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GRADUATE COURSE OFFERINGS
SPRING 2008
List of Courses
(Click
for Description)
PIC 280 C
FEMINISM GONE WILD: RACE, GENDER, SEX, BODIES [NONTSASA NAKO]
PIC 280 H FEMINISM AND ACTIVISM [EMILY
GARVILLA]
PIC 280 J
AFRICAN CULTURE AND WERSTERN WORLD[CAROLINE TUSHABE]
PIC 280 K
MAKING HISTORY [SUSANNA
DRBAL]
PIC 280 M
SECURITY, TERRITORY, MULTITUDE
[BRADLEY KAY]
PIC 280 Q
COMMUNICATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
[JEMIMAJ MWAKISHA]
PIC 280 R
MEDICINE IN LITERATURE
[CECILE LAWRENCE]
PIC 550 U
FOUCAULT’S VOICES
[STEPHEN DAVID ROSS]
PIC 604 G
THE WORLD AS IMAGE
[STEPHEN DAVID ROSS]
PIC 606 E
THE AFICAN NOVEL [ISIDORE OKPEWHO]
PIC 606 M
JOYCE, ULYSSES [MARILYN
GADDIS ROSE]
PIC 606 N APPROACHES TO MODERNISM/MODERN
[GISELDA BRINKER GABLER]
PIC 606 U
TEACHING DECONSTRUCTIVELY
[ROSEMARY ARROJO]
PIC 608 C
GENDER, DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION
[LUBNA CHAUBHRY]
PIC 610 A
EPISTEMOLOGY [ERIC
DIETRICH]
PIC 612 B
TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: LITERARY
PIC 612 C
TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: NON-LITERARY
PIC 612 D
COMPUTER ASSISTED TRANSLATION]
PIC 620 D
AFRICAN AESTEHTICS [NKIRU
NZEGWU]
Other
Semester Offerings
Course Descriptions
PIC 280C (ALSO TAUGHT
AS COLI 280V & WOMN 280B)
FEMINISM GONE WILD: RACE, GENDER, SEX BODIES NONTSASA
NAKO
T R 10:05PAM- 11:30AM
From the ditzy world of Ally McBeal, the "sexual revolution" of Sex
and the City, to the "raunch culture" of Girls Gone Wild, it would
seem that women's liberation, at least in the U.S. context, pivots around
bodily displays, sexual voracity and conspicuous consumption. In this
configuration, what determines identity and social mobility is the market,
and to think that it's gender, race, location, class and sexuality is
outdated. If these three aforementioned "cultural moments" are
anything to go by, how a woman clothes, controls, uses her body, is strictly
her prerogative, and capital, in this über-individualistic context is
the only criterion in social categorization. However, third world immigration
to the U.S.,
and U.S.
intervention in other nations, particularly the Middle East,
troubles this view and leads us to ask what gets left out of these popular
cultural representations. This course will use various texts, from
transnational feminism, sexual and identity politics to analyze the racial,
heteronormative and sexual hegemony that undergirds U.S.
popular cultural representations. We will examine a variety of texts (i.e.,
books, films, television clips, adverts, newspapers, music and the like) to
chart the way popular culture joins hegemonic discourse to continue gender,
racial and sexual stereotyping of those that are considered outside the
mainstream. We will discuss a wide range of issues from cultural dress codes,
body modification, augmentation, scarification, piercing, etc., and any other
cultural representations that students want to raise, to investigate the way
race and gender, and particularly the body, is read and interpreted in the U.S.
and how these interpretations tie in with political discourses and overall
State actions.
PIC
280H (ALSO TAUGHT AS HDEV 380U, SOC 280G)
FEMINISM AND ACTIVISM
EMILY GARVILLA
T R 11:40AM- 1:05PM
This course will examine the relationship between feminism and civic
engagement. Civic engagement practices have increasingly been seen as models
for providing groups like women and people of color who are marginalized by
normative democractic processes with access to public resources. By utilizing
community based learning practices as its basis, this course will allow
students to make connections between their classroom studies and service
experiences. Students will be expected to become familiar with some of the
theoretical frameworks that analyze venues of civic engagement from critical
feminist perspectives. However, students will also participate in community
projects that are supported by the Binghamton Neighborhood Assembly Project
[BNAP]. Towards this end course work will alternate between class and service
time.
PIC 280J
(ALSO TAUGHT AS AFST 280H, ANTH 380V, COLI 280A & WOMN 280P)
AFRICAN CULTURE AND WESTERN WORLD
CAROLINE TUSHABE
T R 2:50PM- 4:15PM
This course will examine the relationship between feminism and civic
engagement. Civic engagement practices have increasingly been seen as models
for providing groups like women and people of color who are marginalized by
normative democractic processes with access to public resources. By utilizing
community based learning practices as its basis, this course will allow
students to make connections between their classroom studies and service
experiences. Students will be expected to become familiar with some of the
theoretical frameworks that analyze venues of civic engagement from critical
feminist perspectives. However, students will also participate in community
projects that are supported by the Binghamton Neighborhood Assembly Project
[BNAP]. Towards this end course work will alternate between class and service
time.
