Fall 2013 First Year Seminars
One of the most important challenges facing the world in the twenty-first century is to identify and develop sustainable sources of energy in order to maintain a reasonable standard of living while also minimizing our impact on the environment. This seminar will discuss the science of energy production and usage for a variety of energy sources and energy conservation strategies, and also examine the environmental advantages and drawbacks of each source or strategy. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill into the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 and the nuclear disaster in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami of 2011 illustrate just some of the dangers underlying our current energy production portfolio. The science regarding the challenge of global climate change will also be discussed. While the seminar is discussion based and writing intensive, students will be introduced to the basic physical principles and skills necessary to understand the issues involved in energy systems and sustainability, including physical units conversion and problem solving techniques. The course will also include course blog postings and discussion of topics of current interest regarding energy and environmental issues found in the popular press.
Your Professor
Kevin Riggs holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Minnesota and specializes in research on magnetic materials useful for magnetic recording and information storage. He also holds an M.S. in Physics/Musical-acoustics from Case Western Reserve University and has an active research program using laser-based holographic techniques to image the vibration patterns of musical instruments. He teaches many advanced courses for physics majors, but especially enjoys interacting with students from a wide range of backgrounds in his general education course on musical acoustics titled "The Science of Music" and his new first-year seminar titled "Energy and the Environment." In his spare time, Dr. Riggs enjoys playing guitar in a Stetson faculty jazz quartet, the "Thin Film Magnetism."
Is writing good for your health? Many writers describe their creative process as a sort of spiritual practice from which they gain insight. And many of us have experienced the way we can write our way to answers in our lives and discover our inner wisdom. Numerous fictional works explore illness- are writers drawing from their related experiences and instinctively moving themselves toward wellness when they write? Is it that same impulse that drives others to keep journals and diaries or turn their troubles into poems? Scientific studies on the impact of writing on health- both emotional and physical- show remarkable results, supporting what those who love to read and write have known all along: the written word is powerful medicine. Where do writing, spirituality, and wellness meet? This course explores that intersection through a variety of texts, discussion, and written responses. In addition, students will learn the sort of writing that has been found to be healing and have the opportunity to experience its potential through journaling and creative writing. This course includes a service-learning component, in which students will perform some tasks off-campus in our local community.
Your Professor
Gail Radley, a lecturer in the English Department, received her B.A. in Independent Studies with an emphasis in creative writing from Mary Baldwin College and her M.A. in English from Stetson. Besides journaling and dabbling in poetry, she is the author of 21 books for children and young adults, as well as various articles and short stories for adults. One of these, "Writing With the Ink of Light on the Tablet of the Spirit," a paper Radley presented at the annual Writing and Wellness Conference, was published in Writing and Wellness Connections (Evans: Idyll Arbor, 2010).
Why does poetry, one of the oldest art forms, not only survive but flourish in the twenty-first century? In this class we will consider how poems make meaning as strangely and as beautifully as the sky produces weather. We will read translations of famous works (Robert Pinsky's translation of Dante's Inferno) as well some famous revisions (the new version of Plath's Ariel) and consider the stunning and sometimes desperate measures poets take to tease what is real out of the artifice of language. Students will write analytically about poetry, attend readings by writers, and read some of their class favorites at the longest-running student reading series in Florida, Poetry at an Uncouth Hour.
Your Professor
Terri Witek is the author of four books of poetry as well as a scholarly book about U.S. poet Robert Lowell. She has a special interest in the connection between poetry and the visual arts. A graduate of Vanderbilt University, she directs the Sullivan Creative Writing Program in the English Department. She is a past winner of the prestigious William Hugh McEniry Award for teaching excellence at Stetson.
This course explores various conceptions of what it is to be human-and what it is to be viewed as less than human (thus, a freak). Academics label such outcast status "otherness." Fundamentally, to be 'other' is to be different from the norm. Indeed, in viewing human beings as persons with dignity and worth, we often exclude those we view as different as not deserving of equal treatment. In order to come to an understanding of what we as a society value, however, we must understand otherness. And it is only by deconstructing difference, by understanding what constitutes the 'other' and how it is defined by the in-group, that we can ultimately become a truly multicultural and diverse community. Deconstructing difference promotes awareness of diverse peoples by deconstructing the concept of the 'other' and the role it plays in fostering fear and discrimination. In order best to understand how discrimination works, its historical and literary origins in western culture, its enduring conceptual power, and its pervasive presence in modern America, we intend to pursue a multilevel analysis. This course will begin with an examination of prejudice in Harry Potter's world, then turn to classical Greek origins of identity and the concept of otherness, and finish with a deconstruction of contemporary attitudes toward the various '-isms.' The class aims to embolden students to reconsider the significance of contemporary models of the human, as supplied by various religious, scientific, philosophical, and pop-cultural sources.
Your Professor
Dr. Susan Peppers-Bates attended Davidson College as an undergraduate and received her Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000. She has published on figures in early modern philosophy, topics in the philosophy of religion, friendship in Harry Potter, and on existentialist vampires. She has two fabulous daughters, Anne-Marie (8) and Sophia (3). She is fond of science fiction, medieval murder mysteries, gardening, and all things philosophical.
You don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind. (Jim Croce)
A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion. (Proverbs)
Never insult an alligator until after you have crossed the river. (Cordell Hull)
Ancient seekers of wisdom believed that there was meaning in human existence. If you found the rhythms of life, success followed. Other thinkers were less positive. No matter how hard you try, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you get sucker-punched! As did the sages of old, students will enter the ageless quest for wisdom. We'll explore the traditions of the ancient Near East including that of the biblical texts. We'll look to wisdom traditions within world religions and consider contemporary expression of wisdom themes. The worldview of wisdom, as a social movement and as language and literature, will provide students a blueprint for developing their own guide for finding meaning in life.
Your Professor
Kandy Queen-Sutherland holds the Sam R Marks Chair of Religion. Her courses focus on the literature of the Bible, particularly Hebrew Scriptures and often grow out of the interplay of biblical texts and issues of social justice. Before coming to Stetson, she taught on a theological faculty in Switzerland. Her love of international travel continues at Stetson through the offering of travel courses to Greece and Turkey as well as the Middle East. She enjoys being the mother of a Stetson student, living on a dirt road, volunteering at the Neighborhood Center, and downtown DeLand on Friday evenings.
What does the term "individual" mean apart from "the community"? What does "community" mean apart from the concept of "the individual"? This seminar will explore the relationship between these two concepts with a view to understanding how the community shapes the individual and how the individual can, and should, shape the community. We will think about issues pertaining to social justice and ask what responsibility the individual has for her or his own formation and what responsibility the individual has for the formation and well being of the community. Service learning in the community is central to this exploration.
Your Professor
After earning his B.A. from Stetson University, Greg Sapp went on to earn an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary and the Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology from the University of Virginia. He is particularly interested in the formation of Christian thought and doctrine. He has published articles and presented papers in the fields of doctrinal development, historical philosophy and theology, and religion and culture. His latest work is in the area of sports and religion. He returned to Stetson in 2006 and holds the Hal S. Marchman Chair of Civic and Social Responsibility. He comes to us most recently from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, where he was awarded the 2005 Spencer B. King Distinguished Faculty Award. He has taught first-year seminars for 12 years now.
In this course we investigate two of the major themes in modern Biology. First, we discuss how evolution has a profound impact on our understanding of all biological systems. We also consider how the concept of evolution has been the subject of controversy, particularly in our public schools. Second, we discuss how the study of human cultures from across the globe and an understanding of their environmental impacts can inform our efforts to live in a more sustainable manner. Students who enroll in this course should enjoy being outside in natural habitats. On Fridays we will frequently take field trips to local areas including Blue Spring State Park and Lake Woodruff National Wildlife Refuge.
