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Africana Studies

Distribution II: May be counted as a Distributional course in History & Tradition.

Inspired by Penn's founder, Ben Franklin, President Amy Gutmann has identified rising to the challenge of a diverse democracy and educating students for democratic citizenship as critical goals of her administration. Since the present undergraduate curriculum falls short in this regard, the seminar aims to synthesize numerous, unrelated, academically-based community service courses into an effectively integrated curriculum. As now envisioned, the new Penn curriculum developed by the seminar would have as a significant component, thematic, problem-solving clusters, i.e., interrelated, cross-disciplinary, complementary sets of courses designed to stimulate and empower students to produce, not simply consumer, societally-useful knowledge. By societally-useful knowledge, we mean knowledge actively used to solve global strategic problems of democracy and society, schooling and society, health and society, poverty and society, environment and society, culture and society, etc., as those global problems manifest themselves locally at Penn and in West Philadelphia/Philadelphia.

Art and Archaeology of the Mediterranean World

Painted vases constitute the most important and comprehensive collection of visual evidence that survives from ancient Greece. In this course, we will examine the development of Greek vase-painting from the 10th to the 4th century BC, with particular emphasis on the pottery of the Archaic and Classical periods produced in the cities of Athens and Corinth. We will look at the vases as objects--and the extensive collection of Greek vases in the University of Pennsylvania Museum will be an important resource for this course--but we will also consider them as they relate to broader cultural issues. Some background in art history or classical studies is helpful but not required.

Art History

Painted vases constitute the most important and comprehensive collection of visual evidence that survives from ancient Greece. In this course, we will examine the development of Greek vase-painting from the 10th to the 4th century BC, with particular emphasis on the pottery of the Archaic and Classical periods produced in the cities of Athens and Corinth. We will look at the vases as objects--and the extensive collection of Greek vases in the University of Pennsylvania Museum will be an important resource for this course--but we will also consider them as they relate to broader cultural issues. Some background in art history or classical studies is helpful but not required.

Benjamin Franklin Seminars

Does not count towards the BFS seminar requirement. More information.

The concept of originality today functions in a very different world than it did in the mid 19th century when it was critical in defining Modernism in the visual arts. When a rapper records a song in which the music is largely sampled from other musicians' material, has she created an original work? If a software developer comes up with a new use for existing software, has she done something original? If her purpose in coming up with the new use is to download music, has she created intellectual property that she is entitled to exploit or is she a wrong-doer who should be held responsible for violating the rights of the songwriter or the recording company? When an artist repurposes the image of a celebrity from a photograph, is she creating an original work or is she violating the rights of the photographer or the celebrity? What does originality and intellectual property mean in the context of a world where ideas and commerce flow freely among cultures with varying views of creativity, innovation, and ownership? We will begin with a brief examination of the evolution of intellectual property law, (copyrights, trademarks, patents and trade secrets), and the legal meaning of terms such as "originality", "novelty", "ownership", "fair comment", Òpublic domain", "derivative works", and "artists' rights." Next, we will examine how technology has driven changes in our definition of originality, first through mechanical and later through electronic means of reproduction and distribution. Then we will discuss the works of 20th century artists such as Marcel Duchamp, who introduced the concept of the "ready-made"; Andy Warhol, who appropriated images of consumer products and celebrities; Sherrie Levine, who photographed the photographs of famous male photographers; Louise Lawler, who documents artworks as installed in private and public collections, and Pierre Huyghe, whose works examine questions of possession and interpretation (exploring for example, whether Walt Disney or the singer has legal owner of the voice of Disney's "Snow White"?). Ms. Shaw is a lawyer whose practice focuses on intellectual property and technology law, and the cases discussed in class will include cases in which she represented one of the parties. Ms Shaw also serves on several art museum and gallery advisory boards and is a collector of painting, sculpture, drawings, photograph, and video from the 1960s to the present. Information about her background can be found at the website of the law firm with which she is affiliated. http://www.obermayer.com/Attorney.cfm?action=moreinfo&id=150

Benjamin Franklin Seminars - Law

The Speluncean Explorers is a classic debate among five judges of a “supreme court”. What can we learn from it in following today’s debates on legal issues? What are the sources of law, and does it make a difference if law is laid down by a legislature, by an executive agency or by a court? We will discuss the American system of resolving disputes and question at each step whether or not it works as advertised. What accounts for the rise of alternative dispute mechanisms and what does the future hold for ADR? How does our legal system deal with novel issues, for example; making books and music available via the internet under copyright protection. And we will read decisions on appeal to the Supreme Court and, if the Court cooperates by deciding some of them before semester’s end, how the Court resolves those cases.

