First-Year Courses

Earlham Seminars

AAAS 150 WOMEN AND CIVIL RIGHTS (4 credits)
Women were an essential, and often dominant, part of the civil rights movement in both the North and the South. Yet few of us know those who collectively and individually gave their time, talents and lives to the struggle to expand democracy, realize racial justice and secure human rights in America. This course focuses on the unique and indispensable leadership of such women as Ella Baker, Gloria Richardson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Septima Clark and Ruby Doris Smith as well as the contributions of hundreds of women in the campaigns such as those in Montgomery, Little Rock, Harlem, Mississippi and Birmingham. Additionally, the course examines the ways in which gender politics affected the direction and presentation of the movement.

BIOL 150 INSECTS AND HUMAN SOCIETY (4 credits)
Insects pervade many aspects of human culture. Humans eat insects, fear insects, rely on insects and admire their beauty. This course explores the influence of insects in literature, music, art and film as well as agriculture, medicine and food.

CLAS 150 EMPIRE IN THE CLASSICAL WORLD (4 credits)
The word empire is tossed around a lot by people talking about the U.S. — and it is usually meant as a pejorative. This course examines Greek and Roman empires and the ancient views of them as expressed in classical literary and artistic works. It also examines modern attempts to understand, interpret and classify these ancient empires.

CLAS 150 FEASTING AND FASTING: FOOD IN THE ANCIENT WORLD (4 credits)
Food is necessary to sustain life; that is a universal truth. And yet, the types of food people choose to eat (and to avoid eating) as well as the ways in which they eat them often give meals a much greater significance than simple sustenance. The ancient Mediterranean world was no exception. This course explores how patterns of feasting and fasting were used in antiquity to express cultural identity, social power and religious belief. Using a combination of ancient literature and archaeological evidence, we will explore a range of case studies from different eras and cultures within Mediterranean antiquity, including sacrificial feasts for the gods, the Greek symposium and the lavish banquets of well-to-do Romans.

CLAS 150 LOVE, MARRAGE AND THE FAMILY IN RENAISSANCE ITALY (4 credits)
Our relationships with our families and loved ones are a central part of our lives; those relationships were just as important to the people of the past. But centuries ago, people experienced and thought about those aspects of private life very differently. This seminar explores what love, sex, marriage and the family meant to people of Renaissance Italy. Students look at such topics as the relationship between love and marriage, the experience of married life, sexuality outside of marriage, and the relationship between parents and children. Readings include stories, trial transcripts and letters.

CLAS 150 TALKING ABOUT LOVE (4 credits)
A lot is at stake when we talk about love. Something as simple as "I love you" is wrapped up in anxieties and hopes, and can feel like a moment of absolute truth. This course looks at the ways Greeks and Romans talked about love as a jumping-off point for examining modern conceptions of love. Can we be sincere when we talk about love, or are our words so entangled in the "rhetoric of love" that our words are not our own? Readings include Sappho, Plato's Symposion, Daphnis and Chloë, the poems of the Roman love-elegists, philosophers' diatribes against love and the modern "love canon" from Romeo and Juliet to pop love songs and romantic comedies.

CLAS 150 SWEET PERSUASION (4 credits)
Persuasion is important in our lives. People try to persuade us to do all kinds of things, e.g., to buy their products, to cast a vote for them, to worship as they worship, to see the world as they see it and even to join them in intimate relationships. This course aims to help us understand persuasion more fully. The study of persuasion began in antiquity, and that is where we will begin. Students explore Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus and then turn to Aristotle's Rhetoric. With this foundation we examine some modern instances of persuasion, a novel, a history, some poems, advertisements and more. We conclude with each of us creating something we intend to be persuasive.

ECON 150 BUBBLE, BUBBLE TOIL AND TROUBLE (4 credits)
This course examines speculative markets. Students consider the theoretical explanations, historical occurrences, and social implications of speculative markets. A portion of the course focuses on what is meant by speculation and under what type of conditions speculative markets arise. The history of speculative markets covers a wide variety of examples including the tulip mania, U.S. housing and the dot.com bubbles. In addition, we will study speculation in international capital markets and the institutions responsible for stabilizing them.

ENG 150 IMMIGRANT FICTIONS (4 credits)
This class explores novels and short stories — that represent immigrant experiences in the United States and Great Britain, considering issues of identity and belonging, memory and forgetting, and aspiration and disappointment as they are addressed in these fictions. Writers studied in the course may include Salman Rushdie, Zadie Smith and Maxine Hong Kingston.

ENG 150 IRISH LITERATURE AND FOLKLORE (4 credits)
This course includes both well-known, important works from the canon of Irish literature and examples of less widely-known traditional folk literature. Students write and revise several academic essays over the course of the semester, as well as shorter, less formal assignments. Close careful reading, discussion and participation in writing workshops are central to the work of the course. Students who are comfortable sharing or discussing their own or their peers' writing should take this course.

