Engagements at a Glance

Fertile gaps between meaning and saying can exist in all sorts of verbal expression. Poets, satirists, and all of us in ordinary life sometimes have to speak or write with double or hidden meanings in order to communicate the truth as we understand it. Critics sometimes call this gap between meaning and saying irony. We might think that irony is a way of being sarcastic, or saying the opposite of what you believe. (An example in two words: yeah, right!) These things are, however, only a small part of irony. Irony can also reflect disappointed expectations, conflictedness, even a sense of humility about our ability to say what we mean at all. Ultimately, irony is a way of approaching the world and ourselves that affords unique possibilities for self-criticism and reflection. We’ll work together to understand how we can both use and appreciate the rifts between meaning and saying that irony creates. We’ll read poetry and essays from James Baldwin, Frederick Douglass, Robert Frost, Jonathan Lear, Audre Lorde, Marianne Moore, Susan Sontag, Oscar Wilde, and others. Course members will also work throughout our seven weeks to develop and curate their own anthologies of irony, with examples carefully selected from their reading, listening, and viewing beyond class. These anthologies introduce us to the pleasures and problems of curating a collection of texts and explaining why they belong together.

Instructed by

Ogden

Emily

My goal as a teacher is to help my students to flourish. I’m there to create a space in which our intellectual pursuits together are real—and not, as the saying goes, only a test. I want my students’ work to be motivated by the discovery of an interest or even a passion, just as my own scholarly work is. When I’m not teaching, I’m researching nineteenth-century American literature and culture, as in the book I wrote about mesmerism, an early form of hypnosis. Or, I’m thinking about the nature of our lives as aesthetically attuned human beings, as in my column “On Not Knowing” at 3 Quarks Daily. It has been an honor to receive the Cory Family Teaching Prize and the Mead Honored Faculty Award for teaching at UVa. Guiding students to an experience of the intrinsic goods that motivate scholarship is a possibility to which I remain ever alert. I’m drawn to the engagements because they let us articulate together the principles that structure the collective work that happens at this university.

Course Name: Title:

TBD

This class explores the aesthetics of resistance in social and political life, emphasizing sound. We will rely on a broad understanding of “resistance,” from street protests to campaign theme songs to Super Bowl performances. Likewise, “sound” will refer primarily to music, but will also include other audible outputs of voices, bodies, and environments. Students will consider how sounds can straddle and influence the intimately connected domains of the aesthetic and the sociopolitical. We will ponder questions such as: how does sound mean? Is sound capable of provoking social change? How do people draw on their own experiences to interpret what they hear? How can the same song or sound inspire some to love and others to hate? Can sound be used as a weapon? How can sound foster inclusivity or exclusivity, or allow individuals to heal, motivate, resist, or change?

We will attend public events in the area to enhance our studies. Importantly, students will examine their own engagements with sonic and musical resistance and will complete self-designed projects that allow them to experiment with sound’s capacities to engage in social action.

Instructed by

Flood

Liza

Postdoctoral Fellow

I am an ethnomusicologist who studies American music and culture. My primary focus is country music in all its various forms: honky-tonk, bluegrass, pop country, and others. Studying a kind of music that was historically ignored by the academy, and yet enjoys broad popularity, prompts important questions such as: what cultural forms are worthy of study? What is good music? How can music represent groups of people or ideas? How can music be used as a form of self-expression, resistance, or political stance?

These are the kinds of questions that motivate ethnomusicologists. We start with music or sound and then ask questions about its content and context. Music guides us through explorations of identity, taste, ethics, difference, social interaction, memory, and belonging. We examine music in everyday life, made by everyday people, not just the megastars whose music gets played on the radio. Through this lens, ethnomusicologists are deeply concerned with participation: music isn’t just an object, it’s very importantly an activity. It’s something we do. As I step outside of my field and join the Engagements program, I bring with me some of the same concerns. I hope to help students explore how big questions inflect everyday life and how we are all active participants in culture-making, capable of engaging, influencing, challenging, and celebrating the world around us.

My first experience teaching was with incarcerated teenagers in a wilderness setting. My students would write slam poetry about cloud types while sitting around a camp fire or study rock formations as we relied on collaboration and problem solving to navigate rugged terrain. This was a formative experience, one that motivated my excitement about the Engagements, a program that is also interested in crossing the boundaries of classroom environments, of academic discipline, and of creative methodology. I believe that this is when the greatest learning can occur: when we are active and collaborative participants in our learning, deeply engaged in the world immediately around us in order to think in limitless ways.

Course Name: Title:

TBD

We have all experienced a long-forgotten memory suddenly triggered by something seemingly ordinary: a taste, a smell, a song that brings the past rushing back. How do artists, composers, and filmmakers utilize this phenomenon of sudden, involuntary memory to create art?

In this course we will ask: How do artworks manipulate the depiction of the passing of time? How reliable are our memories, and does implementing timelines in storytelling make our narratives more or less reliable? In what different ways do both personal and public spaces facilitate the process of remembering? How have artists sought to capture the fleeting nature of time through painting, and how have they sought to freeze time in photography? How does repetition in music incite memory to help structure a four-hour opera? How are words and names used strategically as an efficient way to conjure up memories? Is there such a thing as present time, or is there only past and future?

Instructed by

Smith

Wendy

I have always been drawn to examining history, memory, and ideas of the past through images and objects. I am particularly interested in the various ways artists, novelists, and philosophers have visualized time and how we experience the passing of time. Instead of being passive listeners, viewers, or readers, I encourage students to critically think about the histories they have been taught, and to ponder the reliability of the stories they have been told as we investigate how personal perspectives and identity affect the way we teach, talk about, and represent the past. We apply this thinking to our own lives and family histories as well as using it to become more actively discerning about the way we hear the stories of the past in other contexts such as the university classroom, novels, museums, films, etc..

I teach in both the Differences and Aesthetics Engagement areas, finding that themes of time and memory, and the important role of objects in material and visual culture, are pertinent to a wide range of disciplines and modes of inquiry. I was drawn to the Engagements program’s interdisciplinarity because I believe it more naturally models the research environment most academics are working within. This atmosphere invites students to enjoy the freedom of intellectual curiosity with academic rigor. My own research intersects with the disciplines of art history, musicology, fashion history, English, French and Italian Studies, history of science, and history of theatre. Based on my doctoral research, I am completing the first full-length critical study of the Spanish-Venetian designer and artist Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo (1871-1949). Fortuny, like other figures I am drawn to, had an intriguing view of temporality and continuously used new inventions to re-interpret and re-create historical designs. I am also beginning a book-length project, The Weather in Wagner: Atmospheric Stage Décor c.1870-1930, which will examine the ways technological advances affected approaches to scenography in opera and simultaneously influenced the divergent styles of Romantic realism and abstraction around the turn of the 20th century.

I grew up in rural southern Virginia and suburban North Carolina, but after a transformative undergraduate study abroad experience in Italy, I knew I wanted to live overseas. I completed my M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History and Visual Studies at The University of Manchester in England and enjoyed frequent research trips to Venice. After my studies I lived in Boston for five years, and in the summer of 2019 moved to Charlottesville with my husband and daughter.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530: Encountering the World Through Collected Objects

TBD

Instructed by

Smith

Wendy

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530: Encountering the World Through Collected Objects

TBD

Spring Session Two: March 4 - April 23

EGMT 1510: Are We the Stories We Tell?

TBD

EGMT 1510: Cultures of Play - Listening, Collaborating, Improvising

Instructed by

Kisliuk

Michelle

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1510: Cultures of Play - Listening, Collaborating, Improvising

TBD

EGMT 1510: Imagine This: A Course on Thought Experiments

Why do we do thought experiments?

