Spring 2022

Spring 2022 Tentative Humanities Courses

HUM 002A Consent
Professor Grace Delmolino / CRN 47209

The presence of consent is what distinguishes sex from rape, democracy from dictatorship, surgery from assault, employment from slavery. You’re probably used to thinking about consent as a choice you make on a personal level, but it’s more complicated than that. Apps on your phone collect data about your lifestyle, browsing habits, health, and contacts—you agreed to this by default when you installed the app, but did you really consent? In the Middle Ages, a father could legally consent to marriage on behalf of his 13-year-old child—do you think that is truly consent? What if you agreed to participate in a medical study on your life-threatening illness, but partway through the study, a cure was discovered and the researchers withheld it from you—would you feel like your consent was violated, even though you agreed to the terms of the study? These some of the real-life examples we’ll discuss. For millennia, people have attempted to define consent in philosophy, literature, and theory; we will use a humanistic approach to study what makes for valid consent in the domains of data privacy, medicine, voting, sex, and more.  
 
No prerequisites
GE Credit: AH, WC, WE
 

HUM 002B  A Cultural History of the Blues
Professor Julia Simon / CRN 61727

Do you listen to rock, R&B, jazz, rap, soul, gospel or blues? Do you ever wonder how musical styles develop?

We will trace the evolution of the blues, and African American history, from the Delta to the industrialized north, from Mississippi to Chicago, Memphis, and beyond.  This course combines cultural history with music appreciation to explore the history of the blues, looking at such figures as Son House, Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Muddy Waters, and B.B. King.  We will learn about the historical context that gave birth to the blues, as well as learn about the musical structure of the blues, touching on chord progressions, bass lines and rhythms.  Finally, we will examine the impact of the blues on other genres, such as rock, R&B, jazz and rap.

GE: ACGH, AH & WE                                                               

No prerequisite

HUM 004 Animals & Human Culture
Professor Michael Ziser / CRN 61728
FULL SYLLABUS (PDF)

In the modern adult world it is very easy to get through an entire day without encountering even a faint reminder of the existence of the nonhuman world.  But take a step inside the average child’s bedroom and you will find an incredible array of creatures—goldfish and teddy bears, cartoon chipmunks and puppy slippers, elephant noises and monkey business—spilling from every corner.  It is almost as if one comes of age precisely by stepping through a filter that strips one of any animal fellow travelers.  How did this happen, and what does it mean?

This course will explore how ideas about animals come to be mixed up with ideas about childhood in the modern West, as well as how adulthood comes to be something from which the animal is necessarily absent.  We will look carefully at tales of feral children, chimpanzees raised by humans, Teddy Bears, Tarzan, “wire mothers,” neotenic cartoon animals, and Nature Deficit Disorder, among other wild and wonderful things.  By the end, we will have a much deeper understanding of what our civilization has told us it means to be animal and human, child and adult.

No prerequisites: all students with an interest in animals, the environment, child development and psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and/or cultural studies are encouraged to enroll and explore.