ILS .: courses

ILS courses FALL 2008

ILS 200 Critical Thinking and Expression
Lecturer Kristin Hunt
3:30 W

What does it mean to think critically? To find fault? To employ intellectual rigor? Can we imagine a method of critical thought that produces writing with the potential to change the world? This course takes the definition of "critical thought" seriously in order to expand our idea of what critical communication is and has the potential to be. Getting beyond the standard connotation of "critical" thought as finding fault with others’ ideas, we will explore other definitions of the word "critical," including:

1. constituting a crisis

2. involving grave uncertainty or risk

3. crucial or essential

4. constituting a turning point

Taking these definitions as versions of what critical thinking is or can do, we will examine critical pieces of writing and other forms of expression from Western, colonial, and post colonial experience, asking ourselves what part the simple act of thinking critically had in the most important events in our history, and honing our own writing and thinking skills along the way. Material for the class will include texts and artwork from the history of colonization and independence in the Atlantic Rim, seminal works from the contemporary avant-garde, important speeches from the American Civil Rights movement and the radical youth movements of the 1960s, as well as a variety of other examples of truly critical human thought and expression. Through a semester of careful investigation of the power of critical thinking, students will be asked to broaden their own ideas of what their own writing and thinking have the capacity to do or become in the world.

Assignments for this course emphasize the development of written and oral communication skills essential for a variety of kinds of real-world success, as well as academic excellence. This course fulfills the Communications B requirement.

ILS 201 Western Culture: Science, Technology, Philosophy I
Professor Florence Hsia
1:00 - 2:15 T & R

This course is the first in a two-term sequence that examines the development of science in cultural and intellectual context from antiquity to the twentieth century. These two courses (ILS 201 and 202) are, in turn, part of a sequence of four courses that fulfill the Letters & Science breadth requirement in natural science.

This course begins with an examination of perspectives towards the natural world in poetry, philosophy, and medicine of ancient Greece. It follows the movement of the classical tradition into medieval Islam and Christendom, and concludes with the transformation of European science during the 16th and 17th centuries. Throughout our investigation of what 'science' has been in the past, we will pay particular attention to issues which still have relevance today, such as the interaction between science and religion, the importance of different institutional settings for science, and the relationship between science and government.

Grading will include frequent quizzes in discussion sections, class participation, and three exams.

ILS 202 Western Culture: Science, Technology, Philosophy II
Professor Lynn Nyhart
11:00 M & W

This course offers an introduction to the history of the sciences between the late seventeenth century and the early twentieth century, with the aim of understanding the varied ways of knowing that have come to be known as "science." In pursuing this question, we will treat such pivotal intellectual developments as Newtonianism, the conservation of energy, and Darwin’s evolution theory. At the same time, we will seek to understand the relationship between these ideas and the broader cultural context in which they took place, paying particular attention to the processes by which scientists and non-scientists have assimilated new information and changed their ideas about nature. We will see how scientific ideas have developed in relation to religious belief systems, on the one hand, and technology and medicine, on the other. These big, messy, important relationships are among the most important in our culture’s history and remain central to understand the condition of modern Western and global culture today.

ILS 203 Western Culture : Literature and the Arts I
Professor William Aylward
9:55 T & R

This course examines Western art and literature from the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt to late medieval times, with substantial emphasis on Graeco-Roman antiquity. The syllabus is diachronic, with a view toward revealing how art and literature of western culture shape today's modern world. Students gain foundational knowledge of the Western intellectual tradition, and this includes acquiring critical skills for viewing art and reading literature. Grading is based on periodic exams, as well as participation, attendance, and quizzes in discussions sessions.

ILS 205 Western Culture: Political, Economic and Social Thought I
Professor Richard Avramenko
12:00 T & R

The objective of this course is two-fold. First, this course introduces students to the basics of Western political, economic, and social thought. Through a careful reading of canonical texts, the elementary symbols and concepts of Western thought will be discussed. Our second objective is to learn how these symbols and concepts can be brought to bear on contemporary problems and how they can inform questions concerning our own political and social order. What part, for instance, does reason play in our world? What does a good citizen look like? What is the good human life? What is the place of violence? What does justice look like? Thinkers such as Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristophanes, Aristotle and Augustine may be considered.

ILS 209 Introduction to Global Cultures
Professor Joseph Elder
8:50 M & W

This is an inter-disciplinary course coordinated by Professor Joseph Elder (a sociologist who specializes in South Asia). It is team-taught by some of Madison’s finest professors, each of whom specialize in at least one world culture. Readings, often translated into English from some other language, engage topics of global cultural interactions. The students are introduced to a rich variety of world cultures and are provided analytic tools with which to study cultures. This course is a prerequisite for, and encourages students to consider earning, a Global Cultures certificate by the time they graduate. It also encourages students to participate in one or more of the University’s many study-abroad programs.

