COURSES

This course will examine the morality of the domination of other species for human interests: should non-human species have rights, or should we only have to show concern for their welfare. Pursuing these issues will involve disparate areas in philosophy (theoretical and applied ethics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, philosophy of biology) applied to the use of non-humans in agriculture, biology, psychology, and medicine. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI (E) 4 credits
Albert Mosley (Philosophy)
Offered Fall 2012 TTH 9 a.m.–10:20 a.m.

Clues to over 500 million years of earth history can be found in rocks and sediments near Smith College. Students in this course will attempt to decipher this history by careful examination of field evidence. Class meetings will take place principally outdoors at interesting geological localities around the Connecticut Valley. Participants will prepare regular reports based on their observations and reading, building to a final paper on the geologic history of the area. The course normally includes a weekend field trip to Cape Cod. Enrollment limited to 17 first-year students. WI {N} 4 credits
John Brady (Geosciences)
Offered Fall 2012 M 7:30 p.m.–8:30 p.m., W 1 p.m.–5 p.m.

If God is perfectly good, wise, and powerful, why is there evil? For atheists, the problem of evil is a favored means of arguing against the existence of the God of the Abrahamic traditions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). For theists, reconciling God’s existence with evil is one of the main challenges of faith. This course examines the problem of evil and related questions: What is the nature of human free will? Would a perfectly good God create hell, or create species through natural selection? Texts include philosophical and religious works, novels, paintings, poems, and movies. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI (E) 4 credits
Samuel Ruhmkorff (Philosophy)
Offered Fall 2012 TTH 9 a.m.–10:20 a.m.

A cultural and political history of one of the Western world’s most enduringly important cities, from the perspectives of comparative religion, literature, history, and contemporary Middle Eastern politics. Topics include the centrality of Jerusalem in the holy texts of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; urban development and transformation of Jerusalem under successive empires and rulers; representations of Jerusalem through the ages in maps, art, poetry, travelogues, and memoir; the symbolic value of the city as sacred space in the contemporary conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. In which ways does the relationship between faith, myth, and nationalism find itself intertwined in the ongoing struggle over “who owns Jerusalem”? Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {L/H} 4 credits
Justin Cammy (Jewish Studies)
Offered Fall 2012 MW 1:10 p.m.-2:30 p.m.

What does the term "Asian American" mean? What difference might it make to grow up in the United States of America as an Asian American? This seminar will explore Asian American coming-of-age narratives from the early 20th century to the present. We will read novels, short stories, poems, plays, autobiographies, and films about childhood and adolescence, relations with parents, transracial adoption, dating, and travel to countries of heritage. We also will consult theories of Asian American identity from the field of psychology. Through class discussion, oral presentations, and writing, we will come to be more thoughtful and articulate about Asian American identities in particular and coming of age in general. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {L} 4 credits
Floyd Cheung (English Language and Literature)
Offered Fall 2012 MWF 10 a.m.–10:50 a.m.

As one early currency in the global trade of food, the spices in curry have sustained empires and built hybrid cultures. The circulation of food and food cultures has shaped normative gender and sexual relations and influenced how we racialize work. In South Asia, environmental questions about how to cultivate foods sustainably and how to distribute food equitably are vital components of the food security movement. In this course, we will study histories of curry in Empire, watch comedy sketches, read novels and investigate social movements around agriculture and food allocation in South Asia and the South Asian diaspora. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {S} 4 credits
Elisabeth Armstrong (Study of Women and Gender)
Offered Fall 2012 MW 9 a.m.–10:20 a.m.

This course explores interdisciplinary approaches to the search for life in the Universe by using the Earth as a natural laboratory. We will address fundamental questions surrounding the formation of our solar system and the first appearance of life, the definition of life and how we can search for it elsewhere, and the biases we introduce by using Earth as a model system. The goal of this class is to present a multidisciplinary view of exobiology by integrating geology, chemistry, biology, astronomy, and physics. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {N} 4 credits
Sara Pruss (Geosciences)
Offered Fall 2012 MW 9 a.m.–10:20 a.m.

How have women in the Americas understood defining moments in life? We will read fictional and autobiographical narratives that seek to understand different kinds of turning points: coming of age, coming out, coming to freedom, coming to consciousness. We will consider turning points in history (migrations, internment, war, civil rights and the women’s movements) as well as personal turning points (falling in love, leaving home, resisting oppression) and ask how history and memory, the political and the personal define each other. We will ask how these stories can help us understand and tell stories about turning points in our times and lives. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. Counts toward the Study of Women and Gender major. WI {L} 4 credits
Susan Van Dyne (Study of Women and Gender)
Offered Fall 2011 MWF 11 a.m.–12:10 p.m.

