CRN: | 15444 |
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Section: | RESC 098 04 |
Title: | US & Asia in the 21st Century |
Instructor: | Zhu, Zhiqun |
General Course Objectives: | Take a look at your clothes, footwear, laptop and phone. Most likely they are made or assembled in Asia. There is no doubt our lives are affected and will continue to be shaped by what happens in Asia. It is therefore imperative to learn about America’s interactions with Asia and understand the trends, problems, and challenges that lie ahead. |
Description of Subject Matter: | This seminar addresses the fascinating and complex relationship between the United States and Asia today. Major topics include, but are not limited to, history of US-Asia relations, American perceptions and misperceptions of Asia and Asians, cultural exchanges, global supply chains, international security, and America’s relations with key players such as China, India, Japan, Korea, Australia, and Southeast Asia. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Global Residential College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15102 |
Section: | RESC 098 05 |
Title: | Controversies inGlobalization |
Instructor: | Magee, Christopher S. |
General Course Objectives: | This course examines controversial issues that arise in economics, politics, and international relations as the world becomes more integrated. |
Description of Subject Matter: | This course will examine controversial issues that have arisen as the world becomes more integrated and national borders become “thinner.” We will discuss questions such as: Does trade harm the environment? Is foreign aid a good way to reduce poverty in developing countries? Do humanitarian crises justify military intervention? Can international agreements limit global warming? Is democracy declining internationally? |
Method of Instruction and Study: | Students will write several opinion papers adopting and defending a position on a controversial policy issue on which we will have a debate in class. Students will also write one original research paper on a topic of their choice and will present this paper in class and at a symposium with other residential college students. Through the papers, presentations, class debates, and discussions, students will develop their skills of doing academic research, writing, speaking, and listening. This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Global Residential College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Instructional Materials and Sources: | Books, journal articles |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 13574 |
Section: | RESC 098 08 |
Title: | Once and Future Plagues |
Instructor: | Stowe, Emily L. |
General Course Objectives: | This W1 course is designed to help students develop their writing, reading, speaking, and listening skills at the collegiate level through an exploration of the impact of past pandemics and possible future pandemics. At the end of the course, students will develop their analytical skills necessary for independent academic research work. . |
Description of Subject Matter: | From the mid-19th century to today we have seen a continuous drop in deaths due to infectious disease in the United States. Antimicrobial drugs, immunization, water treatment and sanitation all played a role in bringing those death rates down. Relatively few individuals will have lost a family member to an infectious disease but this safety is new. This class will explore how infectious diseases shaped society throughout history, focusing on specific diseases (for example: plague, tuberculosis, cholera), and time points (for example: the colonization of the Americas by Europeans and the decimation of native populations that followed). We will look at how the development of microbiology and public health lead to the decline of these diseases. Finally, we will end by examining how modern life has brought about new infectious foes and allowed others to return (HIV/AIDS, MERS, SARS, Ebola, antibiotic resistance). |
Method of Instruction and Study: | Students will explore the scientific and cultural issues surrounding communicable disease through a combination of reading and writing assignments in addition to in-class activities. Students will practice reading and interpreting primary scientific literature, learn how to participate in seminar discussions, work with small groups to actively learn new concepts, conduct independent research, and develop written, oral, and video media presentation skills
This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Discovery College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15742 |
Section: | RESC 098 09 |
Title: | Never Eat Soggy Waffles |
Instructor: | Dryden, Emily B. |
Description of Subject Matter: | North, East, South, West. You learn the compass directions at an early age, but how much have you thought about how maps are constructed? The earth is round and paper is flat, so there have always been challenges and choices in creating maps. We will examine some of these challenges and choices from different points in time. For example, we can use different types of projections to get from a globe to a map, we can use mathematical tools to analyze whether districts are gerrymandered, and we can use a geographic information system (GIS) to visualize and understand significant features of today’s world in new ways. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | There will be readings, discussion, a variety of writing assignments, training in and use of ArcGIS, and a collaborative project. This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Discovery College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Instructional Materials and Sources: | We will read from a variety of sources and the readings will be provided. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 12875 |
Section: | RESC 098 10 |
Title: | Illusions |
Instructor: | Mitchel, Aaron D. |
