Addendum to the
Williams College Bulletin 2007-2008

Last updated: 4/6/08 8:03 PM

Course number change Spring:
AFR 377(S)(formerly 404) Imagining Africa: The Politics of Representation (Same as Comparative Literature 347 and English 348) (W)*
This course will examine cultural representations of Africa in an effort to sharpen critical thinking and interpretive skills. Taking"Africa" as our focal point, we will collectively consider key questions about representations: Who has the authority to define an "object" (i.e., Africa or Africans), and how is that authority conferred? What motivates particular images and, more importantly, what are their effects? What role do particular assumptions or constructions of race play in shaping culture? What is the relationship between a"simple" book or image and "the real world"? And what, finally, does it mean to make claims about an entire continent? Our primary source material may include travel narratives, novels, journalism, and films that variously represent Africa. Along with some theoretical essays on representation (including some by Stuart Hall, Roland Barthes, and W.J.T. Mitchell), primary texts may include Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Achebe's Things Fall Apart, Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions, The Gods Must Be Crazy, Out of Africa, Guelwaar, Nightline's report "Heart of Darkness," the documentary Amandla!, and photographs of Darfur. Class will consist of lively class discussions and revision workshops.
Format: seminar. Assignments will include regular one-page writing assignments, one final project, and two formal essays. Enrollment limit: 16 (expected: 16). Preference given to Africana Studies concentrators. This course is part of the Critical Reasoning and Analytical Skills initiative.
ROBOLIN

New Fall Cross-listing under AFR 367
AFR 403(F) Women Writing Africa (Same as Africana Studies 367, Comparative Literature 361, English 364 and Women's and Gender Studies 364) (W)*
This course will serve as an introductory survey of contemporary African literature writing by women. Predominantly (but not exclusively) penned in English, this sub-Saharan literature feature various traditions, geographical terrains, historical moments, social conundrums, and political relationships. Reading these texts together will help us think through a variety of questions, including: On what basis, if at all, is it possible to conceive of an international African women's literary tradition? Towards which experiences or themes have some African writers gravitated in their writing? How have female authors responded to or diverged from their male counterparts? And how have they embraced or critiqued tradition in the face of colonial patriarchy? What "constructions" of Africa (or specific African countries) have they helped produce through in and their literatures? What visions of the colonial past, or of a postcolonial future, do they help us imagine, and why? Texts will likely include novels, short stories, and poetry by Buchi Emecheta, Ama Ata Aidoo, Miriama Bâ, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Yvette Christiansë, Zoë Wicomb, Bessie Head, Chimamanda Adichie, Yvonne Vera, and Calixthe Beyala. We will also draw upon secondary essays in African feminism and gender studies.
Format: seminar. Evaluations will be based upon: attendance and participation, regular short writing assignments, one class presentation, one mid-term, and one final research paper. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference given to Africana Studies concentrators.
ROBOLIN

New Peoples & Cultures designation:
AFR 405(F) (Same as HIST 405 and PSCI 303)*

New Peoples & Cultures designation:
ANTH 390/ENVI 390(F)

Cancelled Fall course:
ARTH 106 Picturing God in the Middle Ages: An Introduction

New Writing Intensive designations
ARTH 201(F)American Landscape History (Same as Environmental Studies 201)
ARTH 213(S) North-American Dwellings (Same as Environmental Studies 211)

New Spring Tutorial:
BIOL 218T(S) DNA, Life, and Everything(W)
Since the molecular biology revolution of the 1960s, a view of biology has developed which regards living organisms as predictable products of their encoded DNA programs.  A motto for this philosophy and scientific approach could be “To know my DNA is to know me.”  In this tutorial we’ll examine the power and the limitations of DNA analysis and manipulation for understanding life.  Students will read and discuss scientific articles that deal with creating artificial life (the field of synthetic biology), environmental DNA sampling (to deduce community structure; to discover new, uncultured species), human genome diversity surveys (to discover the basis for human phenotypic variation and human evolutionary history), comparative genomics to address evolutionary questions (ex., chimps compared to humans), reproductive cloning by nuclear transfer, and the genetic and non-genetic nature of stem cells.
Prerequisite:  BIOL202. Evaluation will be based on 5 papers (4-5 pages each) and on in-class performance as a presenter or challenger. Enrollment limit: 10 (expected: 10) Preference given to sophomores.
Tutorial meeting to be arranged
ALTSCHULER

