University Bulletin (2021-2022)

The First Year Writing Program at Brandeis University is the foundation of the University Writing Program. The University Writing Seminar introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding.

The program offers a selection of topic-driven seminars that challenge students to formulate meaningful arguments, support them with observations and evidence, and convey them clearly and persuasively. In so doing, students will engage with writing as an integral part of academic and professional life, recognizing its value and utility as well as its capacity to foster an engaged citizenry through critical thinking and discussion. By instilling and strengthening flexible writing and research skills, the program invites students to participate in the intellectual discourses of the University. Each seminar addresses the distinct discursive requirements of various disciplines, including the sciences, social sciences and humanities. Students thus learn to write effectively and confidently in any field or profession.

The requirement will be satisfied by completing one University Writing Seminar (UWS) in the student's first year, during which the student attends a Critical Conversation.

First-year students entering in the fall of 2009 and thereafter must satisfactorily complete one UWS course.

COMP 1a Composition
Prerequisite: Placement by the director of university writing. Successful completion of this course does NOT satisfy the first-year writing requirement. Enrollment limited to non-native English speakers.
A course in the fundamentals of writing, required as a prerequisite to the first-year writing requirement for selected students identified by the director of university writing. Several sections will be offered in the fall semester.
Staff

COMP 1b Composition
Prerequisite: Placement by the director of university writing. Successful completion of this course does NOT satisfy the first-year writing requirement. Enrollment open to native English speakers.
A course in the fundamentals of writing, required as a prerequisite to the first-year writing requirement for selected students identified by the director of university writing. Several sections will be offered in the fall semester.
Staff

HUM/UWS 1a Tragedy: Love and Death in the Creative Imagination
[ hum uws ]
Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows.
How do you turn catastrophe into art - and why? This first-year seminar in the humanities addresses such elemental questions, especially those centering on love and death. How does literature catch hold of catastrophic experiences and make them intelligible or even beautiful? Should misery even be beautiful? By exploring the tragic tradition in literature across many eras, cultures, genres, and languages, this course looks for basic patterns. Usually offered every year.
John Burt and Stephen Dowden

HUM/UWS 2a Crime and Punishment: Justice and Criminality from Plato to Serial
[ hum uws ]
Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows. Formerly offered as COML/HOI 103a.
Examines concepts of criminality, justice, and punishment in Western humanist traditions. We will trace conversations about jurisprudence in literature, philosophy, political theory, and legal studies. Topics include democracy and the origins of justice, narrating criminality, and the aesthetic force mobilized by criminal trials. This course also involves observing local courtroom proceedings and doing research in historical archives about significant criminal prosecutions. Usually offered every year.
Eugene Sheppard and David Sherman

HUM/UWS 3a Drawing upon Literature
[ hum uws ]
Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows. Studio fee: $75 per semester. Formerly offered as FA/RECS 118b.
An interdisciplinary team-taught course bringing together the practice of studio art and the study of literature. Students use Russian fiction and poetry (and some critical theory) as source material for the creation of visual images: drawings in various media, watercolors, prints, and photographs. The nature of narrative, as it crosses disciplines, will be a focus of our curriculum. We will read works of fiction by such writers as Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Babel and Nabokov to consider the role of artists as major literary characters, and how works of art function as iconography. Usually offered every year.
Susan Lichtman and Robin Feuer Miller

HUM/UWS 4a Epic Literature
[ hum uws ]
Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows.
Zeroes in on the most foundational of “foundational” texts. This course will study the evolution of the epic, beginning with its solemn ancient origins, in Gilgamesh, following through with the panoramic martial epics of Greece and Rome, and then investigating how Dante, a Christian Medieval poet, adapts his “pagan” predecessors to tell the story of his voyage through Hell, in The Inferno. At the end we will turn to Milton’s engagement with the entire tradition - in his epic treatment of the story of the Fall - and then to the 18th-century “mock-heroics” that parodied them all. The course will necessarily touch on wide-ranging interdisciplinary aspects of history, anthropology, comparative religion, philosophy and myth. But it will focus on intertextuality: it will scrutinize the ways in which later authors reframed, reshaped, honored and challenged the work of their predecessors. Usually offered every year.
Laura Quinney