Description of Subject Matter: | We like to believe that we can trust what we see with our own eyes, but perception very rarely aligns with reality. In this course, we'll examine various types of illusions that demonstrate this disconnect. We'll see colors that aren't really there, fail to notice bears moonwalking right in front of us, and be tricked into hearing something entirely different than what was said. In addition, we will look at how illusions have been used by artists, magicians, engineers and marketing professionals. For example, we'll discuss why Monet's sunset shimmers and how a Hans Zimmer soundtrack builds tension throughout a movie. Not only will we study famous illusions created by others, through a combination of popular books and primary readings, but we will also create our own illusions. Through deception, we will reveal the mechanisms of perception. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Discovery College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 12745 |
Section: | RESC 098 14 |
Title: | Ancient Origins:Secret History |
Instructor: | Larson, Stephanie L. |
Description of Subject Matter: | In this course we’ll be examining origins of things we think we know: stories of heroes; our concept of human nature; our understanding of medicine and healing; the fundamentals of democracy; uses and abuses of war and violence; gender roles for women and men; and our concepts of faith. We’ll be looking at these topics and writing about them through the lens of ancient Mesopotamian and Greek cultures, with a little Roman and Judaean evidence from time to time. We’ll be reading and discussing a variety of material from these civilizations (e.g., epic poetry (Homer); Greek tragedy, Plato, Lucretius, Galen, Saint John), and all the while we will simultaneously contemplate what we also know from our own cultures about these topics. Can we find similarities to our own attitudes in these cultures from long ago, or is the past too foreign to us? How can we approach these ancient thinkers as modern citizens of the world? What does it mean that we as modern humans can read and explore such ancient ideas? As we explore we will develop our skills in thinking creatively about these themes, and we’ll pay close attention to how we can write about them critically and convincingly. For your essays and papers you’ll be able to choose a variety of topics within these large thematic categories, and your final essay can be a topic of your own choosing. We will close the semester by presenting our work at the Residential College Symposium. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Languages & Cultures College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15351 |
Section: | RESC 098 15 |
Title: | Fiction! |
Instructor: | Drexler, Michael J. |
General Course Objectives: | Fiction! is a foundation seminar course in the Languages and Cultures Residential College in the Fall of 2023. Through a selection of readings—some theoretical and others more expository—students will be asked to reflect on keywords of humanistic study, the building blocks that make production of knowledge in the Humanities distinct from other disciplines in the university. These would include ambiguity, paradox, difference, the arbitrary, the imaginary, fluidity, flux, and disinterest among others. In a world that asks for constant engagement, snap judgments, swiping left or right, students will be encouraged to develop the capacity to linger: not to pause or take a break, but to dwell in time with objects of inquiry, things that—under closer view—reveal complexity, contradiction, and prompt wonder. The course takes an expansive view of the concept of the fictional beginning with a focus on language as the most basic level at which we engage reality through a mediated perspective. The meat of the course will concern reading short fiction and writing expository. Mindfulness exercises will be designed to model and encourage attentiveness and focus, to foster in students the joy of the particular, the queer, the unexpected, and the unbidden. Writing exercises will be at the forefront of creating the meditative mood in which the surprising need not be accidental or serendipitous. We will explore free flowing, open-ended writing prompts that provoke and invite wide-ranging, independent thinking. |
Description of Subject Matter: | Short fiction and essays. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | Frequent writing, discussion This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Languages & Cultures College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Instructional Materials and Sources: | Arguing about Literature Please also list what requirement this course fulfills. FOUN AHLG ARHC W1 |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 12755 |
Section: | RESC 098 16 |
Title: | Art of Protest |
Instructor: | Rothman, Roger I. |
Description of Subject Matter: | In response to a world plagued by war, oppression, and inequality, artists of all stripes rise up in protest. Some do so aggressively, assaulting us with words and images that tear at our souls. Others provoke us less violently, by guiding us with images of a better world imagined but not yet realized. Some artists make their art for museums, where only an elite minority can experience them, but others--and more and more each day--make artworks that live on billboards, city streets, and public buildings, and still others that exist only in the virtual world of instagram, twitter, and facebook. This course will dig deeply into the ways that contemporary artists are using art to make the world more just, more kind, more equal. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Languages & Cultures College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15738 |
Section: | RESC 098 17 |
Title: | Masks and Meaning |
Instructor: | Williams, Elaine |
General Course Objectives: | 1. To explore the performance styles and societies which use masks and puppetry in religion, ritual, and festival through reading, writing, research, making, and embodying movement 2. To learn the principles of design through sculpting and decorating original masks inspired by world culture 3. To see and be articulate as a creative artist and thinker 4. To be able to analyze design, writing, and presentations in a critical and nondestructive manner |