Ben Franklin Seminars - Medicine

Open to juniors and seniors only. Permission of instructor required. 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.

Biology

Prerequisite: One semester of college biology or 5 on the AP exam or 6 or 7 on the IB exam This ABCS course counts as one of the "4 additional cu" for the Biology major. In this course, Penn students teach a series of hands-on activities to students in biology classes at West Philadelphia High School. Most weeks will have the following schedule. On Mondays, 10-12, Penn students will learn the relevant biological background and techniques for a hands-on activity (in Goddard Lab 102). On Wednesdays and/or Fridays, each Penn student will lead a small group of West high school biology students in carrying out the hands-on activity. On average, we will teach in West only once a week, but the teaching sessions are scheduled for Wednesdays and Fridays to ensure that you will be available on whichever day is needed to accommodate the high school schedule. West Philadelphia High School is located on Walnut Street between 47th and 48th Streets (enter on 48th Street). Each high school teaching timeslot includes one hour of teaching at West and 10-15 minutes for transportation between Penn and West. We will begin the semester with several classes concerning successful approaches for teaching biology in urban high schools. Then we will start our series of hands-on activities which teach the high school students fundamental aspects of genetics, evolution, anatomy, physiology and other topics in the high school biology curriculum. Requirements for Penn students include quizzes on the assigned reading, a research paper on a topic related to one of our hands-on activities, and grading two sets of the weekly quizzes for high school students and preparing brief reports concerning the strengths and weaknesses of our teaching and the high school students' learning that week.

Business and Public Policy

This course uses microeconomics to evaluate public policy. The course has two aims. The first aim is to provide a microeconomic toolkit that we will use to identify failures of the competitive market; the circumstances in which government intervention can improve economic efficiency; and alternatives to government intervention. The second aim of the course is to apply this toolkit to current policy issues, including environmental regulation, tax policy, health care reform and the problem of the uninsured; education policy; social security reform and the costs and benefits of private accounts; antitrust policy, and policy to promote research and development.

Comparative Literature

May be counted as a Distributional course in Arts & Letters. A careful textual study of one book of the Bible in the light of modern scholarship, including archaeological evidence and pertinent ancient Near Eastern documents. The Book of Genesis covers the creation, the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the origins of the Israelites, and the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs.

Computer Science and Engineering

The purpose of this course is to introduce undergraduate students in computer science and engineering to quantum computers (QC) and quantum information science (QIS). This course is meant primarily for juniors and seniors in CSE. No prior knowledge of quantum mechanics (QM) is assumed.

Classical Studies

Painted vases constitute the most important and comprehensive collection of visual evidence that survives from ancient Greece. In this course, we will examine the development of Greek vase-painting from the 10th to the 4th century BC, with particular emphasis on the pottery of the Archaic and Classical periods produced in the cities of Athens and Corinth. We will look at the vases as objects--and the extensive collection of Greek vases in the University of Pennsylvania Museum will be an important resource for this course--but we will also consider them as they relate to broader cultural issues. Some background in art history or classical studies is helpful but not required.

Ancient and Modern Constitutions

CLST-310-401
J. Mulhern
MW 2-3:30 What actually was it that the Greeks were thinking of when they used the expression "politeia" -- an expression that we often translate by "constitution"? What do their thoughts suggest about prospects for constitution making 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 work of the U.S. Constitutional Convention in a somewhat new light; and it continues through Nineteenth Century and Twentieth Century constitution making into today's constitution making efforts in Eastern Europe.