HUM/UWS 5a Nobel Laureates in Literature
[ hum uws ]
Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows.
Examines a diverse array of writing by Nobel Prize winners. Asks how Laureates exemplify values of idealism and excellence. Interrogates controversies related to prizes. Usually offered every second year.
Caren Irr

HUM/UWS 6a Knowing Yourself: Thinking about Identity from Ancient Greece to Modern Europe
[ hum uws ]
Enrollment limited to Humanities Fellows.
How do we know who we are? What does it mean to say “I am me” and “you are you”? How do shifting cultural values and new ideas impact what shapes the way we see ourselves and others and what we believe about the relationship between the individual and their community?
This course looks at the development of ideas of the self in European thought, starting with early representations in Ancient Greece and moving through the intellectual history of Post-structuralism. While this course is centered around the concept of the self in European thought, it does not present an uncritical view of the very concept of “Europe” in the examination of individual and group identities. We will start with the exploration of self and society in Homer’s Odyssey and then move through literary and philosophical reflections on what it means to be a person in what was once called the “western tradition”. (To be clear, this course will engage in examining the notion of the “western tradition critically”). This course will pay special attention to the way that challenges to ‘traditional’ notions of identity have contributed to a dynamic and at times violent debate about personhood, focusing especially on social forces like religion, race, colonialism, gender, sexuality, disability, and capitalism. Usually offered every year.
Joel Christensen and Rajesh Sampath

UWS 2b Darwinian Dating: The Evolution of Human Attraction
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Among animals, individuals choose mates based on biologically informative features such as long colorful tail feathers, large canines, or a red, swollen posterior. We typically assume that human attraction (and love) is much more nuanced and complex...but is it? Many features that humans find beautiful or attractive, such as small waists, curvy hips, and large eyes, can be tied to biological explanations. Even behavioral features, such as nurturing behaviors, may be attractive for adaptive reasons. In this course, we will explore and write about biological explanations for these and many other aspects of human attraction. Using an evolutionary perspective, we will examine global patterns of attraction and challenge stereotypes of beauty. Do nice guys really finish last? Do traditionally attractive features in western cultures—such as low body weight—actually provide an evolutionary benefit, or might some preferences be culturally derived? For the final essay, students will supplement library research with data collection to produce an interdisciplinary research paper. Usually offered every year.
Elissa Jacobs

UWS 4a Medical Ethics
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
The Hippocratic Oath is a guiding principle amongst doctors: “First, do no harm.” But what if your patient is a potential mass murderer? Does the doctor’s obligation lie first with the patient or with society at large? We will explore these questions and others across a variety of genres, including the acclaimed medical mystery television series House and other forms of social media. In addition, students will have the opportunity to research a case study on a topic of their choice, ranging from designer babies, to issues around vaccine hesitancy, to the rights of children to transition to a different gender. This course will foster the development of incisive analysis and sophisticated academic writing as well as an understanding of disciplinary differences through the exploration of bioethical dilemmas. Usually offered every year.
Lisa Rourke

UWS 16a Sex and Advertising
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors. Sex Sells! It’s the immortal truism of the advertising industry. But how does sex sell? For decades, advertisers have used hot bods and innuendo to suggest that power and pleasure can be bought. In the 1970s, the battle cry, “You’ve come a long way, Baby!” pushed cigarettes as the hip accessories of feminism and the sexual revolution. Today, brands blend consumerism with gender activism, invite LGBTQ to the mainstream marketplace, and tempt millennials with new promises of sex and success. In this course, students find and write about advertising that delights, infuriates, and perplexes them. In the first essay, they dissect their choice of pornographic food commercials, Budweiser bromances, and Calvin Klein billboards that titillate consumers and reshape social constructs of masculinity and femininity. The research paper challenges students to locate and comprehend recent studies of sex and gender in advertising and apply them to a defined set of ads or a major campaign of their choice. Usually offered every year.
Doug Kirshen