PIC
280K (ALSO TAUGHT AS AFST 280D & COLI 280A)
MAKING HISTORY
SUSANNA DRBAL
T R 11:40AM- 1:05PM
This course investigates the significance of historical narratives for
individuals, nations, and other groups. First, we will ask, Who makes
history? That is, whose stories and experiences are recorded and passed on
institutionally, and, conversely, whose are silenced or erased? And why?
Secondly, How is the creation of history dependent on the demands of the
context in which it is written? Why is narrative such a powerful tool in
structuring our consciousness of the past and its meaning for our present?
And third, How can we come to terms with the reality that there is not one
history, but histories? Why are some histories more compelling than others?
How can we, as scholars, illuminate the histories that have been
overshadowed, repressed, or simply denied? We will explore these questions
through literary, historical, philosophical, and popular texts in order to
evaluate the relevance of such issues in our present context. How do the
seductions of a consumer culture manipulate our perspectives on the past? How
can people jointly come to terms with a history of atrocity and brutality?
How do formerly-oppressed people reclaim and reconfigure the history that has
been forced underground by their oppressors? How does collective memory
structure that of the individual, and with what results? What institutional
structures govern our experience of the past?
PIC 280M (ALSO TAUGHT AS COLI 280P, PHIL 280K,
PLSC 287A, SOC 280M)
SECURITY, TERRITORY, MULTITUDE
BRADLEY KAYE
M W F 2:20PM-3:20PM
Security has been an important issue among nations; this is an insecure
moment in history. The Cold War has ended, yet new enemies have emerged
perpetuating subjective relations of power. Conflicts appear to be centering
on various ethnic divisions. This course examines the contradictions inherent
to the logic of having security among core nations and the perpetuation of
war at the periphery. With violence no longer localized to this fringe, what
kind of security will we have? The course will also explore various
subjectivities of resistance to the continuation of the warfare-society and
the pervasiveness of biopower.
PIC 280Q (ALSO TAUGHT AS AFST 280Q, HDEV 380W,
RHET 450M & WOMN280C)
COMMUNICATION FOR SOCIAL CHANGE JEMIMAH MWAKISHA
M W 12:00PM-
1:230PM
The course will define and discuss development communication and how it
relates to social change. It will discuss the place of dialogue among publics
and communities and how they can define and determine their processes of
decision-making and action that best suits their needs, growth and
transformation. This is the kind of dialogue which recognizes and sustains
people's own dignity, empowerment, identity, place, pace and role. The course
will mainly use a case study approach to look at localized applications of
traditional and new communications tools in the pursuit of sustainable
development. Through this approach, it will bring to light how communities,
individuals and groups can participate and steer their own change instead of
being 'receptors' of pre-determined decisions and planning. The course will
also cover issues to do with dynamics of change, groups, cultural identity and
how social change and communication intersect. The course will look at
different ways of bringing change, and discuss participatory communication
and strategies, development patterns and public relations. It will draw from
experiences from communities around the world and how participatory dialogue
processes have brought significant change and acceptance among different
people. Students, will through discussion and group projects learn the art
and value of participatory communication and how to effect such processes.
They will learn about the emerging issues and trends shaping communication
and social change and appreciate how cultural and local community dynamics
influence change. Students will draw from this knowledge and research to
devise a method or skill to bring such change processes to fulfillment.
PIC 280R (ALSO TAUGHT AS COLI 280U, ENG 283T &
HDEV 380V)
MEDICINE IN
LITERATURE
CECILE LAWRENCE
T R 6:30PM- 8:00PM
This cross-disciplinary course will examine how literature and medicine
challenge and influence each other. While learning about an illness will
never match the actual experience of being sick, we'll explore cultural
assumptions and ask questions about health disparities. We will discuss works
created by or about diverse people with illnesses and examine the ways in
which the medical world treats the ill and how people respond to doctors,
nurses, and caretakers. Does being ill put a person in a place of cultural
dislocation? Participants will be encouraged to discern the emotional,
psychological, and cultural contexts of literature about medicine and
illness. While the course benefits anyone interested in literature and the
medical arts, it will be especially useful for students planning careers in
medicine, nursing, medical technology, or health administration.