ILS 252 Contemporary Life Sciences
Professor Timothy Allen
1:20 M, W & F

There are two traditions in science at the moment; one is atomistic as might characterize ILS 251(Contemporary Physical Science), and the other is systems approach. Atomism is to an extent reductionist while systems analysis is generally holistic. In the systems approach used here plants influence humans while humans influence plants. These relationships, are taken in a time sequence; plants in human evolution, crop domestication and ancient cities, historical plants of wars and human migration, plants making America and the Industrial Revolution, modern agriculture, economic plants and sociology, our ecological crisis–is the cure a return to nature? The lectures are related to the twentieth century human experiences. They are designed to be relevant biology for the humanities students with relevant humanities agriculturalists, to stimulate as well as to inform.

Whenever humans are part of an investigation, scientists tend to overemphasize the actions of individual humans. They identify with the humans in the scientific model. Individual human experience will not receive much attention in this course. Emphasis will be on the cultural and political evolution of mankind with plant and animal biology. When dealing with large scale questions, I will endeavor to use large scale explanations. I hope the course will leave you feeling excited and uneasy with new questions that you must ask yourself as to your role as a person, as a member of culture, and as a part of a species in the Biosphere.

ILS 371 Lec. 1
Classical Figures grapple with Contemporary Controversies
Professor Kathleen Sell
11:00-1:30 T

This course is an exciting opportunity to grapple with current political, social, and economic controversies from the perspective of past thinkers, in a venue where we occasionally act as these theorists and political figures in a "talk show" format. This course will follow the approach of the 1950's television show, Meeting of Minds, in which great thinkers and political figures came back from the dead to be interviewed together on a talk show, coupled with Jon Stewart's approach of bringing current political actors to visit The Daily Show.

We will apply the theories and insights of classical to modern Western thinkers to pressing political and economic controversies, from growing income inequality to the role of religion in American politics. We will have representatives of homo economicus (economic man), homo moralis (moral man) and Aristotle's man as a political animal. Students and guest experts will play the requisite roles (from TV show host to interviewees to audience members who also will represent various viewpoints and be allowed to question the guests on the show) for a series of "Meeting of Minds" shows over the semester. We'll ask thinkers and political actors such as Cleopatra, Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, John Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Henry Thoreau, and Jane Addams to return from the dead, as it were, to debate these problems with us.

The course will involve 4 or 5 ""shows"" and each show will be preceded by a couple of weeks of preparation involving the following: class time spent discussing readings from key classical and modern thinkers and current work on contemporary controversies. Dr. Sell will provide biographical material and background on the theorists'' key insights. Students will be expected to do some further research on the selected contemporary issues for each production, as well as become familiar with some of these thinkers so they may apply their ideas to current dilemmas and be prepared to occasionally play a role and argue in character. In addition, prep time for the show will be provided in class, with further preparation expected outside of class. This should be seen as part improv and part prepared role-playing, in a casual class format in which everyone has a role to play.

ILS 371 Lec. 2
The Temptation of Hope
Professor Klaus Berghan
3:30-6:00 M

Utopian imagination and the principle of hope have fallen on hard times. It has become almost a commonplace that utopian visions are obsolete. The present state of world affairs seems to paralyze utopian thinking. In an age of worldwide exploitation and destruction of nature (Greenhouse Effect), epidemic diseases (AIDS), and the age of terrorism the future of mankind appears bleak and apocalyptic images dominate our imagination. Especially the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, if that was supposed to be a Utopia at all, has shattered all dreams of century-old social Utopias. Utopia is draped in a mourning veil, and Postmodernism, we are told, is ringing in the end of Utopia. Would it not be wiser, under these anti-utopian circumstances, to say farewell to utopian thinking?

But what would Utopia be without its opponents -- past and present? A harmless illusion of a blissful life in Schlaraffia (the German term for Utopia in the 18th century), Shangri-la or Cloud-cuckoo-land. The critics of Utopia were the first to legitimize utopian thinking as a critical intellectual intervention. They pointed out that utopian thinking was a thorn in the side of any moribund society, and they warned against utopian thought, which is above all a radical critique of the existing social order.

