Interdisciplinary, discussion-based seminars that provide students with a foundation in the theory and methods of: A. the arts and humanities; B. science and mathematics; and C. the social sciences. These interdisciplinary seminars offer students opportunities via discussion and/or writing to explore implications, connections, and other perspectives (e.g., philosophy, ethics, law, arts, policy, history, politics, medicine/health, the other sciences, etc.). By design they explicitly connect two areas of the DePauw curriculum, i.e., two disciplines within the CLAS, the CLAS with the SBL, or the CLAS with the Creative School.
These courses are open to all DePauw students, although priority is given to students enrolled in the Honor Scholar Program. Students in the Honor Scholar Program take one course each in AH, SM, and SS; each of these courses can be used to fulfill DePauw's distribution requirements. May not be taken Pass/Fail.
| Distribution Area | Prerequisites | Credits |
|---|---|---|
| 1 course |
The "Beat Generation" marks a literary and cultural period from the early fifties to the mid-sixties in which rebellion against mainstream American postwar family values was beginning to surface. This interdisciplinary course looks at the literature of this era in its cultural and political contexts, and examines the impact upon subsequent writers and artists. Some of the authors we'll cover will include "canonical" Beat writers Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti; Black Beat writers LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Ted Joans, and Bob Kaufman; rebel women Diane DiPrima, Joyce Johnson, Anne Waldman, and Hettie Jones. We will also see some Beat-era films (and representations of "beatniks" in the popular culture of the period) and hear some Beat-era music.
Since this course also fulfills DePauw's "S" requirement, students in this class will be expected to participate actively in speaking and listening activities that will include presentations, performances of texts, and discussions in various modes, both formal and informal.
Most of us encounter Greek tragedies in isolation, as required readings in Greek and Roman mythology or culture surveys. Many have read the _Ajax_ as an example of the 'heroic temper' and a prime example of Sophoclean tragedy. Ajax, outraged by a slight to his honor, who tries to murder his commanders and then ultimately commits suicide in shame. The play, however, was performed at a particular time and place, during a festival in which Athenians paid tribute to orphaned children whose fathers had died in battle. This is but one small example of how context matters to Greek and Roman tragedies and comedies; they are performed within specific cultural conditions and themselves perform the culture.
In this course we will read a wide range of Greek tragedies by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Greek comedies by Aristophanes and Menander, Roman comedies by Terence and Plautus, and the horrific Neronian-era tragedies of Seneca. All of these are foundational texts for later tragedy and comedy. Our focus will be on plays less frequently encountered in introductory Classics courses. While exploring the literary and dramatic qualities of the texts we will also investigate how drama serves to express and respond to particular cultural moments.
This course explores the captivating history of performance art in the Americas. Since the early twentieth century, artists have turned to performance as an experimental mode of artistic production. They have used bodily movement, music and sound, costumes, and props to reimagine the forms, institutions, and audiences for art. What does it mean to "perform" art rather than to make an art object? We will take a hemispheric approach to this question, investigating how artists working in diverse contexts in Latin America and North America have used performance as an expressive and political form. For instance, we will analyze performance works made under dictatorial regimes in Argentina and Chile, amid the transnational feminist movement of the 1970s, and during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the United States. Among other topics, we will consider debates around performance documentation, the ethics of audience participation, and the critical use of the body by artists of color and queer and feminist artists. There are no prerequisites for this course.
The Philosopher Daniel Dennett once called evolution "the single best idea anyone ever had." If this claim has any merit, then surely evolutionary perspectives can shed light on important questions about human nature in general, and issues like cooperation, aggression, sex and gender, aesthetics, emotion, cognition, moral judgments, and environmental concerns in particular. We will look at current and historical attempts to develop scientific accounts of human nature, and examine their strengths, weaknesses, and motivations. The course offers an opportunity to explore how the ¿single best idea anyone ever had¿ can be applied to human nature and important contemporary concerns.
Feminist Inquiry prepares students to research and write senior theses in WGSS; it is also useful for juniors and seniors planning to undertake interdisciplinary capstone research (e.g., Honor Scholars, Environmental and Media Fellows, PACS and Global Health students). This course is structured to provide an in-depth overview of both feminist methodology, including theories of what constitutes an ethics of feminist research, and appropriate methods to conduct inter/disciplinary research. We explore some of the many questions that drive feminist inquiry, such as: What makes research feminist? Does gender and sexuality matter in research and do minoritized groups have specific experiences and perspectives that can improve research and/or eliminate bias? How can intersectionality theory be operationalized methodologically? What is at stake if minoritized groups are left out of research initiatives? Do feminist research questions require alternative research methods to get at new ways of seeing the world? You will practice different methods (e.g., interviews, survey development, content analysis and coding) in class and will conduct your own mini research project that is grounded in one of the feminist methodological frameworks discussed and that utilizes one or more of the methods outlined in the syllabus. You will also pick up helpful tools to make research and writing easier. Projects can be tailored to your interests.
This course is cross-listed with WGSS 350. While there are no specific prerequisites, it is helpful for students to have had a course in WGSS or SOC prior to taking this course.
Whether we actively seek it out or not, pop-culture permeates everything around us- our entertainment, our news, our consumption habits, and our politics. In this course we will examine this often-dismissed area of our collective experience seriously by examining how scholars and commentators across political science, history, economics and cultural studies, to name a few disciplines, understand the significance of pop-culture. We will consider questions such as the role of pop-culture in representing dominant and marginalized identities and why this matters, the pop-culture memorialization of key events, the role of culture industries in the economy, the pop-culture of conservative and right-wing movements, the importance of pop-culture in state's soft-power as well as the impact of celebrities on various policy issues, in an election year where this may be particularly salient. We will ponder these questions through the lens of various cases of 'texts' - drawing on students' interests and the instructor's research interests in Bollywood and KPop, and be attentive to pressing issues in pop-culture from the West as well as the Global South. Students will research a topic of their choice applying class concepts and materials.