Special Topic Course Descriptions
The courses described below are offered under "Selected Topics" course numbers. Departments offer Selected Topics only occasionally and the selection is different every semester. Selected Topics courses do not repeat material presented by regular semester courses.
Fall 2006
AH 497/597 Section 1 Seminar in Art History
This class explores the social history of Japanese-style gardens built in North America between 1876-present. It studies how Japanese have wanted their culture to be seen abroad, and how Japanese-Americans have used landscape building and maintenance as an economic activity and act of cultural self definition.
AH 497/597 Section 2 Seminar in Art History
This seminar will deal with special issues in modern/contemporary art.
AH 497/597 Section 3 Seminar in Art History
This class will study the history, theory, and practice of 19th century photography.
AH 498/598 Section 1 Special Topics in Art History
This course will explore art in the Sixties.
ART 10 All Sections Art Matrix
Students are to check in at the Art Department Student Services Office, FA4-106 for a syllabus for this class.
ART 489 Section 1 Animation
A studio course that will give an introduction to the basic principles of animated action and movement for drawn animation.
ART 489 Section 2 Character Design
A studio course presenting the basic principles of character design for a variety of applications, such as illustration of printed material, animated film, and the toy industry.
ART 489 Section 3 Drawing: Figures in Context
A studio course that involves drawing from life with a concentration on the narrative context, emphasis on expression, gesture, and mark making. Subjects include human and animal forms.
ASAM 495/595 Section 1 Seminar in Asian American Studies
This course examines the experiences of countries and places in Asia as seen from the perspective of their world system interactions, and Asian American experiences in the context of world migration patterns and the relationship of diasporic communities with their places of origin and each other worldwide.
CBA 495 Section 1 California Student Leadership Academy
Prerequisite: Consent of Director of program. This seminar style course is designed to equip students with the transformational power of ethical leadership and decision-making through interaction with high-caliber leaders in organizations across business, media, healthcare and government. A variety of ethical issues will be covered.
CHIN 490 Section 1 Intermediate Business Chinese
Designed for students interested in doing business in Chinese-speaking areas. The course reinforces listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills while developing vocabulary specifically needed to conduct business in Chinese.
CHIN 490/590 Section 2 Chinese Matrix of Change: Novels and Films
This course explores the matrix of change in China during the Cultural Revolution and modernization period. Through an examination of the visual and textual representations of this era, the novels and films bring us vis a vis with an emerging and changing Chinese identity.
CHIN 490/590 Section 3 Fengshui and Metaphysics
This course will focus on the various Chinese metaphysical and theoretical frameworks through which the relationship between Fengshui and Chinese culture will be analyzed and interpreted.
CLSC 490 Section 1 Elementary Sanskrit
This course examines Sanskrit and its importance in the traditional and contemporary culture of India through text, song, documentary and film. Students of Latin and Greek will be encouraged to approach the study of Sanskrit from a comparative perspective.
COMM 490 Section 1 Hip Hop Criticism
Through discussions, presentations, and written assignments students will turn a critical eye towards race, resistance, authenticity, and gender in hip hop writing. The goal of the course is to consider from a rhetorical perspective how public discourse about hip hop shapes our perceptions of it.
COMM 490 Section 2 Communication in Development and Fund Raising
This course will examine the nature and role of communication in development and fundraising in organizations; emphasis is on theory and application in nonprofit organizations.
CWL 349 Section 1 Surrealism
Surrealism originated in France in the 1920s. Influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, the surrealists attempted to express in art and literature the workings of the unconscious and to synthesize these workings with the conscious mind. This course will explore these issues in poetry, novels, paintings and films.
CWL 404/504 Section 1 Experimental Women Writers and Theorists
This course will examine major 20th century experimental writers and theorists worldwide. In addition to contemporary European women writers, the class will examine works by third- world writers.
CWL 440/540 Section 1 Magic Realism
Magical Realism is the dominant aesthetic tendency in 20th century Latin American and Caribbean expressive culture. This course will survey painters, filmmakers, and writers, in pursuit of works which reflect that obscure object of marvelousdesire -- realismo magico.
CWL 449/549 Section 1 Nobel Prize Laureates: Sartre, Beckett, Pirandello, Mahfouz, Naipaul
This course will examine selected works of Nobel Prize Laureates (between 1934-2001) from five different countries, who played a major role in the march of world literature.
CWL 452/552 Section 1 Mesoamerican and Other Myths
Come join us for a study of one of the handful of great mythological systems humanity has created - the mythology of Mesoamerica (Mexico and Guatemala) as it has existed prior to the coming of the conquistadores and European culture.
ENGL 469 Section 1 The Brontes
Students in this course will read novels and other writings (poetry, diaries, letters) by Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Bronte. We will also read critical essays and biographies of these remarkable Victorian sisters.
