Spring 2010 BFS Course Chart (Word doc)
Spring 2010 BFS Courses
Anthropology
ANTH 273-301, Cross Listed with: HSOC-239-401
Globalization and Health
M-2:00-5:00
Adriana Petryna
BFS Sector I
In some parts of the world spending on pharmaceuticals is astronomical. In others, people struggle for survival amid new and reemerging epidemics and have little of no access to basic or life-saving therapies. Treatments for infectious diseases that disproportionately affect the world’s poor, remain under-researched and global health disparities are increasing. This interdisciplinary seminar integrates perspectives from the social sciences and the biomedical sciences to explore 1) the development and global flows of medical technologies; 2) how the health of individuals and groups is affected by medical technologies, public policy, and the forces of globalization as each of these impacts local worlds. The seminar is structured to allow us to examine specific case material from around the world (Haiti, South Africa, Brazil, Russia, China, India, for example), and to address the ways in which social, political-economic, and technological factors — which are increasingly global in nature — influence basic biological mechanisms and disease outcomes and distribution. As we analyze each case and gain familiarity with ethnographic methods, we will ask how more effective interventions can be formulated. The course draws from historical and ethnographic accounts, medical journals, ethical analyses, and films, and familiarizes students with critical debates on globalization and with local responses to globalizing processes.
ANTH 347-301
Anthropology of Corporations
T 3-6
Greg Urban
BFS Sector I
Modern business corporations can be characterized as having their own internal cultures, more or less distinct from one another. They also exist within encompassing cultures and cultural flows. At the same time, corporations are producers and disseminators, and thus have effects on their surrounding environments, effects that extend from the local to the global. This course examines modern corporations from these three perspectives through theoretical and ethnographic readings, guest speakers from the corporate world, and independent research conducted by the students. Course requirements include student presentations of their research and readings; one or more take-home exams; and a final research paper.
Bioengineering
BE 225-301
Technology and Engineering in Medicine
MW-3:00-4:30
Gershon Buchsbaum
BFS Sector VII
Pre-Reqs: First year college physics, chemistry and biology or AP credit; Sophomore and higher standing only
This course will provide an in-depth examination of technology and its impact on medicine, with an emphasis on the intersection of engineering with medicine and health. Basic foundations of historical perspective, constraints on technological development and the promise and peril of technological impact on medicine will be discussed. Modules will also focus on specific technological advances which have had significant impact on the field of medicine. These include: imaging and diagnosis of disease, genetic therapy and pharmacology, and rehabilitative devices, assistive devices and transplantation.
Benjamin Franklin Seminars (MED)
BFMD-073-301
Infectious Diseases
TR-4:00-5:30
Helen Davies
Pre-Reqs: Permission of instructor required
This course will examine the interactions between human beings, their organs and cells, and various infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, fungi and parasites. The biological, societal and historical factors influencing these interactions will be analyzed and emerging infectious diseases will be particularly studied. Important infectious pathogenic agents will be surveyed in terms of their physiological functions, properties that permit them to be pathogens, pathogenesis of infections, clinical pictures of the disease states, therapeutic agents, and methods of prevention of infection. Each student will choose an infectious disease, and make an oral and written presentation on it and in this way will learn how to keep up with the topic of infectious diseases.
Biology
BIOL-015-301
Biology of Human Disease
MW-3:30-5:00
Eric Weinberg
BFS Sector V
Understanding how diseases disrupt the life of human individuals requires an appreciation of the genetic, biochemical, and cellular mechanisms that underlie normal human biology. After providing some of this basic information, in a form accessible to students in the humanities, social sciences and physical sciences, this course will focus on a selective group of human diseases, including inherited metabolic and neurological disorders, cancer, and viral infections. Presentations by experts in these areas will be followed by seminars discussing various aspects of each disease, including the biological basis of actual and envisioned therapies and preventive methods including gene therapy, stem cells, and vaccines. This seminar course is designed for non-majors and is open to both freshmen and upperclassmen. Living World sector credit is anticipated for Spring 2010.
