(321) HISTORY AND SOCIOLOGY AND SCIENCE
(467) OPERATIONS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
(525) PUBLIC POLICY AND MANAGEMENT
ANCH 314-401 Roman Law and Society
Distribution II: History & Tradition
Cross-listed CLST 314-401
MW 3-4:30
Brent Shaw
This course seeks to introduce the student not only to the basic elements of the Roman law, but also to its interpretation and practice. The function of the law in its social context will be studied by the consideration of documented historical cases such as homicide, a disputed sale, and a divorce settlement. The application of the basic legal principles will be studied by the analysis of 'mock' cases.
Brent Shaw (Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1978) is professor of Classical Studies and chair of the Graduate Group in Ancient History. He received the Lindback Award for distinguished teaching in 1999. His research interests include the history of the family and the population history of the Roman society. He is also interested in the nature of cultural integration in the Roman Empire, and specifically the difficulties presented by Christians . The related problems of civil violence and disorder have provoked some of his interests in Roman law.
Ancient Rome literally constructed a national and imperial identity with
images and patterned spaces. When Constantine in 313 inaugurated a
Christian Empire, and made a New Rome in the East, the empire's rulers and
inhabitants continued to care about their social and national identity as
a Roman identity, even as they sought to innovate in style and content on
the Graeco-Roman artistic heritage and to make new myths of Christian Rome
- all the more as the empire itself confronted old and new military
challenges on every frontier. Contextualizing art and architecture in the
Late Antique voices of historians and prelates, poets and philosophers, we
look at how Roman Late Antiquity carried on its rich projects of visual
culture west and east, to found by imitation and reaction the Medieval,
Byzantine and Islamic cultures that have shaped the modern "Western" and
Mediterranean world. Looking at sarcophagi and portraits, arches and
coins, mosaics, frescoes and painted books, luxury arts like silverware
and carved ivory, our course topics range over the art and artistic image
of Old and New Rome (Constantinople), at palaces, villas, and imperial
capitals from Trier and Ravenna to Antioch and Damascus, at the decoration
of sacred, imperial and civic space with old and new forms of commemorative
and historical art, the contested status of the image itself, and at the
Late Antique vitality of now-ancient "pagan" themes, "classical" styles,
and Graeco-Roman aesthetics.
Of especial interest to History of Art, History and Ancient History,
Classical, Religious and Ancient and Medieval Studies.
Ann Kuttner is Associate Professor of History of Art with interests in
Greek, Roman, and Etruscan Art.
CLST 170-401. Ancient Greek Medicine
Distribution II: History & Tradition
Cross-listed HSSC 245-401
TR 12-1:30
Ralph Rosen
The history of modern medicine as we know it in the West is remarkably recent; until the nineteenth century prevailing theories of the body and mind, and the many therapeutic methods to combat disease, were largely informed by an elaborate system developed centuries earlier in ancient Greece, at a period when the lines between philosophy, medicine, and what we might consider magic, were much less clearly defined than they are today. This course will examine the ways in which the Greeks conceptualized the body, disease, and healing, and will compare these to medical culture of our own time. We will consider sources from Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle to Galen and Soranus, and whenever possible we will juxtapose these writings with modern discourse about similar topics. Several visitors from the Medical School are expected to participate on a regular basis. All readings will be in English and no previous background in Classical Studies is required.
Ralph Rosen is associate professor and chair of Classical Studies. He received his PhD from Harvard in 1983, after which he came to Penn. His main area of research is with Greek comic genres , including Athenian comic drama (such as Aristophanes) and various forms of satirical, often invective poetry.
CLST 314-401. Roman Law and Society
Distribution II: History & Tradition
Cross-listed ANCH 314-401
MW 3-4:30
Brent Shaw
This course seeks to introduce the student not only to the basic elements of the Roman law, but also to its interpretation and practice. The function of the law in its social context will be studied by the consideration of documented historical cases such as homicide, a disputed sale, and a divorce settlement. The application of the basic legal principles will be studied by the analysis of 'mock' cases.