Instructed by

Mikkelson

Jane

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1510: Imagine This: A Course on Thought Experiments

EGMT 1530: Lost and Found in Translation

TBD

EGMT 1510: Imagine This: A Course on Thought Experiments

Why do we do thought experiments?

Instructed by

Mikkelson

Jane

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1510: Imagine This: A Course on Thought Experiments

EGMT 1530: Lost and Found in Translation

TBD

EGMT 1510: In Praise of Entropy

TBD

Instructed by

Ogden

Emily

Course Name: Title:

TBD

Instructed by

Flood

Liza

Postdoctoral Fellow

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1520: Monsters, Mutants, and Master Genes - What Can Frogs Teach Us About Humans?

TBD

EGMT 1520: Empirical & Scientific Engagement

Fall 2020

Spring 2021

Spring Session One: January 13 - March 2

Who are we? How do we develop from an egg into a walking, talking, thinking human? What happens when development goes wrong? Or why does it go wrong? These are some questions that have intrigued many of us. Studying Biology tells us that, Every animal form starts from a single egg and follows a developmental program coded by its DNA. Our DNA governs the similarities and differences we share with other living beings. It defines the way our cells divide and differentiate and transform into our beautiful, healthy bodies. And, if some part of this program fails, it may result in disease.

To understand and study human health and disease, scientists use other organisms. We are connected to these other organisms as we share a common ancestor and, thus, some parts of our DNA. In this course, you will develop an understanding of how scientists have utilized model organisms to answer some of the questions listed above. We will use frogs as an example model organism, mainly for a few reasons. First, their body plan is very similar to ours; second, they are easy to work with, and third, they develop outside the mother's body, making it easy to watch development in action. We will, as a team, look at some case studies, evaluate experiments, and do some hands-on activities to learn how the use of empirical methods has transformed scientific inquiry. We will also discuss the human values involved in using animals in medical research and the ethical implications. You will also have the opportunity to connect to a scientist who uses frogs to study human health and visit their lab. My goal for you is to be able to evaluate and analyze a news piece about human health and judge for yourself the validity and implications of the data presented in the article.

Instructed by

Date

Priya

My research appetite has enabled me to explore numerous facets of biology, from evolution to developmental and cell biology. While doing so, I have enjoyed working with different animals like fruit flies, lizards, frogs, and mice. Being a scientist has taught me to approach any problem with an analytical mind, where I can ask questions and look for solutions by observing or experimenting. The empirical and scientific engagement courses in the New College Curriculum provide students with a similar experience but on a smaller scale. These courses will invite students to learn strategies to think like scientists. I firmly believe that seeing how the process of science works will enable students to deal with broader social issues and learn more about themselves.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1520: Monsters, Mutants, and Master Genes - What Can Frogs Teach Us About Humans?

TBD

EGMT 1520: Posessed - Objects & Empiricism

Can things speak, and are we listening? If objects can be used as evidence, then how can we interpret them? And why think about objects at all? In this class, students will learn how to use material—from pot sherds to iPhones—to develop and test hypotheses about societies and individuals past and the present. Using things from our own daily lives (sweatshirts, toothbrushes, photos of grandma) as case studies, we’ll together investigate what things can tell us about the people who make and use them, and about ourselves and our own relationship with our possessions. Over the course of seven weeks, we’ll create portfolios based on our own objects, working toward a thick description of it and making a case for its worthiness as evidence. Along the way, we’ll explore the potentials and pitfalls of different kinds of interpretation and reasoning, and also explore the biases and assumptions that impact on the very notion of empiricism itself.

Instructed by

Phillips

Amanda

The Engagements offer instructor and students alike a unique opportunity to work through one of the most urgent issues of the twenty-first century: the nature of what we might think of as verifiable information, or even as truth. As a historian of art and material culture, I’m really interested in asking what truths objects, places, and spaces can tell us that writing or pictures cannot. More than anything, I want to give our first-year students the skills to understand their possessions in context of the web of global production and consumption in the twenty-first century. Beyond collecting data about our stuff, we all need to understand that interpreting and arguing based on this evidence is also part of larger social and historical contexts, and that the very nature of objectivity is also worth critical examination. My teaching in the Engagements helps me explore this facet in my own research, which considers how textiles and other types of objects contain information that is otherwise absent from the historical record.

I’ve lived Paris, Tunis, Berlin, Istanbul, Edinburgh, and several other places, and speak and read a few languages. I spend my time looking at the fragments, scraps, and low-quality objects of mass production that most art historians abominate. It is my firm belief that we have more to learn from the odd, purposefully mediocre, and downright ugly than we do from the beautiful and pleasing.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1520: Posessed - Objects & Empiricism

TBD

Few historical figures from antiquity excite as much interest as Cleopatra VII, last Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt. Despite her enduring popularity, most of what people believe they know about her owes more to Hollywood than to historical evidence. This course examines the nature of historical knowledge by exploring a series of questions about Cleopatra. We will consider such issues as what constitutes historical evidence (What is Cleopatra’s story?), how historians interpret historical evidence in light of its known context (Who were Cleopatra’s enemies?), and how the biases and contexts of modern historians impact historical knowledge (Was Cleopatra Black?). Along the way, we will also consider the difficulties inherent to premodern historical reconstruction caused by the relative paucity of evidence and accidents of survival, as well as the difficulties historians face in reaching the public because of Hollywood-imposed preconceptions about antiquity.

Instructed by

Teets

Sarah

I was drawn to Classics—the study of the ancient Greeks and Romans—as an undergraduate in Long Beach, California because I found it profoundly meaningful to read a text that was written by someone who died thousands of years ago, and feel like I could relate to their experience. And yet, the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans and the peoples they conquered and colonized was unlike ours in ways as dramatic as the technological differences and subtle as the nuances of gender ideologies. In my research, I explore how ancient Greeks and Romans constructed and performed identities. I am especially interested in people who lived at the intersection of multiple identities, those on the fringes of mainstream Greek and Roman culture, and those who were subject to Roman imperial domination. We Classicists study and teach Greek and Roman antiquity not because we want to emulate it. Believe me, we don’t: this world was grounded in slavery, misogyny, and other forms of extreme violence. Nor do we study the past because history is some sort of impartial judge that can teach us the correct course of action in the present. Instead, we study ancient peoples and their literature both for the intrinsic good of knowledge, and because engaging closely with the questions they asked themselves can help us ask and answer our own questions more thoughtfully, with greater nuance, and with fuller perspective.

I am drawn to the Engagements curriculum because of its focus on the habits of mind that we use in the liberal arts. I ground my teaching practice in my belief that students aren’t here to learn content, but to learn how to think broadly and critically across the fulness of their lives. If we ask how ancient Greeks and Romans understood themselves, we must reflect on how we understand ourselves. Who are we, actually, and what does this mean? What responsibilities come with having access to a college education? With being humans on the edge of climate disaster?

As a native of California’s Central Valley, I have made my way east studying Classics. I live in rural Louisa County with my husband, daughter, and chickens on what is either a very small farm or a very large garden.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1540: The Examined Life

TBD

Instructed by

Teets

Sarah

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1540: The Examined Life

TBD

Why do we hold hands? If you think about it, it's a peculiar behavior. What is its function? What does it accomplish? Why do so many people all around the world do it? I hadn’t given it much thought until I embarked on the scientific study of how—at the level of brain function—people soothe each other’s fears and anxieties. In my early work, hand holding was little more to me than a convenient way to study social support in the restrictive environment of the brain scanner. But as the years, and studies, have gone by, a deeper understanding of simple hand holding has unlocked for me many of the secrets of our shared humanity—and helped me explain why, for humans, social isolation is the quickest route to misery, poor health, and even early death. We’ll use the mystery of hand holding as our point of departure on a scientific journey toward understanding the way social relationships affect our earliest sensory experiences, the length of our lives, and everything in between. We’ll also explore the likeliest theories about the evolution of Homo sapiens, and how that evolution is reflected in the structure and function of the human brain.