East Asian Languages and Cultures

Distribution III: May be counted as a Distributional course in Arts & Letters. Close examination in translation of the late 12th-century classic, Heike monogatari, and its derivative tradition in prose, drama, and film. Our subject is Tale of the Heike, a multifaceted narrative of the twelfth-century battles that brought the Taira clan down and led to the establishment of Japan's first military government. We will read the Heike tales with an eye toward how they fictionalize history and idealize certain types, notably loyal women and warriors; the development of the warrior tale genre; central aspects of the Japanes ethos; and later works of literature based on episodes and characters from the Tale of the the Heike. Students of Jampanese language may learn to read a famous section in the original. Seminar format. Paper required.

Economics

General Requirement I. Prerequisites: ECON-001. ECON-002-001 (lecture) is a required co-requisite.

English

Distribution III The idea of "writing the life" has been a defining one for both the novel and biography. Over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the genre of the novel evolved alongside that of biography. Each was principally concerned with things that had historically been regarded as outside the purview of published, respectable writing--the inner thoughts and everyday habits of persons, whether real or imagined, great or small. Each, too, was regarded with suspicion for its working assumption that the trivial details, secret passions, and private struggles of everyday life may be the stuff of art, scholarship, and legitimate public interest. Neither novels nor biographies were thought to be quite legitimate at first; both were seen as morally suspect genres, as inherently questionable kinds of writing that, in dealing closely with the most personal and intimate aspects of their subjects' lives, encouraged an unhealthy prurience in readers and writers alike. In the case of biography, this charge was intensified by related concerns that the act of writing up a lived life for the reading public was a gross invasion of privacy and a violation of the respect that is owed to the dead. This course will trace the complicated and entangled early lives of the novel and biography. We will read a number of novels that tell the stories of imagined lives alongside biographies that purport to tell the truth about real lives; we'll also read novels that contain germs of their authors' autobiographies, novels that meditate on the genre of biography, biographies that engage in literary criticism, and biographies that look and act like novels. Along the way, we will read critical commentary on both kinds of writing. We will also examine how each genre addressed, criticized, and shaped the other. At every point, we will attempt to register the shifting complexity of the connection between two genres that emerged simultaneously for similar reasons, shared many interests and concerns, and yet in the end differed so profoundly from one another. We will begin our study with a brief survey of eighteenth-century thinking about both biography and the the novel; James Boswell's magisterial Life of Johnson, Samuel Johnson's Life of Richard Savage, and Henry Fielding's Shamela will serve as the historical and theoretical backdrop for our subsequent investigation of how the novel and biography each came into its own during the nineteenth century. Readings will include Thomas Carlyle's definitive essays on the form and function of biography, Charlotte Bronte's autobiographical novel Villette, Elizabeth Gaskell's selective and novelistic Life of Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens' partially autobiographical David Copperfield, selections from John Forster's Life of Dickens, Oscar Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray (the novel that was used to convict Wilde of sodomy), and Wilde's "De Profundis," the heart-rending confessional letter the jailed author wrote to his former lover. We will round out the semester with a number of modernist and post-modernist reflections on Victorian life-writing: Peter Carey's imaginative pseudo-biography of Dickens, Jack Maggs; Virginia Woolf's biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's dog, Flush; Lytton Strachey's harsh indictment of Victorian culture, Eminent Victorians; and A.S. Byatt's novel about a biographer's thwarted biographer, The Biographer's Tale. Requirements:regular attendance, active participation, weekly weblog postings, two formal papers, and an in-class presentation.

Belief in the Age of the Urban Cosmopolite

ENGL-359-301
Anne Hall
TR 12-1:30 Distribution III In Forster's Passage to India, The Englishman Fielding explaints to his Indian friend Dr. Aziz that most "'educated, thoughtful people'" in the West are atheists or at least "'the West doesn't bother much over belief and disbelief.'" This course examines a problem for moderns who consider themselves educated in a sophisticated way and who are also religious. That problem is that once their education teaches them what sophisticated people "bother about," in the words of Forster's Fielding, they wisely - or at least prudently - keep their spiritual lives to themselves. This course will first focus on the Enlightenment principles that forced religion into the private life. It will explore the Enlightenment redefinition of reason from a faculty that enables a wise choice of goals to a technique of thinking. It will explore the reflections of different authors on the place of religion and spiritual thinking in the modern world. Readings start with philosophy and then move on to literature. Readings will include Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling, Newman's Apologia Pro Vita Sua, Ortega y Gasset's The Revolt of the Masses, Henry James's Portrait of a Lady and The Spoils of Poynton, E. M. Forster's Room With a View and Passage to India, Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited, and other essays and poems.