Brent Shaw (Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1978) is professor of Classical Studies and Chair of the Graduate Group in Ancient History. His research interests include the history of the family and the population history of the Roman society. He is also interested in the nature of cultural integration in the Roman Empire, and specifically the difficulties presented by Christians . The related problems of civil violence and disorder have provoked some of his interests in Roman law.
This course provides an introduction to economic analysis and its applications. The operation of the market economy will be examined to see how the size and composition of national output are determined. Economic tools will be used to analyze such issues as unemployment, inflation and international trade.
ECON 112-301 Topics in Economic Theory
Distribution I: Society
****COURSE CANCELLED****
ENGL 331-301
TR 3-4:30
Dan Traister
Reading poetry from the later English Renaissance, we briefly survey several poets from this period and concentrate particularly on John Donne, Ben Jonson, George Herbert, Andrew Marvell, and John Milton. Some of their poems seem knotty and crabbed to a modern taste. Others appear highly polished, as if all they have to say sits in plain view on their surface. Still others require knowledge of contemporary politics and related issues. Some demand attention to a specifically Christian religious perspective. All differ from contemporary poetry they even differ from poetry characteristic of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Daniel Traister earned degrees in English literature from Colby College and New York University, and a degree in Library Service from Columbia. He has published essays on the poetry of Sir Philip Sidney, Renaissance publishing practices, the history of books and printing, and--most frequently--rare book librarianship and library collection development, as well as on some topics in twentieth-century American literature. He co-edited Bibliography Newsletter and was both book review editor and a reviewer-columnist for American Book Collector. Current projects in literature concern representations of twentieth-century physics, most especially the Manhattan Project; studies of geographically or otherwise marginalized literatures; and, generally, non-canonical, disregarded, unread writers. Current projects in librarianship concern the acquisition of non-canonical, disregarded, and unread writers; and differences between how library collections grow in theory and in practice.
ENGL 355-301 Topics in 19th Century Novel: The Novel Doubletake
Distribution III: Arts and Letters
TR 9-10:30
Erin O'Connor
This course will examine the historical, cultural and aesthetic
significance of the nineteenth-century novel by focusing on a peculiar
trend in contemporary literature: the penchant of twentieth-century
authors for rewriting nineteenth-century fiction. In the course of the
semester, we will read a series of nineteenth-century novels alongside
their twentieth-century counterparts in order to ask a number of
difficult literary, historical, and theoretical questions:
why have so many present-day authors found it essential to engage with
the politics and poetics of nineteenth-century fiction? what do
rewritings of nineteenth-century novels allow authors to say--about now,
about then, about the relationship between now and then? how do these
literary "doubletakes" transform, distort, illuminate, or even mistake
the works they are adapting? In order to address these questions, we will
necessarily have a dual focus in this course, studying what these
variously re-written works meant during the nineteenth-century in order
to better address their significance to late twentieth-century ideas
about authorship and culture. Our reading will be centered on the
following pairs: Jane Austen's PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1813) and Helen
Fielding's BRIDGET JONES' DIARY(1998); Charlotte Bronte's JANE EYRE (1847)
and Jean Rhys' WIDE SARGASSO SEA (1966); Charles Dickens' GREAT EXPECTATIONS
(1860) and Peter Carey's JACK MAGGS (1998); George Eliot's MILL ON THE FLOSS
(1860) and Cynthia Ozick's PUTTERMESSER PAPERS (1997). We will conclude
our study with A.S. Byatt's award-winning novel about the pleasures and
dangers of studying nineteenth-century literature, POSSESSION (1990).
Erin O'Connor received her PhD from the University of Michigan in the summer of 1995. She has written articles on the role of photography in consolidating anorexia nervosa as a distinct disease, and on the impact of amputation and prosthesis on Victorian models of working-class masculinity. She is currently working on a book on the intersections between industrialism and disease in Victorian culture, and is beginning work on a study of Victorian material culture.