Description of Subject Matter: | Mask and Meaning is a studio-based class that explores mask design, ritual, and performance. We consider our own masks of social identity, the transformational power of the mask, and imbuing masks with spirit. Mask and movement workshops are included in our study of Commedia dell’Arte and Japanese Noh Theatre. Research and class discussions will be used as springboards to inspire you to create masks of your own design that reflect the ritual needs of our contemporary community. You will focus your major research for the semester on a specific performance style or society that uses masks for religious ritual, community celebration, and/or artistic expression. The research will be presented as an oral presentation and will inspire an original mask in the style studied. Creative process and creative risk taking will be emphasized throughout this course. Our goal is discovery using the mind, eye, hand, and body. We will especially explore design, sculpting, and painting to learn; that is, using mask design as a process to help discover ideas in much the same way we use writing to help formulate our thoughts. Each design evolves from significant independent research and class discussion. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | Studio and discussion This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Arts College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Instructional Materials and Sources: | Most mask making materials are provided. Art supplies include sketch pad, colored pencils, acrylic paints, and clay sculpting tool. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15739 |
Section: | RESC 098 18 |
Title: | Amer. Musc. Theatre as History |
Instructor: | Vandevender, Bryan M. |
Description of Subject Matter: | American musicals, like all cultural products, reflect the dominant beliefs, assumptions, values, aspirations, and anxieties of the eras in which they were created. Thus, musical theatre proves an especially productive tool for studying American history. This course will investigate how select musicals reflect, amplify, complicate, or even reject the prevailing cultural dialogues in the United States at the time of their creation. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Arts College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. Full title - 'American Musical Theatre as History' |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15740 |
Section: | RESC 098 19 |
Title: | Craft - The Power of Making |
Instructor: | Westbrook, John E. |
General Course Objectives: | Why do we feel the urge to craft things? What might this desire say about our sense of ourselves in the larger world of learning, working, and consuming? At times of great economic and cultural change—industrialization in the 19th-century or the emergence of the knowledge and digital economies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, craft emerges as an alternative way of thinking about working, making, consuming, and indeed, thinking itself. This course explores the turn to craft both as an object of intellectual understanding but also as an experience we undertake ourselves through creative craft practices. |
Description of Subject Matter: | Craft raises the issues of autonomy and agency: our ability to take responsibility for the things we make and/or use. The question of care—care in creation, caring for or repairing—opens onto what it means to craft our work as learners and members of different communities. This course is the start of an apprenticeship in crafting a meaningful Bucknell experience.
We will examine the ways in which conceptions of craft dialog with the social and cultural contexts in which they emerge. We will experience and discuss how the kinds of the knowledge produced through reading texts differs from the knowledge gained through making things. We will engage in different forms of making in different craft traditions (paper arts or textile arts, for example) and reflect on and tap into the environmental, economic, and political dimensions of craft practices. The roots of the word craft link to the idea of power. Cræft provides a framework to think about the power you hold to shape your world. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | Seminar-style discussion. Presentations. Short analytic writing assignments. Creative craft projects undertaken in maker spaces and outside of class. A final essay, creative project and presentation at the Residential College Symposium. Emphasis through multiple assignments on reading, writing, speaking, and information literacy. This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Arts College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. Full title: "Cræft - The Power of Making" |
Instructional Materials and Sources: | Primary texts by craftspeople, theoretical texts and historical analyses of craft movements, craft materials and tools. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15481 |
Section: | RESC 098 20 |
Title: | The Bad Place: Hell & Horror |
Instructor: | Penniman, John D. |
General Course Objectives: | In this course, students will fulfill two sets of objectives: content and skill set. In the content objectives, students will 1) sharpen their skills of religious literacy, learning how to study religion from an academic orientation; 2) gain understanding of the historical development of hell as an idea across different cultures and time periods; 3) evaluate the enduring impact of the idea of hell on art, culture, and American politics. In the skill set objectives, students will 1) learn how to read multiple types of sources (books, essays, films, artworks) actively and critically; 2) conduct independent research, evaluating primary and secondary sources; 3) write analytically, using proper citation techniques; 4) craft thesis-based arguments supported by evidence. |
