Last updated: November 7, 2000
"Teaching Literature in Community" comprises two parts: the study of an African or African-American text and strategies for teaching it and a six-to-eight week assignment teaching the text at one of a few community sites, including The Center For Literacy, Project H.O.M.E. or a church-based reading group. The common text will be works by poet June Jordan . Ms. Jordan is scheduled to appear at Art Sanctuary, an African-American lecture and performance series designed to bring the creators of contemporary black arts and letters to the Church of the Advocate in North Philadelphia. In April, at the end of their semesters, the scattered-site classes will meet together at Art Sanctuary for a group workshop/presentation preceding Ms. Jordan's lecture. These presentations may take any form that the students and teachers decide is appropriate: acting out a section of a story or play, presenting response papers or poems, or sharing responses in the form of visual arts, for instance. Art Sanctuary will invite Ms. Jordan to attend the "Literature in Community" reception; thepresentation section of the reception, at least, is also open to the public. In this the community classes help students (and student-teachers) become active builders of bridge to join local arts and letters with the larger, professional, nationally African-American arts community. In addition, Ms. Jordan will appear the next day the Writers House in conjunction with English 88, "Modern and American Poetry," taught by Dr. Al Filreis.
The course is designed to accomplish these goals for its many students: (1) Penn students will learn from each other and from their practical experience how to teach in a non-university setting a sophisticated text or excerpt of texts. (2) Non-university scattered site students will learn literacy and textual analysis skills in a familiar setting. (3) The mixture of Penn students and students highly motivated to improve their literacy should provide everyone involved with a challenging intellectual atmosphere in which to study the work. (4) At the group workshop presentation all scattered site students will meet and learn from others doing a structured, but no doubt differently focused, non-traditional, classroom experience. (5) All students will meet and talk with the author.
Note, re: Penn Students: It is likely that this class will require four hours of classroom work during the teaching phase of the course, but homework during that time will not be burdensome. In addition, student teams of two or three will have to travel to the community sites. Written requirements will include lesson plans, a teaching journal, and a final paper.
Lorene Cary graduated with a B.A. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1978 and earned an M.A. in Victorian Literature at Sussex University in 1980. She began writing professionally that year as an apprentice at Time, then as an associate editor at TV Guide. Cary freelanced for such publications as Essence, American Visions, Mirabella, and The Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine, and worked as a contributing editor for Newsweek in 1993.
She has lectured throughout the U.S. at schools and colleges including Carleton College, Denison University, Illinois Weslyan University, Phillips Exeter Academy, Rutgers University, Harvard University, the Hockaday School of Dallas, The Peddie School, Georgia State University, Bryn Mawr College, Millsaps College, Franklin and Marshall, Albion College, and Case Western Reserve, and in Italy at Universita degli Studi di Trento. She's received an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Colby College, ME,(1992) and Keene State College, NH,(1996).
Pride, Cary's latest novel, tells the
story of four strong-willed and accomplished
black women who learn loss and triumph as
maternal passion, addiction, betrayal,
ambition, and violence transform their
friendships and their lives.
The careful textual study of the book of Genesis in the light of modern scholarship, including archaeological evidence and pertinent Near Eastern documents. 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.
Jeffrey H. Tigay, a 1995 winner of the Lindback Award for distinguished
teaching, is A.M. Ellis Professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages
and Literatures, in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, and
from 1995-1998 he was Chair of the Jewish Studies Program.
He received his B.A. in Ancient History from Columbia, Master of Hebrew
Literature from the Jewish Theological Seminary, and his Ph.D. in
Comparative Biblical and Ancient Near Eastern Studies from Yale. His
specialty is the Hebrew Bible and its interpretation, particularly in its
original ancient Near Eastern context.
Dr. Tigay's published works include: The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic;
Empirical Models for Biblical Criticism; You Shall Have No Other Gods -
Israelite Religion in the Light of Hebrew Inscriptions; and The Jewish
Publication Society Torah Commentary on Deuteronomy. His website is
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jtigay.
Asian and Middle Eastern Studies 356-401. Ancient
Interpretation of the Bible
Christianity and Judaism are often called "Biblical religions" because
they are believed to be founded upon the Bible.
