Seminars for 2020

Seminars for 2020

1. Political Theater. Ms. McWilliams Barndt. What can we learn from plays about politics? What does it mean to have a comic or tragic understanding of the political world? Can watching plays make us better citizens, leaders, and/or political actors? In this course, we explore political theater – through reading, discussion, and occasional performance. Readings will include plays by authors including Aristophanes, James Baldwin, Girish Karnad, William Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Lope de Vega. Students will also watch contemporary film adaptations of some of the plays we read, including Sophie Deraspe’s “Antigone,” Spike Lee’s “Chi-Raq,” and Tim Blake Nelson’s “O.” In addition, class members will attend live theater on campus and perhaps beyond.

2. The Romantic Melodic Code and Other Carriers of Meaning. Mr. Cramer. A musical tune is a package of patterns and sensations, among other things. In this course we will think about what information it carries and how. To what extent is musical communication grounded in the cognitive processing of patterns? To what extent is it grounded in their cultural use? How are the patterns processed in the mind and felt in the body? Our study centers on what I call the Romantic Melodic Code, which shapes much 19th-century orchestral music and more recent film music. It radiates out to meaning-laden patterns found in earlier music, folk music, rap, and avant-garde art music. Musical meanings are not at all precise, so to orient ourselves we will also learn about meaning-making practices such as handwriting, symbolic logic, computer code, traditional basket-weaving, birdsong, and the intonational inflection of speech. Non-musicians as well as musicians are encouraged to select this course.

3. Cold Places. Ms. Chu. From snow-covered peaks to the circumpolar tundra, from the Arctic sea ice to the frozen landscapes of Antarctica, cold places evoke images of rugged wilderness and vast spaces. Far from being pristine or empty, however, cold places have been the home of diverse communities as well as the setting for dramatic cultural, political, and environmental encounters. In the twentieth century, they became geostrategic locations and treasure troves of natural resources. In the twenty-first century, they are vulnerable places and indicators of the health of our planet. What makes cold places unique, and how are they changing as a result of global warming? How have cold places shaped cultures and societies? What have been the impacts on cold places of industrialization, colonialism, and modern science and technology? In this seminar, we explore the past and present of cold places through a variety of lenses. Our journey takes place through films and documentaries, fiction and journalism, and works of history, sociology, and anthropology centered on indigenous livelihoods, science, and the environment. We exercise our creative muscles through critical essays and research into the human dimensions of cold places.

4. Iconic Iconoclasts: Lorca, Buñuel, Dalí. Mr. Cahill. A cut eye; flying tigers on a poster; poems about gypsies and the moon. Federico García Lorca, Luis Buñuel, and Salvador Dalí all simultaneously represent Spain’s artistic mastery in the early to mid-twentieth-century and, at the same time, embody the boundary-pushing force of the avant-garde. In this seminar, we will explore what it means for poetry, plays, paintings, and films to be iconic and iconoclastic, controversial and co-opted. How does the success of particular artists overshadow their political, social, and aesthetic complexity? Examining the literary, visual, and cinematic works of these artists in detail, we will consider how all three push aesthetic and social boundaries within and beyond Spain’s borders, exposing the margins of society, the self, and our sensory perceptions of the world. In research papers, students will be able to explore and frame works from multiple artists in depth; the final paper provides the occasion for you to imagine and design an exhibit of all three artists and their work.

5. Tolkien. Mr. Chinn. This course considers some of the major works of J.R.R. Tolkien, the “classic of the 20th century,” from a variety of perspectives. For example, we will examine Tolkien’s narrative technique, his use of visual description, his invented languages, his legendarium, his ethics, as well as the historical context of the works. Writing assignments will include explanatory commentaries and interpretive essays based upon these commentaries. The final assignment will be a short (ca. 5 page) research paper based upon one of the interpretive essays.

