Are you looking for a challenging yet fun course for next semester? Are you interested in satisfying the Gen Ed Second Semester Composition requirement?
Below are the Expo 1213/1223 courses being offered. Please contact each instructor directly for questions about the course material or topic.
Lecturer: Catherine Mintler
Section 001: M/W 3:00-4:15pm, Bizzell Library 0102
Section 002: M/W 4:30-5:45pm, Bizzell Library 0102
“But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement.”
--James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (1931)
The American Dream, arguably the “national ethos” of the United States of America, has been central to cultural narratives of Americanness and American identity from the Declaration of Independence to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech during the August 28, 1963, March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The question is: for whom? This course will investigate the American Dream as a cultural narrative and interrogate it as cultural myth, questioning its aspirational foundation in ideals involving democracy, equality, freedom, and rights. In theory, the American Dream purports and promises to welcome and include all, regardless of difference. In practice, however, history reveals other stories about how the American Dream has excluded, denied, or dispossessed both individuals and entire communities, whether American citizens or immigrants lured by the promise to become Americans, from ascending to the zenith described by its myth, let alone ever reaching its ephemeral horizon.
Lecturer: Ashton Foley-Schramm
Section 004: MW 9:30am - 10:20am, Bizzell Library 0102 (in person) & F asynchronous online
“It is a truth universally acknowledged” that Pride and Prejudice is a story that has withstood the test of time. Whether you’re familiar with the original 1813 novel; the 2005 movie starring Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen; the 2016 movie, book, and graphic novel series Pride and Prejudice and Zombies with Lily James and Sam Riley; or even the 2018 Hallmark movie Pride, Prejudice, and Mistletoe with Lacey Chabert and Brendan Penny; it is quite likely that you have at least heard of the story of proud Mr. Darcy and prejudicial Elizabeth Bennet (or, proud Elizabeth and prejudicial Darcy).
In this course, we will use the story of Pride and Prejudice alongside its modern interpretations to discuss how the way a text is written impacts the messages it sends to readers. We will explore the social and cultural messages undergirding P&P by looking beyond the romantic plots of the story to issues like class prejudice, social and gender expectations, and family identity.
Questions we will consider include: Why has this one literary text evolved into so many re-tellings and re-visions across a wide variety of media and platforms? What messages do these re-readings and re- visions of this “classic novel” send? How do such issues present in various reinterpretations of the same story? What can we learn about the cultural ideologies of the time periods in which each adaptation is produced? Which perspectives of the original novel are prized, and which are omitted in various retellings?
Lecturer: Eric Bosse
Section 014: MWF 1:30pm - 2:20pm
This course focuses on intersectional identity, representation in higher education, and contemporary justice issues through the work and writings of civil rights leaders and social justice activists. In particular, students will explore issues related to human rights, overlapping social identities and systems of oppression (intersectionality), the deconstruction of "toxic masculinity," the roles of allies in social movements, and the implications of protest and dissent for stakeholders within institutions and systems. Through a sequence of writing assignments, students will be challenged to move beyond initial thoughts toward more fully developed arguments, and to examine the power of taking a stance and making a stand for justice.
Lecturer: Rachel Warner
Section 003: T/R 1:30pm - 2:45pm, Bizzell Library 0102
Section 005: T/R 4:30pm - 5:45pm, Bizzell Library 0102
This course focuses on significant works of LGBTQIA+ literature and culture from the turn of the 20th century to postwar period. Despite often being called an “outsider” or marginal modernism, queer modernism reveals the significance of same-sex desire, cross-gender identification, and other queer modes of being to canonical high modernist letters and patterns of representation. This semester, we will pursue this line of inquiry through close critical analysis of poetry, short stories, the novel, film and musical recordings. Across these primary sources, we will ask, among other questions, how and why modernist American culture came to enjoy such a privileged relationship to queer artistic expression.