Your Professor
Terry Farrell came to Stetson from Stanford University where he was conducting research on Marine Biology. He teaches in a variety of courses on Ecology and Marine Biology at Stetson. In the last two decades he has done research with many Stetson students. This research has resulted in more than a dozen published articles on the ecology and behavior of turtles and rattlesnakes. He is a former chair of the Biology Department. In 2009 he won the Hague Award for outstanding teaching in the College of Arts and Sciences.
This seminar takes a scientific approach to cooking and explores the chemistry of foods and the various techniques employed in gastronomy. We will begin by exploring how early humans gradually changed their eating habits. We will then focus on the nature of various foods, how they are made, and why they are made in that way in various international cuisines. We will also try to understand why and when specific culinary habits began. A hands-on approach will be taken, in which experiments will be carried out to answer questions such as," Can you taste foods if you simultaneously hold your nose?" and, "Is there a remedy to over salted soup?"
Your Professor
Ramee Indralingam started teaching at Stetson University after she received a Ph.D. in analytical chemistry from the University of Florida. She teaches general chemistry, analytical chemistry, and instrumental analysis. She has also taught forensic chemistry in the Honors Program at Stetson. She is interested in determining the volatile and medicinal components of herbs and spices, and in developing new and innovative lab experiments for the curriculum. A recent success was in developing a technique to determine the amount of iron in the yolk of an egg. She carries out her research with the collaboration of chemistry and biochemistry majors.
Film, television, the Internet, advertising, music, news media, bestselling fiction-these are only some of the forms of popular culture that we encounter every day in the United States. Far from being "just entertainment," popular culture helps shape values, ideas, and attitudes in American life. This course introduces students to important examples of popular culture from World War II to the present. From '50s rock-n-roll to rap, from Leave It to Beaver to The Cosby Show, from World War II advertising to mass media images of Sept. 11, popular culture gives us insights into the assumptions that shape American values, policy, and social practice. Course themes include national identity, representations of race, gender, and sexuality, ideas about family, and the dynamics of power between audience and producers. Students will have an opportunity to pursue projects on topics that interest them and will learn strategies for successful and rewarding popular culture analysis. At the same time, students will hone their writing and speaking skills; this classroom setting is highly interactive, and we will work together to understand our texts and their significance for their times.
Your Professor
Dr. Emily Mieras enjoys teaching about popular culture because the class offers a chance to analyze cultural phenomena that we often take for granted and to figure out how they help create meaning in American life. Dr. Mieras teaches a range of classes in History and American Studies on such topics as multiculturalism, consumer culture, and women's and gender history. She also directs the Gender Studies program at Stetson. Her research projects include a history of college students' community service work in the Progressive Era, and investigations into contemporary planned communities and visions of family life in contemporary American popular culture.
Free speech, freedom of religion, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, due process of law- commonly recognized terms, but what do they mean in practice? Using public schools as our backdrop, we will examine American freedom by reading and discussing exciting legal cases with primary focus on U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Can students protest? Pray? Advocate illegal behavior? Be strip searched? Can a school post the Ten Commandments? Censor student publications? Teach intelligent design alongside evolution? Compel students to accept diversity? Ban the expression of uncomfortable ideas?
We also consider the inevitable conflict between the twin pillars of the American experience: freedom and democracy. When individual freedoms clash with the desires of the majority, how are we to referee the disagreement? Should the majority always rule? Are there instances where one's individual rights are so important that it does not matter what the majority believe? Where do we draw the line between individual liberties and majority rule? Anyone who is considering a career in law, education, religion, politics- or who is passionate about liberty- will enjoy this hands-on study of America's experience in defining individual freedom while preserving democratic order.
Your Professor
Glen Epley has been a sportswriter, high school history teacher, professor at three universities, deputy superintendent of a 55,000 student school district, and a senior executive for the world's 8th largest insurance brokerage. He is currently Professor and Chair of the Department of Teacher Education at Stetson where he teaches graduate courses in school law and school finance. He has published his research on separation of church and state, due process in student discipline, censorship in schools, legal issues of child abuse, teachers and tort liability, in loco parentis, educational malpractice, and the constitutional rights of parents. He earned his Ph.D. from Duke University.
The course includes an examination of American history in terms of the environmental features of often-familiar events. The great achievements of American civilization have included, in effect, a grand experiment on the landscape, with a whole range of results for good and ill. After learning how we have developed toward our present relationship with the environment, students will then learn inventive suggestions about next steps and do guided research for putting forth their own proposals. In short, this class grapples with The Three Whats: what has happened (in the human relation with the environment); so what (why should we care?); and now what (what's the next step?).
Your Professor
Dr. Paul Croce has been interested in nature since he was a child; as a little kid, he loved animals, wanted to learn about them, and got upset at the rising number of extinctions. As an adult, he has become concerned not only about the current fate of the natural world, but also about the way people with different ideologies talk right past each other rather than find solutions on what to do. As a researcher, he has written on the impact of science and religion on our views of nature, and on ways to conciliate cultural and political differences (especially as these ideas show up in the work of American psychologist William James). As a professor in the interdisciplinary field of American Studies, he is committed to hearing out different values and enlisting different disciplines for finding paths to environmental health. No matter each student's field of interest, he is committed in fostering environmental awareness-a value in itself, and big plus to countless individual career goals.
Can u raed this? Do you bilvee ptassinaloey in the pweor of iedas to cnaghe ateitudts, lveis and umtillaety, the wrlod? If so, you may wish to ponder over why so many life-changing ideas are ignored or downright rejected in the world. We agree that humans are rational, intelligent beings, but why do we often act against our intelligence? To what degree do we live our lives in an economically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually thoughtless manner? Is it possible that despite our intellectual dominance, we live like goslings imprinting upon the first role model (economically, socially, emotionally, and spiritually) that we come across, blindly following it to the death of our human intelligence? Students registering for this course will read and analyze books in economics, psychology, sociology, and religious studies to contemplate these questions and more. However, as you prepare to think outside the box, be wary of jumping into the frying pan.
Your Professor
Ranjini Thaver was born and raised like a gosling in South Africa. She completed her B.A. degree in Economics and Psychology at the University of Durban-Westville, a B.A. (Hons.) degree in Economics at the University of Cape Town, and then completed her M.A. and Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Notre Dame. She has taught at Stetson since 1992 and co-created the AFS program and developed the first university-based microcredit program in the world. This program is located in poverty-stricken Spring Hill in Deland, and in a small village in Kilimanjaro, Tanzania. She has also teamed up with organizations such as the United Way, the FDIC, and the IRS to offer business development workshops and personal finance classes to low-income families. She has taught courses in Economics, Africana Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and the Honors Program.
This course will help you think intelligently about religion and its role in today's world. Religion serves both to heal and empower and to promote violence in the name of God. We will examine key topics including religion and self-transformation, religion and violence, and freedom of religion as a human right. The class is organized as a seminar, meaning that during most classes we sit around a table and discuss assigned readings and films. You will learn how to make professional oral presentations and how to write with precision, persuasiveness, and clarity. You also will learn how to think critically so that you can discern whether an argument rests on solid evidence or not. Religion has long been a controversial topic in human life. Wars have been fought over religious disagreements. In this class we will examine religion's power both to divide and to bring us together to accomplish great things.
