Course descriptions

In most of the world, multiple therapeutic traditions co-exist, sometimes symbiotically and at others competitively. Many societies have radically different ideas and practices concerning health, the body and disease than in the US. And these ideas and practices are contested both within these societies and between different societies in an emerging global world. In this writing seminar, we will examine several contested topics within the field of medical anthropology in Haiti, Ghana, Eastern Europe, Japan, India, Southern Africa and the US: holistic versus ontological approaches towards disease, the politics of suffering, religious healing and contestation, the meaning(s) of organ donation, biomedicine under conditions of poverty, female circumcision, the ethics of clinical trials in the developing world, and finally, HIV/AIDS. This course is designed to improve students? writing skills via peer review, multiple drafts and revisions of essays, and midterm and final portfolios.

English has emerged as a global language, shared by billions of native and non-native speakers across a range of contexts from international politics to popular culture. But is this, as some have claimed, a form of linguistic imperialism or does this world language attempt to realize the perennial dream of a universal language, universal understanding? Additionally, who controls English? How do multilingual speakers negotiate and contribute to English? And should we speak perhaps, more properly, of Englishes? This course will engage in dialogue with the history, legacy, and experience of the English language itself as we sharpen our rhetorical skills and practice of American English college writing and research. We will examine what constitutes a global language, how English attained its current standing, and whether this will?or should?continue.

Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg famously told an interviewer in 2010 that privacy was a social norm that had ?evolved.? Nevertheless, scholars, pundits, technologists, and policymakers continue to ponder issues of privacy in an online era. As our lives are increasingly mediated through online applications that share our personal information, questions about what we are and are not willing to reveal emerge almost daily. And while concerns about media and privacy are nothing new, social network sites, search engines, and online commerce mean that new threats to exposure are often, at least in part, the results of our own behavior. How much privacy can we expect or should we demand? In this class our goal will be to sift through the sensationalism and hype to write critically about new media and privacy. Working with scholarship in internet studies, this course is to help you develop as a writer by improving your knowledge of rhetoric, reasoning, research, and synthesis.

Writers, teachers, and pundits often question the impact of digital technologies on our language and literacy skills. Pessimists go online and see the decline of the written word, a gradual weakening of standards that threatens the knowledge and understanding produced through written exchange. Optimistic observers suggest we are witnessing the emergence of new kinds of literacy and knowledge production: collaborative writing and crowdsourcing supplant single authorship and expert opinion, reputation systems and ?likes? usurp the role of publishers and peer reviewers. In this class, we will explore the cultural impact of digital technology as our uses of the written word evolve and change. Are text messages and status updates writing? Have our definitions of authorship and credibility changed? Is it still possible, or even desirable, to ?own our words,? or has the notion been forever altered by a world of tweets, wikis, downloads, and the <FWD> button?

Home: at its simplest, home is the physical space of residence, the place we return to regularly, and where our belongings are stored. More broadly, though, home is the feeling of familiarity, comfort, and belonging. It is both something we are born into and something we have to create for ourselves. In this class, we will think about the idea of home as the site of identity creation as well as how the concept of home overlaps with political entities like city, state, and, nation. By studying selected essays and poems as well as the film The Wizard of Oz, and guided by Jan Duyvendak's sociological study on home, this class will encourage students to explore the different meanings of home and think about the politics of identity.