Category: Courses

If you are looking for a class to switch into this semester, consider one of these UHP classes that currently have empty seats!

HONR 2047.10 Human Rights
Professor Maria Restrepo
HONR 2047:10 – 3 Credits
CRN: 27984
T 10:00-12:30 PM
Fulfills: CCAS Social Science; ESIA: International Politics concentration, Security Policy concentration; GWSB: Non-Business Elective/Unrestricted Elective; SEAS: Social Science
Course Description: The subject of Human Rights (HR) arguably lays bare the entire premise of liberal education itself. The issue of HR exposes us to the world outside our own circle of experience; and also requires us to make judgments, assessments, and interpretations of uncertain situations, often in settings where there are no clear penalties for wrong decisions or rewards for right ones. Certainly the claim of an expert that “Most students of Western developed countries have the luxury of forgetting about Human Rights” does not hold so true in today’s internet-enabled and interconnected society. This class grapples with these issues. It will teach you fresh skills to think critically about this important topic — whether it concerns ongoing situations ‘here, there or everywhere’.

HONR 2054.12 Public Poetries
Professor Thea Brown
HONR 2054:12 – 3 Credits
CRN: 27329
M 12:45-3:15 PM
Fulfills: CCAS: post-19th century English requirement or upper-division English course; ESIA: Humanities; GWSB: Non-Business Elective/Unrestricted Elective; SEAS: Humanities
Course Description: Combining the literature seminar with the creative writing workshop, Public Poetries hinges on the understanding that studying the histories of poetics, society, and culture enhances how we read and write poems. We examine poets from the early twentieth century to our contemporary moment (Yeats, Auden, Sexton, and Trethewey), investigating how various contexts inform a poet’s poetics. In particular, we consider the role of public life, conceptions of the public sphere, and the boundaries between public and private in shaping a poet’s career and oeuvre. We’ll read the collected work of each poet as well as selections from studies in poetics and aesthetics, critical theory, legal studies, and philosophy. Assignments would include a literary critical essay on each poet, creative writing exercises, and a culminating project that draws on creative practices and critical methodologies explored during the semester.

HONR 2054.81 American Jewish Experience
Professor Jenna Weissman Joselit
HONR 2053:81 – 3 Credits
CRN 27787
R 11:10-1:00 PM
Fulfills: ESIA: Humanities; GWSB: Non-Business Elective/Unrestricted Elective; SEAS: Humanities
Equivalent Courses: HIST 3367, JSTD 2002
Course Description: Crisis! Scandal! Controversy! This course explores a series of turning points in American Jewish history that prompted American Jewry to take stock of its place in the United States. Some of those moments had to do with anti-Jewish prejudice, others with economics and still others with matters of faith. Taken together, they challenged the Jewish community to define itself and its relationship with America.
Drawing on firsthand, eyewitness accounts, the course looks at what happened when Jewish merchants during the Civil War were expelled from areas under Union control, Jewish vacationers were denied admission to hotels in upstate New York and aspiring undergraduates were denied access to the Ivy League.  It also explores how one set of Jews upset another by seceding from their local synagogue, serving non-kosher food at a banquet, and behaving badly, blackening the community’s reputation in the process.