UWS 17b Bodies of Evidence: Forensic Science in Fact and Fiction
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
In 2009, a woman was found murdered in rural Louisiana. There were no witnesses, but seeming evidence led police to suspect undocumented immigrants. The victim’s DNA, however, did not match any of the Mexican suspects. Years later a new forensic technology generated a portrait of the killer – a blonde male of Northern European ancestry, and an arrest was made. Forensic science has not only helped to identify the dead, to solve crimes, and to bring culprits to justice. Forensic techniques, accepted at the time but later discredited, have also led to false convictions, as in the case of a man found guilty of rape who spent decades in prison before DNA tests confirmed his innocence, or in the case of an arsonist who was exonerated by the State of Texas in 2011 but had been executed years earlier. This course invites students to explore the achievements and shortcomings of forensic science. We will investigate the work of forensic anthropologists, take a look at real-life cases to learn about the history and effectiveness of investigative techniques, and analyze how forensic science has been portrayed (and transformed) in popular television series such as Bones, CSI, or Crossing Jordan. Usually offered every year.
Katrin Fischer

UWS 20b "Bad" English
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
A thick accent, bunch of grammar errors, jumble of different languages, and so on: it feels embarrassing to speak “bad” English. We casually hear or say, “you speak very good English!” Is it a compliment or insult? What do we assume as “bad” and what counts as “good”? In this seminar, we will look into how different forms of English are represented and consumed in literature, film, video, and visual art, starting with the film Lost in Translation. Students are welcomed to bring in and share their own experiences on issues including “foreignness,” migration, language learning, and translation, to name but few. By focusing on how multiple Englishes meet and clash in fictional and real environments, we will try to rethink the hierarchies of language and culture. Our ultimate goal is to reflect on how this conversation could influence both our class environment and daily lives. Usually offered every year.
Amanda Presswood

UWS 34a Reading and Writing Boston
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors. What is Boston? Boston is best known for baked beans, Fenway Park, The Boston Marathon, and over 50 colleges and universities that attract nearly 200,000 students in the Greater Metropolitan area. In the 1700’s, Boston was called the “Athens of America” because of its literate and engaged citizenry, wisdom, knowledge and education. Boston is a city of FIRSTS: the first public park, Boston Common, in 1634; the first public school, Boston Latin, in 1635; the first street-car subway system in the nation in 1897. In 2017, Boston ranked fifth in the world for innovations including cultural assets, education centers, transportation, and biking/walking accessibility. From the Esplanade on the Charles River, the Back Bay, Fens and Boston Common to the newer 15-acre Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, the beauty of Boston is unsurpassed. In this section of UWS, we will be using material on the City of Boston and its neighborhoods, with readings that focus on the historical, sociological, literary and contemporary beat of the city. The main goal for UWS is to further develop your academic research and writing skills , and this course will utilize the City of Boston as a textbook, enabling you to “experience” Boston, close to where you have chosen to spend your college years. Usually offered every year.
Marsha Nourse

UWS 37a The Biology of Morality
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Humans often consider themselves to be "the moral animal," distinguished from other animals by our complex and socially derived systems of morality, characterized by empathy and cooperation. However, when comparing humans with the rest of the animal world, are we really so different? In this course, we will examine through discussion and writing the degree to which human morality is grounded in our evolutionary past. We will explore the development of human morality during childhood and adulthood through the lens of evolution and will look at classic scientific tests of morality/ethics (e.g., the trolley problem). Additionally, we will engage with evidence for morality in non-human species and probe the degree to which our primate relatives engage in altruistic, empathetic, and moral behaviors. During the final paper, students will have the freedom to choose their own topic and to utilize interdisciplinary literature in their exploration of the nature and nurture of morality. Usually offered every year.
Elissa Jacobs

