American Studies

Deals with the development and interrelationship of American views on individualism, nature, science, technology, democracy, ethnicity, and the American dream. Readings begin with the Puritans and end with contemporary essayists. Deals with the development and interrelationship of American views on individualism, nature, science, technology, democracy, ethnicity, and the American dream. Readings begin with the Puritans and end with contemporary essayists.

Pre/Co-Requisites: Pre-Req: 42.101/102 College Writing I & II.

A study of literary selections dealing with traditions of family life, the individual, and social change.

This course surveys the history of women in the British North American colonies and United States with a special focus on social and economic change. It examines women as a distinct group but also attends to divisions among them, particularly those based on class, ethnicity/race, and regional diversity. Course themes include concepts of womanhood, the development and transgression of gender roles, unpaid work and wage labor, social reform and women's rights activism, as well as changing ideas and practices with respect to the female body.

A survey of fiction and poetry by Beat Movement authors, including Lowell native Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Herbert Huncke, Gregory Corso, and Lawrence Ferlinghett

An upper-level survey covering African American literature from slave narratives through contemporary literature. Authors covered typically include Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, Ann Petry, Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison, and Lucille Clifton.

A required seminar for American studies majors normally taken during the second semester of the junior year or during the senior year. Students undertake a research project leading to the writing of a major paper with a theme that combines more than one discipline.

Pre/Co-Requisites: Pre-Req: Junior Status or 40.248, 42.248 or 59.248.

An investigation of a topic using an interdisciplinary approach and leading to the writing of a majorpaper. The course provides an opportunity for a student to work closely with an instructor on atopic of special interest.

Allows students an opportunity to combine their formal education with an off campus project. After developing a proposal for the practicum under the guidance of an instructor, the student spends a portion of his or her time working with persons engaged in business, the arts, museums, the professions, community service, or government. The coordinator for American studies maintains a file of organizations that accept students.

Values and Creative Thinking is a course designed specifically for freshmen. Throughout the semester you will be asked to examine your personal value system and how it relates to your education. The purpose of this course is to help you identify those individual qualities that you can use to achieve your highest academic potential. Specifically, this course is intended to help you develop greater self-awareness and confidence; creative and critical thinking skills; career planning skills designed to help you understand the full spectrum of available careers; an understanding of different computer technologies and multimedia techniques; an awareness of the role of values in determining your experiences and perspectives; problem solving and group decision making skills relating to issues that affect the quality of your life.

(Spring Semester) Introduce students to the culture of Lowell through field trips, discussion, and active engagement. Students will demonstrate understanding through written reflection papers and participation in a photography exhibit, Eyes on Lowell. There will be some readings but the primary text will be the City of Lowell.

Pre/Co-Requisites: Pre-Req: 59.102 Freshman Honors Seminar I.

This course studies the aesthetic, artistic and intellectual similarities between art history and music history. By comparing modes of visual and aura representation, the course focuses on the development of human creativity and expression through the arts, from ancient times as 'art and morality' followed in the Renaissance as 'art and sciences' continued in the Enlightenment as 'art and society' contrasted in the nineteenth century as 'art and enlightenment'.

This course explores a series of fundamental issues in the interdisciplinary field of cultural studies, addressing the breadth as well as the limits of the term culture. it will relate to languages, visual and performing arts, film, sports, food, music, and fashion, using case studies from different historical and geographical contexts.

First year seminar for students interested in exploring Lowell, past and present, and using the city to investigate various other issues beyond local.

A survey of the origins and development of painting, sculpture and architecture from prehistoric times to the Medeival period. Emphasis is placed on representative works of art from Ancient Egypt and Near East, Antiquity, Byzantine and Medeival, and Early Renassance Europe. Methodological problems of interpretation, formal analysis and aesthetic principles are studies in these art works.

A survey of the origins and development of painting, sculpture, and architecture from Renaissance times to the Modern period. Emphasis is placed on representative works of art from the Renaisance, Baroque, Rococo, Nineteenth Century Movements-Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Impressionism, Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism and Abstract Art. The aim of the coure is to introduce the student to basic critical and art historical methods as well as the analysis of style and content within sequential cultural contexts.

In this course, students gain an understanding of how the arts progress through examining earlier historical periods and using close studies of examples from different parts of the world. We will examine the Renaissance in Europe, the Hindu to Islamic period in the empires of Southeast Asia, dynastic changes in China, and the rise of Buddhism in South Asia.

This course examines later cultural progressions around the world. These will include Classical, romantic and Modern periods in European arts and the cultural influences of colonial interactions on both the European powers and the colonized. We will also examine cultural arts in the era of technologies and the beginning of the modern era (such as recording and reproduction, architecture and technology), cultural globalization , and subcultures of the 20th century.

