Integrated Studies Courses Spring 2012
IS 300R | Topics | Standing as Metaphor
Spring 2012
Tues/Thurs 10:00-11:15 am
CRN 18701
Taught by Scott Abbott
It is at least as old as the Sphinx’s riddle:
What being, with only one voice, has sometimes two feet, sometimes
three, sometimes four, and is weakest when it has the most?
Man, Oedipus answered, because he crawls on all fours as an infant,
stands firmly on his two feet in his youth, and leans upon a staff in
his old age.
We call ourselves wise (homo sapiens) and argue that our language
differentiates us from other species of animals. But even more
substantially, we define ourselves by our ancestors’ revolutionary
achievement of a standing posture (homo erectus). We became human, in
one sense, because we stood up. In another sense, we are who we are
because of what that physical act has been made to stand for.
Reflecting the substantial nature of that original erection, our
languages and cultures constantly, insistently, even obstinately
establish superstitions and understandings related to the
constituative circumstances of our existence by systematic reference
to our station and stature as standing beings, as static and ecstatic
beings whose destiny is to cause things to stand.
As these words based on the *stā root illustrate, metaphors of standing
determine our conceptions of time and space; they shape our
understanding of existence and ecstasy; they are the tools and the
subject of philosophy and painting, poetry and fiction, sculpture and
law, history and psychology, anthropology and linguistics, archeology
and teleology. Wherever, in short, humans have payed scientific or
artistic attention to our status as human beings, we have done so
through metaphors of standing.
Sculpture by Niki de Saint Phalle
Required Texts:
- TBA
IS 300R 601 | Death and Dying
Spring 2012
Tues 5:00 pm-7:30 pm
CRN 20248
Taught by Nancy Rushforth and Reba Keele
This course in Death Education fills requirements for both Integrated Studies and Community Health. Together we will examine information and data pertaining to death in the United States and globally, causes of death, definitions, stages of dying, bereavement and legal and ethical issues such as euthanasia and suicide. We will focus on attitudes and values of Americans concerning death and study ways in which to work with and relate to the dying.
Text:
Death, Society and the Human Experience
Robert J Kastenbaum 10 ed.
Pearson
Allyn and Bacon
ISBN-13: 978-0-205-61053-2
IS 300R 002 | Buddhism and Science
Spring 2012
W 5:00 pm-7:30 pm
CRN 21521
Taught by Wayne Hanewicz
This course will examine Buddhist philosophy of mind and consciousness, epistemology, and metaphysics in light of contemporary scientific understanding of the cosmos and the things in it, with special attention to principles of quantum physics, cosmology, neuroscience, and information technology. The course will require readings from both classical and modern Buddhism as well as science and technology. We will engage in serious discussion and dialogue about the readings and lectures, and the course will utilize media support where relevant and available.
Required Texts:
- TBA
IS 350R 001 | Science and Nature
Spring 2012
MWF 11:00 am - 11:50 am
CRN 18703
This course will be a multi-disciplinary exploration of the question ‘what is reality?’ We will address questions of physics (the nature of space, time, and matter), philosophy (meaning and metaphysics), mathematics (whether numbers really exist), and ecology. The ecological element will include an exploration of our own natural environment, complete with field trips!
Readings will Include: George Berkeley, Rene Descartes, and Paul Churchland in philosophy; Stephen Hawking about physics; Kurt Gödel, Willard Van Orman Quine, and Ludwig Wittgenstein about mathematics; and Wendell Barry, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir about nature and ecology. The course is open to other ideas that students feel are worth exploring as well.
Required Texts:
John Muir : Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth; My First Summer in the Sierra; The Mountains of California; Stickeen; Essays (Library of America) by John Muir
The Universe in a Nutshell by Stephen Hawking
Thinking about Mathematics: The Philosophy of Mathematics by Stewart Shapiro
IS 350R 002 | Subversion of the Consumer Mind: Duchamp and His Readymades
Spring 2012
MWF 1:00-1:50 pm
CRN 23213
In 1917, Marcel Duchamp took an ordinary toilet fixture (an already made object), renamed it “Fountain,” and signed it with a pseudonym R. Mutt. With this series of actions, he initiated a new chapter in the history of human expression and thought, not to mention art.
What was he trying to do? For one thing, he was attempting to answer his own question: “can you make a work that is not a work of art?”
This course explores the implications and consequences of this question and how it destabilizes ideas of “products” and “art” and the mind that buys into them.
This course seeks a fresh understanding of the object/subject relationship as experienced in the gallery, the museum, the market place, and the self.
This course analyzes how religion, art, politics, and economics all seek to subvert the consumer mind for their various purposes, and how, by contrast, Duchamp sought to subvert the consumer mind itself.
Required Texts:
- TBA
IS 350R 601 | The Evolution of Human Sexual Nature
Spring 2012
M 5:00 PM - 7:30 PM
CRN 18705
Taught by Dr. Mark Jeffreys
Required Texts:
- Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
IS 4980 | Integrated Studies Capstone I
Spring 2012
IS 4980
CRN 15420
M 4:00-4:50
IS 4990 | Integrated Studies Capstone II
Spring 2012
(see advisor - multiple sections available)