2019-2020 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
Course Descriptions
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Courses at Furman are typically identified by codes separated into three distinct parts. The first segment designates the academic subject of the course, the second component relates to the level of instruction, and the final element (when displayed) assists with the identification of the meeting times and location for individual course sections.
Credit bearing undergraduate courses typically are numbered between 100 and 599, graduate instruction is typically numbered between 600 and 999, while zero credit experiences frequently have numbers between 001 and 099. Undergraduates can further expect courses numbers to reflect:
100-299 |
introductory courses, geared to freshmen and sophomores |
300-499 |
advanced courses, designed for majors and other students with appropriate background and/or prerequisites |
500-599 |
individualized instruction, including internships, research, independent study, and music performance studies |
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English |
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ENG-309 Nature in South Asian Literature GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) and WC (World Cultures) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Introduction to the genre of the pastoral as evidenced in writings about South Asia, both by ?Western? and ?indigenous? authors either visiting or domiciled in the Indian subcontinent. An array of literary texts of different kinds written in different eras will be considered to help students understand the transformations in the genre (including its parody and subversion) in response to cultural and political developments. Secondary texts will also help construct an appropriate interpretive framework for the primary texts. 4 credits. |
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ENG-310 Studies in Fictional Histories GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar How does literature shape the ways in which one imagines historical figures, national events, or remote geographies? How do partially fictionalized reconstructions of experience influence historical understanding? This course theorizes the often porous borders between history and fiction. Students will examine archival material, historical documents, and theoretical studies alongside fictional works that do not simply reimagine the past but profoundly recast national histories. 4 credits. |
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ENG-311 Early American Literature GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Study of American literature from the colonial period through Cooper. Focusing on major works by Franklin, Brown, and Cooper, considering such forms as the sermon, diary, captivity narrative, and spiritual biography. 4 credits. |
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ENG-312 Emerson to Dickinson GER: UQ (Ultimate Questions) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Study of Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Stowe, Whitman, Fuller, Poe, Hawthorne, Melville and Dickinson. Through exploring poems, essays, novels, and personal narratives, this course examines living well, considering relationships to nature, to God, and to one’s self. In addition, the course examines concepts of good and evil and the political realities of slavery and the disenfranchisement of women. 4 credits. |
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ENG-320 Eighteenth Century Novel GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Novels are so familiar that it is hard to believe that there was ever at time when they did not exist. However, in Shakespeare’s day, there was not yet a novel in the modern sense, while a bit over a century later the novel was the most widely-read of non-religious literary forms. In this course we will explore the changes–in literacy, class structure, international relations, gender norms, print culture, language, and religion–that this new genre reflected. Authors covered may include Behn, Manley, Defoe, Haywood, Swift, Lennox, Fielding, Richardson, Collier, Burney, Goldsmith, Radcliffe, and Austen. 4 credits. |
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ENG-321 Victorian Novel GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar The Victorian novel viewed through the lens of both nineteenth-century and modern theories of the novel. Works by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Hardy and others will be examined from the perspective of Victorian literary culture and the work of critics such as Mikhail Bakhtin, Georg Lukas, Walter Benjamin, Ian Watt, Fredric Jameson, and Franco Moretti. 4 credits. |
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ENG-322 Modern British Novel GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Study of the novel in the British Isles and Empire from 1900 to 1960. Focus on realism, modernism, colonialism, war, and social change. Major writers studied include: Conrad, Joyce, Woolf, Forster, Lawrence, Durrell, Greene, and Lessing. Readings will include literary history, criticism, and theory of the modern novel. 4 credits. |
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ENG-323 Global Novel Since 1960 GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar The contemporary novel from the British Isles, the Caribbean, Canada, Australia, South Asia, and Africa. Focus on postmodernism, postcolonialism, and transnationalism from 1960 to the present. The writers studied include: Naipaul, Rushdie, Ondaatje, Emecheta, Gordimer, McEwan, Atwood, Carey, and Kincaid. Readings will include theory and criticism. 4 credits. |
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ENG-325 Global Issues in Literature GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) and WC (World Cultures) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Study of postcolonial responses to and re-authoring of different Western literary canons, including examples from drama, fiction and poetry. Study of literary practices from diverse postcolonial locations (Africa and the Caribbean) to enable understanding of how through literary adaptations and oppositional writings third world writers respond to writings from Europe and America. 4 credits. |
