Therese Augst, Assistant Professor of German
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Creative Brainstorms: Madness and the Artist
Just scratch the surface of popular culture today, and you’ll find the images: the tortured rock star, the raving poet, the mad scientist--all brilliant misfits who captivate us and inspire our sympathy, our admiration, our incredulity. From Mozart and van Gogh to Kurt Cobain, cultural representations of our heroes and anti-heroes often lead us to confront the potential links between creativity and risk, inspiration and delusion, the immensity of genius and the depths of despair. By looking more closely at this popular phenomenon, however, we can discover how – and begin to discuss why – the modern world has for so long been haunted by conceptions of the artist and the genius in crisis.

Nora Beck, Professor of Music
MWF 9:10-10:10am
Mostly Mozart
This section examines the life and music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the most influential of all classical composers. Mozart's life and art reveal much about the great age in which he lived, and help us to appreciate the enormous impact his music has had on western civilization, beyond the symphony hall. Mozart's life and art challenge us to consider the nature (and culture) of genius, the foundations for art, and the role tradition and collaboration play in composition. Each week we will study one of his masterpieces in its relation to historical events. Students will read Mozart biographies, letters, and diaries, see movies about his life, examine musical works that influenced him, and learn the rudiments of music, including basic harmony, notation, and meter. Students will keep a blog and complete three research papers. The Lewis & Clark College Choir and Orchestra will be performing Mozart's Requiem this semester and students will also be encouraged to attend the performance and even sing in the choir.

Stephen Beckham, Dr. Robert B. Pamplin, Jr., Professor of History
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
In Search of Wild Places, American Perceptions of the Wilderness
This section examines problems and issues surrounding the extent, character, perception, and myth of the American wilderness. The American landscape was well occupied by the time of the arrival of Europeans. The land, its native peoples, and its plants and animals were subjected to major changes. The seminar raises questions about what it is to be civilized (not wild) and the costs of civilization. Thoreau said: “In wildness is the preservation of mankind.” The seminar attempts to assess the validity of his bold contention.

Andrew Bernstein, Associate Professor of History
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Discovering Nature
Nature is a powerful word. People use it to describe something not as it should be, but as it essentially is. And yet what they mean by such terms as the “natural world” or “human nature” has changed radically over time. Delving into texts that range from the sayings of Confucius to a history of the Columbia River, together we will explore a variety of “natures” invented by humans from ancient times to today. Our exploration will take us out of doors (and beyond the time allotted for class) at three points in the semester. Be prepared to spend several hours at an alternative farm and a Chinese garden, as well as an entire day in the Columbia River Gorge.

Kimberly Brodkin, Visiting Professor of History
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
The State of the Family
What makes a family? Who decides what constitutes a family? Using sources from different disciplinary, cultural, and ideological perspectives, we will consider how families have been imagined, defined, represented, invoked, and experienced. We will therefore also look at changing ideas about marriage, adoption, reproductive technology, childrearing, and family rituals, and at the role families are expected to play in the proper functioning of society as reinforced by laws and public policies. Along the way, students will grapple with their own ideas about and experiences with family, in part by placing concepts of family in a larger historical and cultural context.

Naiomi Cameron, Assistant Professor of Mathematical Sciences
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Mathematics and Social Justice
Students will investigate the ways in which mathematics and quantitative reasoning can inform, explain, or impact issues of social justice and fairness in our society. First, we will explore the ways in which quantitative reasoning can provide insight into concepts of power, voting theory, social choice, and fair division. Second, we will examine how, in different historical and contemporary contexts, an individual’s or group’s quantitative literacy affects the experience and benefits of social justice. Students in this section are required to participate in an off-campus civic-engagement component related to quantitative literacy in the Portland community that meets outside of the normal class time.

Rhea Combs, Adjunct Instructor of Humanities
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Ways of Seeing - Visual Culture and Society
Media and technology are ubiquitous. The way people often understand the world is through images. This course is an introduction to visual culture that examines aspects of race, gender and class and its impact/influence on how we understand the society. There will be times the class will watch films outside of the regularly scheduled class time. These screenings are mandatory.

Chana Cox, Senior Lecturer in Humanities

MWF 10:20-11:20am
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
The Theater as "Public Exploder"
Although it has rarely been safe for playwrights to criticize their government, in relatively open societies theater has nonetheless provided ways of colorfully exploring, and even satirically "exploding," the nature and purpose of government. In this course we will examine political theater in its various historical, philosophical, and cultural settings, beginning with the Fall of Troy and ending with the Fall of the Berlin Wall. We will stop along the way to visit such politically charged, explosive places as Aristophanes' City of the Birds, Shakespeare's England, 17th-century Salem, two Chinese villages during the Communist Revolution, Vaclav Havel's Czechoslovakia, and Gilbert and Sullivan's Island Utopia and its "Public Exploder."