PIC 550U (ALSO TAUGHT AS COLI 574D, PHIL 460Q &
PHIL 655B)
FOUCAULT’ VOICES
STEPHEN DAVID ROSS
T 4:25PM-7:25PM
A course reading Michel Foucault, including selected works spanning his
career. Because the course includes so many works, many of considerable
difficulty, I suggest that we keep open the possibility that we might decide
to spend more time on a given text. If so, we will have to cut back on
others. I find myself wanting to include something from as many works as
possible. Students are responsible for presenting on different texts, so that
there will be at least one presentation on each work, including some of the
ones not required. Presentations will include short handouts of passages that
help make sense both of the presentation and of the text in question. Every
student will present twice during the semester and once at the miniconference
at the close of the semester, the Tuesday after classes. Students are
responsible for 15 minute presentations (in a 30 minute time slot), raising
questions and initiating discussions. Students are also responsible for 30
minute presentations at a class miniconference at the end of the semester.
Questioning is the moving spirit of the course, extending Heidegger's words:
"questioning is the piety of thought" (QT, 317).
PIC 604G (ALSO TAUGHT AS ARTH 441G, ARTH 504B,
COLI 608E & PHIL 480J)
THE WORLD AS IMAGE
STEPHEN DAVID ROSS
W
3:30PM-6:30PM
The world is . . . an aesthetic phenomenon (Nietzsche) the image . . . does
not resemble . . . (Blanchot) The image, with its likenesses the imagination,
the imaginary, and mimêsis presents a recurrent theme through which
human beings express themselves and understand themselves and the world. Many
of these understandings have been disparaging, yet the image returns,
affirmatively and radiantly. Images visual, sonorous, performative,
linguistic, bodily, etc.; also artistic, commercial, fashionable, ornamental,
private, public, everyday, etc. pervade the world, especially in an
advertising, consumer, and technological culture, but also as expressions of
wonder and abundance. This course will explore the production and expression
of images of all kinds, together with reflections on them, again of all
kinds. Materials will be drawn from philosophy and religion, east and west,
north and south, arts and aesthetics, cultural studies and feminism.
Approximately half the course will be concerned with traditional images
around the world and how they are understood. The other half will be
concerned with contemporary images advertising, consumer, technological,
everyday images, etc. Students are responsible for 15 minute presentations
initiating small group discussions, raising questions rather than supporting
theses. At least one such presentation is required at each discussion.
Students are also responsible for 30 minute presentations at a class
miniconference at the end of the semester. Each presentation is to employ and
present images from the following sensory or expressive modalities and media:
sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell; painting, sculpture, music, drama,
dance, film, photography, dress, body ornamentation; images, sounds, aromas,
textures; etc. Readings/authors such as: Blanchot, Nietzsche, Heidegger,
Derrida, Plato, Goodman, Foucault, Spinoza, Whitehead, Bergson, Bachelard,
Lyotard, Deleuze, Guattari; plus topics such as: wonder, consumer aesthetics,
comics, appearance, dress, law, simulation, bourgeois art and aesthetics,
eating, consumption; abundance: quantum aesthetics, everyday aesthetics,
Buddhism, feminist aesthetics, performativity, domestic aesthetics, eating,
urban aesthetics, culture, borderlands, African/African American art, zen;
giving, for giving.
PIC 606E (ALSO TAUGHT AS AFST 373, COLI 517S,
ENG 390E & ENG 655C)
THE AFRICAN NOVEL
ISIDORE OKPEWHO
T R 10:05AM- 11:30AM
This course will explore the development of the novel in Africa
both historically and thematically. On the one hand, we shall trace the
formal growth of the genre, beginning with its emergence from the oral
narrative traditions of the continent, through its attachment to certain
European trends and techniques, to its present achievement in blending
various traditions (African and non-African) in the presentation of key
problems in contemporary African sociopolitical life. On the other hand, we
shall examine some of the key concerns that have occupied one generation of
writers after another: e.g., the European presence; relationships between
tradition and modernity; apartheid; failures of the post-independence
leadership; women in African literature and society.
PIC 606M (ALSO TAUGHT AS COLI 480A, COLI 541J &
TRIP 580L)
JOYCE, ULYSSES
MARYLIN GADDIS ROSE
M 1:10PM- 4:10PM
Close reading of the greatest 20th-century Western novel with an
English-language matrix. Familiarity with Dubliners and A Portrait is
desirable. Participation in Finnegans Wake dependent upon class interest.
Ulysses in the contexts of literature, music and art, myth and history.
Question to be considered, if not answered: did Ireland
provide the 20th century not only its greatest novelists but also its
greatest playwrights (Shaw, Beckett) and poet (Yeats)?
