Now that classes have officially started, the question arises-in the words of The Clash-“Should I stay or should I go?” Fear not, your indecision will serve you well, as ultimately you will choose the classes that will lead you onto your own personal path to enlightenment (and less final exams!) So, in the next couple of weeks before that dreaded deadline for adding, dropping, or changing classes, peruse the Course Listings at your own risk, and while you contemplate taking all your classes in just two days of the week, check out these nifty literary (or just plain nifty) course offerings.
Societies and Literature in Comparative Perspective
Anthropology (L48) 3031, W 3-5:30 p.m. Calvacanti.
Although the title of this course doesn’t exactly make one jump with excitement, this Anthro class has one of the coolest book lists around. Also, the course takes on the thought-provoking task of attempting to compare different books from different societies while taking into account all the cultural differences that shape literary works. The role of culture in the art of writing is a topic that has been pursued for many years, and with discussions about a variety of topics, this course is sure to answer questions while raising new ones. The books list includes the following: Book of Laughter and Forgetting/Kundera, Bread & Wine/Silone, Dry White Season/Brink, Emigrants/Moberg, If Not Now, When?/Levi, Name of the Rose/Eco, None to Accompany Me/Gordiver, Of Love and Shadows/Allende, President (El Senor Presidente)/Asturias, Real Life of Alejandro Mayia/Llosa, Stones From the River/Hegi, We/Zamyatin
Thursday Development Rave
Biology and Biomedical Sciences (L41) 5215, T 4-6 p.m. Cagan.
Although most of us won’t be lucky enough to ever take this course, it deserves an honorary mention for having the word “rave ” in the title, as well as declaring that “developmental biology can be fun!” They give you notes, food, and drink..does this sound like heaven or what? There’s got to be a catch somewhere..oh, wait, it’s a graduate level Bio course.
World Literature
Comparative Literature (L16) 211, T-Th 2:30-4 p.m. Henke.
Go ahead and break out of that English and American literature and do some world traveling. Comp Lit courses are pretty popular on campus and a lot of fun, and there’s always something more to learn. And with some classics by Shakespeare and Sophocles mixed in with some more obscure titles, this book list provides a lot of variety. Book list includes the following: Antigone/Sophocles, Crossing the Mangrove/Conde, Death and the King’s Horseman/
Soyinka, Heart of Darkness/Conrad, Radiance of the King/Laye, Season of Migration to North/Salih, Sherazade/Sebbar, The Tempest/Shakespeare, Tempest/
Cesaire, and Macbeth/Shakespeare.
Genres: Textravel: Postmodern Narrative
Comparative Literature (L16) 338C, T-Th 11:30-1 p.m. Kafelenos.
Yet another super cool course offering from the Comparative Literature department. This course is an introduction to Postmodern texts, a genre that is starting to be explored by several departments. This course will explore texts from a wide variety of angles, and the following list makes great candidates for this multidimensional exploration: Double or Nothing/Federman, Hydrahead/Fuentes, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler/Calvino, Labyrinths/Borges, Lovers’ Discourse/Barthes, Maison de Rendezvous & Djinn/Robbe-Grillet, Pale Fire/Nabokov.
Economics of Sports
What better way to make economics more user-friendly to college students than to associate them with one of the most popular extracurricular categories? This course explores the theory and practice behind one of the most interesting money markets today by discussing labor markets, subsidized, stadiums, and Division I schools’ marketing strategies. All this and you get to meet “members of the St. Louis sports scene’-hmmmm, Pujols? Or will it be some guy from the River City Otters? This class only has one textbook in the campus store, so it’s bound to be a winner.
Psychology of Creativity
Education (L12) 366, T-Th 3:30-5 p.m. Sawyer.
Ever considered yourself an artist, or have you never thought of yourself that way since you grew out of the crayon picture fridge gallery phase? By exploring the works of artists in many genres, as well as identifying and discussing society’s perceptions of creativity, this class introduces the student to the psychological study of art and crativity. Book list includes: Creating Conversations/Sawyer, Creativity/Csikszentmiha.
This Land is Your Land
History (L22) 3063, M-W 2-3 p.m. (with additional discussion section). Valencius.
Giving a new spin to the understanding of environmental practices and changes on the North American Continent, this course not only has a very cool reading list, but it explores this issue in a variety of contexts, including Europeans’ uses of land during their early years in America and the cultural impact of environmental practices that involved slavery. The
course continues up through the current century and the identification of nature as a special entity. The book list includes a variety of viewpoints, including the always quotable Walden by Thoreau. Other works include: Changes in the Land/Cronon, Common Fields: An Environmental History of St. Louis/Hurley, Greening of a Nation?/Rothman, Rivers of Empire/Worster, Silent Spring/Carson, Twelve Years a Slave/Northup, Uncommon Ground/Cronon and Nature’s Nation/Opie.
Borderlands: Cross Cultural Themes in Women’s Studies
Women’s Studies (L77) 326, T-Th 1-2:30 p.m. Power, H.
This course has a really great book lineup, and the title is kinda catchy too. This course also contains the variety of approaches and multicultural viewpoints that can predict success for many courses. The book list includes famous works by Toni Morrison and Jane Rhys, as well as other intriguing novels and autobiographies.