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1701 North State Street Jackson, MS 39210-0001 (800)352-1050 (601)974-1000
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CORE I: INTRODUCTION TO THINKING AND WRITING
IDST-1050-01: This Digital Life
Instructor: Dr. Anita DeRouen. Who are we when we're on the web? What does it mean to be "digital?" How does our understanding of our lives change when we start "living" on the internet? These and other questions will guide us through a semester - long examination of our digital lives. We'll consider the applications which have become almost requirements for our social lives (like Facebook), our understanding of the connections we have to the technology we use, and the way words like "community" and "privacy" take on different shades of meaning when we apply them to internet culture.
MWF @ 9:00 + T @ 9:00
IDST-1050-02: The Problem and Promise of Race in America
Instructor: Dr. Kristen Oertel. In his 1903 work, The Souls of Black Folk, black intellectual W.E.B. DuBois argued that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line." Just over one hundred years later, DuBois' concerns continue to resonate with the American people, as we struggle to reconcile the promise of America with its reality. In this course, we will study DuBois and others who have written about race and racism, focusing especially on the idea of whiteness and how white, black, brown, and ethnic or immigrant Americans have forged their racial identities in the land of equality and opportunity.
TTH @ 10:00 + W @ 12:00
CORE 2-5: THE HERITAGE PROGRAM
IDST 1118-1128: Heritage of the West in World Perspective
Instructors: Dr. Patrick Hopkins, Department of Philosophy; Dr. Lola Williamson, Department of Religious Studies; Dr. Andrew Paxman, Department of History; Dr. Eric Griffin, Department of English. Beginning with antiquity and continuing to the present, this program brings together history, literature, philosophy, religion, and the arts in an integrated approach to the study of Western culture within a global context. It is the equivalent of eight semester hours each semester extending throughout the year. In the spring, this course examines developments in Western culture from 1500 to present in the context of world history. IDST 1128 is open only to students who have completed IDST 1118 in the fall. All students will be assigned to the same section and professor as in the fall. Heritage meets the Fine Arts requirements as well as the requirements of Core 2-5. Enrollment is limited to freshmen.
CORE 3: PRE-MODERN WORLD
IDST-1300-01: God Told Me to Love or Kill You: Tolerance and Violence in Asian and European Religious Traditions in the Pre-Modern Period
Instructor: Dr. James Bowley. This class will explore attitudes and ideologies of Christians, Muslims, and Hindus in Europe and South Asia. How were religious outsiders viewed and how were they treated? What were the motivations and effects? And what residue remains?
Focus: Religious Studies
MTWF @ 9:00
IDST-1300-02: Love and War in Feudal Europe and Japan
Instructor: Dr. Greg Miller. Is all fair in love and war? What are the rules of engagement? Is the lover an intimate adversary? Is the enemy in war an intimate ally? Do literature and art represent codes of conduct and models of behavior? What is the relationship between love and war? We will pursue these questions as we read literary texts written in feudal Europe and Japan, texts that include Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Marie of France's Lais, and Murasaki Shikibu's The Tale of Genji. We will also examine artistic representations of lovers and warriors, considering the social contexts in which these texts were written and these images were created.
Focus: Literature
MTWF @ 9:00
IDST-1300-03: Fables, Tales, and Songs: Pre-Modern Islam and Christianity
Instructor: Lara Kees. How did literature and music reflect on the pre-modern Christian and Muslim worlds? What were the ideals of people within these cultures? What conflicts did each culture register between its ideals for itself and reality? We will read and discuss a variety of literary texts; compare examples of architecture and art from each religious tradition; explore early encounters between Islam and Christianity; and read and evaluate translations of primary historical documents written by Christians and Muslims.
Foci: Literature and Religious Studies
MTWF @ 9:00
IDST-1300-04: Fables, Tales, and Songs: Pre-Modern Islam and Christianity
Instructor: Lara Kees. How did literature and music reflect on the pre-modern Christian and Muslim worlds? What were the ideals of people within these cultures? What conflicts did each culture register between its ideals for itself and reality? We will read and discuss a variety of literary texts; compare examples of architecture and art from each religious tradition; explore early encounters between Islam and Christianity; and read and evaluate translations of primary historical documents written by Christians and Muslims.
Foci: Literature and Religious Studies
MWF @ 10:00 + TH @ 8:00
IDST-1300-05: Abraham's Growing Family: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Collaboration and Conflict
Instructor: Dr. Steve Smith. Between 600 and 1600 CE large-scale Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities developed in Europe, Asia, and Africa. These communities intersected in many ways, including episodes of intense persecution or intergroup conflict (as in the Crusades) but also regimes of peaceful coexistence and collaboration (as in early medieval Spain). This course will explore how Jews, Christians, and Muslims defined themselves in relation to each other in premodern times, and how this process continues in our own time.
