Fall 2012
ABEC 404: A Wildlife/Ecology/Conservation In S Africa TBA
Instructor: Susan Margulis
Prerequisites: Senior ABEC Majors only
Travel to South Africa for three weeks during the summer to study wildlife ecology and conservation from a more global perspective. Students will have the opportunity to interact and collaborate with students and researchers from the University of Venda and the research staff of the Lajuma Research Centre as part of their field experience. In addition to the scientific components of the course, students will gain a deeper understanding of the cultural, historical, and political issues of South Africa, and the realities of conservation in a developing nation, via discussion and reading. The class also involves travel to Kruger National Park. Research projects are completed during the fall semester. Students must apply for this course during FALL of their junior year.
BIO 477: Plants And Society MWF 11:00-11:50
Instructor: Robert Grebenok
Prerequisites: Seniors only
This core capstone course involves a detailed examination of the relationship between higher plants and their societal use. We begin by exploring the basic structure and growth paradigm of higher plants and subsequently examine the many ways in which plant products influence societal organization and the behavior of members of diverse societies around the world. Topics to be discussed within this context include the ethics of genetically modified food production, the global justice of plant derived medicine production and other commercial products, the responsibility for global warming, effective resource utilization and the economy of alternative fuel production. We explore the effective distribution and use of technology and resources worldwide through group discussions, written assignments and oral presentations.
CHM 482: Contemporary Chemical Technology Issues MWF 10:00-10:50
Instructor: Roberto Gregorius
Prerequisites: Seniors only. Students in this core capstone course will analyze chemically intensive processes vital to the modern society such as: energy, food and materials production, water purification, and waste management, examining these from the perspective of social justice, ethics, diversity and global awareness, and risk/benefit assessment and management. The course will rely heavily on individual and group reporting, will have a written and oral communications component, with the intention of promoting student reflection on current technologies.
CLL 400: Humanitas TR 1:00-2:15
Instructor: Thomas Banchich
Prerequisites: Seniors only; see description below
The range of meaning of the Latin work Humanitas encompasses our notions of education, culture, and literature. The course will be devoted to the study of a particular ancient Latin author—for example, Virgil, Cicero, or Suetonius—, group of authors—for example, Plautus and Terence or Caesar and Sallust—, or genre—for example, philosophy, poetry, or history. Whatever the authors or texts, most of them will be read in the original Latin.
As a result, though the course is not limited to Classics majors, students will be required to have had at least three semesters of ancient Latin. To ensure that this is the case and that those who wish to register have completed or are in the process of completing their core requirements, the permission of the instructor will be required for all who wish to take CLL 400. CLL 400 may count toward the completion of the major or minor in Classics.
EDE/EDY/ECCH/SPEB/SPE1 494: Capstone Seminar for Teachers TBA
Instructor: Nicki Calabrese
Prerequisites: Senior Education Majors only
This seminar is the reflective course that accompanies student teaching for education majors. Teacher candidates reflect on their student teaching and observations, complete readings, engage in classroom discussions and complete reflections and other projects related to issues of diversity, ethics, global awareness and social justice and how these pertain to their own development as teachers.
EDS 494: Capstone Seminar for Teachers TBA
Instructor: Barbara Burns
Prerequisites: Senior Education Majors only
This seminar is the reflective course that accompanies student teaching for education majors. Teacher candidates reflect on their student teaching experience, engage in classroom discussions, and complete readings, reflection papers, and a final project related to issues of diversity, ethics, global awareness, and social justice.
ENG 365B: Memoir: Individual & Culture TR 1:00-2:15
Instructor: Sandra Cookson
Prerequisites: Seniors only
This course focuses on memoir and autobiographical works by a wide range of writers: American and international, on subjects chosen to both raise students’ awareness of ethical and social justice issues in our own country, and the countries of oppressed peoples around the globe. At the same time, the course provides students a unique opportunity at a crucial point in their college career to reflect upon and write about their college life so far, in particular, the core curriculum experience, by creating a memoir of their own. Memoir is directly personal; written in first person; drawing upon the life experiences of the writer, memoir is focused on a particular period, or specific aspect, of the writer’s life. Students will be challenged to connect their personal experience to the knowledge and reflection on the larger world presented in the course readings. The intimate, first-person narration of the readings will also provide models for the cultivation of “voice” in the student memoir writers.