Description of Subject Matter: | This course explores the story of hell by tracing its beginnings in Greek & Roman mythology, its development within the Hebrew Bible & later literature of Judaism, and its forceful expression in the traditions of Christianity and Islam. We will also analyze the enduring legacy of hell in the American imagination and its relationship to the history of incarceration. Our goal is not to debate the existence of hell but rather to understand the role that the idea of hell has played in shaping human beliefs, cultures, & politics about punishment and moral or spiritual reformation from the past to the present. We will read primary sources from the ancient world, academic analysis of religious histories, and we will watch films and analyze artworks that depict hell. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This course will emphasize seminar-style, discussion-based methods of instruction. High levels of student engagement will be the norm in each class session. No quizzes or tests will be used. Rather, students will come prepared each session with questions and comments and reactions to the assigned material, ready to guide the discussion and participate collaboratively. There will be writing workshops, film screenings, and sessions dedicated to learning the basic skills of art interpretation. This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Humanities College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. Full title - The Bad Place: Hell and Horror in Religion |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15425 |
Section: | RESC 098 21 |
Title: | Gender Revolutionaries |
Instructor: | Delsandro, Erica G. |
Description of Subject Matter: | This writing-centered first year seminar focuses on embodied revolutions and gendered revolutionaries. As part of the Humanities Residential College, the course emphasizes textual and artistic portrayals of characters and events—some fictional, some not—that challenge the gender, sex, and sexuality status quo. From Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale to Janet Mock’s Redefining Realness to Chanel Miller’s Know My Name, the course material examines why and how people revolt against normative expectations surrounding gender, sex, and sexuality, often altering their bodies and lives in significant ways and risking their safety, all in service of seeking authenticity, autonomy, and justice. At the heart of the course is a meditation on the power of social construction to shape identity and the determination of individuals to challenge expectations, discover their true selves, and bring their desires to fruition both in real life and through narrative. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Humanities College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15687 |
Section: | RESC 098 22 |
Title: | Speech, Harm, University |
Instructor: | Burgos, Adam B. |
Description of Subject Matter: | The United States is currently in the grip of an extended national conversation about the limits and contours of free expression. Questions about the first amendment, academic freedom, cancel cultural, hate speech, and the power of words to harm are front and center. From controversial campus speakers to student performances to everyday interactions, campus life is filled with the interplay of free expression and the potential for harm. What is the relationship between speech and harm? How does that relationship develop on a university campus? And how do we, as members of both Bucknell and society at large, and as students, faculty, and staff, navigate that relationship? In this course we will think about those questions, along with who gets to speak, who is listened to, how to understand the meaning of words and actions, and what it all says about community. While these issues often understandably provoke intense and passionate responses, they can also benefit from the sort of reflection that the classroom setting enables. They also, of course, are issues of longstanding concern. We will discuss classic defenses of free expression like John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty in addition to thinking about how words are more than they might seem at first, in that they can actually do things in addition to expressing ideas. We will also look at some of the legal precedents surrounding free speech and free expression, protection, and belonging, as well as a sampling of the many articles written in the past few years on cancel culture and the freedom of expression in popular media. Over the course of the semester we will work together on constructing a workable guide to free expression that could be put to use at Bucknell. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Humanities College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15743 |
Section: | RESC 098 24 |
Title: | Sustainable Harvest |
Instructor: | Spiro, Mark D. |
Description of Subject Matter: | Wendell Berry famously said “Eating is an agricultural act.” This quote alludes to the social, economic and environmental impacts of our daily consumption of food. Through food and agriculture we will explore societal connections to the biological fields of evolution, ecology, botany and human nutrition. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | Sustainable Harvest will engage students in an interactive, discussion- and project-based course that will consider how our food choices and national agricultural policies affect our health, the natural environment and the lives of others. This course is part of a residential college program with the theme ‘Wild Places, Cultivated Spaces’. We will use our common hour to investigate the wild and cultivated landscape of the Susquehanna Valley, meet with local farmers and take part in projects to conceptualize the design of the newly established on-campus Bucknell University Farm. This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Food College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Instructional Materials and Sources: | TBA |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15744 |
Section: | RESC 098 25 |
Title: | Food, Culture and Society |
Instructor: | Durden, Elizabeth |
General Course Objectives: | In the Food Residential College, you'll uncover new ways to think about what we eat, exploring the complex relationship between humans, food, and the natural and social world. This course delves into the significant relationships between people, culture, and food across society. We will explore the social and political origins of agriculture and the development of our modern industrial food systems and the impact of such a system on the social and environmental costs of our modern food system. |