ENG 150 JEWISH LITERATURE (4 credits)
This class offers an introduction to some provocative and powerful examples of the literature produced by the Jewish people. While the class starts with some ancient and medieval writings, including Torah texts and Midrash, the course focuses on more recent works from the Yiddish-writing diaspora, Jewish American writers and Israeli writers. Texts may include poetry by Yehuda Amichai and Allen Ginsberg; drama by S. Ansky; and prose by Anzia Yezierska, A.B. Yehoshua, Sholom Aleichem and Cynthia Ozick. Special attention is given to the ways that Jews have used literature to preserve and challenge their cultural and religious identity in different historical circumstances.

ENG 150 LITERATURE OF LATINOS IN THE U.S. (4 credits)
As one of the fastest growing minority populations in the United States, Latinos figure prominently in all social, cultural and political debates of the 21st Century. This course focuses on literature that examines issues of colonialism, language, race, education and political representation. While this class does acknowledge the diversity of the Latino population, it focuses primarily on Mexican Americans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans. Major concerns addressed include: alliances within and without the Latino community, cultural retention vs. assimilation, and the politics of language, identity, gender and sexuality.

ENG 150 OF MONSTERS AND MARVELS (4 credits)
Tannakin Skinker, the hog-faced gentlewoman, was born in or about 1618 to parents wealthy and kind enough to buy her a small silver dining trough and a wedding dress she never wore. She, like the subjects of other Early Modern ballads and pamphlets, was part of a new print culture that prized the unusual (like Tannakin), the menacing (like the Witch of Edmonton) and the villainous (like Richard III). It also included some of the most prominent writers of the day, like William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson and Elizabeth Carey. Their influence, like their interest in the unusual, is still with us. This course explores the origins and development of this writing about unusual things, using a selection of Early Modern and modern-day texts from authors like Shakespeare, Jonson and Carey, as well as Mikhail Bakhtin, Natasha Korda, Peter Stallybrass, Jim Paul and Gayle Rubin.

ENG 150 SHAKESPEARE'S AFTERLIVES (4 credits)
In the nearly four centuries since Shakespeare's death his works have been constantly re-presented as dramas, novels, poems, comics and cartoons. This course focuses on major Shakespearean dramas and the ways they have been reimagined for the stage and screen; texts include Hamlet, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, The Tempest and Forbidden Planet.

ENG 150 WRITING WOMEN'S LIVES (4 credits)
This course explores how women have been spoken about and have spoken for themselves in literature. Readings include novels, poetry, autobiographies and memoirs from the British and American traditions as well as from a variety of cultures or nations such as Ba's So Long a Letter from Senegal, Riverbend's Baghdad Burning: Girl Blog from Iraq and Adnan's Sitt Marie Rose from Lebanon. Other texts include speculative fiction by writers such as Atwood, Winterson and Butler and the graphic memoir Fun Home. Students complete writings of women's lives in both analytical and imaginative forms.

GEOS 150 OUR NUCLEAR LEGACY (4 credits)
This seminar examines the history of the nuclear fuel cycle from the perspective of science. The course starts with the early discoveries of radioactivity and nuclear chemistry, progresses through the geologic controls on uranium mineralization and the methods of exploration, extraction and milling and culminates with an examination of environmental impacts, including bioaccumulation of radionuclides, mill tailings and high-level disposal.

GER 150 BRUISED IDENTITIES: VIENNA CIRCA 1900 (4 credits)
The course considers works of a number of writers, artists and intellectuals, examining how those works reflect a very turbulent and exciting time in our history. The arrival of the 20th Century brought with it new directions in the arts, science and medicine; new ideas about political and social structures; and new senses of ethnic and national pride. All had a dizzying effect on the Viennese of the old K and K Monarchy. Had that which always had been proper, right and good now lost its meaning? In examining these questions and these bruised identities, this course considers, among others, the works of Schnitzler, Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Freud and Klimt.

GER 150 DREAMS AND DELUSIONS:
PROSE, DRAMA AND FILM STORIES FROM GERMAN-SPEAKING EUROPE (4 credits)
This course explores dreams and delusions — from the Romantic notion of dreaming as fantasizing and imagining an ideal world to Freudian-inspired dreaming as a kind of "wish fulfillment" to Kafkaesque nightmares about a world gone mad. Students consider what certain writers, thinkers and film makers say about the human condition. The texts are in English translation and the films have subtitles; no knowledge of German is required.

