| LIBS
204: MINORITIES IN AMERICAN CINEMA (4 units) |
This course 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. Our primary focus will be the representations of racial minorities in American cinema from the beginning of the twentieth century up to the present day. Applying an interdisciplinary and multicultural approach, we will investigate the depictions of race, racial identity, and interracial relationships in both mainstream (Hollywood) and alternative cinemas. We will supplement our inquiry through related works of literature and drama, in addition to readings in film theory, film history and critical cultural studies. Thus, even as we consider the historical truths of American culture, these "truths" will be consistently interrogated and reformulated by examining the representations of minority figures and groups in American cinema. [top] |
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302: INTRODUCTION TO LIBERAL STUDIES (3 units) |
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An interdisciplinary "gateway course" examining the meaning of a liberal education, emphasizing seminar skills, oral and written communication, and introducing the Hutchins Portfolio. Successful completion of LIBS
302 is required to continue
in the Hutchins program. Students
earning a grade lower than a C will
not be allowed to continue in Hutchins. [top]
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| LIBS
312: SCHOOLS IN AMERICAN SOCIETY (3 units) |
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 45
hours as volunteers in public school settings. This
will allow students to complete their volunteer prerequisite
requirement for the School of Education. Students
will share their volunteering experiences with
the class. [top] |
| LIBS
327: LITERACY,LANGUAGE AND PEDAGOGY
(3 units) |
This course for pre-credential multiple subject students looks at the importance of literacy and language arts in the contemporary world, including the value of wiriting and literature in the classroom, as well as the significance of literacy as a broader educational and social issue. Students will develop a pedagogy of grammar, examine the use of literature and the written word in the classroom, and create and teach a classroom grammar lesson. [top] |
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342: HUTCHINS COMMUNITY ART SHOW PREPARATION (2 units) |
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This course will give students a forum to create a Hutchins Community Art Showing. During class time, students will choose the dates and venue for the art showing, secure the necessary venue, publicize the event, create a call for entries, process the entries, decide which entries will be shown, hang show, plan and conduct reception, take down show. [top]
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| LIBS
402: SENIOR SYNTHESIS (4 units) |
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A capstone course required for the Hutchins major. Drawing on the papers collected for his or her portfolio, the student prepares a major paper and a Senior Project synthesizing aspects of that individual’s own intellectual development. Each student makes an oral presentation of his or her project at the end of the semester. Must be taken in the student’s final semester in the Major. [top]
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| LIBS
403: SENIOR SYNTHESIS - STUDY AWAY (4 units) |
A capstone course required for the Hutchins major. Drawing on the papers collected for his or her portfolio, the student prepares a major paper synthesizing aspects of that individual’s own intellectual development. This is done in a study away situation. Also available for students choosing a minor in Hutchins. [top]
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| LIBS
410: INDEPENDENT STUDY (1-4 units) |
Contract
Course |
Must use
form to register |
Consent of instructor required |
Independent Study is an individualized program of study taken for a letter grade with a Hutchins faculty sponsor who is willing to supervise it. A student consults with a faculty member on a topic, develops a plan of study, including number of units, project outcomes, number of meetings with the faculty and deadline for completion. A Project Contract is submitted to Admissions and Records after the beginning of the semester and before the last day to add classes. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: LIBS 302 and consent of instructor. [top] |
| LIBS
480: TEACHING ASSISTANT - SEMINAR FACILITATION
(1-3 units) |
Contract Course |
Must use form to register |
Consent of instructor required |
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]
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| LIBS
499: INTERNSHIP (1-5 units) |
Contract
Course |
Must use
form to register |
Consent of instructor required |
All students develop an internship working outside the classroom. Students also prepare a portfolio project based upon a larger topic implicit in their internship. They participate with other interns in an internship class once a week to discuss their internship experience and issues related to the larger society. Grade only. [top]
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CORE
A OFFERINGS
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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?
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| LIBS
320A.1: CONTINENTAL AMERICANS (3 units) |
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This is a study of the political status given to human bodies in different epochs in the American Continent. The objective is to increase our understanding of the struggles for economic, human and civil rights dating back to Colonial Continental America and the overthrow of the European Monarchies, which led to the birth of democracy in the Western Hemisphere. A second objective is to learn how these same struggles have taken different forms throughout history and how they continue to take shape in our lives today.