Instructed by

Coan

Jim

http://jamescoan.com

For years I've been interested in pushing the boundaries of my teaching, in structure, content and engagement with students. When I learned of the New Curriculum, my first thought was "this is exactly what I've been hoping for." This is because I feel passionate about my work, my field, and the transformative power of scientific knowledge, and I want to explore new ways to share that passion with young people. Every day, by virtue of the work that I do at UVA, I get to experience real awe and wonder--the beauty of learning about how our social relationships shape and support our brains and bodies, and what that knowledge suggests about our origin and future as a species. The knowledge created in my lab and in labs throughout the world has also instilled in me a desire to engage with my broader community--which is part of why I've been involved in things like television programs, podcasting, and UVA's Center for Media and Citizenship. It is a privilege to add teaching for the New Curriculum to that list.

I am Professor of Psychology and Director of the Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory at the University of Virginia. I consult for clinicians, businesses and researchers, working with groups as diverse as the Oregon Social Learning Center, the Anna Freud Center, the Kurt Lewin Institute, and the Community of Democracies. I am the co-editor of the Handbook of Emotion Elicitation and Assessment and have authored more than eighty peer-reviewed articles. My work has been covered in Science, Nature, and the New York Times, among other media outlets. I've also appeared as an expert for the National Geographic show Brain Games. In addition to being a professor at UVA, I'm a fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, produce the podcast Circle of Willis, and serve as Chief Scientific Advisor at Movius Consulting.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1520: Monsters, Mutants, and Master Genes - What Can Frogs Teach Us About Humans?

TBD

Spring Session Two: March 4 - April 23

Instructed by

Date

Priya

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1520: Monsters, Mutants, and Master Genes - What Can Frogs Teach Us About Humans?

TBD

EGMT 1520: Monsters, Mutants, and Master Genes - What Can Frogs Teach Us About Humans?

Instructed by

Date

Priya

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1520: Monsters, Mutants, and Master Genes - What Can Frogs Teach Us About Humans?

TBD

EGMT 1520: The Big Bang - The Creation of Our Universe

For many people “The Big Bang Theory” is a CBS sitcom following the tangled lives of four geeky Caltech students. But what is the real Big Bang Theory? Most people know it concerns the beginning of the Universe, but exactly what does the theory say and how firm is the evidence for it? In this class, we’ll journey out into the galaxies and back to the primordial fireball, always paying attention to how we know what we claim to know. Ultimately, we’re pursuing an idea that has been present in all cultures at all times: what is the origin of our world, with its land and sky, sun and stars, and even ourselves?

During this class, we’ll be exploring some wonderful themes. We’ll see how cosmic expansion helps us understand the unusual nature of the universe’s explosive origin about 14 billion years ago. We’ll use high-caliber data from large telescopes to unpack the evidence for two major, but invisible, components of today’s universe: dark matter and dark energy. Astronomers are extremely lucky because they can actually see the past simply by looking far away. Our largest telescopes reveal a billion year old universe filled with chaotic “infant” galaxies quite unlike today’s majestic “adult” spirals and ellipticals. We can even see the primordial fireball using microwave telescopes that reveal in exquisite detail the incandescent glow from hot gas, laced with deep harmonic tones of primordial sound. Pushing even earlier we arrive at the first hour and even the first minute, where we find conditions similar to the sun’s center or the inside a hydrogen bomb. Remarkably, the “heavy” hydrogen in the water you drink every day was made in that first minute! Finally, stepping back to frame everything, we’ll calculate the total energy of the Universe and find that it is zero – it sums to nothing! This in turn suggests a truly remarkable creation mechanism, called inflation, that creates everything from nothing and launches the expansion. While the evidence for inflation is not yet robust, there are important observations in the next decade or two that may help confirm its reality.

Throughout, we will honor the overall intent of the “empirical engagement” by using the Big Bang Theory as a test case to explore how science works – how observations are used to test and refine a theory that is built using the known laws of physics. After a century of effort, this theory – with the exception of the creation mechanism itself – is about as detailed and robust as the theories of evolution and atomic structure. While these theories reached maturity some time ago, modern cosmology has only recently gelled and is therefore, arguably, the greatest scientific narrative of our current time.

Instructed by

Whittle

Mark

My subject is astronomy – a subject I’ve loved since I was ten years old, when my father would tell me of strange new discoveries: powerful quasars, spinning pulsars, the faint glow from the big bang. Decades later, and a career that has allowed me to learn about all these things, my sense of wonder is no less intense. What has changed for me, and perhaps for the entire field of astronomy, is the recognition of a single, integrated, and fabulously rich story that links all these realms into an overarching history of our universe, from the big bang to the formation of planets, including ones suitable for life.

Perhaps a fundamental goal of the University is to help students explore their place within ever larger and interconnected contexts – cultural, historical, environmental, religious, to name a few. My own goal, especially in entry-level classes, is for students to leave my class with a sense of their cosmic context. Of course, I want them to gain an intellectual understanding. But what I’m really aiming for is an emotional awakening – a feeling of awe at nature and a deep sense of their own cosmic ancestry and citizenship. My allies in this are simple: metaphors that turn the alien into the familiar; frequent links that build the bigger picture; an honest reflection of my own emotional reactions; and an opportunity for students to articulate their own sense of place.

The engagement courses, with their more open format, have challenged me to find a fresh path into the subject that provides two rather distinct experiences for students – one is an intuitive understanding of the richness of the cosmic narrative itself, and the other is an appreciation of how science actually constructs that narrative.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1520: The Big Bang - The Creation of Our Universe

TBD

Scientists are wrong all the time, sometimes for many decades. This is not surprising, as discovery in science is a process of change. Do scientists change their minds when they get new data, or does the data need to be "special"? In this course, we will trace the processes that caused scientists to change their minds about biological discoveries, beginning with the demonstration that genes are made of DNA, and ending with the controversial role of "junk" DNA in the human genome. By investigating what scientists believed when they were wrong, and then following their arguments for and against the incorrect, and correct explanations, we will both understand better the roles of theory and evidence in scientific discovery, and also develop a process for making sense out of abstract models. In addition to following the process of transition from "wrong" to "right" for settled biological science, we will also examine an unsettled question: "Is 90% of the human genome 'junk'?".

Instructed by

Pearson

William

Some of my most interesting scientific projects began when I realized that something that most scientists in my field took for granted "didn't make sense". Often, what didn't make sense seemed sensible on the surface, but below the surface there were contradictions. When my students and I explored those contradictions in more detail, we made discoveries. Science is often presented as a series of logical steps, one discovery leading to the next. But the logic of the presentation obscures the scientific intuition that is required to pick the direction for the next hypothesis or experiment. For me, the engagements offer a chance to explore the "does it make sense" nature of the scientific process. How can we understand what scientists were thinking when they were wrong, and their "Aha!" moment when they realized that what seemed to make sense didn't, which prompted them to search for better explanations. For example, it makes complete sense that heavy objects fall faster than light objects, because, after all, they are heavier. But the obvious observation that heavier objects weigh more than light objects, and thus should fall faster, had some implications that did not make sense, which lead Galileo and Newton to a simpler, but more powerful, perspective. My engagements course will explore scientific befores and afters with a focus on why the wrong explanation made sense (or didn't), and why the current explanation prevailed.

