| Christ College Home Page |
| About Christ College |
| News & Events |
| Curriculum |
| Faculty & Staff |
| Alumni & Friends |
| Prospective Students |
| Current Students |
| Useful Links |
| Contact Us |
|
Fall 2008 Course Listings and Summer 2008 |
| 201EV: Christ College Symposium.
Cr. 0. All Christ College sophomores, juniors, and seniors are required to register for the course and expected to attend each gathering except in the case of a course conflict. Symposia include presentations and discussions of significant topics of special interest to members of the Christ College community. Only Christ College students may register, but all students are welcome to attend.
Through a range of works in art, literature, philosophy, and theology, this course examines the history of visual and textual representation from ancient Greece to the present. Readings, lectures, and discussions are organized around several key themes: the authority of representation; the power of images; the reliability of words and images; the relationship between word and image in religion, categories of visual experience; and visual experience in the modern world. Primary texts will include Plato, The Republic; John of Damascus, On the Divine Images; Shusaku Endo, Silence; William Blake, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience; Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Joe Sacco’s graphic novel, Palestine; Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others; and John Berger, Ways of Seeing. Although classes will be conducted primarily through discussion, there will be plenary lectures on Wednesday evenings, several Monday evening films, and field trips to local religious sites and to the Brauer Museum of Art. Students will write three critical papers and several shorter descriptive essays.
This course will introduce students to central developments in the history of the Christian tradition and to the nature and purpose of Christian theology. It will also encourage students to practice developing a "working theology" by examining primary texts in the Christian intellectual and spiritual tradition. This work will be reflected in three short papers and one longer research paper. Readings include selections from the Bible, St. Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as well as selected writings by other classical and contemporary theologians. The course aims at improving the student's (1) knowledge of Christian theological and practical traditions; (2) ability to read theological texts closely and to think critically about them; and (3) integration and expression, oral and written, of critical reflection on the readings.
This course examines selected Shakespeare plays and sonnets in the contexts of sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, and of selected works by playwrights contemporary to Shakespeare. The course’s title plays in part on Stephen Greenblatt’s recent biography of Shakespeare, Will in the World, which is as much a portrait of the England in which Shakespeare lived as of the Bard himself. In the spirit of Greenblatt’s biography, the course will examine as well some biographical fictions of Shakespeare the cultural icon, about whom so little is actually known. The course includes viewing selected plays on video, and will very likely include a field trip to see a theatrical performance. (Course texts may change slightly according to the 2008-2009 season of theatres in Chicago and northwest Indiana.) The course intentionally does not repeat texts that have been covered in last year’s ENGL 410: Shakespeare course. Units and Texts: Assignments will include a short (5-6 page) and a longer (8-10 page) paper, a summary and presentation of a critical work or performance, and periodic responses to a class discussion board or blog. In this seminar students explore the modes in which they listen to music and the manner in which they understand and derive meaning from it. Students will learn about raw materials of music and will begin to evaluate music, both in classroom discussion and in the writing of essays and musical reviews. The derivation of musical meaning will be explored through a survey of the development of Western musical aesthetics; modern assumptions about the value and place of music will be critically examined. A final paper connecting a particular musical work to the themes of the course will be required. This course will rely on aural (as opposed to written) musical examples, and students need not have any prior musical training. Musicians and those without special music training alike are encouraged to enroll in the course. Readings for the course will be selected from: Musical works to be examined will include compositions by Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Debussy, Charles Ives, Steve Reich, Jean Sibelius, and Edgard Varèse, as well as works by a variety of popular musicians such as Radiohead and Joni Mitchell.
When the printing press was invented in the mid-1400s, many contemporary observers saw it simply as a cheap way to reproduce ecclesiastical manuscripts. Yet in less than three hundred years, technologies of print had transformed almost every aspect of European life. Newspapers, encyclopedias, scientific research, paper money, political revolutions, government surveillance, new forms of religious thought and practice—all of these were made possible by print and the proliferation of writing and communication it spawned. Indeed, our identities as modern individuals are supported by a vast infrastructure of written communication. (Think of the myriad technologies of writing and record-keeping that sustain the modern university.) While it remains to be seen how radically electronic media will transform the traditional institutions of print culture, our lives remain indelibly shaped by Europe's first great media revolution. This course will examine the social, cultural, religious, and political effects of the print revolution between 1450 and 1800. How did Europeans experience the transition from manuscript to print culture? How did individual authors handle a flood of new and often disorienting information? How did new media transform conceptions of selfhood and individual identity? One goal of asking such questions is to gain greater perspective on the current digital revolution and its effects on our everyday lives. Class sessions will consist of both presentation and discussion. Readings will include both primary and secondary sources; we will examine what today's historians have to say about the early modern media revolution and what contemporary observers thought about the changes taking place in their own day. Students will be responsible for reading response assignments, in-class presentations, and a final paper.
