AAAS 49S.01  A HISTORY OF THE PLANTATION FROM IRELAND TO THE AMERICAN SOUTH: THE CASE OF DUKE AND DURHAM                                                               (CZ, CCI)

(Cross-listed as HISTORY 49S.01)

INSTRUCTORS: Susan Thorne and Thavolia Glymph

What is a plantation and why do some citizens view Duke as a plantation?  This course is designed to broaden ongoing discussions by locating the question of Duke’s relationship to Durham in the global as well as local historical processes on which it ultimately rests.  We begin with an exploration of the complex history of the plantation in the Anglo American world, moving from the late medieval plantation of Ireland established by English and Scottish settlers, to the forced migration of indentured Irish and enslaved African laborers to the plantation of the New World, and finally to the rise of Durham’s tobacco and textile industries and Duke University.  This course is interested in helping students understand how these seemingly disparate movements have come together to shape social relations in Durham today and how people understand questions of freedom, race, sexuality, work and class as well as America’s democratic promise.

Susan Thorne, Ph.D. (University of Michigan) is a social historian of Imperial Britain.  Her work foregrounds the influence of the colonial encounter on Victorian political culture and social relations.  She is currently working on the social history and cultural construction of pauper orphans in Britain and its colonies at the turn of the nineteenth century.

Thavolia Glymph, Ph.D. (Purdue University) is Assistant Professor of African and African American Studies and History at Duke University.  She is the author of several essays on slavery, emancipation and the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction, economic history, and southern women.  Her current writing and research focuses on southern women in the transition from slavery to freedom and the formation of an Afro-American women’s radical culture in the post bellum South.

James Reynolds, Ph.D. (New Mexico State University) holds the rank of Professor of Environmental Sciences and Biology. His interests center on the response of plants and ecosystems to disturbance, e.g., climate change and human land use. Dr. Reynolds is leading an international research team in a study of the simultaneous roles of biophysical and socio-economic factors in land degradation in arid and semiarid regions of the world (desertification).

BIOLOGY 49S.03  THE BIOLOGY OF AGING: THE QUEST FOR A FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH

                                                                                                                                        (NS, EI, STS)

INSTRUCTOR: Alison Hill

Do recent advances in our understanding of the biology of aging suggest that human aging will soon be postponed significantly?  What are we to make of the proliferation of the anti-aging industry and the promise of various anti-aging elixirs, interventions or therapies?  What do calorie-restricting diets, telomeres and antioxidants have to do with aging?  In the future, will humans be able to rely on stem cells to grow new body parts or will it be possible to engineer embryos with life-extending genes?  This seminar will focus on what research is telling us about the fundamental mechanisms that lie behind the aging process.  This will include a focus on genetic and molecular studies in diverse organisms (yeast, worms, flies, etc.), how this research is being applied to understand aging in humans, and recent genomic studies in humans that have associated gene variants with longevity.  In addition, we will look at past and current attempts to modulate aging.  Some of the basic topics to be discussed are: the forces of natural selection and aging, Hayflick’s limit, mitochondrial DNA and aging, telomeres and aging, and stem cells.  This seminar will tie in discussions about the long-term social impact of ever-increasing life expectancies and the changing demographics that will ensue.  Each student will be responsible for presenting a particular research area and facilitating a class discussion around the topic.  Students will also be expected to participate in debating the social consequences of life extension.

Alison Hill, Ph.D. (UNC Chapel Hill) has been involved in the fields of genetics and molecular biology over the last 26 years either as a researcher or, more recently, as an instructor in the Biology Department at Duke.  She has become increasingly aware of the importance of educating the public (i.e. undergraduates) about issues in biology that directly intersect society.

CULANTH 49S.01  CULTURE, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY 

                                                                                                                            (SS, CZ, STS, R, W)

INSTRUCTOR: Richard Collier 

In this course we will examine the intersection of culture, society, science, and technology.  This course is designed to shatter assumptions about the insulated nature of scientific practice from the cultural and social world in which it operates by pointing to the very cultural nature of scientific thought.  We do this by examining both broadly conceptual considerations of the nature of scientific thought and practice as well as historically and ethnographically particular examples of the “situatedness” of science in daily life.  This course has an important research component, demanding students to push the border of the classroom into the realm of scientific practice.  Students will be expected to do “participant observation” in a scientific setting, writing up their anthropological findings in an ethnography that will apply the concepts and critical tools that they learn throughout the semester.  Throughout this course there will be an undercurrent that examines questions of objectivity and cultural values and norms in light of scientific practice in order to better address questions of ethics in science.