I was trained as a "wet-lab" molecular biologist, purifying molecules from tissues to learn why different cells in the body, all with essentially the same set of genes, behave differently. But at the same time, I was writing computer programs to collect and analyze data. I continued to write computer programs to analyze DNA and protein sequences, which lead to the development of the FASTP and FASTA programs for rapid sequence similarity searching. While FASTA is no longer widely used for similarity searches, the FASTA format is ubiquitous in genome biology and bioinformatics. I have taught Computational Biology and Bioinformatics to undergraduates, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and professors for more than 30 years. I continue to explore aspects of protein sequences, and protein evolution, that seem to "not make sense".

Course Name: Title:

TBD

Instructed by

Pearson

William

Course Name: Title:

TBD

Instructed by

Coan

Jim

http://jamescoan.com

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

TBD

EGMT 1530: Engaging Differences

Fall 2020

Spring 2021

Spring Session One: January 13 - March 2

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

*Note: Since this class satifies both EGMT 1530 (Differences) and EGMT 1540 (Ethics), students must enroll in both Fall Session 1 and Fall Session 2 quarters.

Democracy is currently face daunting challenges in the U.S. and around the world. Authoritarian leaders and populist parties have undermined democratic values across the globe, including Brazil, Hungary, Algeria, Poland, and the United States. In the U.S., there are attempts to make it more difficult for citizens to vote. Practices of gerrymandering and unethical campaign finance undermine citizen’s interests in representative government. In Charlottesville, especially in the wake of events of August 2017, questions have been raised about the responsiveness of local government to the needs of its citizens and the city’s failure to protect the safety of those who protested against the actions of self-admitted racist and fascist groups.

In the midst of these challenges, do we still have faith in democracy and, if so, why? Must we have faith in democracy in order for it to succeed? What do we mean by faith? How might the resources of democracy itself (its ideas and its practices) help societies respond to these crises?

This course examines the character of democracy:

What is a democracy and what distinguishes it from other forms of governments?
What are the practices of democracy and the role of education in preparation for democratic participation?
What does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy and who counts as a citizen?
What are the challenges and opportunities of pluralism (religious, cultural, racial, political) to the life of democracy?

A major goal of the class is to prepare students to connect questions about democracy to the different settings they will encounter in their years at UVA, from the classroom to the many social and political situations they negotiate.

In addition to reading assignments and short papers, students will be required to move out of the classroom and select, observe and reflect upon a real-life instance of democratic politics in action (e.g., city council meetings, school board meetings, and so forth).

Instructed by

Flores

Nichole

I am excited to serve as a College Fellow co-teaching a course (along with Bruce Williams), “Do we still have faith in democracy?" Teaching in the engagements presents a unique opportunity to explore the ideas and practices of democracy with a diverse group of students eager to tackle one of the most challenging topics of our time during their first year in the college!

My teaching and research in religious ethics and democracy is animated by two life experiences. The first experience is attending public middle school on the west side of Denver, Colorado where the majority of my classmates were either Mexican or Vietnamese Catholics. Our teachers often asked us to explore questions about our deepest passions, values, and commitments, but we were tacitly asked to do so without breaching the "wall of separation between Church and State" famously articulated by Thomas Jefferson in his “Letter to the Danbury Baptists." Limiting religious engagement in the public educational setting curtailed our ability to constructively and critically evaluate the way our religious upbringings influenced our lives. The second experience is participating in community organizing alongside farmworkers from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers when I was in my mid-20s. As I marched alongside workers whom had experienced economic exploitation and human rights abuses in U.S. agricultural fields, I witnessed the power of religious people, communities, ideas, practices, and commitments (Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, Protestant, and Buddhist, among others) to help pursue justice for those on the bottom rungs of the global economy. While I think maintaining the separation between church and state is vital to maintaining a society committed to justice and equality, these experiences of religion in public life ignited my passion for exploring the ways that religion can enliven and/or hinder democracies at the local, national, and global levels.

My academic research emphasizes the relationship between religious ethics and aesthetics in cultivating solidarity in the context of religiously diverse and politically democratic societies. I also have a “side hustle" as a contributing author on the masthead at America: The Jesuit Review of Faith and Culture, where I write feature essays that interlace Catholic theology and ethics with politics and culture. This past winter, I fulfilled a lifelong dream of interviewing Federico Peña, the first Latinx mayor of Denver and a member of Bill Clinton’s cabinet, about the role his Catholic faith played in his public life.

Course Name: Title:

Williams

Bruce

Bruce Williams is the Ambassador Henry J. Taylor and Mrs. Marion R. Taylor Professor of Media Studies. He received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Minnesota and, before coming to UVA, taught at the Pennsylvania State University, the University of Michigan, the University of Illinois, and the London School of Economics. His research and teaching interests focus on the impact of a changing media environment on democratic politics. He has published five books and more than forty scholarly journal articles and book chapters. His two most recent books are The New Media Environment: An Introduction (with Andrea Press) and After Broadcast News: Media Regimes, Democracy, and the New Information Environment (with Michael Delli Carpini), both published in 2012. In 2012 he received an All-University Teaching Award. For six years, Bruce served on the committees that designed both the College Forums and New College Curriculum.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

TBD

EGMT 1530: Encountering the World Through Collected Objects

This course will examine how objects can be used to shape (or distort) our understanding of other cultures, and how stories about societies, nations, and ethnic groups are formed around collections of objects and artworks. This way of encountering others can illuminate the differences and similarities between cultures and result in a deeper, more tangible connection across humanity that yields greater appreciation and understanding.

However, there are also several challenges in this process. Museums are generally how we access objects from cultures and civilizations from around the world. How do museums handle objects that were stolen or looted? How do displays confront or enforce racial stereotypes? What aspects of a society are being highlighted or hidden and how does this change the story being told about them and our engagement with them? How do those in power represent those without power? How do those without power represent themselves?

In this course we will learn to distinguish how objects have been used in museum collections, exhibitions, and displays to tell stories about various groups of people. We will learn to detect gaps in what is presented. We will recognize bias in the presentation of objects from other cultures. We will engage with the questions museums are struggling with today: Can we display objects from other cultures without our own cultural bias? How can voices from other cultures be represented in the display of their art/artifacts? What does it mean for these objects to speak for themselves? From paintings, textiles, tribal masks, Chinese vases, and ancient sculptures and sarcophagi to looted menorahs and slave shackles, we will see how objects can tell us about their creators, users, and collectors. We will reflect on how some of our own possessions can reveal aspects of our identity, as well as doing hands-on work to examine how historical objects have been used to tell the story of UVA.

Instructed by

Smith

Wendy

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530: Encountering the World Through Collected Objects

TBD

EGMT 1530: Encountering the World Through Collected Objects

Instructed by

Smith

Wendy

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530: Encountering the World Through Collected Objects

TBD

EGMT 1530: Origin Stories: Identity, Migration, and Homelands

Why do we attach importance to origin stories? How does knowing our heritage (family history or national history) influence the way we imagine the past, the present, and the future? In this course we will examine tales of creation myths in the superhero genre, stories of world building from immigration and science fiction narratives, and chronicles of the American Dream. We will ask why are different perspectives integral and valuable to the way we engage with others. Class discussion and assignments will be framed around questions of how origin stories frame and influence discussions about power, privilege, and difference. How does our sense of self and our cultural values relate to constructions and portrayals of American national narratives such as the settlement of the New World or icons such as the Statue of Liberty? We’ll examine how creation myths and origins appear in superhero films such as Black Panther and Wonder Woman, delve into companies that focus on ancestry and heritage tours, and document how origin stories are a part of our own family histories and where/what we call home.