The aims of this course are to explore diverse religious understandings of children and childhood and to reexamine our own attitudes and obligations to children. The course first examines contemporary challenges facing children and families both here and abroad and then addresses some of the following fundamental questions: How do various religious traditions speak about the nature and status of children? How do they view obligations of parents and the community to children? How do they speak about the moral and spiritual formation of children? What kinds of religious practices do they emphasize for passing on a particular faith tradition to children? How do they view the responsibilities of children and their role in religious rituals and communal life? How are leaders of various religious traditions responding to current national and international debates about child wellbeing and children’s rights? Participants in the course will read and discuss selected classical and contemporary texts on these and other related questions. Students will also carry out a research project on a topic of their choice. Requirements include active participation in class discussion; two short papers on common reading assignments (4-5 pages each); and a final research paper (10 pages). This course will be of special interest to those students interested in marriage and the family; childhood studies; the moral and spiritual development of children; theological and ethical perspectives on children; youth and family ministry; children’s rights; and child advocacy.
This course will explore the contemporary contours and historical roots of several key areas in American political and legal debate. We shall focus on three issues: race, religious liberty, and gay and lesbian rights, examining each through a combination of historical and philosophical analysis, political speeches, court decisions, and legal scholarship. Of course, any of these three issue areas could have a semester devoted to it alone: our larger goal is to think together about how historical, social scientific, and other sorts of evidence figure into the process by which we understand political and legal debates in our own time. In each case, our aim will be to gain a deeper and more nuanced understanding of the current legal-political debates by more fully appreciating the way that those debates have emerged and developed over the course of American history. Readings will include selections from the following: We will also read and discuss both the arguments and the holdings
of (at least) these cases, and likely others as well: As this is a cross-listed seminar with Christ College and the Law School, there will be several different sets of course requirements, depending on students’ registration status. In consultation with the instructor, each student will develop his or her approach to one of the three issue areas outlined above.
This course explores a variety of secular and religious practices
like atonement, reparation, compensation, reconciliation, forgiveness,
history writing, and various criminal and civil procedures that
are undertaken in order to right wrongs or to “set the record
straight” or to remedy past injustices or to compensate for
negligence. We will ask ourselves whether “making things right”
is ever fully possible, and if so in what contexts or domains—legal,
moral, spiritual, historical. We will also ask ourselves whether,
even if it is impossible to “make things right” in a
given instance, it is nevertheless important to make the effort.
Course materials will include legal documents, theological treatises,
novels like Ian McEwan’s Atonement, plays like Shakespeare’s
The Merchant of Venice, works that are hard to classify,
such as Norman Maclean’s Young Men and Fire, and
films like The Mission and In the Bedroom. 325D: Dostoevsky’s World. Cr. 3-4. Mr. Olmsted. The focus of this course is on Dostoevsky’s fiction and its context in 19th-century Russia. The first half of the semester will be spent in reading Dostoevsky’s shorter fiction, e.g., “Notes from the Underground” and “The Gambler,” as well as selections from writers who influenced him, e.g., Balzac, Gogol and Lermontov. The second half of the semester will be devoted to reading The Brothers Karamazov and some of the literary criticism on this work. Requirements, in addition to class participation, will include one long essay (approximately 10 pages) and two short essays (approximately 5 pages). Probable Readings: Possible Readings:
This course will introduce students to important modern and postmodern attitudes and practices focused on the human body. The course begins with an examination of young adult women’s “body practices,” then looks at male sexuality and concludes with a scrutiny of the process of dying. Our concerns will range over current discourses about eating disorders, virginity, clothing styles, body images, intergenerational mentoring, pornography, bisexuality, circumcision, domestic violence, AIDS, cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease and other topics. The connecting theme among these different topics is the “invented” aspect of not only discourse about the body but our actual experience of it. As even the briefest survey of body practices indicates, they vary enormously over different time periods, from one culture to another, between generations, among different races and ethnicities, from one religious group to another, etc. Thus, to cite one example, “French kissing” is unfavorably regarded by most French people while one Brazilian tribe regards kissing of any kind as “a disgusting practice that contaminates the mouth” (Kimmel 68). Despite these differences, however, the “invented” quality of bodily