CULANTH 49S.02  THE SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY OF MUSIC

                                                                                                                                             (SS, CCI)  

INSTRUCTOR:  Ingrid Byerly

Music "sounds society" and, in turn, societies can be examined through music.  This course analyzes the psychology of music, and how individual motives in making music arrive at public performances that serve social interests.  It explores the social influence of music in society, and examines how music is instrumental in not only reflecting the trends of thought and ideologies in society, but in forming them in times of dynamic social and political crisis.  Themes explored will range from the expression of evolving ethnic identities to commentaries on the fluctuation of racial demographics, the motive of mediation between cultures, the proclamation of nationalism, the trends of social observations and political resistance, and the mobilization of change across historical times and geographical spaces.  Music will be heard as a "voice of society" and treated as a primary soundscape through which to listen to societies.

Ingrid Bianca Byerly, Ph.D. (Duke University) is an ACLS Fellow and visiting assistant professor in the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University.  She has taught in South Africa, Russia and England on such topics as cross-cultural communication, video production, cultural anthropology, and education.  Her interests lie primarily in ethnomusicology and education.  She is presently completing a book on South African protest music entitled THINGS COME TOGETHER: The Music Indaba of Apartheid South Africa, and one for students entitled TO A CERTAIN DEGREE: The Art of Graduating.

ECONOMICS 49S.36  JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES

                                                                                                                                                        (SS)

INSTRUCTOR:  E. Roy Weintraub

This seminar will examine the life and work of one of the truly important figures of the twentieth century, John Maynard Keynes.  The context of the development of Keynes’s thought in late Victorian Cambridge, and the influence of Moore and the Apostles, sets the stage for an examination of Keynes’s emerging role as government advisor, journalist, teacher, and economist.  The seminar will study his connections to the Bloomsbury Group as well as his non-economic writings, both political and biographical. The emergent focus will be Keynes’s influential General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, and its intellectual background; this work is a major text of this century’s intellectual life, and so it will be read directly and not from a modern perspective of, for example, Keynesian economics versus monetarism.  Primary readings will include the biographies of Keynes by Harrod and Skidelsky, and various portions of Keynes’s writings found in The Collected Works of John Maynard Keynes.  Secondary readings will include G.E. Moore’s Principia Ethica, biographies of other Bloomsbury figures like Strachey and Woolf, and the essays on Keynes in books like that edited by his nephew, Milo Keynes.

E. Roy Weintraub, Ph.D. (University of Pennsylvania) joined the Duke University faculty in 1970.  He was trained as a mathematician, though his professional career has been as an economist.  In recent years his research and teaching activities have focused on the history of the interconnection between mathematics and economics in the twentieth century.  His writings have thus charted the transformation of economics from a historical to a mathematical discipline.

ENV 49S.01  WHAT ON EARTH?  AN INVESTIGATION OF CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES 

                                                                                                                                              (SS, STS)

INSTRUCTOR: Prasad Kasibhatla

This seminar will delve into the scientific and public policy perspectives on contemporary environmental issues.  In recent decades, there has been increasing awareness of the need to understand and manage diverse environmental challenges, such as global climate change, regional air pollution, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity, and beach erosion.  This course will examine topics such as these, exploring both the scientific study of and societal response to these issues, with a specific focus on developing an integrated way of thinking about contemporary environmental issues.

Prasad Kasibhatla, Ph.D. (University of Kentucky) is an associate research professor in the Nicholas School of the Environment & Earth Sciences.  He has taught courses in atmospheric chemistry, biogeochemical cycle modeling, environmental sciences & policy, and environmental chemistry & toxicology.  His research interests include tropospheric chemistry & transport and regional air quality.

GERMAN 49S.01  THE POETICS OF THOUGHT: PHILOSOPHY IN LITERATURE FROM ANTIQUITY TO MODERNITY    

(Cross-listed as PHIL 49S.01 and LIT 49S.01)                                                    (ALP, CCI, EI)

INSTRUCTOR: Michael Morton

This course will introduce students to some of the ways in which writers have made use of literary techniques in order to explore philosophical themes and to present philosophical arguments.  Works to be considered range from the very ancient (Epic of Gilgamesh) to the fairly recent (Marat/Sade), and include selections from the Bible (Book of Job), the Greek Golden Age (Plato’s Symposium), the transition from classical antiquity to the medieval period (Augustine’s Confessions), the High Middle Ages (Dante’s Inferno), and the nineteenth century (Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground and Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra).  Some of these works bear a decidedly religious stamp; others are resolutely secular in outlook.  Some propose definite answers to the questions they raise, while others serve only to deepen our perplexity and intensify our unease.  Throughout the semester students will have several opportunities to engage these issues in their own right, in the form of short written assignments and oral presentations.