UWS 39a Science Studies and the Problem of Truth
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors. We depend upon scientific research to guide many facets of our lives, from medicine to technology to social and educational policy and beyond. Considering the current trend of ignoring science – for example, the climate change denial movement – we may live in a dangerous time to question the validity and objectivity of scientific knowledge. But there is also a dark history of scientific research and knowledge on marginalized populations: 'science' continually found that women were less emotionally stable then men, and people of color were less intellectually capable than white people; the now-infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study intentionally left a population of black men with untreated syphilis for 40 years, all in the name of science ('science' for whom, we might ask). As such, it may be even more dangerous to let the enterprise of science march on unquestioned than to hold it under a critical lens. This course will examine materials from fields such as Science Studies, Feminist Philosophy of Science, and Critical Data Studies, all of which hold science up to the standards of truth and objectivity, of freedom from bias and ideology, that it claims to have. Our goal in critiquing science is to strive toward better and more just uses of scientific methods and thinking, so that we see the realities of the world more clearly and less ideologically. Usually offered every year.
Joshua Lederman

UWS 43a Storytelling in Business
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors. Storytelling plays a crucial role in our lives. We draw on stories to make meaning of ourselves and others, to shed light on our experiences, and to express who we are or would like to be. The same holds true for businesses. Storytelling is not only a core competency of business leaders but an indispensable component of functional organizations. Successful companies take pride in compelling stories; troubled companies tend to lack institutional stories and a culture of storytelling. Capable business leaders are effective storytellers, and strategic storytelling has been a proven means of initiating change and of turning companies around. This course invites students to investigate the power of stories and storytelling in business contexts. By analyzing texts from various media, we will discuss questions such as: What characterizes effective stories? What is the importance of storytelling and story-making in companies? How can storytelling bring about organizational change? Which traits do storytellers and business leaders share? What is the connection between storytelling and leadership? Usually offered every year.
Katrin Fischer

UWS 43b Animals in a Human World
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing, and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructor.
How do we define our relationship with animals: which we keep as livestock, which we keep as pets, and which we keep in zoos? Human-animal interactions have developed over hundreds of thousands of years; in that time, animals have had a significant impact on human behavior and on the development of human societies. In this class, we will explore the deep history of the relationship between humans and animals. We will consider how different cultures and subsistence strategies cultivate different interspecies dynamics, and particularly how domestication changes the way we perceive animals and their place in the world. To explore these questions, we will use multiple lines of evidence, including ethnographic data, material culture, and scientific analyses of faunal remains. Students will have the opportunity to research and write about the relationship between humans and animals in a wide variety of ancient and modern cultures. Usually offered every year.
Catherine Scott

UWS 48a Love: Where, When, How, Who?
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing, and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructor. What is love? How does society encourage or discourage it? Who gets to fall in love and why? For many years, the study of love seemed to belong to poets, painters, singers, and playwrights. Scholars in different fields like history and anthropology avoided studying love, claiming that it was too special—too personal, maybe too sacred—to be a topic of reflection and analysis. Yet love is all around us. What does it mean and do? This course explores films, case studies, and more to explore how love conforms to and challenges the prevailing social order and becomes a force for change or continuity. We will analyze readings about how people living in Africa, the USA, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East have described and experienced love as a vital emotion within or despite the expectations they face. Students will research a love-related issue of their choice and may choose from texts including written narratives, ethnographies, legal studies, films, works of art, novels, and other mediums. Usually offered every year.
Martha Lagace

UWS 50a Neurodiversity and Culture
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing, and revising—working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
John Nash was a brilliant mathematician at Princeton who won the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics for his work in game theory even as he struggled with schizophrenia. How did academic culture influence Nash’s personal and professional life, and, more broadly, what role does culture play in neurodiversity? How does social media, such as Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok influence perceptions of neurodiversity? In this course we will explore the way neurodiversity plays a role in culture beginning with an analysis of the film A Beautiful Mind, based on Nash’s life. Students will then choose their own research topic and text on neurodiversity, ranging from films such as Prozac Nation and Silver Linings Playbook to television series, such as Homeland and The Good Doctor. This course will help prepare students for academic research and writing, introducing them to peer reviewed research, academic databases, and the fundamentals of disciplinary conventions. Usually offered every year.
Matthew Burkett