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ENG-326 Harry Potter and the Secrets of Popular Culture GER: WR (Writing-Research Intensive) and TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar This course will examine the relationship between the Harry Potter film and book franchise and the 18th century novel. Like the blockbuster series, many 18th century novels relied on an earlier literary tradition, which they both sensationalized and updated. Not only does the Harry Potter series borrow tropes and plots from a variety of literary works, but it also relies on a rich literary tradition of borrowing and adaptation. This course will explore how literary traditions have always grown through copying, imitation, and outright theft. 4 credits. |
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ENG-331 American Novel to World War I GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Examination of literary romanticism, realism, and naturalism as reflected in a selection of American novels and study of their cultural contexts, including war, gender roles, slavery, expatriation, and immigration. Authors might include Cooper, Hawthorne, Stowe, James, Twain, Norris, Chopin, and Cather. 4 credits. |
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ENG-332 American Novel Since World War I GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: Any first year writing seminar Examination of modern and post-modern novels, emphasizing how these works reflect cultural assumptions about social class, race, ethnicity, gender roles, politics, technology, religion, art and entertainment. Authors might include Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, Hurston, Kesey, Walker, and Tan. 4 credits. |
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ENG-342 Drama in London GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Study of drama from the West and elsewhere in performance primarily on stage in London but also in other locations around the British Isles. Attention paid to the conditions of theatre in the present and at the time the drama was first produced. Offered only in conjunction with study away experience conducted in the British Isles. 4 credits. |
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ENG-343 Drama at Stratford-upon-Avon GER: VP (Visual and Performing Arts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Offered only as part of the fall term in the British Isles program. Study of the drama being performed in London and Stratford-upon-Avon by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre and others. 4 credits. |
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ENG-345 Travel Study in the British Isles Texts and culture in the United Kingdom and Ireland. Specific topics will change from year to year. 4 credits. |
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ENG-351 Modern Poetry GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Works by at least a half-dozen prominent poets will be read, analyzed, and evaluated. Although prosody, poetic theory, and the development of modernism will be covered, major emphasis will be on the aesthetic qualities of individual poems and the distinctive sensibilities of individual poets. 4 credits. |
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ENG-352 Experimental Poetries Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Introduction to different kinds of British and American poetries and poetics of the 20th century: some that reaffirm the well-known persona-centered lyric in various guises, and others that question the notions of expressivity and authenticity to redefine the lyric through a relatively more pronounced linguistic experimentation. 4 credits. |
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ENG-355 Religious Poetry in English GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Selected religious poets writing in English in the Christian tradition, from the seventeenth century to the present. Special attention to the function of metaphor in rendering religious experience. 4 credits. |
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ENG-361 History of English Language GER: HB (Empirical Study of Human Behavior) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Survey of the internal history of English, reviewing Indo-European and Germanic background and studying the development of phonology, morphology, and syntax from Old English to Modern English. 4 credits. |
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ENG-362 English Language: How It Works GER: HB (Empirical Study of Human Behavior) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Introduction to basic English linguistics. The difference between prescriptive grammar (the rules we learn in school) and descriptive grammar (the linguistic rules that native speakers of a language have learned). Discussion of the main divisions of linguistics, focusing on the phonology, morphology, and syntax of Edited American English. Study of the ways other dialects, in particular, Southern American English and African American Vernacular English, differ from the standard and exploration of the implications of linguistics on social and educational policy 4 credits. |
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ENG-365 Revolution and Reaction GER: WR (Writing-Research Intensive) and TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Focuses on appreciating the diversity of thought collected under the term conservatism. The courses will celebrate the diversity, inconsistencies, and variable unity of the divergent ideas sometimes considered synonymous
with conservatism. 4 credits. |
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ENG-367 South Asian Travel Writing Introduction to the various texts that show both how South Asian cultures have figured in the Western imagination and also how South Asians themselves have dealt with questions of identity, selfhood, and otherness through travel. 4 credits. |
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ENG-368 Film and Visual Culture in South Asia GER: VP (Visual and Performing Arts) and WC (World Cultures) South Asian cinemas and visual culture through analyzing films, film studios, film archives, library and other visual and performative art forms such as architecture, painting, cinema billboards, advertising, public spaces, design, fashion, photography, dance and theatre. 4 credits |