ENGL 382-401
Distribution II: History and Tradition
Cross-listed HIST 211-401
W 2-5
Michael Ryan and John Pollack
One hundred years after the Spanish Conquest of Central America, English nobles, merchants, and religious radicals belatedly set out to build their own colonies in North America. Explorers and promoters wrote to celebrate an empire they had yet to create. But the English colonial experience in North America turned out quite differently than that of the Spanish. The English struggled to define their territory in opposition to claims made by the Spanish, the French, and the Dutch. Like these other Europeans, the English were obliged to conquer or compete with the many Indian tribes of the Northeast. Meanwhile, parts of English claims were settled by fringe groups like the Puritans and the Quakers, who arrived with their own distinctive visions of empire and settlement. By studying writings about early North America, we will attempt to recover the wide variety of English understandings of the North American colonial world. We will also examine Native points of view about English colonists and consider the difficulties of this endeavor. The course will extend into the early nineteenth century, as we read "American" writers' efforts to interpret the North American colonial past.
Readings may include John Smith's tales of Pocahontas; Shakespeare's The Tempest; missionary narratives; captivity narratives like that of Mary Rowlandson; Henry Hudson; accounts of King Philip's War; writings by Puritans, slaves, and Natives; and a novel by James Fenimore Cooper.
Michael Ryan (Special Collections & History) and John Pollack (Special Collections & English) will teach this course jointly. Michael Ryan has a PhD in History with a specialty in early modern European Intellectual History. He taught at U of Chicago and Stanford before coming to Penn. Interests are in the history of books and reading; early European colonialism; the history (and future) of utopia; and literary canons. He has also headed rare books and manuscript collections at Stanford and currently at Penn.
The purpose of this course is to develop an analytical framework to understand macroeconomics and policies in the context of a developed open economy. Although the objective of the course is to better understand policies and their operation, the course is analytical, not descriptive. The first part of the course extends the ideas and arguments developed in Econ 1 and 2; the analysis is both more sophisticated and developed in the context of a global economy. The second part of the course develops the monetary sector in considerable detail, examining how a complex financial system operates and affects the supply and demand for money, and thus the level of interest rates. The last part of the course is devoted to using the analytical framework developed in the first two parts to study phenomena such as the determination of wages and inflation, stabilization policies, the trade and federal deficits, etc. The course is conducted like a seminar. It is presumed that the students will have read all the materials before class. The class time will be devoted to a critical examination of these materials, not to lectures by the instructor. There will be two mid-term examinations and a final examination. (The last will probably be a take-home examination.) Students will also be required to write a term paper.
IMPORTANT: Permission to enroll in this class is needed for all students. Students must attend the first day of class to complete an application (applications will not be distributed until then). Students should register for another 101 course in case they are not accepted. Decisions will be made by the second class meeting.
Jamshed Ghandhi was born in India and educated in India, Switzerland, the United States and England, receiving a Ph.D. in economics from Cambridge. He taught at the universities of Manchester, Cambridge and Wharton, and was visiting professor at the American University of Beirut. He has a non-academic appointment as advisor on capital markets at the World Bank. He is currently consultant to the Capital Market Board, Turkey, and the Finance Ministry, Portugal, on development of their financial systems; the OECD on capital markets; Central Bank of Turkey and Citibank-Latino on manpower development programs. He is also a member of the European Community Committee on Financial Change.
Research and study under the direction of a faculty sponsor.
Research is an important part of an undergraduate career. Students should consult with faculty, department advisors,or the Research Directory for Undergraduates to gain ideas and insights, as well as to identify possible projects and sponsors. Students are encouraged to discuss their research ideas with the GH advising staff. Since research takes planning, students should begin well in advance. Research proposals must be completed and turned in to the General Honors office three days before the last day of Add. Proposal forms are available now.
GENH 205-301 Search for Post Modernist Self
General Requirement III: Arts & Letters
W 3-6
Chaim Potok
Permission of
department required.
Juniors or seniors only.
What is this elusive entity called the "self", the "individual"? When was it born? How does it relate today to the notion of "community"? How can one be both a "self" and at the same time a member of a community?