PIC
606N (ALSO TAUGHT AS COLY 480Y, COLI 535Y & ENG 450Q)
APPROACHES TO MODERNISM/MODERN
GISELA BRINKER GABLER
T 1:15PM- 4:15PM
An exploration and examination of debates and experiments in 19th/20th
century art, literature, theory and philosophy. Special attention will be
given to topics like modernization and metropolis, metaphors of progress and
transition, gender and modernization, national and transnational imagination,
modern exile/border crossings, visual/verbal/musical intersections.
PIC 606U (ALSO TAUGHT AS COLI 480C, COLI 535P, ENG
450T, GERM 481A, LING 439C, RLIT 501D & TRIP 580T)
TEACHING DECONSTRUCTIVELY
ROSEMARY ARROJO
W 1:10PM- 4:10PM
The course will examine some of the basic consequences of contemporary
theories of text (influenced by poststructuralism, contemporary philosophy,
postcolonialism, and psychoanalysis) for pedagogy. The following are some of
the topics that the course will address: transference in psychoanalysis and
the role of the psychoanalyst as teacher; the importance of pedagogy in
Derrida's deconstruction; pedagogy and power (Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed).
Special emphasis will be given to the implications of these conceptions and
insights for the actual teaching of literature, theory, languages and
translation
PIC 608C (ALSO TAUGHT AS AAAS 380T, EDUC 580M, HDEV
383S, LACS 380S, MASS 581A)
GENDER, DEVELOPMENT AND EDUCATION
LUBNA CHAUBHRY
T 1:40PM- 4:40PM
Course is interdisciplinary exploration of relationship between education,
gender, and development from perspective that emphasizes the intersections of
nationality, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, and well-being with the
social construction of masculinities and femininities. Drawing from diverse
societies, in historical and geographical Terms, with global focus whereby
the attempt is to under the multi-layered power relations framing the
teaching-learning of "gender" in formal educational as well as
larger cultural contexts.
PIC 610A (ALSO TAUGHT AS PHIL 507)
EPISTEMOLOGY
ERIC DIETRICH
R 4:25PM-7:25PM
This course will survey the history
of philosophy from the point of view of a particularly puzzling and
long-lived paradox. Briefly, this paradox is that human thought has
boundaries beyond which we can nevertheless go. So the boundaries both limit
us and point the way to a profound expansion beyond the limits. The
resolution of the paradox seems to require us to admit some contradictions as
true. Our goal will be to analyze this requirement from logical,
metaphysical, and epistemological perspectives. Philosophy as a whole
(including Buddhist philosophy) is teeming with versions of this paradox.
Ethics is also subject to it. For philosophy students, grades will depend
primarily on class participation and a paper.
PIC 612B
(ALSO TAUGHT AS COLI 472, COLI
572, FREN 572, LACS 480A, SPAN 582, TRIP 472, TRIP 572)
TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: LITERARY
T R
11:40AM-1:05PM
Specialized workshop training
students to translate literary works from foreign language to English.
Workshop is geared to graduate students; undergraduates may be admitted with
consent of instructor.
PIC 612C
(ALSO TAUGHT AS COLI 473, COLI 572, FREN 573, LACS 480B, SPAN 583, TRIP 473,
TRIP 573)
TRANSLATION WORKSHOP: NON-LITERARY
T R
11:40AM-1:05PM
Specialized workshop training
students to translate from fields dependent on translation (e.g.,
cross-cultural scholarship, international affairs, world trade) from foreign
language to English. Students interested in German should register under the
TRIP rubric.
PIC 612D
(ALSO TAUGHT AS COLI 580C, LACS 580C, LING 449B, TRIP 461 & TRIP 580C)
INTRO COMPUTER-ASSISTED TRANS
M 1:10PM-4:10PM
Practical introduction to
computer-assisted translation and terminology management tools. This course
will present a variety of computer tools for translators, including both web-based
applications and software specially designed for translation and terminology
management. There will be an initial presentation of basic concepts in
terminology management and documentation, as well as an introduction to
translation project management. The course is not language-specific; the
skills will be useful for various disciplines.
PIC 620D
(ALSO TAUGHT AS AFST 480J, ARTH 450A, ARTH 562A, COLI 480D, COLI 535F, PHIL
480B & PHIL 504)
AFRICAN AESTHETICS
W 3:30PM-6:30PM
This course explores the
principles of aesthetics and creative expression of visual arts in Africa
and the African diaspora. First, the course examines the conceptual and
methodological issues that define this field; next, by engaging the issues
that are of aesthetic interest in the field, it challenges the presumption
that issues of aesthetic interest must approximate what occurs in European
aesthetics; third, it outlines the concepts and issues of interest in African
visual arts; and fourthly, it examines the interrelationship of art and
aesthetics in societies that have experienced forms of domination, slavery,
colonialism and neo-colonialism to understand artists, appropriation,
deployment, or rejection of Africa in their works.
Other
Semester Offerings
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