Foci: History and Religious Studies
MWF @ 11:00 + TH @ 9:00
IDST-1300-06: Monsters, Magicians, and Trickster-Monkeys: The Significance of the Supernatural in Pre-Modern Art and Literature
Instructor: Dr. Anne MacMaster. In the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, the hero fights not only the quasi-human monster Grendel, but also Grendel's mother and (later, when he is old) an elderly fire-breathing dragon. What aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture might these monsters stand for? How much reality are we to credit them with? Did the Anglo-Saxons believe in dragons and other monsters? And what about the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth? Did people in the court of James Stuart actually believe in witches? Asking questions like these, we'll read the heroic poem Beowulf, selections from The Lais of Marie de France and from Dante's Inferno, two of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (the Franklin's Tale and the Wife of Bath's Tale), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Shakespeare's Macbeth, and Monkey: A Journey to the West (a classic of sixteenth century Chinese literature). Keeping our focus on the supernatural, we'll also examine representative works of art produced at the same cultural moments as these works of literature: early middle ages, high middle ages, and Renaissance.
Foci: Fine Arts, Literature
MWF @ 11:00 + TH @ 9:00
IDST-1300-07: The Morphing of England
Instructor: Gail Buzhardt. When Edward the Confessor came to the throne in 1043, his weakness set the stage for England's conquest by William of Normandy. For the next two centuries England would suffer the extremes of its rulers: Archbishop Becket's murder in the cathedral; Richard the Lionheart as the absentee king in Palestine; and John, charming and powerful but maliciously cruel. Finally, in 1296, King Edward "Longshanks" succeeded in unifying England. Along with this tumultuous history, we will experience extremes of literature, including medieval epics, lyric poetry, violent liturgical dramas and Sufi poets.
Foci: History and Literature
TTh @ 10:00 + W @ 12:00
IDST-1300-08: The Quest for the Holy Grail
Instructor:Mary Louise Jones. A study of two Grail texts: Perceval by Chretien de Troyes and The Quest of the Holy Grail by Sir Thomas Malory. This course will delve into the medieval world that created this powerful literature by understanding it religion, architecture, and social history. It will also take us into the study of the mythical hero, the Crusades, caritas (spiritual love), courtly love, the cathedral and the castle.
Foci: Religious Studies and Literature
TTh @ 10:00 + W @ 12:00
CORE 5: CONTEMPORARY WORLD
IDST-2500-01: Worlds of Music: Globalization in Sound
Instructor: Dr. Lynn Raley. "In a world such as ours it is necessary to understand why a madrigal by Gesualdo or a Bach Passion, a sitar melody from India or a song from Africa, Berg's Wozzeck or Britten's War Requiem, a Balinese gamelan or a Cantonese opera, or a symphony by Mozart, Beethoven, or Mahler, may be profoundly necessary for human survival." --John Blacking (1928-1990). This course exists to expand your awareness of music as human expression, a reflection of culture, and a way of organizing human activity. We will examine the hybridization of music cultures, identify trends and influences across cultures, and observe the effects of "globalization" on music. Making connections in the music will require you to listen to music in a conscious way, analyzing the music to make comparisons and reach thoughtful conclusions.
Focus: Fine Arts
MTWF @ 9:00
IDST-2500-02: Art and Culture of Surrealism
Instructor: Dr. Abigail Susik. Between the First and Second World Wars of the last century, one of the most distinctive episodes of the European avant-garde emerged from the urban center of Paris. The Surrealist leader André Breton returned to Paris after World War I, yearning to combat the conservative post-war climate in France. The Surrealists supported radically innovative literary and artistic endeavors, as well as a new kind of political and philosophical discourse. At the same time, however, this aesthetic-political movement was also deeply invested in the day-to-day activities of its members, and the way in which low-brow influences from pop culture, or exotic influences from non-western countries, invaded the "fine" art realm to exhilarating ends. This Core 5 course will examine the complex and fascinating culture of French surrealism through a chronological survey of its development between the two World Wars (1919-1939). Our investigation of surrealism will include glimpses of surrealist poetry, literature, theater, political and philosophical tracts, as well as diverse forms of visual art, ephemera, and surrealist collections of Oceanic and African artifacts.