Chaim Potok was born and raised in New York City. He received a BA summa cum laude in English literature from Yeshiva University, an M.H.L. and Rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania. He served as a United States Army chaplain in Korea with a front-line medical battalion and an engineer combat battalion. He has been writing fiction since the age of sixteen and is widely known for his novels, The Chosen (Edward Lewis Wallant Award), The Promise (Athenaeum Prize), My Name is Asher Lev, In the Beginning, The Book of Lights, and Davita's Harp. His novel, The Gift of Asher Lev, published in May 1990, won the National Jewish Book Award for fiction. He is also the author of Wanderings: Chaim Potok's History of the Jews, and of numerous articles, short stories, and reviews. His plays, Out of the Depths and Sins of the Father, received their premiere productions in Philadelphia in 1990. His latest novel is The Gates of November. He is also author of I Am the Clay.
GENH 210. Improvement of Undergrad Education: What is to be Done?
R 2-5
To an unprecedented extent, the American system of undergraduate education -- particularly at research universities -- is now being severely criticized. The recent report of the highly prestigious "Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University," for example, judged the problem to be so serious as to require Reinventing Undergraduate Education We quote that report:
" ... The research universities have too often failed, and continue to fail, their undergraduate populations ... Many students graduate having accumulated whatever number of courses is required, but still lacking a coherent body of knowledge or any inkling as to how one sort of information might relate to others. All too often they graduate without knowing how to think logically, write clearly, or speak coherently. The university has given them too little that will be of real value beyond a credential that will help them get their first jobs... For the most part fundamental change has been shunned; universities have opted for cosmetic surgery, taking a nip here, and a tuck there, when radical reconstruction is called for [emphasis added.] What is needed now is a new model of undergraduate education at research universities..."
To what extent and in what ways does that criticism apply to Penn undergraduate education? If it is essentially (or even partially) valid, what should be done to improve the quality of Penn undergraduate education?
Developing good answers to those and related questions is this seminar's primary goal. To achieve that goal, the seminar will critically assess Penn undergraduate education, with particular attention to the College of Arts and Sciences, which is currently exploring possible revisions to its general education curriculum. Students who seriously participate in the seminar's work, we assume, will significantly develop: 1) their general capacity to think critically, creatively, constructively; 2) their particular capacity to examine and help shape their own lives critically, creatively, and constructively; 3) an understanding of the range of competing conceptions of the purposes of higher education; 4) an understanding of institutional forces that have shaped higher education historically and that are at work today.
Students who believe that they might benefit from participation in this seminar and contribute significantly to its work are invited to apply for admission. They can do that by contacting Dr. Ira Harkavy at the Center for Community Partnerships (phone 215-898-5351 or by email), or Dr. Kent Peterman at the College of Arts and Sciences (phone 215-898-7867 or by email).
GLAW 064-301. The American Legal System
Distribution I: Society
TR 1:30-3
Samuel Diamond
This course will examine how American civil law responds to economic, social, technological and political change. This course will trace selected areas of law which illustrate law's dynamic. Some of the areas of special current legal interest include the law as arbiter of scientific truth; issues of life and death (who decides on the giving or withholding of medical treatment of those who can -- and who cannot -- decide for themselves); the changing ground rules of sexual harassment in the workplace; rights of the disabled and the fine line between administering pain relief and medical intervention resulting in death; and the increasing expansion of legislation to speed "corrections" in the common law.
Samuel Diamond is a graduate of the Wharton School (1952) and the Law School (1955) of this University. After two years of service in the Navy, he has practiced law in Philadelphia, concentrating in real estate and corporate law. He has taught in Drexel University and in the Wharton and Law Schools of the University of Pennsylvania. He was 1990 chairman of the Philadelphia Bar Association section on real property law and is 1997 Co-Chair of the Bar Association's Committee on Professional Responsibility.
GMED 073-301 Infectious Outbreaks and Epidemics
Juniors or seniors only
TR 4:30-6
Karin McGowan
In 1993, a once obscure intestinal parasite called Cryptosporidium caused the largest waterborne infectious disease outbreak ever recognized in the United States. Infectious outbreaks and epidemics continue to occur worldwide with alarming frequency. Despite tremendous improvements in health care and amazing advances in our knowledge of science, we live in a delicate balance with old and newly emerging microorganisms. Cultural, ecological, economic and social factors all contribute to outbreaks. This course will examine the intersections of those factors. Each student will have the opportunity to research a specific organism or disease in the context of a 20th century outbreak and from the perspective of their own academic goals. Each student will present a 50-minute discussion to the class. A primary objective of this course is to enable non-science majors to participate as informed citizens in critical discussions that impact on prevention and management of infectious outbreaks and epidemics.