6. I Disagree. Mr. De Silva. The most important skill in any relationship—personal, professional, political—is knowing how to disagree. Why? In this seminar, we consider the problem of living with difference. What does it take to be the one juror out of twelve who votes innocent? What are the dangers of living with people who agree with you? How does a scientific community confront troublesome new ideas? A religious community? Is it weak to compromise? Do you enjoy being right? Do you prefer being wrong? It is an unfortunate fact that the word “disagreeable” is usually taken to mean “unpleasant.” In this seminar, we will rehabilitate the word and revive the noble art of disagreement. Participants will be expected engage with the wider college community as we grapple with these questions.

7. Language and Gender. Mr. Divita. In this course, we will seek to answer the following question: how do ways of speaking reflect and construct our experience of gender? We will begin by exploring foundational research on language and gender within the field of sociolinguistics, tracing its development from the 1970s to the present. We will examine the linguistic resources through which individuals perform gender identities today; we will also consider the ways in which language constrains how gender may be invoked, and how such constraints vary across cultures. Throughout the semester we will engage with current debates about linguistic phenomena, such as uptalk and vocal fry, that are often gendered by popular media in problematic ways. We will also analyze how language can be used as a means of challenging gender norms. During the course, students will collect original language data, which they will analyze in light of the concepts and issues examined in our readings and class discussions.

8. Japan as Utopia and Dystopia. Mr. Flueckiger. Depictions of Japan, whether by foreigners or Japanese themselves, have often made claims about the radical differentness of Japan from other countries. These claims have varied widely in their idealizations or condemnations of Japan, at times depicting the country as a utopia of aesthetic refinement, religious enlightenment, social harmony, or advanced technology, and at times as a dystopia plagued by social breakdown, xenophobia, economic stagnation, or environmental degradation. In this course we will explore such images of Japan through fiction, memoirs, social commentary, films, anime, and other sources, examining not only what these sources tell us about Japan itself, but also what they reveal about how Japan has existed as an object of the imagination. Writing assignments will include informal reading responses, formal analytical papers on the readings, and a research paper.

9. From Liszt to Lady Gaga: Selling Music and Celebrity. Ms. Givens. Our society is obsessed with celebrity. We consume it on multiple screens, in gossip magazines, and on countess entertainment and reality shows and websites. In the nineteenth century, classical music (or as it was known then, music) was just as fascinated with celebrity, anointing one musician after another as the next big thing. Europe was as obsessed with the performances of Felix Mendelssohn and Franz Liszt as our culture is with Beyoncé and Lady Gaga. Mendelssohn’s appearances on concerts were rabidly covered in the press. Even Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were ardent fans, receiving him in their private rooms. Liszt was a superstar on the order of the Beatles—complete with swooning fans and sexual entanglements. What parallels can we draw between the 19th century culture of celebrity and our own? What roles do the press and marketing play in the vicissitudes of fame? What was it about these performers and their music that was so attractive? Can we use a historical lens to consider today’s pop superstars? We will explore these and other questions by examining contemporaneous documents, the rise of the music business, the flourishing of music publishing, performance culture, the evolution of the permanence of music, and the music itself.

10. Pomona Goes Green. Mr. Gorse. The Earth Charter (1987-2000) states that “we stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history, a time when humanity must choose its future.” How do our choices – as individuals in our daily lives, and as members of the planned community of Pomona College – affect this future? How does the concept and goal of “sustainability” unite academic, artistic, pragmatic, natural and social endeavors? In this course, we will investigate these questions, using Pomona College as our case study: how can we make this a more sustainable “campus,” and how can and should such a campus be a model for our global future? In our search for answers we will read authors such as Italo Calvino, Leo Marx, Alan Trachtenberg, and William McDonough; write about campus spaces, student organizations and initiatives; and engage the dynamic interdisciplinary field of “Environmental Analysis.” Our “critical inquiry” course will focus on a discussion of “campus” and “sustainability.” What do these two words mean? Where do they come from? How do they relate to each other? Are they reconcilable? Can we have a “sustainable campus” and “modern global society”?

11. Law and Lawyers in America. Ms. Hollis-Brusky. This course will serve as an introduction to law and lawyers in America. Why are so many political issues resolved with lawsuits in America? Why do courts and judges seem to have so much power here? How and under what conditions can lawyers bring about radical change in society? Throughout the course, we will engage the relationship between law, politics and social change with an emphasis on contemporary movements and issues in the U.S. Some themes we will explore include racial justice, criminal justice, reproductive rights, and the environment.

