Cosplay is the art/culture/act of dressing up in costumes, usually for a specific subcultural scene or event. Cosplay is a complex physical craft, involving lots of technical knowledge, as well as lots of creativity and vision. We will build cosplay costumes and wear in them in multiple contexts. We will also investigate cosplay as a Continue Reading »
This senior seminar touches on many intersections of science and literature while focusing on the stories we tell about human biology. What can fictional and nonfictional narratives tell us about the impact of biotechnology? How is genomic science changing conceptions of personhood and the relative influence of inheritance and environment? Conversely, how are new forms Continue Reading »
Study of contemporary American fiction, poetry, non-fiction, drama, and film, emphasizing recent formal and thematic trends. This course considers emerging directions in early twenty-first-century US literature and film and pressing questions about the future of “nature.” We will look especially at the problems of climate change and the ways in which various publics have responded Continue Reading »
Although species, sex, and race have been key categories for classifying living beings, they are highly problematic terms. Their boundaries and meanings have been continually contested and reinvented both across and within historical periods. This course investigates constructions of biological difference—and the political uses they are made to serve—through case studies of literature contextualized with Continue Reading »
Can we tell stories that span 1,000 or 10,000 years? Can an individual’s affect be contextualized not only by her immediate environment but by the epoch in which she lives? What formal techniques—time lapse, montage, allegory—can be used to convey that our creaturely fragility is shared not only with species contemporaneous to us, but with Continue Reading »
In FMS 321 we will study the cultural significance of videogames from a number of critical perspectives. As products of a complicated network of social, economic, and technological forces, videogames are dense objects, deeply layered with multiple meanings and hidden histories. Whether we consider early arcade games like Pac-Man or the latest blockbusters like No Continue Reading »
The primary goal of this course is to teach students the tools and vocabulary needed to critically engage with and write about cultural objects in our contemporary media age. The class will focus both on “big picture” questions relating to the ways in which new forms of media and technology may significantly alter fundamental aspects Continue Reading »
This course is a graduate seminar focusing on the history of biology in art and design. It traces biocentrism – a biology-based philosophy of the oneness of art and science – from the late nineteenth century to the present within the greater world of art. It focuses on the work of nineteenth-century naturalists Ernst Haeckel Continue Reading »
The relationship between the humanities, science, and technology has been a matter of consternation for some time. C. P. Snow’s famous 1959 lecture, “The Two Cultures,” epitomizes this anxiety. Snow gave primacy to science and technology, shaming British society and government for not supporting the sciences to the degree it had traditionally supported the humanities. Continue Reading »
This course interrogates the relationships between gender, race and the practices of the psychological sciences from the 19th century to the present. Rather than focus on the discoveries, diagnosis, or effects of psychological knowledges, this course attends to the methods used by researchers in the 19th and 20th century. Our reading and discussion will focus Continue Reading »
