Humanities Course Descriptions
HUM 101AA - Prof. Elizabeth B. Cox
In this course we will read and study essays, poetry, and short stories to better understand how to write in each category. We will study works by Annie Dillard, George Orwell, Wendell Berry, Richard Ford, and Plato to determine how each writer moves toward a point, or realization, or a profound insight. We will examine poetry by William Stafford, Mary Oliver, Pablo Neruda to discover how to enlarge an image into an idea, or a simple situation into a larger understanding. And we will read short stories by William Faulkner, Ursula LeGuin, Andre Dubus, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Louise Erdrich to examine the ways a story about human interaction may reveal larger truths about the human condition.
HUM 101B - Prof. Carol B. Wilson
Family. . . For many, this word evokes feelings of warmth, security, and love. It is a solid foundation upon which people build their lives. For others, family summons feelings of rejection, hurt, and failure, and for them, family becomes a net from which they must escape. In this seminar, we will read twentieth-century novels, plays, and short fiction which take family relationships as a principal concern. Works will include Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. As we examine traditional and non-traditional families, our challenge will be to analyze ourselves as well as the characters we encounter. Exploring different conceptions of the family will lead us through a wide range of topics: for example, the relationship of the individual to the family, the expectations held by and for men and women within the family, and the role that a family's own ”fictions” play in a person's life. In all, the focus of our research, discussions, readings, and other assignments will be on our values and ideas as we draw conclusions about the characters in the literature we read.
HUM 101BB - Prof. John E. Lane (Linked with Biology 104A as half of learning community available to non-science majors)
Water makes up more than 70% of all living things and covers 75% of the earth’s surface. Water also stirs the human imagination as a powerful and mysterious presence. Therefore, water serves as a natural connection to integrate scientific and humanistic inquiry. This proposal from Wofford College fosters cross-disciplinary collaboration in the development and implementation of a two-course module linking a course entitled “Water and Culture” with a course entitled Bio 104A “The Nature of Water.” This special two-course "water module" will be developed and taught by a team consisting of two faculty members and two undergraduate teaching assistants.
In “Water and Culture” we will consider water from many angles and work across disciplines to discuss why this "element" is so universal as myth, metaphor, and image. What role has water played in the human imagination over time? Some of the texts and works of the imagination we will consider are Genesis from the Old Testament, Henry David Thoreau’s Walden, Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Barry Lopez’s River Notes, the work of Simon Schama, the poetry of Wordsworth, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, A.R. Ammons, and Gary Snyder. Among other sources to be included are the paintings of Thomas Cole, and the “water music” of Handel and the Grand Canyon suite of the Paul Winter Consort. Several films will be discussed as well, including Deliverance, The River, and A River Runs Through It.
HUM 101C - Prof. Anne B. Rodrick
“Sensation fiction” as a genre relied on evoking “sensations” in the reader, who vicariously lived through such tribulations as madness, wrongful incarceration, missing heirs, wills gone astray, and wicked relations galore. As such, the sensation novel was a forerunner of the gothic as well as of the mystery novel. But the sensation novel was also a critique of convention and social expectations, especially in its presentation of women, foreigners, and others who exercised little conventional power. And because most sensation fiction was written by women, critics were often horrified at the combination of bad behavior within the novel and the questionable moral values of the authors themselves. This humanities course will look at several sensation novels and the reviews and essays written about the phenomenon of the sensation novel to examine how this apparently frivolous and very popular genre could both undermine traditional social codes and, at the same time, invite extraordinarily harsh criticism.
Readings will include Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret; Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone; Sheridan LeFanu, Uncle Silas; a collection of shorter sensation fiction and the reviews and essays from the period; and evaluations of the genre by 21st century historians and literary critics.
HUM 101CC - Prof. Karen Warren
Images play an important role in shaping our value systems, and as Americans, we are constantly bombarded with pictures urging us to think a certain way about ourselves and the world around us. These images take different forms, ranging from pictures and billboards to the images created by words and to those found on the big screen. This course deals specifically with the images of America given to us by writers and moviemakers. We will examine American works of literature and explore the effects of their appropriation by Hollywood. In doing so, we will discuss the "picture" of America espoused by the authors and the ways this "picture" changes when the works are transformed into movies. By examining the value systems authors and filmmakers endorse in their works, we can come to better understand the ways our own image of America has been shaped by both internal and external forces.