Michael M. Morton, Ph.D. (University of Virginia) is an associate professor of German.  He specializes in 18th century literature, critical theory, and literary history & criticism, and his research interests include philosophy and literature and intellectual history.

HISTORY 49S.01  A HISTORY OF THE PLANTATION FROM IRELAND TO THE AMERICAN SOUTH: THE CASE OF DUKE AND DURHAM                                                           

(Cross-listed as AAAS 49S.01)                                                                                       (CZ, CCI)

Instructors: Susan Thorne and Thavolia Glymph

HISTORY 49S.04  WHAT'S THE BIG IDEA? IDEAS AND DEBATES IN WESTERN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY SINCE 1500                                                               (CZ, CCI, EI, W)

INSTRUCTOR:  Charles Ludington

This course will expose students to some of the major ideas and debates in Western history since 1500.  Students will be required to read excerpts from primary texts in order to understand the arguments being put forth, secondary texts in order to put the ideas and debates in historical context, and recently published news articles, essays, etc. in order to see how these historical debates remain present, albeit in slightly different form.  Indeed, both the continuity and change within those debates will be stressed and explored in class discussions.  The course will begin by exploring the arguments within Western Christianity known commonly as the Reformation and Counter-Reformation and will focus on positive and negative consequences of the breakdown of Christendom and the emergence of the idea of the individual conscience.  Similarly, each week will focus on the consequences and irreconcilability of major debates such as Hobbes and Locke on human nature and the role of government, Rousseau and the social contract, Adam Smith's "invisible hand," Thomas Paine and Edmund Burke on natural rights, Mary Wollstonecraft and women's equality, John Stuart Mill and Karl Marx on "true" freedom, and Nietzsche's declaration of the death of God.  All of these and other ideas will be discussed in this course so that students will understand the historical depth of contemporary debates, as well as the ambiguities found in all historical attempts to resolve them.

Charles Ludington, Ph.D. (Columbia University) is a visiting assistant professor at Duke University and UNC-Chapel Hill.  His primary historical interests are in early modern British and Irish political and cultural history, European intellectual history, and the history of food and drink.  He is currently completing a major study on the relationship between politics, political authority and the taste for wine in England and Scotland in the period 1650-1860.

HISTORY 49S.06  RADICALISM AND EXTREMISM: THE RUSSIAN ROOTS

                                                                                                                                  (CZ, SS, CCI, W)

INSTRUCTOR:   Anna Krylova

Political radicalism and extremism have shaped the world across the whole spectrum of modern experience, including our political life, ideas, and culture.  What are the roots of these movements in the modern world?  Using modern Russian history as a case study, this course explores the origins of political radicalism and extremism in the intellectual and revolutionary traditions of the 19th and 20th centuries.  We will begin with the forerunners of these modern movements in Tsarist Russia, then take up the tumultuous events of the Russian revolution and trace out their influences right through the dramatic fall of the Soviet Union and on into the present day in Vladimir Putin's Russia.  Course materials will include first-hand accounts, political treatises, great literary works and excerpts from landmark twentieth-century Russian films.

Anna Krylova, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University) is Hunt Assistant Professor of Modern Russian History.  Her research and teaching interests include  the cultural, social, and military history of modern Russia as well as cultural and gender theory. 

LIT 49S.01  THE POETICS OF THOUGHT: PHILOSOPHY IN LITERATURE FROM ANTIQUITY TO MODERNITY                                                                                      (ALP, CCI, EI)

(Cross-listed as GERMAN 49S.01 and PHIL 49S.01)

INSTRUCTOR: Michael Morton

LIT 49S.02  FRENCH EXISTENTIALISM

                                                                                                                                (ALP, CZ, CCI, EI)

INSTRUCTOR: V.Y. Mudimbe

This course offers a critical introduction to the chief presentations and controversies of French existentialism, and particularly to the following issues: (a) Is existentialism an amoral subjectivism? (b) Can we describe the human in the same way we define an article of manufacture? (c) How can we analyze the importance of atheism? (d) Human’s finitude and his/her relation to nothingness; and (e) In which sense should philosophy see and define the human?

