- MCWP 50 COURSE DESCRIPTIONS -
WINTER 2010

All students with more than 90 cumulative units need to obtain departmental authorization from the Muir Writing office before enrolling in MCWP courses.

• IMPORTANT NOTE: Students on the waitlist who do not attend the first class meeting of Muir Writing will be considered NOT ENROLLED in the course. Enrolled students who miss the first two class sessions will be asked to drop the course. Responsibility for dropping the class from the Registrar’s records belongs solely to the student.

The reading and writing requirements are the same for all sections. Books for each section are now available at Groundwork Books (858-452-9625) in the Old Student Center.

-WINTER 2010-

Cities:
Real and Imagined

During the early 20th century, Berlin, Paris, London, and New York emerged as vibrant cultural centers and scenes of extreme political conflicts. These cities, among many others, signified social transformations and an emergence of a “new” perception of identity. In this class we will consider how the city and its inhabitants are portrayed in the early 20th century. We will examine how depictions of cities may express utopian projections, how cities may be framed as social commentaries, and how concepts of the city differ from those of the country. The course will consider how social spaces have been mapped by literature, film, and culture in paradoxical and interconnected ways and served as projections of social and cultural ideologies. Furthermore, the class will explore how historical and social processes—such as industrialization, national and political events, growing consumer culture—have both informed and been shaped by the culture and literature. The course will draw on a selection of theoretical texts to provide a framework for the different literary and visual portrayals of urban life and will culminate in student research papers.

Texts:
Berlin Alexanderplatz by Alfred Döblin; The Craft of Research, Third Edition by Booth, Colomb, and Williams; and a photocopied reader

Jackie Chan in Switzerland:
Investigating Global Youth Culture

People show who they are through the things they do—the music they listen to, the clothing they wear, the languages they speak, and the activities in which they participate. Young people in particular create their own subcultures that help them shape and define social identities of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. With globalization, particular ideas and practices of youth cultures often spread beyond their local communities and link young people from different locations. This course will look at ideas of identity and practice among young people, examining the link between various global youth cultures:  Bollywood and break-dancing, hip-hop and alternative rock, speech styles and hairstyles,  as well as African youth in Amsterdam and South Asian Desis in Silicon Valley. You will use the coursework to write a research paper that will explore the arguments you see in a particular type of youth subculture.

Texts:
Youthscapes: The Popular, the National, the Global by Sunaina Maria, Elisabeth Soep, and George Lipsitz; The Craft of Research, Third Edition by Booth, Colomb, and Williams; and a photocopied reader

"Wayward" Women:
Challenging Gender Constructions

In this class, we will analyze the arguments in a number of case studies that demonstrate the ways in which women have challenged gender roles.  Our primary examples will involve women in the U.S., including women pirates, the Salem witches, and suffragettes.  However, students may write about any woman or group of women (historically “real,” fictionalized, revised, etc.) in order to explore the conflicts inherent in socially constructed views on gender.  Topics for the final research paper may include any of the women we discuss in class but may also address topics such as the famous Chinese pirate Cheng Sao (or Ching Shih) of the early 1800s; the 20th-century hunger strikers in Irish prisons who championed for the vote; or graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi, who wrote Persepolis in 2003 partly as a protest of veil-wearing laws in Iran.  A background in women’s or gender studies is not required.   As a class, we will explore what it means to be a woman in given societies and historical contexts, and how women challenge those expectations.

Texts:
The Craft of Research, Third Edition by Booth, Colomb, and Williams; and a photocopied reader

From Race to Robots:
Passing and the Performance of (In)authencity

“Passing” in the United States has historically – and most commonly – referred to racial passing, and the practice of light-skinned African Americans passing as white in the early 20th century. In our course, however, we will examine other possible arenas of passing including, but not limited to, the identity constructs of gender, sexuality, class, and sentience. For example, how does the emergence of robots and cyborgs in films complicate our understanding of what it means to pass as human? Our readings will draw primarily from the academic fields of literary, performance, and film studies, including authors Gloria Anzaldua, Jose Esteban Munoz, and Della Pollack. We will consider the authors’ arguments in order to think about passing as a possible radical and political performance, and not simply a moving to and fro between supposedly settled and stable identities in the United States. Course materials will provide a framework for students’ research papers.

Texts:
Passing by Nella Larsen; The Craft of Research, Third Edition by Booth, Colomb, and Williams; and a photocopied reader

World Poverty ad the Ethics of Assistance

Imagine yourself walking past a shallow pond in which a small child is drowning. You look around for the child’s parents, but they are nowhere to be found.  You quickly realize that if you do not wade into the pond and pull the child out, she will die. You figure that saving the child is morally more significant than ruining your clothing. Moral philosopher Peter Singer has famously made use of this example to argue that in knowingly failing to assist those living in absolute poverty, each of us does something seriously morally wrong. After all, he argues, if ruining your shoes is morally insignificant next to saving a drowning child’s life, then surely sacrificing money you would otherwise spend on luxuries is comparably morally insignificant next to what it could do if donated to overseas famine relief agencies – namely, save one impoverished child’s life, or save thousands of children’s lives. In this course, we will examine Singer’s controversial and demanding proposal, spelled out in his new book The Life You Can Save, as well as several objections to it. Such objections range from ethical questions about the extent and stringency of our duties to assist distant needy others, on the one hand, to empirical questions about the long-term effectiveness of international aid, on the other. We will also read arguments written by leading ethicists, scientists, and economists on this or closely related topics. No prior knowledge of any of the topics discussed in this course is required.