Lecturer: Nick LoLordo
Section 009: M/W 10:30am - 11:20am, Bizzell Library 0102 (in person); F asynchronosus online
Section 010: M/W 12:30pm - 1:20pm, Bizzell Library 0102 (in person); F asynchronous online
Whether mythologizing a “Lost Generation” after WW I or mining data to build the collective identity constructs of today, for more than a century the American media has imagined history in generational terms. Your cynical, flannel-clad Gen X professor will guide us on our tour of cultural forms–fiction to pop music, movies to memes–considering how they represent collective struggles over power, wealth and opportunity. We will also have the opportunity to enter directly into generational arguments ourselves! What might the lens of generational analysis show us about the true nature of an increasingly unequal society—& what might it obscure?
Lecturer: Timothy Bradford
Section 007: T/R 12:00pm - 1:15pm, Bizzell Library 0102
Paris, The City of Light, has long attracted crowds of American writers and artists hungry for artistic and other freedoms, inspiration, and camaraderie, as well as cheap food and lodging. This course will examine specific push and pull factors related to individual writers and artists, their experiences with the bourgeois and bohemian poles of the city, and the influence of Parisian society and culture on their work and identities. Mark Twain, Isadora Duncan, Gertrude Stein, Sidney Bechet, Eugene Bullard, Josephine Baker, Ada “Bricktop” Smith, Ernest Hemingway, Sylvia Beach, Man Ray, Langston Hughes, Djuna Barnes, James Baldwin, and Dorothea Tanning are some of the figures we will engage with through their work, and primary and secondary sources, including art monographs, maps, and films, will be used to further explore the terrain and formulate great questions while developing critical reading, thinking, researching, and writing skills.
Lecturer: Timothy Bradford
Section 016: T/R 3:00pm - 4:15pm, Bizzell Library 0102
Spirituals, work songs, blues, gospel, jazz, rhythm and blues, soul, funk, and hip-hop: African Americans have created some of the most vibrant and influential musical genres in the world. How did a relatively small group of people, who started in such difficult circumstances, use music to survive, innovate, and even thrive in a country that was, and in ways remains, indifferent if not antipathetic? How did these music forms become so influential and popular? And what can we learn about African American and American history and culture by examining these music forms? With these questions in mind, we’ll explore this music and related literature from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century with an emphasis on their roles in survival, identity, pride, leadership, and innovation. Excerpts from Amiri Baraka’s Blues People, Kevin Young’s The Grey Album, and Tricia Rose’s Black Noise, various documentaries, and our own Spotify playlists will serve as the main texts for the course and as inspiration for asking great questions that we will attempt to answer while developing critical reading, thinking, researching, and writing skills.
Lecturer: Talisha Haltiwanger Morrison
Section 013: T/R 10:30am - 11:45am, Bizzell Library 0102
Lizard people. Flat earth. Illuminati. Conspiracy theories have long been sources of fascination, entertainment, paranoia, and harm across the globe. While easy to dismiss by some, the persistence of consistently and overwhelmingly debunked theories should prompt us to consider why people continue to believe patently false theories. What makes them so compelling? And, what do we do when the conspiracies are real?
In this course, we will use a rhetorical approach to explore various conspiracy theories, the reasonings and appeals behind them, and how and why they spread. We will also examine the effects of these theories on real people and communities.
This course will ask you to complete several writing projects as a way of exploring our course theme. We will use writing to think deeply about concepts of truth, reality, ethics, and community, among others. This course asks you to draw on your experiential knowledge and also to grow that knowledge through critical listening and engagement with texts, including scholarly research.
Lecturer: Eric Bosse
Section 015: MWF 11:30am - 12:20pm
This course examines instances of individual and collective inequality, injustice, and systemic oppression through an intersectional framework, by considering factors that can contribute to marginalization, including race, class, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, physical ability, etc. After developing our understanding of intersectionality, we will turn our attention to laws, policies, and practices that produce and perpetuate inequality in the United States. And finally, we will examine ways that the climate crisis in general and climate policy in particular are compounding and complicating injustice and inequality. Along the way, we will also take care to find examples of successful action and activism that can help lead the way to a better, safer, more just and equal world.