The Novel of Adventure

ENGL-360-301
John Richetti
TR 10:30-12:00 Distribution III The "serious" novel in Britain has since the middle of the eighteenth century tended to center on character development related to heterosexual courtship and marriage. But one of the most popular early novels, Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) is an adventure story that treats the hero's escape from slavery in Morocco and then his survival on a deserted island off the coast of South America. As we read a selection of novels of adventure from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century, we will seek to understand why the main tradition of fiction in Britain (what we normally read in college literature courses) chose to ignore overseas masculine adventure in favor of domestic situations and problems. Why was adventure fiction, with its non-European locales and brutal events, relegated to boys' books and popular or even pulp literature? We will also read a number of American novels (one of them pulp) that express a quite different attitude toward adventure. Among the authors we will read are Daniel Defoe, Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Joseph Conrad. Two short (3-5 page) papers, class reports, and a final (10-12 page) paper.

Emily Dickinson at Large

ENGL-386-301
Max Cavitch
TR 10:30-12 Distribution III America's greatest writer of extremity, Emily Dickinson roamed the universe like a devil hungry for souls. Doing so, while remaining, for the most part, at home in Amherst, Massachusetts was a neat trick. To this day, the scary magnificence of her achievement remains unencompassed. Indeed, even some of the most basic questions about her writing (how much of it is poetry?) have never been satisfactorily answered. And we have yet to take the full measure of her disinhibited contact with the sheer unsparingness of things: God, nature, time, language, idealism, markets, the unconscious. In this seminar, our intensive focus on Dickinson's writings will be complemented by our research on the world she inhabited, from the most intimate scenes of composition and friendship to the cataclysms that shaped the era. We'll also explore the history of her reception and edition up to the present moment, from her own correspondence and early publications to the latest variorum edition, the new web-based archives, and the cutting edge of criticism.

Topics in Gender, Sexuality, and Literature: Friendship

ENGL-390-401 (WSTD-390-401)
Heather Love
T 1:30-4:30 Distribution III This seminar offers an introduction to the history and philosophy of friendship. We will consider friendship in relation to eros and same-sex desire; as a mode of political thought; and in relation to questions of representation and truth. We will take up twentieth-century transformations in marriage and kinship and will reflect at length on recent queer rethinkings of friendship "as a way of life." Students will also be asked to think about the classroom as an alternative space of social relations and to design and lead one pedagogical experiment during the semester. Readings by Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Carson McCullers, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alan Hollinghurst, and others. One class presentation; pedagogy project; long final paper.

The Literature and Historiography of National Trauma: Partition and South Asia

ENGL-393-401 (SAST-393-401)
Suvir Kaul
R 1:30-4:30 Distribution III This course will examine the way in which imaginative literature and film have addressed the difficult socio-political issues leading up to, and following from, the independence and partition of British India. Pakistan and India came into being as nation-states in moments of great national trauma: historians have long argued over the process that led up to Partition, and we will study some of these debates, but for the most part we will examine novels, short stories, poetry, and some films to think about the impact of Partition and Independence on communities and individuals in South Asia. In doing so, we will recognize the continuing role played by these events and experiences in shaping the cultural, social, and political realities of contemporary South Asia. We will also learn about the crucial role played by literary and creative texts in making available to us the full dimensions of human tragedy, especially those precipitated when the imperatives of nation-formation redefine the lives of individuals or of sub-national communities.

Environmental Studies

An academically-based community service course. The environment affects people's health more strongly than biological factors, medical care and lifestyle. The water we drink, the food we eat, the air we breathe are all components of the environment. Some estimates, based on morbidity and mortality statistics, indicate that the impact of the environment on health is as high as 80%. (Environmental Health, Morgan, pg. 14). 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 not only examine the toxicity of physical agents, but also the effects of lifestyle, social and economic factors, and the built environment on human health. Selected topics will include cancer clusters, water borne diseases, radon and lung cancer, lead poisoning, environmental tobacco smoke, respiratory diseases and obesity. Students will be researching in depth the health impacts of the 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, or Environmental Education issues as they discuss approaches to mitigating environmental health risks. Students will be asked to research one environmental health topic in detail, to present their findings to the class, and to propose recommendations for future action. This course is an ABCS course that requires community service in addition to the class times. Students will work together in teams to identify environmental health needs in the community then develop and implement an intervention that is sustainable and replicable.