HIST 150 THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION AND ITS AFTERLIVES (4 credits)
This seminar examines the history of the American Revolution and its lasting resonances in American culture and politics. The course begins by examining the Revolution itself and the ways that it changed — and failed to change — American politics, culture and society. Then, the course looks at some ways that the story of the Revolution was remembered, retold, reimagined and even spoofed during the first century after its conclusion. Finally, the course considers war as moral lesson, as myth, as farce, and as powerful touchstone for a number of social and political movements from anti-slavery and women's rights to labor activism and partisan politics.

HIST 150 FAITH AND COMMITMENT (4 credits)
This course explores a series of texts in which authors have recorded their thoughts about faith and commitment. Some of these texts are widely regarded as classics; others are not as well known. They all share a human consciousness attempting to give form to the nature of faith and the challenges of commitment, and to reflect on their significance for humanity.

HIST 150 FAMOUS FEUDS (4 credits)
Conventional wisdom tells us that conflict within and between families is often the most brutal and bitter of all. This course examines three of the most famous family feuds of all time: The Wars of the Roses, the feud between the Hatfields and the McCoys, and the one between the Earp brothers and their adversaries in Tombstone, Arizona. Students consider whether the conventional wisdom is true, and if so, why, and what might be its significance. Discussions focus on such questions as: What causes families to feud, how do the participants understand what's going on, and how do the conflicts fit within their broader socio-economic, cultural and historical contexts? What's at stake in these feuds, and why are subsequent generations so much more fascinated with them than with other kinds of conflict?

HIST 150 THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION:
MACHINES, METROPOLISES AND MODERN SELVES (4 credits)
The modern age is the age of the machine. Machines have allowed for seemingly limitless expansion of production, exponential speeding up of transport and the rise of the modern metropolis. Machines also have helped to generate entirely new social relations, new notions of time and new possibilities for human emancipation. Yet the machine age has also been the age of distinctly novel forms of social control and unprecedented man-made destruction. This course examines classical sociological works by Adam Smith, Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt, as well as historical works by Karl Polanyi, E.P. Thompson, and Joan Scott (among others) to explore the rise of the machine age, its benefits and human costs.

HIST 150 IS HISTORY BUNK? (4 credits)
What do the Haitian slave rebellion, the Alamo, the Vietnam Wall, the AIDS quilt, the Shoah, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, and the Armenian genocide have in common with the widespread belief that veterans of the U.S. war in Vietnam were spat on by protesters when they came home? This course examines case studies and theory in an effort to discover the patterns, processes and politics of remembering and forgetting.

HIST 150 MODERN ANTI-SEMITISM (4 credits)
This course explores the intellectual, cultural and political origins of "modern" anti-Semitism, and the role it has played in modern European history as both a widespread social and cultural prejudice, and a state policy. Our work focuses more particularly on the 19th century rise of anti-Semitism in modern European societies, and the differences between its Western and Eastern European expressions. It examines how "racial anti-Semitism" emerged in the early 20th century and was implemented by the Nazi Regime with the "Final Solution," the specificity of Nazi anti-Semitism; and the way the Holocaust forever changed the way Europe defined the "Jewish question." Our readings are driven by the following questions: Is anti-Semitism another form of racism? How has anti-Semitism persisted and how have its manifestations changed? Readings include primary texts, novels, political tracts and historical monographs.

HIST 150 WORKERS AND ACTIVISTS:
A CLASS PERSPECTIVE ON U.S. HISTORY (4 credits)
The United States is often portrayed as a classless or "middle class" society, but the last 30 years have been marked by increasing concentrations of the wealth of a few and increasing poverty, erosion of economic security and alienation of the rest. This seminar raises basic questions about class and its intersection with the ideals of democracy in the United States, as well as race and gender. Readings focus on three time periods: 1) the Revolutionary period and its impact on the institutions, ideology and structures that affect class issues today; 2) the late 19th century and profound labor issues generated by industrialization and immigration; and 3) the contemporary period as labor faces the challenges of globalization and inequitable distributions of wealth and power.

JPNS 150 INTRODUCTION TO JAPANESE LITERATURE (4 credits)
This course introduces a variety of fictional and non-fictional essays from Japan in English translation from contemporary fiction and film to classics and poetry. Students learn the basic skills of reading, writing, and discussion as they explore important issues in Japanese society, such as the concept of beauty in classical periods and memories of WWII. By looking at a different culture and history, students learn how to see and think about themselves. For example, what beliefs and ideologies condition the interpretation of a text? What factors determine judgments of good and bad?

MUS 150 BEETHOVEN: MAN, MUSIC, MYTH (4 credits)
This course introduces the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven, as well as the myths that have developed around his iconic status as a classical composer. Students are exposed to many ways that those in the field of music approach music, its context and its history — engaging with the music itself, performance questions, musical analysis, issues of elitism, political issues from Nazi Germany to South Africa, gender in canon formation and with other issues of social construction. Students are not required to read music.