But the truth of the matter is that it was less the Bible itself than the
particular ways in which the Bible was read and
interpreted by Christians and Jews that shaped the development of these
two religions and that also marked the
difference between them. So, too, ancient Biblical interpretation --
Jewish and Christian -- laid the groundwork for and
developed virtually all the techniques and methods that have dominated
literary criticism and hermeneutics (the science of
interpretation) since then.
The purpose of this course is to study some of the more important ways in
which the Bible was read and interpreted by
Jews and Christians before the modern period, and particularly in the
first six centuries in the common era. We will
make a concerted effort to view these interpretive approaches not only
historically but also through the lens of
contemporary critical and hermeneutical theory in order to examine their
contemporary relevance to literary interpretation
and the use that some modern literary theorists (e.g. Bloom, Kermode,
Derrida, Todorov) have made of these ancient
exegetes and their methods. All readings are in English translation, and
will include selections from Philo of Alexandria,
the Dead Sea Scrolls, Rabbinic midrash, the New Testament and early
church fathers, Gnostic writings, Origen, and
Augustine. No previous familiarity with Biblical scholarship is required
although some familiarity with the Bible itself
would be helpful.
David Stern (Ph.D. Harvard, Comparative Literature) is professor of
post-biblical and medieval Hebrew literature in the
depts. of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies and Religious Studies. His
primary field of research is classical Judaism and
its literature, early Biblical commentary in particular, and he is
generally interested in the history of the book and
problems of textuality, and in literary interpretation and criticism,
ancient and modern, and its relationship to imaginative
and other types of literature.
Genetic and environmental components of IQ, personality, and
psychopathology. Evolutionary psychology; basic evolutionary theory;
evolution of altruistic, cooperative, and competitive behavior. For
additional details, see the syllabus (psych.upenn.edu/~norman). The
course develops and makes extensive use of elementary mathematical and
statistical models.
Frank Norman (Ph.D., Stanford, 1965) is professor of psychology. Most of
his publications are concerned with mathematical models for evolution and
psychological processes. (For a list of publications, see
psych.upenn.edu/~norman/pubs.html).
Besides the topics covered in
Psychology 441, his current interests include microcomputers and
psychological testing.
How Do You Know is a course that attempts to teach students how
scholars advance knowledge in various disciplines. The focus in the
course is on the nature of evidence, and how a case is made for a
particular claim. Five different faculty members, from five different
disciplines, in two weeks each, using principally original materials,
illustrate the process of discovery, confirmation, and change.
Students write a short paper relevant to each of these five modules. In
addition, the course integrator compares the scholarly process in the
different disciplines, teaches some basic statistics, and leads
students through an exercise that takes them from scientific findings to
media representations of these findings. The course is taught, for
Spring 2001, by Professor Paul Rozin (Psychology) as integrator, with
modules offered by Professor Robert Giegengack (Geology), Assistant
Professor Susan Sidlauskus (Art History), Associate Professor Nancy
Bonini (Biology), Professor Jeremy Sabloff (Anthropology), and Professor
Kim Scheppele (Law and Political Science). Each module consists of a 2
week sequence, with 3 lectures (with discussion) and one discussion
section.
Discussion sections will be led by three graduate students: Steven Cook,
Paul Grant, and Derek Isaacowitz
The course is open to undergraduate students in all years and all
schools.
TR 10:30-12
cross listed: AMES-555, COML-556, JWST-356, JWST-555, RELS-418
(049) BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF BEHAVIOR
Biological Basis of Behavior 441-401. Genetics, Evolution, and
Behavior.
Cross-listed: PSYC 441-401.
TR 1:30-3
(115) COLLEGE
College 100-203. How Do You Know?
TR 4:30-6
Registration required for lecture and recitation.
WATU option available
(113) COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
Comparative Literature 380-401. Bible in Translation: Genesis.
