If you’re looking to change classes, add a fifth – or even sixth – or work towards finishing your T-Reqs, Recess is here to help. Here are five distinctive courses that celebrate creativity and quirkiness in the artistic and cultural landscape classes while helping you graduate on time.
Mafia at the Movies
Taught by Roberto Dainotto, West Duke 202, MoWe 11:45 a.m. -1 p.m.
Course credits: CINE 271, ITALIAN 385, LIT 385, VMS 385 (CCI, ALP)
Step into the shadowy world of the Mafia with this course, where students study how crime and culture interweave on screen to understand the Italian mafia, its diasporic components and their effect on American society. The course offers a study of the mafia and Italy’s “dark heart” represented in a wide range of Italian and American cinematic and television productions, from documentary to drama to comedy. According to the course description, students “will also consider possibilities and limits inherent to cinema in representing, and influencing, cultural and social realities.”
Virtual Realities: Collective Dreams from Plato to Cyberspace
Taught by Sarah Pourciau, Allen 103, TuTh 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m.
Course credits: LIT 265, GERMAN 266, ROMST 266 (CCI, EI, STS, ALP)
Before asking the question of what virtual reality is, we must first think about what defines “reality,” “realness” and technology. Aiming to define and discern reality and virtuality, the course inquires into the relationship between “dreams and art, art and games, games and technology, technology and reality,” according to its description. Topics of discussions range from “Plato's allegory of the cave, to the immersive spectacles of baroque theater, to the ghostly realms of gothic literature and modern film, to the invention of cyberspace and parallel universe games.”
Asian American and Latinx Literature and Film
Taught by Sandra Sotelo-Miller, Susan Thananopavarn, Classroom Building 106, MoWe 11:45 a.m.-1 p.m.
Course credits: AADS 320S, ENGLISH 350S, AMES 320S, LSGS 320S (CCI, ALP)
“In a world fractured by turmoil, there's much to learn from the profound human experience shared by the uprooted and displaced,” according to writer-journalist Helen Zia. Cross-listed by four academic departments, the course will answer the question of “What can Asian American and Latinx perspectives show us about dominant constructions of ‘America’ and its historical and contemporary power structures?” while exploring fundamental issues affecting Asian American and Latinx communities in the U.S. Through analyzing literary and cultural productions, the course will focus on how the United States’ two fastest-growing ethnoracial groups have been shaped in mutual relations with each other and with “common histories of imperialism, militarism, labor and immigration law.”
Meet the Beatles and the 1960s
Taught by Thomas Brothers, Biddle Building 101, MoWe 4:40-5:55 p.m.
Course credits: MUSIC 144 (EI, ALP, CZ)
This course invites its students to join a journey into the revolutionary sounds and shifting identities of the 1960s, a decade when music became a force for social change, spiritual exploration and cultural rebellion. The course will examine the Beatles’ unprecedented transformation from rock and roll icons to anti-war leaders and Hindu devotees, delving into the counterculture scenes of the 1960s. Besides the Beatles, the course will also explore the works of “Elvis, Dylan, Chuck Berry, Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, Psychedelic Rock, North Indian Raga, Bach, Beethoven.”
Bad Behavior
Taught by Nima Bassiri, Friedl Building 126, TuTh 3:05-4:20 p.m.
Course credits: LIT 333, SOCIOL 330 (EI, STS, CZ, SS)
The course will examine the distinctions between conceptions of evil, criminal and “bad” behavior, exploring the definition of behaving “badly.” Through studying ideas of “deviance, wrongdoing, and misconduct in the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries—that is, modern behavioral categories that are considered to be aberrant without necessarily being strictly defined as transgressions of the law,” the course will focus on how “bad behavior” raises concerns because they challenge established implicit social norms rather than “explicit violation of legal or moral codes.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.