Not offered Spring 2008:
BIOL 313(S) Immunology
The immune response is a defense mechanism comprised of a complex network of interacting molecules and cells which function to recognize and respond to agents foreign to the individual.  This course focuses on the biochemical mechanisms that act at the molecular and cellular levels to regulate this process.  Textbook readings will be supplemented with current literature.
Format: lectures, three hours a week; laboratory, three hours a week.  Evaluation will be based on exams, a comprehensive final exam, laboratory reports, and a research paper.
Prerequisite:  Biology 202.  Enrollment limit: 24 (expected: 24).  Preference given senior and then to junior Biology majors.
ROSEMAN

New Fall course offering:
BIOL 416(F,S) Epigenetics
After decades of studies emphasizing the role of DNA in heredity, scientists are now turning their attention from genetics to a variety of heritable phenomena that fall under the heading of epigenetics, heritable changes that do not result from an alteration in DNA sequence. Research reveals that stable changes in cell function can result from, for example, stable changes in protein conformation, protein modification, DNA methylation, or the location of a molecule within the cell. Using readings from the primary literature, we will explore the epigenetic nature and molecular mechanisms underlying a diverse array of phenomena such as prion propagation, genetic imprinting, dosage compensation, transvection, centromere formation, synapse function, and programmed genome rearrangements. The significance of epigenetic processes for development, evolution, and human health will be discussed.
Format: discussion, three hours per week. Evaluation will be based on class participation and several short papers.
Prerequisites: Biology 202. Enrollment limit: 12 (expected: 12). Open to sophomores, juniors and seniors, with preference given to senior Biology majors who have not taken a 400-level course, then to juniors.
ALTSCHULER

New Spring Course:
BIOL 420(S) Evolutionary Genetics
Recent advances in genetics and genomics provide unparalleled tools for the study of evolution. This course will begin by examining the structure and organization of genes and genomes (why do all organisms have DNA anyway? where do sex chromosomes come from? why do genomes vary wildly in size among organisms?), and then expand our focus to encompass organismal and population-level processes (adaptation, speciation, population structure, etcŠ). Ultimately we will turn the lens on ourselves to explore the ongoing evolution of Homo sapiens. Class discussions will focus on readings from current primary literature.
Format: Discussion, three hours per week. Evaluation will be based on participation in class discussions and several short papers.
Prerequisite: Biology 202 and Biology 305, or permission of instructor. Enrollment limit: 12. 
WILDER

Updated course description:
NOTE: THIS DOES NOT CARRY PEOPLES & CULTURES CREDIT IN THE SPRING
COMP 111(S) The Nature of Narrative (Same as English 120) (W)
In this course we will read first-rate fiction by first-rate writers from a wide variety of traditions and eras in an effort to understand the meaning of narrative. How does narrative technique shape our understanding of a given text? In what ways, and for what purposes, do authors create different narrators to present a story? Our texts may include writings from Antiquity, and by Calvino, Cervantes, Dinesen, Goethe, Gogol, Kafka, Maupassant, Nabokov,  Pushkin, Sholem-Aleichem, and Woolf.
We will accompany these texts with pertinent theoretical pieces by-among others-Aristotle, Plato, Benjamin, and Foucault. All readings in English
Format: lecture/discussion. Requirements: active class participation, three short papers, and a final 10-page paper.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 19 (expected: 19). Preference given to students considering a major in Comparative Literature or Literary Studies and who have studied a foreign language.
CASSIDAY and VAN DE STADT