PHIL 150 ARE YOU MY MOTHER?
AND OTHER QUESTIONS CONCERNING IDENTITY (4 credits)
P.D. Eastman's book, Are you my Mother?, is usually classified as a "child's book," but the question it poses concerning how we identify ourselves is far from childish. This course uses Eastman's text as a starting point for a much larger philosophical discussion concerned with some of the attempts that western tradition has employed in tackling questions of personal, political, sexual, ethnic, racial and national identity.

PHIL 150 GOOD AND EVIL (4 credits)
The subject of good and evil shows up in a wide variety of literature in the Western tradition. This course looks at some of that literature and engages students in critical discussions of the subject by reading texts like Hesiod's Theogony, the Old Testament's creation story, Plotinus' Enneads, Augustine's On Free Choice of the Will, Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, Melville's Billy Budd, Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem, and Patrick Suskind's Perfume.

PHIL 150 PHILOSOPHY, PEACE AND JUSTICE (4 credits)
This seminar concentrates on questions of peace and justice from a philosophical perspective. Two goals are examined: (1) understanding the fundamental questions of philosophy and how they relate to politics, society, culture and our everyday life in general and (2) understanding the connection of philosophy to peace and justice. What do we mean when we use the concepts "justice" and "peace"? How do they differ from their opposites "injustice" and "war"? What are the presuppositions of our desire to live in a peaceful and just society or world? Does philosophy help us to achieve peace and justice? Students come to understand the difficulties, as well as the philosophical problems associated with, peace and justice issues and see how questions of peace and justice require extensive conceptual clarity and historical sensitivity.

POLS 150 LEADERS AND TYRANTS:
LEADERSHIP THROUGH BIOGRAPHY (4 credits)
The course addresses the concept of political leadership. What qualities make a leader? What is the difference between leadership and tyranny? Students examine these and other questions by reading and discussing biographies of selected 20th century political figures, among them Martin Luther King, Jr., Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, and Theodore, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, among others.

POLS 150 POLITICAL LEADERSHIP THROUGH POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
(4 credits)
The course examines political leaders in both constitutional and authoritarian settings. Readings include biographies of Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Churchill and Hitler, among others.

POLS 150 RIOTS, REBELLIONS AND REVOLUTIONS (4 credits)
This course explores social conflict and political violence in its many forms, from isolated outbreaks to popular uprisings. Why do ordinary people sometimes exert force to get what they want politically or socially? This class focuses on the meaning of violence as well as when and why it happens, using examples from different parts of the world. Students choose a violent political incident or movement that interests them, conduct research on the subject, and present their findings in both written and oral form.

REL 150 BALANCING ACT:
LIFE IN THE SPIRIT AT HOME AND AT WORK (4 credits)
In this class we focus on the ways family life and spiritual commitments intersect with work. We explore different family patterns and faith communities in the USA by reading histories, plays and novels, and we consider the ethical dynamics of the vocational choices we discover and observe. Assignments include papers (both reflective and expository), library research and group presentations.

REL 150 LOVE, PROTEST AND HOPE (4 credits)
This seminar exposes students to the structural and spiritual challenges posed to Christian love (in its agape, eros and philia forms) by U.S. cultural and political history. It enables students to focus on the key characteristics of love in their actions and reflections in society and the world. Students challenge one another to face serious issues and encourage one another toward resistance and hope in the service of love. Guiding questions in this seminar include: What does the principle and/or virtue of love have to do with what it means to be human? Is love simply romantic or indiscriminate and therefore antithetical to justice, or can love take the form of justice? Students wrestle with the issues of love, protest and hope in conversation with voices from the African American (including "Womanist"), Native American, U.S. Latino/a and Latin American communities.

REL 150 RELIGION: FOR AND AGAINST THE COMMON GOOD (4 credits)
This course traces how religion has been cast as a force of both good and ill on the world stage with regard to such questions as peace and justice, human rights and civil liberties. Quaker thought and practice are among the topics discussed.

REL 150 SPIRITUAL LIFE IN THE NEW TESTAMENT (4 credits)
In this seminar students read from the New Testament, especially the gospels, with a focus on discovering how to explore ways of living a spiritual life. Students engage the religious questions of the New Testament in the historical context of the first century, seeking connections between the meaning of the New Testament for its first readers and possible meanings for readers today. The course examines a variety of interpretations — feminist, African American and Latin American liberationist voices — and explores artistic expressions and spiritual practices that interpret and engage New Testament texts.

SOAN 150 JACKIE ROBINSON:
RACE, SPORT AND THE AMERICAN DREAM (4 credits)
Based on the premise that Jackie Robinson transcended sports and that his arrival was a defining moment in the history of the Untied States, this course examines how he transformed the American and political scene as an athlete, civil rights leader and American hero. It explores how Robinson's struggles and achievements help us understand the nexus between race, sport and American social institutions