Distribution III: Arts and Letters
TR 4-5:30
Cross-listed: AMES 255-401, JWST
255-401
Group 5 Sections
ECON 002-212 REC F 10-11
This course provides an introduction to economic analysis and its applications. The operation of the mar-ket economy will be examined to see how the size and composition of national output are determined. Economic tools will be used to analyze such problems as unemployment, inflation and international trade. Introductory economics is a two semester course; either or both semesters may be taken through General Honors.
One highly visible strain of literary culture in the British 18th Century thought of itself as deriving from the classical past, from the ancient Greek and Roman authors who had come down to European posterity, and many authors saw themselves as the successors to that tradition. On the other hand, from the very beginning of the century London (the largest city in Europe) witnessed the emergence of a marketplace for print in which traditional literary forms and values gave way to new formats for writing such as memoirs, novels, periodical essays, and newspapers. Much 18th-century writing exists in this sometimes tense rivalry between the old and the new, between the aristocratic and classical tradition (almost exclusively male) and an emerging popular and middle-class print culture that counted women among its readers and writers. This tension will be the main organizing theme of a series of readings in 18th-century British writers. Among those we will read are the following: Pope, Swift, Gay, Defoe, Addison, Steele, Thomson, Cowper, Gray, Collins, Johnson, Boswell, and Burke.
John Richetti received his graduate degrees from Columbia University, where he specialized in eighteenth-century English literature, and wrote his dissertation at University College, London as a Fulbright and a Danforth Fellow. He has taught at Columbia, at Stanford, and for many years at Rutgers, where he received the Lindback Award for distinguished teaching. He has held fellowships from the ACLS, the NEH, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His books include: Popular Fiction Before Richardson: Narrative Patterns 1700-1739; Defoe's Narratives: Situations and Structures; Philosophical Writing: Locke, Berkeley, Hume; and The English Novel in History, 1700-1780. He has edited The Cambridge Companion to the Eighteenth-Century Novel, The Columbia History of the British Novel, and (with Paula Backscheider) Popular Fiction by Women: 1660-1740. He is currently editing the Restoration and Eighteenth-Century volume of the New Cambridge History of English Literature and writing a critical biography of Daniel Defoe.
English 365-301. Oscar Wilde and the Fin de Siècle.
TR 9-10:30
Exactly one hundred years after Oscar Wilde's death, his life and work are being discussed and re-evaluated with greater honesty and appreciation. In this course, we will read about the famous Wilde trials, discuss the history of criminal laws against homosexuality, and watch Wilde, Stephen Fry's film about the author's life, together with A Man of No Importance, the 1994 film about a Wilde-loving Dublin bus driver whose fortunes are plotted against those of his precursor. We will also read a wide sample of Wilde's works, including fairy tales, plays, his one novel, and his criticism. We will also watch two film adaptations of Wilde's work. Finally, we will try to recapture the 1890s context of his life and work by reading some of the work of Wilde's contemporaries. Requirements include one oral presentation, two papers, and a final exam.
Vicki Mahaffey, the director of the General Honors program, received her Ph.D. from Princeton, with a specialty in Modernism and modern Irish literature. Her Reauthorizing Joyce was published in hardcover by Cambridge University Press and in paperback by Florida University Press. States of Desire: Wilde, Yeats, Joyce, and the Irish Experiment was published by Oxford University Press in 1998. She was the first recipient (with Frank Warner) of the Ira Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching.
English 381-401. Topics in African American Literature: Teaching
Literature in Community.
Distribution III: Arts and Letters
M 2-5
Cross listed: AFAM-381
English 438-601. Topics in Spenser and Milton.
R 4:30-7:10
This class will read two long poems: Edmund Spenser's The Faerie
Queene
and John Milton's Paradise Lost. We are interested in how these poems
relate to broad traditions of epic (and numerous other literary forms, as
well), how they relate to one another, and how they work as long poems.
We are interested as well in how they relate to the history and thought of
the times in which they were written, and how they can continue to be read
and enjoyed in our own very different time. The course will require a
willingness to read a great deal of poetry and to speak about it in class.
Some additional secondary works will also be assigned. The class will
require two longish papers. Students should also expect exercises in oral
interpretation of these texts (that is, reading them aloud publicly).
This class is taught jointly by Michael Ryan and Dan Traister.