GMED 073-302 Selected Topics in Medicine: Infectious Diseases
General Requirement VII: Science Studies
Juniors or seniors only.
TR 4-5:30
Helen Davies
This course is concerned with the examination of the interactions between human beings, their organs and cells, and various infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, and parasites. Both the biological and societal factors influencing these interactions will be studied.
Helen Davies (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1960) is professor of microbiology in the School of Medicine. She is recipient of the Lindback Award and has been designated one of the two Distinguished Basic Science Educator Awardees in the School of Medicine. Prof. Davies is the author of more than seventy papers in the areas of bacterial bioenergetics, infectious diseases, enzyme kinetics, bacterial infections, discrimination in higher education, and affirmative action for women and minority groups.
This course introduces students to a global cultural and economic community in history -- the Atlantic World from 1440 to 1800 -- through an examination of primary documents, interpretive essays, films, and survey texts. Students will explore several important themes of early modern history and culture: the rise of nation states; voyages of discovery; cultural encounters of Europeans, Africans, and indigenous Americans; the emergence of colonial plantation cultures; global trade networks and path of tropical commodities; and the changing nature of colonial identities during the century. This course is designed to provide students with basic skills in critical reading, thinking, and writing. We will discuss different interpretations of historical sources, the uses of evidence, and the construction of persuasive arguments. These skills are necessary for most disciplines and professions but are especially valuable for aspiring history majors.
Kathleen Brown is associate professor of History with interests in colonial and women's history.
HIST 211-401 Europeans and the People of the New World: Literature and
History of North American Colonization
Distribution II: History and Tradition
Cross-listed ENGL 382-401
W 2-5
Michael Ryan and John Pollack
One hundred years after the Spanish Conquest of Central America, English nobles, merchants, and religious radicals belatedly set out to build their own colonies in North America. Explorers and promoters wrote to celebrate an empire they had yet to create. But the English colonial experience in North America turned out quite differently than that of the Spanish. The English struggled to define their territory in opposition to claims made by the Spanish, the French, and the Dutch. Like these other Europeans, the English were obliged to conquer or compete with the many Indian tribes of the Northeast. Meanwhile, parts of English claims were settled by fringe groups like the Puritans and the Quakers, who arrived with their own distinctive visions of empire and settlement. By studying writings about early North America, we will attempt to recover the wide variety of English understandings of the North American colonial world. We will also examine Native points of view about English colonists and consider the difficulties of this endeavor. The course will extend into the early nineteenth century, as we read "American" writers' efforts to interpret the North American colonial past.
Readings may include John Smith's tales of Pocahontas; Shakespeare's The Tempest; missionary narratives; captivity narratives like that of Mary Rowlandson; Henry Hudson; accounts of King Philip's War; writings by Puritans, slaves, and Natives; and a novel by James Fenimore Cooper.
Michael Ryan (Special Collections & History) and John Pollack (Special Collections & English) will teach this course jointly. Michael Ryan has a PhD in History with a specialty in early modern European Intellectual History. He taught at U of Chicago and Stanford before coming to Penn. Interests are in the history of books and reading; early European colonialism; the history (and future) of utopia; and literary canons. He has also headed rare books and manuscript collections at Stanford and currently at Penn.