Computer and Information Science
CIS 398-001
Quantum Computer and Information Science
TR-4:00-6:00
Max Mintz
The purpose of this course is to introduce undergraduate students in computer computer science and engineering to quantum computers (QC) and quantum information science (QIS). This course is meant primarly for juniors and seniors in CSE. No prior knowledge of quantum mechanics (QM) is assumed. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor.
Classical Studies
CLST-310-401, Cross Listed with: GAFL-510-401
Ancient and Modern Constitutionmaking
MW-2:00-3:30
John J. Mulhern
BFS Sector II
What actually was it that the Greeks were thinking of when they used the word politeia— an expression that we often translate by “constitution”? What do their thoughts suggest about prospects for constitutionmaking today? This course builds on contemporary scholarship to reconstruct what we may call the constitutional tradition as it develops in the main ancient texts, which are read in English translations. The ancient texts are taken from Herodotus, Xenophon, the Pseudo-Xenophon, Thucydides, Plato, the author of the Aristotelian Athenian Constitution, Aristotle himself, Polybius, Cicero, Augustine, and the codifiers of Roman law.
The course traces this tradition through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance and the great thinkers of the Seventeenth Century, following linguistic and other clues that carry one up to Madison and put the product of the U.S. Constitutional Convention in a somewhat new light; and it continues through Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century constitutionmaking into today’s consitutionmaking efforts in Eastern Europe. The course is conducted interactively as a group tutorial. The professor offers a prelecture to the class each week on the text that they will read next to help them understand its historical, literary, and political context. In the next class, the students read short papers on the text, and these papers are discussed by other students and by the professor. The professor then provides a summary lecture on the text just completed and a prelecture on the reading set for the next class. At the end, the students have reconstructed the constitutional tradition for themselves from the sources.
English
ENGL-326-301
Topics In Drama to 1660: Introduction to Shakespeare
MW-3:30-5:00
Phyllis Rosalyn Rackin
BFS Sector III
Although Shakespeare’s plays are usually studied as high canonical literature, they were originally written as playscripts designed for the entertainment of a disorderly, socially heterogeneous crowd and the financial profit of the players. This course will attempt to resituate the plays in their original theatrical setting. We will study a representative selection of Shakespeare’s comedies, tragedies, and histories (to be chosen by the class at the first meeting) along with background material on Shakespeare’s theater and his culture. There will be one or two hour-exams, one or two short papers, and a final exam. In addition, students are expected to meet in study groups outside of class and to make thoughtful, well-informed contributions to the class listserver and discussions.
ENGL-329-401, Cross Listed with: COML-329-401/CLST-329-401
Topics in Classicism and Literature: Literature and Political Culture Among the Ancients
MW-2:00-3:30
Anne D. Hall
BFS Sector III
This course is the counterpart to “Poetry and Politics in Ancient Greece,” which Professor Hall has taught at Penn for several semesters. In this course we will concentrate on “the city” and will discuss works for which there was not time in the other course. As Plato’s Republic was the heart of the other course, the heart of this one is Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics and the Politics, although it is good to remember that the composer Berlioz thought the most important influence on him was Virgil’s Aeneid.
Modern artists hold that literature inhabits a realm unto itself for the sake of imaginative exploration of private visions. Classical writers held that literature is an imitation of humanity, how humanity is and how humanity might be. Therefore, classical art is closely connected to political culture. Literature has a music that shapes the soul, and how souls are shaped is crucial to the goals of the city.
In this course we will read great authors who thought long and deeply about the relationships among arts, politics, and ethics. In the course of our discussions, we will be touching on questions central to a liberal education: what is the definition of a human being? What is his role as a citizen? Wherein does happiness lie? What is the connection between individual happiness and the success of a city?
Reading: Gilgamesh, Sophocles’ Oedipus trilogy (Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone—and also Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy) Herodotus’ History of the Persian Wars, several dialogues of Plato (Euthyphro, Ion, Symposium, Lysis, Laches, Phaedo), Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics and Politics, parts of Livy’s History of the Roman Republic, and Virgil’s Aeneid.