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ENG-369 Gender in South Asian Literature and Film GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) and WC (World Cultures) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Introduction to the various debates over the representations of masculinity and femininity as these categories intersect with other forms of identity and belonging such as caste/class, nation, race, and sexuality through the reading of literary and filmic texts. 4 credits. |
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ENG-371 Mystery and Detective Fiction GER: WR (Writing-Research Intensive) and TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Study of mystery fiction and its offshoots (detective, suspense, spy) in English and translation. Possible writers: Shakespeare, Walpole, Poe, Hammett, Mankell. Critical perspectives may include narrative studies, gender criticism, Marxist criticism. 4 credits. |
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ENG-372 Studies in Short Fiction GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) and WR (Writing-Research Intensive) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Stories to be discussed are selected from a variety of historical periods and cultural perspectives. Writers might include Hawthorne, Scott, James, Lawrence, Joyce, Trevor, and Munro. 4 credits. |
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ENG-373 Medical and Scientific Culture in Film Examining the intertwined ways in which scientific/medical imaging (such as X-ray, MRI, and PET scans) and popular forms of visual culture (film, fine art, novels) conceive of and display the body’s surface and interior. Exploring the role that medical/scientific forms of visual culture play in constructing notions of gender, sexuality, disability, race. 4 credits. |
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ENG-374 Stardom and Identity GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Exploring the historical development of the Hollywood star system and the complex role stars play in American film and culture. Focusing on representative classic and contemporary film 147stars,148157 and analyzing how stars are produced by the studio system and its remnants in the contemporary Hollywood dream factory and remade in the cultural imaginary. 4 credits. |
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ENG-375 Screening Film Noir GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Examination of distinctive stylistic and thematic features of film noir as it emerged in its classic period and as it returns in contemporary American cinema. The course will also consider the ?noir anxiety? that emerges around identity as it relates to historical trauma, sexual roles, race and ethnicity ? and do so with an eye toward assessing the critical social commentary offered by both classic and contemporary noir cinema. 4 credits. |
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ENG-376 Shakespeare on Film GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Study of Shakespeare’s plays on film or in production if live performances occur during semester the course is taught. Shakespeare’s written texts may be studied, but focus will be on the artistry of the cinema or theater in revealing Shakespeare for modern audiences. 4 credits. |
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ENG-377 Studies in the Essay GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar The essay as a genre, beginning with work from early practitioners such as Montaigne, Hazlitt, Lamb, and Shonagon, and tracing its development to the dynamic form we see in contemporary work. Students will read both American and international writers and discuss works on the basis of both thematic and formal qualities. 4 credits. |
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ENG-401 Studies in Chaucer GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar The poetry of Chaucer, in Middle English, including some early poems, Troilus and Criseyde, and substantial selections from The Canterbury Tales. Special attention to the development of Chaucer146s narrative art, his invention of the Chaucerian persona, and his relevance to postmodern thought, conceived as his self-consciousness about the use of language and his ambivalence about the value of literary art. 4 credits. |
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ENG-403 Faulkner GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Chronological study of the development of Faulkner’s art from FLAGS IN THE DUST to GO DOWN, MOSES. Attention paid to the concept of Yoknapatawpa County and to the various innovative narrative techniques Faulkner employed. 4 credits. |
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ENG-404 Major Figures in Early Modern British Literature GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Study of works written by major authors in the reigns of the Tudors and the Stuarts. Authors include: Sidney, Spenser, Wroth, Marlowe, Jonson, Milton, or the major lyric poets. Focus on major works in their entirety written by single authors except in the case of the lyric poets. 4 credits. |
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ENG-405 Gothic Literature GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Examining literature that evokes terror and horror, explores the possibility of supernatural forces, portrays mental disintegration, transgresses social, political, and moral norms, and exposes cultural anxieties and oppression. Topics and texts may vary. Topics and texts may vary. 4 credits. |
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ENG-411 Satire GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Readings in satirical literature of all genres and many periods, with an emphasis on satire of the early eighteenth and the late twentieth centuries. Some attention to satire in forms other than literature. Focus on function, method, characteristics, and problems of the satirical mode. 4 credits. |
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ENG-412 Autobiography GER: UQ (Ultimate Questions) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Topics include formal/theoretical discussions that stress spiritual and moral concerns, exploring contrast with other forms such as biography and memoir, and the study of specific sub-genres. Film adaptation or autobiographical film may also be considered. Alternating versions will include either an American emphasis or a global emphasis. 4 credits. |
