Studies of the Arts and Literature
56:606:611:90 From Bop to Pop: History of Jazz
ECollege Platform
Professor Leach
From Bop to Pop: History of Jazz is a graduate course designed to introduce and survey the origins of jazz from New Orleans to the music of today. Topics covered will trace the social and historical context that gave birth to jazz styles as well as the related genres and musical inventions. From Dixieland and Folk to Big Band to Rock, students will investigate landmark artists, songs, and movements, which explore the connections between the music they listen to and the artists who have pioneered that progress.
Studies of Politics and Society
56:606:621:90 Politics of Terrorism
ECollege Platform
Professor Snow
An analysis of the use of terror as a form of political expression and strategy. The course will investigate terrorism from institutional and historical perspectives, focusing on the level of threat to the United States from domestic terrorists and Al Queda, as well as tactics, weapons, aims, and the rationality of terror. Other topics include state-sponsored terrorism, and the consequences and tactics of counter-terrorism.
Studies of Philosophy and Religion
56:606:641:90 Contemporary Moral Issues
ECollege Platform
Professor Young
This course will focus on the study of articles written on a broad range of contemporary issues of ethical concern. These issues potentially include but not limited to capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, sexuality, animal welfare, and poverty. Studying the works of respected thinkers on these matters will afford students an opportunity to think more thoroughly and systematically about these issues than would otherwise be likely.
Major western ethical theories, potentially including but not necessarily limited to those authored by Bentham, Mill, Aquinas, Kant, and Aristotle will also be studied. Representing the most widely studied attempts to bring unity to our particular judgments of right and wrong under a more general ethical perspective, they are not only the basis of many of the articles we will study, but are also useful in revealing inconsistencies in our own views.