Your Professor
Phillip Lucas, Professor of Religious Studies, enjoys teaching, spirituality, baseball, India, guitars, travel to sacred sites around the world, and gardening. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara and has published four books and numerous articles in the fields of new and minority religions, religious freedom, comparative spirituality, and American religious history. He is regularly interviewed in newspapers and television news, and is the founding General Editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. This academic publication is the leading international journal in the field of new and minority religions. At Stetson he teaches courses on world religions, American religious history, comparative spirituality, and new religions. He received the William Hugh McEniry Award for excellence in teaching from Stetson in 2002 and the Homer and Dolly Hand Award for Excellence in Scholarship in 1995 and 2007. In 2011, he became university director of the First-Year Seminar program at Stetson. He has lived and/or traveled in India, Nepal, Taiwan, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, Central America, and Canada.
Madness and civilization have always been inextricably intertwined, from Old Testament prophets in the wilderness to divinely inspired pagans (the oracle at Delphi, the Sybil, Cassandra) to modern figures like William S. Burroughs, Sylvia Plath, Amy Heckerling (Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Clueless), Syd Barrett (of Pink Floyd) and Vincent Van Gogh. Does Civilization Make Us Crazy explores the borders of sanity and civility through a broadly cultural approach, from investigative journalistic critiques of western psychiatry to film, painting, literature, music, and other aspects of culture. We will also examine some of our most important theorists of madness and civilization, from ancient thinkers like Plato to moderns like Freud and Foucault. Expect to read a lot, write a lot, and to spend time with your classmates working out other means of expression.
Your Professor
Joel B. Davis grew up in Wyoming, graduated from the University of Oregon with a Ph.D. in English Literature, has enjoyed climbing Devil's Tower as much as working in the Manuscripts room at the British Library, and cannot shake his irrational fear of sharks and amoebae in Florida waters. He has traveled extensively in Europe and published on Shakespeare and other Renaissance writers. His teaching interests include film, poetry, gender and sexuality, rhetoric, Shakespeare, and most things having to do with sixteenth and seventeenth-century European literature or culture.
Films provide profound insights into the cultures and societies that produce them. As a result, movies are one of the most important art forms of our time. In this course, both the "art" of film and the social or political statements made by films about African-American women will be studied. Course content will rotate each time it is taught among the following foci: attention to Hollywood's apparent celebration of African-American women in film and the contradictions that belie those apparent celebrations; the depictions and characterizations of African-American divas, sassy mammas, and jezebels in film; and how African-American women and men are portrayed by African-American producers and directors as opposed to non-African-American producers and directors.
Your Professor
Shawnrece Campbell received her Ph.D. in English from Kent State University. Her teaching specialties include African-American literature and culture, Women's Studies, and Film Studies. Her publications focus on the collective power of females of all ages and the traditional healing arts. She loves literature and film, sports, cooking, and enjoying nature.
In this course we will examine the meaning of diversity and its relation to global education. Through literature and film, we will discuss the broad definition of diversity, focusing on the study of race, ethnicity, language, gender, social class, sexual orientation, religion, and emotional and physical disabilities. All students will use field placements in local schools or non-profit organizations to provide practical experiences that will illuminate our class's major concepts.
Your Professor
Bette Heins holds the Nina B. Hollis Chair of Educational Reform in the Department of Teacher Education. She directs the Hollis Institute for Educational Reform and teaches educational psychology, exceptional student education, and classroom management. Her research interests include single gender education, reading issues, and classroom management. She loves teaching about diversity in the classroom and, in her words, "celebrates deviancy on a daily basis."
This seminar will sample the interplay of culture, science, environment, power, politics, literature, business, an the myriad other ways that human lives intertwine with Water and Life. Topics will be chosen by student members of the seminar. Topics for consideration could include: Water as Sacred; Water and Disease; Melting Ice; Water and Politics; Water and Literature; Water and History; Restoring Ecosystems; Water and Energy; Sustainable Clean Water; Water and Climate Change; Aquifers and Groundwater; Impacts of development on water resources; Urban water quality; Coastal water resources management; Ocean management; and many other possibilities.
Your Professor
Derek Barkalow grew up in, under, and on the waters and beaches of Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, Block Island, Montauk Point, and the Jersey shore. A sojourn to the Midwest for college allowed new experiences in and around the Great Lakes. Dr. Barkalow has taken Stetson students to the Caribbean and various local lakes, rivers and beaches in central Florida. A member of Stetson's Biology faculty, he has explored many diverse academic arenas including a recently developed junior seminar on the "Future of Human Health & Welfare."
The word madness means everything and nothing at all. It is such a puzzling, confounding riddle that some of the greatest writers, artists, and philosophers have pondered it for much of their lives. During the semester, we will consider many representations of madness as well as social, political, creative, philosophical, and psychological theories of madness. Is there a method to madness as Shakespeare claims? Does learning lead to madness, as Petrarch feared? Or as Emily Dickinson seemed certain, perhaps "much madness is divinest sense." What is the relation of madness and everyday life? We will address these and other questions and claims in this First Year Seminar. We will read a wide range of material, including a case study by Sigmund Freud, social theory by Michel Foucault, fiction by Edgar Allan Poe, and poetry by Arthur Rimbaud and Sylvia Plath. We will also consider the visual arts and film. Students with interests in literature, art, psychology, sociology, and especially those who are interested in a little of everything should consider this course. But beware: according to Nietzsche, "When you stare into the abyss, the abyss stares back at you."
Your Professor
Dr. John Pearson is a Professor of English and Director of the General Studies Program. Originally from Boston, he studied in Florida and in Boston before coming to Stetson. His areas of expertise include American literature (especially the nineteenth century), autobiography, and nonfiction. In addition to this first-year seminar, Pearson teaches a variety of classes including autobiography, a junior seminar called The Cult of the Beautiful, Modern American Literature, and Reading Nonfiction.
Why do we throw babies off the side of temples to awaiting families? Why do we put our hands in gloves filled with stinging ants? Why do we physically alter our bodies with specific markings or piercings? Why do we prepare to watch athletic events with dances, arm gestures, elaborate costumes and ceremonies? Why do some groups express reverence for the sacred with ecstatic dances and others with meditation and silence? ARE WE JUST NUTS OR ARE WE REMARKABLY HUMAN? This course will examine our habits, customs and traditions: THE RITUAL OF OUR LIVES. You will examine the nature of rituals of many cultures and how they compare and contrast in their explanation of the Circle of Life. Finally, we will critically examine whether or not rituals are outdated, need to be replaced, or no longer have value for contemporary life. Let's find out together.
Your Professor
Michael Fronk, the University Chaplain, is a graduate of Stetson University where he received his B.A. in Religious Studies. He received his M. Div. from Southern Seminary. His special expertise is in the area of changing expressions of death rituals in America where he continues to be a national speaker, writer and consultant. This has lead him to embrace the faith practices of cultures that are not his own and to encourage students to find excitement in the meaningful journey of people who do not share their history. He is known for his ability to find humor in the quest to be human and believes that truth and self discovery happens in the most unlikely places.
I think therefore I am... I think? Our identity, we wish to believe, is housed in our control over our thoughts, in the choices and memories we have made. What does it mean, then, when someone else takes control of my "I"? Even scarier, what happens when I cannot avoid this "I," and "I" takes me places where I don't want to go? Art often taunts this anxiety, teasing us with competing concepts of the self that shake the stability of identity. That "I" scams people (me, too!), commits crimes, stalks victims. All the while, I uncomfortably enjoy the alienating experience. We will explore novels and short stories, mystery and horror films that creatively manipulate first-person narration for different, subversive purposes.