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ENG-415 Studies in Contemporary American Literature GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Readings in American literature from 1950 to the present, with emphasis on what might make this recent writing different from what came before, or 147postmodern148 in terms of aesthetics and cultural context. May address fiction, drama and poetry or concentrate on a single genre. 4 credits. |
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ENG-418 Shakespeare’s Europe and England’s Renaissance GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar The influence of important classical and Renaissance European writers on the literature and drama of Shakespeare’s England. Topics vary, but may include the impact of authors such as Dante, Ovid, Montaigne, Petrarch, and others on Donne, Herbert, Marlowe, Milton, Shakespeare, Spenser, and their peers. 4 credits. |
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ENG-420 Animals in Medieval Literature and Culture GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Explores medieval literature about animals, humans’ historical relationships with other animals, philosophical discussions of the idea of “the animal,” and connections between medieval views of animals and modern ecological issues. 4 credits. |
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ENG-422 Literature of the South GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar The dialogue about race, class, and gender that takes place between writers such as Faulkner, Warren, Gaines, Welty, O’Connor, Walker, and Allison. 4 credits. |
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ENG-423 Irish Renaissance Literature GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar The remarkable literary flowering contemporary with the late nineteenth-century movements in Ireland that led to the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921, and with the difficult historical circumstances faced by the new nation in the first years of its existence. The major figures studied include Yeats, Joyce, Synge, and O’Casey. Normally taught in conjunction with study away experience conducted in the British Isles. 4 credits. |
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ENG-434 Global Postcolonial Issues GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) and WC (World Cultures) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Introduction to the field of Global Postcolonial Studies through the study of literary, filmic, and theoretical texts focusing on the historical and ongoing interactions of European and non-European cultures from the perspective of domination, resistance, and the search for alternatives. 4 credits. |
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ENG-435 Culture and Politics in African Literature GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) and WC (World Cultures) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar A cross-genre survey of the literature of the African Continent. Attention will be paid to significant formal innovations and thematic preoccupations that define African literature. Exploring structures across literary and cultural boundaries like genre, race, gender, class and politics, in order to gain valuable insights into the relationship between literature and society, especially how texts participate in, and document the changing conditions of African societies. 4 credits. |
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ENG-451 Film Analysis GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Exploration of the fundamentals of film form151narrative construction in the Hollywood system as well as non-narrative formal systems (documentary, abstract and avant-garde film). Includes examination of the fundamentals of film style (mise-en-sc232ne, cinematography, editing, sound) and attention to the relationships between the literary and filmic texts. 4 credits. |
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ENG-452 Literary Feminisms GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) and WR (Writing-Research Intensive) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Women’s literature in English as a distinct tradition, from the perspective of feminist literary theory and criticism. Structured as a historical and thematic survey of issues in the field; the writers and theorists studied will vary. 4 credits. |
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ENG-453 Slave Narrative to Slave Novel GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Consideration of the traditional Black Atlantic 18th, 19th, and 20th century slave narratives and novels, including authors such as Douglass, Equiano, and Butler, among others. Texts critique historiographies, ideologies, and models of interpretation that subjected African American cultural production and black identity to second-class citizenship. Examine the relationship between memory, writing, and historical representation and the production of hierarchical categories in the construction of racial, sexual, and gender differences. Texts engage the challenges of formal genre presented by the slave novel’s reinvention of the traditional slave narrative. 4 credits. |
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ENG-454 Caribbean Cosmopolitianisms GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Reading across Caribbean literatures, cultures, languages, and theories which organize the region,exploring the ways in which cosmopolitanisms shape the literary and cultural productions of the Caribbean. Attention paid to the ways cultural hybridity emerges against the persistence of a mythological cultural and national homogeneity. Authors might include William Shakespeare, Charlotte Bronte, Michelle Cliff, Junot Diaz, Christina Diaz, Jamaica Kincaid, Earl Lovelace, and Jean Rhys. 4 credits. |
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ENG-455 Interpretive Issues in Early Modern Literature GER: WR (Writing-Research Intensive) and TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Study of key issues for understanding early modern British literature and its place in a history of ideas in the West. Topics include early modern literature in relation to the histories of science, individualism, gender and sexuality, privacy, literary criticism, authorship and/or the place of period texts in emerging theories of literature and history. 4 credits. |