This course focuses on the development of Southeast Asian art and culture from ancient times to the present. As a diverse region that is home to Muslims, Catholics and other Christians, Buddhists,Hindus and animists, examining arts and culture in Southeast Asia provides fascinating insight into the region's societies. This course examines performance, architecture and material culture from a variety of Southeast Asia, its contacts with neighboring regions, and the breadth of societies in the region and their motivation for creating art. Students will be introduced to theater, dance puppetry, martial arts and music of Southeast Asia. We will examine artistic forms influenced by ancient Hindus, Chinese, Arabs, Europeans during the colonial era, and other influences on the arts in Southeast Asia. Students will also explore how various art forms have political, social and religious functions in such regions as Thailand Indonesia (Bali and Java). Vietnam and Cambodia.

Deals with the development and interrelationship of American views on individualism, nature, science, technology, democracy, ethnicity, and the American dream. Readings begin with the Puritans and end with contemporary essayists. Deals with the development and interrelationship of American views on individualism, nature, science, technology, democracy, ethnicity, and the American dream. Readings begin with the Puritans and end with contemporary essayists.

This course studies the aesthetic, artistic and intellectual similarities between art history and culture in western and non-western civilizations. Discussion of the arts focuses on the development in examining the human creativity and expression through the arts. Furthermore, this course surveys some of the fundamental aspects of art history and culture, such as the nature of aesthetic judgment, the task of art and music criticism, including formalist, representational, and contemporary theories on viewing, analyzing, and interpreting the arts.

How safe is safe enough? Who really was Dr. Frankenstein? Was it possible not to create the A bomb? In this course we study decision-making capabilities crucial to survival in a technological age and examine the many value issues involved in understanding the nature of technological risk and its impact on modern society. Focusing on questions of scientific responsibility and societal safety, this course examines the changing attitudes toward technology and values.

Pre/Co-Requisites: Level Junior Standing.

This course examines the relationship between Islam, politics and culture in the contemporary Muslim world. This course will introduce students to the emergence and spread of Islam and the place the 'Muslim brotherhood' holds in the imagination of many Muslims. Students will gain a deeper understanding of the social, political and cultural complexity of the Muslim world. We will cover such regions as the Middle East, Africa, South and Southeast Asia as well as various places in the 'western' world. Topics will include the rise of political Islam, the various cultural expressions of Muslims, and the variation and divergences across Muslim cultures. **This course could be taken by students from a variety of departments/majors: Islamic Studies, Political Science, History, Asian Studies, Cultural Studies,a nd Liberal Arts

The Uses of Multimedia explores how multimedia is used on the Internet as well as providing a forum and a lab for the creation of multimedia web pages. The course meets twice a week, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Includes lectures, demos and hands-on activities and the creation of student multimedia projects on the web.

A study of Greek painting, sculpture, and architecture from the Cycladic to the Hellenistic period, and an examination of Roman Art from the Etruscan age to the beginning of Christian art. Emphasis is placed on the Greek Classical period and the Roman Empire.

The development of painting, sculpture and architecture in Italy during the seventeenth century with special emphasis on Rome and Venice. The role of representative artists (Caravaggio, Bernini, Borromini, Pietro da Cortona, Artemisia Gentileschi, Elisabetta Sirani and Longhena) is emphasized.

Examines Early Modern European Philosophy and its religious and scientific context, including movements such as the Mechanical Philosophy, Rationalism, Empiricism, and Transcendental Philosophy. Topics include knowledge and scientific understanding, the human mind and personal identity, and the debate between faith and reason.

Investigation of the various ways women have been portrayed in the visual arts from antiquity to the present. A chronological examination of selected female artists and their milieu from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century.

The examination of nineteenth century painting in England with a study on the role of representative artists such as Ford Madox Brown, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Everett Millais, Edward Burne-Jones, William Holman Hunt, Elizabeth Siddall, Fredrick Sandys, and William Morris.

This course will examine various literary and political responses to the Cambodian genocide, particularly personal accounts or literary testimony by survivors and government sanctioned legal proceedings. The course will consider how the literary and political responses to the Cambodian genocide have at different times paralleled, complimented and opposed each other. The course will also ask whether their overall effect contributes to or detracts from the serving of justice and the process of healing for the survivors. To pursue these questions, we will read selections from novels and poetry written by Cambodian survivors side by side with accounts of political activities of the Cambodian government and the international community to bring the perpetrators of the genocide to justice.

Explores basic questions of human existence in 19th and 20th Century philosophy and literature. Topics include anxiety and alienation; freedom and responsibility; authenticity and bad faith; individuality and mass society; rationality and the absurd; values and nihilism; and God and meaninglessness.

