Tunisia, Egypt and Libya in 2011, South Africa 1993, Algeria 1962. These are some of the revolutions that captured international attention and dramatically changed the social and political landscape of Africa. The revolutionary thinking of Marx, Lenin, Gandhi, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Fanon and Biko and others, formed the basis of mass mobilization against oppressive regimes. Furthermore, African political thought and praxis inspired civil rights movements and anti-colonial struggles throughout the world. Beyond exploring these revolutions, the class will introduce students to Africa and African diaspora cultures in Los Angeles through activities and excursions that will encompass the visual and dramatic arts, music, culinary experiences, lectures and tours.
 
“Revolutions” comprises one half of the  entire fall semester course load (8 units), and students taking it should plan their remaining courses carefully.  It is particularly recommended for students interested in History and/or Diplomacy and World Affairs, or for those going on in the social sciences and humanities generally.

As a major U.S. city that grew in importance during a time of increasing globalization, Los Angeles occupies a unique position within the cultural imagination.   This course will explore how the unique geographical and cultural space of Los Angeles has contributed to ways in which the city has been imagined and represented in literature and film.   In our explorations, we will consider how L.A.’s roots, migrating populations, shifting community boundaries, and multiple forms of power shape imaginings and lived realities of the city.  How do various representations reflect – and diverge from – living communities within Los Angeles?  How are the city and its communities shaped by national and global forces?  How has Los Angeles as a destination city for migrants shaped the ways it is imagined?  How do we reconcile the dueling representations of L.A. as both utopia and dystopia?  Over the course of the semester, we will examine a broad range of film and literature that will guide our discussion of these and other questions, interrogating what it means to live in the city of Los Angeles.

This course is about the past, present and future of the fight for equal citizenship for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, commonly known as the “gay rights movement.” A central concept is that gender, race, sex and sexual orientation (among other aspects of one’s identity) are social constructions. We analyze the historical time period from the Internet's birth (1950s) to present day. We examine the historical, cultural, religious, legal and societal significance of marriage as a lens to view the myriad ways that civil rights and fundamental freedoms are mediated by identity. Texts include academic articles, court cases, legal briefs, popular media, fiction, blogs, videos, tweets and images. We use Web 2.0 tools (Blogger, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook) to facilitate students' development as both consumers and producers of intellectual, academic material. The ability of students to produce and critique online content is a learning outcome of this class. No previous knowledge of any particular internet tool is required. Technological support is provided.

Who should you believe:  the sculpted Adonis who attributes his heavenly body solely to Product A, or your middle-aged doctor as he looks over horn-rimmed glasses and preaches to you his mantra of fruits and vegetables?  This course will explore how science is portrayed to the public, with the aim of deconstructing issues to objectively evaluate the merits of the arguments.  The first part of the course will explore in great depth the perpetual, self-corrective process of the scientific method to demonstrate the necessity of research and contradictory viewpoints.  The focus will then shift towards topics that include, among others, health/fitness, biotech, and the environment. 

Be prepared:
 .  This course includes a rigorous writing component, requires intensive group work both within the classroom (e.g., presentations) and beyond (e.g., community engagement), and
     emphasizes development of oral presentation skills. 
 .  Students enrolling in this course must have a solid background in high school chemistry and biology.   

This course will consider how Los Angeles has been represented in a cross section of 20th century literature, film, music and popular culture. We will examine contradictory visions of the metropolis as a land of promise and peril where issues of space, race, and class intersect to create an urban culture in which conflict and cooperation exist in productive tension. Primary texts in the various media will be supplemented and contextualized by secondary readings in social history and cultural theory. Cultural events in greater Los Angeles may be incorporated if appropriate opportunities come up.

Does our world appear to us like an abundant garden--or is it a stony, unforgiving desert?  This seminar will explore the opposed images of desert and garden, of barrenness and fruitfulness that pervade Western history.  Beginning with a close reading of Genesis and the story of human expulsion from the Garden of Eden, we will first examine these images in a number of literary and artistic appearances (including T. S. Eliot’s famous diagnosis of the “modern” condition as an unredeemed “waste land”).  In the second phase of the course we will consider their specific effects, for better and for worse, on the development of an iconic U.S. institution:  the city of Los Angeles. 