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ENG-456 Comparative Ethnicities GER: WC (World Cultures) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Emphasis on a comparative approach to Asian American, Jewish American, Native American, African American, Caribbean, US-Latino, and Chicano literatures. Focus will be on how writers of color address histories of ambivalent citizenship; how the immigrant experience and the return home changes both America and the world; the problematic concept of America itself, always seemingly at battle with itself. Some of the rhetorical battles waged over the meaning of an American national and hemispheric identity in the works of Gish Jen, Leslie Marmon Silko, Ralph Ellison, Maxine Hong Kingston, Sherman Alexie, Cristina Garcia, Junot Diaz, Philip Roth, and Edwidge Danticat, among others. 4 credits. |
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ENG-457 African-American Drama GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Three-part history and development of African American drama in the United States from its origins to the present moment. Part one explores the roots of African American drama and examines early stage images of black subjects, 19th century stage stereotypes of minstrelsy, and the initial achievements of the African Grove Theatre and early black playwrights. Part Two focuses on the Harlem Renaissance and the Harlem Unit of the Federal Theatre Project. Part Three examines major plays and playwrights from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun (1959) to the 2001 Pulitzer Prize-winning production of Suzan Lori-Park’s Topdog-Underdog. 4 credits. |
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ENG-461 Critical and Cultural Theory GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Introduction to theoretical approaches to literature such as psychoanalysis, deconstruction, feminism, and postcolonial studies. Consideration of the ethics and politics of interpretation, the assumptions and practices informing theoretical work, and the relation between literature and theory. Readings include works of fiction, film, and texts by theorists such as Freud, Lacan, Kristeva, Zizek, Derrida, de Man, Butler, Cixous, Spivak, Bhabha. 4 credits. |
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ENG-462 Stage, Social Struggle, Theory GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) and WR (Writing-Research Intensive) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Exploration of the way the theatre and drama become sites for producing social discourses and institutions. Focusing on one or more key periods in world drama, students will study the interrelations of plays, theoretical formulations, and specific material conditions of performance. 4 credits. |
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ENG-471 South Asian Cultural Studies Literature and Film GER: TA (Critical, Analytical Interpretation of Texts) and WC (World Cultures) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Introduction to the complex array of issues essential to understanding South Asian cultures in the contemporary context. Examining literary texts and films through interpretive approaches appropriate to the pluralistic cultural traditions of the region and informed by current debates in the humanities. 4 credits. |
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ENG-475 Senior Seminar in English Writing/Research Intensive (WR) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Course topic changes with each offering. 4 credits. |
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ENG-476 Senior Seminar in Writing WR (Writing/Research Intensive ) Prerequisite: any first year writing seminar Capstone experience for students pursuing the writing track within the English major. Students engage in reading, writing, commenting, and revising to create a portfolio of polished writing. 4 credits. |
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ENG-501 Independent Study Variable credit. |
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ENG-503 Individualized Internship Prerequisite: instructor permission Student will develop an internship to work at a business, agency or media site for up to 210 hours over the term and will meet the objectives of a learning agreement completed with the employer and approved by a faculty sponsor. Requirements include a work journal, portfolios, and assigned academic papers relating to their internship. Open primarily to seniors and juniors. A student must have the permission of the instructor and an internship position secured to be enrolled. May be taken only once. May not be taken for major credit. No pass/fail. May not contribute to the major. Cannot be completed through the pass-no pass grading option. Not repeatable. Variable credit. |
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ENG-505 Structured Internship Prerequisite: instructor permission Students will develop internships at businesses, agencies, or media sites for up to 210 hours over the term and will meet the objectives of a learning agreement completed with the employer and approved by a faculty sponsor. The internship site must permit the student a significant degree of professional writing. A weekly seminar class focuses on the objectives and issues of students? experiences as they develop their verbal and written communication skills. Course requirements include a work journal, portfolios, and academic papers relating to their internship. The course is open primarily to seniors and juniors. The course may contribute to the major. No pass/fail. Not repeatable. The course is open primarily to seniors and juniors. The course may contribute to the major. Cannot be completed through the pass-no pass grading option. Not repeatable. Variable credit. |
Environmental Studies |
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EST-001 Biodiesel Production Provides students with a working knowledge of biodiesel production, including basic organic chemistry, safety considerations, logistics, and economics, through the weekly processing of high grade biodiesel from waste vegetable oil. Course will include weekly discussions concerning alternative fuels and environmental issues. 0 credits. |
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EST-1 Biodiesel Production Provides students with a working knowledge of biodiesel production, including basic organic chemistry, safety considerations, logistics, and economics, through the weekly processing of high grade biodiesel from waste vegetable oil. Course will include weekly discussions concerning alternative fuels and environmental issues. 0 credits. |