HIST 214-401 University-Comm. Relations
Distribution II: History and Tradition
W 2-5
Ira Harkavy and Lee Benson
American cities are increasingly pathological. Can we reverse that condition? Can American universities reinvent themselves and help spark an Urban Renaissance in the 21st century? Can Penn realize in practice Ben Franklin's vision of a world-class cosmopolitan civic university in a world-class cosmopolitan city? Specifically, what should Penn do to try to realize in the 21st century Franklin's grand 18th century vision of the Good University in the Good Society? Those are the basic questions the seminar addresses. To answer them, the seminar makes several assumptions: 1) "Knowledge is power" to do good; 2) universities now constitute the primary institutions responsible for advancing knowledge to the furthest possible limits; 3) if American universities act on those assumptions, they can learn how to reinvent themselves and how to integrate the production and use of knowledge for the progressive "betterment of the human condition." Are those assumptions warranted? To test their validity and to provide undergraduates with an opportunity to develop their capacities to think critically and creatively, students in the seminar will: 1) identify a specific West Philadelphia/Philadelphia problem which engages them morally and intellectually; 2) write a seminar paper specifying what Penn can realistically do to help solve that problem or why it is unrealistic to imagine that Penn can develop the knowledge needed to help solve it. As this "mission statement" suggests, the seminar makes another key assumption: Penn undergraduates can significantly help educate themselves by seriously studying societal problems. Students interested in testing that assumption are invited to apply for admission.
This course will be team-taught by Dr. Ira Harkavy, director of the Center for Community Partnerships and Associate Vice President; and by Dr. Lee Benson, Emeritus Professor of History.
HIST 216-301 Chinese Cultural Revolution
Distribution II History and Tradition
M 2-5
Matthew Sommer
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-76) can be seen as the culmination of Maoist idealism, with faith in Chairman Mao and in human capacity for self-improvement reaching the level of religious mania. At the same time, the Cultural Revolution developed the most vicious and dishonest aspects of the Maoist regime to their logical extreme. The revolution turned on and devoured its own true believers, the best people it had--and the lies that justified such violence became too absurd to be believed by anyone for long. As a result, the Chinese Communist Party today must reckon with a complete lack of faith in socialism on the part of the people whose support it seeks. Can we make sense of this paradoxical period of recent Chinese history? In search of the truth, we will read a variety of memoirs, propaganda literature, and scholarly analyses.
Matthew Sommer is associate professor of History with interests in modern China.
The history of modern medicine as we know it in the West is remarkably recent; until the nineteenth century prevailing theories of the body and mind, and the many therapeutic methods to combat disease, were largely informed by an elaborate system developed centuries earlier in ancient Greece, at a period when the lines between philosophy, medicine, and what we might consider magic, were much less clearly defined than they are today. This course will examine the ways in which the Greeks conceptualized the body, disease, and healing, and will compare these to medical culture of our own time. We will consider sources from Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle to Galen and Soranus, and whenever possible we will juxtapose these writings with modern discourse about similar topics. Several visitors from the Medical School are expected to participate on a regular basis. All readings will be in English and no previous background in Classical Studies is required.
Ralph Rosen is associate professor and chair of Classical Studies. He received his PhD from Harvard in 1983, after which he came to Penn. His main area of research is with Greek comic genres , including Athenian comic drama (such as Aristophanes) and various forms of satirical, often invective poetry.
HSSC 418-301 Listening to America: Aural Culture and Technology
Distribution II: History and Tradition
R 1:30-4:30
Emily Thompson
This course explores the meaning and significance of sound, noise, and music in American culture in the 19th and 20th centuries, by focusing on the history of the development and use of acoustical technologies. Students will examine technologies and techniques such as architectural acoustics, the telephone, phonograph, radio, sound motion pictures, electronic musical instruments and noise control, and the course will follow the rise of the communications and entertainment industries that developed around these new technologies. Throughout the semester, the emphasis will be not simply upon the machines themselves, but on the culture and society that brought them forth. What cultural needs did these new technologies fulfill, and how were they used both to reinforce and to challenge the society in which they were developed? By "listening" to America's history in this way, we can understand better how we communicate with each other, how and why we form communities, how we entertain each other, and why, sometimes, we choose not to listen.
Emily Thompson studied physics and electrical engineering as an undergraduate, and worked as an engineer at AT&T's Bell Laboratories before turning to the study of the History of Science and Technology. While a graduate student in History at Princeton, she combined her interest in science and technology with her love of music and architecture, and wrote her doctoral thesis on the history of architectural acoustics in America. Her interest in sound, music, noise and technology also stems from work experience in radio and recording studios, at WQED-FM in Pittsburgh, and at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
The first part of this course will inquire into the nature of law and the legal process, the second part will introduce the law of contracts, and the last will cover some of the basic principles of international law.