ENGL-341-401, Cross Listed with: GSOC-341-401
Topics In 18th-Century Literature: The Pamela Craze
TR-10:30-12:00
Toni Bowers
BFS Sector III
In 1740, a successful London printer named Samuel Richardson published what turned out to be one of the most influential and controversial novels ever written, Pamela: or, Virtue Rewarded. It tells the story of a servant girl who repeatedly resists the sexual overtures of her powerful “master,” Mr. B., and of the supposedly happy ending – marriage to a wealthy man – that her virtuous behavior eventually earns.
The questions about power, class, gender, virtue, and meaning that Pamela made visible sparked an enormous amount of writing in its day and ever since. Was Pamela really virtuous, or did she manipulate Mr. B’s desire for her in order to gain wealth and social position? Who is the agent of the seduction in Pamela, and who its object? What is the nature of Pamela’s “virtue,” and what is the quality of her “reward?” Is women’s virtue different from men’s? Is marriage necessarily a form of economic exchange, even of prostitution for women? These are some of the questions that Pamela raised for readers of the eighteenth century, and that continue to this day to be debated in writing surrounding this controversial work.
In this advanced seminar, we will examine the universe of writings that have emerged since 1740 in response to Pamela, with emphasis on works by Richardson’s contemporaries in the mid-eighteenth century. Starting with the novel itself and with Richardson’s defenses of it, we’ll look at the multitude of “anti-Pamelas” that crowded 18th-century publication lists, and at voices that have sounded since in the debate, either to praise or to attack the novel. Emphasis will be placed on independent library research and on the recovery and interpretation of eighteenth-century texts. Students will learn to use sophisticated research tools — electronic databases, microfilm collections, and rare book libraries, for example – efficiently and critically. Class meets on the 6th floor of Van Pelt Library. Students from disciplines other than English are welcome.
ENGL-363-301
Topics In 20th-Century American Literature: American Prison Writing
TR-1:30-3:00
Amy B Kaplan
BFS Sector III
The prison looms today as a central feature of American society. With more than two million people crammed into the nation’s overcrowded jails and prisons and an increasing number of people in its detention centers abroad, the United States has become known around the world as a leader in imprisonment. As incarceration has become ever more central to American society, literature by prisoners, ex-prisoners and writers fascinated with life behind the walls has become ever more vital to understanding prison’s wider social, historical and imaginative significance.
Within its imagined walls, the prison contains a bewildering array of associations: a place of isolation and illness, correction and corruption, tedium and torture, violence and tenderness, protest and political organizing. How do writers represent freedom in relation to captivity, the body in relation to abuse, race in relation to the overwhelming numbers of non-whites imprisoned? How do they reflect on the significance of citizenship in relation to disfranchisement, and on the meaning of life in relation to legalized killing? How do they connect an often invisible population inside those walls to society on the outside? How do writers narrate personal journeys, both literal and figurative, across prison walls? And how does writing, in some cases, offer a kind of liberation?
While most of the literature in this course was written in the 20th century, we will start with materials on the origin of the penitentiary in the slave plantation and 19th century reform movements. Focusing on American literature, we will also read literature by authors from other countries and will end the course with material about the exportation of the prison system to Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. Reading includes fiction, poems, and memoirs by John Edgar Wideman, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Franz Kafka, Alexander Berkman, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Etheridge Knight, Malcolm Braly, Carolyn Baxter, Patricia McConnell, Jack Abbot, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Ha Jinn, and theory by Erving Goffman, Michel Foucault, and Angela Davis. We will also view some films and visit The Eastern State Penitentiary.
Environmental Studies
ENVS-406-401, Cross Listed with: HSOC-406-401
Community Based Environmental Health
TR-1:30-3:00
Richard Pepino
BFS Sector VII
From the fall of the Roman Empire to Love Canal to the epidemics of asthma, childhood obesity and lead poisoning in West Philadelphia, the impact of the environment on health has been a continuous challenge to society. The environment can affect people’s health more strongly than biological factors, medical care and lifestyle. The water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe, and the neighborhood we live in are all components of the environment that impact our health. Some estimates, based on morbidity and mortality statistics, indicate that the impact of the environment on health is as high as 80%. These impacts are particularly significant in urban areas like West Philadelphia.
