Seminars Archive
Fall 2022
First Year Forum, XPL
50:525:162:01
Dr. Lee Ann Westman
Tuesday & Thursday 2:00pm-3:20pm
The Honors College First-Year Forum is a 3-credit course organized around the 2022/23 theme “What is a Just Community?” This course is required of all first-year Honors College students in their first or second semester at Rutgers-Camden. Faculty from across campus will join us each week to discuss how their discipline approaches the question of “What is a Just Community” and students will work with Honors College Teaching Assistants and each other on semester-long projects to produce a change-making product, service, or initiative.
Upper Division Honors Courses
Contemporary Art: Seeking Justice, AAI
50:525:152:01
Cyril Reade
Tuesday & Thursday 9:35am-10:55am
In this course we work with the 1619 project, a history of slavery in the US. We begin by reading essays addressing different topics each week and identifying artists whose work addresses a similar issue.
A just society
The 1619 Project is a multi-authored re-writing of US history through the lens of the institution of slavery. The project was launched to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the arrival in the US of the first vessel transporting kidnapped Africans in 1619 and the creation of a slave economy that has since emancipation distorted American life. Slavery is the root of the injustices, discrepancies, inequalities, and discrimination that have driven US political, financial, social and cultural life.
The course takes as its vantage point this interpretation of US history. Authors, writing from different disciplinary vantage points, trace various aspects of slavery and its post-emancipation legacy in maintaining an unjust society. We assume that the authors shine a light on these dark corners so that society can move towards just communities, as Nikole Hannah-Jones lays out in the first essay. In the first weeks we find artists whose work complements this search for justice, each individual and community working towards defined goals within their field of concern. We also narrow the scope of the 1619 project to discover its history in Camden and in the lives of its residents.
Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation, GCM – FULL
50:525:153:01
Nate Walker
Monday 12:30pm-3:20pm
Course Description: Throughout the world, Truth and Reconciliation Commissions formed in response to political unrest, racial segregation, war, and genocide. They have become one of the most effective geopolitical tools for local communities to create cultures of resiliency. For instance, organizers in South Africa provided a public space for people to speak the truth about their part in violence and train perpetrators and victims to achieve an authentic state of reconciliation. In this cross-national course, students will apply theories of Restorative Justice to the study of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions that formed throughout the world, with attention to South Africa, Rwanda, Bosnia, New York City, and Philadelphia.
What is a Just Sporting Community?, EAV
50:525:155:01
Dr. Catherine D’Ignazio
Tuesday & Thursday 2:00pm-3:20pm
Sport occupies a unique place in the American culture and psyche. Purportedly rules based and impartially monitored for breeches of those rules, sport provides us with a ubiquitous metaphor of fairness and justice, “the level playing field.” Sport is proffered as a potentially fair and just culture within a larger less so one. Because of this sport is a space attractive to those seeking fairness and justice At the same time such ideals are professed, American sport enthusiasts created a culture where sportsmanship and gamesmanship are admired equally. And if balancing between admirable and deplorable were not enough of a contradiction to sport’s claims to fairness, the very bodies that play/do/make sport can fall within or outside other rules for engagement; are the bodies the “right” sex, gender, race, complexion, origin, political and polite presentation? What are the rewards for being the “right” ones or reprimands for not? And most importantly is there a community that also experiences those individually targeted rewards and reprimands? Do communities fashion responses to rewards and reprimands? In other words, how are the institutional, symbolic and personal consequences of rewards and reprimands in the world of sport experienced?
This course will explore the many ways sport has offered the space for efforts to expand and participate in American culture based upon sport’s purportedly close association to fairness and justice.
Searching for Utopia, EAV
50:525:155:02
Shauna Shames
Tuesday & Thursday 11:10am-12:30pm
This course will wrestle with the question of what makes a “just community” by examining fictional and historical attempts to envision or enact utopia. Communist societies are perhaps the best known empirical examples, and we will examine the theory and practical application of these; but these and other examples of utopian thinking, when put into practice, have been disastrous for millions. Fictional attempts at achieving utopia have similarly examined both the causes and consequences of attempts to institute utopian thinking (generally with a focus on the negative consequences for individuals). This course will consider both the positive goals and visions behind such experiments as well as their fairly terrible results overall.