New Spring Offering:
COMP 243(S)(Formerly 252) Modern Women Writers and the City (Same as Women's and Gender Studies 252)
Ambivalence has always been a vital part of literary responses to city life. Whether they praise the city or blame it, women writers react to the urban environment in a significantly different way from men. While male writers have often emphasized alienation and strangeness, women writers have celebrated the mobility and public life of the city as liberating. We will look at issues of women's work, class politics, sexual freedom or restriction, rituals of consumption, the conservation of memory by architecture, and community-building in cities like London, New York, Berlin, Paris. We will examine novels and short stories about the modern city by writers as diverse as Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Anzia Yezierska, Ann Petry, Jean Rhys, Marguerite Duras, Margaret Drabble Ntozake Shange, Verena Stefan and Jhumpa Lahiri and Edwidge Danticat. We will consider theoretical approaches to urban spaces by feminists (Beatriz Colomina, Elizabeth Wilson), architectural historians (Christine Boyer) and anthropologists and sociologists (Janet Abu-Lughod, David Sibley, Michael Sorkin). Several contemporary films will be discussed. All readings in English.
Format: Lecture and discussion. Requirements: Two short papers and one final paper.
Prerequisites: Comparative Literature 111 or a 100-level English course. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 20).
DRUXES

Course Number change from COMP 353:
COMP 253(F) Writing the City: Beirut and Cairo in Contemporary Arabic Literature*
The Lebanese novelist Elias Khoury has written that understanding contemporary Lebanese literature requires us to understand "how literature both creates myth and then seeks to destroy it." This class will consider this statement in relation to the development of the Arabic novel emerging out of Beirut and Cairo in the latter part of the twentieth century. We will consider the ways in which Lebanese and Egyptian novelists use the motif of the city as a way to take up the prevailing social and political issues of the day. In so doing we will discuss how some works actively mythologize and celebrate the city as an extension of national identity, while others portray it as the root cause of the country's social ills. We will also consider how the history of each of these cities was intertwined with the rise and fall of certain ideological movements in the Arab world whereby the novel, as a relatively new form in the region, served as an alternative medium for theorizing and considering the efficacy of such movements. In taking up these questions, we will discuss the extent to which the trajectory of the Arabic novel may be understood as a reflection of the changes affecting these urban milieus and reciprocally the way these two cities are, and continue to be, produced by these fictions. Throughout the semester we will read a range of works by Lebanese and Egyptian novelists as well as a selection of critical material that theorizes the city in relation to literature.
Format: lecture/discussion; Course Requirements: active participation, presentation, two short papers (5-6 pages), and one longer paper (8-10 pages).
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 15-20). Preference given to Comparative Literature majors and seniors.
NAAMAN

Newly Cross-listed with RLSP, new tutorial:
COMP 272T(S) Literature of the Americas: Dialogues in Historical Perspective (Same as American Studies 256 and Spanish 272) (W)
This tutorial will present some of the methodologies and issues involved in studying the literature of the American hemisphere, with particular emphasis on the dialogue between US and Spanish American writers in the 19th century. Then as now, some of Latin America's most important intellectuals were profoundly affected by the experience of living in the US, and their influential formulations of Latin American identity reflect their ambivalence towards a northern neighbor that was both enviously successful and alarmingly imperialistic with regard to the rest of the hemisphere.  Reading Domingo F. Sarmiento, José Martí, and other Spanish American authors in dialogue with Emerson, Whitman and others, we will examine the various and intertwined ways in which American writers from both North and South of the Río Grande addressed questions of fundamental importance to the new nations of the Americas, including the legacies of slavery and colonial violence, the scope of democracy and women's participation in it, the link between geography and national identity, and the nature of inter-American relations. Readings will vary widely, including poetry, novels and essays as well as popular journalism on the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, the spanish-American War, and the Panama Canal controversy.
Format: Tutorial This course may be taken in English or Spanish; tutorial partners will be assigned accordingly.  Each pair will meet with the instructor for one hour each week.  On alternate weeks each student will be expected to prepare a five-page paper which her or his partner will then critique during the meeting.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit 10(Expected 10).
FRENCH

Cancelled Spring 2008:
COMP 346(S) Questioning the Cultural Self in Literature (W)*

Cancelled Spring 2008:
ECON 468 Microfinance (Same as Economics 508) (Q)

Cancelled Spring 2008:
ENGL 111 Poetry and Politics (W)