Over the last 20 years, the field of environmental health has matured and expanded to become one of the most comprehensive and humanly relevant disciplines in science. This course will examine not only the toxicity of physical agents, but also the effects on human health of lifestyle, social and economic factors, and the built environment. Topics include cancer clusters, water borne diseases, radon and lung cancer, lead poisoning, environmental tobacco smoke, respiratory diseases and obesity. Students will research the health impacts of classic industrial pollution case studies in the US. Class discussions will also include risk communication, community outreach and education, access to health care and impact on vulnerable populations. Each student will have the opportunity to focus on Public Health, Environmental Protection, Public Policy, and Environmental Education issues as they discuss approaches to mitigating environmental health risks.
This honors seminar will consist of lectures, guest speakers, readings, student presentations, discussions, research, and community service. The students will have two small research assignments including an Environmental and Health Policy Analysis and an Industrial Pollution Case Study Analysis. Both assignments will include class presentations. The major research assignment for the course will be a problem-oriented research paper and presentation on a topic related to community-based environmental health selected by the student. In this paper, the student must also devise practical recommendations for the problem based on their research.
History
HIST-214-301
America after 1800: American Reform
W-2:00-5:00
Sheldon Hackney
BFS Sector II
This seminar will examine the long “decade” from the Brown decision in 1954 to the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974, an era that contained the Civil Rights Movement, the beginnings of the Woman’s Movement, other social justice movements, the anti-war movement, the counterculture, the War on Poverty and other domestic reforms. It was such a turbulent and divisive period that it is difficult to assess it historically. Indeed, there is a sense in which the politics of today are driven by a reaction to this watershed “decade.” Our task will be to make sense of the events of the period, develop interpretations about why things happened as they did, and come to some balanced judgments about what was good and what was bad about this era of American reform. We will be especially interested in understanding why the Civil Rights Movement made the transition from “freedom high” to “black power,” and we will inspect the dynamics of other movements for similarities and differences.
HIST-214-302
America after 1800: Lincoln & the Civil War
R- 1:30-4:30
Stephanie McCurry
BFS Sector II
Italian
ITAL-310-401, Cross Listed with: COML-310-401/GSOC-310-401
The Medieval Reader
TR 12-1:30PM
Victoria E Kirkham
BFS Sector III
Through a range of authors including Augustine, Dante, Petrarch, Galileo, and Umberto Eco, this course will explore the world of the book in the manuscript era and contrast it with our own assumptions about reading. Lectures/discussion in English.
ITAL-333-401, Cross Listed with: ENGL-323-401/COML-333-401
Dante’s Divine Comedy
TR-1:30-3:00
Kevin Brownlee
BFS Sector III
In this course we will read the Inferno, the Purgatorio and the Paradiso, focusing on a series of interrelated problems raised by the poem: authority, fiction, history, politics and language. Particular attention will be given to how the Commedia presents itself as Dante’s autobiography, and to how the autobiographical narrative serves as a unifying thread for this supremely rich literary text. Supplementary readings will include Virgil’s Aeneid and selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. All readings and written work will be in English. Italian or Italian Studies credit will require reading Italian text the original language and writing about their themes in Italian. This course may be taken for graduate credit, but additional work and meetings with the instructor will be required.
Legal Studies & Business Ethics
LGST-101-301
Introduction to Law and Legal Process
MW-12:00-1:30
Ann E Mayer
This course presents law as an evolving social institution, with special emphasis on the legal regulation of business. It considers basic concepts of law and legal process, in the U.S. and other legal systems, and introduces the fundamentals of rigorous legal analysis. An in-depth examination of contract law is included.
LGST-210-301
Corporate Responsibility and Ethics
MW-9:00-10:30
Thomas J Donaldson
This course explores business responsibility from rival theoretical and managerial perspectives. Its focus includes theories of ethics and their application to case studies in business. Topics include moral issues in advertising and sales; hiring and promotion; financial management; corporate pollution; product safety; and decision-making across borders and cultures.
Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
NELC-250-401, Cross Listed with: COML-380-401/JWST-255-401/RELS-224-401/NELC-550-401
The Bible in Translation: Genesis
TR-4:30-6:30
Jeffrey Howard Tigay
BFS Sector IV and CCA
Please note that starting from March 2 through the end of the semester it will be necessary to go until 6:30 in order to accommodate oral reports which are an essential part of the course.