Instructed by

Davé

Shilpa

I’ve always seen popular culture as a site where heroes, aliens, sexualities, nationalities and citizenship, and history are negotiated on a daily basis. As an avid consumer and fan of visual culture such as comics, television, and film, and literature and as a teacher, I believe media culture offers an accessible entry to explore issues and ideas that engage all of us on both a personal and professional level to live in a culturally diverse world.

Outside of teaching, I am also an academic advising dean in the College of Arts and Sciences and I talk with students about their course and major selection, resources at the university, and plans towards graduation. I teach classes on comparative race and media studies such as Racial Borders and American Film, and Asian American Media Cultures as well as classes on gender and sexuality and the graphic novel. In my research, I write about and am interested in how Asian Americans and South Asian Americans are represented in the media such as through racial performance such as an accent and also produce cultural productions (literature, theater, visual culture, and digital media) that have shaped and developed American culture.

I wanted to be a College Fellow because I like working first years at UVA and enjoy talking with my colleagues about ideas about teaching and learning. I am excited to be part of creating an interactive first year experience that includes activities across the disciplines sets the stage for how learning and participating in a liberal arts curriculum crosses multiple boundaries and fosters interactive thinking and cooperative culture that is vital to undergraduate success in college and beyond.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530: Origin Stories: Identity, Migration, and Homelands

TBD

http://history.as.virginia.edu/people/hb3r

In this course we ask big questions, perhaps among the biggest. Who am I? How do I come to be who I am? How do I know myself? Can I know myself? What makes me who I am? Am I responsible for my own life? What are my relationships to others? What are my relationships to my society (societies)? What are my rights? What are my obligations? Does who I am in private say more about me than what I do in public? Can I live a moral life surrounded by immorality? Should there be a safety net in a society of individuals? If we are indeed individuals, or can be, how do we forge our lives, in our interests and in those of others, toward the public good?

This course considers these big questions in order to help us better understand the richness and complexity of individuals and communities. We will reflect on the historical impacts of society on individuals and consider how individuals begin to form societies – or even more important, communities. In particular, we will consider how we as individuals encounter one another in our differences and what it might mean to pursue a common good.

Instructed by

Braun

Tico

Associate Professor of History

I came from Colombia and Mexico to teach the liberal arts in the United States, the nation that knows them best. I have been involved with the liberal arts in my specialized undergraduate courses on Latin American history for more three decades at the University of Virginia. How do hierarchical and deeply conservative societies, we ask, seek to build enduring order?

The Engagements offer me the opportunity to teach the liberal arts more broadly as ways in which our American and international students can think about themselves and their places in this nation’s democracy and in their expanding globalized world. I view the Engagements as a once-in-a-lifetime classroom opportunity to bring together the often-conflicting views of liberals and conservatives about the central issues of our past, present and future. A liberal arts education seeks discourse and debate across different ideologies, and it aims to help us understand better those who seem to have ideas that may be different from our own, and thereby to also know ourselves more deeply.

To make this experience come alive in my first course on Engaging Difference, we will ask about the places of the individual in various societies, in the past and in our contemporary world. This is perhaps one of our richest and deepest concerns, as we create different and overlapping ideas about our individual obligations to others and to the making of a good society.

Course Name: Title:

TBD

“That’s unnatural.” These words convey a judgment of a practice, a state of being, or a social arrangement; we hear them often, and likely even use them ourselves. To call something unnatural is to suggest that it is out of keeping with the natural of order of things and the way they ought to be. To render this judgment is to imply that no further debate, discussion, or argument is needed, because we take for granted that what is unnatural is to be avoided and rejected. Who can argue with biology or nature?

But what, exactly, is nature? On what basis do we evaluate whether something is natural or unnatural? Who gets to decide? And why do we consider this an important distinction to make? In this seminar, we will examine these questions as we work towards untangling how the concepts of “natural” and “unnatural” function in our society—and how they might function differently in other times and places. Our goal will be to denaturalize our understanding of nature. We will analyze how the naming of people, practices, and institutions as “unnatural” works to create and perpetuate various forms of difference and inequality in society, along the lines of gender, sexuality, race, class, the environment, and other categories. We will also examine how the concept of nature has been used in attempts to overcome inequality, specifically through the discourse of natural rights, and what are the possibilities and pitfalls of such approaches. This course encourages students to observe the world around them carefully and critically, so that they can be aware of and capable of responding to the ideologies that underlie their everyday experiences.

Instructed by

Shuve

Karl

Associate Professor of Religious Studies

I am thrilled to have the opportunity to join the College Fellows and to be teaching one of the Engaging Differences courses. As a historian of Christianity in the ancient and medieval worlds, I am profoundly interested in difference. My research and teaching explores the ways in which concepts and institutions that we often assume to be static and unchanging do, in fact, have their own histories and how understandings of them have changed, sometimes dramatically, over time. I am particularly interested in ideas about gender, sexuality, and marriage. What did early and medieval Christians think about these topics? What do we learn when we set aside our modern preconceptions about gender differences and marriage practices? What differences emerge, and what can these differences tell us about the world that we live in, today, in the present?

I will be teaching a course called “Unnatural.” Nature is one of the most fundamental concepts that we use to organize our world. We tend to value and to seek out things that are “natural,” and to disparage and avoid things that are “unnatural.” We can find this reasoning used in areas as varied as food consumption (“this product contains only natural ingredients”) and marriage practices (“monogamy is unnatural for humans”). Once we start looking for it, we can find it nearly everywhere. But what, exactly, is nature? On what basis do we evaluate whether something is natural or unnatural? Who gets to decide? And why do we consider this an important distinction to make? Together we will examine these questions as we work towards untangling how the concepts of “natural” and “unnatural” function in our society—and how they might function differently in other times and places.

Course Name: Title:

TBD

Where am I? This is a question we often pose only when we’re lost, or need directions. The answer we are looking for is usually quite straightforward, and thanks to our smartphones, easy to come by. Yet there are other ways to pose this question that lead to more complex answers, ones that hit much closer to home. How has this place – my home, my city, my country – shaped the person I have become, and how does it continue to define my possibilities? Where do the lives of others play out, and what does that mean for the way we treat each other? It turns out that life has an irreducibly spatial dimension and that dimension has profound ethical dimensions. We learn who we are and who we can be from spaces that are gendered, racialized, and nationalized in a variety of ways, not only when we are young, but an on ongoing basis, yet we do not often think about this aspect of life. In this class, we will learn to think about this“hidden dimension” of life, its spatial dimension, and how it shapes, or tries to shape, who we are, who we can be, and how we relate to our fellow human beings.

Instructed by

Padron

Ricardo

Some of my fondest memories from my time as an undergraduate at U.Va. involve conversations about big ideas, either in class or outside it, that forced me to really think about who I was, what I believed, and how I should live my life. When I decided to become a college professor, I knew I wanted to help students have similar experiences. For me, it was never about preparing students for post-graduate careers, but about helping them prepare for life as reflective and ethical human beings. This is why so much of my research has involved the Spanish encounter with the New World and Asia in during the century after Columbus’s voyages, when Spain was first building its empire. The topic inevitably brings up questions about the nature of historical truth and of cross-cultural encounter, not to mention the ethics and politics of colonialism. I became interested in how these issues played out in what might seem like an esoteric context, the drawing of maps and the description of spaces in literature. This has introduced me to broader questions about how we build the spaces (domestic, civic, national, global) we inhabit, and how those spaces in turn shape who we are and how we interact. I am looking forward to sharing these interests with first-year students in my Engagements course, and hopefully guiding them toward the sort of college experience that I am so grateful to have had.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

TBD

Spring Session Two: March 4 - April 23

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

*Note: Since this class satifies both EGMT 1530 (Differences) and EGMT 1540 (Ethics), students must enroll in both Fall Session 1 and Fall Session 2 quarters.

