Draws on an archive of American religion and culture to study gender and religion with an intersectional eye toward historical and contemporary dynamics of power. Introduces students to feminist, womanist, transgender, and queer scholarship in study of religion.
Rhetoric
Study of the principles, precepts, and strategies of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speaking. Emphasis is placed on assessing the rhetorical situation and researching, composing, practicing, and delivering a speech. Ethical, political, and social questions raised by speaking in public are considered. Students deliver speeches, practice effective listening, and serve as speech critics and interlocutors.
Study of the principles, precepts, and strategies of informative, persuasive, and ceremonial speaking. Emphasis is placed on assessing the rhetorical situation and researching, composing, practicing, and delivering a speech. Ethical, political, and social questions raised by speaking in public are considered. Students deliver speeches, practice effective listening, and serve as speech critics and interlocutors.
Topical survey of the major questions and controversies in rhetorical theory, criticism, and practice, including rhetorical situations, classical canons of rhetoric, the role of rhetoric in civic life, and the relationship of rhetoric to power, politics, law, education, and ethics. Students consider the rights and responsibilities of speakers and critics. Accordingly, readings include selections from a wide array of rhetorical theorists and critics as well as a diverse and open canon of orators and speakers.
In this survey of the expectations for successful speaking across several disciplines, students will explore the techniques, strategies, and precepts peer and professional tutors may employ to help student speakers and listeners attain their goals. Participants will examine samples of student speaking and listening, discuss possible responses, and develop model interactions between and among tutors and students.
This course surveys the key topics, questions, issues, and controversies surrounding the rhetoric of mass and social media. Students explore not only how this rhetoric helps us inform, persuade, and move others to action, but also how—and whether—they are informed, persuaded, and moved to act themselves. Topics surveyed may include rhetorical framing, message bias, propaganda, the rhetorical propagation and circulation of misinformation, freedom of expression, protest, and visual rhetoric.
Russian
An introduction to the fundamentals of the language and culture with emphasis on communicative proficiency, clarity of pronunciation and basic skills in reading, writing, and conversation. Use of language laboratory required. Four hours of class each week, plus an additional conversation meeting with a native speaker.
An introduction to the fundamentals of the language and culture with emphasis on communicative proficiency, clarity of pronunciation and basic skills in reading, writing, and conversation. Use of language laboratory required. Four hours of class each week, plus an additional conversation meeting with a native speaker.
Continued study of grammar and review of basic grammatical structures; readings in Russian with emphasis on acquisition of vocabulary and continued development of conversational and writing skills. Four hours of class each week, plus an additional conversation meeting with a native speaker.
This course explores Vladimir Nabokov’s literary output, criticism, and film adaptations of his novels. To understand Nabokov's aesthetics and situate him in the context of world literature, students will investigate the author's approach to several themes, such as reality, the construction of the author within the text, literary translation, emigration, and transformation. Students will also situate Nabokov among his émigré contemporaries, focusing on digitized resources from the author's Berlin and American periods. The course is taught in English.
The course surveys Tolstoy's two masterworks, Anna Karenina and War and Peace; shorter novellas such as The Death of Ivan Ilyich, The Kreutzer Sonata, and Master and Man; and provides an introduction to the author's writings on topics such as education and art. Students move toward an understanding of Tolstoy as a novelist and thinker and situate him within broader literary, social and intellectual traditions. The course is taught in English.
A study of 20th- and 21st-century Russian prose and media, including podcasts, television, and written news, emphasizing advanced linguistic and cultural proficiency. Authors studied may include (but are not limited to) Evgenii Grishkovets, Alisa Ganieva, and some excerpts from Tatiana Tolstaya and Viktor Pelevin.
School of Letters
An individualized course designed to meet the curricular needs and interests of a particular student. May be taken only by special arrangement with the proposed instructor, and with permission of the School of Letters Director. This course may be repeated for credit when the topic differs.
Southern Appalachian Studies
An anthropological study of the southern United States emphasizes cultural continuity in both mountains and lowlands. The course uses community studies and literature to explore how indigenous interpretations fit within and react against national patterns and how locality, race, status, and gender act as social principles.
This course introduces the history, theory, and practice of public history, examining the ideas and questions that shape and are shaped by public engagements with the past. It engages and evaluates historical works aimed primarily at public audiences in order to determine why and how public investments in the historical past develop and change.
The "roots" music of the Southeastern United States has been one of the region's chief exports. Musicians wander back roads, crowd front porches and church pews, and sometimes make their way to music centers like Nashville, New Orleans, and Memphis. This course focuses on musicians in the Southern tradition and addresses diverse idioms, especially the blues (folk, country, electric) and Sacred Harp singing. Students become knowledgeable in interpreting lyrics and in deploying terminology for music analysis, including mode, meter, harmony, and form (e.g., 12-bar blues).
Spanish
Part I of a year-long intensive, introductory course with emphasis on the fundamentals of grammar (both written and spoken) and extensive practice in listening comprehension and reading. Four class hours per week.
Part I of a year-long intensive, introductory course with emphasis on the fundamentals of grammar (both written and spoken) and extensive practice in listening comprehension and reading. Four class hours per week.
Part II of a year-long intensive, introductory course with emphasis on the fundamentals of grammar (both written and spoken) and extensive practice in listening comprehension and reading. Four class hours per week.