Prevention of Tobacco Addiction among Pre-Adolescent Children in Philadelphia

ENVS-407-401 (HSOC-407-401)
Elaine Wright
TR 1:30-3 An academically-based community service and CWiC course. 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. The substantive parts of this course will be taught by faculty in the Pulmonary Division of the Medical School.

Urban Asthma Epidemic

ENVS-407-401 (HSOC-407-401)
Elaine Wright
TR 10:30-12 An Academically Based Community Service Course. Asthma as a chronic pediatric disease is undergoing a dramatic and unexplained increase. It has become the #1 cause of public-school absenteeism and now accounts for a significant number of childhood deaths each year in the USA. In ENVS 408, Penn undergraduates learn about the epidemiology of urban asthma, the debate about the probable cause (or causes) of the current asthma crisis, and the nature and distribution of environmental factors that modern medicine describes as potential triggers of asthma episodes. Penn students then collaborate with community-service home visitors employed in a clinical research study at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The Penn students accompany CHOP staff to the homes of children undergoing outpatient treatment for chronic asthma at CHOP. They instruct the families of those children in strategies to establish and maintain a trigger-free space within each child's home in which he/she can sleep, play, and study. The Penn students also conduct on-site ACLOTEST procedures in each home to determine the concentration of dust-mite feces in the rooms children will be using as safe sapces. They will then summarize the results of their work in a format appropriate to the assessment phase of the CHOP clinical study.

German

General Requirement III This course presents major trends and figures in Yiddish literature and culture in Eastern Europe from the mid-19th century through World War II. Divided into five sections - "Historical Overview," "The Shtetl/ Traditional Jewish Life," "Enlightenment and the Shtetl's Dissolution", "Responses To Pogroms, Revolution, War," and "The Cities - Warsaw, Vilna, Lodz," - this course will examine how Jews have represented the central aspects of their experience in Eastern Europe through history, literature (fiction, poetry, drama, memoir), film, and song.

Health and Societies

The course explores the historical development of traditional weapons of mass destruction such as chemical, nuclear and biological agents, in addition to newer and seemingly non-traditional weapons such as land mines and civilian aircraft that can also be employed to cause large numbers of injuries and deaths among civilian and military populations. Through case studies in technology and public health, students will evaluate the medical, scientific, environmental, and cultural ramifications of these weapons and their effect on human heal and society by analyzing the rise of the military -industrial-academic-complex in twentieth century America.

Prevention of Tobacco Addiction among Pre-Adolescent Children in Philadelphia

HSOC-407-401 (ENVS-407-401)
Elaine Wright
TR 1:30-3 An academically-based community service and CWiC course. 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. The substantive parts of this course will be taught by faculty in the Pulmonary Division of the Medical School.

Urban Asthma Epidemic

HSOC-408-401 (ENVS-408-401)
Elaine Wright
TR 10:30-12 An academically-based community service and CWiC course. Asthma as a chronic pediatric disease is undergoing a dramatic and unexplained increase. It has become the #1 cause of public-school absenteeism and now accounts for a significant number of childhood deaths each year in the USA. In ENVS 408, Penn undergraduates learn about the epidemiology of urban asthma, the debate about the probable cause (or causes) of the current asthma crisis, and the nature and distribution of environmental factors that modern medicine describes as potential triggers of asthma episodes. Penn students then collaborate with community-service home visitors employed in a clinical research study at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). The Penn students accompany CHOP staff to the homes of children undergoing outpatient treatment for chronic asthma at CHOP. They instruct the families of those children in strategies to establish and maintain a trigger-free space within each child's home in which he/she can sleep, play, and study. The Penn students also conduct on-site ACLOTEST procedures in each home to determine the concentration of dust-mite feces in the rooms children will be using as safe sapces. They will then summarize the results of their work in a format appropriate to the assessment phase of the CHOP clinical study.