Your Professor
Dr. Nicole Denner attended Indiana University for her undergraduate and Master's degree, and received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Northwestern University. She studied horror films at IU and eighteenth-century Enlightenment literature for her doctorate (they aren't so different after all). She has taught at Stetson since 2001 in both the French and English departments. She is most interested in how and why texts so frequently turn inward and comment upon themselves.
How have Eastern philosophy, practices, and culture been introduced to North America during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries? What about Asian pop culture, such as horror movies, Bollywood films and Japanese animation? In this course, topics will range from the religious and spiritual to the stuff of pop culture. We begin with the introduction of Buddhist philosophy and the martial arts in America, then move on to the more recent popularization of yoga, meditation, acupuncture and other holistic practices. Discussions will also touch upon the late-twentieth century introduction of Asian popular culture in America. What has been the role of media in helping Eastern philosophy, practice, and culture gain a greater acceptance in America? How have these subjects been depicted in movies, music, magazines and on TV? What about news coverage? What are the implications of treating Asian philosophy and spirituality as products? Finally, what is new on the horizon of Asian cultural exports?
Your Professor
Mario Rodriguez may have studied media and communication, but he has always had a fondness for Asian culture. Though his research focuses on social network privacy, his teaching and research interests are varied and include popular culture and visual culture. He has a strong interest in critical cultural studies and teaches a range of courses, including New Media & Privacy, Communication & Technology, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Visual Communication, and Interpersonal Communication. Professor Rodriguez hopes that by focusing on the role of media in exporting Asian culture he can raise students' cultural awareness and introduce them to the vast possibilities of globalization.
Stories told in words and pictures go by many different names all around the world, such as comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, manga, bandes dessinées, fumetti, tebeos, comix, imagetexts, sequential art, and graphic narratives. Whatever they are called, comics and their influence are everywhere-on magazine racks, online, in literary journals, in museum galleries, and on movie screens. They have been used to tell the simplest of jokes, to create the wildest fantasy worlds, and to explore the depths of the most profound human experiences. This course will examine the art form that the French call "The 9th Art" in order to: Examine how words and pictures combine to make meanings Survey a variety of texts from different times and places Investigate where comics have come from, where they are now, and where they might go in the future We will work together on reading visual/verbal texts closely, on writing analytically, and on finding ideas and presenting them in class. Students will have the opportunity to design a creative project in which they make their own comic or create a work of art about comics.
Your Professor
Joseph "Rusty" Witek, Professor of Humanities, has been teaching English and Humanities courses at Stetson since 1989. He is known as one of the first academics in the United States to focus on comics as an art form, making Stetson one of the first universities to offer regularly scheduled courses on comics and graphic novels. He has published books and articles on such topics as comics criticism and theory, autobiography and history in comics, war comics, 9/11 in comics, and the fact that Donald Duck can't fly. He is presently working on a book project that examines some of the worst comics ever published.
British artist Richard Hamilton defined Pop Art as "popular (designed for a mass audience); transient (short-term solution); expendable (easily forgotten); low cost; mass produced. Young (aimed at youth); witty; sexy' gimmicky; glamorous; big business." This course will consider these diverse and often conflicting aspects of Pop Art as they continue to influence contemporary artistic practice. Pop Art was created and popularized in the 1950-60s by young artists, critics, dealers, and collectors in England and the United States. Pop artists made mass culture their predominant subject matter and source material. Appropriating images and objects such as advertisements, celebrity icons, cartoons, common household items, fast food, and mass-media imagery from television, magazines, and newspapers these artists shattered the existing divide between commercial and fine art. The course will examine the rise and influence of Pop art through the works of the most important artists of the era. The central objective of this course is to understand how they redefined what it meant to be an artist in contemporary culture, introducing celebrity logic into artistic production.
Your Professor
Dr. Katya Kudryavtseva (Ph.D., University of Southern California) is Assistant Professor of Art History at Stetson University. She specializes in art of the twentieth century, and her research focuses on the intersecting trajectories of art history, politics, law, and business and their role in the development of the canon of modern and contemporary art. Her teaching interests include historiography and canon formation; collecting and display; aesthetic and critical theory of modern and contemporary art; and the impact of art institutions and the art market on the art historical discourse. Her book, The Making of Kazimir Malevich's Black Square, is under contract with NLO publishing house (Moscow, Russia) and will come out in 2012.
Have you ever watched a film which depicts a major historical event and asked yourself what really happened? Are you a fan of Jet Li or have you wondered what it was like to be a samurai? If you are curious about any of these issues and or some aspect of Asian culture or history, consider taking this course. This course will examine films about Asia’s past, including both Asian and Western blockbusters. It will analyze how filmmakers have influenced both Western and Asian perceptions of Asia’s past by using artistic license while portraying important events and personalities. Case studies for this fall 2013 semester will include a recent samurai blockbuster based on a popular manga, a winner of the Oscar for Best Picture, Jet Li epics, and one of the highest-grossing South Korean films of all time.
Your Professor
Dr. Leander Seah (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania) teaches East Asian history, Southeast Asian history, and modern world history at Stetson. In terms of research, as an ethnic Chinese citizen of Singapore who lives in the United States, he is particularly interested in migration and diasporas, maritime China and maritime Southeast Asia, modern China, modern Japan, and transnational and world history. He has published journal articles, has presented his work at conferences in the United States, Singapore, Hong Kong and mainland China, and is currently revising a book manuscript based on his doctoral dissertation, "Conceptualizing the Chinese World: Jinan University, Nanyang Migrants, and Trans-Regionalism, 1900-1941." His accolades include seventeen fellowships, research grants and awards from the Association for Asian Studies, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Center for Chinese Studies in Taiwan, the National Library Board of Singapore, the National University of Singapore, the University of Pennsylvania, and Stetson University. Funding from many of these sources has enabled him to carry out research in Hong Kong, mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, and the United States. His current personal interests include traveling, supporting Liverpool Football Club (soccer) and the Philadelphia Phillies, enjoying Asian movies and Asian cuisine, reading historical fiction, and collecting academic books.
This writing-intensive and critical-thinking course will focus on the development of capitalism as a form of economic activity. The course will also feature discussions of creativity and innovation as cornerstones for modern business practices. Required reading for the course includes Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats, which guide the discussion of capitalism and American business. The other primary reading for the course is Joyce Appleby's The Relentless Revolution: A History of Capitalism.
Your Professor
Dr. Scott Jones is Associate Professor of Marketing in the School of Business Administration. Dr. Jones earned a Ph.D. at the University of Oregon. He has published more than 25 intellectual contributions including manuscripts in the Journal of Service Research, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of Internet Commerce, and Sport Marketing Quarterly. Broadly, his research focuses on the relationship between consumers and brands. Dr. Jones teaches courses in Stetson's First Year Seminar program, sport marketing as well as other core marketing requirements including Marketplace and Consumers. He is the advisor for Stetson's American Marketing Association.
What you do today will determine who you are tomorrow. How do you define success? Is your definition similar or different to that of your peers, your family, or society? What are the habits of successful people? In this course we will examine and analyze factors related to successes and failures in individuals, groups, business, and sports, drawing connections to how you live your daily lives as college students. Together we will reflect critically on contemporary literature, and complete projects and assignments that reinforce vital skills such as self-awareness, team building, problem solving, and effective written and oral communication.
Your Professor
Rosalie Carpenter holds an M.S. in Positive Organizational Development from Case Western Reserve University, and a M.Ed. in Higher Education Administration from the University of South Carolina. She also holds Certificates in Emotional Intelligence, Sustainability and Appreciative Inquiry, and has taught courses in Management and Business Communications. Since joining the University in 2003 Carpenter has held several positions in Student Activities, First Year Studies and Student Success. She has opened two successful businesses, loves improv comedy, is a sports fanatic and enjoys taking care of her 3 dogs.