Kyoto is acclaimed by Japanese and foreigners alike as one of the world’s great cities, the embodiment in space and spirit of Japan’s rich cultural heritage. It is also a thriving modern metropolis of over a million people, as concerned with its future as it is proud of its past. In this course students will study Kyoto past and present, its culture and people, so as to better understand how it became the city it is today. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students.
WI {H} 4 credits
Thomas H. Rohlich (East Asian Languages and Literatures)
Offered Fall 2012 MWF 9 a.m.–9:50 a.m.

An introduction to the elements, history, and functions of criticism. How do reviewers form their critical responses to theatre and dance performances as well as to films? The seminar will explore different critical perspectives, such as psychoanalytic, feminist, political, and intercultural approaches. The students will attend live performances and film and video screenings, and will write their own reviews and critical responses. Seminar discussions and student presentations will be complemented by visits and conversations with invited critics and artists. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {A/L} 4 credits
Kiki Gounaridou (Theatre)
Offered Fall 2012 MW 2:40 p.m.–4 p.m.

This seminar explores the history of the Northampton State Hospital, its impact on the city of Northampton, and the current planning process around the redevelopment of the site. The former Northampton State Hospital grounds lie adjacent to Smith College. The facility was opened in the mid-1800s as the third hospital for the insane in Massachusetts. At its height, a century later, it had over 2000 patients and over 500 employees. In 1978, a federal district court consent decree ordered the increased use of community-based treatment as one part of a process of deinstitutionalizing the mentally ill in Western Massachusetts. In 1993 the hospital was officially closed. Subsequently, 120 acres of land and 45 buildings on the “campus” were made available by the state for reuse and future development. As a case study of socio-economic change and public policy, this seminar will explore the history of the Northampton State Hospital, deinstitutionalization, the hospital’s closing, and the ongoing development of the site. Students will develop background and skills, including map reading, site visits, and historical research, to appreciate both the past and the future of the hospital grounds. Enrollment limited to 16 first year students. WI {H/S} 4 credits
Thomas Riddell (Economics)
Offered Fall 2012 MWF 11 a.m.–12:10 p.m.

This seminar will explore lions from many perspectives. We will look at how lions are viewed by artists, scientists, science fiction writers, directors of documentary films, and movie producers. We will also compare different kinds of science fiction and different kinds of mammals, exploring the science of fiction and the fiction of science. Readings will be by OS Card, CJ Cherryh, J Crowley, G Schallar, and others. Enrollment limited to 16 first year students. WI, Quantitative Skills, {N} 4 credits
Virginia Hayssen (Biological Sciences)
Offered Fall 2012 TTH 9 a.m.–10:20 a.m.

An introduction to the essential physics every world leader needs to know. Emphasis is on the conceptual understanding and application of physics relevant to real-world problems rather than mathematical computation. Topics include energy, power and explosives, rockets and satellites, radioactivity, nuclear power, and nuclear weapons, electric power generation and transmission, medical imaging, night vision, radar, and x-ray detection, earthquakes and waves, the earth’s energy balance and global warming, transistors, lasers and other quantum devices, and the critical role special and general relativity play in the functioning of GPS navigational devices. (E) WI {N} 4 credits
Nathanael Fortune (Physics)
Offered Fall 2012 MWF 9 a.m.–9:50 a.m.

Women have set forth on journeys of exploration across the centuries, stepping into the unknown, challenging tradition, expanding the world. The story of women’s exploration is largely unknown. Who were these women? What does it feel like to go into the unknown? How did they plan their trips, find their way? What dangers did they encounter? In this seminar we will survey several famous explorations and some not so famous ones. Students will work with historical documents, study navigation (including celestial), and develop their ability to make oral and written presentations. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI Quantitative Skills. 4 credits
James Johnson (Exercise and Sport Studies)
Offered Fall 2012 MW 1:10 p.m.–2:30 p.m.

Reacting to the Past is an interdisciplinary, historical role-playing course, consisting, typically, of two or three games from a list of about twenty games now in use. Students read from elaborate game books which place them in moments of heightened historical tension. The political and intellectual backgrounds are explained, game rules and elements are laid out, and supplementary readings are supplied. The class becomes a public body; students, working from role descriptions, become particular persons from the period and/or members of factional alliances. The purpose is to advance a policy agenda and achieve victory objectives by speech-making, cross-table debate, coalition building, bargaining, spying, and conspiracy. After a few set-up lectures, the game begins, and the students are in charge; the instructor retires to a corner of the room and functions as gamemaster/adviser. Deviations from the actual history, which some students will be trying to accomplish, are corrected in a post-mortem session. Students write papers, which are all game- and role-specific, but take no exams. Games used recently at Smith include: “The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C.”; “Confucianism and the Succession Crisis of the Wanli Emperor”; “The Trial of Anne Hutchinson”; “Henry VIII and the Reformation Parliament”; “Rousseau, Burke, and the Revolution in France, 1791”; “The Trial of Galileo”; and “Defining a Nation: Gandhi and the Indian Subcontinent on the Eve of Independence, 1945.” Watch a video of this class... WI {H} 4 credits
Offered Fall 2012
Sections:
Section 1: Daniel Gardner (History and East Asian Studies)
enrollment limited to 18 first-year students; TTH 1 p.m.–2:50 p.m.
Section 2: Pat Coby (Government); enrollment limited to 25 first-year students; MW 7:30 p.m.–9 p.m.