Peter Drake, Associate Professor of Mathematical Sciences
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Games in Society
This section will explore games and their role in society. Themes include skill, chance, competition, fairness, gambling, strategy, intelligence, mastery, madness, war, the definition of a game, and games for modeling and teaching. We will examine these themes through the eyes of gamers, novelists, sociologists, economists, and computer scientists

John Fritzman, Associate Professor of Philosophy
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Bollywood's ImagiNation and ImpersoNation: The Construction of Indian Identity in Hindi Cinema
This section will focus on the changing ways in which India's national identity, as well as that of the Indian citizen, are constructed and contested in Hindi cinema (Bollywood) through its representations of self and other. This will provide students with resources to interrogate the construction of their own identities. Our section will involve significant reading and writing. Without exception, all students in this section must be able to attend film screenings Thursday evenings at 6:00pm. Bollywood UTube

David Galaty, Adjunct Professor of Humanities
MWF 11:30-12:30pm
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Understanding How We Understand the Maya
We will examine the ways in which westerners have endeavored to understand the Maya, starting with The Maya's own view of themselves at the point of European contact. Those Europeans in turn had their own very different views of the Maya, as have subsequent American adventurers, historians, archeologists, anthropologists, paleo-astronomers, and others. As we gradually uncover the fascinating story of these attempts to understand Mayan culture, we will also begin to understand the methods used by different disciplines to explore, discover, and create new knowledge. Will we ultimately discover the real Maya?

Jerry Harp, Visiting Professor of English
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
By the Waters of Babylon: Biblical Journeys and Exiles
Biblical references show up everywhere in our culture, from political speeches to blogs to late-night talk shows to novels to slam poetry. This ubiquity is understandable given the Bible's deep and far-reaching influence. Even if one lives far removed from any Jewish or Christian religious tradition, biblical texts continue to make their presence felt and to matter. Our work in this section will be to deepen our understanding of these ultra-influential works, by analyzing them in terms of their developing traditions as well as in light of our own shifting frameworks (including evolutionary theory) and multiple questions. Our encounters with Ruth, Esther, Job, Psalms, Isaiah, Lamentations, the Gospel of Mark, and Revelations will take us in unexpected directions, as will our encounters with literary works (such as Milton's Paradise Lost) that have arisen from the Bible.

Curtis Johnson, Dr. Robert B. Pamplin, Jr., Professor of Government
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Darwin: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
This section takes a close study of the main contributions of Charles Darwin to intellectual history, and attempts to situate his thought within the broader context of the European Enlightenment, 19th-century natural science, and ongoing discussions about the place of evolutionary thinking in the contemporary world. Themes to be examined include: the war in nature among natural organisms, the struggle for survival, the survival of the fittest, the place of humans in the natural order, and the role of free will and human intelligence in meliorating the human condition.

Loretta Johnson, Adjunct Professor of Humanities
MWF 11:30-12:30pm
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
"Brooks in Books": Literary Perspectives on the Environment
In this section we will read a diverse group of literary texts—ancient and modern, western and eastern---that influence and challenge our understanding of and relationship to the environment. Do humans have dominion over other animals? How does the natural world impact our lives? Do some cultures and texts recommend old or new ways to inhabit and treat the earth? The following authors, works, and excerpted texts are included: Ecocritical studies, The Upanishads, the Bible, Plato, Ovid, the Romantics, Emerson, T.S. Eliot, Cather, Aldo, and more.

Stuart Kaplan, Associate Professor of Communication
MWF: 1:50-2:50pm
The Civil Liberties Idea in Contemporary Democratic Societies
This section examines how the core civil liberties of freedom of speech, privacy, and the rights of accused persons have been established in both law and social practice in various democratic societies, including the United States. In addition, we shall focus on the subject of civil liberties in the context of the international human rights movement as well as in the “global war on terror,” particularly the latter’s implications for civil liberties in free societies. Attention will also be given to the future of civil liberties in an age of increasingly powerful means for communication and for monitoring what people say and do.

Susan Kirschner, Senior Lecturer in the Humanities
MWF 10:20-11:20am
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
How Should We Live?
How should we figure out what is important? To whom and what should we give our attention? What kind of life is worth living? Although we each answer this timeless human question for ourselves, a premise of this course is that it is good to put one’s own ideas, attitudes, and predispositions into ‘conversation’ not only with friends, family, teachers and fellow students, but with books. How do books challenge us to feel and think in new ways, to explore from unfamiliar angles? What does each suggest about how much choice we really have? About what we can change, and what is beyond our power or control? About self-knowledge, and the extent it is even possible? We will study a variety of texts, old and new. In the process, we will study ourselves, reflecting on how we read and interpret—compose and recompose—answers to the urgent question: how should we live?