It is against this backdrop of recent criticism of utopian thinking that this seminar tries to rescue the concept of Utopia and to restore the power of utopian imagination. This seminar is, however, not a historical survey of Utopias since Thomas More, which would after a while be repetitious and a bit boring. Instead we will look at the beginning of the seminar at three prototypes which influenced utopian thinking ever since: More’s model of the genre, Bacon’s technological Utopia, and Campanella’s Christian Utopia. As an antidote we will also look anti-Utopias (Dystopias) by Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell. However, our main concern will be to measure utopian thinking and imagination against our own life experience, be it perpetual peace, social engineering, ecological concerns, emancipation of women and minorities. Finally we will look at Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope as a transformation of utopian thinking which permeates every aspect of modern life – and at his postmodern critics.

This course will be truly interdisciplinary: Each text has its historical context, which is important for understanding its criticism of the existing social order; each text asks questions about the ideal political and social order, which is embedded in the narrative as theory; and each text has to be analyzed as a piece of literature, which necessitates all the pertinent hermeneutical questions about its structure. Most importantly, however, students are forced to think about their own pursuit of happiness, their role in society, and their political attitude toward the state.

ILS 372 Lec. 2
Tocqueville's Democracy in America
Professor Richard Avramenko
5:30-8:00 T

This course will offer students an opportunity to consider carefully Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Our analysis will consider, among other things: the relationship—historical and logical—between aristocracy and democracy; the instability of democracy; the institutional mechanisms that serve as antidotes to these instabilities; the significance of taste in Tocqueville’s thought; the case for American Exceptionalism; the place of religion in democracy; whether Tocqueville himself recognized the limits of his “institutional” political science; and finally, the prospects for democracy and democratization around the globe. The intention is less to defend what Tocqueville says than to begin to comprehend the way in which he thought through democracy and its problems and the way this thinking can be brought to bear on our contemporary political predicaments, both domestic and international.

ILS 400 Capstone Seminar
Education, Leadership, and Character: Meiklejohn's and Other's Ideals
Professor Kathleen Sell
1:00-3:30 W

In a participatory seminar environment, we will examine our own notions of education, leadership, and character against those of historical and contemporary theorists and practitioners. We will have a chance to dialogue with one another and with guest speakers who are experts in these areas. As you prepare to go to graduate school or into the professions, this is a pivotal "turning point" when it is useful to look back over your education and forward to the opportunities and challenges of adult life. What will be your "ILS Toolkit" as you move forward?


