Penn Humanities Forum | Courses 07-08

Courses, Fall 2007
	Penn Humanities Forum Freshmen Seminars National Creation Myths, Mark Doyle The Origins of Life, Llyd Wells The Origins of Sexual Difference, Camille Robcis Athens/Babylon: Images and Metaphors of the American City, Anthony Raynsford Origins and Originality, Judith Brown
	Susan Miller, History (F07) Coming of Age in America: A History of Childhood and Adolescence, Susan Miller
	Catriona MacLeod, German, Art History (F07) Winckelmann
	Michael Weisberg, Philosophy (F07) Philosophy of Biology
	Jonathan Steinberg, History (F07) Economic Ideas from Adam Smith to Marx, Mill and Maine

Penn "Origins" Courses • Spring 2008 The following courses, offered by Penn Humanities Forum Postdoctoral Fellows and selected Penn faculty, are a sampling of Origins-related courses offered at Penn and by no means reflect the full range of courses available on this subject (download pdf, full descriptions).
Open to full-time Penn students. To register, interested students should consult with the individual departments, rather than the Penn Humanities Forum.
	English 016.302 \| MW 3:30–5:00 Modern Primitivism Judith Brown, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow King Kong, Josephine Baker, Picasso’s masks, Freud’s “dark continent” — why has the 20th century been so drawn to the idea of the primitive?
	History 106.301 \| W 2:00–5:00 Massacres in History Mark Doyle, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Who decides when an event merits the term massacre, and what is the value of attaching this highly charged term to particular outbreaks of violence?
	English 057.001 \| TR 4:30–6:00 Colonial and Pre-Colonial America : The Origins of American Literature Timothy Powell, Senior Research Scientist, Penn Museum The intellectual roots of "America" encompassed much more than British colonization. In this class, we will consider the writings of Spanish, French, and Dutch colonizers, as well as the literature of women, African Americans, and Native Americans.
	Art History 301.303 \| M 2:00–5:00 Representing the Modern Metropolis: Architecture/Painting/Film Anthony Raynsford, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow German expressionism, architectural Postmodernism, Pop Art, and Hollywood science fiction are some of the movements and genres to be explored in this course on the role of the metropolis in the development of modern art and architecture.
	Anthropology 138 \| W 3:30–6:30 The Social Contract and the Origins of Society Camille Robcis, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Political philosophy has always been preoccupied with the problem of “the social”: how is society born? Who are some of the major figures of European intellectual history who have attempted to think and rethink the origins of society?
	Theatre Arts 410.401 \| TR 1:30–3:00 Theatre, History, Culture I, Classical Athens to Elizabethan London James Schlatter, Director, Theatre Arts Program This course will focus on the development of theatre practice in Western and non-Western cultures as it intersects with the history of cities, the rise of market ecoomies, and the emerging forces of national identity.
	German 581.401 \| T 3:00–5:00 *Becoming Modern: The German-Jewish Experience* Liliane Weissberg, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor & Professor of German and Comp Lit What has become known as “modern” German culture has been more often than not assigned to Jewish authorship or Jewish subjects. But what do authorship and subject mean in this case? This graduate course will be accompanied by a conference at Penn on March 30, 2007.
	History of Science STSC/ENVS 313 \| R 1:30–4:30 Human Nature at the Origin Llyd Wells, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow What are the ecological, evolutionary and ethical assumptions underlying human designations of "original" organisms and of the "alien" species that often have overtaken them? What is the human role in nature? Does this role differ from that of other organisms? What do we mean when we identify specific organisms as native or original?
	English 341.401 \| TR 9:00–10:30 Slavery and Abolition in the Eighteenth Century Chi-ming Yang, Assistant Professor of English How did our modern ideas of race and racism originate in the context of the slave trade? What kinds of activist strategies aided the British abolition of the slave trade, and, eventually, emancipation? What role did women and the fight for women’s rights play in the anti-slavery movement? Why was interracial romance such a prevalent theme in antislavery fiction and poetry?