ALICE KAPLAN INSTITUTE FOR THE HUMANITIES

HUM 220-0-20: Health, Biomedicine, Culture, and Society
(SOCIOL 220)
Steve Epstein (Sociology)

Fulfills Distro 3 (Social and Behavioral Sciences), Distro 5 (Ethics and Values), or Interdisciplinary Distro

Present-day medicine and health care are flashpoints for a bewildering array of controversies--about whose interests the health care system should serve and how it should be organized; about the trustworthiness of the medical knowledge we rely on when we are confronted with the threat of illness; about the politics and ethics of biomedical research; about whether health care can be made affordable; about how the benefits of good health can be shared equitably across lines of social class, race, and gender; and about the proper roles of health professionals, scientists, patients, activists, and the state in establishing medical, political, and ethical priorities. By providing a broad introduction to the domain of health and biomedicine, this course will take up such controversies as matters of concern to all. We will analyze the cultural meanings associated with health and illness; the political controversies surrounding health care, medical knowledge production, and medical decision-making; and the structure of the social institutions that comprise the health care industry. We will examine many problems with the current state of health and health care in the United States, and we will also consider potential solutions.

HUM 370-4-21: Red Power: Indigenous Resistance in the U.S. and Canada, 1887-Present
(HISTORY 393-0-20)
Doug Kiel (History and Humanities)

Fulfills Distro 4 (Historical Studies)

In 2016, thousands of Indigenous water protectors and their non-Native allies camped at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation in an effort to block the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. That movement is part of a long history of Native activism. In this course, we will examine the individual and collective ways in which Indigenous people have resisted U.S. colonial domination since 1887. Most of the course will focus on the contiguous United States, but we will also turn our attention to Alaska, Hawaii, and the U.S. territories. This course will highlight religious movements, inter-tribal organizations, key intellectual figures, student movements, armed standoffs, non-violent protest, and a variety of visions for Indigenous community self-determination.

HUM 370-6-20:AmericanEnvironmental Literature
(ENGLISH 378 and ENVR_POL 390)
Sarah Dimick (English; Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Environmental Humanities)

Fulfills Distro 6 (Literature and Fine Arts)

In this course, we will explore what Lawrence Buell terms "the environmental imagination." Through reading, conversation, and written reflection, we will pursue a series of questions: How have American writers imagined and depicted wilderness, toxicity, and interconnection? What are the political and social consequences of their visions? How have their portrayals of the environment influenced how we use and value it? Ranging from canonical American nature writing to the literature of nuclear fallout, from poems about urban gardening to stories of communities weathering a warming world, we will pay particular attention to the way literary forms both encapsulate and reveal environmental change. Throughout this course, we will also consider the relationship between environmental writing and activism, reflecting on literature's unique capacities to expose environmental risks and envision a variety of environmental futures.

HUM 370-6-22: Shakespeare: The Whole Journey
(ENGL 339)
Peter Erickson (Theatre and African American Studies)

Fulfills Distro 6 (Literature and Fine Arts)

The 20th century British poet and literary critic T. S. Eliot wrote that one "must know all of Shakespeare's work in order to know any of it." This course takes a journey along the whole of Shakespeare's plays that will enable us to ask: what do we learn when we pursue this comprehensive perspective? As Eliot puts it, "The standard set by Shakespeare is that of a continuous development from first to last" that ultimately becomes a display of Shakespeare's "power of development." In various ways we will consider what generates this power and what role different genres at different moments may play in activating this ongoing process. What stories do we see when we imagine the Shakespeare corpus as incremental narratives? How does Shakespeare's use of generic form change over time? How does the overall sequence of these changes create strikingly different endings and outcomes?