Core I: Histories of the Present: Truth
The search for truth is often taken to be one of the goals of academic inquiry, as well as a touchstone for making political and social decisions. Yet despite it being something many of us seek, we do not all agree on what is true. This course examines some methods that are seen as offering access to universal truth, while also proposing additional ways of knowing that challenge such claims. Who decides what is true and false? What do we do when dominant powers insist on a version of truth that we do not believe? Is there such a thing as truth, and, if not, what does it mean for something to be a lie? In addressing these questions, we consider how institutions, socially constructed categories such as race and gender, and other cultural frameworks influence ways of evaluating truth.
Core II: Histories of the Present
Core II continues—with sharper focus and through an array of course offerings—the interdisciplinary investigations begun in Core I. Core II courses are taught by a faculty member with interdisciplinary research interests and may be team-taught by faculty whose complementary research interests make for fresh interdisciplinary dialogue. Consult the Scripps Portal for CORE II offerings for the current semester. Core II offerings vary each year and may include:
The Aesthetics of Justice: Race, Space, Architecture and Music
The Art of Medicine, Medicine in the Arts: the body in Italian Literature
The Arts and Literature of Zen Buddhism
Becoming Someone Else in American Culture
Communities and Faultlines: Militarism and Building Anti-Racist Feminist and Queer Solidarities
Communities of Hate
The Construction of Kinship
Constructions of (Dis)Ability
Contract Enforcement: Histories of the Mafia, Past and Present
Convergence: Women, Work and Alternative Media
Death
Decolonizing: First Nations Musics and Literatures
Desire and Decadence: Interdisciplinary Contexts in Fin-de-Siecle Europe
The Detective in the City
Discord and Dialog
Eat the Rich! Capitalism and Work
Ecological Justice
Gender, Science and Knowledge
Hunger
Incentives Matter: The Economics of Gender and Choice
Investigating Humor in Literature and Mass Media
The Language of Music
Lights, Camera, Murder! Crimes and Trials in France and the U.S
Marginalized Communities
Making Sense of Power
Metropolis: Imagining the City
Misrepresentation of Women in Society and Science
Nerds and Geeks
Old New Media
Plantation Empires: Gender, Labor, Race and the Construction of “Difference”
Poetry of the Revolution: The Manifesto
The Question of the Animal, Ancient and Contemporary
Riotous Americans: Los Angeles and the Poetics of Unrest
The Self and the Origins of the State in the Western World
Shakespeare Then and Now
Subversive Selves
Terms of Modernity
Travel, Encounter, and the History of Religion
Urban Nights: Gender, Work, and Experiences
Why Punish?
Core III: Histories of the Present
Core III courses are small seminars designed to foster innovation and collaboration among students and faculty. The seminars involve considerable student participation and afford the opportunity to do more individualized, self-directed scholarship in association with a single faculty member working in the area of expertise from an interdisciplinary perspective. The work of the seminars culminates in a self-designed project exploring a particular topic through the lens of “histories of the present.” Exceptional student work will be disseminated to the wider College community. Depending on instructor and subject matter, the Core III seminars involve research, internships with fieldwork, exhibits, performances, conferences, and multimedia projects. Consult the Scripps Portal for Core III offerings for the current semester. Core III course offerings vary each year and may include:
Animal Rights and Speciesism
Antiracist and Transnational Feminist Coalitions
Bad Writing
Blues Jazzlines: Past and Present Tense
Bodies in Motion: Representation and Simulation
Building Los Angeles
Capitalism/Anti-Capitalism
Caribbean Women’s Literature
Challenges from the global south - “America”
Collective Songwriting: Theory and Knowledge Production
Creating and Recreating Genji
Cyberculture and the Posthuman Age
Democracy in Theory and Practice
Domestic Life and Political Activism in the 19th-century U.S.
Dream Factories: cinema in theory and in practice
Education and Inequality
Embodying Illness
Encountering the Middle East: Representations of Race, Gender, and Violence
Fame & Happiness: French Women as Case Study
Foreign Language and Culture Teaching Clinic
History and Memory
Home/Politics/Activism 19thC US
Landscapes of Plunder
Making Radical Sense of Power
Mathematics in Our Culture
Mobilizing Art
Narratives of Memory: Spain and Latin American
Postcolonial Anxieties: Unpacking Europe/Unyoking Africa
Prescriptions and Debates on What Contributes to Health
Radical Cartographies
Realism and Anti-Realism
Regarding the Pain of Others: Ethics and Documentary Representation
Representations of the Male Body in Contemporary Art and Culture
Representing LA: rock ‘n’ roll
Resilience and Resistance: Women of Color in the United States
Sites of Seduction: Aesthetic Contexts of the French Garden and its Others
Snapshots, Portraits, Instagram
Southern California and Hollywood Film: Human Dreams, Human Difference and Human Desire
The Detective in the City
The Life Story
The Meaning(?) of Life
The Mechanical Eye: Photography from Science to Art
The Twentieth-Century Music Schism
United: Women’s Work and Collective Action
VIR/GYN GODDESS: The Virgin and the Femme Fatale
Walls, Borders, Fences
What is Happiness?
Wilderness in American Life
Women, Girls, and Mathematical Superstitions
Women’s Rights: Does it Matter?
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