Texts:
The Life You Can Save: Acting Now to End World Poverty by Peter Singer;  The Craft of Research, Third Edition by Booth, Colomb, and Williams; and a photocopied reader

Visual Culture and Institutions of Meaning

This class looks at a series of argumentative strategies within art and visual culture. Meant to serve as a primer to some of the contemporary discourses on art, the class will focus on the various ways to understand art through the process of transmission and communication, as well as how its interpretation varies according to the historical context in which it is articulated. The significance attached to such interpretations not only depends on the artist’s intentions but also by society, politics, tradition, and economics. The class will then analyze competing modes of interpretation and methodologies of meaning-making that can be applied to our larger visual culture.  Students do not need to have a background in art or visual culture to participate in this course.

Texts:
The Craft of Research, Third Edition by Booth, Colomb, and Williams; and a photocopied reader

Tourism and the Modern Traveler

The topic of this class is narratives of tourism and travel in what is commonly, and often problematically, termed the "postcolonial" era. Course work will focus on texts about tourism and postcolonial travel, such as the short novel A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid, excerpts from Jean Baudrillard's America and Joan Didion's The White Album, travel essays from mass media sources such as the New Yorker, and critical essays focusing on travel narratives. Some central questions guiding the course include: Who travels and who does not? What are some motives for travel, and how do these diverse incentives mark privilege or disenfranchisement? How do travel and tourism discourses break from or uphold traditional dichotomies between "developing" and "developed" countries, as well as the "haves" and the "have-nots" within those countries? Students will use the course materials as a starting point for writing their own research papers.

Texts:
A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid; The Craft of Research, Third Edition by Booth, Colomb, and Williams; and a photocopied reader

Mariola Alvarez, PhD Program, Visual Arts.  Her studies focus on the history of modern Latin American art, primarily Brazilian abstract art of the 1950s. She spent last summer in Brazil, conducting research and learning Portuguese.

Juliana Cho, PhD Program, Literature, Culture Studies emphasis. Her work focuses on modern Japanese literature, as well as consumer capitalism, imperialism, and ethics. She has lived in Tokyo, Japan.

Zulema Diaz, PhD Program, Literature. She studies 19th-century plantation society in the U.S. and throughout the Anglophone and Hispanophone Caribbean. Zulema also conducts research on gender, transnationalism, popular culture, and contemporary Spanish speaking communities, including Mexican immigrants.

Jodi Eisenberg, PhD Program, Literature. Jodi specializes in contemporary Spanish literature, including immigrant and queer communities, as well as the Spanish Civil War, communism, and expulsion. She spent last summer in Spain conducting research among survivors of the Spanish Civil War.

Isa Hinrichs, PhD Program, Literature. Isa’s research focuses on 20th-century German film and literature, contemporary Hollywood cinema, and the New German cinema. She recently presented her work in Bristol, England, and Berlin, Germany.

Per Milam, PhD Program, Philosophy. He researches free will and moral responsibility, agency, action, and animal issues. Presently, he researches fatalism and the justification of animal rights terrorism. Per also studied at Oxford and taught English in Chichibu, Japan.

Emily Montgomery, PhD Program, History. She focuses on Latin America, with an emphasis in 20th century Bolivia, particularly human rights abuses and resistance movements during authoritarian military regimes. As part of her research, Emily studies in Bolivia and performs community-based education work in Honduras.

Yumi Pak, PhD Program, Literature. Yumi studies the intersections of queer, feminist, and literary theories within 20th-century Korean American /Asian American literatures and the history of lynching in the United States. Her interests also include creative writing.

Elizabeth Peacock, PhD Program, Anthropology. She is primarily concerned with language, social and national identities, and geopolitical orientations of Western Ukrainian youth.  Elizabeth lived for two years in the Ukraine during the Orange Revolution, where she taught high school and conducted research.

Theron Pummer, PhD Program, Philosophy. Theron studies ethical theory and is particularly interested in distributive principles and moral psychology.

Lisa Thomas, PhD Program, Literature. She is interested in race, gender, and class in early to 19th century American literature. Lisa’s other academic interests include popular culture rhetoric; her work examines such television shows as The Simpsons and South Park.

Eun Park Smith, PhD Program, Visual Arts. Eun studies the Korean American responses to the 1992 social upheaval in Los Angeles. Moreover, she is the Curatorial Director of the compactspace gallery in Los Angeles and recently presented a paper at the de Young Museum in San Francisco.