During the first half of the 20th century—a time of great social, political, and technological change—many writers, artists, and musicians sought new and innovative modes of expression. While their works varied in both genre and style, modernists shared a common desire, in the words of the poet Ezra Pound, to “make it new.”  Focusing on the period from 1910 to 1968, this interdisciplinary course will examine a tumultuous half-century through an exploration of the radically new forms of literature, art, and music it produced. How did writers, artists, and musicians deal with issues of race, gender, and sexuality? How did they react to brutal wars and periods of intense political oppression? And what exactly is the avant-garde? From Woolf to Kerouac, Kandinsky to Warhol, and Stravinsky to Sgt. Pepper, this course will examine what it means to create modern works for a modern world.

This course explores the literary depiction of two exceptional women in myth: Clytemnestra and Medea.  Clytemnestra is an adulteress who murders her husband, King Agamemnon, upon his victorious return from the Trojan War.  Medea, after being spurned by her husband who remarries a young princess, kills the bride, her father the king, and her own two children in order to punish her husband.   The course title points to the subversive qualities possessed by these two figures: neither woman should use violence to acquire power, but they do and so confound historical expectations for their gender.  In this course we will consider what can be learned about women (and men) from these presentations of Clytemnestra and Medea and think deeply about what has made them so fascinating and horrifying for over two thousand years. 

This class will occasionally meet with Professor Stocking's CSP11.

The content of this course is derived from the disciplines of sport psychology, positive psychology, and stress management.  Concepts such as motivation, goal setting, energy management, and finding meaning will be discussed in a way that is directly applicable to daily living.  Students will have the opportunity to engage in self-exploration in addition to being exposed to lives of individuals such as John Wooden, Viktor Frankl, and Morrie Schwartz (of “Tuesdays with Morrie”).  Students will leave the class with a greater awareness of how to utilize their strengths and be equipped with strategies that foster resilience when dealing with challenges.

This course surveys African musical elements as they exist in North, South and Central America as well as in the Caribbean Islands.  Through readings, lectures, videos and sound recordings, we will trace the historical origins of some traditional aspects found in Africa and relate them to the development of many musical genres found in the Western Hemisphere.

Why do we write, if not to communicate with a reader? Readers can be anyone: yourself, someone you know, someone you hope to meet, or a whole group of people whose expectations you must imagine, and whose responses you may never see. In this course, we’ll explore expectations of writers and readers in academic contexts, persuasive personal writing, professional writing, journalism, and creative writing. We’ll experiment with a variety of essay styles and writing development tools to translate writer-centered work into reader-centered work, with an emphasis on reader feedback, revision, and reflection. The class workshops will help you find your voice as a writer; improve your understanding of professors’ and other readers’ expectations for writing; boost your confidence in your own abilities as a reader, writer, and scholar; and help you design your own path to mastery of effective writing. This course is for all students who want to master a broad range of writing styles and situations, and it is of particular benefit to students who prepared for college outside the US.

The course is designed to examine current scientific research on peer relationships in childhood and adolescence.  The questions which will guide the course include: What types of children are victimized by their peers?  Why are some children more popular than others? What effect does popularity have on children and adolescents’ emotional, behavioral, or academic functioning? What role does aggression play in establishing and maintaining status in the peer group?  What types of peer crowds do adolescents affiliate with?  How are peer relationships different as individuals develop?  We will discuss how psychological science has been used to examine these, and related questions about child and adolescent peer relationships. The course will examine the form and function of peer relationships in Western and non-Western cultures.

What do you like to eat? Who prepares your food, and who is at the table eating it with you? In this course we will take on these and related questions, covering aesthetic, historical, social, and cognitive approaches to food studies. In addition to critically examining cross-cultural aspects of food culture, students will engage with Los Angeles food culture.

This is an 8-unit colloquium and seminar course.  Students enrolled in this colloquium will not only get credit for the first year spring seminar requirement, but also will meet the Core Program's Cultural Studies Distribution requirement for Global Connections.

Why does the United States continue to use the death penalty when nearly every other industrialized Western nation in the world has abolished its use? What explains the persistence of America’s contentious commitment to capital punishment? When the state kills, who wins? These questions will guide our exploration of the death penalty’s past, present and future. Using various historical, legal and social perspectives, we will examine the shifting rationales and nature of contemporary death penalty debates; cross-national public opinion; racial disparities and the historical legacy of lynching in America; the social and personal impacts of executions; and contemporary problems with the death penalty’s current application (e.g., wrongful convictions, sentencing disparities).