This course calls us outdoors, to close observation of the natural world, practiced on the Smith campus and in the Connecticut River Valley. About half our time will be given to field trips and independent exploration, to noticing and recording what we see, to asking questions about how and why we see; and the rest of our time to engaging with the work of other observers, such as Darwin, Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Barry Lopez, and Edward Abbey. Students will keep journals, present their observations in a variety of forms, and prepare a final project that may involve other media besides the written word and engage other periods besides the present. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {L} 4 credits
Sharon Seelig (English Language and Literature)
Offered Fall 2012 TTH 1 p.m.–2:50 p.m.

We will use a series of great 19th-century novels to explore a set of questions about the nature of individual freedom, and of the relation of that freedom — transgression, even — to social order and cohesion. The books are paired — two French, two Russian; two that deal with a woman's adultery, and two that focus on a young man's ambition — Balzac, Pere Goriot; Flaubert, Madame Bovary; Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment; Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (there are some additional readings in history, criticism, and political theory). Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {L} 4 credits
Michael Gorra (English Language and Literature)
Offered Fall 2012 MW 9 a.m.–10:20 a.m.

An introduction to several current issues in the area of Artificial Intelligence, and their potential future impact on society. We start by exploring the nature of intelligent behavior through the Turing Test and the Chinese Room argument. Deep philosophical questions are explored through the increasingly sophisticated game-playing capabilities of computers: checkers, chess, go. Next we turn to language: the challenges of machine translation, text-to-speech, and speech understanding. Then we investigate learning and discovery by computers, especially through neural networks, and genetic algorithms. Finally we explore robotics, from Roomba to autonomous vehicles. Here there are serious implications for labor (explored through the prediction of a technological “singularity”) as well as deep ethical issues. Prerequisites: Fluency with computers, including basic Web searching skills. Four years of high school mathematics recommended. No programming experience necessary. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {M} 4 credits
Alicea Wolfe (Computer Science)
Offered Fall 2012 TBA

The Norse colonies of Iceland and Greenland, and the attempted settlement of Vinland in North America, were the first European societies of the New World, revealing patterns of cultural conflict and adaptation that anticipated British colonization of the mid-Atlantic seaboard seven centuries later. We will compare the strengths and weaknesses of the medieval Icelandic Commonwealth, founded in 930, with the 1787 Constitution of the United States, both political systems facing serious crises within two generations. Our sources for these experimental communities are the oral memories of founding families preserved in the later Íslendingasögur ‘Sagas of Icelanders’ of the 13th century. WI {L} 4 credits
Craig Davis (English Language and Literature)
Offered Fall 2012 TTH 10:30 a.m.–11:50 a.m.

Could a Jane Austen heroine ever marry a servant? What notions about class or decorum dictate what seem to be choices of the heart? How are individual desires shaped or produced by social, historical and cultural forces, by dominant assumptions about race, class, gender, or sexuality? How do dominant love stories both reflect these assumptions, and actively create or legislate the boundaries of what may be desired? How may non-dominant (queer or interracial) love stories contest those boundaries, creating alternative narratives and possibilities? This course explores how notions of love, romance, marriage or sexual desire are structured by specific cultural and historical formations. We will closely analyze literature and film from a range of locations: British, American and postcolonial. We will also read some theoretical essays to provide conceptual tools for our analyses. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. This course can count towards the major in English, CLT or SWG. WI {L} 4 credits
Ambreen Hai (English Language & Literature)
Offered Fall 2012 WF 1:10 p.m.–2:30 p.m.

This course will examine various conceptions of creativity, emphasizing not only the role of the individual, but also the social and cultural context that surrounds the individual engaged in creative work. What characterizes a creative individual, product, or process? What can we learn by studying Creative Individuals and how they go about their work that can be applied to enhance our own personal creativity? We will examine a variety of creativity myths and test them by studying the peer-reviewed literature, and we will investigate how the concepts of creativity and innovation are related to and yet distinct from one another. Through careful case studies of individuals and institutions, we will examine the role of creativity in both problem solving as well as problem framing. Each student will have the opportunity to apply what she learns through a series of projects, presentations, and written assignments. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI 4 credits
Borjana Mikic (Engineering)
Offered Fall 2012 TTH 9 a.m.–10:20 a.m.