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EST-301 Environment and Society GER: NE (Humans and the Natural Environment) Interdisciplinary examination of the causes, potential solutions and ethical dilemmas associated with environmental problems on various spatial, temporal, political and social scales (individual to global). 4 credits. |
Film Studies |
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FST-202 Introduction to Reading Film GER: Dependent on version; consult term-specific course listings Distinctive ways that film conveys and generates meaning. Tools to critically analyze films by examining the basics of film form, style (mise-en-scene, camera angle and movement, editing, and sound), and genre. The course also will explore the characteristic features of – as well as alternatives to – the “classical Hollywood style,” a series of formal and narrative conventions present in films as distinct as Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds (2005) and John Ford’s 1939 western, Stagecoach. 4 credits. |
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FST-365 Great Film Directors GER: VP (Visual and Performing Arts) An examination of the concept of auteur (author) film production that focus on the unique stylistic elements of films based on the film director’s aesthetics and worldview. The course looks at the films of many of the main individuals, both inside and outside of Hollywood, who are considered auteur directors such as John Ford, Billy Wilder, Igmar Bergman, Alfred Hitchcock, Akira Kurosawa, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, Pedro Almadovor, Spike Lee, Zhang Yimou, and Wong Kar Wai. 4 credits. |
First Year Seminar |
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FYW-1101 Abortion: Issues and Controversies Abortion touches core beliefs about the nature of the human person, human freedom and rights, human relationships, and the right ordering of society. This seminar will consider abortion through various disciplines in order to arrive at a deeper understanding of the issues and the controversies around this phenomenon. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1106 Doing History in the 1950s The purpose of this seminar is, first, to explore changing tastes in the field of history by comparing what was written in the previous generation to what is being written today, and second, to examine the Landmark Series, published in 185 volumes by Random House in New York City in the 1950s and early ‘60s. Students will read on topics, mostly of their choice, comparing books written in the U.S. in mid-century to the best of current scholarship on those same topics. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1108 Evaluating Scientific Claims in the Media Students will learn the skills necessary to read scientific claims carefully, find relevant information in a variety of sources, and develop an informed opinion in writing about the veracity of the original claim. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1109 Global Climate Change This course provides an insight into the scientific theory and data of global climate change. Students will analyze real data and compare their results to those cited in the novel “A State of Fear” by Michael Crichton. Ultimately, we will assess the roles of humans and natural variation in current climate change. We will also consider how knowledge and uncertainty influence climate policy. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1110 Global Water Issues The course is intended to introduce students to and foster discussion on the many scientific and political facets of the world’s leading global water issues. The course covers a wide range of water resource and water policy topics. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1111 Haunted Mansions This course explores how the interior and exterior settings of a selection of Gothic novels, short stories, and films reflect the lives and complex psyches of the characters. Students will learn about such psychological disorders as dissociative identity disorder, post-partum depression, and schizophrenia and will discuss how family relationships and cultural pressures adversely affect the characters studied. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1112 History of Liberal Arts Why are you at Furman? The course will explore the history and practice of the liberal arts from the classical period to the present. Specific focus will be on the development of “Humanism” and the “Humanities” in higher education from early modern European universities to liberal arts education on American campuses. Students will explore arguments and create their own through a series of guided writing assignments that will introduce them to college-level writing. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1116 Language, Argument and Culture A study of classical and modern principles of rhetoric and argument applied to contemporary linguistic issues such as information technology, multilingualism, language and gender, language and national identities, and the globalization of English. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1118 Man vs. Machine Popular culture has depicted the prospect of intelligent machines as a threat to the humans that serve as their models. This course examines the enterprise of creating an intelligent machine and what it might imply about our own species. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1120 Medicine, Morality and Culture This course will examine the ways in which our moral and cultural conceptions shape medicine and medical research as well as the ways that medicine and medical research shape our cultural understandings of health, wellness, and normal human functioning. Special attention will be given to historically controversial cases, for example: the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, Nazi human experimentation, the Terri Schiavo case. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1122 Popular Culture, Crime and Justice Examine images of crime and justice in popular culture and compares them to scientific data; consider the source of these popular culture accounts of crime and justice; and evaluates the influence popular culture has on understands of crime and criminal justice policy. Discuss the ways that mass media reflects and reinforces underlying issues and concerns about crime and justice, and how these images changes over time. Use a socio-historical perspective to examine crime and justice in American popular culture and connect those images to broader social issues. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1125 Sex and the New Testament Sex and the NT is a writing seminar that will investigate through research and writing what the New Testament has to say about sex, why it says what it does, and what that might mean for contemporary society. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1126 The Ethics of Sex Introduction to understanding human sexuality and thinking about sexual ethics through consideration of pressing issues, such as the moral status of pornography, prostitution, masturbation, polygamy, and abortion; the rationale and value of marriage; intersexed and transgendered individuals; and debates over whether there is a rational basis for privileging heterosexuality over homosexuality. Three broad approaches, an evolutionary, a social constructionist, and a Christian theological, will be used to examine ethical questions in dialogue with a number of philosophical and theological scholars. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1127 To Walk the Land Through weekly hikes, the goal of this seminar is that you would come to know and enjoy the land, your local upstate environment, in a deeper way; to appreciate its natural and cultural history; to better understand our connection to and dependence on the land; and to communicate this new understanding effectively. Students will explore arguments and create their own through a series of guided writing assignments that will introduce them to college-level writing. This seminar is physically demanding and time consuming because of one six-hour afternoon hike and one two-hour discussion meeting per week. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1128 Turing: Thinking Machines, Codes and Other Enigmas Explores the enigmatic life and prodigious work of Alan Turing (1912-1954), including his pioneering work in the fields of artificial intelligence, the limitations of computing power, and code-breaking during World War II. Consideration of works offering biographical or fictionalized treatments of Turing. Uses a biographical study of his life and writings to examine the fundamental nature of human thought, the existence of a soul, and the ethical role of a citizen in wartime, as well as society’s response to otherness. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1129 Pristine Nature: Myth Or Reality? An examination of the concepts of wilderness and “pristine” nature from scientific, historical, and cultural perspectives. Both the present influence of humanity on nature and evidence for human influences on landscapes in the past will be considered. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1133 Can We Make Sense of the 60s? An introduction to college writing that focuses on American history in the 1960’s and early 1970’s. Through writing and revision, students will critically analyze conflicting forces that shaped American life. With careful staging of assignments, they will complete a research project on a topic of choice, such as on a key individual or international crisis of the era, the civil rights movement, the emergence of the environmental crusade, or on the protest tradition. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1136 Exploring Politics through Literature This course seeks to stimulate intellectual curiosity about the philosophic underpinnings of politics through thoughtful readings of literature. Drawing upon the vivid power of literature taken from a variety of different historical and cultural contexts, students will have an opportunity to begin an exploration of the influence of politics on human development. More specifically, how the competing views of nature, religion or the human good embedded in politics influence the possibility of self-knowledge. Literary works will be supplemented with short readings from the tradition of political philosophy. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1137 Freedom or Oppression: Human Rights in Asia There are thousands of political prisoners in Asia. Leaders who order their detention contend that “Asian Values” and unique historical circumstances obviate the need to protect rights that many in the West take for granted. This course examines the “Asian Values” debate, the foundations of human rights theory in Western liberal democracies and in Confucianism, and how human rights can best be safeguarded in Asia. It examines the relationship between human rights and democracy. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1138 Know Thyself Consider, in a wisdom-seeking spirit, what some of the Western tradition’s greatest philosophers have written about the fundamental human questions: love and friendship, politics and justice, happiness and misery, death and God. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1140 History of Detective Fiction Whodunnit? This course traces detective fiction from its roots, with possible readings from 18th century gothic novels to Sherlock Holmes, British cozies, and American crime noir. Narrative style, trends in the genre, and social, ethical, and legal questions are also explored. Writing assignments will introduce students to college-level writing, including creating a logical argument, using textual evidence, and writing mechanics. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1141 Homer and History Follow the history of Homer’s great war-poem, the Iliad, from the Bronze Age and the invention of writing, through the tyranny and democracy of Athens, the library of Alexandria, to its rescue from the ruins of Constantinople in the 1400s. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1142 Economics of Walmart Examines the economic forces, business decisions, and controversies related to big box retail stores, including their effects on local businesses, traffic congestion, and urban development. Discuss the emergence of Wal-Mart’s global supply chain and its implications for efficiency and well-being in the United States and developing countries. Assess whether Wal-Mart is the economic miracle of modern times or a behemoth that should be contained by government policy and regulation. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1143 Shakespeare in His Contexts This course will be fashioned around a particular group of ideas or topics relevant to Shakespeare’s plays or poems. Students will study and write about these ideas in ways structured to develop interpretive, analytical, and argumentative writing skills appropriate for college-level work. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1148 Southern Women: Black & White This seminar will explore the experiences of Southern Women from 1800 to the present through the literature written by and about them. The method of study will include: describing the culturally defined image of Southern women, tracing the effect of this definition on female behavior, defining how the realities of Southern women’s lives were often at odds with the ideal, and examining the struggle of black and white women to confront racism and cultural expectations and to find a way to achieve self-determination. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1149 Art, Literature and the Civil Rights Struggle Exploration of the cultural, historical, and literary significance of the American civil rights movement. Course texts feature works of literature and history as well as the popular music, artistic productions, and public speeches that galvanized a national movement. We will extend our study to examine contemporary representations of this era as well. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1150 Sugar and Spice Imagine your day without sugar and spice. Unsweetened cappuccino? Cinnamon-free apple pie? This seminar traces the history of the globalization/localization of food. By considering the networks that connect Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean, students will study and write about the movement of goods and people that shape our social and culinary worlds. What are we eating and why? Through a series of guided writing assignments, peer critiques, and individual writing consultations, students will develop writing skills appropriate for college-level work. Tastings included! 4 credits. |
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FYW-1151 American Dream Ideal and Reality An exploration of the concept of America as a place of political and religious freedom, social and economic mobility, and opportunities to achieve personal fulfillment. Students will analyze both literary texts and contemporary culture. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1152 The Tumultuous Twenties This seminar will examine the political, social, and cultural history of the United States in the 1920s. During this crucial decade the values of urban America clashed with the traditions of rural America as the culture of the Jazz Age redefined American morals. Nativism, Anglo-Saxon racism, militant Protestantism and Prohibition characterized the reaction to a rapidly changing society. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1153 The United State Civil War through the Lens of Biography This seminar will examine the Civil War era using the perspective of biography. In addition to considering biographical interpretations of leaders such as Robert E. Lee, Abraham Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass we will consider memoirs of ordinary participants and approaches such as collective biography. Students will, with guidance from the instructor, have an opportunity to research and write their own biographical interpretations of individuals from the period. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1154 The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) is arguably the most important book on economics ever published. Indeed, the central tenets of this work provide the intellectual rationale for the free enterprise system of markets and government embraced by much of the modern world. This first-year writing seminar will examine the economic, social, and moral theories put forth by the Scottish moral philosopher Adam Smith (1723-1790) and their applicability to the modern world. As a writing seminar, much of our time will be focused on developing the skills necessary for successful college-level writing. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1155 University and Social Justice Course will examine whether the university has a roll in educating students about what would constitute a more just society and, if so, what might be unique about a university’s contribution. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1156 Who Speaks Bad English? Should English be our official language? What is Black English? Who makes the grammar rules we learn in school –and should those rules be changed? Students will be introduced to basic linguistics and use their knowledge to discuss issues from national language policy to attitudes about “ain’t.” Students will study and write about these ideas in ways structured to develop interpretive, analytical, and argumentative writing skills appropriate for college-level work. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1158 Beer and Society An examination of the ways in which beer production and use intersects with human culture. Topics will be addressed from the viewpoints of disciplines in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. Course includes lab exercises and field trips. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1159 Veils and Turbans: Genders and Modernities Veils and turbans are objects of clothing that signal cultural difference and compel us to reflect on norms of gender and sexuality across cultures. Through writing assignments of various kinds in response to stories, poems, films, and plays, students will develop interpretive, analytical, and argumentative writing skills appropriate for college-level work. 4 credits. |
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FYW-1161 Contemporary Issues on Film This seminar will focus on films that address global, political, and social issues. The issues will change with each offering of the seminar: in one term the seminar might study films that explore the status of women in a variety of social and cultural contexts. Possible topics might include black/white relationships or the representation of war. Students will study and write about these ideas in ways structured to develop interpretive, analytical, and argumentative writing skills appropriate for college-level work. 4 credits. |
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