HUM 101D - Prof. Deno P. Trakas
Human conflicts--the problems that plague us, the values that confuse us--are the focus of this seminar, and students in this class will be reading, writing, and talking about the ways in which these conflicts and their resolutions are presented in the modern short story. Although the course will include a review of grammar and practice in expository writing, its main emphasis will be on reading, discussing, writing, and writing about short stories. We will study some of the best contemporary short stories written in America, some funny, some heartbreaking, from famous writers such as Thomas McGuane and the not-so-famous such as Aleksander Hemon. Each student will be expected to write expository prose essays as well as an original story. Previous experience in creative writing is not mandatory.
HUM 101 DD - Prof. Karen Warren
Images play an important role in shaping our value systems, and as Americans, we are constantly bombarded with pictures urging us to think a certain way about ourselves and the world around us. These images take different forms, ranging from pictures and billboards to the images created by words and to those found on the big screen. This course deals specifically with the images of America given to us by writers and moviemakers. We will examine American works of literature and explore the effects of their appropriation by Hollywood. In doing so, we will discuss the "picture" of America espoused by the authors and the ways this "picture" changes when the works are transformed into movies. By examining the value systems authors and filmmakers endorse in their works, we can come to better understand the ways our own image of America has been shaped by both internal and external forces.
HUM 101E - Prof. Mark S. Byrnes
Throughout the semester, we will explore the idea of censorship, reading literature and viewing films that either have been banned or that have been the subject of censorship attempts. In addition to discussing the targets of censorship themselves, we will also examine the goals of those seeking to censor—What are their motivations? What are the sources of the desire to ban? What social/historical/political circumstances create the conditions for censorship? When, if ever, is censorship a valid response? Texts may include George Orwell, Animal Farm or 1984; Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five; Voltaire, Candide; and J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye.
HUM 101F - Prof. Natalie S. Grinnell
What happens when human beings come face to face with the supernatural? In this course, we will explore some literary encounters between human beings and the divine, demonic or simply inexplicable and consider what such encounters reveal about the nature of humanity and the cosmology it embraces. Readings will include Satan in Goray by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Small Gods by Terry Pratchett and Angels in America by Tony Kushner.
HUM 101G - Prof. Carol B. Wilson
Family. . . For many, this word evokes feelings of warmth, security, and love. It is a solid foundation upon which people build their lives. For others, family summons feelings of rejection, hurt, and failure, and for them, family becomes a net from which they must escape. In this seminar, we will read twentieth-century novels, plays, and short fiction which take family relationships as a principal concern. Works will include Louise Erdrich's Love Medicine, Gloria Naylor’s Mama Day, and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. As we examine traditional and non-traditional families, our challenge will be to analyze ourselves as well as the characters we encounter. Exploring different conceptions of the family will lead us through a wide range of topics: for example, the relationship of the individual to the family, the expectations held by and for men and women within the family, and the role that a family's own ”fictions” play in a person's life. In all, the focus of our research, discussions, readings, and other assignments will be on our values and ideas as we draw conclusions about the characters in the literature we read.
HUM 101H - Prof. Alan D. Chalmers
What stirs some of us to move on? Does the urge derive from what lies behind or ahead? What are the ethical implications of an unwillingness or inability to settle, or to stay put? This course focuses on a selection of fictional and non-fictional texts, including films, to explore the experiences of various nomads, pilgrims, refugees, misfits, adventurers and other travelers. Films will include The Straight Story, Kings of the Road, and Thelma and Louise; writings will include Ursula Le Guin’s "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," Eudora Welty’s "A Worn Path," Lars Eighner’s "Travels with Lizbeth," Jack Karourac’s "On the Road," William Faulkner’s "Barn Burning," and J.M. Coetzee’s Dusklands.
