HUM4601 Place, Space, Occasion: Public Discourse in Theory and Practice
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

We are living in a moment of great social, cultural, and political unrest. To examine, understand, and, most importantly, solve society's most pressing problems requires vigorous and inclusive civic deliberation and dialogue. Our focus this semester will be on discovering what makes for logical, nuanced, productive, and exciting argumentation while also creating our own. We will study rhetorical principles, from antiquity to the present day, and consider various strategies for speaking in public forums. You will have the opportunity to experiment with these principles and strategies as you craft original oratory and speeches for specific audiences and contexts as well as practice with theatrical and performance methods for vocal variation and body language. Theory-driven and practice-oriented, this course offers you a space to both explore how any public discourse reflects its historical and social context and to engage in the public sphere as a speaker, audience member, and citizen-scholar.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

LIT4693 Play, Performance, Politics: The London Stage
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

Program fee is paid to Glavin Office - program fee includes accommodations, breakfast, tube pass in London, airport transport, theatre tickets, program planned meals, and cultural excursions. Not included: tuition, international flight, visa costs, additional meals and personal expenses.

The course aims to develop an appreciation for and deeper understanding of the theatre as an art form through an immersive experience of play-text study, play attendance, performance workshops, and class discussion. While we will see a variety of types of plays on a variety of subjects, our approach to these plays will particularly emphasize the social and political context and issues raised implicitly or explicitly by the plays we read and see. We will also place the issues raised in a number of the plays into a wider discussion of social and political issues occurring in the world today - be they around matters of inequality at local, national and global levels, the role of government, the meaning of freedom in daily life and as a legal and political concept, and the effort of people to shape their collective futures through political action and argument. Success in this class is dependent upon students' ability and willingness to participate fully in all class discussions as well as work outside of class, both individually and in teams, and to contribute their independent insights and observations to the learning community of the class. Participation is imperative.

The course will involve a combination of close reading of the play-texts and contextual readings, careful and critical analysis of the performances, and engaged participation in acting workshops, tours, and class discussions.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

LIT4689 Poetic Elegy: Shaping Cultural and Personal Loss
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsAn elegy is a poem of mourning, a lament that can express both private and public grief. Reading elegies offers insight into cultural attitudes towards life and death while featuring the resilience of poetic form. From antiquity to the present, poets have used this shaping form to memorialize, describe, reflect, critique, and witness. In this course we will examine the origins of the form and study pivotal poems and poets in its development. We will also explore the contemporary elegy-certainly in the shadows of 9/11 and the war in Iraq-both as a private expression of feeling and as a public need for decorum and custom. Texts may include poetry by John Milton, Anne Bradstreet, Thomas Gray, Thomas Hardy, W.H. Auden, Langston Hughes, Adrienne Rich, Yusef Komonyakaa, Carolyn Forché, Mark Doty, Marie Howe, and Brian Turner, as well as lyrical prose elegies by Joan Didion and Philip Roth.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

ECN3662 Political Economy of Latin American Development and Underdevelopment

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Elective Credits

This course is for any individual interested in the political, financial, historical, and social determinants of economic development in Latin America. Both theoretical and policy issues in development are covered. Analyzing the characteristic volatility of the region's business environment, the course provides an in-depth examination of the workings of Latin America's economies, which in combination with courses in the liberal arts, leads to a greater appreciation of this region's global distinction and diversity.

Prerequisites: ECN2000 and (SME2031 or ECN2002)

ECN 3601: Political Economy of Sustainable Development: Case of Germany

4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

Germany has emerged as one of the world leaders in sustainability and innovation since the end of WWII. How has the political economy of Germany shaped its role in sustainability in Europe and in the world? With new "traffic light" coalition, would an increasingly popular Green Party accelerate actions towards sustainable development goals in Germany, or will these actions be hampered by the Free Democrats? The course meets first as an on-campus seminar to introduce you to the political and economic structures as well as the major environmental and sustainability debates in Germany. We will then spend spring break traveling in Germany to learn on the field, including a visit to the German Parliament (Bundestag), where the course instructor once interned.

