IDS 3210
Exploring the Documentary Form
Mr. Tom Hansell, MFA
TR 12:30-1:45
317 Edwin Duncan Hall
The course offers students a chance to learn the fundamentals of non-fiction story telling.  Students are required to use research skills to explore a topic, and then develop a video, audio, or photographic documentary that uses their research to tell a compelling story.  The instructor will connect students to research resources, guide the students to primary sources for interview, and teach students the basic skills of documentary production.  During this course, students will learn a range of techniques that bridge academic disciplines: how to use both primary and secondary sources for research, writing skills to structure their documentaries, visual communication techniques to translate their writing into images, and editing skills to clearly communicate their story.

IDS 3300/HON3515-105
H20:  We are Water
Dr. Kristan Cockerill
MW 3:30-4:45
LLR 263
Water is a focal point for study and contemplation in disciplines ranging from art to zoology. This interdisciplinary course will look at water and the many places it touches our lives. It will discuss the ways we use water, abuse it, revere it, ignore it, and fight over it. In the US, our quality of life is entirely dependent on cheap, plentiful, clean water. We use it in vast amounts to produce power, grow food, and protect our health. The class will cover the intersections among our scientific understanding of water, our technological developments, and our cultural attitudes and subsequent behavior toward this elemental resource.

IDS 3300/3537:  Cuba Libre, American Exceptionalism
Dr. Joe Gonzalez
MW 2-3:15
LLA 214
Why can’t Americans travel to Cuba?  You might think it’s because Cuba is a dictatorship, and America is a democracy:  At least that’s what our leaders tell us.  In this course, however, you will learn that Cubans and Americans have been arguing for better than one hundred years – and they have been arguing about democracy.  Cubans have one idea about democracy, which we will call Cuba Libre, while Americans have another, which we will call American Exceptionalism.  During the  fall, we will examine this conflict using a variety of disciplinary lenses, from the 19th century to today.  We will also give special attention to elements of Cuban culture adopted by Americans, such as food, dance, and, most of all, music.  

IDS 3538
Dr. Jeff Bortz
T 6-8:30
TBA
The modern world is a product of revolutions, ranging from the Protestant Revolution and the Scientific Revolution to the French Revolution of the 18th century.  During the 20th century, social revolutions were particularly common, including Mexico (1910), Russia (1917), China (1949), Cuba (1959), Nicaragua (1979), and Iran (1970), among others.  What is a revolution?  What distinguishes a process such as the Scientific Revolution from a social revolution, such as those that took place in France and Russia?  What makes an individual a revolutionary?  What led a Martin Luther, a Karl Marx, a Fidel Castro, to break with the past and attempt to launch a new order?  What causes a social revolution, why are some successful, and what are the consequences?  And, what are the limits to revolution?  What can they change and what do they fail to change?  Lastly, what are the prospects for revolution in our lifetime?  This course uses an interdisciplinary approach to the study of revolution. It draws on theories and contributions from various fields, and from revolutionaries themselves, to see if we can arrive at an understanding of what a revolution is, of why a revolution comes about, what the revolutionary process entails, how revolutionary outcomes have shaped the modern world, and what kind of revolution may lie in our future.

IDS 3539/3700
The Games We Play: Sports in America
Dr. Kristan Cockerill
MWF 1-1:50
LLA 223
Love them or hate them, sports are pervasive in US culture. Sports influence our clothes and our language.  Sports play a large role in our economy and they are relevant to local and global politics. Embedded in the story of sports in America are historical and contemporary issues of race, class, and gender. This interdisciplinary class will explore the diverse ways that sports touch our lives and influence our culture.  It will look at the intersections among sport and history, sport and literature/art, sport and economics, as well as sport and politics/globalism.

IDS 4200: Interdisciplinary Thinkers and Thinking
Dr. Dave Haney
MWF 11:00 – 11:50
LLR 263
In this course we will read some major interdisciplinary interpreters with the purpose of enhancing our own interdisciplinary interpretive practice.  Since I’ve already used versions of “interpret” twice (now three times), you might interpret this (there it is again) as a course about interpretation, and you would be correct. We will start by reading some essays by Hans-Georg Gadamer, a major thinker in “philosophical hermeneutics.”  Then Paul Ricoeur will expand our discussion from interpretation itself into notions of the interpreting self as an ethical and a conscious being. We will read Emmanuel Levinas, a Holocaust survivor who argues that an ethical relationship to other humans grounds our very being, and who is directly engaged by Ricoeur in Oneself as Another. John Searles’ polemic Mind: a Brief Introduction (which is neither brief nor particularly introductory) will anchor our discussion of consciousness, and we will witness a debate between Paul Ricoeur and Jean-Pierre Changeux, a leading neuroscientist.  By the end of this course you should be able to articulate both the insights gained from and the difficulties faced by these interdisciplinary approaches to interpretation, ethics, and consciousness.  More importantly, your own interpretive practice should be enriched by your thoughtful consideration of these issues.