HUM 101J - Prof. Tracy J. Revels
In the course of 56 short stories and 4 novels, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gave the world its most well known fictional character, the great detective Sherlock Holmes. He also gave students of the Humanities a wonderful springboard for considering a wide variety of topics and issues. In reading the stories, we find not only mystery and adventure, but meditations on good and evil, debates between law and justice, insights into human strengths and weaknesses, questions of romance and love, and---perhaps most important for freshmen---a study in the nature of true friendship. While reading the Sherlockian canon and learning more about the real world of Holmes’ creator, we will also ask questions about our own world and the mysteries that surround the first-year experience at Wofford.
HUM 101K - Prof. Clayton J. Whisnant
Since Plato, a popular subject among writers and intellectuals in the West has been the human potential for creating novel kinds of communities. Originally, the goal was to conceive of new social and political organizations that would both provide for our basic needs and bring out the best in mankind. In the twentieth century, however, more and more writers have occupied themselves with nightmarish visions of society overrun by technology and tyrannical governments, which take away everything that makes life worth living. This course will compare a number of these utopian and dystopian works—Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Bellamy’s Looking Backwards, and Zamyatin’s We—in order to think about different understandings of what we human beings require, both physically and spiritually. In the process, students will consider different views of human nature, alternate conceptions of the relationship between society and the individual, and ultimately questions about the value of human life.
HUM 101M - Prof. Dennis M. Dooley
The South has held onto its regional identity and culture longer than any other section of the United States. In addition, in this century, it has produced a remarkable body of literature which both celebrates and criticizes the Southern way of life. The tensions within that literature are reflective of the conflict between the values of the progressive, industrialized New South and the values of the traditional, agrarian Old South. But great literature not only addresses itself to the particular, but moves from the particular to the universal. It is about man: what he is; what he should be; what he must be. This seminar will examine the South as seen through the eyes of her writers in the hope that this regional examination will reveal something more universal: a vision of the Good Life. Beginning with I’ll Take My Stand, the Nashville Agrarians critique of the New South, we will move to such writers as William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, James Dickey, Lee Smith and Eudora Welty.
HUM 101N - Prof. Nancy M. Williams
This seminar will focus on the problem of human evil across the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, history and literature. We will cover a wide range of topics; for instance, the difference between wrongdoing and evil, the nature of social conformity and conventional evil, and how human evil manifests itself in literature. How does evildoing spring from a combination of character, situation, and social structure? Texts will Stanley Milgram’s Obedience, Elie Wiesel’s Night, and P. Oliner’s Toward a Caring Society.
HUM 101P -Prof. Alan D. Chalmers
What stirs some of us to move on? Does the urge derive from what lies behind or ahead? What are the ethical implications of an unwillingness or inability to settle, or to stay put? This course focuses on a selection of fictional and non-fictional texts, including films, to explore the experiences of various nomads, pilgrims, refugees, misfits, adventurers and other travelers. Films will include The Straight Story, Kings of the Road, and Thelma and Louise; writings will include Ursula Le Guin’s "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas," Eudora Welty’s "A Worn Path," Lars Eighner’s "Travels with Lizbeth," Jack Karourac’s "On the Road," William Faulkner’s "Barn Burning," and J.M. Coetzee’s Dusklands.
HUM 101Q - Prof. Mark A. Ferguson (Linked with Physics 104A as half of learning community available to non-science majors)
This course, part of a learning community linked to PHYS 104A (Prof. Steve Zides), addresses two disparate fields of inquiry from two distinct perspectives. For part of the semester we consider the theatre of physics, reading plays about science and scientists in order to evaluate both their literary and scientific merit. Works by both ancient and contemporary authors (Aristotle, Brecht, Sophocles, Stoppard, Dürrenmatt, etc.)—about a variety of scientists (Galileo, Newton, Einstein, Heisenberg)—will be discussed. We then turn our attention to the physics of theatre, exploring the physical properties of lighting, sound, and other elements of theatrical practice.
