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In this second introductory lecture, Professor Paul Fry explores the interrelation of skepticism and determinism. The nature of discourse and the related issue of discursivity is read through two modern works, Anton Chekov's Cherry Orchard and Henry James' The Ambassadors. Exemplary critical focus on literary authority is located in Michel Foucault's "What Is an Author" and Roland Barthes' "The Death of the Author," both of which are read ...more
Professor Hammer introduces students to the material that will be covered in the course of the semester. Course readings and requirements are also addressed. Early publications of poems are discussed as they appeared in small magazines such as Blast, Broom, and The Criterion. Book publication of the same poems and other poetry collections are then discussed in contrast. A number of modern English poets are presented such as Eliot, Hughes, ...more
Professor Brownell gives an overview of the course agenda. The psychological issues of food are introduced, such as who defines food, what promotes health, and how the food industry contributes to both debates. The biological issues that will be discussed include how people's hard-wired preferences interact with a modern food environment. The political issues of the class will integrate food production, consumption, marketing, and world po...more
Professor Blight offers an introduction to the course. He summarizes some of the course readings, and discusses the organization of the course is discussed. Professor Blight offers some thoughts on the nature of history and the study of history, before moving into a discussion of the reasons for Americans' enduring fascination with the Civil War. The reasons include: the human passion for epics, Americans' fondness for redemption narrative...more
Professor Sylvia Ceyer covers radioactive decay and its various uses in modern medicine. Second order half-life, as a second order integrated rate law, is then discussed. The lecture concludes with the overlap of kinetics and chemical equilibrium: the equilibrium constant, elementary reactions, and an example, the decomposition of ozone.
Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts (HIST 251)In this lecture Professor Wrightson surveys the religious landscape of England during the later medieval period through to the reign of Henry VIII and the beginnings of the reformation. He notes that while the late medieval church was more vibrant and popular than many early triumphal analysis of the reformation allowed for, there were, nonetheless...more
Foundations of Modern Social Thought (SOCY 151)John Locke, a liberal thinker and near-contemporary of the conservative Hobbes, disputes Hobbes's thinking in some keys ways and builds on it in others. Locke starts his political theory with a notion of individuals in the state of nature being free, equal and reasonable; the state of nature is not synonymous with the state of war for Locke as it is for Hobbes. Locke argues that states should ...more
Part 1 - A Lesson in Lying: Immanuel Kant believed that telling a lie, even a white lie, is a violation of one’s own dignity. Professor Sandel asks students to test Kant’s theory with this hypothetical case: if your friend were hiding inside your home, and a person intent on killing your friend came to your door and asked you where he was, would it be wrong to tell a lie? This leads to a video clip of one of the most famous, recent exampl...more
The lecture begins with an introduction of Machiavelli's life and the political scene in Renaissance Florence. Professor Smith asserts that Machiavelli can be credited as the founder of the modern state, having reconfigured elements from both the Christian empire and the Roman republic, creating therefore a new form of political organization that is distinctly his own. Machiavelli's state has universalist ambitions, just like its predecess...more
The Abolition of the Slave Trade in America and Britain. Internationally-renowned historian Professor Simon Schama was an undergraduate, and later Fellow, at Christ's College, Cambridge before becoming Fellow and Tutor in Modern History at Brasenose College, Oxford. He then spent 13 years as professor at Harvard and is currently Professor of Art History and History at Columbia University in New York, where he specialises in European cultur...more
In many regions, the central cultural idea is that of a lineage, a family and its line of male ancestors and descendants. The prime duty in these cultures is to keep the lineage going. Religion is small scale with the ancestors performing many of the functions of gods. Denser populations and larger political entities lead to large-scale religion where conformity is stressed and cultural rules are codified in a book and not subject to discu...more
Foundations of Modern Social Thought (SOCY 151)Marx begins his intellectual life as a Young Hegelian, in the company of Bruno Bauer and others. The Young Hegelians, a radical group of scholars, intended to subject Hegel's theories to critical scrutiny. Eventually, Marx breaks with this tradition altogether by saying that alienation does not come from thoughts and therefore cannot be solved by ideas alone. Alienation comes from material ...more
