Readings focus on three cultural areas the West, China, and the Middle East and include historical studies, political philosophy, personal essays, and fictional works. Students improve their own writing skills through work on the traditional linear research paper, the personal essay, and historical or science fiction. Aspects of ourselves we hold most dear, most changeless, are, in actuality, socially fashioned. This seminar examines the raw materials out of which identities are formed, fixed, and made to appear timeless. Students consider how our variously gendered, raced, classed, and otherwise imperatively regarded selves become named, learned, performed, and enforced in different cultural and institutional settings.
Students examine how systems of production, ownership, and religion help mold notions of personhood.
Through ethnographic interviews, historical research, and the analysis of print and Web-based texts, students have ample opportunity to explore in their research papers aspects of personal, family, and other corporate identities. Science of Alternative Medicines. Americans spend a great deal of money on herbal remedies and other nutritional supplements and make frequent visits to nontraditional healers. Course activities include small group discussions of readings, presentations by practitioners and other experts in the field, and student presentations of findings from the literature. After the bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, atomic fission technologies were a part of modern culture.