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 Hutchins Portfolio binder 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]

2069

W

4:00-6:40pm

Mutombo M'Panya

CH 68

Contact Instructor for description.

[Top]

2070

M

1:00-3:40pm

Francisco Vazquez

CH 69

Contact Instructor for description.

[Top]

2071

M

4:00-6:40pm

Tom Shaw

CH 68

Contact Instructor for description.

[Top]

This section is not being offered in Spring 2012.

[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. 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]

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]

2300

TH

1:00-3:40pm

Ianthe Brautigan Swensen

CH 68

2302

TH

4:00-6:40pm

Ianthe Brautigan Swensen

CH 68

This course for pre-credential students examines the pedagogy and socio-political context of literacy in the contemporary world, including the process of language development and the significance of literacy as a broader educational and social issue. Students will explore the philosophies of pedagogy, the politics of language and classrooms lesson designs. [Top]

2121

T

4:00-6:40pm

Rob Weiner

IVES 24

This course is a close inspection of child development through the windows of Western culture, emphasizing relevant social, linguistic and cultural factors as well a major theoretical views of physical, emotional, and personality growth. Subjective views of childhood experiences will be contrasted with objective observations. Particular focus on school-related concerns such as ADD/ADHD, will be addressed. This course is restricted to seniors only until the beginning of the semester. If there are open seats after Reg I, we will open it to juniors for Reg II in January.[Top]

Intended for students seeking an elementary credential and wishing to assemble resources in children's literature projects. Register for this course on-line.

[Top]

Not Offered

Intended for students seeking an elementary credential and wishing to assemble resources in children's art projects. Register for this course on-line.[Top]

[Top]  

Mass media are a critically important part of the modern world, shaping virtually every conceivable aspect of our lives from our understanding of the world around us and our nation’s contemporary affairs to our own identities, attitudes and beliefs.  We are so saturated with various media forms that we often aren’t even aware of our immersion in the vast sea of media forces that constitute the “white noise” of our culture. This series will aim to develop critical media awareness and action through an examination of our contemporary media age from numerous disciplinary perspectives, including communication studies, history, sociology, and journalism. This 1-unit course consists of a series of 14 lectures/dialogues with guest speakers each week. The series will provide a forum for students, academics and journalists interested in studying the current media system to learn from, and engage in conversation with, local and national experts in the study of media and practice of journalism. Guests will include authors from the Censored 2010 yearbook. [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 - #10 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?

Contact Instructor for description.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202.[Top]

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 [Top]

The “middle class” is a critical category of American social life.  Surveys shows that the vast majority of Americans identify as middle class; however, these same people objectively may share little in the way of professional identity, educational attainment, income or wealth, or set of cultural beliefs. Yet as incoherent as the middle class is as a socio-economic category, it remains a powerful cultural ideal.  It is a particularly powerful in the current economic recession, as politicians, the media, and culture critics alike declare the middle class to be in crisis and question its future existence.  This course will examine the American middle class as a historical cultural, political, and economic construct in the United States. We will examine its origins in ideas of the American Dream and the concepts of meritocracy and family values; explore how well these ideas have matched the reality of American life, particular in the era from World War II to the present; and address the causes and consequences of the failure of American political and economic institutions to live up to these dreams.

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

LIBS 320A.4 (3 Units) NOT OFFERED IN SPRING 2012

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

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 culture's 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.

Contact Instructor for description.

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

For thousands of years everything that humans have done, and everything that they though affected them (including religious ideas) was represented either by tasks or things done by manual or animal labor, or simply the forces of nature. That began to change in the Middle Ages, as wind- and water-mills became more common, and new building techniques produced marvels like the great cathedrals. Perhaps more disturbing to everday thinking was the arrival of clocks. Still, nothing could prepare societies for the ways that steam power, gasoline power, and electrical power redefined absolutely EVERYTHING that humans did in their day-to-day lives.

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

Contact Instructor for description.

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

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 world's 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.

This course will explore film as a storytelling medium, as well as the unique ways in which this medium has been and continues to be used by filmmakers around the world. Moving chronologically, we will examine a variety of narrative film forms, including the classical Hollywood style, innovations within this form, as well as multiple, international alternatives from the 1960s up to the present. Through frequent film screenings and readings in film theory, psychoanalysis, semiotics and cultural studies, students will develop a basic understanding of film language as well as a deeper understanding of how films operate, how they create meaning, and how, as viewers, we participate in this process.

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

Singing! Dancing! Spectacle! Glamour! Bollywood has become a catchword today yet, in this era of Slumdog Millionaires, a key question remains: what is Bollywood? Is it just one thing? Does it refer to a film style, a national cinema, a global phenomenon, or all of the above? In this course, we will address this question by looking at several Bollywood films from the 1970s up to the present. We will explore the multiple elements of these films, including their vibrant song and dance sequences, mixing of genres and film styles and over-the-top narratives, from multiple perspectives, including those of film theory, postcolonial studies, and gender studies, to name but a few. We will also examine the more recent phenomenon of Western films that imitate or pay homage to Bollywood, in an attempt to develop an understanding of the ever-changing relationship of Bollywood and Hollywood. Students will also conduct their own research on this cinema and its influences on musical styles, cultural trends and fashion industries around the world which, in turn, will serve as the basis for a brief research paper. 

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

Contact Instructor for description.

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

This course examines the contemporary renaissance in political satire spearheaded by the success of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  Readings will examine satire as a cultural form; historical examples of satire, especially the controversial work of Lenny Bruce; African-American humor and its important role in satire; the rise of late night television satire in recent years; and an in-depth look at the work of Jon Stewart and Colbert himself.  Students will have the opportunity to share their own favorite comedy bits in class, discuss how comedy works, and may choose to make up their own satire for their final class project.

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

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.

Many of us have an increasing everyday sense that people are struggling
these days- with anxiety, with depression, and with a general unease about
their lives and the future.  When so many people are finding difficulties
in coping with their lives, are we to look outside the individual for
causes and solutions?  Is our society itself insane?  Or are mental health
and mental illness best seen as ordinary existential problems of life?
This course will address these wide-ranging and increasingly important
concerns, and others such as the role of therapy in healing, the maladies
of youth, the psychological and spiritual bases of health and healing, the
ethics of drug treatment, and the link between artistic creativity and
madness- through interdisciplinary readings and films, everything from
Erich Fromm's The Sane Society to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and
Donnie Darko.

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

Empathy is the ability to actually understand the internal conscious state of another being.  This quality goes beyond sympathy and, some would argue, beyond compassion.  Empathy is not the mere intellectual understanding of the felt-experience of another, but the actual vicarious LIVING of that experience. Widely considered to be fundamental to the deepest and richest human relations, this ability may be the one quality

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

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 [Top]

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

Contact Instructor for description.

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