12. Building the Future: Revolution, Imagination, Utopia. Ms. Jensen. What does utopia look like? The term “utopia,” coined by Thomas More, puns on the Greek words eutopia (good place) and outopia (no place). This double meaning haunts the utopian project: can an ideal society exist? What happens when utopian dreams go wrong? In this course, we will explore fictional works that imagine alternate worlds, as well as real-world attempts to build utopian communities (with a special focus on the 1917 Russian Revolution and its legacies). We will consider such questions as: How can everyday life be transformed to create a new utopian society? What roles do science and technology, art and imagination play in these societies? What is the relationship between the individual and the community? What mechanisms of control are necessary to achieve an ideal society? How might imagined worlds offer critiques of the contemporary reality they emerge from? Thinking about utopia and dystopia will lead us to dwell on a range of topics, including science fiction, feminism, socialism, religion, and ecology.

13. Can Zombies Do Math? Ms. Karaali. Mathematics is a field of knowledge commonly associated with objectivity and universality, and yet, doing it well requires a certain comfort with ambiguity and a deep desire for elegant simplicity. Furthermore, mathematicians claim, its main appeal is not its applicability and power, but instead, its aesthetic beauty. Does this make it a particularly human endeavor? In other words, could zombies do math? Could they appreciate it? Our investigations in this seminar will progress along two parallel paths. In one path, we will examine what it means to be human rather than a zombie, and how we define “humanness” in opposition to the various qualities we attribute to monsters and Others. In the second path, our inquiry will involve several cases made in defense of the human nature of mathematics. The readings of the course will include fiction and poetry as well as essays and articles in cognitive science, philosophy, and computer science. We will also look inside ourselves and engage with our own mathematical and creative impulses as we seek to understand what makes us human and how math relates to our humanity.

14. The European Enlightenment. Mr. Kates. European society in the eighteenth century was riddled with inequalities of all kinds: religious bigotry and political despotism, as well as new forms of racism, slavery, and class strife. The writers and artists associated with the European Enlightenment suggested radical ways to address these problems. These proposals encompassed both the political and social realms, imagining new forms of friendship and marriage, as if those relationships might constitute analogies to politics itself. In doing so, they blurred the lines between the government and the social, the political and the private, and established a moral foundation for our modern era. Readings will include primary works from the period by such authors as Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Richardson

15. Austen’s Comedy. Mr. Kunin. Comedy is a big part of literature, but a surprisingly small part of the study of literature. Literary critics seem to feel that we might not be the friends of comedy – as though, in studying comedy, we might inevitably delete the comic element. In this course, we will try to learn something about comedy, and we will try to write about it, by focusing our thinking on the novels of Jane Austen. We will also refer to a few other writers who thought about comedy, including Hobbes, Burney, Trollope, Carroll, Bergson, Ellison, and Canetti.

16. Geohazards as Told by Indigenous Traditional Narrative. Ms. Moore. In this course we will explore how indigenous traditional narratives are expanding our scientific insight into geological disasters that have occurred throughout human history and across the globe. There are many examples to draw upon. The Quileute and Hoh people of the Pacific Northwest, for instance, describe a tumultuous fight between Thunderbird and Whale during which the ocean rose up and covered the whole land. This tribal mythology is informing our geological understanding about events surrounding the great Cascadia subduction zone earthquake of 1700. Similarly, native Hawaiians describe Tūtū Pele setting the forest on fire while enraged at her sister Hi’iaka for stealing her lover, Lohi’au. This story enhances our understanding of a voluminous and long-lived effusive volcanic eruption on Hawaii from the 1500s. How do narratives such as these improve our interpretation of large scale geohazard events that were not witnessed by the geoscientists currently seeking to understand and explain those events? What range of geologic processes is recounted by these stories? What details can we glean about such geologic events, from the micro to the macro scale? We have much to learn from traditional indigenous narratives, not just sociologically and historically but scientifically as well.