Prerequisites: ECN 2002

CPS2015 Political Thought

(Formerly CVA2015)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course addresses the meaning and practice of politics through close readings of a range of political theory approaches, such as anarchist political theory, classic liberalism, civic republicanism, Black Nationalism, queer theory, settler colonial/Indigenous studies, conservatism, and feminist theory. The course will pursue such topics as the politics of confrontation, transformation and change, the role and meaning of citizenship, political community, government, inequality, political resistance, violence, and any other pertinent issues we discern from the work assigned. This is a reading intensive course, and it will also explore political themes that can be drawn out of popular culture, such as films and television shows.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Spring

Prerequisites: (FCI1000 or AHS1000) and (WRT1001or RHT1000)

HUM4614 Postmodernism: Future Culture
4 Advanced Liberal Arts (Elective Abroad) CreditsThis course explores postmodern culture as a strange obsession with the future. Thus, we will use the captivating cityscape of Dubai-its unparalleled architecture, its accelerated movement and fragmented spatial organization, the provocative visual design behind its many tourist sites-in order to track crucial ideas of simulation, virtuality, and the spectacle in our postmodern era. Moreover, we will navigate contemporary works of literature, philosophy, film, and architecture while making several excursions into Dubai as a constructed cultural zone of the Middle East. Ultimately, this rare immersion in perhaps the most futuristic place on earth will provide us a dynamic outlook on how postmodern culture blurs the boundaries of reality itself.

Prerequisites: 3 Intermediate liberal arts courses (CVA, LVA, HSS, CSP, LTA in any combination) and admission into the course

WRT4602 Practicum in Peer Consulting and Writing
Advanced Liberal ArtsStudents learn to act as peer consultants in writing and work on improving their own writing, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills. They accomplish these objectives by addressing their writing problems; writing extensively; developing criteria to evaluate the writings of others; studying various writing processes and theories of composition; examining pedagogical approaches to teaching writing; reading extensively about, and becoming acquainted with, the dynamics of peer tutoring; and working in the Writing Center as peer consultant trainees.

This course is typically offered in the following semesters: Spring

Prerequisites: Instructor permission

AQM2000 Predictive Business Analytics

4 Foundation Liberal Arts Credits

This course is only open to students who started Fall 2021 or after

This course introduces students to the foundational ideas of modern data science through a hands-on implementation in modern statistical software. Students will encounter key conceptual ideas like the importance of holdout data, the dangers of overfitting, and the most common performance indicators for various model types through a tour of popular and practical predictive analytics algorithms: linear regression, k-nearest neighbors, logistic regression, classification and regression trees, naive Bayes', and others. In addition to these supervised learning models, students will investigate unsupervised learning models like association rules and clustering, which are designed to uncover structure in data rather than predict a particular target. Throughout the course, students will practice communicating the results of their analyses to a variety of stakeholders.

Prerequisites: AQM1000

SEN1307 Enhance Your Presentation Skills through Forensic Arts

(Senior Instructor: Breeana Blackmon) Poetry Interpretation is a specific type of skill within the speech and debate field of Forensics. In this seminar, students will practice this skill by choosing a short poem to interpret, practice performing, and finally present at the final Senior Seminar Showcase.
In the course, students will first and foremost be challenged to step outside of their comfort zones. Poetry Interpretation will not only boost their confidence, but also greatly strengthen their communication and presentation skills. They will learn how to connect with and captivate a crowd or audience. Also, they will develop valuable leadership skills through critiquing and coaching their peers.

To get a better idea of what Poetry Interpretation looks like and how it relates to speech and debate skills, please visit the following links:

http://www.speechanddebate.org/aspx/video.aspx?id=51
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTErgLIYkc4&index=15&list=PLxwwkVu35jxAcS1U-TMYdail3A3gAQbHz

Course Schedule:
Class 1 - Tuesday, January 27
Class 2 - Tuesday, February 3
Class 3 - Tuesday, February 10
Class 4 - Wednesday, February 18 (as February 17 is a Babson Monday)
Class 5 - Tuesday, February 24
Class 6 - Senior Seminar Showcase: Tuesday evening, 3/3 or Friday afternoon, 3/6. Details to be confirmed by first day of class.