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Critical Inquiry (ID1) is a program of seminars for first-year
students in their first semester at the college. Seminars are taught
by faculty from across the disciplines and engage students in
rigorous reading, writing and discussion on varied topics. The goal
of ID1 is to prepare students to participate fully and successfully
in the intellectual community that is Pomona College. Critical
writing is an essential component of that participation, and to that
end ID1 is a writing-intensive course. All sections of ID1 focus on
writing as a recursive process of drafting and revision. All
seminars meet at 11 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
Courses
1. Simply Sondheim. Mr. Bailey. The Hollywood
release of Sweeney Todd in 2007 sparked a renewed interest in
American composer Stephen Sondheim, an undisputed giant of
20th-century American musical theater. A study of Sondheim’s
Broadway shows offers a glimpse not only into the history of musical
theater, but of the nation which gave it birth and the social
complexities that are celebrated in his lyrics and music. This
seminar will provide an in-depth study of the composer, several of
his musicals, and an opportunity to engage in the artistic process
of writing lyrics and music.
2. Edge Dwellers: Representing Difference in Contemporary U.S.
Literature. Ms. Chávez Silverman. Difference, or
“diversity,” is a buzzword commonly invoked on college campuses, in
the workplace, and in popular culture in the U.S. For many,
“diversity” is synonymous with “multiculturalism,” and both terms
are often deployed as something desirable in terms of achievement or
at least aspiration. But in other parts of the world, if we tell
people “my campus is very diverse,” they are likely to respond with
a puzzled “¿diverso de qué?” [different to what?] As we discuss the
ways authors articulate their difference(s) from an often invisible
or unconscious norm, these questions will be our central concerns.
What happens when an author or character inhabits or embodies
overlapping—often conflicting—categories of difference? How do we,
as readers, negotiate the anxieties, recognitions, and pleasures
produced by narratives of difference by recent U.S. authors? All
texts in English.
3. Welcome to Hell: From Deep Sea and Subsurface to Outer
Space. Mr. Crane. The discovery of life at the bottom of
the sea and deep beneath the surface of the Earth has changed our
assumptions both about what is necessary for life and about what
forms living creatures can take. Almost all environments on Earth
can support life, and the variety of organisms appears endless, but
there do seem to be some immutable laws governing life on Earth. In
this seminar, we’ll investigate these laws—is there a minimum size
for a living thing? is there a minimum number of individual “parts”
required for a free-living and replicating organism?—and we’ll think
about how what we know about life on Earth might help us to
recognize extraterrestrial life if we saw it. Readings will be drawn
from fields such as deep sea exploration, deep subsurface
microbiology, and extraterrestrial life detection.
4. 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.
5. “Flashpoints” in Rock & Roll History. Mr. Dettmar.
Rock & roll has had a rocky public reception since its earliest
days: Bill Haley & the Comet’s “Rock Around the Clock” provoked
riots across the country, and rock quickly developed a snarling
public image. High-profile dust-ups continue to characterize rock’s
relationship with its public: Amy Winehouse being released from
rehab for her live-via-video rendition of “Rehab” at this year’s
Grammys is only the most recent installment. In this seminar, we
will trace the “scandalous” history of rock & roll via its public
controversies: Dylan “going electric” at Newport, Hendrix burning
his guitar at Monterey, Sinead ripping apart a photo of the Pope on
Saturday Night Live, Milli Vanilli revealed as frauds . . . In such
moments, we learn a great deal about what rock hopes to be, about
its intrinsic contradictions and structural instability, and about
the resistance it meets from its own fans.
6. War and Peace. Ms. Dwyer. Leo Tolstoy’s War and
Peace has been hailed as “the greatest European novel” and derided
as a “loose, baggy monster.” In this seminar, we will immerse
ourselves in this controversial, enduring, and influential novel. We
will see what War and Peace can tell us about Russian history and
culture during the Napoleonic Wars of 1805-1812 (when the novel is
set) and during the revolutionary period of the 1860s (when it was
published). We will also pay close attention to War and Peace as a
work of art: What are the hidden linkages that hold this “monster”
together? Finally, we will consider how Tolstoy can help us grapple
with questions that are (once again) urgent: What is the nature of
war? How does one represent history and experience? What
possibilities are there for individual human action in the world at
large? All texts in English.
