Maymester 2023 courses offered by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences:
Course: ENG/AFS 248 – Survey of African American Literature
GEP: Humanities, US Diversity or CHASS Literature II
Instructor: Dr. Marc Dudley
Day & Time: MTWThF 11:40 – 2:40
Location: G113 Tompkins Hall
This special Maymester version of the ENG/AFS 248 offering will afford students the opportunity to explore the African American experience through the community’s literature (from the 18th century to the present moment), but through the lens of the “American Dream.” America has long been touted the “land of opportunity”; we are, arguably, a nation of dreamers. With the help of several seminal texts, we will engage in an examination of African American literature in terms of its relationship to a national culture at large and that coveted “American Dream,” ever-revisited, often revised.
Course: ENG 340 – Literature, Art and Society: Heaven, Hell, and the Afterlife
GEP: Humanities, Interdisciplinary Perspective or CHASS Literature II
Instructor: Dr. Timothy Stinson
Day & Time: MTWThF 1:40 – 4:40
Location: G117 Tompkins Hall
This course surveys some of the great works of literature focused on heaven, hell, and the afterlife, including classical works such as Homer’s Odyssey and Virgil’s Aeneid, European works from the medieval through modern eras, including Dante’s Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Blake’s Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and diverse accounts of the afterlife from world literature, such as “The Descent of Inanna from the Great Above to the Great Below” (Sumer) and “The Feather of Maat” (Egypt). These will be paired with films and visual depictions of the afterlife, such as renderings of The Last Judgment (showing both heaven and hell) by Giotto, Bosch, and Michelangelo and Egyptian and classical funerary art. We will make virtual excursions to museums worldwide to view artworks from a variety of world cultures related to the afterlife.
Course: ENG 376 – Science Fiction: Humans, Machines, and In-Betweens
GEP: Interdisciplinary Perspective or CHASS Literature II
Instructor: Dr. Paul Fyfe
Day & Time: MTWThF 9:50 – 12:50
Location: G115 Tompkins Hall
YouTube: Course Video
This course explores the long literary history of artificial intelligence from Frankenstein’s monster to contemporary machine learning. We investigate how the genre of science fiction develops as a way of defining (and often redefining) boundaries of humans, animals, machines, computers, and artificial consciousness. Students will gain an understanding of the genealogy of science fiction, explore key works in its 200-year history, analyze how sci-fi evolves through different mediums, pursue sci-fi’s creative insights into futures thinking, and reflect upon the ethics of science, technology, and engineering in representations of AI.
Course: PHI 205 – Introduction to Philosophy
GEP: Humanities or CHASS Philosophy
Instructor: Dr. Catherine Driscoll
Day & Time: MTWThF 9:50 – 12:50
Location: 209 Poe Hall
One of the main aims of Philosophy is to use a rigorous, logical approach to understand some of the big questions of “Life, the Universe and Everything”. In this course we will see how philosophers have applied their logical tools to inquire about the existence of God, the nature and content of morality, justice, science, human minds and the very existence of a real external world. We will learn how arguments work, how they should be evaluated, and how they have been used by real philosophers to answer each of these “big questions”.
Course: SSUS 295 – Sociology of Barbecue
GEP: Social Science, US Diversity, or CHASS Social Science
Instructor: Dr. Sarah Bowen
Day & Time: MTWThF 9:50 – 12:50
Location: TBA
This course will use North Carolina barbecue as a lens for examining how food is produced, sold, consumed and understood. As sociologist John Shelton Reed stated 20 years ago, “I don’t think you can really understand the South if you don’t understand barbecue—as food, process, and event.” This course aims to do just that. Barbecue will serve as a gateway for our sociological exploration of such topics labor in food systems, agriculture and environmental justice, race and food history, and food and community traditions. Class may include field trips.
Course: SW 495/595 LGBTQ+ Social Work (Undergrad or Graduate)
GEP:
Instructor: Dr. Kim Stansbury
Day & Time: MTWThF 12:30 – 3:30
Location: 124 1911 Building
As LGBTQ+ identities sit at the forefront of social and political discourse, this course aims to foster practical skills in students through real-world experiences and storytelling surrounding LGBTQ+ individuals and groups. Going beyond concepts of rainbow capitalism and allyship, this course will arm students with the necessary skills needed to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and its intersecting identities across all spaces of life. Rooted in practical, in-community education, students will get the opportunity to listen to and engage with activists, leaders, and community organizers in micro, mezzo, and macro LGBTQ+ spaces.