V.Y. Mudimbe, Ph.D. (University of Louvain) has honorary doctorates from the University of Paris VI and Leuven.  He has taught at the Universities of Louvain, Paris-Nanterre, Zaire, Haverford College, Stanford University and now Duke.  He has published three collections of poetry, four novels, and several books in applied linguistics, philosophy and social science.  His interests are in French phenomenology and structuralism, with a focus on the logic of mythical narratives and the practice of language.

LIT 49S.03  PARADIGMS OF JUSTICE

                                                                                                                                (ALP, CZ, CCI, EI)

INSTRUCTOR: Michael Hardt

This seminar will investigate paradigms of justice in a variety of social fields and across different historical periods.  We will focus on racial injustice, for example, and anti-racist struggles; gender injustice and feminist struggles; and injustice based on sexuality and gay/lesbian struggles.  The method of the course will be to read revisions and interpretations of some classical texts that grapple with injustice.  We will begin with Antigone by Sophocles and then read Jean Anouilh’s Antigone, written during the Nazi occupation of France.  We will then proceed to Judith Butler’s Antigone’s Claim, which uses the drama to pose a framework for feminist politics and to open the consideration of alternative kinship structures.  Next, we will read Exodus from the Bible and then Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain, written in the 1930s.  This series ends with Martin Luther King’s final speech “I Have Been to the Mountaintop,” given in Memphis the day before his assassination.  These repetitions across different historical and social contexts will allow us to make connections among different struggles for justice, freedom, and democracy.

Michael Hardt, Ph.D. (University of Washington) is a professor of Literature and Romance Studies.  His fields of research and teaching interests include globalization, political theory, comparative literature and literary theory.

MATH 49S.01  CONSTRUCTING NUMBERS

                                                                                                                                             (QS, R, W)

INSTRUCTOR: Dan Lee

Have you ever wondered what the “real number line” really means?  Starting with basic notions of sets, we will explicitly construct the usual numbers encountered in grade school and high school: the naturals, the integers, the rationals, the reals, and the imaginaries, as well as some less familiar number systems.  Along the way, students will learn to write rigorous mathematical proofs, and we will discuss important properties of these number systems.  Each student will complete a final project on a number system of their choice.  Possibilities include Gaussian integers, quaternions, cardinal numbers, and many others.  While this course is intended to satisfy a basic curiosity about numbers, its true goal is to use these familiar mathematical objects as a tool of inquiry into the world of abstract thinking and advanced mathematical concepts.  Prerequisite: an interest in abstract mathematics.

Dan A. Lee, Ph.D. (Stanford University) is an assistant research professor in the Department of Mathematics.  His primary field of research is geometric analysis, a branch of mathematics that uses partial differential equations to solve problems in differential geometry and has applications to topology, general relativity, and string theory.

MUSIC 49S.01  COMPOSERS OF INFLUENCE

                                                                                                                                             (ALP, CCI)

INSTRUCTOR: Harry Davidson

Throughout the history of the arts in western civilization, certain individuals stand out whose achievements seem to propel the very nature of their respective art forward. They are said to stretch its boundaries by manipulating its raw materials in ways not conceived of prior to their time. These artists end up exerting enormous influence on others - those working in the same field and the culture in general. This course examines the lives and works of specific composers who have had an unusually powerful influence, in the process informing us a great deal about music's path through the ages. It may also yield insights into the natures of influence and progress themselves. Composers to be studied are J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, and Stravinsky.

Harry Davidson, M.M. (Pacific Lutheran University) is a Professor of the Practice in the Music Department and director of the Duke Symphony Orchestra.  He made his major orchestra debut conducting the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.  He has guest conducted numerous professional and conservatory ensembles, including the Charlotte Symphony, the Akron Symphony, and the Cleveland Institute of Music and Oberlin College Conservatory orchestras.

PHIL 49S.01  THE POETICS OF THOUGHT: PHILOSOPHY IN LITERATURE FROM ANTIQUITY TO MODERNITY

(Cross-listed as GERMAN 49S.01 and LIT 49S.01)                                            (ALP, CCI, EI)

INSTRUCTOR: Michael Morton

RUSSIAN 49S.01  TOLSTOY AND DOSTOEVSKY

                                                                                                                                (ALP, CZ, CCI, EI)

INSTRUCTOR:  Denis Mickiewicz

We will read War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov, as well as selected representative short works.  The great issues and their vivid dramatization will be considered in the light of the authors' irreconcilable approaches to the human condition, culture, artistic goals, and narrative technique.

Denis Mickiewicz, Ph.D. (Yale University) is a professor emeritus in the Department of Slavic Studies.  His current research focuses on various aspects of signification in modern Russian poetry.  His secondary interests lie in Russian vocal music and the interaction between language and music, and in the philosophy of major Russian writers.