7. The Look of Modern Life: Painting in Paris during the
Second Empire and Early Third Republic (1852-1895). Mr.
Emerick. During the 19th century, London, the center of world
finance, neatly trumped Paris as Europe’s “true” capital. But from
the mid-century onward, Paris leapt ahead anyway to become Europe’s
cultural capital and quintessentially modern city. How did the
French pull this off? In this seminar, we will focus on the role
painting played in bringing the modern city to view. We study first
how the French state authorities during the Second Empire packaged
the “new Paris” in their biennial Salons and in special exhibitions
of painting in two huge, international “Universal Expositions” in
1855 and 1867. Then we trace how the “new Paris” got re-presented
all over again by some mavericks—by Edouard Manet and his followers,
mainly—who broke rules, parodied the state-approved art, and
featured the new spaces of modernity in their pictures. Berthe
Morisot, Manet’s friend and model, wife of Manet’s brother, and one
of the founders of Impressionism will figure largely. Includes a
field trip to the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena.
8. Pilgrimage, Travel, and Cultural Encounter. Mr.
Gorse. When you come to Pomona College this fall, you will be
making a pilgrimage, traveling to a distant land, and experiencing
cultural encounter. How are you to understand these transformative
experiences? What does it mean to be a pilgrim or traveler, to be
impacted by a foreign culture? In this seminar, we will explore the
history of pilgrimage, travel, and cultural encounter in the
Mediterranean world from Antiquity to Modernity, through texts and
images from Tacitus’ Germania to Marco Polo’s Travels to Italo
Calvino’s Invisible Cities. Using the tools of cultural
anthropology—in particular, the work of Victor Turner and James
Clifford—we will look at these texts and other works of art in light
of modern theories of “liminal” space, experience, identity, and
rituals of passage. Join us on this journey.
9. The Heart of a Doctor. Ms. Hoopes. In
literature, doctors are often portrayed as caring deeply about
patients. But as medicine becomes more complex and
technology-driven, the ability of a doctor to feel empathy towards
patients can be compromised. In this seminar, we’ll read the
Hippocratic Oath and consider the hearts of today’s doctors. We’ll
think about how medical training affects students, and what we ask
when we expect doctors—who frequently must watch their patients
die—to respond to the feelings of patients and families. We’ll
consider what different cultures expect of doctors, and the
challenges doctors face when caring for patients who come from
cultures radically different from their own. To increase our
insight, we’ll read selections from Robert Marion’s Intern Blues,
Pauline Chen’s Final Exam, Lori Alvord’s The Scalpel and the Silver
Bear, Abraham Verghese’s My Own Country, Dang Thuy Tram’s
Last Night
I Dreamed of Peace, Tracy Kidder’s Mountains Beyond Mountains, and
other sources.
10. “But then what happens???” Mr. Horowitz. In
Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot the first line uttered on stage
is, “Nothing to be done”—and the play concludes with this dialogue
and these stage directions:
VLADIMIR: [Looking up] Well? Shall we go?
ESTRAGON: [Looking down] Yes, let’s go.
(They do not move. [Silence]).
This places Godot within a performative world perhaps begun in
the writing of Anton Chekhov, further developed in the works of
Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter, and refracted through such forms
as the films of Woody Allen and the television comedy of Jerry
Seinfeld and Larry David. Such works present humankind wallowing in
apparent stasis—where the unremarkable and the petty annoyance
become raw material for both low comedy and high drama. The
challenge is presenting this maddeningly mundane world as believable
(and indeed boring), yet, paradoxically, still serving as a probing,
penetrating platform for the twisted realities of human existence.
This seminar will focus upon those art forms where Aristotle’s
stress upon the importance of plot and action is challenged and
subverted, and where the word “inactive” takes on a curiously active
quality.
11. Cultural Psychology. Mr. Hurley. We begin with
the assumption that the culture that one experiences
(socio-cultural-historical context) has a primary and powerful
influence on perceptual, cognitive, and behavioral development.