College is sometimes billed as "the four best years of your life." It can be an incredible experience of intellectual and social growth. It can be a transformational rite of passage. It can be a time to explore new ideas, define personal values, and identify lifelong passions. It can be all these things- and a lot of fun as well. But too often, students find themselves "academically adrift" (to use the title of one recent book); others experience nothing more than "animal house" (as in the popular film). And at an increasingly high price as well- for many students, a college education will be one of the two most expensive items they will ever purchase. Meanwhile, the higher education industry is itself in flux, faced with rapid changes and numerous challenges. In this course, we will explore "the undergraduate experience" as it is portrayed in fiction, nonfiction, and film. We will discuss how to "get your money's worth" from what Stetson has to offer. And we will consider how to act as change agents for an improved academic experience, be it on campus or around the world.
Your Professor
Dr. Rebecca Oliphant is Associate Professor of Marketing in the School of Business Administration. She teaches International Marketing, Professional Selling and Marketing Decision Making. She has been a visiting professor in Kufstein, Austria where she teaches Consumer Behavior and Advertising. Dr. Oliphant has organized trips for Stetson students to such places as Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Austria, Germany, Italy and Hong Kong. Dr. Oliphant's research interests are international studies and career planning. Most recently she was selected as one of only 43 professors (5 businesses professors) from over 500 applications to sail on the MV Explorer as it sails on an around the world voyage. She graduated from California University of Pennsylvania with both her BA and her M.Ed and counts Disney and NBC as former employers. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Communication and Management from The Florida State University. In 2010 Dr. Oliphant received the "Teacher of the Year Award" for the School of Business Administration.
The college years are some of the most formative of your life, and you will be faced with important decisions about the paths you will follow. Self-assessment, self-reflection, and dialogue are essential to your journey. In this seminar, you will have the opportunity to better understand yourself and how this understanding relates to both enjoying and succeeding in college and in your personal life. Significant parts of the course will include talking with your peers, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, values clarification, and objective feedback.
Your Professor
Peter Begalla is a family business owner and Adjunct Professor and Program Manager of Stetson University's Family Enterprise Center. He is at the forefront of Next Generation Leadership Development, having helped hundreds of college-aged students establish credibility and marketability with their family, with their family businesses or with non-family employers. He combines years of counseling experience with over eight years of business development and marketing experience in online education. As a consultant, he has worked with such companies as Butterball Farms, Angley College, Flight-1 and Cascade Engineering.
"What do termites and architecture have in common? Music records and airlines? And what does any of this have to do with healthcare, card games or cooking?" In this course, we will examine these questions and many more as we study and discuss how ideas and innovations come together in often-explosive ways. We will use a study of the Medici Effect and other works to challenge ourselves to see beyond our own current expertise and to actively approach new situations, including the first year in college, in creative and game-changing ways.
Your Professor
Dr. John Tichenor is Associate Professor in the Decision and Information Science department in the School of Business Administration. Dr. Tichenor has worn lots of Stetson hats over fifteen years, teaching statistics courses, serving as Director of Institutional Research, University Registrar, and occasional drummer in local jazz and rock groups including the faculty rock band, "Two-Piece Chicken Dinner." His academic background includes the B.A. and M.A. from Baylor University and Ph.D. in sociology from Florida State University. Dr. Tichenor and his family enjoy traveling and often participate in Stetson's Study Abroad program in Innsbruck, Austria.
Be mindful of your thoughts...they always come true! The law of attraction is always working, and it will give you what you want every single time. This course, based upon a book by R. Byrne, is designed to inspire you to think differently: about yourself, about the world, and about your place in the world.
Your Professor
Dr. Maria Rickling is Assistant Professor of Accounting in the School of Business Administration. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati in Ohio with a Bachelor of Business Administration, majoring in both Accounting and Management Information Systems. She received a Master of Accountancy and a Doctor of Philosophy in Business Administration (Accountancy track) from Florida International University in Miami. Dr. Rickling teaches accounting courses at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. She is a member of the American Accounting Association, The National Scholars Honor Society, and the Golden Key International Honor Society, and she has numerous years of experience in, and personal testimonials of, harnessing the power of thought.
The class will examine films with finance-related themes. The course will review various movies such as: comedy classic Trading Places, which deals extensively with the futures markets; Wall Street, which portray the rampant deal-making of the go-go Eighties; Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, which exposes the greed and unethical behavior behind one of the biggest accounting scandals in U.S. history; and Too Big to Fail, which documents the early days of the financial crisis and the government's response to a crumbling financial sector. In the process, we will cover finance and economics from an academic standpoint to better understand the concepts dealt with in the films.
Your Professor
Dr. Chris Tobler is Assistant professor in the Finance Department in the School of Business Administration. Dr. Tobler spent six years as a journalist and 10 years as a small business owner prior to joining the faculty at Stetson in 2007. In addition to an M.B.A. concentrating in international business and a Ph.D. in finance, he also has a Masters of Arts in English specializing in Modern and European Literature. A native of Arkansas, Dr. Tobler has traveled extensively throughout Europe and North America.
Your economic future will be decided partially by choices you make individually and partially by events and circumstances that you have no control over. This course is designed to help you identify and choose a course of action related to your future assets and liabilities so that you can become monetarily successful in life. The course is also designed to recognize and adjust to the behavioral habits of 300 million people walking in tandem in a capitalistic society. My purpose is to teach you, the student, how to build your economic success and to do so in an ethical manner.
Your Professor
Professor Richard Copeland is Associate Professor in the School of Business Administration. He received his JD from the University of Florida in 1972, and his LLM from the University of Miami in 1973, majoring in tax. For 36 years he has been an Associate Professor at Stetson University. Dr. Copeland has extensive experience in the areas of taxation and estate planning and for 39 years has had his own law practice specializing in the purchase and sale of businesses, probate, guardianship, sale of real estate, and adoptions. He is an active speaker in the Florida Bar Association, Florida Institute of CPAs, at estate planning meetings for numerous churches, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, insurance companies, and others.
Originating at the dawn of the seventeenth century in late Renaissance Italy, opera is alive and well today- as entertainment, as drama through music, as social and political commentary, as celebration of historical events, as a psychological examination of humanity- in short, as a mirror of society. This course is designed for the opera novice- any student interested in the art form of opera and wishing to learn about the myriad elements that combine to produce this fascinating and complex combination of music, theater, and visual art. Topics for classes include learning about voice types, operatic roles, and the production elements involved in the art form, such as staging, conducting, set construction, costuming, and theater design, with particular emphasis on opera's connection to and impact on society and culture. Students will meet featured guests from the professional opera world, and the class will make at least two field trips to view opera in live performance as well as in the "Live from the Met" broadcast series at a local theater. No musicianship skills, such as singing or reading music, are required.
"And they lived happily ever after." That's how most fairy tales end isn't it? But what happens if you meet Prince Charming on your wedding day, or if Prince Charming is a womanizer and a rogue? What if Snow White isn't as pure as the driven snow? The French novels that we will read and discuss this semester will present us with scenarios that differ considerably from those of most fairy tales with different endings and different ways of looking at love and the consequences of falling in love. Does faithfulness always lead to happiness? Is it possible to live up to someone else's ideal of a lover? Can jealousy blind one to the truth about the other? Does trust in God lead to happiness in love? These are some of the questions that we will seek to answer through our reading of these novels set in four different periods of French history with very different perceptions of the relationship between a man and a woman. Along the way, we will explore French culture, art, music and history as they help us to look at the meaning of love.