RUSSIAN 49S.02  NEW RUSSIANS

                                                                                                                                             (ALP, CCI)

INSTRUCTOR: Carol Apollonio

This course will offer an exploration of the latest new works of Russian literature and film.  Beginning with a reading of Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, we will proceed to works written and produced at the turn of the twenty-first century.  Our goal is to discover any patterns that remain from the great nineteenth-century classics.

Carol Apollonio, Ph.D. (UNC Chapel Hill) is an Associate Professor of the Practice in the department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies.  She specializes in the classic nineteenth-century Russian writers (Dostoevsky, Chekhov, and Tolstoy), problems of translation, and language pedagogy.  She is a conference interpreter of Russian with lengthy experience working in arms control, and a translator of Russian and Japanese literature. 

SOCIOLOGY 49S.01  POVERTY ACROSS SPACE AND RACE

                                                                                                                                          (SS, CCI, R)

INSTRUCTOR: Sherri Lawson-Clark

Where is poverty?  What does it look like?  How does it shape the lives of children and families?  This weekly seminar offers a hands-on approach to the study of poverty.  We begin with an overview of the sociology of poverty in the U.S., followed by more contemporary poverty research.  Students will have the opportunity to examine two large ethnographic data sets -"Welfare, Children & Families: A Three-City Study" and "The Family Life Project" - that focus on the impact of poverty across diverse contexts, i.e., urban/rural geographies, race and ethnicity, and age and gender.  Both data sets are extensive and include substantive topics such as welfare and public assistance use, domestic violence, physical and mental health, multi-partner fertility, residential mobility, incarceration, discrimination, work and household economies, social networks, nutrition, parenting and child care, and intimate relationships.  Students will help untangle some of the complexities and realities of poverty by choosing a topic of interest to develop and analyze throughout the semester into a written and oral research project.

THEATRST 49S.01  FIRST-YEAR ACTING ENSEMBLE

                                                                                                                                                      (ALP)

INSTRUCTOR: Jay O'Berski

This course will explore both the art of acting, including theoretical and historical components, and the craft of acting, derived from in-class exercises, scene work, and writing assignments.  Students will work together to master the basics of realistic acting and to learn rehearsal techniques.  The class will culminate with a performance project.  Topics include (but are not limited to) text analysis, voice work, physical work, imagination, dramatic writing, improvisation, collaboration, and critical analysis.  No performance experience is necessary.

Jay O’Berski, M.F.A. (Moscow Art Theatre School) is artistic director of The Little Green Pig Theatrical Concern and an associate artistic director of Manbites Dog Theater.  Recent stage credits include Ancient History (Glass House), Piecemeal (Bothhands), The Woman in the Attic (Archipelago), and The Tempest (Shakespeare & Originals).  Directing credits include Back of the Throat and The Man Who (Manbites Dog), Faust (Shakespeare & Originals), and Child of Hungry Times, a senior thesis project at Duke.  Jay also choreographs stage fights and coaches dialects for the Department of Theater Studies.

WOMENST 49S.01  GENDER AND SPORTS

                                                                                                                                                        (SS)

INSTRUCTOR:  Donna Lisker

This course examines two major facets of gender and sports in contemporary America: the actual and the representational.  In the first facet we’ll look at the literal participation of men and women in athletics.  Do men and women (boys and girls) choose different sports?  How are their choices conditioned by social conventions of masculinity and femininity?  What difference does physical difference make?  How have legislative mandates such as Title IX changed the face of sports in America?  What opportunities exist for further change?  Students will examine the ethical and political debate revolving around this issue from the 19th century into the 21st century.  The second facet moves away from literal participation of individuals to representation of men and women in sports.  We will examine films and fictional depictions of men’s and women’s athletic endeavors as well as media coverage of professional and collegiate athletes.  Using a gendered analysis, we will explore how authors and directors draw on or refute stereotypes of masculinity and femininity.  Ultimately, we will circle back to our earlier discussions of participation, thinking through how media and fictional depictions of athletes influence and direct budding athletes.

Donna Lisker, Ph.D. (University of Wisconsin) was Assistant Director of the Women’s Center at Virginia Tech for four years before becoming Director of the Duke Women’s Center in 1999.  She is an adjunct assistant professor in Duke’s Women’s Studies program.  Lisker earned her Ph.D. in English and, as a specialist in feminist drama, she teaches one Women’s Studies class each year.

LIT 20S.05