Using a variety of methods, including historical, literary, and psychological, this co-taught course will investigate the multiplicity of ways in which childhood has been and is conceived from the 18th century to the present. The course will explore questions such as “what is the role of innocence in defining childhood” and “what is the role of imagination, truth, and fantasy in childhood development”? Students will conduct research regarding how digital technology shapes the early literacy of children by writing their own digital children’s story and assessing how actual children in the Childhood Development Center respond to digital texts.

Experience the European Renaissance of the 14th through 17^th centuries-- an age of classical revival, religious reform, and global exploration.  A book of almost 100 concise biographies—Renaissance People: Lives that Shaped the Modern World—introduces students to the daily lives of a diversity of men and women and the controversies their lives provoked. Films will highlight the multi-varied individual, like the courtesan and poet Veronica Franco, as well as the confrontation between artist Michelangelo and military pope Julius II.  A source reader will provide practice in analyzing texts, as well as objects of material culture, in an age of encounters between cultures.  For a research-based essay utilizing evidence from the times, each student will focus on two individuals in a field of the student’s interest such as politics/diplomacy; court life; sexuality/gender; crafts and the arts; reformation in religion; scientific experiment and enlightenment; mapping the globe;  or travel and encounter.  Together students will share the evidence upon which scholars re-interpret the past to meet concerns of our present world.

This broad-ranging course will explore the science impacting the use of energy in our society as well as the sustainability of this practice on the planet.  Case studies from both the developing and developed world will be the focus.  This discussion-focused, writing-intensive course employs a scientific framework in considering four themes (1) fossil fuel energy sources and their use, (2) renewable sources, (3) consequences of energy consumption in our global society and (4) implications for sustainable development on the planet.  In addition to a final paper, each student will also develop a 15-minute oral presentation on a scientific question related to one of the four key themes noted above.  Students enrolling in this course should have completed at least one course at the high school level in biology, chemistry, and physics. 

This course will examine texts of fiction, poetry, essay, music, film and graphic arts that have as their subject the problems and promise of urban life in major world-cities of the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the cities we may explore through their imaginative representation are London, Paris, New York, Los Angeles, Hong Kong and Mexico City. Field study in Los Angeles may be incorporated as pertinent events or opportunities come up.

Berlin has been a focal point of German, European, and indeed world politics for more than a century. The course will focus 1) on the post WWII years, when Berlin became a divided city, a fault line in the Cold War, and the wall was a symbol of the irreconcilable differences between East and West, known throughout the world, 2) its unpredicted fall thanks to a powerful grass roots civil rights movement whose motives and expectations will be analyzed, and 3) the aftermath of the re-unification with its consequences, problems, and achievements throughout Germany. The goal is to compare rhetoric and reality of the Cold War, the achievements and shortcomings of the GDR civil rights movement, the expectations of East and West (after unification), the politics of memory, the role of various urban communities, and the changing character of the city. A major component of the course will be the collaboration with the Wendemuseum in Culver City which houses tens of thousands of documents and other items around the wall, its fall, the Wende or “turning point,“ and everything relating to the GDR world. We will also work closely together with the Villa Aurora – a German cultural institution in Pacific Palisades - which invites young writers, film makers, and artists many of whom come from Berlin. 

This course explores the relationship between music and consciousness in different world cultures with the intention of developing an understanding of the role that music plays in ecstatic experiences. This course draws on ethnomusicology, psychology, anthropology, dance ethnology, and religious studies.

During the early 20th century Paris was a center of intellectual activity for writers and artists of the Harlem Renaissance as well as Caribbean and African thinkers. This course will examine the international elements of the Harlem Renaissance, addressing themes such as Jazz Age Paris, the Pan-African congress, Negritude and Garveyism. Readings will include works by and about figures such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker and Léopold Senghor.

Writing in 1906, the American composer John Phillip Sousa expressed grave concerns about what he termed the “menace of mechanical music.” According to Sousa, the advent of devices like the player piano and the phonograph threatened to remove “the human skill, intelligence, and soul” from music and reduce it to little more than “a mathematical system of megaphones, wheels, cogs, disks, and cylinders.” More than a century later, musicians and audiences today have embraced musical technology in ways that would have been inconceivable in Sousa’s time. How did the introduction of such technologies transform musical culture at the turn of the twentieth century? And how has the subsequent development of new musical technologies changed the way people both produce and listen to music? Through the examination of a diverse range of literature, films, archival materials, and sound recordings, this course will explore the complex and continually evolving relationship between music and technology—from the primitive phonograph introduced by Thomas Edison in 1877 to vibrant culture of digital sampling, MP3s, and Auto-Tune of the present day.