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发帖数: 38600 | 1 Listed below are 20 completely ridiculous college courses being offered at U
.S. universities. The description following each course title either comes
directly from the official course description or from a news story about the
course…
1. “What If Harry Potter Is Real?” (Appalachian State University) – This
course will engage students with questions about the very nature of history.
Who decides what history is? Who decides how it is used or mis-used? How
does this use or misuse affect us? How can the historical imagination inform
literature and fantasy? How can fantasy reshape how we look at history? The
Harry Potter novels and films are fertile ground for exploring all of these
deeper questions. By looking at the actual geography of the novels, real
and imagined historical events portrayed in the novels, the reactions of
scholars in all the social sciences to the novels, and the world-wide frenzy
inspired by them, students will examine issues of race, class, gender, time
, place, the uses of space and movement, the role of multiculturalism in
history as well as how to read a novel and how to read scholarly essays to
get the most out of them.
2. “God, Sex, Chocolate: Desire and the Spiritual Path” (UC San Diego) –
Who shapes our desire? Who suffers for it? Do we control our desire or does
desire control us? When we yield to desire, do we become more fully
ourselves or must we deny it to find an authentic identity beneath? How have
religious & philosophical approaches dealt with the problem of desire?
3. “GaGa for Gaga: Sex, Gender, and Identity” (The University Of Virginia)
– In Graduate Arts & Sciences student Christa Romanosky’s ongoing ENWR
1510 class, “GaGa for Gaga: Sex, Gender, and Identity,” students analyze
how the musician pushes social boundaries with her work. For this
introductory course to argumentative essay writing, Romanosky chose the Lady
Gaga theme to establish an engaging framework for critical analysis.
4. “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame” (The University Of South Carolina
) – Lady Gaga may not have much class but now there is a class on her. The
University of South Carolina is offering a class called Lady Gaga and the
Sociology of Fame. Mathieu Deflem, the professor teaching the course
describes it as aiming to “unravel some of the sociologically relevant
dimensions of the fame of Lady Gaga with respect to her music, videos,
fashion, and other artistic endeavours.”
5. “Philosophy And Star Trek” (Georgetown) – Star Trek is very
philosophical. What better way, then, to learn philosophy, than to watch
Star Trek, read philosophy, and hash it all out in class? That’s the plan.
This course is basically an introduction to certain topics in metaphysics
and epistemology philosophy, centered around major philosophical questions
that come up again and again in Star Trek. In conjunction with watching Star
Trek, we will read excerpts from the writings of great philosophers,
extract key concepts and arguments and then analyze those arguments.
6. “Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond” (The University Of Texas) –
Why would anyone want to learn Klingon?
7. “The Science Of Superheroes” (UC Irvine) – Have you ever wondered if
Superman could really bend steel bars? Would a “gamma ray” accident turn
you into the Hulk? What is a “spidey-sense”? And just who did think of all
these superheroes and their powers? In this seminar, we discuss the science
(or lack of science) behind many of the most famous superheroes. Even more
amazing, we will discuss what kind of superheroes might be imagined using
our current scientific understanding.
8. “Learning From YouTube” (Pitzer College) – About 35 students meet in a
classroom but work mostly online, where they view YouTube content and post
their comments. Class lessons also are posted and students are encouraged
to post videos. One class member, for instance, posted a 1:36-minute video
of himself juggling.
9. “Arguing with Judge Judy” (UC Berkeley) – TV “Judge” shows have
become extremely popular in the last 3-5 years. A fascinating aspect of
these shows from a rhetorical point of view is the number of arguments made
by the litigants that are utterly illogical, or perversions of standard
logic, and yet are used over and over again. For example, when asked “Did
you hit the plaintiff?” respondents often say, “If I woulda hit him, he’d
be dead!” This reply avoids answering “yes” or “no” by presenting a
perverted form of the logical strategy called “a fortiori” argument [“
from the stronger”] in Latin. The seminar will be concerned with
identifying such apparently popular logical fallacies on “Judge Judy” and
“The People’s Court” and discussing why such strategies are so widespread
. It is NOT a course about law or “legal reasoning.” Students who are
interested in logic, argument, TV, and American popular culture will
probably be interested in this course. I emphasize that it is NOT about the
application of law or the operations of the court system in general.