Using the village empowerment Peru Project at UML as a framework and case study, students will explore solutions to overcoming poverty in the world. Poverty in public health, education, income, infrastructure and the tools to overcome these are topics to be addressed. A service-learning group project is required to address the specific needs of communities in the Village Empowerment Project. Instructors are from colleges of engineering, management, health, art and science, and government.

The art museum in the United States is a unique social institution because of its blend of public and private support and its intricate involvement with artists, art historians, collectors, the art market, and the government. This course will study the art museum�s history and status in our society today. Special consideration will be given to financial, legal and ethical issues that face art museums in our time. Short papers, oral reports and visits with directors, curators and other museum officials in nearby museums will be included along with a detailed study of a topic of ones choice.

This course provides students with a wide range of interests and backgrounds with the opportunity to examine their own mental model(attitudes/values/ assumptions) of disability. It includes an overview of the nature of mental retardation and other disabilities and it provides opportunities to explore and understand the historical social response to disability. Students will look at a range of strategies for providing support and intervention and they will learn about how to effect change through a variety of strategies, including advocacy.

Pre/Co-Requisites: Pre-req: 47.101, General Psychology; Student may not enroll if already has credit for 47.363.

Examination of issues of content, theory and criticism in the traditional, modern and contemporary lives of artists; autobiographies, biographies and historiographies as source of filmic expression. Focus on the interpretation and transformation of art historical records into filmic vision as revealed in set and costume design, music, camera technique and other aesthetic elements of film, as well as how such elements function to extend and convey directorial vision to movements in art history.

A study on the impact of the High Renaissance in the sixteenth century, the subsequent development of early Mannerism in central Italy and the formation of the Proto-Baroque syle in Venice and Northern Italy, the establishment of the courtly Mannerist style. The role of representative artists such as Anguissola, Pontormo, Rosso, Parmigianino, Bronzino, Beccafumi, Fontana, Vasari, Veronese, Bandinelli, Cellini, Palladio, Peruzzi and Ammanati is emphasized.

A study of the waning of the Middle Ages and the dawning of the Renaissance as seen through the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio. Emphasis is on the study of sources and the influence of Petrarch and Boccaccio upon the literatures of western Europe. Conducted in English.

A survey of ancient to early modern theatre in its historical and social contexts, tracing changes and developments in acting syles, theatre architecture, scenic practices, dramatic literature, and the audience. The course examines how theatre both reflects and shapes the changing beliefs and priorities of a culture.

Pre/Co-Requisites: Pre-Req: 42.101/102 College Writing I & II.

A survey of theatre in its historical and social contexts from the 19th century to the present, focusing on innovations in design and technology, the advent of the director, the emergence of modern schools of acting, and the creation of new forms of theatre to suit the changing needs of a modern world.

Pre/Co-Requisites: Pre-Req: 42.101/102 College Writing I & II.

This course is the service learning capstone for the Environmetal Studies Minor (soon to be created, after approval of this course). It emphasizes the cross-disciplinary examination of contemporary environmental issues, starting from the premise that they are multi-dimensional - biophysical, cultural, economic, ethical, historical, technical, etc. It requires only a few class meetings and otherwise involves students in work with local and regional environmental agencies and organizations. This service work is meant to encourage students to make connections between theory and practice, as well as to expand the conceptual and practical tool kit they need to understand environmental controversies and work toward sustainability.

Pre/Co-Requisites: Pre-Req: 46.175 Intro to Environmental Studies.

A study of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Florence, Rome and .Venice during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Special emphasis on the formation of the High Renaissance style and the role of representative artists of the period, such as Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael in Central Italy; Giorgione and Titian in Venice.

Introduction to the design and technical aspects of theatre through hands-on experience working on campus productions. Focus on basic principles of set, lighting, props, costume, makeup, and sound production. May be repeated for credit.

This course provides for an in-depth exploration of values, and attitudes of participant. It also offers students the chance to deepen their capacity to identify with people with developmental disabilities and for investigating the reality of disenfranchisement. Finally, it provides a forum for discussion of fieldwork experience and to integrate such experience with what they have learned in their Psychology and related courses. (Field Placement Required)

Pre/Co-Requisites: Pre-req: 47.101, and 47.269, and 47.362, or 47.363 or 59.363.

This course is a continuation of 47.480. The classroom experience accompanies the field placement and provides a critical examination of the nature of community and advocacy in the lives of people with disabilities. Students are provided with a forum to explore personal values and attitudes relative to community and to identify key elements of healthy communities. Strategies for supporting people with disabilities to assume valued, community roles will be identified. (Field Placement Required)

Pre/Co-Requisites: Pre-req: 47.101, and 47.269, and 47.362, or 47.363 or 59.363.

An individual supervised research project relative to issues of the environment and society. Thematic or methodological issues must result in a significant research paper.

An individual supervised research project relating to cultural studies. A significan research paper is required for completion of this course.