This course examines the character of democracy:

What is a democracy and what distinguishes it from other forms of governments?
What are the practices of democracy and the role of education in preparation for democratic participation?
What does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy and who counts as a citizen?
What are the challenges and opportunities of pluralism (religious, cultural, racial, political) to the life of democracy?

Instructed by

Flores

Nichole

Course Name: Title:

Williams

Bruce

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

TBD

Musical sound is a way that people the world over imagine, imitate, and engage with people different from themselves. In the US, genres like hip-hop and country are ways we deal with and imagine the lived experience of race and class. ‘World Music’ and associated sounds—like Peruvian panpipes, Afro-Cuban rhythmic components, and Celtic melodies—tell us musical stories about people beyond our borders. But what do we really know about others when we listen to “their” music? And how do musical sounds come to represent certain bodies and identities in the first place, or even to “belong to” certain groups? What is the difference between cultural appropriation and creating or consuming music as a means of identifying with or advocating for others? How do technology and capitalism play a part in the power of music to cause both good and harm?

This course explores the processes through which sounds come to index certain cultural categories (race, gender, class, nationality, age, religion, sexuality) or global locations, and how musical material can be repurposed for political means. Students will investigate terms such as hybridity, exoticization, cultural appropriation, revivalism, and embodiment. We will look at case studies including minstrelsy in the US, “non-Western” college music ensembles, racial identity among Asian-American jazz musicians, bluegrass in post-Communist Czech Republic, white rappers, the international hip hop scene, and corrido listenership in the transnational Mexican community. Students will also have the opportunity to examine their own listening practices and to create and share playlists with peers.

Instructed by

Flood

Liza

Postdoctoral Fellow

Course Name: Title:

TBD

http://history.as.virginia.edu/people/hb3r

Instructed by

Braun

Tico

Associate Professor of History

Course Name: Title:

TBD

Instructed by

Shuve

Karl

Associate Professor of Religious Studies

Course Name: Title:

TBD

Instructed by

Padron

Ricardo

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1520/1540: Engineering Humanity

TBD

EGMT 1540: Ethical Engagement

Spring 2021

Fall 2020

Fall Session One: August 27 - October 16

EGMT 1520/1540: On The Goods and Uses of the University

*Note: Since this class satifies both EGMT 1520 (Differences) and EGMT 1540 (Ethics), students must enroll in both Fall Session 1 and Fall Session 2 quarters.

In 2017, the University of Virginia reported an operating budget of almost $3.2 billion, assets of $11.2 billion, and liabilities of more than $7.8 billion. The university includes an athletics enterprise with 25 programs and $24 million in revenues and expenses; a police force with 67 officers; an investment company that manages resources from 25 tax-exempt foundations, each with its own board; ownership of numerous art, historical, and scholarly collections, including more than five million printed volumes; capital assets in the form of academic buildings, dorms, and a Unesco-recognized World Heritage Site; a top-ranked medical center with several affiliated health companies, more than 12,000 employees, and its own budget of almost $1.5 billion; a concert-and-events venue for everything from monster-truck rallies to the Rolling Stones; a recycling business; a mental-healthcare provider; and a transportation system with a fleet of buses and cars. UVa also educates around 16,000 undergraduates and 6,500 graduate and professional students each year. With so many different functions and purposes, what makes UVA a university? And how do all of these different activities relate to one another?

Using UVA as our primary example, this combined, 14-week Empirical and Ethical Engagement course considers how and why universities work. We will create, analyze, and interpret our own data sets, work in the University’s archives, and debate the goods and uses of the contemporary university.

Instructed by

Wellmon

Chad

Co-Director of the College Fellows & Associate Professor of German Studies

http://chadwellmon.com

I teach and write on European intellectual history, media theory, and the history of education and technology. My work ranges across centuries and ideas. In part, that’s because I get easily distracted by new books and new ideas, but it’s also because I simply love to learn from my students, my colleagues, and my books.

As co-director of the College Fellows Program, I consider the Engagements a dream come true. My work as chair of the General Education Reform Committee, which designed the new curriculum, inspired me to teach in the College Fellows Program. As a Fellow, I get to teach with and learn from some of UVA’s smartest and most talented faculty members, and I leave every Fellows meeting with a new book or a new thought. I get to share all those with students in their very first college class and show them that learning never ends and, regardless of your career, that you can devote your life to it.

My teaching has been recognized with an All University Teaching Award, and my scholarship has been supported by awards and fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies. I’ve written essays on everything from Google’s search engines and Facebook’s algorithms to virtue in the modern university and the history of reading. My five published books include Interacting with Print: Elements of Reading in an Era of Print Saturation (forthcoming, 2017), and Organizing Enlightenment: Information Overload and the Invention of the Modern Research University (2015).

Course Name: Title:

MW 3:30pm-4:45pm

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

*Note: Since this class satifies both EGMT 1530 (Differences) and EGMT 1540 (Ethics), students must enroll in both Fall Session 1 and Fall Session 2 quarters.

This course examines the character of democracy:

What is a democracy and what distinguishes it from other forms of governments?
What are the practices of democracy and the role of education in preparation for democratic participation?
What does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy and who counts as a citizen?
What are the challenges and opportunities of pluralism (religious, cultural, racial, political) to the life of democracy?

Instructed by

Flores

Nichole

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

Williams

Bruce

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

MW 12:30pm-1:45pm

EGMT 1540: Cats - Why We Love Them

Why do we love cats? Compared to dogs who live to serve us, cats are strange animals that have found a place in our homes. Cats are contradictory creatures: seemingly independent yet needy, quick to temper yet affectionate, inexpressive yet adorable. It is not coincidence that many of us who live with cats are uncertain as to who is the master and who is the pet. The complex relationship between human beings and cats poses a number of ethical questions that ask us to reconsider who is it that we are that we might love a creature of another species like a cat, what love means in this relationship, what our responsibilities are to the cat and the world in which the cat lives, and why we privilege certain animals (like cats) above others, creating bonds of kinship that we might not extend to fellow human beings.

This course will take up ethical topics relating to personhood, the human/animal relationship, posthuman morality, ecological and environmental concerns, and above all, the concepts of love, care, and friendship. While the focus of the class is on what might be considered philosophical issues of ethics and morality, we will approach these issues through a variety of media and forms, from philosophical essays to cat videos, from works of fiction to works of zooanthropology, from films that feature cats to comic books. Much of our work will begin with the question of how to think about the cat and what we owe to the cat (and to ourselves), and we will use these various media representations as springboards for our discussion.

Instructed by

Chen

Jack

I knew that I loved literature from a young age, reading everything from Marvel comic books to Jane Austen. As a college student, I somehow managed to read James Joyce’s Ulysses twice, along with most of T.S. Eliot’s poetry and plays, and a fair chunk of Wallace Stevens, before taking a (now) more than twenty-year detour into the thickets of classical Chinese literature, particularly the poetry of the Han through Tang dynasties. For the last couple of years, I’ve co-directed the Humanities Informatics Lab at UVA and have been thinking about how information technologies shape our cultures, both past and present.

I wanted to join the College Fellows to be able to teach and think about subjects that are outside of the East Asian cultural sphere and yet may also be illuminated by a knowledge of non-Western traditions. I’m interested in topics that allow us to consider larger questions of how we understand our world, what the limits of our knowledge might be, and how we relate to one another as human beings. I believe that serious, sustained, and thoughtful conversation is what underlies a humanistic education and that learning how to read and think is a lifelong endeavor. I am looking forward to meeting you over the course of the next two years.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1510: On Ghosts

TR 9:30am-10:45am

EGMT 1540: Does Reading Literature Make Us More Ethical? Really?