This course is a careful textual study of the book of Gene¬sis in the light of modern scholarship, including archaeology, ancient Near Eastern documents, and literary criticism. Topics covered will include the Biblical accounts of the origins of the physical world and living things, of the human race, and of the Israelite people. Episodes such as the Garden of Eden, the sin of Adam and Eve, Cain’s murder of Abel, Noah and the Flood, the Tower of Babel, God’s call to Abraham, Abraham’s near-sacrifice of Isaac, Jacob and his family, and Joseph in Egypt, will be studied in depth, and the impact of Genesis on Judaism and Christianity, Western civilization and American culture will be explored.
NELC-342-401, Cross Listed with: NELC-642-401
Introduction to Mesopotamian Literature
T-1:30-4:30
Stephen J. Tinney
Syllabus
BFS Sector III and CCA
Ancient Mesopotamian literature is among the oldest and longest lasting in the world, starting near the Ancient Mesopotamian literature is among the oldest and longest lasting in the world, starting near the beginning of the third millennium BCE and continuing, reduced and mutated, past the turn of the era into late antiquity. This course takes the traditional broad view of literature held by Mesopotamianists and examines it in all of its facets. From the birth of narrative in early royal inscriptions to the latest known Greek paraphrases of the core myths, we will read in translation all genres of Mesopotamian literature, not only myths and epics, but also historiographic texts, rituals, magical incantations, wisdom literature, hymns of praise and liturgical laments, omens and a number of compositions which defy categorization. Students will develop a sensitivity to Mesopotamian literary devices and protocols as well as the means to situate Mesopotamian textuality within its ancient cultural and modern critical contexts. No prior knowledge of Mesopotamian culture is required.
Nursing
NURS-338-401, Cross Listed with: GSOC-338-401/HSOC-338-401
“Sweet Little Old Ladies and Sandwiched Daughters”: Social Images and Issues in our Aging Society
W-4:00-7:00
Sarah Hope Kagan
Syllabus (Word doc)
BFS Sector I
This course is an intensive and focused introduction to social gerontology as a trans-disciplinary lens through which to examine aspects of social structure, actions, and consequences in an aging society. A variety of sources are employed to introduce students from any field focused on human behavior and interaction to classical notions of social gerontology and current scholarly inquiry in gerontology. Field work in the tradition of thick description creates a mechanism to engage students in newly gerontological understandings of their life worlds and daily interactions. Weekly field work, observing aspects of age and representations of aging and being old in every day experiences forms, is juxtaposed against close critical readings of classical works in social gerontology and current research literature as well as viewings of film and readings of popular literature as the basis for student analysis. Student participation in the seminar demands careful scrutiny and critical synthesis of disparate intellectual, cultural, and social perspectives using readings and field work and creation of oral and written arguments that extend understandings of the issues at hand in new and substantive ways. Emphasis is placed on analysis of field work and literature through a series of media reports and a final term paper.
NURS-339-401, Cross Listed with: GSOC-339-401/HSOC-339-401
“Aging, Beauty, and Sexuality”: Psychological Gerontology in the 21st Century
T-4:00-7:00
Sarah Hope Kagan
Syllabus (Word doc)
BFS Sector I
This honors course examines the psychological gerontology of advancing age and identity in the 21st century. Examination emphasizes gendered notions of beauty and sexuality in ageing and the life span to foster discourse around historical notions and images of beauty and ugliness in late life in contrast to contemporary messages of attractiveness and age represented by both women and men. The course is designed to create intellectual foundations as place from which to critique socially mediated and personally conveyed images and messages from a variety of media and their influence on intrapersonal and interpersonal constructions and social processes. Contemporary and historical ideas encompassing stereotypical and idealized views of the older person are employed to reflect dialogue around readings and field work. Classical and contemporary scholarship from gerontology, anthropology, biomedicine and surgery, nursing, and marketing among other disciplines as well as select lay literature are critiqued and compared with interpretation of field work to build understandings of diverse individual, familial, and cultural impressions of aging and identity. Skills for participant observer field work in the tradition of thick description are built to allow reflection and analysis of discourse about aging, beauty, sexuality, and other relevant aspects of human identity. This course satisfies the Society & Social Structures Sector for Nursing Class of 2012 and Beyond.