Since context is literally everything, everywhere, across time, how
can the science of psychology expect to study it in any meaningful
way? This seminar takes an exploratory look at the how the recent
Cultural Psychology movement fights to avoid being overwhelmed by
the sheer magnitude of what it hopes to study by thinking outside
the discipline, compromising when necessary, and otherwise letting
the questions (rather than traditional methodologies) lead the way.
Students will learn the structure and style of writing/inquiry in
the social sciences.
12. Muslim Literary Landscapes. Ms. Kassam. How do
Muslims represent themselves in literary works? We will journey into
the imaginative spaces of and about Muslims across the globe in
order to explore the issues, the contexts, the characters, and the
stories that these Muslims have to tell. Are their concerns very
different from ours? Is their world unconnected to the one we
inhabit? On this journey, we will visit places as diverse as North
Africa and the Middle East, south Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, Central
Asia, and Europe. We will hear from them what they make of this
global village we call home. If you are interested in learning about
“other” cultures, about human struggles, about politics, feminism,
religion, and society, not to mention mysticism, come and join us!
13. The TV Novel. Mr. Klioutchkine. How does an HBO
television series relate to our everyday experience and to our
understanding of the culture we live in? How did a 19th-century
serialized novel relate to its readers’ understanding of the world
around them? What can these genres tell us about our selves? In this
seminar, we will explore these questions as they establish links
between the serialized novel and the original television series, the
novel’s present-day incarnation. We will read Wilkie Collins’ novel
The Moonstone (1868) before focusing on two exponents of the
television series, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under.
14. Poverty in America. Mr. Lozano. In 1883,
economist Alfred Marshal wrote that poverty in the United States
could be eradicated within one or two generations, but 130 years
later, poverty remains a pressing problem. But what does it mean to
be poor in the 21st century? In this seminar, we will study the
nature and consequences of poverty in the United States. Some of the
questions we will explore are: Why are minorities more likely to be
poor? Is poverty transmitted across generations? Why is poverty so
persistent, and what is the role of discrimination in perpetrating
poverty? In pursuing answers to these questions we analyze the
different social, educational, residential and labor market programs
designed to alleviate poverty, such as welfare reform, affirmative
action, job training programs, early education interventions, and
moving-to-opportunity housing programs.
15. Mirroring Japan/ese America. Ms. Miyake. In
this seminar, we will explore what Japan and/or Japanese America
looks and feels like to a series of writers, dramatists, manga and
anime writers and artists. You may be surprised by what you
encounter; you may disagree what they reveal; or you may resonate
with what they say. In this seminar, we will read a range of texts,
asking questions about how they represent the spaces and identities
of Japan/ese America. Have you ever read a work by Murakami Haruki,
Yoshimoto Banana, or our own Pomona graduate Garrett Hongo? Or has
the manga by CLAMP, Cardcaptor Sakura, “captured” your imagination?
What about The Grave of the Fireflies? In addition to addressing
issues of gender, sexuality, and orientalism, we’ll consider what
difference medium makes: do traditional literary forms, such as
novels and plays, treat these questions differently than popular
forms, such as manga and anime?
16. Bad Science. Ms. Perini. In the United States,
there are ongoing controversies over scientific issues that have
important policy ramifications: evolution vs. intelligent design;
whether and why the earth is warming; the scientific value of
research on human embryonic stem cells, and so on. The one thing all
sides agree on is the need to avoid bad science. But what is that?
How do you recognize when work is not truly scientific? Should we
always trust scientific consensus? To investigate these questions,
we'll first consider eugenics (the early 20th-century movement to
resolve social problems by regulating the reproduction of “unfit”
people) and intelligent design in order to clarify the difference
between science and non-scientific studies. We'll then turn to the
question of evolutionary psychology, which purports to explain many
socially significant human behaviors but faces criticism from other
scientists. In the final unit of the seminar, we will focus on the
more public controversy over the developing scientific consensus on
climate change.
