Instructor: Paul Herrnson

The outcome of the 2016 congressional elections will not only determine who controls Congress, it also will have an impact on healthcare policy, taxes, immigration reform, international relations, and who sits on the federal courts. This seminar focuses on congressional elections, drawing on examples from the upcoming election cycle.

Congressional elections will be examined from several perspectives, including those of candidates, party officials, interest group leaders, journalists, and scholars. The class will cover the backgrounds of congressional candidates; the decision to run for office; campaign finance, strategy, and communications; and the activities of political parties, interest groups, and the mass media. We also will examine the factors that separate winners from losers, the impact of elections on policymaking, and election reform.

Students who enroll in the course will receive insider perspectives from internationally-recognized political consultants from firms that have been involved in presidential, congressional, and statewide campaigns. These and briefings from other on and off campus experts will provide networking opportunities. Students who excel in the class may be offered an opportunity to work on a research project with the professor.

Requirements: Each student will become an expert on one congressional election and write a few short reports and a longer paper that draws from the reports to provide an overview of their election. Other assignments include a 2-page paper predicting the net change in the number of congressional seats held nationally by each party.  Class participation is required.

POLS 3613 is defined in the catalog as open to juniors and higher. Honors students without junior standing should email Prof. Herrnson for a permission number.

Instructor: Sean Forbes

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011 or 3800

The Speaker: The Eye of the Poem and the Short Story

According to Frances Mayes, “the poet ‘finds’ the right speaker and the right listener, usually by trying out several approaches.” In this introduction to creative writing class we will examine the different approaches that a writer can take when trying to establish a speaker in a poem or short story. We will look at exemplary works of poetry and fiction from writers like Robert Hayden, Elizabeth Bishop, Anne Carson, and Justin Torres. Students will produce a final portfolio of their original work. Class participation is an essential component to this largely workshop-based course along with weekly writing prompts such as writing in iambic pentameter and challenging prose sketches.

Instructor: Albert Fairbanks

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011 or 3800

The Victorian Period (1832-1900) was one of enormous social change. The Industrial Revolution and restructuring of agricultural practices provoked a shift of many workers from the countryside to the cities that sprang up in areas favorable to mining and factories. The culture had to invent ways to cope with resulting labor abuses, zoning, pollution, and public health. The discoveries of geologists, paleontologists, and Charles Darwin brought about a crisis in religion, and the new wealth amassed by the growing middle class transformed traditional class structures and patterns of consumption. The political liberation achieved by the Reform Act of 1832 was only partial, and its failure to enfranchise women along with the stifling new conditions for middle-class women provoked intense discussion of their rightful familial and social role. A backlash against the sensibilities associated with the preceding Romantic period arguably exerted oppressive restraints on manners and especially sexual expression.

We will read literary responses to these issues by several novelists, poets, dramatists, and the public intellectuals that came to be known collectively as “the Victorian sage.” Novelists may include George Eliot, Dickens, and Oscar Wilde; poets Tennyson, Arnold, Robert Browning, and the Rossettis (Dante Gabriel and Christina); and social critics Carlyle and Arnold.

The class will be run as discussions, and the writing assignments will consist of a series of short papers (5-8 pp.) amounting to 15 or 20 pages in total. There will be a midterm and final exam.

Instructor: Jonathan Hufstader

Prerequisite: ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011 or 3800

How to read, hear, see, understand, enjoy, interpret, think about,talk about, and write about poems. Come prepared to do all these things actively in class. Two papers, midterm, final.

(CA 1).

Instructor: Etan Markus

Prerequisites: (1) ENGL 1010 or 1011 or 2011; (2) PSYC 1100; (3) PSYC 2100; and (4) PSYC 2200 or 2500 or 3201 or 3552

Remember how you got to class today? a bad experience? learning to ride a bike? What parts of the brain are involved in these different types of behaviors? How can one examine these questions in the laboratory rat? This hands-on laboratory will provide students with an opportunity to conduct experiments using modern behavioral techniques. The ability of rats to carry out different types of tasks will be related to different brain structures.

Note! This is a hard lab! Really!

• This is a hands-on lab, most of the time we will only have a brief classroom session. Instead, on about half the weeks students will be training animals for about 1-2 hours/day for 3-4 days a week.
• On occasion you will have to come in on the weekend to care for your animals.
• This is also a “W” class with a large amount of writing & re-writing.