	ILS courses FALL 2008 ILS 200 Critical Thinking and Expression Lecturer Kristin Hunt 3:30 W What does it mean to think critically? To find fault? To employ intellectual rigor? Can we imagine a method of critical thought that produces writing with the potential to change the world? This course takes the definition of "critical thought" seriously in order to expand our idea of what critical communication is and has the potential to be. Getting beyond the standard connotation of "critical" thought as finding fault with others’ ideas, we will explore other definitions of the word "critical," including: 1. constituting a crisis 2. involving grave uncertainty or risk 3. crucial or essential 4. constituting a turning point Taking these definitions as versions of what critical thinking is or can do, we will examine critical pieces of writing and other forms of expression from Western, colonial, and post colonial experience, asking ourselves what part the simple act of thinking critically had in the most important events in our history, and honing our own writing and thinking skills along the way. Material for the class will include texts and artwork from the history of colonization and independence in the Atlantic Rim, seminal works from the contemporary avant-garde, important speeches from the American Civil Rights movement and the radical youth movements of the 1960s, as well as a variety of other examples of truly critical human thought and expression. Through a semester of careful investigation of the power of critical thinking, students will be asked to broaden their own ideas of what their own writing and thinking have the capacity to do or become in the world. Assignments for this course emphasize the development of written and oral communication skills essential for a variety of kinds of real-world success, as well as academic excellence. This course fulfills the Communications B requirement. ILS 201 Western Culture: Science, Technology, Philosophy I Professor Florence Hsia 1:00 - 2:15 T & R This course is the first in a two-term sequence that examines the development of science in cultural and intellectual context from antiquity to the twentieth century. These two courses (ILS 201 and 202) are, in turn, part of a sequence of four courses that fulfill the Letters & Science breadth requirement in natural science. This course begins with an examination of perspectives towards the natural world in poetry, philosophy, and medicine of ancient Greece. It follows the movement of the classical tradition into medieval Islam and Christendom, and concludes with the transformation of European science during the 16th and 17th centuries. Throughout our investigation of what 'science' has been in the past, we will pay particular attention to issues which still have relevance today, such as the interaction between science and religion, the importance of different institutional settings for science, and the relationship between science and government. Grading will include frequent quizzes in discussion sections, class participation, and three exams. ILS 202 Western Culture: Science, Technology, Philosophy II Professor Lynn Nyhart 11:00 M & W This course offers an introduction to the history of the sciences between the late seventeenth century and the early twentieth century, with the aim of understanding the varied ways of knowing that have come to be known as "science." In pursuing this question, we will treat such pivotal intellectual developments as Newtonianism, the conservation of energy, and Darwin’s evolution theory. At the same time, we will seek to understand the relationship between these ideas and the broader cultural context in which they took place, paying particular attention to the processes by which scientists and non-scientists have assimilated new information and changed their ideas about nature. We will see how scientific ideas have developed in relation to religious belief systems, on the one hand, and technology and medicine, on the other. These big, messy, important relationships are among the most important in our culture’s history and remain central to understand the condition of modern Western and global culture today. ILS 203 Western Culture : Literature and the Arts I Professor William Aylward 9:55 T & R This course examines Western art and literature from the civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt to late medieval times, with substantial emphasis on Graeco-Roman antiquity. The syllabus is diachronic, with a view toward revealing how art and literature of western culture shape today's modern world. Students gain foundational knowledge of the Western intellectual tradition, and this includes acquiring critical skills for viewing art and reading literature. Grading is based on periodic exams, as well as participation, attendance, and quizzes in discussions sessions. ILS 205 Western Culture: Political, Economic and Social Thought I Professor Richard Avramenko 12:00 T & R The objective of this course is two-fold. First, this course introduces students to the basics of Western political, economic, and social thought. Through a careful reading of canonical texts, the elementary symbols and concepts of Western thought will be discussed. Our second objective is to learn how these symbols and concepts can be brought to bear on contemporary problems and how they can inform questions concerning our own political and social order. What part, for instance, does reason play in our world? What does a good citizen look like? What is the good human life? What is the place of violence? What does justice look like? Thinkers such as Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Aristophanes, Aristotle and Augustine may be considered. ILS 209 Introduction to Global Cultures Professor Joseph Elder 8:50 M & W This is an inter-disciplinary course coordinated by Professor Joseph Elder (a sociologist who specializes in South Asia). It is team-taught by some of Madison’s finest professors, each of whom specialize in at least one world culture. Readings, often translated into English from some other language, engage topics of global cultural interactions. The students are introduced to a rich variety of world cultures and are provided analytic tools with which to study cultures. This course is a prerequisite for, and encourages students to consider earning, a Global Cultures certificate by the time they graduate. It also encourages students to participate in one or more of the University’s many study-abroad programs. ILS 252 Contemporary Life Sciences Professor Timothy Allen 1:20 M, W & F There are two traditions in science at the moment; one is atomistic as might characterize ILS 251(Contemporary Physical Science), and the other is systems approach. Atomism is to an extent reductionist while systems analysis is generally holistic. In the systems approach used here plants influence humans while humans influence plants. These relationships, are taken in a time sequence; plants in human evolution, crop domestication and ancient cities, historical plants of wars and human migration, plants making America and the Industrial Revolution, modern agriculture, economic plants and sociology, our ecological crisis–is the cure a return to nature? The lectures are related to the twentieth century human experiences. They are designed to be relevant biology for the humanities students with relevant humanities agriculturalists, to stimulate as well as to inform. Whenever humans are part of an investigation, scientists tend to overemphasize the actions of individual humans. They identify