HSS2019 A History of Food and Election Campaigns

4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsTreating voters to food and drink in exchange for their vote on Election Day has a long history. This course focuses on campaigning for public office from 1876 to the present. We look at how political meetings and campaign stops provides the opportunity for a candidate to identify with voters and thereby gain their vote. As an HSS, this course cultivates ethical structures for interrogating the world, understanding choices, and making decisions. It focuses on frameworks for critically understanding the cultural constructions of meanings and identities and the simultaneous and reciprocal construction of cultural and political context by human beings as ethical agents.

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

PRF1200: Acting Workshop

2 free elective credits

This course will introduce the methods and tools required for stage performance. Through various exercises, games, improvisation, and assignments you will create characters, gain an understanding of theatre terminology, and attempt to find not only meaning but also the performance potential of dramatic literature. Most importantly, you will develop the confidence to approach the craft of acting with the discipline and rigor required for compelling performance.

The art of acting not only requires you to call upon knowledge in history, languages, and literature but also to understand your capabilities physically and vocally. The lessons you will learn this semester in active listening, characterization, vocal capabilities (resonance, range, enunciation, and delivery), collaboration, and bodily awareness are some that you can use in any career and in any field.

Prerequisites: none

SPN4615 Advanced Spanish in the Community
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsSPN4615 Advanced Spanish in the Community is a service-learning course where students will explore issues of Latino identity in the U.S. Through direct engagement with a community partner in Boston, along with corresponding readings, films, podcasts, and class discussion, students will consider the diversity of the contemporary Latino experience and its representations in the media, popular culture, and politics. Class discussions will be supplemented with a review of advanced grammar topics designed to help students improve their proficiency and gain confidence in their language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing). As an integral part of this course, students will complete 12 hours of service learning (approximately 2 hours every other week) through a partnership with Sociedad Latina, a Boston-based organization whose stated mission is _to create the next generation of Latino leaders who are confident, competent, self-sustaining and proud of their cultural heritage._ Students will provide mentorship to high school students that are participating in a 10-week entrepreneurship curriculum as part of an after school program run by Sociedad Latina. Extensive journaling will allow students to reflect on their experiences and improve their writing in Spanish. Guided writing workshop sessions will help prepare students' written reflections to be published on a class blog. At the end of the semester, Babson students and their high school mentees will develop a joint presentation about their collaborative learning.

Prerequisites: SPN4620 or higher, or similar proficiency as demonstrated by a required placement test. Heritage speakers may enroll upon permission of the instructor.

CVA2002 African American History and Foodways (HIS)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThe course covers the major periods, movements, and events that have shaped African American history and foodways. These include: the African slave trade; antebellum period; the civil war and reconstruction; World War I and the great migration; Harlem Renaissance and Garveyism; Great Depression; Spanish Civil War and World War II; Civil Rights and Black Power movements; industrialization, the growth of the prison industrial complex, and the _war on drugs_. The course will also include content on African American foodways from the African slave trade to the Black Power movement. Classes discuss the assigned reading with lively student participation. Out-of-class work includes readings, online exams, attending lectures, artistic presentations, and films, as well as independent research.

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

CSP2002 African American History and Foodways (HIS)

(Formerly CVA2002)
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThe course covers the major periods, movements, and events that have shaped African American history and foodways. These include: the African slave trade; antebellum period; the civil war and reconstruction; World War I and the great migration; Harlem Renaissance and Garveyism; Great Depression; Spanish Civil War and World War II; Civil Rights and Black Power movements; industrialization, the growth of the prison industrial complex, and the _war on drugs_. The course will also include content on African American foodways from the African slave trade to the Black Power movement. Classes discuss the assigned reading with lively student participation. Out-of-class work includes readings, online exams, attending lectures, artistic presentations, and films, as well as independent research.

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

POL4601 Africa Rising?
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis interdisciplinary course on contemporary Africa examines political, economic and social developments in the context of the now common mantra "Africa Rising." It takes a historical look at Africa's relations with global development actors and how these have impacted individual states and the entire continent. It includes a comparative analysis of Africa's partnership(s) with the different regions of the world (broadly categorized into East and West, Global South and Global North) and time spans (broadly grouped into colonial and post-colonial). It also examines processes, actors, events and partnerships within independent Africa and how they have contributed to the present state of the continent, which observers have described as rising. The course interrogates this observation. How truly is "Africa rising"? What is the cost of the rise? What does it mean for individuals, states and the entire continent? Why/how does it matter? The course focuses on these (and other important) questions, considering examples from various sectors, events, countries, bilateral and multilateral arrangements with African states and in relation to the rest of the world. It uses a variety of materials including texts, news and journal articles, as well as electronic and internet-based resources.

Prerequisites: 3 Intermediate liberal arts courses (CVA, LVA, HSS, CSP, LTA in any combination)

LTA2010 African American Literature
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts CreditsThis course will introduce students to the African American literary tradition starting with the slave narrative and concluding with contemporary literary production. Along the way, we will consider the move from oral to written literatures, the aesthetic forms created and adapted by African American writers, and the role of African American letters in chronicling and shaping the experience of African American people. Our study will be informed by major historical moments -slavery, reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration from south to north, the Civil Rights and post-Civil rights eras-and we will read work by writers such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, Nella Larsen, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Toni Morrison.

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

HSS2032 African American History and Foodways
4 Intermediate Liberal Arts: African History and Foodways will cover the major subjects, movements, and events that have shaped Africa since the 1400s. These include: African crops and animals, African political institutions and wars, gender, the spread of Islam, slavery, European colonization, and African independence movements. One learns how to publish a blog and create podcast episodes with show notes. Deliverables, regular contributions to class discussions, public speaking, research, and group work are essential course components. Cooking are a part of live classes.

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

LIT4661 American Autobiography
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsAutobiography, always popular, has reached new heights of acclaim in recent years - especially in the United States. Why do readers find it so attractive? Sensationalist, exhibitionist, self-serving, revelatory, probing: while it can be all of this and more, autobiography as a literary genre has its roots in a person's desire for expression and meaning. As its writers explain themselves to the world, they explain the world to themselves, imposing on it their views and causes. Autobiography can demonstrate how history is made in words, not found; how people make sense of their own lives. Reading a cross-section of such works written by authors living in what is now the United States compels us to question simplistic notions of what _America_ stands for, and to rediscover its promises and its meanings in its variety and conflict.

This is an upper-level liberal arts course. Readings range from Benjamin Franklin to the present.

Prerequisites: 3 Intermediate liberal arts courses (CVA, LVA, HSS, CSP, LTA in any combination)

LIT4608 American Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsThis course is a deep dive into literary works representing three major movements in American literature: Romanticism, Realism, and Naturalism. Romanticism is thematically concerned with nature and the common man, the frontier and immigration. Our study may include Thoreau, Whitman, and Morrison, as well as the genres of the gothic story and the slave narrative. Realism and Naturalism are often understood as reactions to Romanticism and are thematically concerned with man-made reality, objectivity and Darwinian ideas. Our study may include Wharton, Dreiser, and contemporary U.S. fiction.

Prerequisites: 3 Intermediate liberal arts courses (CVA, LVA, HSS, CSP, LTA in any combination)