UWS 50b Public Health: Writing with Data
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Over the past year, particularly with the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen an increasing reliance on public health data to inform public policies, monitor progress, and guide individuals’ health decisions. Public health data has been spun into narratives about right versus wrong, infographics that motivate action, and graphs that illustrate trends, among others. Since we’ve been inundated with quantitative data, you likely know what it’s like to experience data as an audience member, however in this course, you’ll become the composer with data at your communicative disposal. This course will encourage you to think about questions like: What is public health data? How is data generated and collected? How is public health data used or misused in academic, professional, and societal contexts? How do writers frame data to achieve certain ends? How does data visualization relate to communication? We will explore these questions across a variety of texts including CDC and NIH publications, TedTalks, and academic articles. After analyzing public health data use in different genres, you’ll then embark on your own quantitative reasoning journey by crafting a research essay that incorporates public health data and strategic data visualization. Usually offered every year.
Allison Gianotti

UWS 51a Professional Writing in the Sciences
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
According to Charles Darwin, “A naturalist’s life would be a happy one if [they] had only to observe and never to write.” Unfortunately (or fortunately!), much of a naturalist’s practice involves writing. In fact, the same holds true for those in other scientific fields—scientists must not only do science, but they, too, must write science. But what exactly are professional scientists writing? What motivates their composing and to whom do they write? What rhetorical choices do scientists make when communicating complex information? In this course, we’ll examine the discursive and generic requirements scientists face when composing in different contexts for different audiences. By considering a number of professional scientific genres—including research articles, grant applications, poster presentations, and public talks—we will explore questions of accessibility, writerly agency, persuasion, and objectivity. You’ll even have the opportunity to interview faculty members in the disciplines to learn about the writing tasks you might encounter as a working professional in your field. By the end of this course, you’ll have a more sophisticated understanding of professional writing in the sciences, and as such, you’ll be asked to produce two distinct genres of writing that take up the same research topic, albeit for different audiences and different communicative purposes. Usually offered every year.
Allison Gianotti

UWS 52a Playing Fair: Gender, Race, and Sports in America
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Whether you’re an athlete or fan, you have likely noticed that issues of race and gender have become increasingly central to conversations in collegiate and professional sports. These issues have raised important questions: To what extent do sports create a “level playing field” for women, transgender athletes and Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC)? How do intersections of social class, mental health, and physical ability impact the discourse about race and gender in sports? In this class, we will investigate the history of racist and sexist policies and practices in amateur and professional sports as well as developments that place sports on the cutting edge of gender and racial equality in society at large. Case studies will include the raised fist salute by Tommie Smith and John Carlos at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, the passage of Title IX, current debates about financial compensation for elite NCAA athletes, and Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling for the national anthem in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Usually offered every year.
Deborah Feingold

UWS 52b Environmental Justice
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing, and revising – working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
This section of UWS focuses on “Environmental Justice,” which encompasses the equal access of all people, regardless of race, ethnic origin, or socio-economic status, to the benefits of nature as well as the equitable distribution of environmental harms. It gives visibility and voice to those who have been historically marginalized and suffered the most from environmental hazards and the effects of climate change: communities of color, indigenous peoples, and the poor. The course invites students to examine power inequities, historical contexts, and scientific concepts to understand the causes and effects of environmental injustices and environmental racism. It also invites students to explore stories of resilience and hope by researching, learning, and writing about inspirational individuals, groups, and movements who have taken action for a more just and equitable future. Usually offered every year.
Katrin Fischer

UWS 53b Mythology of the American West
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing, and revising – working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, the gold rush, and Conestoga Wagons. When we think of the American West, we might envision images of cowboys and Indians, of danger and folk heroes. But these images mask a darker side of struggles and colonization; some even argue that Westward expansion in the 19th Century lay the roots for American expansionist policies in the Cold War era and beyond. This course will interrogate these seemingly conflicting narratives. We will first watch the classic John Ford western film, Stagecoach, in which the mysterious cowboy/outlaw character, Ringo Kid, helps to protect a group of innocent pioneer townsfolk on a dangerous stagecoach trip across the American Southwest. For the research essay, students select a topic and text of their choice, ranging from the film Pocahantas, to a painting by Georgia O’Keefe, to a classic novel by John Steinbeck, in order to explore the idealization of the American West and the lingering effects of that idealization today. Usually offered every year.
Eric Hollander