17. Imagined Cities. Ms. Nucho. Today, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities. By 2030, the UN projects that over 60 percent of people will live in urban centers. As the world becomes increasingly urban, it is ever more essential to study the urban experience and to think more intentionally about the cities of the future. How does the built environment help to shape and reproduce relations of inequality? What are the dreams and dystopian visions of the urban metropolis that influence how people experience the cities they live in, or imagine those they do not? In this seminar we will look at critical readings that center the urban as the object of analysis as well as recent ethnographies of cities all over the world. We will also examine the role of the visual and the sensory in shaping ideas about the city and conduct a walking experiment with the aim of producing our own sensory ethnographies.

18. Science and the Public’s Health.  Mr. O’Leary. The relationship between science and health is complicated. Look no further than your refrigerator to find a story that illustrates this point. The development of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by Midgley and co-workers in the late 1920s was a public health advance because these non-flammable and non-toxic compounds provided cheaper and safer home refrigeration. Only fifty years later was the environmental impact of these compounds revealed, when CFCs were identified by Rowland and Molina as causing depletion of global health-preserving ozone in the upper atmosphere. One advance led to a significant downstream unintended consequence. Coincidentally, Midgley was also involved in the development of the gasoline additive tetraethyl lead, an example where science advanced a technology in spite of known adverse health effects. Course materials will include books, journal articles, popular press and video. Critical analysis skills will be developed through close reading, active discussion and presentation, writing and peer review of writing. Specific writing assignments include 1-page responses to the day’s readings, 5-page position papers and a longer research paper. Class topics may include vaccination policy, the COVID-19 pandemic, cancer, pharmaceutical synthesis, HIV/AIDS, antibiotic resistance, lead exposure, and climate change. Issues regarding human subjects protection, balancing short-term benefits with long-term costs, individual choice versus the public good and decision-making under uncertainty are key to the development of sound science and effective public health policies.

19. Molecules and the Mind. Ms. Parfitt. At least one out of six American adults take a prescribed psychoactive medication for treatment of conditions like depression, ADHD, anxiety, or psychosis. Most of these prescriptions are critical for these individuals to function optimally in their everyday lives; all of them come with side effects. Writing of living with bipolar disorder, Kay Redfield Jamison states, “No amount of love can cure madness or unblacken one’s dark moods. Love can help, it can make the pain more tolerable, but, always, one is beholden to medication that may or may not always work and may or may not be bearable.” Many individuals self-medicate with recreational drugs, such as alcohol, THC, stimulants, or opioids, sometimes developing addictions to them. In this seminar, we will investigate how the brain works by looking at cases in which brain function has gone awry in ways that can be alleviated or exacerbated by drugs. Reading memoirs from individuals struggling with psychiatric illness and neurodegenerative disease, we will consider such difficult questions as: Are there conditions in which individuals should be medicated against their own wishes? Is there an under-use of psychoactive drugs in our society today? Or an over-use? Is addiction a personal weakness or a disease? In addition to short position papers on the readings, students will be able to closely investigate and write about issues of their choosing.

20. Lose Thyself. Mr. Quetin. You have just committed to four years of a liberal arts education, the expressed purpose of which is to free your mind and soul. But what happens if it doesn’t work out that way? Or what if this education serves you too well and your freedom takes you too far? In this course we will explore the art of being lost in the context of classics texts in western literature. We will place ourselves in the midst of the perennial effort to create order and harmony in the cosmos and the natural and societal forces tearing these world views apart. By learning how to communicate our own experiences of being lost we will join a greater conversation with a variety of lost souls over the last few millennia to examine the extraordinary transformations that can occur in those who find themselves adrift. We’ll be immersing ourselves in epic poetry, autobiographical sketches, philosophical essays, short stories, theater and art, as well as learning how to navigate the night sky and explore the origins of the universe.

21. Literature and Plague. Ms. Raff. How has literature sought to understand widespread illness, and what can we learn from literary representations of epidemics? How have ideas about disease connected to theories of happiness, sex, justice, environmentalism, and the state? We will explore such questions in works spanning several centuries and genres. Texts may include Leviticus and writing by Thucydides, Sophocles, Boccaccio, Shakespeare, Defoe, Shelley, Poe, London, Ibsen, Mann, Camus, José Saramago, Tony Kushner, Colson Whitehead, Emily St. John Mandel, Yuri Herrera, Susan Sontag, René Girard, Michel Foucault, William McNeill, Jared Diamond, and David Wallace-Wells.