A study of the physiology and psychology of tobacco addiction, and a review of the history of the legal case now being made against the tobacco companies. Tobacco companies historically have targeted pre-adolescent potential smokers with aggressive advertising, in response to research that has shown that brand loyalty established early is very resistant to change. Penn students in the course will be sent into local middle schools to undertake to counter that advertising. The course will undertake to show that prevention of smoking at an early age may be a more effective strategy to reduce smoking than programs designed to encourage established smokers to quit.
Robert F. Giegengack (Ph.D. Yale University, 1968) is professor and chair
of the Department of Earth and Environmental Science. He is a member of
the Education Advisory Council of the SEA Education Association and the
Yellowstone-Bighorn Research Association. Professor Giegengack is the
recipient of both the Lindback Award and the
Ira Abrams Memorial Award, given each year to recognize distinguished
teaching.
Research and study under the direction of a faculty sponsor. Research proposals are due to the General Honors office by January 26. Students are encouraged to discuss their research ideas with the GH advising staff.
General Honors 210-301. Faculty/Student Collaborative Learning.
W 2-5
General Honors Medicine 073-302. Infectious Diseases.
TR 4-5:30
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 had 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 seminar offers a focused and contextual study of the French Enlightenment, concentrating on the thought of three diverse and profoundly influential "new philosophers," Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot. The seminar will involve intensive discussion in a collegial setting, and will ask about the evolution of each thinker's thought; the similarities and differences among them; and the debates that arise, implicitly and explicitly, from those differences. Students' work will be evaluated on the basis of active and informed participation in discussion, and on the basis of one brief paper and one research term-paper.
Alan Charles Kors is Professor of History, a former director of General
Honors, and was co-founder of the College House system at Penn in the
1970s. He has won both the Lindback Award and the Ira Abrams Award for
distinguished college teaching. He is the author of several books and many
articles on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century intellectual life, serves
on the board of several scholarly organizations and publications, and
currently is editor-in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of the
Enlightenment, a four-volume international project that will be published
in 2002.
History 214-301. Resurgence and Rebirth: American Religion in the
Twentieth Century.
TR 3-4:30
This seminar focuses on the multiple paths of religious commitment and
belief in American history in the twentieth century. Immigration, race,
conversion, millennialism, utopian movements, cults, and the
decentralization of authority have characterized religious involvement
over the course of the final century before the new millennium. The
course explores the continuing importance of religion (despite
predictions of secularization), the efflorescence of new religious groups
and the relationship of faith to political, social and legal change. We
will work with a number of different media, including print, film, music
and the internet.
Sarah Barringer Gordon teaches American religious history, courses in law
and relgion, and legal history in the law school and the history
department. Her research focuses on the nineteenth century and includes
the fields of constitutional law, church and state, and gender. She is
completing a book on the history of antipolygamy in the United States,
and has published articles on woman suffrage and blasphemy.
History 216-301. Flags, Frontiers and Fellowship: The Dilemmas of
Nationhood in the Modern Middle East.
T 2-5
A Turkish nationalist once remarked that "today the West as well as the East shows unmistakably that our age is the Age of Nations." This course explores the validity of this assertion by tracing political and cultural movements in the modern Middle East and investigating the myriad markers of national identity. It strives to understand the forces of national cohesion as well as the causes of national disintegration. Nationalists of whatever breed have often based their romantic notions of their community on land, language, or ethnicity. However, by articulating their beliefs, many patriots adopted at once a statement of inclusion and a policy of exclusion that frequently led to internal strife and external conflict in their communities - conflicts that continue to be played out in the Middle East today. Deconstructing nationalist mythologies and ideologies will enable students to gain an understanding of the complex processes shaping Middle Eastern culture and society.
This course will be taught by Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, Assistant Professor of History.
This course offers an introduction to the history of the variegated relationships between humans and their environments. Using the frame of environmental history, we will discuss the history of global exchanges, different technologies of using, overusing and restoring nature, as well as the history of how humans understood and valued nature. For it is a human system of beliefs and values that shapes our interactions with the environment, nature or landscape. In this regard, environmental history is an effort to understand nature both as a concept and asa social practice.