Physics
PHYS-171-301/302 (lab) /303 (lab)
Honors Physics II: Electromagnetism and Radiation
MWF-10:00 AM-11:00 AM; M-02:00 PM-03:00 PM
Larry Gladney
BFS Sector VI (all classes) and QDA
Pre-Reqs: MATH 114 and PHYS 150 or PHYS 170, or permission of instructor
This course parallels and extends the content of PHYS 151, at a somewhat higher mathematical level. Recommended for well-prepared students in engineering and the physical sciences, and particularly for those planning to major in physics. Electric and magnetic fields; Coulomb’s, Ampere’s, and Faraday’s laws; special relativity; Maxwell’s equations, electromagnetic radiation.
Registration also required for Laboratory.
Sociology
SOCI-041-301
Topics in Sociology: Mistakes, Accidents, and Disasters
TR- 3:00-4:30
Charles Bosk
BFS Sector I
The purpose of Soc 041 is to provide a basic understanding of some rather ubiquitous social phenomena: mistakes, errors, accidents and disasters. We will look at these misfiring’s across a number of institutional domains: aviation, nuclear power plant, and medicine. Our goal is to understand how organizations “think” about these phenomena, how they develop Strategies of prevention, how these strategies of prevention create new vulnerabilities to different sorts of mishaps, how organizations respond when things go awry, and how they plan for disasters.
At the same time we will be concerned with certain tensions in the sociological view of accidents, errors, mistakes and disasters at the organization level and at the level of the individual. Errors, accidents, mistakes and disasters are embedded in organizational complexities; as such, they are no one’s fault. At the same time, as we seek explanations for these adverse events, we seek out whom to punish. We will explore throughout the semester the tension between a view that sees adverse events as the result of flawed organizational processes versus a view that sees these events as a result of flawed individuals.
Theater Arts
THAR-240-401, Cross Listed with: ENGL-376-401
Advanced Theatre History: American Theatre Left and Right
TR-10:30-12:00
Cary M Mazer
BFS Sector III
This semester’s topic focuses on twentieth-century American theatre and performance—both in the mainstream and on the fringes—that defined itself oppositionally to the prevailing culture and political system, and the relation of this performance activity to the dominant culture, the established theatre industry, governmental support, and governmental regulation. We will look at three temporal snap-shots: the 1930s (political and agitprop theatre; the Living Newspaper; the funding and defunding of the Federal Theatre Project; new movements in acting techniques and ensemble), the 1950s (theatre, culture, the cold war, and the Marshall plan; McCarthyism and blacklisting; the politics of method acting), and the 1980s (performance art; ethnic, political, and queer performance; Reaganism, the culture wars, and the “NEA Four” defunding controversy). Finally, we will move forward to a single theatre piece from the 90s—Angels in America—which consciously evokes the politics and aesthetic struggles of earlier decades.
Urban Studies
URBS-178-40, Cross Listed with: AFRC 078-401/HIST 173-401
Urban University Community Relations
W-2:00-5:00
Ira Harkavy
CDUS
One of the seminar’s aims is to help students develop their capacity to solve strategic, real world problems by working collaboratively in the classroom and in the West Philadelphia community. Students work as members of research teams to help solve universal problems (e.g., poverty, poor schooling, inadequate health care, etc.) as they are manifested in Penn’s local geographic community of West Philadelphia.
The seminar currently focuses on improving education, specifically college and career readiness and pathways. Specifically, students focus their problem-solving research at Sayre High School, West Philadelphia, which functions as the real-world site for the seminar’s activities. Students typically are engaged in academically based service-learning at the Sayre School, with the primary learning activities occurring on Mondays from 3-5. Other arrangements can be made at the school if needed. Another goal of the seminar is to help students develop proposals as to how a Penn undergraduate education might better empower students to produce, not simply “consume,” societally-useful knowledge, as well as function as life-long societally-useful citizens.