with the humans in the scientific model. Individual human experience will not receive much attention in this course. Emphasis will be on the cultural and political evolution of mankind with plant and animal biology. When dealing with large scale questions, I will endeavor to use large scale explanations. I hope the course will leave you feeling excited and uneasy with new questions that you must ask yourself as to your role as a person, as a member of culture, and as a part of a species in the Biosphere. ILS 371 Lec. 1 Classical Figures grapple with Contemporary Controversies Professor Kathleen Sell 11:00-1:30 T This course is an exciting opportunity to grapple with current political, social, and economic controversies from the perspective of past thinkers, in a venue where we occasionally act as these theorists and political figures in a "talk show" format. This course will follow the approach of the 1950's television show, Meeting of Minds, in which great thinkers and political figures came back from the dead to be interviewed together on a talk show, coupled with Jon Stewart's approach of bringing current political actors to visit The Daily Show. We will apply the theories and insights of classical to modern Western thinkers to pressing political and economic controversies, from growing income inequality to the role of religion in American politics. We will have representatives of homo economicus (economic man), homo moralis (moral man) and Aristotle's man as a political animal. Students and guest experts will play the requisite roles (from TV show host to interviewees to audience members who also will represent various viewpoints and be allowed to question the guests on the show) for a series of "Meeting of Minds" shows over the semester. We'll ask thinkers and political actors such as Cleopatra, Socrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, John Locke, Rousseau, Adam Smith, Henry Thoreau, and Jane Addams to return from the dead, as it were, to debate these problems with us. The course will involve 4 or 5 ""shows"" and each show will be preceded by a couple of weeks of preparation involving the following: class time spent discussing readings from key classical and modern thinkers and current work on contemporary controversies. Dr. Sell will provide biographical material and background on the theorists'' key insights. Students will be expected to do some further research on the selected contemporary issues for each production, as well as become familiar with some of these thinkers so they may apply their ideas to current dilemmas and be prepared to occasionally play a role and argue in character. In addition, prep time for the show will be provided in class, with further preparation expected outside of class. This should be seen as part improv and part prepared role-playing, in a casual class format in which everyone has a role to play. ILS 371 Lec. 2 The Temptation of Hope Professor Klaus Berghan 3:30-6:00 M Utopian imagination and the principle of hope have fallen on hard times. It has become almost a commonplace that utopian visions are obsolete. The present state of world affairs seems to paralyze utopian thinking. In an age of worldwide exploitation and destruction of nature (Greenhouse Effect), epidemic diseases (AIDS), and the age of terrorism the future of mankind appears bleak and apocalyptic images dominate our imagination. Especially the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, if that was supposed to be a Utopia at all, has shattered all dreams of century-old social Utopias. Utopia is draped in a mourning veil, and Postmodernism, we are told, is ringing in the end of Utopia. Would it not be wiser, under these anti-utopian circumstances, to say farewell to utopian thinking? But what would Utopia be without its opponents -- past and present? A harmless illusion of a blissful life in Schlaraffia (the German term for Utopia in the 18th century), Shangri-la or Cloud-cuckoo-land. The critics of Utopia were the first to legitimize utopian thinking as a critical intellectual intervention. They pointed out that utopian thinking was a thorn in the side of any moribund society, and they warned against utopian thought, which is above all a radical critique of the existing social order. It is against this backdrop of recent criticism of utopian thinking that this seminar tries to rescue the concept of Utopia and to restore the power of utopian imagination. This seminar is, however, not a historical survey of Utopias since Thomas More, which would after a while be repetitious and a bit boring. Instead we will look at the beginning of the seminar at three prototypes which influenced utopian thinking ever since: More’s model of the genre, Bacon’s technological Utopia, and Campanella’s Christian Utopia. As an antidote we will also look anti-Utopias (Dystopias) by Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell. However, our main concern will be to measure utopian thinking and imagination against our own life experience, be it perpetual peace, social engineering, ecological concerns, emancipation of women and minorities. Finally we will look at Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope as a transformation of utopian thinking which permeates every aspect of modern life – and at his postmodern critics. This course will be truly interdisciplinary: Each text has its historical context, which is important for understanding its criticism of the existing social order; each text asks questions about the ideal political and social order, which is embedded in the narrative as theory; and each text has to be analyzed as a piece of literature, which necessitates all the pertinent hermeneutical questions about its structure. Most importantly, however, students are forced to think about their own pursuit of happiness, their role in society, and their political attitude toward the state. ILS 372 Lec. 2 Tocqueville's Democracy in America Professor Richard Avramenko 5:30-8:00 T This course will offer students an opportunity to consider carefully Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. Our analysis will consider, among other things: the relationship—historical and logical—between aristocracy and democracy; the instability of democracy; the institutional mechanisms that serve as antidotes to these instabilities; the significance of taste in Tocqueville’s thought; the case for American Exceptionalism; the place of religion in democracy; whether Tocqueville himself recognized the limits of his “institutional” political science; and finally, the prospects for democracy and democratization around the globe. The intention is less to defend what Tocqueville says than to begin to comprehend the way in which he thought through democracy and its problems and the way this thinking can be brought to bear on our contemporary political predicaments, both domestic and international. ILS 400 Capstone Seminar Education, Leadership, and Character: Meiklejohn's and Other's Ideals Professor Kathleen Sell 1:00-3:30 W In a participatory seminar environment, we will examine our own notions of education, leadership, and character against those of historical and contemporary theorists and practitioners. We will have a chance to dialogue with one another and with guest speakers who are experts in these areas. As you prepare to go to graduate school or into the professions, this is a pivotal "turning point" when it is useful to look back over your education and forward to the opportunities and challenges of adult life. What will be your "ILS Toolkit" as you move forward?