practices does not mean that they cannot operate with coercive power. Thus, “inventions” may seem arbitrary in terms of their origins but can function in compulsory ways. Our task will be to understand how the body came to be invented and in what ways the invented body serves us usefully or, contrarily, is in need of re-invention. Requirements: In addition to regular attendance, the course requires three papers of four to six pages in length. The first two papers may, with the instructor’s permission, be rewritten in the event of a grade of B or lower; rewrites must be completed within two weeks and will be returned without comment. Written work should observe the Honor Code and sources, including Internet sources, must be indicated. Good participation in class discussions will have a positive effect on the final grade. I encourage the taking of class notes and keeping a journal that records your impressions of the readings—this habit makes it easier to prepare for discussion and to begin the paper-writing process. Students who opt to write a Senior Honors Thesis will not be required to write the third paper. A rough draft of approximately ten pages will be due at the beginning of the twelfth week of class. Texts may include: 375A: The Scholar in Society. Cr. 3. Mr. Trost. The Scholar in Society seminar is designed for students applying for nationally competitive post-graduate scholarships and fellowships such as Fulbright, Marshall, Mitchell, Truman, Rhodes, Rotary Ambassadorial, Jack Kent Cooke, and National Science Foundation Scholarships. The course aims to: Students must be actively pursuing at least one post-baccalaureate competitive scholarship or fellowship. Although the timeline of the scholarship application process drives much of the course structure, the seminar is designed to provide significant independent benefit to students—it is not simply an administrative “scholarship prep” course. Students will learn to write polished personal statements, effectively summarize and present information on public affairs, and become more adept and comfortable with social etiquette and protocol. Required Texts:
The “TA Course” provides a unique opportunity for both teaching and learning to selected CC seniors. As more advanced and mature students, the Tutorial Assistants are well equipped to introduce first year students to great humanities texts as well as to the general atmosphere and expectations of Christ College. As students about to complete their undergraduate careers, seniors have an opportunity to return to some texts they read as freshmen, as well as some new texts, and reconsider them in light of their further skills and knowledge. Most discover that preparation and teaching of the texts requires a new and deeper appreciation of these fundamental materials of study in the humanities. Each TA works with a small group of freshmen on Monday of each week, introducing them to the text under consideration. The TAs meet as a group for presentation and discussion of the texts on the previous Thursday evening and are expected to attend CC Symposium (R 6:30-7:30 pm). Each TA is responsible for a weekly written preparation of the discussion questions assigned for Monday’s class, and for a one-page self-evaluation of that class. TAs also read and comment on freshman paragraphs prepared for class. TAs will also receive evaluations from their freshmen at mid-term and at the end of the semester.
Note: All Senior Students, especially those who are planning to apply to graduate schools are strongly advised to take CC 499 in the fall. Registration is restricted to students who will graduate in December 2008 or May or August 2009. Christ College Senior Colloquium provides a capstone, integrative experience for Christ College Associates and Scholars. Through class conversations, readings, and written work, students will be led to give shape to the substance of their lives through autobiographical narrative, and they will be led to reflect upon the character and meaning of their future work. The practical dimensions of these reflections will include attention to the transition from college. Required text: Summer Session I-2008 300AX: Contemporary British Theatre. Cr. 3. Mr. Orchard.
(Cross-listed with THTR 390X.) Come travel to England with theatre professor Dr. Lee Orchard and learn about some of the most exciting plays currently being performed on the London stage. Dr. Orchard has taught this study abroad course for many years and has developed a class that features daily trips to the theatre, including playhouses on the West End, the Royal National Theatre, pub and fringe theatres, the Donmar Warehouse, the Globe, and Stratford-on-Avon. Programmed activities consist of play attendance, classroom discussion, and field trips to theatre and non-theatre related sites (such as the Houses of Parliament, Warrick Castle, the Museum of London, etc.). Course evaluation will be based upon participation, two 3-5 page papers, and a final exam. Special fees include transportation, lodging, field trips, and ticket costs. Contact Dr. Lee Orchard, chair of the theatre department, for further details.
Hangzhou, China International Study Center (Cross-listed with ED 490CHA, EAST 390CHA, COMM 490Ch, SOC 390CH,
and SOCW 391CH.) Participants leave for Shanghai, China, on May 19 or 20 and return from Beijing to Chicago on June 24 or 25. The program starts with a two-day tour of Shanghai before arriving at Hangzhou, the provincial capital of Zhejiang, where all classes will be held. There will be four full weeks of classes with several group field trips. The program ends with a three-day visit to Beijing, the capital of China, before returning to the U.S.
Return to Christ
College : Curriculum |