Seminar on Professional Nursing
57:705:102:H1
Jamille Nagtalon-Ramos
Tuesday 8:00am-10:50am
This introductory nonclinical course in nursing is designed to provide the student with a foundation in nursing knowledge that will provide the basis for ensuing theory and clinical nursing courses. Major foci will be the discipline and profession of nursing, its history, its conceptual and theoretical structures, and the patterns of knowledge needed for developing the science and practice of nursing. It requires the integration of previously acquired knowledge in the sciences, arts, and humanities and introduces basic concepts in epidemiology, demographics, and cultural competencies, as well as the knowledge necessary for a beginning understanding of the research process, and for development of interpersonal and interdisciplinary communication skills. The ethics and values of the profession as well as the scope of practice and other legal and regulatory aspects will be introduced. Current issues in nursing and the many roles of the baccalaureate-prepared professional nurse will be examined and discussed as the student is socialized to become a self-reflective, accountable, lifelong learner given to self-appraisal as she or he navigates the route to achieving the terminal objectives of the curriculum.
Spring 2022
Global Perceptions of Race, Religion, and Gender AAI
50:350:212:H1
Rafey Habib,
Monday & Wednesday 9:35am-10:55am
This course entails a comparative study of modern texts from various cultures, Anglo-American, European, African, Indian and Islamic. We will look at a variety of genres, and our study will be informed by various theoretical perspectives impinging on feminism, religion, colonialism, and international political developments in the modern era. The texts in this course will be examined in their historical contexts, with due emphasis upon their interrelations. The themes and issues to be pursued include: (1) race and imperialism, including Western views of the “Orient” and Africa; (2) the problems of identity: definition of self, world, and other; (3) revolutions in literary form and theme; (4) notions of exile, hybridity, migration, nation and cultural schizophrenia; (5) the problematic status of language; (6) the treatment of gender and feminist revaluations of mainstream philosophical assumptions.
Short Stories AAI
50:350:264:H1
Tim Martin,
Tuesday & Thursday 11:10am-12:30pm
A study of the short story as a literary form through an examination of important writers from the nineteenth century to the present. The course will be conducted in two parts of relatively equal weight. First, we will survey the many genres in which short fiction has been written, including not only realist writing but also fantasy, detective fiction, horror, and science fiction. Second, we will take a closer look at collections of stories by more recent individual authors, including writers of the twenty-first century. Among writers under consideration for this closer look are Indian writer Bharati Mukherjee, South African Nadine Gordimer, and the Irish William Trevor. Time permitting, we will include two or three examples of the novella, the “long” short story–like Kafka’s Metamorphosis, James Joyce’s “The Dead,” and Henry James’s Daisy Miller–that begins to exploit the potential of the novel. Assignments will include short response papers suitable for both majors and non-majors, a couple of take-home tests, and a term project to be determined.
Intro to Latin American Studies HAC – FULL
50:590:210:H1
Carla Giaudrone,
Online
This course enables students to acquire an in-depth, interdisciplinary understanding of the cultural history of Latin America (Mexico, the Caribbean, and South America), which may include topics such as society, politics, literature, religion, music, dance, and sports.
Nutrition USW
57:705:255:H1
Kelly
Monday 8:00am-10:50
Biomedical Ethics EAV – FULL
50:730:249:H1
Michael Gentzel
online
This class will examine moral issues in medicine using the application of various moral theories and philosophical concepts. Topics to be covered include abortion, end of life decisions, physical-patient relationship, human enhancement, cloning, and others
Human, Non-Human AAI
525:152:01
Carol Singley,
Tuesday & Thursday 2:00pm-3:20pm
What makes us human? To answer this question, we examine literature and other media about humans in relationship with one another and with their counterparts, such as animals, monsters, ghosts, zombies, forms of artificial intelligence, and other embodiments of the non-human, or the abject. From Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein and its film versions, to Warm Bodies, to today’s veganism, robotics, and embrace of pets as support animals, we explore connections and hierarchies among these groups. We also work with theories of affect and power to better understand the interplay of care and justice. Assignments include short writings and oral presentations, with a final project on a topic and in a medium of your choice.