UWS 54b Thinking About Borders Through Data
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
As Eavan Boland’s poem “That the Science of Cartography is Limited” might remind us, maps are limited renderings of the places we encounter: not only because they are representations of these places rather than the places themselves, but because we make decisions about the features or data we encode in them and the borders we draw. Given how core the language of territory and borders is to how we understand what we know—What “field,” for example, are you thinking of majoring in?—this course will consider borders metaphorically as well as literally. In both of these contexts, what does it mean to be a citizen, or a migrant, or a tourist? What are the documents that confer or communicate these identities? We will read from fiction, watch movies, and listen to podcasts to think critically about the boundaries that separate physical spaces, as well as those that separate conceptual spaces like fields of knowledge and genres. Further, we will think through the decisions that we make as writers when wandering through these spaces, while representing the identities we and others claim in them. Specifically, we will focus on what documents and data can and can’t capture, as well as how they can, at different times, reinforce or break down the boundaries we draw. Usually offered every year.
Gregory Palermo

UWS 55a Making Decisions with Algorithms
[ uws ]
This course introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Should an algorithm be used to grade your paper, based on what other papers look like? How about to determine what videos you see on YouTube or TikTok, based on what it thinks you like? Or what about to decide how long you are incarcerated, based on your risk of future crime? In this course, we will read popular and journalistic texts to learn about algorithms and how they can carry the politics of their designers and propagate bias. Discussing issues like digital redlining, recidivism assessment, and facial recognition, we will consider the extent to which the digital technologies that shape our daily experiences when sorting through information can potentially cause harm. Moreover, we will consider our role in resisting the categories chosen for us when sorting through the content we engage, in spaces ranging from social media to grocery stores — thinking, perhaps, about the times we are asked to be algorithmic ourselves as readers and writers. How might we still make space there for what we want to say? Usually offered every year.
Gregory Palermo

UWS 55b Homelessness and the Self-Perpetuating Cycle of Shame
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Why has the number of people experiencing homelessness in Massachusetts more than doubled since 1990? This course will investigate the changing face of homelessness over the past fifty years and question why the “hidden homeless,” many of whom are couch-surfing college-age kids, constitute the fastest growing and least recognized segment of this population. Through literature, film and essays, this course will examine the shame that so often contributes to homelessness and discuss what it will take to shift this self-perpetuating cycle. Weekly reading responses, lively debate and your own mock profile of a person experiencing homelessness will help us address our individual and collective response to this national crisis. Guest speakers from area shelters will contribute to the discussion, and you will be prompted to dive deep into your own relation to homelessness through short essay assignments. Usually offered every year.
Julie Batten

UWS 56b Tracking the Digital Self
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Streaming service algorithms, smart home devices, predictive text, even sleep-tracking apps. These are just a few examples of technologies that shape our daily experiences. We use apps to order food, track our bodies, and even find love. We have robots that clean our floors as well as robots that surveil our streets. This seminar asks students to explore, through writing and research, some tricky questions about the technologies we come into contact with: how they shape our identities and track our bodies or how corporate powers exploit our data and influence our behavior. As a class, we will explore technology debates and representations of technology in cultural texts (stories, films, ads, news coverage etc.). For the final research papers, students will be expected to develop a research topic on a technology of their choosing. Usually offered every year.
Paige Eggebrecht

UWS 57b Racial Difference and the Senses
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
How is a person’s race determined? Is it how they look, sound, or feel? Is it their biological or cultural filiation? While some may be tempted to say that race is merely a function of skin tone, it has historically been theorized as something much more complicated. Indeed, since 1896, when Plessy v. Ferguson established the “one-drop rule” as the law of the land in the United States, race has largely been understood to exceed the bounds of the visual, to be made up of something more than just the color of one’s skin. This “something more” will be the central focus of this course. Reading a wide range of creative, cultural-critical, historical, and scientific texts that grapple with the issue of racialized perception, we will spend the semester exploring how all five senses—not just sight—work to construct and deconstruct categories of racial difference.
Patrick Kindig