New Spring Course Offered:
ENGL 341(S) American Genders, American Sexualities (Same as Women's and Gender Studies 341)
This course investigates how sexual identities, desires, and acts are represented and reproduced in American literary and popular culture. Focusing on two culturally rich periods-roughly 1880-1940 (when the terms "homosexual" and "heterosexual" came to connote discrete sexual identities), and on the last twenty years-we will explore what it means to read and theorize "queerly." Among the questions we will ask: What counts as "sex" or "sexual identity" in a text? Are there definably lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer writing styles or cultural practices? What does sexuality have to do with gender? How are sexual subjectivities intertwined with race, ethnicity, class, and other identities and identifications? And why has "queerness" proven to be such a powerful and sometimes powerfully contested concept? We will also explore what impact particular historical events, such as the rise of sexology, the Harlem Renaissance, and the emergence of a transgender movement have had on queer cultural production. Readings may include works by the following theorists-Almaguer, Butler, Sedgwick, Foucault, Freud, Hammond-as well as James's "The Beast in the Jungle," Stein's QED, Cather's "Paul's Case," Larsen's Passing, Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Diaz's "Drown," Feinberg's Stone Bitch Blues, and poetry by Lorde, Hughes, Pratt, and Rich, as well as screenings of contemporary videos and films such as Looking for Langston and The Wedding Banquet.
Format: discussion/seminar. Requirements: active class participation, several short writing assignments, two 5-page papers, and one 8- to 10-page paper.
Prerequisites: a 100-level English course, except 150. Enrollment limit: 25 (expected: 25). Preference given to English majors and/or students interested in Gender/Queer Studies.
(Post-1900 or Criticism)
KENT

Cancelled Spring 2008:
ENGL 343T Whitman and Dickinson in Context (W)

Cancelled Spring 2008:
ENGL 353 Modern Poetry

Newly Cross Listed with WGST:
HIST 334(S) The Fin-de-Siècle: Vienna-Paris-St. Petersburg (Same as Women and Gender Studies 334)
This course will introduce students to some of the most significant and exciting social, artistic, intellectual, and political developments in fin-de-siècle Europe (1870 to 1914). "Fin-de- siècle" is a concept that denotes not only a historical period - the end of a century - but refers to a consciousness of living in a time of accelerated change and crisis. Intellectuals and artists of the decades we will be examining were preoccupied with "degeneration," loss of innocence, meaning, morality, and the inner self. They were simultaneously fascinated and horrified by technological innovation, emergent political and ideological currents, and the challenges to traditional values and identities posed by them. After a survey of political upheavals during the European fin-de-siècle, the course will focus on three metropolises consecutively: Vienna, Paris, and St. Petersburg. Through analyses of historical literature, novels, music, visual art, and the seminal texts of psychoanalysis we will explore how the self, public life, gender relations, sexuality, and aesthetics were conceived and re-imagined in each city, and bring to light the sensibilities and culture they shared.
Format: seminar. Evaluation will be based on class participation, an oral presentation, two short critical essays based on class readings, and a final research paper. No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 30 (expected 20-25).
Group C
FISHZON

Spring Course Cancelled:
MUS 108 The Concerto

New Spring Course Offered:
MUS 138(S) Sibyl of the Rhine: The Life and Times of Hildegard of Bingen
The 11th century German abbess Hildegard of Bingen was one of the most remarkable people of her age. She was a theologian and reformer, poet, composer, artist, author of treatises on natural science and medicine; she corresponded with emperors, kings, queens and popes as well as abbots, abbesses, nuns, monks, and laypeople. Yet she lived most of her long life in a remote cloister on the banks of the river Rhine, and was virtually lost to history until her recent rediscovery 900 years after her birth. This course draws on a wealth of recent scholarship to explore the life and times of this extraordinary woman, using her music as the window into her ideas and her world. Class meetings will include discussion of readings by and about her life and work as well as in-class performance of her plainsongs and liturgical drama.
Format: lecture/discussion, two days a week. Evaluation based on class participation, several short papers, and a final project. A field trip may be required.
No prerequisites. No enrollment limit (expected: 10-15).
BLOXAM