Robert Mandel, Professor of International Affairs
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
The Art of War
This section covers the historical, strategic, and moral dimensions of war to give entering students an understanding of the most important challenge faced by humankind. The central questions revolve around the nature, purpose, and limits of warfare. The approach has students learn conceptual insights largely through reading about the actual experience of warfare, with an emphasis on interdisciplinary readings interpreting patterns across cultures and time periods. Using a mix of lecture and discussion, students will ponder and analyze the fundamental controversies surrounding organized armed international violence.

Michael Mirabile, Adjunct Professor of Humanities
MWF 9:10-10:10am
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Imagining Empire
This section examines the global role played by empire and imperial expansion in shaping cultures, establishing borders, and constructing identities. Drawing upon historical, anthropological, post-colonial, and literary studies, we will read texts from the time of the Roman Empire to that of contemporary globalization, with special concentration on modern, twentieth-century novels that address the complex relation between imperialism and the rise of the nation state. Authors include Tacitus, William Shakespeare, Joseph Conrad, E. M. Forster, Jean Rhys, Don DeLillo, and Arundhati Roy.

Jay Odenbaugh, Assistant Professor of Philosophy
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Darwinian Revolutions
This section aims to provide a historical and philosophical introduction to the revolution that Charles Darwin initiated with his On the Origin of Species. The course will have three parts corresponding to three “revolution” – the appearance of Darwinian evolution, the appearance of the modern Neo-Darwinian theory, and the diffusion of Darwinism into the social sciences, religion, and philosophy.

Bruce Podobnik, Associate Professor of Sociology
MWF: 1:50-2:50pm
The Pursuit of Happiness
The US Declaration of Independence declares our unalienable rights to be "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." But what is happiness? Can it be pursued, intensified, or made a more permanent part of our lives? Can a community, a city, or a nation increase its average level of happiness? Is it even important to be happy, or is that a dangerous, self-indulgent quest? In this course, students will delve into these and related questions. We will draw on the disciplines of philosophy, religious studies, psychology, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, economics, and multicultural studies to shed light on the complex roots of happiness.

Liz Safran, Associate Professor of Geological Science
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Changing Views of Earth: Science, Religion, and Art
Today we take concepts like deep time and a dynamic Earth for granted. For most of human history, however, ideas about Earth’s origin, structure, and behavior were rooted in influential early narratives and discourses, such as those found in the Bible and in the writings of Greek philosophers. This course explores (in a quirky and far-from-comprehensive fashion) changing views of Earth, including some of the pivotal physical, philosophical, and religious issues that unfolded along the way. We will also examine some conceptions of Earth expressed in aesthetic contexts – e.g., in poetry, landscape painting, etc. – and consider how those representations relate to contemporaneous thinking about Earth’s functioning

Joel Sweek, Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities
MWF: 1:50-2:50pm
The Making of Modern Freedom
Are we free? Descartes thought his will as free as God's, but by WWI this enthusiasm was exhausted. What had happened? The waning of the ancien régime promised new liberty to working men and women, to children and emigrants. Furthermore, various modern progressivisms implied a nearly boundless freedom of action. But such defiant declarations of human will soon collided with emergent natural and social scientific conclusions about the philosophically, biologically, psychologically, and socio-politically inescapable. To follows this conflict, the course reads entire works by Hume, Kant, Marx, Darwin, Dickens, Nietzsche, Freud, and Joyce, and engages with music, art, and poetry of the period.

Heather Watkins, Visiting Assistant Professor of Art
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
The Art of the Book and The Book as Art
For most of us, a book is a common item, albeit an enriching one, and yet, books have not always been so readily available, so affordable and accessible. We will examine the book’s development as a form and an idea, broadly considering the evolution of its function and its aesthetic value while we track the parallel development of relevant book technologies: writing systems, paper, the printing press, digital formats, and “artists’ books.” We’ll also consider how the primacy of this specific object has been sustained for so long, and how we regard recent claims about its increasing, inevitable obsolescence. Three (2-3 hour) evening and/or weekend studio sessions will be mandatory.

Kristi Williams, Adjunct Professor of Humanities
MWF 1:50-2:50pm
Am I My Brother’s Keeper?
This section will explore some of the “enduring questions” about the human condition raised in the first semester, via the question, “What is human responsibility?” We will explore this pivotal question as it relates to such issues as justice, gender, ethnicity, and war, through texts from different time periods and disciplines. Works include selections from Plato, Hobbes, and Rousseau; The Constitution of the United States; the Iroquois “Laws of the Confederacy;” Homer’s Odyssey; Dante’s Inferno; Morrison’s The Bluest Eye; and Silko’s Ceremony.