UWS 58a The Age of Distraction
[ uws ]
Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
In 1941, poet T.S. Eliot lamented that the world had grown “distracted from distraction by distraction.” Living as we do in the era of Twitter and TikTok, we would be hard-pressed to disagree with him. But what exactly do we mean when we call something a distraction? How do distractions force us to attend to them, and why do we see this as a problem? In this course, we will explore how and why we draw the line between distraction and so-called “normal” or “healthy” attention. Borrowing analytical tools from the fields of medicine, psychology, philosophy, and cultural history and theory, we will examine both historical distractions (such as theater and film) and more contemporary ones (such as social media). We will also investigate the role played by distraction in such psychiatric disorders as ADHD and internet addiction. In analyzing these phenomena, we will develop a more nuanced understanding of how attention and distraction shape our experience of the world.
Patrick Kindig

UWS 58b Nature and the Human Experience
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Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Whether camping in the White Mountains, walking through an urban park, or biking down a busy metropolitan road, humans interact every day with the natural world. This course explores the history of that relationship through various perspectives, geographies, terrains, and political traditions developing a conceptual understanding of our evolving relationship to the earth we inhabit. We will look at technology, agriculture, urban planning, forestry, and social movements as lenses through which to interpret that relationship. To do this, the course uses sources from history, film, literature, and political science to paint a broad picture of how humans have experienced the natural world and made sense of and/or resisted that experience. More importantly, students will come away from the class able to apply a critical and historically informed opinion of mainstream conceptions of the environment and our role within it.
Alexander Herbert

UWS 59a Slavery On Stage
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Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
New York City: July 18, 1853. Lights up on a new play at the National Theatre about the most divisive issue of the day: slavery. White New Yorkers, out for a night’s entertainment, are about to see a drama of Black servitude based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the most popular novel of the nineteenth century. Three hundred thousand copies had already been sold, but millions of Americans would experience the abolitionist classic in the theatre, where adaptations moved audiences to indignation while fueling bigoted stereotypes of African Americans that endure to this day. Frederick Douglass responded to the new craze for “Tom Shows”—some little more than blackface minstrelsy—by rewriting his autobiography, cranking up emotional pathos to compete with melodramas that sensationalized slave suffering while cruelly demeaning the enslaved. In this seminar, we will explore a selection of race plays through the lens of Douglass’s writings and oratory. Students will explore digitized collections of historical documents, discovering their own insights about racialized theatrics and the legacy of Uncle Tom through the next century and beyond. Together, we will face tough questions about our continuing impulse to reenact slave culture. Do films such as Twelve Years a Slave and Antebellum move us toward racial justice? Or do they perpetuate White fascination with spectacles of Black suffering? Trigger warning: this class confronts racist historical texts and images.
Doug Kirshen

UWS 59b Museums and Cultural Heritage
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Introduces students to the power of writing as a means of communication and a process of thinking and understanding. As students complete a series of writing assignments, they will engage in a process of reading, drafting, reviewing and revising, working in peer groups and individually with their instructors.
Cultural heritage—which includes a diversity of tangible (e.g., artifacts, monuments, buildings) and intangible (e.g., language, folklore, traditions) elements of culture—is a vital part of how we understand ourselves and the world. Here in Boston, we have a particularly close relationship with the cultural heritage of the founding of the United States; a stroll along the Freedom Trail will lead one past historically “sacred” sites such as the Old North Church and Bunker Hill, as well as to sites reminiscent of daily life such as the Boston Common and the Paul Revere House. However, communities in the United States and around the world often have a fraught relationship with cultural heritage because of the ways that it has been shaped by legacies of colonialism and oppression. These complexities are evident in longstanding debates around the repatriation of objects—such as the Elgin Marbles from Greece or the Benin Bronzes from what is now Nigeria—and in recent protests advocating for the removal of Confederate monuments. In this course, we will examine some of the conversations surrounding tangible cultural heritage. Who has the “right” to own objects? Who controls what stories are told about cultural heritage? And how do those stories shape our understanding of our place in the world?
Catherine Scott