ENGL 469 Section 2 Durrell and Fowles
Students will read texts from several different genres (novels, poetry, short stories, and non-fiction) by Lawrence Durrell and John Fowles, two highly significant English writers of the 20th century. Their work will be examined in the context of the continuum of modernism to postmodernism.
ENGL 479 Section 1 Faulkner
This seminar will trace the career of one of the most esteemed American writers of the 20th century, focusing on Faulkner's novels as well as his works of shorter fiction.
ENGL 479 Section 2 Melville
This course provides an in-depth study of Herman Melville by exploring a number of his novels in light of theories and the history of the novel. We will be reading novels from the different periods of Melville's career as well as representative novels and critical statements from the development of the novel as a genre. ENGL 488 Section 1 (Post) Modern Persuasion This section will investigate ancient, modern, and postmodern practices of persuasion, with emphasis on how traditional arguments in texts have been partially transformed through digital media.
ENGL 681 Section 1 Samuel Johnson
In this course we will study the works of Samuel Johnson in depth in an effort to understand the literary culture in England in the latter half of the 18th century.
ENGL 683 Section 1 Ethnic American Fiction
An in-depth exploration of major works by American fiction writers of ethnically disparate origins. This seminar will reconsider the distinction between "mainstream" and "marginal" in favor of a pluralistic, polyphonic understanding of the literary history of the United States.
ENGL 683 Section 2 Teaching Basic Writing
This course will examine both the history and practical applications of teaching Basic Writing. The texts in this class will be oriented to instructor practice, but textbook sources will include selections from the beginnings of Basic Writing as a field of study to current (re)examinations.
HIST 466 Section 1 Gender and Sexuality in Latin American History
This course studies constructions of gender and the multiple manifestations of sexuality throughout Latin American history. Utilizing literature and primary sources, we will consider how the family, politics, culture, and the economy historically have conditioned unequal power relations between men and women.
JAPN 490 Section 1 Survey of Japanese Literature
A survey of the major literary works from Kojikito contemporary Japanese authors. Students reflect on the predominant movements, genres, rhetorical devices, literary techniques, and writers of the works. This course is conducted in Japanese and English.
PHIL 493/593 Section 1 Special Topics in Metaphysics
This course will examine the connections between perception and action, which has become a muchdebated issue amongst both philosophers and scientists. We will be concerned with three questions: How is visual information used to select targets of action and to guide goal-oriented behavior? What effect does occurrent visual information have on subsequent information-acquisition activity? Does action have a constitutive role in perceptual content?
PSY 390 Section 1 COR Basic Research Methods
This course will provide intensive training in research methods and is restricted to psychology students in their junior year who are in the COR program.
PSY 390 Section 2 Gay/Lesbian Psychology
This course is a systematic study of the psychological issues affecting lesbians, gay men and bisexual individuals. The course integrates the most recent research-based information with life experiences of lesbian/gay/bisexual people in such areas as conceptualization and origin of sexual orientation, heterosexism, coming out, lifespan development, psychosocial identity, internalized homophobia, relationships, parenting, and clinical services for GLB clients. The course emphasizes an affirmative approach and is appropriate for students of any sexual orientation.
PSY 490 Section 1 Multicultural Psychology
This course examines how race, culture, and ethnicity impact (a) the study of psychology, (b) individual experiences, behavior, and identity, and (c) multicultural competence in various professional settings. It is designed to allow both non-majors and majors in psychology to understand the psychological underpinnings of cultural, racial, and ethnic influences upon individual identity and interpersonal interactions.
PSY 490 Section 2 COR Advanced Research Methods
This course will provide intensive training in research methods and is restricted to psychology students in their senior year who are in the COR program.
SOC 490 Section 1 Global Terrorism and Human Rights
This course is concerned with terrorist practices and objectives as well as with the effects of terrorism and antiterrorist policies on political freedom, individual privacy, and other human rights. Examining historical and contemporary examples of terrorism carried out by private groups and organizations (for example, al Qaeda) as well as by national governments (for example, Nazi Germany), the course will identify the various kinds of people who become terrorists and the diverse origins of private and state terrorist organizations.
SPAN 490/590 Section 1 Spanish as a World Language
Starting with the conquest of the New World and leading up to the present time with the Latinization of the United States and Brazil, this course examines the historical and social conditions that account for the dominant position that Spanish enjoys in the world's linguistic hierarchy. In addition, it focuses on the future of the language in the global economy, with particular emphasis on the American and Asian continents.
SPAN 493/593 Section 1 Women's Intellectual History in Spain
This course on women's intellectual trajectory in Spain will contextualize feminism, rights, and equality for the medieval period to the present. Scholarly definitions and everyday uses of the term "feminism" will be discussed for various time periods and social contexts. Authors include activists, politicians, nuns, and other writers whose thinking challenges social norms and advocates social justice.