experiences.
• One of the major concerns of people in all places at all times has been: what are the components of being human?
• The range of answers which are sometimes perplexingly inconsistent with one another, and yet their very divergence itself suggests something about the powerful complexity of the human individual.
• The study of biology as it relates to psychology, and consciousness as it affects and is affected by perceptions of reality.
• Meaning-making as a necessary human achievement, and identity formation as it is understood in the light of developmental psychology and the nature-nurture controversy.

African American art will be explored in this course as an integrated cultural phenomenon.  Music and dance, painting and sculpture, oral and written literature, and photography and cinema will be discussed in the context of theoretical paradigms related to historical experiences, including African antecedents, the Middle Passage and the wider Diaspora.  Specific art objects, experiences and performances will be discussed in terms of the expression and negotiation of community and individual identity.  Particular attention will be paid to the legal and social conditions of cultural discourses, to the expression of resistance and counter-narratives in the African American community, and to the status of African American art as—in the words of the African and diasporic historian Robert Farris Thompson—“a triumph of creative will over the forces of destruction.”

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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"I don't want to achieve immortality through great works. I want to achieve it through not dying." - Woody Allen.

Confronting death can bring us fully to life. This course will examine biological dying, the sociology and psychology of death, and the spiritual dimensions of passing beyond through literature, art, film medicine, guided meditations, and humor. Written and experiential assignments will engage our analytic, creative, and spiritual minds. This course may be emotionally challenging. Field trips to be arranged.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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This course examines sex and gender through a variety of lenses, including evolutionary biology, developmental science, linguistics, anthropology, politics, feminism, literature, and sociobiology. We will pay particular attention to personal, collective, and institutional power differentials between the sexes, confronting traditional assumptions of the natural, normal, and moral. We will investigate contemporary challenges to established gender roles, limitations on sexual expression, and relationships between biology, culture, and gender diversity.  .

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Contact professor for description.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]

Contact professor for description.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]