History

The seminar looks at the evolution of modern Italy from the Napoleonic Empire through the unification of the Kingdom through its crisis in the First World War and the subsequent struggle for control of the new mass society. ÊIt looks at the emergence of the first fascist regime and the first modern dictatorship under Benito Mussolini; the rise and consolidation of that dicatorship, its descent into anti-semitism, defeat in war and the civil war of 1943-45, which followed that defeat. ÊOut of that crisis a new prosperous Italian society has grown.The collapse of the First Republic after 1989 and the reappearance of the Right round off the story in the present.One of the glories of modern Italian history has been the exceptional quality of its literature. Great fiction can form an alternative approach with which to gain insights into Italian history. Eight works of literature have been put on a list as required reading. Each student will be expected to chose one work and write a book review of it. All of them are in English translation, but, of course, if you can read them in Italian, you will have more fun.

American Reform, 1954-1974

HIST-214-301
Sheldon Hackney
R 1:30-4:30 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.

Urban University-Community Relations

HIST-214-401 ( AFRC-078, URBS-078)
Ira Harkavy
W 2-5 Inspired by Penn's founder, Ben Franklin, President Amy Gutmann has identified rising to the challenge of a diverse democracy and educating students for democratic citizenship as critical goals of her administration. Since the present undergraduate curriculum falls short in this regard, the seminar aims to synthesize numerous, unrelated, academically-based community service courses into an effectively integrated curriculum. As now envisioned, the new Penn curriculum developed by the seminar would have as a significant component, thematic, problem-solving clusters, i.e., interrelated, cross-disciplinary, complementary sets of courses designed to stimulate and empower students to produce, not simply consumer, societally-useful knowledge. By societally-useful knowledge, we mean knowledge actively used to solve global strategic problems of democracy and society, schooling and society, health and society, poverty and society, environment and society, culture and society, etc., as those global problems manifest themselves locally at Penn and in West Philadelphia/Philadelphia.

Immigrants, African-Americans, and Cities in Twentieth Century America

HIST-214-402 (URBS-220-402)
Michael Katz
T 2-5PM This seminar explores the links between race and immigration in American cities. Readings focus on both case studies - building racial ghettos, the confrontation of "new immigrants" with America, Mexican and Chinese immigrants in California cities - and major interpretive issues, such as panethnicity, assimilation, and multiculturalism. Seminar sessions will be divided between discussions of readings (approximately one book per week) and analysis of primary sources. Students will be expected to lead one or two workshops on primary sources related to the seminar's concerns.

Popular Culture in the Middle East

HIST-216-301
Firoozh Kashani-Sabet
T 2-5 The meaning of a culture can sometimes best be understood through a study of its popular traditions and the routines of everyday life. This course will grapple with issues of ethnicity, political conflict, and identity by analyzing the culture produced for and consumed by a wide spectrum of the general public. Political cartoons, photography, novels, film, music, dance, and other modes of cultural expression will be used to explore the historical roots of the political anxieties and social conventions common to many modern Middle Eastern communities.

Jewish Literature and Culture in Eastern Europe

HIST-265-401 (GRMN-265,JWST-265)

Katherine Hellerstein
TR 10:30-12 General Requirement III This course presents major trends and figures in Yiddish literature and culture in Eastern Europe from the mid-19th century through World War II. Divided into five sections - "Historical Overview," "The Shtetl/ Traditional Jewish Life," "Enlightenment and the Shtetl's Dissolution", "Responses To Pogroms, Revolution, War," and "The Cities - Warsaw, Vilna, Lodz," - this course will examine how Jews have represented the central aspects of their experience in Eastern Europe through history, literature (fiction, poetry, drama, memoir), film, and song.

History and Sociology of Science

The course explores the historical development of traditional weapons of mass destruction such as chemical, nuclear and biological agents, in addition to newer and seemingly non-traditional weapons such as land mines and civilian aircraft that can also be employed to cause large numbers of injuries and deaths among civilian and military populations. Through case studies in technology and public health, students will evaluate the medical, scientific, environmental, and cultural ramifications of these weapons and their effect on human heal and society by analyzing the rise of the military -industrial-academic-complex in twentieth century America.