HUM 101R - Prof. Katherine J. Jones
The word "work" conjures up lots of images and feelings in people. Why is it that we work?
And how do the liberal arts apply to the "real world" anyway? Why should a business or biology major care about religion and philosophy? Why should a painter or poet care about what happens in corporate boardrooms? There is often talk among academics that a college education shouldn't be confused with "job training". What does this mean? How might the world look if we thought about the liberal arts as job training? In this course, we will talk about the relationship among the courses we take and the different facets of our lives. Among the texts we will read are Robert Reich's I'll Be Short: Essentials for a Decent Working Society, Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, and excerpts from Deborah Tannen's Talking From 9 to 5: Women and Men at Work. We will also look at a few films that depict conflicts between individual values and those of the workplace.
HUM 101S - Prof. John M. Ware
In this course, we will analyze literary and visual texts that represent the need for war, the experience of war, and war in the future. We’ll begin by analyzing speeches and wartime posters for the ways in which they seek to persuade their audience of the need for a particular course of action. In the second part of the course, we’ll read Hemingway’s In Our Time (1925) and watch Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987)—two works that represent the effects of war on various characters. In the third part of the course, we’ll read Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles (1950) and watch Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997) in order to consider the way in which science fiction offers writers and filmmakers an opportunity to critique various aspects of societies that engage in war. Although we’ll address questions such as the need for and the costs of engaging in war, we’ll primarily be concerned with the way in which different texts represent war to different effects.
HUM 101U - Prof. Amy H. Sweitzer
The course will examine torture and the values which are threatened or upheld by the use of torture in a modern political context. Readings will include selections from Edward Peters’ Torture and Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain, as well as from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago. We will also read contributions to the current (post 9/11) debate on torture taking place in the US, together with various legal definitions of torture.
HUM 101W - Prof. C. Michael Curtis
Many of our most serious and talented writers have published short stories dealing in one way or another with religious experience, broadly defined. Some write from the perspective of official practitioners (ministers, priests, rabbis); others speak as non-clerical participants. Students in this course will read works of reflection, memoir, and history, and will take up, in turn, issues such as redemption, atonement, discipleship, loving concern, efficacy of Prayer, the obligations and expectations of church membership [or clerical leadership], and fiction as a vehicle for spiritual concerns. Authors will include both fiction and non-fiction writers such as Simone Weil, Dorothy Day, and Reinhold Niebuhr.
HUM 101X - Prof. Sally A. Hitchmough
John Dryden wrote:
Great wits are sure to madness near allied
And thin partitions do their bounds divide.
In this course we will consider the interesting relationship between creativity and madness through a variety of texts. Among many others, writers include Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, Guy de Maupassant and Henry James.
HUM 101Y - Prof. Jim R. Neighbors
It’s not too much of a stretch to see the Puritans, the Cold War, and what many call “postmodernism” as examples of paranoia run amok – of “psychosis characterized by delusions of persecution or grandeur” and/or “a tendency on the part of an individual or group toward irrational suspiciousness of others” (Webster’s). The same holds true when you understand paranoia philosophically as well – as a problem of knowledge. That is, when Americans ask basic questions of what makes an American – what distinguishes an American or American culture from other people or cultures – the answers often suggest paranoid thinking. We’ll explore the psychological and philosophical notions of paranoia in American literature and culture by reading and watching exemplary texts and movies, which may include The Captivity Narrative of Mary Rowlandson, Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Assata Shakur’s Assata, and Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Rebel Without a Cause, The Searchers, and The Conversation.
HUM 101Z - Prof. Christine S. Dinkins
Most of us grow up believing that life has meaning, that Truth is attainable and that Reality is knowable. But what is the meaning of life? Where does this meaning come from, and how can we be sure of it? What is the purpose of our lives, as individuals, as a society, as human beings? And is the Truth out there, about anything? And if so, will we ever know it? What is Real, and who gets to decide the answer to that question? In this course, we will study drama, religious texts, fiction, film, and philosophical works to explore the above questions. Works to be studied include: The Book of Genesis¸ Quinn’s Ishmael, and the films The Matrix and Memento.