Consumption GCM
50:525:153:01
Aaron Hostetter
Monday & Wednesday 12:30pm – 1:50pm
We do it every day and depend upon it in order to survive. Consumption. We eat food and use commodities. It is our main task as part of the American middle class, our raison d’être in this society. Everything bends towards making us want to consume more and more. There are serious side effects to this all-consuming urge. Obesity and its related health effects are an American epidemic, trapping us in bodies that only want more. Credit card debt and poor saving practices trap middle class lives in financial constraint, unable to achieve the American Dream. Also, and as seriously if not more, our consumption practices have global effects: political & economic exploitation of the Global South, cultural exchange (& appropriation), environmental devastation. Consumption also has historical legacies that intertwine world cultures & complicate easy narratives of “Western civilization” and “New World Orders” and so on.
You may be what you eat, but did you know you were so many things by doing so?
Despite these rich tapestries of connection & ancestry & power & knowledge (or because of them), the idea of Consumption tends to be under-theorized in most economic models. Even if we are conceived of as consuming agents, how and why we consume what we do is only superficially studied, as if too much attention would expose as inadequate the cherished mythology of the liberated, democratic consumer, a romantic hero or heroine who confronts and conquers the wilderness of the free market. De gustibus non disputandum (about taste there is no argument), social theories often concede, refusing to argue the problem of consumer appetite.
But taste and desire are not forces beyond discourse—if they were there would be no purpose in advertising. Rather, these fundamental aspects of social identity are thoroughly constructed, products of conscious choice and unconscious manipulation, pervaded by discourse, subject to power. The business of this seminar will be to attempt to collect, engage, and understand various ideas about consumption, using both literary and theoretical texts to draw it out as a legitimate area of study.
To do so, we will have to venture beyond standard social presumptions and explanations, past what the Powers that Be want us to know. Be prepared to have your default ideas of life and society challenged.
Religion and Human Rights GCM
50:525:153:02
Nate Walker,
Mondays 6:00pm-8:50 p.m.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 was born in response to the genocide of over six million Jews in Nazi Germany. And yet, its values were conceived hundreds of years prior by religious communities that, in their own geographic and cultural contexts, advocated for protections for human’s inalienable rights.
In this Global Communities course, students will use both legal studies and religious studies to examine the origins, developments, effects, and critiques of four legal frameworks: freedom of religion, freedom for religion, freedom from religion, and freedom within religion. By studying international case studies, students will cultivate their cross-cultural, inter-religious, and intra-religious understanding about how the rule of law can be used to promote and protect the human right to “freedom of religion or belief” for people of all religions and none. Special attention will be given to the critical examination of the limitations of human-rights frameworks and the limitations of rule-of-law responses to human rights abuses.
Why is this such an urgent subject? Over three quarters of the world’s population lives in countries with high levels of government restrictions on religious people; these restrictions corelate with increased levels of social hostilities and violence. The legal framework of human rights has been a proven, albeit limited, remedy in deescalating such conflicts, demonstrating that the promotion of peaceful coexistence can be an effective security strategy.
Attachment Disorder PLS – FULL
525:157:01
Gianna Bowler
Monday & Wednesday 9:35am-10:55am
Developmental Attachment extends beyond a warm bond between a mother and child. Attachment representations are complex, adaptive systems designed to seek proximity and elicit emotional needs from critical caregivers. Attachment Disorganization is a severe, developmental pathology stemming from a child’s inability to develop a coherent attachment representation. This course provides a comprehensive view into attachment representations and disorganized attachments, the historical development of Attachment Disorganization, precursors and sequelae of childhood Attachment Disorganization, adulthood attachment dissociation, and a general overview of clinical interventions for treating disorganized attachments.