Willamette University

Registrar's Office

New or Changed Courses - Fall

THE FOLLOWING ARE DESCRIPTIONS FOR FALL 2012 COURSES THAT ARE NEW OR CHANGED SINCE THE LATEST VERSION OF THE PRINTED CATALOG, OR THAT ARE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING;

New Course

Course Change

"One Time Only" Courses

One Time Only Courses with MOI Designation

 

Special Topics Courses

English 116: Literature and Disability Studies

This course will introduce students to a range of significant texts in American literature and will
be organized around a particular critical approach: disability studies. Literature consistently
is obsessed with the disabled body, both as metaphor and actual subject—a testament to the
degree to which disability has loomed in our larger cultural imaginaries in one way or another
across centuries. Rather than merely cataloguing examples of disability in literature, however,
we will use disability studies as a framework through which to examine core questions about
disability, literature, culture, and the problems and opportunities arising at the intersections of all
three. More specifically, disability studies is a theoretical paradigm that can help us investigate
questions like: What is “disability”? How is disability socially constructed? What is disability
identity? Readings and conversations will help us reframe our ideas about disability and
disability history, interrogate socially defined categories of normalcy and ability, and explore
“disability culture,” especially as it is evidenced via literature. General Education Requirement
Fulfillment: IT, W. Instructor: Professor Allison Hobgood.

ENG 319-02: Literary Genre: Sentimental
TTh 9:40 – 11:10

Melodramatic, mawkish, “twee,” sappy, schmaltzy: these are just a few synonyms to
describe the sentimental genre that emerged in mid eighteenth-century literature.
Unlike realism, which aims at truthful representations of pain and suffering,
sentimentalism features displays of emotion that are considered both “too much”
and “too simple.” It is far-fetched and overly sensitive, on the one hand, and willfully
ignorant of political and social reality, on the other. This course will consider
whether the dismissal of sentimental literature has been justified. We will ask
questions about the political relationship of sentimentalism to realist conventions,
and examine the similarity of sentimentalism to performative aesthetics such as
kitsch and “camp.” Our reading for the semester will include popular eighteenth-
century sentimental novels (The Man of Feeling, A Sentimental Journey, and
Frankenstein), as well as eighteenth-century philosophy and modern theories of
affect and emotion.

History 131: The Holocaust

This course studies the origins and implementation of the Nazi effort to
exterminate Europe’s Jewish and Gypsy populations during the Second
World War. Drawing on recent historical texts, primary sources, and film, the
course examines the emergence of racial anti-Semitism in modern Europe, its
transformation into genocidal policy under the Nazis, and the ways in which Jews
and others responded to the German onslaught.

History 131: Utopias in History

Men and women have always envisioned societies that were better, more just,
more equal than the one in which they lived. In this course, we will study a
number of utopian visions of better pasts and futures. We will use our study
of these imagined societies to discern what they can tell us about the time
period in which they were produced, as well as how we, as later readers, might
understand them. We will ask, too, what role imagining a better life plays in the
fulfillment of real change in society.

History 306: History through Biography: John Brown

In this course we will study the life of John Brown, one of the most fascinating
and controversial figures in American history. Brown’s use of terror to attack
slavery inspired both sanctification and vilification, both in his own time and ever
since. Known primarily as an abolitionist, Brown’s life intertwined with almost
every current of 19th -century American thought and culture. We will use our
study of Brown to understand more about both his life and about the culture from
which he emerged. We will also examine our continuing fascination with Brown
and ask what it tells us about ourselves.

Politics 358: The Puzzle of American Exceptionalism

Why did the United States never develop a robust socialist tradition comparable to say France or Germany? Why is economic inequality so much greater in the U.S. than in almost every other advanced industrial democracy? Why, too, does the U.S. stand virtually alone among western democracies in continuing to use capital punishment, and why does the U. S. have incarceration rates that are far, far higher than other industrial democracies? These and other related questions (e.g., why no national health insurance in the U.S., why is the U.S. a welfare state “laggard”) are at the core of what social scientists and historians term “American exceptionalism.” In this course, we will explore the concept of American exceptionalism, not as a normative claim (is America the best—or worst—in the world?) but as a sociological or empirical phenomenon. We will interrogate whether it is in fact true that the United States differs fundamentally from other western democracies. In what ways, if any, is the U.S. an outlier among western democracies, and in what ways does the United States resemble other democratic nations? To the extent that the United States is distinctive, what explains the differences between the United States and other advanced industrial societies? Is it the nation’s political institutions, and if so, which ones: the separation of powers, federalism, the judiciary? Alternatively, does the key to the puzzle lie in the nation’s political culture and political ideology, particularly its liberal, anti-statist tradition? Or should we seek the answers instead in “path-dependent” patterns of political development related to suffrage and state-building? Or do the answers lie in America’s distinctive racial past or perhaps in its extraordinary religiosity? The ultimate aim of this course is not only to place the study of American politics in a broader, comparative perspective but to prepare students to think about political research in terms of puzzles to be posed and answered.