22. The Question of Art. Mr. Van Ginhoven Rey. This seminar will explore how the definition of art has changed throughout the modern and contemporary periods (19th, 20th, and 21st centuries). Our focus will be on a series of crucial developments in the practice of art and on their impact on the way art has been conceptualized: the invention of photography, the birth of abstraction, the readymade, conceptual art, performance, appropriation, and the internet. A series of case studies illustrating these developments, and close readings of various philosophical attempts to come to terms with their implications, will help us to develop the critical vocabulary necessary to understand the nature, the function, the utopian possibilities, and the limitations of art in late capitalism. The course will combine seminar discussions with visits to Pomona College Benton’s Museum and other art institutions in Los Angeles.

23. Biblical Beginnings, Race, and Heteropatriarchy in the U.S. Culture Wars. Ms. Runions. In the Bible’s first chapter, God is said to create the world by speaking. The words that describe creation then grew into more words, which grew into texts, and then into traditions, attitudes, and cultural productions. This seminar explores the multiple ways in which cultural truth and authority are constructed and negotiated, in scripture and beyond. We will study the first eleven chapters of the biblical book of Genesis, along with their interpretations in culture and politics. The Bible’s primeval accounts, themselves produced through exchange with other ancient Near Eastern cultures, have been incredibly generative for philosophy, theology, and art. Yet interpretation has narrowed in recent U.S. history to support racism, sexism, homophobia, creationism, and more. We will analyze the interpretive moves that have rendered Genesis 1-11 as significant support for anti-black, heteropatriarchal culture in the U.S, as well as those that produce more resistant readings. To understand the range of possibility for interpretation, will read precursor texts and afterlives of Genesis, including ancient Babylonian myths, early Jewish and Christian interpretations, Medieval and Renaissance art, early American political debates over race, contemporary U.S. culture wars, and popular culture. We will analyze how these texts have been interpreted, in what contexts, and to what ends.

24. The Idea of Money. Mr. Seery. This course will examine the idea of money, drawing from the perspectives and literatures of many academic disciplines: political theory, philosophy, religion, economics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, media studies, history, literature, art, music, theater, and perhaps a few others. Readings from Max Weber, Marcel Mauss, Bronislaw Malinowski, Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Shakespeare, Dante, Jacques Derrida, Charles Baudelaire, Georg Simmel, Friedrich Hayek, Sigmund Freud, Michel Foucault, and more. As a culminating project we will play the lottery, and if we win, we’ll be better positioned to test our ideas against reality. We will also take a field trip to view (and participate in) a taping of “The Price is Right!” at CBS Studios in Hollywood. Note: This is not an economics course and does not serve as any sort of introduction into economics.

25. The Art and Aesthetics of the Islamic Middle East. Mr. Shay. What we today term Islamic art did not appear overnight with the advent of Islam as a faith, but rather took several centuries of artists and craftsmen, often non-Muslims, developing and creating designs and elements, largely from the societies that proceeded them, especially borrowing selectively from Byzantine and Sasanian art traditions in order to bring into existence a tradition that we can call Islamic art. Through readings, visual examples found in the readings or other sources, class discussions, videos, and other media, the class will examine the spectrum of Islamic art and architecture to identify elements such as geometric design and improvisation that form the basis for the creation of Islamic Art. Students are encouraged to bring samples of Islamic art or Islamic artistic performances to class to share and discuss with the class. The class will examine in detail, together, art, architecture, and calligraphy, which is perhaps the most important aesthetic form and which constitutes a visual form that creates a great impact on a visitor to a Middle Eastern city as well as related genres like music, dance, and Quranic recitation.