ENG 365C: Culture And Conflict: Re-Interpreting WW I MW 3:00-4:15
Instructor: Jane Fisher
Prerequisites: Seniors only
This course will focus on the major cultural debates surrounding World War I as we approach its centennial. Taking as its center Adam Hochschild’s social history To End All Wars which emphasizes the protests of conscientious objectors, this course will examine a range of literary and historical works representing conflicting viewpoints making up a complex portrait of the World War I period. Beginning with those who welcomed the War as a clean break with the decadent past, continuing through the unexpected mounting trauma of trench war fare to the elegiac mourning voices of the post-war period, students will trace the War’s full trajectory, including the 1918 influenza pandemic which marked both its Armistice and the negotiations of the Versailles Treaty. The course will focus on perspectives often neglected or absent in conventional accounts of World War I, such as social justice issues regarding women’s suffrage, the treatment of shell shock, the use of colonial troops, and the punishment of war protesters; the role of illness and disease in the War; how poetry became an important part of War culture; nursing and the War; African-American soldiers and World War I; new technologies’ impact on the War; and changing gender roles during and after the War. Course readings will include Regeneration by Pat Barker; poetry by Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, and Claude McKay; Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter; as well as a collection of shorter historical and critical essays. We will also examine the material culture of the period, especially World War I propaganda posters which played such an important role in communicating governmental policy to the public. Students will be encouraged to build on and expand work they may have done in other classes as they complete this capstone course.
FAM 390: Sounding Society MWF 11:00-11:50
Instructor: Richard Falkenstein
Prerequisites: Seniors only
The premise that music is one of the richest cultural expressions of a community forms the basis for this course, which explores how music represents, instills, and challenges the values of ethics, justice, diversity, and global awareness in different societies. In addition to art music (Western and otherwise) the course also encompasses popular and indigenous music. The course is flexible enough to accommodate students without music reading skills.
HIS 460: Life & Times: Theodore Roosevelt W 2:00-4:45
Instructor: Nancy Rosenbloom
Prerequisites: Seniors only
This course explores the life and times of Theodore Roosevelt (1859-1919), a period that saw the birth of modern America. If historians sometimes argue that the man makes the times, alternatively they also argue that times make the man. Roosevelt helped to forge a political culture in response to modernity and articulated a national and international vision that reflected both an understanding of American diversity and the demands of being a player on the world stage. At the same time, Roosevelt developed a concept of civic virtue that met the ethical standards of what he famously called “the strenuous life,” and, as President from 1901-1908, he used his office as a “bully pulpit” towards the achievement of a more just economic and social order. For this reason, The Age of Theodore Roosevelt focuses on the period that roughly encompasses the political career of one of the most fascinating figures in modern American history.
PED 494: Capstone Seminar for Teachers TBA
Instructor: Jeffrey Lindauer
Prerequisites: Senior Education Majors only
This seminar is the reflective course that accompanies student teaching for education majors. Teacher candidates reflect on their student teaching and observations, complete readings, engage in classroom discussions and complete reflections and other projects related to issues of diversity, ethics, global awareness and social justice and how these pertain to their own development as teachers.
PHI 399: Ethics, Justice & The Problem Of Poverty MW 1:00-3:45
Instructor: Michael Forest
Prerequisites: Seniors only
Open to all students from all majors, this core capstone course was partly designed for Business Majors. We will consider several rival versions of our moral self-understanding and several rival versions of how to address contemporary moral problems. Our goal is to apply these different approaches to the problem of world poverty. Since by current estimates, over 1.7 billion people live in absolute poverty [less than $1.25 per day], how do different economic approaches to these problems entail different conceptions of justice and of the living well? The course considers our position as moral beings in a poverty stricken world.
PHI 399: Ethics, Justice & The Problem Of Poverty TR 11:30-12:45
Instructor: Sean Johnston
Prerequisites: Seniors only
This course synthesizes the learning experiences from having completed the components of the Core Curriculum. The course has two parts. The first part takes up consideration of two texts that provide a strong yet accessible background in ethics, justice, and diversity: (1) Kwame Anthony Appiah: Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers; and (2) Michael Sandel: Justice. The second part of the course examines the controversy between two development economists; here the texts are: (3) Jeffrey Sachs The End of Poverty; and (4) William Easterly: The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good. The emphasis then is on global awareness. Examining the controversy between Sachs and Easterly raises concern about how good will and a commitment to justice by themselves seem not to entail clear and easy solutions to the problem of world poverty.