Your Professor
Richard Ferland has a B.A. in French from Assumption College, and A.M. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University. He also has an M.B.A. degree from Stetson University. His main interest is the History of Ideas in 18th Century France with an emphasis on the conflict between Enlightenment writers and the established Church. His other academic interests include the Marquis de Sade, French Comic Theater and French feminist writers. At home, he loves to cook, putter around in his yard and read spy novels and thrillers whenever he has the time. In addition to teaching at various universities in the U.S., he has taught in Paris and Freiburg, Germany.
This course is designed to help students understand themselves and their environment as they make the transition into the collegiate program. Students, through a variety of self-assessment vehicles, will better understand their values, learning styles, and habits in order to create a successful academic life. Students will gain exposure to a diverse set of perspectives and how they interact in various societal relationships. Students will read several popular books. Since the professor of this course loves sports, we explore the many facets of sports.
Your Professor
Dr. Gary Oliphant is Associate Professor of Decision and Information Sciences in the School of Business Administration and a frequent co-author with his wife, Dr. Becky Oliphant. He holds a Ph.D. in Marketing and an MBA from Florida State University and M.Ed. in Computer Science and Mathematics from California University of Pennsylvania. He is certified in Project Management and in several different areas of SAP, an enterprise software system. He has worked in various government agencies as a planning manager, in the nuclear field industry as system analyst, and owned a number of different companies, one of which was the second largest real estate publication in the United States. In his classes he makes theories come alive with real world business examples. He loves to play all sports, follows the Stetson athletic teams, and is a big Steeler, Pirate, and Penguin fan. He has played college basketball and continues to play baseball today. He has taught in international programs in Austria-Germany-Italy on both the MBA and undergraduate level and also accompanied graduate students to China and Japan.
What is advocacy? Why is it powerful and significant for each of us? Many advocate for the arts or devote time to some other cause beyond themselves. You may have had the experience of standing up for a friend or a family member. Significantly, you can become your own advocate as a first-year university student. Through collaborative engagement and as individuals, you will explore your own "DANCE of Advocacy" as you intentionally employ Discipline, Awareness, Networking, Courage, and Education in a wide variety of assignments and activities, some to be determined as a class. You will have opportunities to meet or interview people, within and beyond the Stetson community, who have proven to be advocates for something they believe in, and ultimately for themselves.
Your Professor
Jean Ohlsson West is Dean and Professor of Flute in Stetson University's School of Music. Her association with Stetson's School of Music began in 1985 when she founded the Stetson Community School of Music, which she directed until 1992. She is flutist with the faculty wind quintet and wind trio, whose CD titled Tres Vientos was produced in 2000, and she is otherwise active as a solo, chamber, and orchestral player within the university setting and beyond.
Dr. West has enjoyed a very active involvement in the Florida Flute Association since 1986. She has organized and hosted many Flute Fairs of the Association and has been a regular presenter and performer at annual Flute Fairs. As past president, she is currently chair of the Board of Directors. As a member of the National Flute Association, Dr. West has performed at national conventions and served as an audition and competition adjudicator on several occasions. Dr. West has been associated with Michigan's Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp since 1995, teaching and playing flute in the Festival Band and Orchestra, and twice touring in Europe as group leader with the International Jazz Ensemble.
Privacy is an issue of profound importance in the contemporary world. Nearly every nation seeks to protect privacy. Yet, many philosophers and legal theorists have lamented the difficulty in reaching a satisfying conception of privacy. This course explores the moral and legal underpinnings of the concept of privacy by addressing fundamental questions such as: What is privacy? Why is privacy morally important? How has the right to privacy been articulated in constitutional law? In what ways is privacy under siege and what has been or will be the impact of government surveillance, data mining, social networking, thermal imaging of private residences, virtual strip-searching, and other perceived threats to personal privacy? Finally, the course examines the central privacy issues facing business institutions in 2013.
Your Professor
Dr. James Beasley is Professor of Business Administration in the School of Business Administration. He teaches courses in business ethics. Dr. Beasley grew up in rural, north central Florida where he learned to appreciate the beauty and significance of Florida's natural environment. He and his wife Joan, who also works at Stetson, enjoy camping, boating, fishing in the Florida Keys, and spending time with their children and grandchildren. Having spent five years in New England for graduate school (M.A. at Andover-Newton and Ph.D. at Tufts), Dr. Beasley returned to his undergraduate alma mater and is now in his fortieth year as a faculty member at Stetson. He took a 21-year detour from teaching to serve in a variety of roles in the Stetson Administration, ending his higher education business experience in the role of Senior Vice President.
This course presents an overview of personal finance, at a very accessible level. This course is not intended to be a finance course, but rather a survey course that provides a background in personal finance useful to all college students today and in their future careers. The primary text will provide the foundational information necessary to understand, interpret, and critique the additional readings. This course is not suitable as a prerequisite for any finance course nor is it taught at a level suitable to allow substitution for any other course in the business curriculum. The course actually is most suitable for non-business majors.
Your Professor
Dr. Stuart Michelson is the Roland and Sarah George Professor of Finance. He teaches corporate finance and investments at the graduate and undergraduate levels. He was formerly Dean of the Stetson School of Business Administration (three years) and Director of the Executive MBA program (four years). He is editor of the refereed academic journal Financial Services Review. He is a member of the editorial board of several scholarly journals, a board member of Financial Executives International, and a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors. He is a past president of the Academy of Financial Services, Financial Executives International (Central Florida) and the Academy of Business Education. Dr. Michelson has published over 50 refereed academic journal research articles. His current research areas include: behavioral finance, tax efficiency in retirement accounts, the use of alpha to increase portfolio returns, the use of technology in education, mutual funds, portfolio risk budgeting, and academic honesty. He received the School of Business Administration Professor of the Year award in 2009, Researcher of the Year for several years (2002, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007), and Outstanding Service Award in 2008. He received the Stetson University Hand Award for Outstanding Research in 2008.
For every student fascinated by ancient Egypt, the Greeks and Romans, the ancient Near East and the Fall of the Roman Empire, there is a nagging question of how we know so much about such long departed societies, especially when so few ancient documents were preserved. This course will introduce the student to the various ways in which ancient historians study these societies. You will learn how to use archaeology, how to read coins and inscriptions, and how to study the ancient natural environment. You will also have the chance to learn about current trends and controversies in ancient history, and how historians use the written and non-written evidence to study the distant past. The class will be challenging and interactive, as we look at what we can learn from actual coin "hoards", excavations, inscriptions, and the voices of the ancients themselves. No knowledge of ancient language is needed.
Your Professor
Dr. Kimberly D. S. Reiter is Associate Professor of Ancient and Medieval History at Stetson University. Her scholarship focuses on the Western Roman Empire, specifically the Aquitaine Basin, and in the impact of Romanization in perceptions of the wilderness. Within her own field, she is interested in the differing perceptions of "Romanization" as a measurement of Roman involvement and agency, and has recently co-authored a textbook in Western Civilization. Dr. Reiter has had extensive experience designing and teaching courses in environmental history and environmental issues and has presented and published papers on the teaching of environmental issues from an interdisciplinary perspective. She is currently President of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Association (IEA). She is very active in student field projects as well, and directs the Stetson British Field Course on the Early English landscape. She is also advisor for the Stetson chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the History honors society, and chairs the Stetson Undergraduate Research committee.