Description of Subject Matter: | This foundation seminar is part of the Food Residential College that will investigate the American Food system through the social sciences and natural sciences. In this seminar, we will explore foodways or the cultural, social and economic practices related to the consumption of food. This course delves into the significant relationships between people, culture, and food across society. We will explore the social and political origins of agriculture and the development of our modern industrial food systems and the impact of such a system on the social and environmental costs of our modern food system. We will explore how one's race and socioeconomic status impact one’s ability to obtain healthy nutritious foods. Furthermore, how are alternative food systems both a social and political act? |
Method of Instruction and Study: | Intimate seminar course built around lecture, readings and class discussion. Get ready to get your hands dirty and explore new cuisines as the Food Residential College will not only take place in the classroom but in the field, where you will gain hands-on experience growing and preparing food to share with your fellow students. We will work on the Bucknell Farm as well as delve into the local food system. Field trips range from a local farmer's market to a cultural food tour of Philadelphia. This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Food College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Instructional Materials and Sources: | Academic readings, current news sources and appropriate documentaries. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 13895 |
Section: | RESC 098 27 |
Title: | Both EdgesofTechnology’s Sword |
Instructor: | Knoedler, Jan T. |
General Course Objectives: | To develop writing, reading, speaking, listening, and information literacy skills in a seminar format, and to think critically about the use and impact of several modern technologies on society and the economy. |
Description of Subject Matter: | In this class, we will be considering the following features of technological change: while it is undeniable that new technologies have, at least in modern times, improved the standard of living for many and made possible the previously impossible, in doing so, technology has too often created winners and losers, creating technology’s double-edged sword. To get a better sense of the winners and the losers, we will consider several of these double edges: the widened South Fork dam that eased travel for Pittsburgh’s new industrial elite but also and Johnstown workers; CRISPR’s life saving tools that can eliminate cruel genetic diseases but also create a new eugenics; emerging AI and robotic tools that will reduce onerous, backbreaking, repetitive work but also eliminate the livelihoods for many; communications tools that have allowed us to communicate instantaneously with friends and family wherever they are but have also led to addiction, social isolation, and political polarization. We will look at both of technology’s edges – the edge that sometimes aids those with advantages due to geography, skills, genetics, and more, and the other edge that often leaves the rest further and further behind. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | Seminar class, including discussion, some group projects, writing assignments consistent with the goals of W1 classes, and a presentation as part of the Residential Colleges symposium.
This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Society & Technology College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Instructional Materials and Sources: | Texts TBD, but a combination of texts and Moodle readings are planned. |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15353 |
Section: | RESC 098 28 |
Title: | Climate Fiction |
Instructor: | Chow, Jeremy H. |
General Course Objectives: | This Society & Technology Residential College course introduces students to the foundations of beginning a collegiate career. The goal is to prepare students for their subsequent coursework, regardless of major, by emphasizing the development of reading, writing, public speaking, and research skills. |
Description of Subject Matter: | “Climate Fiction” provides an entry point for students to consider how society and technology have both produced issues of climate change and are also responsible for remedying these effects. Students will explore a variety of media, literature, and philosophy to grapple with the concerns prompted by climate change and how authors, filmmakers, poets, and writers take up these concerns. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This course is a Foundation Seminar, which emphasizes seminar-style discussion and interaction. This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Society & Technology College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. |
Instructional Materials and Sources: | Authors may include but are not limited to: Octavia Butler, Jeff Van der Meer, Becky Chambers, Elizabeth Kolbert, Naomi Klein, Amitav Ghosh, and K.A. Hays. Please also list what requirement this course fulfills. FOUN W1 |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
CRN: | 15741 |
Section: | RESC 098 29 |
Title: | When IT Goes Bad |
Instructor: | Ladd, Ned F. |
Description of Subject Matter: | On March 28, 1979, in large part because of a faulty indicator light for a relief valve, a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island created the most significant nuclear accident in US history. The technology was in place to avert this accident, yet because of bad information, operators were unable to control the reactor. In this course, we will examine cases where bad information, and the decision-making based on it, led to failures of otherwise robust technologies. Case studies will include the Great Boston Molasses Flood, the Thalidomide pharmaceutical disaster and the 1954 crash of the BOAC Comet. We will discuss ways of identifying, obtaining, and valuing good information, and the social benefits of relying on good information to make decisions. |
Method of Instruction and Study: | This is a Residential College course. If you choose this seminar, you are also choosing to live in the Society & Technology College housing with students who have interests similar to yours. Please note additional required participation in the Symposium and the fall field trip (date/time TBA). Please refer to the Residential College website for a description of the program. Full title - "When IT Goes Bad: the Perils of Bad Information in a Technological World" |
Requirements: | Writing Level 1 |
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