10. “Elvis As Anthology” (The University Of Iowa) – The class, “Elvis as
Anthology,” focuses on Presley’s relationship to African American history
, social change, and aesthetics. It focuses not just on Elvis, but on other
artists who inspired him and whom he inspired.
11. “The Feminist Critique Of Christianity” (The University Of
Pennsylvania) – An overview of the past decades of feminist scholarship
about Christian and post-Christian historians and theologians who offer a
feminist perspective on traditional Christian theology and practice. This
course is a critical overview of this material, presented with a summary of
Christian biblical studies, history and theology, and with a special
interest in constructive attempts at creating a spiritual tradition with
women’s experience at the center.
12. “Zombies In Popular Media” (Columbia College) – This course explores
the history, significance, and representation of the zombie as a figure in
horror and fantasy texts. Instruction follows an intense schedule, using
critical theory and source media (literature, comics, and films) to spur
discussion and exploration of the figure’s many incarnations. Daily
assignments focus on reflection and commentary, while final projects foster
thoughtful connections between student disciplines and the figure of the
zombie.
13. “Far Side Entomology” (Oregon State) – For the last 20 years, a
scientist at Oregon State University has used Gary Larson’s cartoons as a
teaching tool. The result has been a generation of students learning — and
laughing — about insects.
14. “Interrogating Gender: Centuries of Dramatic Cross-Dressing” (
Swarthmore) – Do clothes make the man? Or the woman? Do men make better
women? Or women better men? Is gender a costume we put on and take off? Are
we really all always in drag? Does gender-bending lead to transcendence or
chaos? These questions and their ramifications for liminalities of race,
nationality and sexuality will be our focus in a course that examines
dramatic works from The Bacchae to M. Butterfly.
15. “Oh, Look, a Chicken!” Embracing Distraction as a Way of Knowing (
Belmont University) – Students must write papers using their personal
research on the five senses. Entsminger reads aloud illustrated books The
Simple People and Toby’s Toe to teach lessons about what to value by being
alive. Students listen to music while doodling in class. Another project
requires students to put themselves in situations where they will be
distracted and write a reflection tracking how they got back to their
original intent.
16. “The Textual Appeal of Tupac Shakur” (University of Washington) – The
UW is not the first college with a class dedicated to Shakur — classes on
the rapper have been offered at the University of California Berkeley and
Harvard — but it is the first to relate Shakur’s work to literature.
17. “Cyberporn And Society” (State University of New York at Buffalo) –
With classwork like this, who needs to play? Undergraduates taking Cyberporn
and Society at the State University of New York at Buffalo survey Internet
porn sites.
18. “Sport For The Spectator” (The Ohio State University) – Develop an
appreciation of sport as a spectacle, social event, recreational pursuit,
business, and entertainment. Develop the ability to identify issues that
affect the sport and spectator behavior.
19. “Getting Dressed” (Princeton) – Jenna Weissman Joselit looks over the
roomful of freshmen in front of her and asks them to perform a warm-up
exercise: Chart the major moments of your lives through clothes. “If you
pop open your closet, can you recall your lives?” she posits on the first
day of the freshman seminar “Getting Dressed.”
20. “How To Watch Television” (Montclair) – This course, open to both
broadcasting majors and non-majors, is about analyzing television in the
ways and to the extent to which it needs to be understood by its audience.
The aim is for students to critically evaluate the role and impact of
television in their lives as well as in the life of the culture. The means
to achieve this aim is an approach that combines media theory and criticism
with media education. | s*****o
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