This first-year seminar looks at literature and film to gain insight into the history of selected American Indian tribes and their enduring cultures. We will confront the brutal treatment of tribal nations, through broken treaties, massacres, and programs of resettlement and re-education, but we will also see what has endured, even flourished into the twenty-first century. Our readings will range from early documents (such as Columbus's letter on his 'discovery' of people he called Indians and Jefferson's Declaration of Independence) to fiction and memoirs by contemporary Native Americans such as Sherman Alexie, Louise Erdrich, and David Treurer. We'll also watch a series of narrative and documentary films to consider the development of mythological images of Indians as well as resistance, especially by contemporary Native American filmmakers, to such stereotypes as the Vanishing Indian, the Savage Warrior, or the Ecological Indian. A field trip to St. Augustine will allow us to think about early Spanish contact and also about American policies that resulted in leaders of western tribes being transported to and imprisoned at the Castillo, far from their homelands, in the late nineteenth century. Active participation in discussions will be important, and there will be regular expectations for writing, including journal entries, brief position papers to start seminar discussions, and a short but richly researched essay. We'll also collaborate on a webpage with materials for other students interested in learning more about American Indian history and literature. Our FSEM supports Stetson's commitment to developing informed values of citizenship and could lead to further study of social justice issues though a wide range of majors and community engagement experiences.
Your Professor
Grady Ballenger, professor of English, has long been interested in American literature and its representation of national ideals such as equality, justice under the law, and unlimited individual self-creation. After college, he joined Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), editing a community newsletter and organizing tenants' unions, then returned to study, earning a master's at Columbia and a Ph.D. in American Literature at UNC, where he also taught film studies. Before coming to Stetson in 1998 to serve as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, he helped to create Louisiana's state residential honors high school and its public liberal arts honors college. He looks forward to working with First Years in this seminar, which is being offered at a time of impressive work by American Indian writers and filmmakers and exactly 500 years after Ponce de Leon landed nearby to claim La Florida's land and first peoples for Spain.
What's the relationship between travel and spirit? Pilgrimages have long been a part of religious and cultural traditions. Consider, for example, the centuries of trips to the Holy Land, Mecca, Bodh Gaya, Lourdes, and Santiago. Think about secular pilgrimages to places like the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Vietnam War Memorial, or Graceland. Besides pilgrimages to one specific place, many travelers have more free-ranging objectives: for example, the Australian walkabout or even the post-college rite of backpacking around Europe. Why is travel such a catalyst for spiritual growth? In this course, we'll focus on the ways in which travel--especially unpredictable travel outside one's comfort zone--has an effect on the spirit. We'll read books like Siddhartha, A Razor's Edge, The Art of Travel, and The Little Prince, and we'll watch movies like The Way and Touching the Void, all as jumping-off spots for discussions and writings about the spiritual transformations of travel.
Your Professor
Nancy Barber has been a lecturer at Stetson University since 1998. She majored in political science at Davidson College, then worked as a journalist before getting an M.A. in English at Stetson, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Florida. Barber specializes in creative nonfiction. Among her other writings, she published an essay on human cannonballs in Raritan Quarterly in 2006 and co-wrote Meals Worth Stopping for in Florida: Local Restaurants within 10 Miles of the Interstate, published by Globe Pequot Press in 2008. She is also a veteran of both sacred and secular pilgrimages.
Stetson University recently established a fresh approach to its institutional values, re-emphasizing commitments to global citizenship, personal growth and intellectual development. This course will critically examine specific aspects of this work, paying special attention to issues of diversity, religion and spirituality, health and wellness, academic excellence, social justice and gender. We will explore each of these topics broadly and then examine how the University itself strives to "practice what it preaches." The course includes a focus on ways our developing awareness of values implies and informs change on an individual level, potentially leading to personal transformation. We will enjoy interactions with key values-oriented figures at Stetson as well as with carefully selected community leaders. This is a class designed to challenge your ideas in a way that will enhance your own life experience.
Your Professor
Robert Sitler teaches Spanish and Latin American Studies courses at Stetson. He is especially passionate about the Native peoples of Latin America, the Maya in particular, a culture that has powerfully shaped his life. He is a radical environmentalist, an intensely committed social activist, a lover of experiential learning, and a strong proponent of natural living and preventive approaches to illness. He loves free-diving in local springs, working with the local Mexican-American community, eating high-quality vegetarian food, exploring his own "spirituality," and walking every day to work. He travels extensively in Latin America and his experiences there powerfully inform his teaching. He is currently Leader of the University's Values Commitment Steering Team.
Have you ever wondered how race/nationality/ethnicity can affect decision-making, not only in this country but around the globe? What about gender? Environmental considerations? How do these concepts shape culture and affect our physical environment? This course explores the different perspectives that analyze these relationships. In addition to discussion and in class group work, this course uses activities such as developing guidelines for and conducting group observational research, individual field trips, and physically charting/mapping globalization to determine these social concepts' effects on social and physical environments. We then consider how an understanding of these concepts may contribute to the betterment of humankind.
Your Professor
Sven Smith holds a Ph.D. in Law and Society from the University of Florida and has an active research program regarding group organizations, critical race theory and globalization. He also holds a law degree from Florida state University and an M.A. in Sociology from University of Chicago and has recently completed a multi-method research project on the structural effects of group organization on judicial decision making. He teaches beginning as well as advanced sociology courses and seeks to make the classroom a vibrant learning center wherein students learn conceptually and through experiencing sociology. In his spare time, Dr.Smith enjoys playing music, attending the cultural events here at Stetson and reading.
Massively multiplayer online games (MMO's) have become extremely popular in recent years, with some attracting millions of players and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenues for their operating companies. These games are not just a vehicle for entertainment. They are also their own societies, complete with social norms, customs, language idioms, and economies. As such, they provide a fertile field for considering a wide range of issues. Do violent computer games foster violent behaviors in society? What do we learn about the functioning of real-world economies, from the transactions within these virtual economies? Since games often require effective group interaction, what creates effective cooperative behavior and how can those skills be transferred out of the online 'laboratory' into the real-world business and social environment? How can a viable business model be developed in a highly competitive industry where an increasing amount of content is available for free? Since games require players to master highly complex knowledge bases and skill sets, how can we apply concepts involved in "learning games" to learning in other venues, such as the academy?
We will play games in this class - several different MMO's, in fact. Some will be free to play, but others will entail some modest subscription costs, which students enrolled in the class should be prepared to pay. (Total cost will be less than that of textbooks for the typical college course.) But we won't just play games; we'll also use these games as a laboratory for discussion a wide range of socially relevant issues.
Your Professor
Dr. John Rasp has lived in a wide variety of virtual worlds (from Stars! to WoW to Evony to the Star Wars Old Republic). He hasn't necessarily met with great success. (Please, no jokes about being voted "most likely to be pwned.") But he has enjoyed the challenges, and the interactions, that the games present. (And for one brief shining moment, he even had the top-ranked Blackarrow character on the Crickhollow server of Lord of the Rings Online. Those glory days are long past, however.)
In the "real world" he (or at least his avatar) is originally a Midwestern boy - raised in the St. Louis area, with undergraduate work in mathematics at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana. After experiencing far too many cold and snowy winters, he decided to head south. He got a Ph. D. in statistics from Florida State, then taught for five years at the University of Alabama before coming to Stetson. Here he teaches the introductory business statistics course, as well as advanced statistics electives. Over the years he has served as advisor to several student organizations, including the Chess Club, the College Libertarians, the Honor System Council, and Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity. He has a master's degree in theological studies, obtained after fourteen years of part-time study "just for fun." He has received the McEniry Award for Teaching (the top faculty award on campus), and has published research on statistical applications in a variety of disciplines, including accounting, labor law, literary analysis, and baseball.