Eric Orts is associate professor of Legal Studies. His areas of research include corporate law, corporate governance, environmental law and policy. He is currently working on a project on corporate law in the European Union.
LGST 210-301 Corporate Responsibility and Ethics
TR 1:30-3
Alan Strudler
Explores theories of business responsibility from a multi-disciplinary and managerial perspective. Presents current theories of business ethics and examines how they apply to a number of case studies. Topics include ethical and social responsibility issues with regard to consumer product safety, advertising, affirmative action, sexual harassment, employee rights, whistle-blowing, conflicts of interest, and worker safety.
Alan Strudler is assistance professor of Legal Studies. His research ares include ethics negotiation, moral psychology, and corporate responsibility. His current projects include the law and ethics of insider trading and the social psychology of moral influence.
The purpose of this course is to bring together decision-making in socio-economic field and in literature. In literature there are wonderful examples in which the heroes of the books make their own decisions. In these examples, the authors not only bring new sophisticated analytical parameters, but also use a variety of artistic means directed toward developing the imagination of the reader. Unfortunately, the methods used are far from being analytical; the modern analytical methods for decision-making developed in the socio-economic field are not used. The course proposed here would encompass socio-economic examples of decision-making conceptions, along with literature. The course must give a clear synthesis of analytic and artistic methods of thinking, which is important in connection with new situations. This course can be crucial in instructing aesthetically educated students who are pragmatically oriented. Finally, the students will better understand the value of nonpragmatic categories of art and their priceless role in the developing of their intellect and decision-making abilities.
Aron J. Katsenelinboigen was born in the Soviet Union. He graduated from Moscow State Economic Institute and obtained a Doctor of Sciences degree in Economics. He has worked in the USSR Academy of Sciences and was promoted to head of the Department of Complex Systems at the Central Economic Mathematical Institute. He also taught mathematical economics at Moscow State University. Since his emigration to the United States, Prof. Katsenelinboigen has been a visiting lecturer in the Department of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He joined the Social Systems Department and then the Decision Sciences Department as a professor. Prof. Katsenelinboigen is the author of fifteen books, nine of which were published in the United States. More than sixty articles of the author have been published, but only in western countries. His current research is concerned primarily with the category of indeterminism and the aesthetic method.
Vera Zubarev was born in the former Soviet Union. She graduated from Odessa University and obtained her masters degree in literature. Six years ago Vera emigrated to the USA. She was admitted to the doctoral program at the Slavic Department, University of Pennsylvania, and in 1994 she defended her doctoral thesis. She continues to teach Russian language at the University of Pennsylvania. In the last years Vera published several books in poetry, and a book in literary theory, A Systems Approach to Literature: Mythopoetics of Chekhov's Four Major Plays (Greenwood Press, 1997). Her current interests concern the linkage between literature and business in the frame of her research on literary problems.
This is the first semester of a small-section three-semester sequence in introductory physics for well-prepared students. Topics will include classical laws of motion, interaction between particles, conservation laws and symmetry principles, rigid body motion, wave motion, and kinetic theory and thermodynamics.
Fay Ajzenberg-Selove's principal scholarly work has been the preparation of evaluated reviews and summaries of what is known about the nuclei with mass numbers 5 to 20. These include isotopes of hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, boron, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, neon and sodium. For her these elements are among the most interesting both from the point of view of basic nuclear research, and for understanding the nucleosynthesis of elements in stars. Applied uses include energy generation through fusion, dating of artifacts, and nuclear medicine. Each year, over 1200 scientific papers are written by scientists all over the world dealing with the spectroscopy of the light nuclei; that is, the ways in which these nuclei absorb and emit energy.