Cancelled Fall 2007:
MUS 211 Arranging for Voices

Spring 2008 Course Format Change (From Seminar to Tutorial):
PHIL 300T(S) Mute Witness: Disability, Gender, and Testimony (Same as Women's and Gender Studies 300T) (W)
Inspired by a 1994 film, Mute Witness, in which the lead character plays a mute makeup artist who witnesses a murder and is not believed when she reports it, this course is an introduction to the philosophy of disability through two critical approaches. One is through the concepts of gender and sexuality; the other is through an epistemology of testimony. "Philosophy of disability" expresses at least a two-fold concept. One focuses on the meaning of disability: what does it mean to have a disability or to be disabled? The other focuses on the meaning of philosophy: what new problems and concepts are raised by the phenomenon of disability? In other words, what does the experience of disability reveal about traditional questions in philosophy such as What is the meaning of life (to be healthy)? What is a good life (can disabled people have meaningful lives)? Who can know (can mentally disabled people know legitimately)? Who can speak (are disabled people authoritative witnesses)? Through this course you will be able to: 1) explain both the material and social construction of disability by identifying and locating the myriad forces that have shaped various understandings and experiences of disability; 2) explain and demonstrate the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality, and disability; 3) understand the relationship between embodiment and disability; 4) explain the existence of a dominant model of testimony in the Western affluent world and its impact upon the disabled minority.
Format: tutorial. Students will work in pairs. Requirements: each student will write and present orally a five-page essay every other week. Students not presenting essays will prepare oral critiques of their partners' essays. Evaluation will be based on written work, oral presentations of essays, and oral critiques.
Prerequisites: Philosophy 101, Philosophy 102, Women's and Gender Studies 101 or permission of instructor. Enrollment limit: 10 (expected 10).
SCHRIEMPF

Cancelled Spring 2008:
REL 221 Post-Enlightenment Christian Thought

Cancelled Spring 2008:
REL 226 New Religions in North America (Same as American Studies 226)

Cancelled Spring 2008:
REL 256 Engendering Buddhism: How Women and Men Shape and Are Shaped by Buddhism (Same as Women's and Gender Studies 256) (W)*

Cancelled Spring 2008:
REL 302 Religion and Reproduction (Same as Anthropology 392 and Women's and Gender Studies 325)

Cancelled Spring 2008:
RUSS 202 Advanced Russian

Revised course description:
SOC 202(S) Terrorism and National Security
An analysis of the roots, goals, and social organization of contemporary radical Islamist terrorism and of the state efforts to defeat it. A focus on: the recruitment, training, and indoctrination of Islamist terrorists; their ideologies and self-images; and case studies of specific terrorist attacks and the vulnerabilities of modern societies that such attacks reveal. The course analyzes the exigencies and dilemmas of ensuring public safety in a democratic society. Special attention to: the structure and ethos of intelligence work; the investigation of terrorist networks and their financing; the relationship between organized and semi-organized crime and terrorism; the legal dilemmas of surveillance, preemptive custody, and "extraordinary rendition" in democratic societies; and the technology and organization of ascertaining identities in modern society. The course also addresses the crisis facing European societies-particularly the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany- with growing populations of radical Islamist minorities who reject cultural assimilation into Western social or legal frameworks, a crisis paralleled in the United States, with important differences, by widespread illegal immigration. An assessment of the ideology of multiculturalism and its intended and unintended consequences in the fight against terror. The course also examines the threat of terrorists' use of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons of mass destruction and the defenses against such threats. Finally, it appraises the structure and content of mass media coverage of terrorism, as well as official and nonofficial propaganda on all sides of these issues. Experts in different fields will give guest lectures throughout the course.
Format: lecture/discussion. Requirements: mandatory attendance, randomly-called student presentations, term paper, final examination.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit: 60 (expected: 60). Open to all classes, to staff, and to the whole community. A Gaudino Fund Course.
JACKALL

Cancelled Spring 2008:
THEA 204 Acting II

Offered Spring 2008:
THEA 214 Playwriting (formerly Writing for the Theatre) (Same as English 214) (W)
A studio course designed for those interested in writing and creating works for the theatre. The course will include a study of playwriting in various styles and genres, a series of set exercises involving structure and the use of dialogue, as well as individual projects. We will read and we will write, beginning with small exercises and working toward a longer project. Students will be expected to share in each other's work on a weekly basis.
Format: seminar. Evaluation will be based on attendance, completion of class assignments, and class participation.
No prerequisites. Enrollment limit:15 (expected: 10). Preference given to Theatre majors.
Holzapfel

Cancelled Spring 2008:
THEA 239 World Theatre History II: Performance in Modern Media Cultures (Same as Comparative Literature 239)

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