Transitions I: Engaging the Liberal Arts
Transitions I: Engaging the Liberal Arts offers three hours of credit and is designed to address high level cognitive skills, such as ethical reasoning, critical thinking, and quantitative literacy, by centering on a topic of such interest. This course is purposely designed to get your college career off to a wonderful start. Students have the opportunity to choose a topic of interest from 16 different classes. Please read over the course descriptions below and choose five that you would be interested in pursuing further. We will do our best to place students in one of his or her top five choices. Please note: If you are in the Honors Program, please indicate that on the website registration form and do not choose other preferences. Dr. Joe Lane will contact you about the course topic.
A PDF version of Transitions course descriptions is here.
Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality in Film
This course is designed to investigate movies with a critical eye. We will look at how society is portrayed and expressed in film. There are several questions we will seek to answer. What story is being told? Who is telling it? What role does money play in the process of filmmaking? How do movies mirror or mock mainstream society? In short, by taking a philosophical approach, we will investigate the impact of movies. Instructor: Jimmy Whited
Ghosts, Psychics, and Astrology: The Unsinkable Rubber Ducks
A recent Gallup poll indicates that 3 in 4 Americans have at least one paranormal belief. Despite much disconfirming evidence, people continue to believe that houses can be haunted, that people can communicate with the dead and foresee the future, and that the alignment of the stars at birth can influence a person’s life course. In this class, we will investigate these phenomena, as well as the reasons why we continue to believe. Instructor: Dr. Kim Reed
Racial Identity in Context
Kenneth B. Clark, the psychologist whose studies on racial identity helped shape America’s historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, analyzed the role of racial identity relative to the struggle for equality. Despite progress toward said equality, race continues to define United States culture and—in the view of many—prevents the development of the “just society” envisioned by Clark, Martin Luther King, and others. Through research, debate and other class interactions, students will explore specific questions relative to this ongoing debate—a debate intensified in the presidential election of 2008. Instructor: Dr. Jerry Jones
Controversy and the Theater
There are certain plays in our recent history we have marked as “great,” whether it be by honors such as Tony Awards, and Pulitzer Prizes, or by repeated performances. In many cases these same plays are the most controversial, as they get to the heart of our nation’s feelings towards race, gender, religion and sexuality. In this course we will look at some of these plays and ask ourselves: Does great theatre need to be controversial? Is there something about the theatre that lends itself to controversy? Should tax dollars be spent on these plays that spark such heated debate? How can a play be popular, and polemic at the same time? Instructor: Dr. Kelly Bremner
Citizenship in a Scientific Age
You will be faced with numerous decisions in your life involving issues beyond your expertise. Should I vaccinate my kids? Should I vote for the candidate that denies humans are dangerously warming the planet? Should I let them aggressively treat that slow growing prostate cancer, despite the nasty side effects? Are you in danger from the frac’ing operations on your neighbor’s property? How does a non‐expert sort through all the bluster and hype to make sensible decisions about his or her own future and that of our shared community? Join us as we try to sort out how to make decisions about complex and contentious issues where science plays a significant role. Instructor: Dr. Mike Duffy
The Religious Right in America
For nearly the past three decades, the Religious Right has come to play an important role in American politics and society. At the national level it maintains it helped elect Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes to the presidency. While the Religious Right has its detractors, some argue that its devotees – just because they had a life‐changing religious experience – should not have to relinquish their right as American citizens to participate in politics. This leads to one of many questions that may be explored in the course: to what extent can the sacred and secular really be separated in the American political realm? Instructor: Mr. Robert Vejnar
The Frontier in Fact and Fiction
This course examines the central place that the frontier has held in shaping American society and the American character, from the earlist periods of settlement up through the twentieth century. Employing literature and film, as well as historical analysis, this course examines the developmnet of the geographic frontier and such manifestations as cultural contacts, economics, diplomacy, social character, and intellectual formulations, with an emphasis on how those factors have been portrayed and embraced in American society. Instructor: Dr. Michael Puglisi
Corporate America
Corporate America will introduce students to various roles that corporations have had in our nation’s history and evolving relationships between business and society. Topics covered will include the purpose and function of a corporation, history and structure, corporate social responsibility, and sustainability. The course will also cover current trends and relevant topics in business such as the financial crisis and current political landscape for corporate America. Instructor: Mr. Scott Ambrose
Food and Place
What is the food culture of college students today? What are the pros and cons of eating locally‐grown food? Organic food? Different kinds of meat? No meat at all? Eating is an agricultural act, said poet‐farmer Wendell Berry. This course explores the social, geographic and moral questions surrounding what we eat and how our food system can be sustainable in multiple globalizing, urbanizing and commodifying American cultures. Instructor: Dr. Ed Davis
Motown: Music and Meaning in the Middle of the 20th Century
Motown means many things: good solid music; black entrepreneurship; a voice for African Americans at the height of the Civil Rights Movement; a voice for young Americans in the throes of adolescence and young adulthood; the cradle of hip-hop; and, much more. This course introduces students to the music and the musicians of Motown, but also looks at the American cultural, social, and political scene in the tumultuous middle of the 20th Century. Instructor: Rev. David St. Clair
The Human Animal in Literature
We live in a time of smart phones and in vitro fertilization, and though human scientific understanding and technological mastery of nature has enabled marvelous achievements, it has exacted a price: Our instinctual, emotional identification with nature has diminished. In this course, students will explore a variety of literature that ponders what is still wild and instinctual in our nature. Students will also document a personal outdoor experience and then engage the creative process, constructing an artistic project that explores their own connection to nature. Instructor: Mr. Jim Harrison
Myth
What are myths? What distinguishes myths from other kinds of stories? What questions were myths designed to answer? Why do myths remain relevant today? In this course we will explore these questions through a survey of a few myths taken from ancient Greece and Rome. We will take a look at the Greek story of how the world was created, the battles between heroes and gods at Troy, and the founding of Rome by descendants of Trojan exiles. Instructor: Dr. Jack Wells
Self-Motivated Learning
Will explore the history of the concept of self-motivation. Will analyze barriers to self motivation and apply strategies for assuming greater personal responsibility toward what is of value. Instructor: Dr. Eric Grossman
Faith and Atheism
Why is there evil in the world if God is good? What evidence do we have for God’s existence? Is God a psychological projection? Is religion simply a tool used to promote socioeconomic oppression? Does religion promote an inauthentic existence? This course will critically examine some of the most famous atheistic critiques of religion. We will focus on the works of Hume, Nietzsche, Freud, Marx and Derrida. Instructor: Dr. Adam Wells
Family
We often hear people say that everyone has two families: one we’re born into, and the other we choose. But what is family, and how should it work? What should parents do for their children? What should children do for their parents? How much should the state interfere with family dynamics, either for the good of the family members or for the good of society? In this class, we will carefully examine what is arguably the most influential institution in our lives. Instructor: Dr. Brynn Welch
Who Am I?
The ways in which individuals self-identify, prioritize some self-identities over others, and grapple with potentially conflicting self-identities are fundamental to social and political life. Our understandings of “who we are” shape our ethical deliberations, our political loyalties, and how we engage with the world around us. Students in this course will explore their own concepts of self-identity within a global and comparative framework of how others have grappled with this question across a variety of time periods and cultural contexts. Particular attention will be given to the interaction of “American” identity with other national, subnational, ethnic, and religious identities. Instructor: Dr. Alise Coen