PHI 399: Ethics, Justice & The Problem Of Poverty TR 1:00-2:15
Instructor: Michael Forest
Prerequisites: Seniors only
Open to all students from all majors, this core capstone course was partly designed for Business Majors. We will consider several rival versions of our moral self-understanding and several rival versions of how to address contemporary moral problems. Our goal is to apply these different approaches to the problem of world poverty. Since by current estimates, over 1.7 billion people live in absolute poverty [less than $1.25 per day], how do different economic approaches to these problems entail different conceptions of justice and of the living well? The course considers our position as moral beings in a poverty stricken world.
PSY 320: Cultural Psychology MWF 10:00-10:50
Instructor: Dewey Bayer
Other: In-class and online experiences
Prerequisites: Seniors only
Cultural psychology is the comparative study of cultural effects on human psychology (socialization, learning, perceptions, emotions, and motivations). It examines psychological diversity and the links between cultural norms and behavior. It also examines the ways in which particular human activities are influenced by social and cultural forces. Furthermore, cultural psychology primarily uses the comparative method to establish psychological concepts, principles, and hypotheses. The purpose of the seminar is to introduce the field of cultural psychology and its contemporary applications. Through discussions and readings students can expect to develop a broader, global perception of contemporary psychology. Additionally, the course will assist in developing a useful set of critical-thinking tools with which to analyze and evaluate psychology from various, ethnic, national, and religious groups, thereby applying the attributes of the college core. Information literacy and advanced writing are required.
PSY 320: Cultural Psychology MWF 11:00-11:50
Instructor: Dewey Bayer
Other: In-class and online experiences
Prerequisites: Seniors only
Cultural psychology is the comparative study of cultural effects on human psychology (socialization, learning, perceptions, emotions, and motivations). It examines psychological diversity and the links between cultural norms and behavior. It also examines the ways in which particular human activities are influenced by social and cultural forces. Furthermore, cultural psychology primarily uses the comparative method to establish psychological concepts, principles, and hypotheses. The purpose of the seminar is to introduce the field of cultural psychology and its contemporary applications. Through discussions and readings students can expect to develop a broader, global perception of contemporary psychology. Additionally, the course will assist in developing a useful set of critical-thinking tools with which to analyze and evaluate psychology from various, ethnic, national, and religious groups, thereby applying the attributes of the college core. Information literacy and advanced writing are required.
PSY 470: Controversial Issues TR 3:00-4:15
Instructor: Debra Instone
Prerequisites: Seniors only
This course will address some of psychology’s controversial topics in order to illustrate how psychologists address and debate the core issues. As is the case in complex human affairs, there are no easy answers, simple solutions or quick resolutions. You will use critical thinking and information literacy skills to arrive at answers to some of the most interesting and perplexing issues in psychology today. Four of the issues selected for analysis will relate to the core attributes of ethics, justice, diversity and global awareness. Come prepared to read, research, write, discuss and debate.
RST 399B: Religious Diversity In Buffalo T 6:00-8:45
Instructor: Jonathan Lawrence
Prerequisites: Seniors only
This course will explore the nature of religious diversity in Buffalo through visits to congregations from different religious traditions and discussions of larger themes concerning religious diversity in America and around the world. During visits to these congregations in small groups, students will videotape worship services (when permitted) and interview clergy and members about their religious beliefs, practices, and experiences of interactions with other religious communities. Students will conduct background research into the congregations they are visiting and compose reflections on those visits which will be shared on the website for an on-going project the instructor is conducting.
RST 399D: Catholic Concept Of Conscience MW 3:00-4:15
Instructor: Martin Moleski, SJ
Prerequisites: Seniors only
This course will concentrate on the development of the Catholic understanding of conscience in the fifty years since Vatican II. "Conscience is a judgment of reason whereby the human person recognizes the moral quality of a concrete act that he is going to perform, is in the process of performing, or has already completed. In all he says and does, man is obliged to follow faithfully what he knows to be just and right. It is by the judgment of his conscience that man perceives and recognizes the prescriptions of the divine law" (Catechism of the Catholic Church, #1778). The field of conscience covers both personal ethics (sexual, medical, inter-personal) and public ethics (social justice, public policy, freedom of religion). Catholicism is a living world religion that can be studied like any other religion by attending to its primary sources (scripture and Tradition). The Catholic concept of conscience can be understood by those who do not accept the teaching authority of the Church. The course will require students to demonstrate that they have understood the assigned readings, not that they accept them as a guide to life. The assigned readings from primary sources (Scripture and the Magisterium) as well as secondary sources (philosophers and theologians) will provide information about the Catholic notion of conscience.