This introductory course explores the economics and politics of policy analysis and management in government. The first part of the semester is devoted to the analysis of the economics and politics of government policy formulation and implementation. This is followed by a detailed examination of why, how, and with what success/failure government intervenes in a variety of areas: health, education, welfare, law enforcement, housing and urban development, international trade, the environment are examples of the topics that may be covered. Finally, the course examines the growing importance of allowing competitive markets to provide publicly funded services, taking advantage of private management approaches to fostering innovation in public management. Three major areas in which this is occurring will be examined: privatization/contracting out of government activities; business improvement improvement districts: homeowners associations.
Janet Pack is professor of Public Policy and Management. Her current projects include Metropolitan Studies, and studies of the impact of urban poverty on city budgets and of the increasing role of the private sector in providing services traditionally the responsibility of local governments.
The course I have designed is introductory in nature. I have selected several stimulating recent texts that I find quite accessible. These include Haught's Science and Religion - from Conflict to Conversation (1995); 1999 Templeton prize-winner Ian Barbour's 1997 Science and Religion - Historical and Contemporary Issues; and Keith Ward's lively God, Chance and Necessity (1996). These cover the field of science and religion reasonably broadly. The remainder of the course will be a survey of a number of current topics, including evolution and its permutations, such as sociobiology and genetic determinism, any one of which could easily be explored in great detail. I conclude by placing the enterprise of science within its social context. Among current topics, I chose presentations by scientific naturalists/evangelical atheists such as Weinberg, Gould, Wilson, Dawkins, and Dennett, and then attempt to present rebuttals from a theological perspective. I propose for students to select one of these topics for in-depth exploration in a paper, which will be a major component of the evaluation, along with participation in class discussion.
Peter Dodson, professor of animal biology in the School of Veterinary Medicine, and of geology in Arts and Sciences, will teach this course.
At the turn of the 21st century attention is focused on the future, but how much about our lives and social world is determined by the past? How does history shape our personal lives, preferences and identities? How does contemporary society-- including its economy, culture, and politics-- reflect the events of the past? In this seminar, we will explore how the past matters to the present by looking at individual biographies and at the group experiences of peoples of different nationalities, races and ethnicities, and religions. Course requirements include active participation in class, a book review, a term paper, and leadership of one class discussion.
Ewa Marawska is professor of Sociology with current research in urban and community sociology, East European studies (historical and contemporary) and qualitative/ethnographic research methods.
SOCI 239-301 Sociology of Religion
Distribution I: Society
TR 1:30-3
Randall Collins
Classic theory of religion in Durkheim and Weber, as well as contemporary theories of religious movements. Topics include ritual, magic, and mystical experience; religious ethics and salvation beliefs; the dynamics of cults, sects and mainstream churches; origins, expansion and decline of religions; religions and social class; religions and politics. The spectrum of religions in the contemporary United States will be examined, as well as historical comparisons.
American cities are increasingly pathological. Can we reverse that condition? Can American universities reinvent themselves and help spark an Urban Renaissance in the 21st century? Can Penn realize in practice Ben Franklin's vision of a world-class cosmopolitan civic university in a world-class cosmopolitan city? Specifically, what should Penn do to try to realize in the 21st century Franklin's grand 18th century vision of the Good University in the Good Society? Those are the basic questions the seminar addresses. To answer them, the seminar makes several assumptions: 1) "Knowledge is power" to do good; 2) universities now constitute the primary institutions responsible for advancing knowledge to the furthest possible limits; 3) if American universities act on those assumptions, they can learn how to reinvent themselves and how to integrate the production and use of knowledge for the progressive "betterment of the human condition." Are those assumptions warranted? To test their validity and to provide undergraduates with an opportunity to develop their capacities to think critically and creatively, students in the seminar will: 1) identify a specific West Philadelphia/Philadelphia problem which engages them morally and intellectually; 2) write a seminar paper specifying what Penn can realistically do to help solve that problem or why it is unrealistic to imagine that Penn can develop the knowledge needed to help solve it. As this "mission statement" suggests, the seminar makes another key assumption: Penn undergraduates can significantly help educate themselves by seriously studying societal problems. Students interested in testing that assumption are invited to apply for admission.
This course will be team-taught by Dr. Ira Harkavy, director of the Center for Community Partnerships and Associate Vice President; and by Dr. Lee Benson, Emeritus Professor of History.