Italian

The seminar looks at the evolution of modern Italy from the Napoleonic Empire through the unification of the Kingdom through its crisis in the First World War and the subsequent struggle for control of the new mass society. ÊIt looks at the emergence of the first fascist regime and the first modern dictatorship under Benito Mussolini; the rise and consolidation of that dicatorship, its descent into anti-semitism, defeat in war and the civil war of 1943-45, which followed that defeat. ÊOut of that crisis a new prosperous Italian society has grown.The collapse of the First Republic after 1989 and the reappearance of the Right round off the story in the present.One of the glories of modern Italian history has been the exceptional quality of its literature. Great fiction can form an alternative approach with which to gain insights into Italian history. Eight works of literature have been put on a list as required reading. Each student will be expected to chose one work and write a book review of it. All of them are in English translation, but, of course, if you can read them in Italian, you will have more fun.

Jewish Studies

May be counted as a Distributional course in Arts & Letters. A careful textual study of one book of the Bible in the light of modern scholarship, including archaeological evidence and pertinent ancient Near Eastern documents. The Book of Genesis covers the creation, the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the origins of the Israelites, and the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs.

Jewish Literature and Culture in Eastern Europe

JWST-265-401 (GRMN 265, HIST 265)

Katherine Hellerstein
TR 3-4:30 General Requirement III
This course presents major trends and figures in Yiddish literature and culture in Eastern Europe from the mid-19th century through World War II. Divided into five sections - "Historical Overview," "The Shtetl/ Traditional Jewish Life," "Enlightenment and the Shtetl's Dissolution", "Responses To Pogroms, Revolution, War," and "The Cities - Warsaw, Vilna, Lodz," - this course will examine how Jews have represented the central aspects of their experience in Eastern Europe through history, literature (fiction, poetry, drama, memoir), film, and song.

Legal Studies

The first part of this course will introduce the American legal system and processes, the second part will introduce the law of contracts, and the last will cover some of the basic issues of equal employment opportunity.

Corporate Responsibility and Ethics

LGST-210-301
Martin Sandbu
TR 3-4:30 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.

Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

Distribution II: History and Tradition. A study of Mesopotamian civilization, its cultural impact on the ancient Near East and the Bible, and the legacy it bequeathed to Western civilization. Topics will include Mesopotamian religion, law, literature, historiography, and socio-political institutions.

The Bible in Translation: Genesis

NELC-250-401 (COML-380, JWST-255, RELS-224)
Jeff Tigay
TR 4:30-6 May be counted as a Distributional course in Arts & Letters. A careful textual study of one book of the Bible in the light of modern scholarship, including archaeological evidence and pertinent ancient Near Eastern documents. The Book of Genesis covers the creation, the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the origins of the Israelites, and the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs.

Nursing

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. Creative approaches to identifying literature, analyzing field work and representing critique are encouraged.

Physics

Gen Req VI: May be counted towards the General Requirement in Physical World.
This course parallels and extends the content of Physics 151. 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; geometrical and physical optics. Prerequisite(s): Successful completion of Physics GH170 (Well-prepared students who have taken Physics 150 and are co-registered in Math 240 or above are also eligible to take Physics 171). 1.5 c.u. 4 hours in lectures. 2 hours in labs.

Introduction to Research in Physics and Astronomy

PHYS-295-301
Paul Heiney
TR 5-6:30
Prerequisite(s): PHYS 150/151 or PHYS 170/171 or PHYS 101/102. This course will provide an introduction to current research performed by faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. It will be particularly appropriate for sophomore or junior physics majors interested in participating in physics research; it will also be of interest to other science- or engineering-oriented students who want to learn more about current topics in physics. Grading will be based on attendance at seminars presented by faculty, homework assignments, and a term paper.

Psychology

Religious Studies

May be counted as a Distributional course in Arts & Letters. A careful textual study of one book of the Bible in the light of modern scholarship, including archaeological evidence and pertinent ancient Near Eastern documents. The Book of Genesis covers the creation, the Garden of Eden, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, the origins of the Israelites, and the lives of the patriarchs and matriarchs.