Jewish Studies 255-401. Ancient Interpretation of the Bible.
TR 10:30-12
cross-listed: AMES 356; AMES 555, COML 556, JWST
555, RELS 418
Legal Studies 101 provides an introduction to jurisprudence, the study of law, and the legal process. It critically explores the expansive role of law in society from the perspectives of the civil and criminal legal systems, the constitutional and administrative structure of law, and the law of contracts.
This course will be taught by Arnold Rosoff.
Legal Studies 210-301. Corporate Responsibility
and Ethics
This course will explore theories of business responsibility from a
multi-disciplinary and managerial perspective.
Current theories of business ethics will be presented along with how
they apply to a number of case studies. Topics
include ethical and social responsibility issues with regard to
advertising, affirmative action, employee rights,
whistle-blowing, conflicts of interest, and financial management.
This course will be taught by Thomas Donaldson
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 exam-ples 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. That is why ability to play
chess is a prerequisite to this course. This course can be crucial in
instructing aesthetically educated students who are pragmatically oriented.
Finally, the students will better understand the value of non-pragmatic
categories of art and their priceless role in the developing of their
intellect and decision-making abilities.
Aron J. Katsenelinboigen was born in Ukraine. 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 pub-lished, 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.
Laboratory:
This course parallels and extends the content of Physics 151. It is the
second semester of a small-section three semester sequence for
well-prepared students. Topics will include electric and magnetic
fields; Coulomb's, Ampere's, and Faraday's laws; Maxwell's equation;
emission, propagation and absorption of electromagnetic radiation; and
geometrical and physical optics.
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 course will receive a high number of registration requests. Students
are strongly advised to request alternates for this
course. Students who are not Benjamin Franklin Scholars should fill out a
form that is available at the BFS office and return it there.
An introduction to psychology as both a natural and social science. The
text will provide broad coverage of the state of
knowledge in psychology, while the lectures will focus on particular
problems in some detail. The aim of the lectures will be
to clarify the process of inquiry in natural and social sciences.
In-class laboratories will engage students in formation of
hypotheses, design of research, data gathering, and analysis and
interpretation of results. Topics covered will include brain
and behavior, dreams and psychoanalysis, behaviorism and phobias,
sociobiology and sex differences, color vision,
thinking, memory, person perception, appetites and addictions.
Paul Rozin is Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty
Excellence in Psychology. He received his Ph.D. from
Harvard in biology and psychology. After working for two postdoctoral
years with Jean Mayer at the Harvard School of
Public Health, he came to the University of Pennsylvania. He has been at
Penn since 1963, during which time he has served
as chair of Psychology and director of the Benjamin Franklin Scholars and
General Honors Programs. His areas of research
interest include the development of food preferences; the interaction of
culture, biology and individual psychology in
determining food attitudes and cuisine; magical thinking; and the
evolution of intelligence. Professor Rozin has been a John
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellow, is the recipient of the Ira Abrams
Memorial Award for distinguished teaching, the
Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Professor for Faculty Excellence in
Psychology, and is an editor of the scientific journal
Appetite.
Psychology 441-401. Genetics, Evolution, and
Behavior.
MW 9-10:30
(467) OPERATIONS AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT
Operations and Information Management 402-301. The Aesthetic
Approach to Decision-Making.
TR 4:30-6
(497) PHYSICS
Physics 171-301. Honors Physics II.
General Requirement VI:
Physical World.
Fulfills College Quantitative Skills Requirement
Prerequisite: Successful completion of Physics 170 or permission of the
instructor. Students must register for lecture and lab section.
LEC MWF 10-11, LEC M 2-3
LEC R 11-12
PHYS 171-302
W 1-3
(521) PSYCHOLOGY
Psychology 001-301. Intro to Psychology. Sector V, Quantitative
Skills
MW 1-3
Cross-listed: BIBB 441-401.
TR 1:30-3
(541) RELIGIOUS STUDIES
Religious Studies 418-401. Ancient Interpretation of the Bible
TR 10:30-12
Distrubution III: Arts & Letters
cross-listed AMES 356, AMES 555, COML 556, JWST
356, JWST 555