Does reading literature increase empathy for others, and, if so, are there limits to empathy? Does it provide models for human flourishing? Make us inhabit modes of life different from our own? If so, does that lead to different action in the world? And how durable are its effects? From antiquity onwards it has often been claimed that literature can have an ethical effect upon the reader; in short, that literary works can change us for the better, influence our sense of our obligations to others, even alter our behaviors and be a powerful driver of social change. We’ll explore the historical and cultural conditions that comprise our individual moral particularity and ask to what extent that particularity is malleable. And we’ll consider arguments about how literary works afford explorations of our obligations to others in ways that non-literary modes cannot, looking at how diverse thinkers have argued for – and against – links between ethics and literature and reading literature as a public good.

In this class we’ll be exploring these questions in depth in the context of the current global refugee crisis, examining a diverse set of ethical commitments both within literary works and in arguments about them, and considering these arguments in their potential application to an urgent contemporary issue. We will ask what kinds of ethical commitments those might be, and whether and how they may transfer from the page to the life beyond it. To do so, we will be running the class as a lab space for a collaborative investigation into the possible uses – and, perhaps, limits – of literature for humanitarian advocacy. The culmination of the course will be the collaborative creation of materials for the United Nations with recommendations for the incorporation of literature into UNOCHA’s refugee advocacy campaign and a student-created portfolio of suggested reading materials with accompanying critical tools and apparatus.

Instructed by

Ghaly

Adrienne

Postdoctoral Fellow

I work on the modern novel in British, Anglophone and European contexts, and its philosophical and cultural tasks in twentieth-century thought; the interplay of ethics and literature; and cultural responses to global manmade species extinction. My research spans the period from the later nineteenth century to the contemporary. I work both within the field of literature and beyond it, for my scholarship addresses what ‘the novel’ is and the migration of novelistic modes into other media, particularly contemporary art, and asks how literature and visual art respond to and think about the age of extinction as a modern phenomenon. My interests are a reflection of my interdisciplinary training at New York University and the University of Chicago and exist at the intersection of literature, philosophy, critical theory, history and the environment.

I came to the College Fellows program and the engagements courses for three key reasons. First, aesthetic and ethical problems are intertwined in my work and I wanted to teach courses that encourage creative connections across disciplines and media. Second, the engagements lay the foundation for university-level thinking: to question the concepts we use to approach, categorize and reflect on ways of looking at the world, and to invite us to consider new and radical perspectives. Third, the role of the humanities in public life is crucial to the questions I ask in my teaching and research, and to the urgent challenges - such as manmade extinction - facing us now.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1510: Extinction in Art and Literature

EGMT 1540: Does Reading Literature Make Us More Ethical? Really?

TR 6:30pm-7:45pm

EGMT 1540: Does Reading Literature Make Us More Ethical? Really?

Instructed by

Ghaly

Adrienne

Postdoctoral Fellow

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1510: Extinction in Art and Literature

EGMT 1540: Does Reading Literature Make Us More Ethical? Really?

TR 11:00am-12:15pm

EGMT 1540: Revolution - Theory & Practice

TR 11:00am-12:15pm

EGMT 1540: The Ethics of Piracy, from the High Seas to Torrents

“…an apt and true reply which was given to Alexander the Great by a pirate who had been seized…when that king had asked the man what he meant by keeping hostile possession of the sea, he answered with bold pride, ‘What thou meanest by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, whilst thou who dost it with a great fleet art styled emperor.’”

—Augustine, City of God

What is piracy? Can piracy, or theft, ever be ethical? What connects torrent sites like “The Pirate Bay” to the eighteenth-century pirates of the Caribbean or the present-day pirates active off the Horn of Africa and in the Malacca Straits? This course explores the full range of activities that have been described, or denounced, as piracy, from maritime seizures to copyright violations and intellectual property theft, from antiquity to the present day. Whereas some would have (or did) reject the label of pirate, situating their activities within the legal context of warfare and service to faith or state, others have embraced the term—and are celebrated for it in popular culture. Regardless of whether its practitioners have been publicly lauded or criticized, piracy has frequently been deployed in service of empire, whether by England in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Caribbean or by China in the intellectual property realm in more recent years. The phenomenon of piracy raises questions about who gets to decide what is legal or ethical and whether those are indeed the same thing: Do the ends always justify the means? Who has the jurisdiction to prosecute pirates, and who actually should? If we acquire stolen property, music or movies, are we pirates too?

Instructed by

White

Josh

Associate Professor of History

I’ve long been fascinated with borders and boundaries, with how they are constructed, crossed, and transgressed. As a historian of the Ottoman Empire, that interest in boundaries, both territorial and legal, was what first led me to the phenomenon of piracy, which was endemic in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mediterranean. I figured that focusing on piracy would provide an engaging way to explore the social, legal, and diplomatic history of the Ottoman Mediterranean world. But one of the things you quickly learn when you study piracy is that there’s a lot of ambiguity and rather less agreement over definitions. What is piracy, and perhaps more important, who gets to decide? Even tougher to answer: Who is a pirate? Historically speaking, few of those we might choose to call pirates would have embraced the title. Many received (or believed that they had) license from rulers or their faith to attack and plunder enemy shipping and were (and still are) celebrated for their actions in their home countries. Others only dabbled in piracy, well-armed merchants engaging in a little opportunistic free trade. Regardless, the majority of “pirates,” whether of ships or of intellectual property, whatever they have called themselves, have sought ways to justify their activities. But can piracy be ethical? When does taking something become piracy, and what does (or should) that mean for both pirates and buyers or receivers of pirated goods? The questions are as relevant today as ever, the ethical considerations no less pressing in the internet age as in the age of sail. That’s why I’m so excited to be navigating them together with students in the Engagements. After all, thanks to the internet, it’s never been easier to be a pirate. Now we must all contend with the implications.

Since joining the UVA faculty in 2012, I have taught courses at all levels on the history of the medieval and early modern Middle East and North Africa, the Ottoman Empire, and the Mediterranean. My first book, Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean, examines the impact of and Ottoman response to maritime violence in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I am currently working on a number of projects, including studies on illegal enslavement and freedom suits in the Ottoman Empire and the role of Islamic law and religious-legal authorities in Ottoman foreign relations.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1540: The Ethics of Piracy, from the High Seas to Torrents

TR 3:30pm-4:45pm

EGMT 1540: The Ethics of Piracy, from the High Seas to Torrents

—Augustine, City of God

Instructed by

White

Josh

Associate Professor of History

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1540: The Ethics of Piracy, from the High Seas to Torrents

TR 5:00pm-6:15pm

What is authority? Why do we follow the instructions of certain persons and sources (pilots, lifestyle bloggers, WebMD, religious texts)? Merely to question or merely to follow authority does not, on its own, make us good. Rather, to navigate a complex world ethically, we must be able to discern who should be trusted with authority and who should be ignored or resisted, judge which directives for action are good and which are bad, and debate why some statements should be accepted as authoritative and others rejected. Authority, whether respected or reviled, inflects and influences the behaviors, habits and dispositions that constitute a good or successful life.

In this class we will examine authority as a special kind of human relationship with deep implications for what it means to be a good person. We will read about a wide variety of types of authority—for example, professional, parental, religious, scientific, political—and ask how they interact with each other and change over time. We will study how authority is different from, but often becomes entwined with, power. Finally, we will build a better understanding of the conditions under which people are willing to accept, resist, and/or reformulate authority.