Russian

Distribution III

In this course students will discuss Fyodor DostoevskyÕs major writings within relevant historical, cultural and literary contexts. The course will be divided into three major parts: (1) The Age of Dostoevsky; (2) How to read Dostoevsky? and (3) Dostoevsky in action: "Crime and Punishment" and ÒThe Brothers Karamazov.Ó This class will consist of lectures, discussion, and four disputes.

Sociology

Distribution I: May be counted as a Distributional course in Society. This seminar explores the conditions under which women become politically active and the relevance of gender to forms of activism, organizational practices, and choice of issues. Contemporary and historical case studies will examine women's activism in feminist and anti-feminist movements and organizations, in single sex-organizations devoted to a broad range of goals, and mixed-gender movements, including civil rights and trade unions.

South Asian Studies

Distribution III This course will examine the way in which imaginative literature and film have addressed the difficult socio-political issues leading up to, and following from, the independence and partition of British India. Pakistan and India came into being as nation-states in moments of great national trauma: historians have long argued over the process that led up to Partition, and we will study some of these debates, but for the most part we will examine novels, short stories, poetry, and some films to think about the impact of Partition and Independence on communities and individuals in South Asia. In doing so, we will recognize the continuing role played by these events and experiences in shaping the cultural, social, and political realities of contemporary South Asia. We will also learn about the crucial role played by literary and creative texts in making available to us the full dimensions of human tragedy, especially those precipitated when the imperatives of nation-formation redefine the lives of individuals or of sub-national communities.

Urban Studies

Distribution II: May be counted as a Distributional course in History & Tradition. Inspired by Penn's founder, Ben Franklin, President Amy Gutmann has identified rising to the challenge of a diverse democracy and educating students for democratic citizenship as critical goals of her administration. Since the present undergraduate curriculum falls short in this regard, the seminar aims to synthesize numerous, unrelated, academically-based community service courses into an effectively integrated curriculum. As now envisioned, the new Penn curriculum developed by the seminar would have as a significant component, thematic, problem-solving clusters, i.e., interrelated, cross-disciplinary, complementary sets of courses designed to stimulate and empower students to produce, not simply consumer, societally-useful knowledge. By societally-useful knowledge, we mean knowledge actively used to solve global strategic problems of democracy and society, schooling and society, health and society, poverty and society, environment and society, culture and society, etc., as those global problems manifest themselves locally at Penn and in West Philadelphia/Philadelphia.

Immigrants, African-Americans, and Cities in Twentieth Century America

URBS-220-402 (URBS-214-402)
Michael Katz
T 2-5PM This seminar explores the links between race and immigration in American cities. Readings focus on both case studies - building racial ghettos, the confrontation of "new immigrants" with America, Mexican and Chinese immigrants in California cities - and major interpretive issues, such as panethnicity, assimilation, and multiculturalism. Seminar sessions will be divided between discussions of readings (approximately one book per week) and analysis of primary sources. Students will be expected to lead one or two workshops on primary sources related to the seminar's concerns.

Women's Studies

Distribution III This seminar offers an introduction to the history and philosophy of friendship. We will consider friendship in relation to eros and same-sex desire; as a mode of political thought; and in relation to questions of representation and truth. We will take up twentieth-century transformations in marriage and kinship and will reflect at length on recent queer rethinkings of friendship "as a way of life." Students will also be asked to think about the classroom as an alternative space of social relations and to design and lead one pedagogical experiment during the semester. Readings by Plato, Aristotle, Montaigne, Shakespeare, Walt Whitman, Sarah Orne Jewett, Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Carson McCullers, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Alan Hollinghurst, and others. One class presentation; pedagogy project; long final paper.

Women and Political Activism

WSTD-431-401 (SOCI-425-401)
Robin Leidner
W 2-5 Distribution I: May be counted as a Distributional course in Society.

This seminar explores the conditions under which women become politically active and the relevance of gender to forms of activism, organizational practices, and choice of issues. Contemporary and historical case studies will examine women's activism in feminist and anti-feminist movements and organizations, in single sex-organizations devoted to a broad range of goals, and mixed-gender movements, including civil rights and trade unions.