26. Medical Ethics. Ms. Tannenbaum. There is a worldwide shortage of various medical resources. Consider not only the shortage of ventilators and masks that has arisen during the COVID-19 pandemic, but also shortages of vaccines and organs. How should we decide who gets what medical resources when there are not enough to go around? Should we prioritize the most vulnerable or maximize utility? In this humanities course we will explore this and other medical ethics questions not by turning to the law or religion, but to philosophy. We will examine different kinds of moral requirements, such as to benefit others and be just, and thinking through their role ethical controversies ranging from scare medical resource distribution to the ethical limits of stem cell research and CRISPR. The style of writing you will learn and engage in is not that of an opinion piece or editorial, but rather argument grounded in logical inferences and well-supported claims.

27. Theatre in an Age of Climate Change. Mr. Taylor. What does the theatre have to tell us about humanity’s symbiotic and ever-evolving relationship with the environment? How can the theatre help us re-imagine our relationship with and existence in a rapidly changing natural world? And how can the theatre inspire action in our immediate (and urgent) environmental futures? By encountering a broad range of contemporary eco-dramas in reading, writing, and discussion, we will explore possible answers to these and other questions central to the study of theatre in an age of climate change. The course will culminate in the conceptualization of student conceived eco-drama projects. No theatre experience is required.

28. Language, Power, and Community. Ms. Thomas. Language is inherently social—a tool for communication and often a signifier of identity, status, and belonging. Learning language(s) can facilitate effective sharing of ideas and build bonds between people, yet humans frequently employ linguistic discrimination to demarcate in-group and out-group standing and reproduce social hierarchies. A core principle of sociolinguistics is that no dialect is inherently superior to any other. If different groups stigmatize some forms of language as “uneducated” or “ungrammatical,” they marginalize users of those varieties and miss the opportunity to appreciate the creative capacity of language both for the nuanced expression of ideas and the celebration of identity. Certainly, some standardization increases efficiency. We rely on a shared sense of what words “mean” and agreement on basic rules about how we string them together to form more complex utterances. Academia, and more specifically the construct of academic writing, is a fascinating microcosm for exploring the potential of language to facilitate or impede communication and community. What does academic writing—and for that matter, academic speaking or discussion—really involve? Who has power to define it and evaluate others’ attempts at engaging in it? In this course, we will consider how educators and students can co-create inclusive discourse communities.

29. Walking Toward Freedom. Mr. Traore. This course examines the global development of early twentieth century Black cultural movements for freedom. We will trace these freedom movements throughout history by exploring the diverse forms of domination—slavery, colonialism, apartheid, and neo-colonialism—to which Africa and people of the African diaspora have been subject between the early seventeenth and twentieth centuries. Reading novels, poetry, manifestos, and speeches, as well as historical sources, we will analyze the multi-faceted interconnectedness between Africa, America, and Europe. On the one hand, these geographic entities were interconnected by their subjugation to the Atlantic Slave Trade, their inhabitants deprived of freedom. On the other hand, however, those who lived through European colonial domination created strategies to fight and ultimately liberate themselves. These resistance strategies included slave revolts and rebellions, though also movements like the Harlem Renaissance, which originated in the United States, blossomed in Europe (France), and deeply influenced several young African students, who then went on to devise their own African nationalist movements for independence. In this course, students will analyze the power of expression (e.g., speeches, poems, songs, novels, art, etc.) in resisting and ending slavery, colonial domination, apartheid, and neo-colonialism. We will ask, furthermore, what the ongoing legacy of those freedom movements is in the African diaspora today.

30. Pomona and the World. Mr. Anderson. In its mission statement, Pomona College describes itself as “a small residential community that is strongly rooted in Southern California yet global in its orientation.” Since its founding in 1887, Pomona and its students have been active participants in world history. What connects Pomona to places near and far, including China, Mexico, South Africa, and Denmark? How does Pomona fit into the larger history of Southern California? To what extent are our current struggles, including Black Lives Matter and the COVID-19 pandemic, unprecedented in our history? Working with a wide range of historical documents—campus newspapers, diaries, oral histories, and more—in this seminar we will come to understand Pomona College as an institution, and its students as historical actors. Through original research, critical analysis, and scholarly writing, students will learn how they fit into the college’s history, and will reflect on how they can shape its future.

Other courses offered by the Writing Program