Instructed by

Reed

Isaac Ariail

Associate Professor of Sociology

https://isaacreed.net/

Since my own first year of college (a long time ago!), I have always been drawn to the life of the mind. The purpose of that life, in my view, is to create a learning environment where students can become clear and careful thinkers, active and engaged citizens, and responsible and caring people. In the engagements, we have the opportunity to reconsider and reconstruct how we educate young people and prepare them to navigate the world outside of Grounds. My own research in historical sociology considers how humans have, in different times and places, enhanced their capacity to flourish by constructing complex and interconnected forms of social, technical and economic organization, democratic republics, and ethical traditions; yet simultaneously we have reproduced, and even introduced new forms of, disempowerment, domination and moral destruction. In the engagements, I draw on my research experience to teach students to think comparatively about society and history, and to venture outside their own experience so as to better understand the world and how to act ethically within it. I ask students to learn about the tremendous variation in how the interconnected societies of the globe are organized, connect the long arc of human history to the concerns and struggles of their own generation, and write with rigor, clarity, and courage in the pursuit of truth.

The grandson of Jewish refugees, I was born and raised in Durham, North Carolina. I received my Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University in 2007, after which I taught for nine years at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In 2016 I moved to Charlottesville with my wife Jennifer and daughter Hannah. My first book, Interpretation and Social Knowledge: On the use of theory in the human sciences, proposed a framework for bringing the humanities and social sciences closer together. My current book project examines authority and power in the history of the American republic.

Course Name: Title:

MW 12:30pm-1:45pm

Instructed by

Reed

Isaac Ariail

Associate Professor of Sociology

https://isaacreed.net/

Course Name: Title:

MW 3:30pm-4:45pm

If citizenship gives us rights, can it also make demands of us? What would it mean to acquiesce to these demands, if so, and what to refuse them? Such questions about the ethics and requirements of engaged citizenship were central to the founding of the University of Virginia and increasingly serve as a rallying cry for the importance of the liberal arts tradition. But what is engaged citizenship and what does it require of us? In this class, we will consider varying frameworks for the ethics of engaged citizenship—education, self-reflection, presence (or showing up)—to struggle with the relationship of the self to society within the University community and beyond. Why do we increasingly know more about certain aspects of our food supply and so little about others? What are the implications of this visibility and invisibility for our behavior towards each other? Does citizenship require us to confront those who we perceive as challenging our values, and, if so, can that ever be anything other than a coercive and oppressive act? Is citizenship a communal agreement or an individual one? Does it bind us together or separate us? When is violence justified, if ever? Under what circumstances should we bend or discard our citizenly duty? Through class excursions, readings, journaling activities, viewings, and course presentations we will experiment with the ethical implications of the various positions we take—including inaction—when we respond to the world around and inside of us.

Instructed by

Goldblatt

Laura

Posdoctoral Fellow

I worked as an English teacher at a failing high school in the Mississippi Delta before arriving at the University of Virginia. Nearly all of my high-school students were of color and qualified for free or reduced price lunch: I can count the exceptions to this rule on a single hand. More than half of the female students in my classes graduated from or left high school with at least one child, and my daily headcount too often depended upon sentences in juvenile detention, or worse.

Suffice it to say that the student body at the University of Virginia, an elite public institution that largely educates the children of professionals, has little in common with those who helped me craft my earliest and most abiding pedagogical principles. Despite these differences, both experiences have shown me that good teaching does not depend upon academic level and that the classroom can serve as a powerful laboratory for participatory democracy.

Due to these experiences, the hands-on, collaborative, and wildly ambitious pedagogical imagination at the core of the Engagements proposal drew me to the program. Two main goals guide my teaching. On the pedagogical side, using the tenets of cultural and literary study, I urge my students to view aesthetic objects as entangled in a complex web of meanings, historical contexts, and relationships that require consideration from multiple perspectives and methodologies. But for me, teaching also has material consequences on my students’ lives and the lives of those with whom they interact.

Beyond the content I convey, I aim to teach my students to think critically and creatively about the local and global systems in which they are imbedded while also urging them to consider possibilities to be realized outside these systems. I consider my courses a success when my students acquire the ability to consider the different viewpoints that can be brought to bear on cultural artifacts and to resist the urge to overlook the way something is said—its packaging—when considering its message. Most of all, I hope my classes will give them the courage to speak.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1520/1540: Engineering Humanity

MW 2:00pm-3:15pm

Fall Session Two: October 17 - December 6

EGMT 1520/1540: On The Goods and Uses of the University

*Note: Since this class satifies both EGMT 1520 (Differences) and EGMT 1540 (Ethics), students must enroll in both Fall Session 1 and Fall Session 2 quarters.

Instructed by

Wellmon

Chad

Co-Director of the College Fellows & Associate Professor of German Studies

http://chadwellmon.com

Course Name: Title:

MW 3:30pm-4:45pm

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

*Note: Since this class satifies both EGMT 1530 (Differences) and EGMT 1540 (Ethics), students must enroll in both Fall Session 1 and Fall Session 2 quarters.

This course examines the character of democracy:

What is a democracy and what distinguishes it from other forms of governments?
What are the practices of democracy and the role of education in preparation for democratic participation?
What does it mean to be a citizen of a democracy and who counts as a citizen?
What are the challenges and opportunities of pluralism (religious, cultural, racial, political) to the life of democracy?

Instructed by

Flores

Nichole

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

Williams

Bruce

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1530/1540: Do We Still Have Faith In Democracy?

MW 12:30pm-1:45pm

EGMT 1540: Cats - Why We Love Them

Instructed by

Chen

Jack

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1510: On Ghosts

MW 11:00am-12:15pm

EGMT 1540: Ethical Dilemmas and Science

Science and the technology it has spawned has radically transformed societies throughout history, at ever increasing rates. The traditional caricature of the scientist is as a dispassionate searcher of “what is true,” who is not concerned with the ethical implications of his/her work. It is not possible to escape ethical considerations and decisions – to ignore ethics is a choice with ethical consequences. Many think of ethics as merely a prescription against certain actions but the most interesting and vexing ethical choices involve trade-offs between options that have both positive and negative consequences. One goal of this course is to introduce you to ethical questions that face scientists and the broader society that financially supports and regulates science. Another is to consider consequences of choices to individual scientists, to institutions, to professions, and to society at different levels of organization. The three specific areas to be examined: (1) The ethics of medical research, including questions of potential conflicts between the interests of subjects and the possible benefits to the larger society. (2) The ethics of practice of science, including the influence of incentives and conflicts of interest. (3) The responsibilities of scientists for the uses and other impacts of their research on society. Examples for discussion will be taken from well-studied examples from the past, present controversies, and the impact of emerging transformative technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 and Artificial Intelligence.

Instructed by

Lehmann

Kevin

I have long had an interest in the intersection of Science and Ethics, but that has been amplified by the teaching of scientific ethics as part of a graduate chemistry course. In that course, the focus was on the ethics and misconduct of how science is practiced. In the engagement course I will teach, I will strive to explore ethical issues and reasoning that arises from Science, and how responsibilities for the consequences of Scientific research should be apportioned between different levels of the hierarchy that goes from the individual scientist, through scientific institutions, and ultimately to society at large.

My research has been at the interface of Physics and Chemistry, a field known as Chemical Physics. In particular, I use spectroscopic and quantum mechanical theoretic methods to explore the properties of molecules, the strength of their interactions and how energy exchanges between forms, both in a single molecule and in collisions with other molecules. Lasers are my preferred tools of the trade. I am a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America.

Course Name: Title:

EGMT 1540: Ethical Dilemmas and Science

TR 12:30pm-1:45pm

Instructed by

Goldblatt

Laura

Posdoctoral Fellow

Course Name: Title: