Course Schedules & Descriptions: FALL 2013
Course descriptions can be found under the schedule, or click on course title:
CRS# CRN COURSE/TITLE DAYS TIME BLDG INSTRUCTOR
124 4452 G. I. in Science T R 2:15 - 4:05 Observatory Dale Kennedy
123 4430 G. I. in Science M W F 11:45 - 12:35 Olin 230 Jeff Wilson
123L 4431 G. I. in Sci LAB R 9:15 - 11:05 Olin 234 Jeff Wilson
124 4450 G. I. in Science M T W TH 1:00 - 1:50 Observatory Mark Bollman
131 4211 G. I in Humanities M W R 1:00 - 2:05 Vulg 201 Mary Collar
131 4212 G. I in Humanities T R 10:30 - 12:20 Vulg 202 Judy Lockyer
155 4432 G. I. in Social Science M W 10:30 - 12:20 Putnam 253 Trisha Franzen
155 4278 G. I. in Social Science M W F 11:45 - 11:00 Observatory Debraa Kanter
151 4433 G. I. in Social Science T R 10:30 - 12:20 Observatory Andy Grossman
172 4451 G. I. in Fine Arts M W F 10:30 - 11:35 Observatory Sam Mcllhagga
175 4434 G.I. in Fine Arts M W 2:15 - 4:05 Observatory Clayton Parr
397 4435 Thesis Development T 7:00 - 8:00 Observatory Dale Kennedy
Neurophysiology for Beginners HSP 123
CRN 4430 & 4431
Monday, Wednesday, Friday 11:45 – 12:35
Thursday LAB = 9:15 – 11:05am Dr. Jeff Wilson
Everything that you do, feel, think, perceive… basically everything that matters to you… is the result of activity in your nervous system. Individual cells called “neurons” communicate with one another to create your mind. In “Neurophysiology for Beginners” we will learn about the activity of neurons: how they work, how they encode sensory information, how they control movement, perhaps how they produce emotions and mental activity. The course will provide an overview of the history of our understanding of neurons, and will include many experiments and/or demonstrations that illustrate the concepts that we address. You will also gain a basic understanding of simple instrumentation used to study the nervous system. Because neurons are comparable across species, we can learn about your neurons by studying the neurons of simpler organisms like invertebrates; many of the lab experiences will focus on neurophysiology in cockroaches and earthworms, but we will also at times examine the neurons of students. A specific lab period is scheduled, but lecture time will also be devoted on occasion to laboratory-related experiences and discussion. Students will be expected to maintain a lab notebook in which they record methodology and observations of each lab. Students will also write up three of the labs (literature review, methodology, results, and discussion) according to APA style – these write-ups will be graded. Finally, each student will design an individual experiment that extends one of the studies that we conducted in lab, ideally providing information about some as yet unanswered question in the literature. Learning outcomes: By the end of the course students will be able to: - Describe in detail the function of a neuron, - Describe the process by which neural activity is measured, - Explain how the nervous system encodes information about sensory stimuli, - Explain how electrical signals can cause muscles to move, - Explain how electrical signals can be used to examine sensory processing though the human nervous system, - Propose and conduct a well-controlled experiment addressing some feature of neural activity, and - If all goes very well, propose an answer to the fundamental question of how neurons create mind.
Reading assignments will be drawn from the primary literature on the function of the nervous system
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP123, you may not take this course unless you have written permission by Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration
Animal Communication
HSP 124H CRN 4452
Tuesday, Thursday 2:15 – 4:05pm
Observatory
Instructor: Dale Kennedy
Course Description:
In Animal Communication, we will start with the question, what is communication? We will examine some of the diverse systems of communication among animals from an evolutionary perspective. Animal communication involves a minimum of three components: a signaler (sender), a signal, and a perceiver (receiver). We will explore different types of signals in animal communication (including acoustic, visual, chemical, and tactile), and ask how environmental factors and other features, such as signal reliability and signal cost, affect signal selection in non-human species. We will address a variety of other questions, including whether signals are honest and accurate from the perspective of the sender and the perceiver, whether signals work among different species (interspecific), and what (if anything) distinguishes non-human animal communication from human language.
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP124, you may not take this course unless you have written permission by Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration
8 Big Ideas That Shaped Science
HSP 124 CRN 4450
1:00 – 1:50pm Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Observatory
Dr. Mark Bollman
This course will examine eight major scientific ideas, each one of which has had a revolutionary impact on a particular area of science.
Astronomy: Big Bang theory Biochemistry: DNA structure Biology: Evolution Chemistry: Periodic Law Computer science: Information theory Geology: Plate tectonics Mathematics: Non-Euclidean geometry Physics: Atomic structure
In several cases, students will read the original papers that reported the discovery. Laboratory work with Geometer’s Sketchpad will be used to explore the world of hyperbolic geometry. Evaluation will be based on a sequence of short papers, a collection of laboratory reports from Sketchpad, and a substantial final project.
The reading list will include: The Discoveries, Lightman, The Canon, Angier, A Well-Ordered Thing, Gordin The Non-Euclidean Revolution, Trudeau, The Double Helix, Watson, The Origin Of Species, Darwin, Fortune’s Formula, Poundstone, Plate Tectonics, Orestes
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP124, you may not take this course unless you have written permission by Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration
The Literature of Equality: Truth, Lies, and Ambiguity
HSP 131 CRN 4212
Tuesday, Thursday 10:30 – 12:20
Dr. Judy Lockyer
One of the most compelling ideas in Western culture is that people are or should be equal before the law and in each other’s eyes. In this seminar we will look to literature, philosophy, and public documents to find the complex of beliefs and assumptions that make equality still just out of reach and often ambiguous. We begin with Shakespeare’s final play, The Tempest and Aimé Césaire’s revisionist play, Une Tempête to learn from one early source about the complexities of equality. All of our reading offer specific and varied perspectives on power and equality; each text enriches and complicates ideas we generally believe are true and stable facts. Our reading will include The Declaration of independence and the Declaration of Sentiments, Seneca Falls; and Ralph Ellison’s classic novel Invisible Man and Paul Beatty’s comic response White Boy Shuffle. All papers will require approaches to textual analysis.
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP131, you may not take this course unless you have written permission by Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration
Mystery, Manners, Modernisms and Me
HSP 131 CRN 4211
Monday, Wednesday , Thursday 1:00 - 2:05pm
Dr. Mary Collar
This course examines the response of thinkers, many of them literary artists, to the death of god, the idea that Nietzsche put at the center of thought for himself and for many of the moderns. Even writers not directly influenced by Nietzsche have been haunted by the implications of such a philosophical orientation and have asked to what extent a death-of-God stance would necessarily reorient the artistic gaze away from Truth and towards the social good. At mid-century, the American writer Flannery O'Connor uses the terms Mystery and Manners to designate these two realms; near the century’s end, the Indian writer Salman Rushdie contends that the conflict between the sacred and the secular poses the central aesthetic question for any modern writer. Also in this late modern period, some thinkers use Nietzsche to undermine fundamental conceptions of human identify. The goal of this HSP course is to expose and explore these tensions among competing and often contradictory visions, to provoke in students intelligent reflection upon some great issues surrounding truth, goodness, and beauty.
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP131H, you may not take this course unless you have written permission of Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration
Women, the Environment and Sustainability
HSP 155 CRN 4432
Monday, Wednesday 10:30-12:20
Dr. Trisha Franzen
Rachel Carson, Vandana Shiva, and Wangari Maathai head the list of women thinkers, writers and activists who have given us fresh views on the environment and sustainability. Starting with the works of these women and recognizing that the United States and other western countries have no monopoly on with environmental theory or activism, students will explore the breadth of global and local women’s work on all the issues relevant to sustainability. While the general public doesn’t often see the environment as a women’s issue, women’s ecofeminism developed with the contemporary women’s movement, the environment is often not there is no one approach In addition to reading, class discussions and short papers, students will conduct original research on an individual woman or women’s group. From that research, students will teach a section of the class and write a significant paper. Students will participate in Albion College’s Year of Sustainability events and develop a related class project. Outcomes: • Teach students to think critically about the connections between women’s issues and the environment; • Examine how place influenced the particular paths of the three key women theorists and activists; • Consider the basic concepts, frameworks and debates concerning gender and the environment; • Explore how women’s studies and feminism have contributed to ecological and environmental theory; • Foster creative thinking and original research on global and local efforts by women ion these issues; and • Link this class with the campus-wide sustainability theme. Process: Students will • Participate in and lead class discussions; • Write short reflection papers; • Conduct original research; • Teach a class based on that research; • Develop a group project related to Albion College’s Year of Sustainability
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP155, you may not take this course unless you have written permission by Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration
After the Melting Pot: Issues in 20th-Century U.S. Immigration
HSP 155 CRN 4278
Monday , Wednesday, Friday 11:45 – 12:50pm
Dr. Deborah Kanter
The role of immigrants in the U.S., a “nation of immigrants,” has been debated since the founding era. This seminar looks both at the experience and myths of immigration, as well as the debates over immigration’s place in the 20th-century U.S.
How has immigration changed since the arrival of the predominantly European “huddled masses” of a century ago? Ellis Island holds a strong place in our national consciousness, but many American families first entered the U.S. in the past century at Angel Island, El Paso, JFK, or LAX. The U.S. population currently includes an all-time high number of foreign-born individuals, mostly from nations well beyond Europe: what does this hold for the future? How have attitudes toward immigration changed with the rise and fall of different notions of race?
The class will consider immigration through history, ethnography, demography, literature, film, and sociology. Amidst our general readings, the seminar will focus on three main immigrant groups: East European Jews, Mexicans, and South Asians. Students will have the opportunity to research other immigrant groups.
Readings (tenative list): Israel Zangwill, “The Melting Pot” Ernesto Galarza, Barrio Boy Rubén Martínez, Crossing Over: a Mexican Family on the Migrant Trail Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk Jane Ziegelman, 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement
Films: The Sixth Section Hester Street
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP155, you may not take this course unless you have written permission by Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration
“Savage ‘Little’ Wars: Narratives of Counterinsurgency Warfare in Film and in Practice 1963-2013”
HSP 151 CRN 4453
Tuesday, Thursday 10:30 – 12:30
Dr. Andy Grossman
This honors seminar is framed by a puzzle which is best considered as a question: How is it that a military strategy, “Counterinsurgency” (COIN) that has failed so often and so systematically can continue to be held in high regard by political and military elites in countries such as the United States? In thinking about this question, we will analyze how COIN has been viewed by national security and military elites (post-World War II generals in particular) as a long-term strategy to fight asymmetric wars: that is, post-Colonial conflicts, conflicts that arise in “failed states,” and, finally, the problematic “global war on terrorism”— i.e., the post 9/11 strategies for asymmetric war.
We will take two approaches to the analysis in the seminar. 1). The consideration of how COIN tactics have been portrayed in in film, specifically how narratives are used in film to establish a particular kind of thinking. 2). A careful and close reading of important academic literature in the national security, war-fighting, and policy history scholarship. This aspect to our seminar aims at a fuller understanding of how military strategy has adjusted to modern asymmetric warfare and why COIN regularly reemerges with a new gloss, as the “go to” tactic/strategy for countries such as the United States.
As regards the use of film, the seminar will examine how COIN has been portrayed in popular film as means to either support or raise questions about small wars and the tactic of COIN. Films representing both points of view will be used. We will consider questions about how the use of film narratives (drawing on the work of Hayden White and others) can reconstruct a particular context (a reality if you will) that lends support or undermines COIN.
With respect to the second approach, we will read the literature on military strategy, consider the issue from perspective of war-fighting, from the perspective of regular soldiers, and from the perspective of those on the “receiving end” as it were, of COIN. I would like us to focus specifically on why COIN tactics and strategies seem to continue to garner significant purchase among the military, even in light of its abject historical failure (save a few instances in modern history). Why is this the case? That is the what the seminar is about.
Preliminary: Films and Books Films: The Battle of Algiers, Restrepo, Go Tell the Spartans, Full Metal Jacket, Walking with Bashir, The Lemon Tree Books: Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, Orwell, Animal Farm, Orwell, Collection of Essays, West, The Village, Miller, Tiger the Lurp Dog, Junger, War, US Marine Corp, Small Wars Manual
The course will entail both a close reading of two types of texts: film and literature. Short papers follow each film. One final paper for the course.
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP151 , you may not take this course unless you have written permission by Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration
Historic Parallels in the Arts
HSP 175 CRN 4434
Monday & Wednesday 2:15 – 4:05pm
Clayton Parr Music Department (
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The course will examine a number of points in European cultural history and look at how changing aesthetic ideals were manifested in music, painting and architecture. Students will gain a basic historical familiarity with the important movements in Western artistic thought while developing the ability to compare examples of these ideas in different artistic genres.
Possible weekend class trip to Chicago for students to get some direct experience of the things we will be covering in class --- visit to the art museum, an architectural walking tour, the Frank Lloyd Wright house in Oak Park, take in a concert.
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP172, you may not take this course unless you have written permission by Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration
Perspectives on Composer: Style and Expression in Music Composition
HSP172H CRN 4451
Monday, Wednesday & Friday 10:30-11:35am
Sam McIlhagga
Course Description: This course will examine music composition through the lens of the composer, the performer, and the audience. Further views by musicologists, philosophers, and psychologists will provide an interdisciplinary approach to the topic. While music composition is the primary focus, relevant parallels in architecture, visual art, literature, and poetry will also be considered. Historically established music traditions (e.g. concert music and jazz) are contrasted with new forms (e.g. techno, film music and rap) in search of the expanding role of music composition. Course activities include artistic creation, readings, listening assignments, writing, concert attendance, field trips, class discussion, and presentations.
Student learning outcomes: -Students will experience the compositional process first-hand through multiple composition projects on various topics -Students will prepare and perform select compositions from their portfolio of compositions in an end-of-semester recital -Students will accurately identify similarities and differences in musical genres, composers, compositions, and critical analyses through written assignments
You DO NOT have to be a music major or play an instrument to take this class
Note: if you have taken or now are taking a section of HSP172H, you may not take this course unless you have written permission by Dale Kennedy, Director of Honors, before registration.