This writing-intensive First-Year Seminar will introduce students to the rebellious women who have changed the American social and political landscape through reform, mobilization, cultural interventions, and outright rebellion. Using Estelle Freedman’s No Turning Back on the history of feminisms as our primary text, we will chronicle the history of feminist ideas and movements, interweaving historical change with contemporary debate. This course will use a variety of sources as our “texts” in addition to Freedman and will rely heavily on primary sources from the Sophia Smith Collection. The intention of this seminar is threefold: 1) to provide an overview of feminist ideas and action throughout American history, 2) to introduce students to primary documents and research methods, and 3) to encourage reflection and discussion on current women’s issues. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. (E) WI {H/S} 4 credits
Kelly Anderson (Study of Women & Gender)
Offered Fall 2012 MW 9 a.m.–10:20 a.m.

A study of the transformation of Cleopatra, a competent Hellenistic ruler, into a historical myth, a staple of literature, and a cultural lens through which the political, aesthetic, and moral sensibilities of different eras have been focused. Study of Roman, Medieval, Renaissance, Orientalist, Postcolonial, and Hollywood Cleopatras with the larger goal of understanding how political and cultural forces shape all narratives, even those purporting to be objective. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {H/L} 4 credits
Nancy Shumate (Classics)
Offered Fall 2012 TTH 9 a.m.–10:20 a.m.

This course will focus on fragrant plants with emphasis on their science as well as their use and economic significance in different parts of the world. Throughout history aromatic plant materials have been utilized as cures, perfumes and flavorings, and their extensive use continues at the present. The chemistry, botany and bioactivities of these natural products will provide the scientific content for the course. Their consideration in historical and cultural contexts, and also their depiction in literature and in art will provide an interdisciplinary approach to the subject matter. The course will utilize the Smith College Botanic Gardens as a main resource; other resources will include the Rare Book Room, the Art Museum and the Science Center facilities. No prerequisites. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students.
WI {N} 4 credits
Lâle Aka Burk (Chemistry)
Offered Spring 2012 MW 1:10 p.m.–2:30 p.m.

Readings, discussions, and student projects will explore the transformation of a “Victorian” America into a “modernist” one by focusing on forms of expression and sites of conflict in 1925—the year of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Bessie Smith’s “St. Louis Blues,” Alain Locke’s The New Negro, Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, the Scopes evolution trial, and the emergence of powerful new ideas in the social sciences—to cite just a few examples. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. WI {L/H} 4 credits
Richard Millington (English Language and Literature)
Offered Fall 2012 MW 2:40 p.m.–4 p.m.

Why do people collect things and what do they collect? Members of this seminar will explore these questions by focusing on local museums and exhibitions. From a behind-the-scenes look at the Smith College Museum of Art to an examination of hidden gems like the Botanical Sciences herbarium collection or that cabinet of curiosities which is Mt. Holyoke’s Skinner Museum we will research the histories of these collections and analyze the rationale of varying systems for ordering objects. by grappling with the interpretations of art historians, anthropologists, and psychologists we’ll attempt to come to an understanding of how knowledge is constructed in the context of display and how visual juxtapositions can generate meaning. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. (E) WI {A/H} 4 credits
Barbara Kellum (Art)
Offered Fall 2012 TTH 10:30 a.m.–11:50 a.m.

Billions of cups of coffee are consumed around the world every day. We will explore the history of the little green bean in the bright red berry, from its murky origins in North Africa, to its present status as the second most traded commodity in the world, after oil. Topics will include origin stories, the history of the “coffee house,” biochemical and physiological aspects of coffee consumption, coffee botany and techniques of cultivation, the coffee trade and organic and fair trade coffee movements. Students will investigate Northampton coffee-houses, visit a local coffee roaster, and work with the Botanic Garden. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. (E) WI {S} 4 credits
Nola Reinhardt (Economics)
Offered Fall 2012 TTH 10:30 a.m.–11:50 a.m.

How can we re-imagine, reconstruct, understand an historical personage? How do we perceive and get to “know” such a figure, and through this knowledge, the historical moment and context in which the person lived? We’ll examine Marie Antoinette from a variety of perspectives: archival sources, documents and letters; biographies, portraits--official and unofficial--caricatures, pornographic pamphlets, fictional works such as plays, novels and films in which she figures. The course will incorporate a role-playing unit reenacting her trial, during which every member of the class will play the role of one of the important participants. Some film screenings. Enrollment limited to 16 first-year students. (E) WI {L/H} 4 credits
Janie Vanpée (French Studies)
Offered Fall 2012 MWF 11 a.m.–12:10 a.m.