Fall 2022
The Art and Science of Happiness
Instructor: Isabelle Petersen
Striving for happiness is an integral part of the human condition: everyone wants to be happy! This course introduces the happiness research of recent decades and its roots in ancient philosophy. How have people throughout history and across cultures defined happiness? Can happiness, or subjective well-being, be measured and quantified? What are the contributors to and inhibitors of personal and collective happiness? Does more money make us happier? Should public policy address happiness? What can we learn about happiness from the arts? These are some of the questions that will be explored with perspectives from philosophy, religion, psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics, and the arts.
Renaissance Florence
Instructor: Melanie Pitts
In this section of LST 470 students will study the art, literature, philosophy, and politics of Florence, Italy from 1265 to 1513. Particular emphasis will be placed on the rise of Humanism, the evolution of art and development of linear perspective, the power of the Medici, and the literary works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Students will also take part in “virtual” study abroad experiences, including field trips to museums, tours through architectural landmarks, and visits to the best gelato spots and restaurants in Florence. Students will complete a variety of writing assignments, including analytical essays, a “travel” journal, and a final project.
Social Activism Through the Arts
Instructor: Isabelle Petersen
This course explores major social movements through the lens of artistic expression, offering insights into the interrelationship between culture and social change within the United States and globally. By examining cultural texts (music, film, poetry, painting, etc.) engendered by resistance movements since the 1950s, students will analyze how these expressions have influenced contemporary views of social justice and contributed to social change.
The Three Cultures
Instructor: Brian McCormack
The Two Cultures, a lecture given by C.P. Snow in 1959, was an influential critique of the Humanities – the most notable recent example in a long tradition of conflict between the centers of Western knowledge. In our course, “The Three Cultures,” named after Charles Kagan’s recent book of the same name (which adds the Social Sciences to the Sciences and the Humanities), we take Snow’s critique to task, and determine ways in which the three cultures can be mutually supportive. Through innovative experiments (notably, looking at clouds as a source of metaphor for the best chance for unity between the sciences and the humanities; creating neologisms in the service of our own research and revision; and group screenplay writing on current issues), we challenge ourselves to think well past the limits ascribed to us in these debates over knowledge. The benefits of the course include the development of an acute awareness of the high stakes of our university education, an opening of the mind to the possibilities of thinking in more than one academic register, and a chance to express ourselves both with rigor and imagination.
Summer 2022
Renaissance Florence
Instructor: Melanie Pitts
In this section of LST 470 students will study the art, literature, philosophy, and politics of Florence, Italy from 1265 to 1513. Particular emphasis will be placed on the rise of Humanism, the evolution of art and development of linear perspective, the power of the Medici, and the literary works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Students will also take part in “virtual” study abroad experiences, including field trips to museums, tours through architectural landmarks, and visits to the best gelato spots and restaurants in Florence. Students will complete a variety of writing assignments, including analytical essays, a “travel” journal, and a final project.
Seeking Self and Identity
Instructor: Melanie Pitts
We will be using a transdisciplinary approach to question and study the pursuit of identity. Issues relating to identity and the formation of the self are certainly complex. If asked the question “who are you?” there might be several answers: an ASU student, a woman, an American, an Asian-American, a man, a husband, a mother, a business major, etc. As the above quote from the Bard suggests, we play many roles during the course of each day and during the course of our lives. Selves are multiple, fluid, constantly on the move, and even virtual these days. Nevertheless, individuals typically possess a stable sense of self; that is, we feel there is something coherent and unified that defines us. But, where does that sense of coherence come from? What is the role of social and cultural identity in our overall sense of self? How do external forces and circumstances shape the individual? And, how do we best seek and express our identities?
Our exploration of identity will employ the critical lenses of psychology, social psychology, life writing, art history, and philosophy. The course will be divided into two main units. For Unit 1, we will work under the umbrella of social sciences to examine various definitions, theories, and models of identity. We also will discuss categories of social identity (including gender, race, and ethnicity) and how “difference” impacts the development of stereotypes, power struggles, and group relations. In Unit 2, we will “seek identity” from a humanities perspective by examining poetry and art. Students also will be introduced to the process of life-writing as means of establishing “self,” and will be given the opportunity to test this theory by writing a memoir.
Understanding Place
Instructor: Lori Eshleman
This version of the Liberal Studies capstone seminar looks at transdisciplinary approaches to the experience, uses and meanings of Place. Place is something we tend to take for granted. We live in it, look at it and travel across it throughout our lives. It shapes our experience, our thoughts and memories, our sense of identity, our social relations, and our values in profound and complex ways. Throughout the course we will examine, evaluate and synthesize approaches to Place from the Social Sciences (including Anthropology, Human Geography and Sociology) and from the Humanities (including Art and Art History, Literature, and Religious Studies). Our course will be organized by modules into the following themes: Place and Identity, Sacred Place and Pilgrimage, Contested Place, and Boundary-Crossing.
While this topic has global applications, a number of the readings and visuals will focus on the American Southwest. The issues the topic raises include preservation; historic designation; development; land use; sustainability; reintroduction of species; travel and tourism; sacred space; land rights; diasporas, immigration and borderlands; place as a marker of personal and ethnic identity; and personal and collective memory and history.