Within western civilization, the theatre arts has a rich cultural history of exploring the theme of revenge. From the earliest recorded history of theatrical activity, we see playwrights and performers struggling with the moral, spiritual and ethical dimensions of the concept of vengeance. Characters and spectators alike must wrestle with the following kinds of questions: is an act of revenge ever justified? Who has the right to seek out vengeance? By acting on an impulse for revenge, does one lose their sense of humanity? Is it ever possible to achieve a sense of peace through revenge? Is it possible to remain objective when pursuing a course of revenge? These are just some of the questions that will guide this course as we study several preeminent works of dramatic literature and performance. Some of the plays that we will study include Greek classics such as Medea, Renaissance and Jacobean classics such as Hamlet and The Revenger's Tragedy, and modern musical classics such as Sweeney Todd.
Your Professor
Dr. Julie Schmitt earned her Bachelor of Arts in theatre from Stetson University in 1997. She received her M.A. and her Ph.D. in theatre from Bowling Green State University. Upon graduation, she worked as an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Lon Morris College. In 2004, she accepted a position to teach theatre and direct theatre productions here at Stetson University and in 2010 she was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor. She currently serves as Director of the Theatre Arts Program. She also serves as an officer in the focus group Theatre as a Liberal Art in the Association of Theatre in Higher Education. Her primary area of expertise falls within the realms of theatre history, theatre theory and dramatic literature. Her areas of scholarly research include feminist studies, Renaissance and Jacobean dramatic literature, and theatre pedagogy.
Everyone begins the day by putting on clothes, but not everyone thinks about their choices. We thus begin the course with three central questions: How have value and meaning - personal, cultural, economic -- been inscribed in clothes? How does what we wear reflect our selves? How can style be seen separate from fashion? As we seek to answer these questions, we'll begin with Anne Hollander's work Seeing Through Clothes, which provides an overview of Western representations of fashion and the body. From there, we'll work on history, gender studies, and mass media: we'll investigate at least one historical case about the attempt to control style and its signifiers and the artistic responses to those attempts (such as the Zoot Suit Riots in 1943 Los Angeles); we'll look at Hollywood representations of style in films from the 1930s, the 1960s, the 1990s, and the 2000s; we'll read and critique current writing about style and fashion in magazines and blogs, and briefly analyze some of the economics of current fashion.Assignments in the course would include: a graded journal; at least four essays, one researched, which would go through a workshop process before submission; a formal presentation of one of those essays to the class; student contributions to a group blog on Stetson style.
Your Professor
Dr. Lori Snook is an Associate Professor of English, specializing in Drama. She began as a scholar of English Restoration drama, the plays of which are stylish in content and form, and she has given conference papers on the figure of the dandy.
In 1877, Edison unleashed his phonograph on the world to much fanfare and went on to invent an industry based on the mass consumption of sound recordings. While the recording industry made sound into a thing to be purchased and collected, industrialization and mechanization continued to create an increasingly noisy environment. Not only has our relationship to and experience of sound changed drastically since Edison’s time, but the pace of change is exponentially faster. Some iconic sounds like dot matrix printers and dial-up modems come into the world and leave it in a matter of years. Technology such as iPods and the internet have also enabled the collection and distribution of sound on scales that likely would have been unimaginable to Edison. This course will broadly examine both the production and consumption of sound in modern society. Topics will include the impact of changing technologies, methods and behaviors of sound collecting, the effect of sound on both individuals and groups, and the role of artists and scholars in engaging with our sonic world.
Your Professor
Dr. Nathan Wolek is an audio artist and researcher whose work encompasses advanced signal processing techniques, multimedia performance, and electronic music history. He enjoys collecting sounds during his various travels and using them as material for making art. In Fall 2012, he was named a Fulbright scholar and spent 6 months living and conducting research in Bergen, Norway. He teaches courses in Audio Recording and Production and Computer Music as part of the Digital Arts program and is also chair of the Creative Arts department.
This course provides an interdisciplinary analysis of the role intercollegiate athletics plays within the university. No matter your major course of study, this course will investigate intercollegiate athletics through a wide variety of lenses (psychological, sociological, financial, ethical, communications, commercial, marketing, and business) to better understand the relationship between intercollegiate athletics and the university. Together we will explore the history of college athletics and how its’ place within institutions of higher education has evolved over the last 100 years.
Your Professor
Dr. Matt Wilson is the Sport Management Program Director and an Assistant Professor at Stetson University. A former college and professional baseball player, Dr. Wilson completed his doctoral work at the University of Georgia and has taught in higher education since 1998. Dr. Wilson's research areas are focused on issues in intercollegiate athletics and professional athlete transition/development. Dr. Wilson also has several years of practical sport management work experience having worked for eight years in intercollegiate athletics, the 1996 Summer Olympic Games, Augusta National Golf Club.
"We should live sustainably!" seems a recent exhortation, but perhaps it is no more than a return to the literary tradition of Utopias. Are we not telling stories about an intentional community based on idealistic visions? How do such comparisons between sustainability and Utopias fail to account for contemporary realities? What are the dystopic aspects to sustainability? The primary work of this course will be to historically situate the sustainability movement within a historicity of Utopian and dystopian thought. What is the relationship between contemporary calls for sustainable living and the rich tradition of Utopian thought? In what ways can the Brundtland Report, which popularized the notion of sustainability, be seen as continuous with a corpus as heterogeneous as Plato's Republic, Augustine's The City of God, Marx's Manifesto of the Communist Party?
Your Professor
Tony Abbott is a Geographer and Political Ecologist. Research foci include agricultural biodiversity, clean energy, greenhouse gas and other environmental policy, and sustainability science with a longstanding regional interest in the Americas, especially Ecuador.
"We should live sustainably!" seems a recent exhortation, but perhaps it is no more than a return to the literary tradition of Utopias. Are we not telling stories about an intentional community based on idealistic visions? How do such comparisons between sustainability and Utopias fail to account for contemporary realities? What are the dystopic aspects to sustainability? The primary work of this course will be to historically situate the sustainability movement within a historicity of Utopian and dystopian thought. What is the relationship between contemporary calls for sustainable living and the rich tradition of Utopian thought? In what ways can the Brundtland Report, which popularized the notion of sustainability, be seen as continuous with a corpus as heterogeneous as Plato's Republic, Augustine's The City of God, Marx's Manifesto of the Communist Party?
Your Professor
Joshua Rust is an assistant professor of philosophy and faculty advisor to both the Philosophy Club and Film Club. A committed fan of all things pop-cultural, he has recently co-authored an essay in the book True Blood and Philosophy. His wife gave birth to their first child recently, a big baby boy named Quinn.
"We should live sustainably!" seems a recent exhortation, but perhaps it is no more than a return to the literary tradition of Utopias. Are we not telling stories about an intentional community based on idealistic visions? How do such comparisons between sustainability and Utopias fail to account for contemporary realities? What are the dystopic aspects to sustainability? The primary work of this course will be to historically situate the sustainability movement within a historicity of Utopian and dystopian thought. What is the relationship between contemporary calls for sustainable living and the rich tradition of Utopian thought? In what ways can the Brundtland Report, which popularized the notion of sustainability, be seen as continuous with a corpus as heterogeneous as Plato's Republic, Augustine's The City of God, Marx's Manifesto of the Communist Party?
Your Professor
Karen Cole directs the Gillespie Museum, Stetson's Earth Science Museum in a Natural Setting. She earned her Ph.D. in literature from the University of Illinois and served as Associate Professor of Humanities and Social Thought at the Louisiana Scholars' College at Northwestern State University in Louisiana. She has taught courses on environmental literature and gender studies, and has published on women's work in landscape design.