Prerequisite: LIBS
302 or LIBS 101-202
[top] |
| LIBS
320A.2: THE MIDDLE CLASS (3 units) |
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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]
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320A.3: HAPPILY EVER AFTER: LOVE RELATIONSHIPS IN AMERICAN CULTURE (3 units) |
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This course will examine ideas and practices of romantic love in American life, past and present. Special attention will be given to how these ideas and practices both inform gender and sexual identities, and are in turn shaped by those identities. We will read about changing cultural ideals of love and sexuality; how social conventions of courtship, cohabitation, marriage, and family relations have changed over time; how political and legal structures have shaped normative conceptions of love relationships; the economics of dating, mating, and family formation; and the commodification of love in consumer culture and mass media.
Prerequisite: LIBS
302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]
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CORE
B OFFERINGS
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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.
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| LIBS
320B.2: MACHINE AS METAPHOR (3 units) |
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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
[top]
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| LIBS
320B.3: SCIENCE AND STORYTELLING (3 units) |
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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
[top]
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CORE
C OFFERINGS
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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.
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| LIBS
320C.1: AFRICA AND THE DIASPORA (3
units) |
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The history and art of Africa, and its extension in the African diaspora, is neglected in many discussions of art, philosophy, and history. We hear Africa mentioned with but little sense of the people who live in this enormous continent--their cultures, histories, and spiritual richness—which persist and flourish despite centuries of colonization. This course will survey selected cultures in Africa and their extension through the Middle Passage into Haiti (and Brazil and Cuba) and the United States. Emphasis will be placed on a set of themes: masking, initiation, architecture, music and dance, and the body. The popular and political neglect of Africa—despite, or perhaps because of, multinational dependence on African resources, corporate media priorities, and perceptions of Africans as "those people over there' —will also be addressed, and the art of the diaspora presented, in the words of art historian Robert Farris Thompson, as "a triumph of creative will over the forces of destruction."
This semester will focus on the Democratic Republic of the Congo/Rwanda, the Western Sudan, Nigeria and Southern Africa, and the diaspora in Haiti (and Cuba and Brazil) and the United States.
Prerequisite: LIBS
302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]
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320C.2: GRAPHIC NOVELS (3 units) |
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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 texts. 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, human sexuality, greenman, human vs. machine, war, and postmodernism. A field trip to a local comic convention is a required part of the course (Alternative Press Expo (APE) held October 12-13 in San Francisco).
WARNING: Some of the material we will be discussing in this class may include extremely violent and/or sexual content . If you find violent or sexual material offensive, this is NOT the class for you.
Prerequisite: LIBS
302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]
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320C.3: BARBIES (3 units) |
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In Western society the Barbie is an icon of feminine sexuality, a site simultaneously of innocence and desire, commodification and psychological projection, the fetishization of gender ideals and the construction and perpetuation of the feminine "mystique." What is the power of Barbie? Why do we adore her? How do we resolve the apparent conflict between damage and play/desire? Does Barbie reveal, as her creator Ruth Handler argues, "the endless possibilities available [to young girls] . . . encouraging them to actively use their imagination" to interpret the adult world and "work through growing up to explore their dreams and their future?" Or do Barbies replicate an oppressive gender hierarchy?
In this class we will explore these and other questions, using Barbie as an opportunity to explore the manner in which gender is constructed, commodified, and disseminated, the role of play in indoctrination and social formation, and the power of individual agency and resistance discourse in interrupting fixed social and political narratives. We will also consider the possibility of Barbie as a phenomenon beyond assessments of "good" or "bad"--as a performance phenomenon beyond irony, open to our own interpretation, objective, and desire.
Prerequisite: LIBS
302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]
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CORE
D OFFERINGS
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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.
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| LIBS
320D.1: EMPATHY (3 units) |
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Course description TBA.
Prerequisite: LIBS
302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]
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| LIBS
320D.2: DEATH, DYING & BEYOND (3
units) |
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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
[top]
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| LIBS
320D.3: THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF HUMOR (3 units) |
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This course will examine humor through the lenses of anthropology, psychology, sociology, and performance. Though we will sample the comedic arts, it will be no laughing matter.
Prerequisite: LIBS
302 or LIBS 101-202
[top]
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