17. Music in Paris, 1870-1930. Mr. Peterson. In
this seminar, we will explore musical life in Paris during a pivotal
60-year period marked by the Franco-Prussian War, the “belle
époque,” the disruption of World War I, and finally the strikingly
diverse aspects of French culture in the 1920s. Specifically, we’ll
investigate how gender and national identity were defined through
musical expression. In considering works by composers such as
Debussy, Ravel, Saint-Saëns, Satie, Milhaud, and Poulenc, we will
pay close attention not only to the important musical genres
(symphonic music, piano music, opera, song, and chamber music), but
also to broader cultural movements such as Impressionism and
Symbolism. We’ll discover that the recurring theme of “Paris”
invites us to reconsider aspects of place and of national identity
within French musical culture in this period. Finally, we will
examine emerging themes in post-World War I Paris, including the
formulation of a post-war neo-classicism, the appropriation of jazz,
and the persistence of Exoticism in the 1920s.
18. Advice about Love. Ms. Raff. Some elusive piece
of information, says a persistent but questionable intuition, holds
the key to love and happiness. Why do works of literature so often
present themselves as purveyors of just such information? What do
readers mean when they say that they are “in love” with a particular
author, book, or literary character? What does a literary work’s
status as object of love contribute to its authority as advisor
about love? And what are the sources of the discourse of therapy
that pervades contemporary American culture? In this seminar, we
examine how various texts represent their role in the life of the
reader (literature as medicine, aphrodisiac, guardian, spouse, or
seducer) as well as the content of literary advice about love (how
to seduce a virgin or annoy her, save a marriage or destroy one,
curtail erotic melancholy or prolong it). We draw on works by Ovid,
Molière, Laclos, Austen, Henry James, Freud, and Nathanael West.
19. Fairy Tales. Ms. Regaignon. Say “fairy tales”
and we think of princesses, castles, ogres, and dragons, of
fantastic and frothy confections that begin “once upon a time” and
end “happily ever after.” We might be surprised to learn that in
some versions of “Little Red Riding Hood,” the heroine performs a
strip-tease for the wolf, or that the Grimm brothers typically
sanitized the folktales they collected. Fairy tale tropes help us
imagine and therefore understand romantic love, childhood and
growing up, gender, identity, difference, and danger. In this
seminar, we will explore these tales as cultural narratives that
simultaneously reveal and help to shape the ideals and nightmares of
the societies that consume them by reading canonical western
European fairy tales, versions from non-Western cultures, and
contemporary adaptations. In addition, we’ll examine how the logic
and tropes of fairy tales shape contemporary culture, and will write
our own fairy tales.
20. Fictive Lebanon. Mr. Sarkis. Questions of
Lebanese national selfhood—religious and cultural identification,
colonial heritage, and sociopolitical affiliation—generate abstract
discussion. But they are also central to the physical and military
issues this country has faced, from four centuries of Ottoman rule
to the French-British mandate that forged its national borders after
WW1, and from its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict to its 15-year
civil war. In this seminar, we will engage with the questions of
Lebanese identity by way of contemporary novels, memoirs, and film.
We will not answer the questions. We may hardly even ask them. What
we will do is investigate the manner in which stories real and
manufactured can reflect, inform, and construct national and other
selves.
21. Performing Sex and the Body. Mr. Shay. The
controversy over California’s Proposition 8, which bans marriage
between people of the same gender, has drawn our attention, once
again, to the ways that gender roles and sexuality are
simultaneously the most private and the most public elements of any
individual’s character. In this seminar, we will consider how
“masculine,” “feminine,” “effeminate,” and “butch” behaviors and
characteristics are imagined in cultural contexts ranging from
popular culture to high art, and how the performing arts (music,
dance, theater, and cinema) create societal role models that many
individuals conceive of as cultural givens. We’ll therefore also
consider how the performing arts provide spaces and modes through
which we explore, challenge, critique, invent, and subvert different
ways to “be” gendered. We will look at original texts such as
choreographies and screenplays, as well as scholarly articles and
books to see the ways in which gendered modes have changed
historically and across cultures.
22. Race, Confidence Men, and the Eye of Providence.
Mr. Smith. In mythic cycles from the “Western Tradition,” there
has been a sustained intrigue over the relationship between the
human eye and the heavenly sun. From the Cyclops of Homer’s Odyssey
to its refiguring in D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, the
powers of the eye get equated with those of its celestial
counterpart. This intrigue has been reshaped—but not lost—with the
advent of modern visual surveillance techniques, like optical
scanners in voting machines, weather-imaging satellites, and
battlefield-embedded observational media. In this seminar, we will
examine a range of manifestations of the solar eye, paying
particular attention to the relationship(s) it bears to reality and
the ways in which the solar eye operates in schemes both great and
small, of confidence and illusion. We’ll consider works by Plato,
Foucault, Ellison, and Faulkner; documents in government policy; and
movies like Resident Evil and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.
23. American Inequality. Mr. Summers Sandoval. The
United States proudly declares itself a nation founded on the
propositions of human equality and liberty. Its history, however,
has been more a testament to the limits of the promise of these
ideals than to their enjoyment. The lived experiences of African
Americans, Latinos, Filipinos, and Native Americans, among others,
have been simultaneously the measure of these limits as well as the
foundation of struggles for their fulfillment. Our class will
investigate the role played by “race” in 20th-century United States
history as we ask why it is American inequality has more often been
the rule than the exception. Our analysis will center the lives of
“people of color,” examining the history of “whiteness” and racial
formation, segregation and marginalization, and the struggles for
justice and equality.
24. Nanotechnology in Science and Fiction. Mr.
Tanenbaum. Nanotechnology—which combines physics, chemistry,
biology, and engineering—is currently one of the most heavily funded
and fastest growing areas of science. Depending upon what you read,
nanotechnology may consume our world or enable unlimited new
materials, destroy life as we know it or enable immortality, lead us
to squalor or utopia, or simply make better electronic gadgets. We
will discuss current scientific research in contrast with a range of
fiction by Philip Dick, Neil Stephenson, Kathleen Ann Goonan, Mary
Pearson, and others. How do science and fiction intermix and inspire
each other? Can technology change our self-image and identity? Will
technology enhance or subvert the development of the individual or
our culture? We will examine how the existing media and literature
influence and define both the science and popular culture of
nanotechnology.
25. Paradoxes. Mr. Thielke. Consider the “Paradox
of Material Coincidence.” A clay statue sits in front of you: how
many objects are there? “One,” seems the obvious answer, but some
reflection might lead you to think otherwise. The clay, after all,
can survive a good smashing, but the statue cannot; the statue is
valuable, but the clay is not. So, are there really two things—the
statue and the clay that composes it—on the table in front of you?
This is but one example of the seemingly endless number of paradoxes
that confront us. But what—if anything—do paradoxes tell us about
reason and the world? Is the world itself paradoxical, or can reason
manage to solve the many paradoxes we encounter? In this seminar, we
will look at a variety of paradoxes, with an eye toward assessing
where the limits of reason lie.
26. Witchcraft in Early American Society. Ms. Wall.
Most of what we think we know about witchcraft in early America
stems from the Salem Hysteria, usually filtered through The
Crucible. But rather than extremist thinking run amuck, witchcraft
beliefs were both pervasive and important in mainstream early modern
Anglo-American culture. These beliefs open windows onto the social
and mental worlds of early America. They reveal assumptions and
tensions surrounding gender roles and family life; economic ambition
and competition; social divisions and personal enmities; anxieties
arising from threats of war and racial mixing on the frontier; and
the challenges of establishing successful, godly communities in a
precarious new setting. Witchcraft cases thus allow us to examine
changing legal practice, including standards of proof and the use of
judicial torture; the growing importance of a scientific worldview;
and the sharpening distinctions between folk religion and medicine
on one side, and established, elite beliefs on the other.
27. Finding India. Mr. Woods. While the coronation
of Queen Victoria as "Empress of India" in 1876 and the Great
Imperial Durbar of 1911 asserted British cultural, racial, political
and economic power over the subcontinent, they also simultaneously
announced and obscured the complex nature of the cultural dynamics
and cross-fertilizations between India and Britain, a relationship
traceable from 1600 (when the British East India Company was
chartered) through the present. Examining essays, historical
commentaries, videos, analyses, music, food, wit, wisdom, and
follies to see how "British India" and "Indian India" were invented
and reinvented, we will discuss British exotica and Mughal culture;
historical self-conceptions; the processes and ideologies of raj;
and religion and cultural baggage. See
http://pages.pomona.edu/~rlw04747/rlw/10ID1 for more
information.
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