Foci: Fine Arts and Literature
MTWF @ 9:00
IDST-2500-03: African-American Religions
Instructor: Dr. Annie Blazer. This course will examine features of contemporary African-American religious experience. We will employ a range of topics (holidays, music, new religious movements, and the contemporary black church) to explore three main themes: 1) the role of Africa in African-American religious thought, 2) immigration (forced and chosen), nationalism, and globalization as defining factors in new religious movements of the 20th century, and 3) the role of commercialism and media in creating religious identity. By examining a range of religious personalities, from Martin Luther King, Jr. to Father Divine to Muhammad Ali and Bob Marley, we will investigate the contexts and power dynamics that gave rise to a wide variety of African-American religious experiences.
Focus: Religious Studies
MW @ 1:00
IDST-2500-04: We are the 1980s
Instructor: Dr. Steve Kistulentz. If the 1970s were famously labeled the "me decade," what labels do the films and novels of the 1980s put on the decade of Ronald Reagan? It's a short ten years from the beginning of the 24-hour news cycle, to crack cocaine, Live Aid, trading arms for hostages, and the eventual fall of the Berlin Wall. From "Where's the beef?" to "Just say no," were the 1980s a decade of clever slogans and little substance, or do they mark a seminal period in the emergence of an American culture dominated more by consumption than production?
We'll read novels, screen a few films, and even watch a few music videos, all in an attempt serious answers at any or all of the following questions: what were the cultural, personal and artistic values of the 1980s and to what extent are those values reflected today?
Foci: Fine Arts, History, Literature
TTH @ 10:00 + W @ 12:00
IDST-2500-05: Seeking Southern Voices: How Documentary Theatre Shapes our Historical Consciousness
Instructor: Jeannie-Marie Brown. (Team-taught with Dr. Nick Brown; his section is IDST-2500-06) Students will investigate social issues in a unique theatrical form that takes actual historical events and creates a dramatic script from interviews. Studying "theatre of fact," we will question how Documentary Drama reflects, informs, and advances social-historical change. In historical terms, the class covers 20th-century southern American history. Our myriad of southern voices will consider how plays can draw people together, to challenge stereotypes, to build community, and to cultivate compassion. In learning the history, and Documentary Drama format, students will also embrace and express their own artistic voices through playwriting and historical research and writing. We will use other voices to create a new, and better, understanding not only of what "southern" means, but what being "American" means.
Focus: Fine Arts and History
TTH @ 10:00 + W @ 12:00
IDST-2500-06: Seeking Southern Voices: How Documentary Theatre Shapes our Historical Consciousness
Instructor: Dr. Nick Brown. (Team-taught with Jeannie-Marie Brown; her section is IDST-2500-07) Students will investigate social issues in a unique theatrical form that takes actual historical events and creates a dramatic script from interviews. Studying "theatre of fact," we will question how Documentary Drama reflects, informs, and advances social-historical change. In historical terms, the class covers 20th-century southern American history. Our myriad of southern voices will consider how plays can draw people together, to challenge stereotypes, to build community, and to cultivate compassion. In learning the history, and Documentary Drama format, students will also embrace and express their own artistic voices through playwriting and historical research and writing. We will use other voices to create a new, and better, understanding not only of what "southern" means, but what being "American" means.
Focus: Fine Arts and History
TTH @ 10:00 + W @ 12:00
IDST-2500-07: Religion in a Media Age
Instructor: Dr. Curtis Coats. Against prediction, religion has not faded away in the 21st Century. Rather, it has persisted as a social, cultural, and political force. Religion and spirituality remain active in the media age, whether in pop cultural contexts like Harry Potter, The Passion of the Christ or Angels and Demons; in political invocations of God and conversations about Christianity and Islam, or in "virtual" contexts like Tangle.com (formerly GodTube) or World of Warcraft. This course engages examples like these and the way that religions and media intersect - and often collide - in everyday life. We will focus on the critical study of media and religion, using textual, ethnographic and rhetorical methods.
Focus: Religious Studies
TTH @ 1:00
IDST-2500-08: Twentieth Century Philosophy: Existentialism
Instructor: Dr. Kristen Golden. Is the life of the free-wheeling, artistic Don Juan more rewarding than that of the committed family-person who embraces traditional religious and community values? Must a Christian suffer deeply from uncertainties of faith, as the most famous Christian existentialist says? Can an atheist excel in virtue? These are some of the questions existentialists raise and if they agree about the questions, they disagree about their answers. We will read some of the most intriguing and lovely existential philosophy and literature ever written and some profound arguments against them, and trace course themes to contemporary film. Ours will be a quest for clarity about twenty-first century concepts of good and evil, faith and virtue, by thinking with and against existential thought as it relates to our ever shrinking, ever quickening global surroundings.
Focus: Philosophy
TTH @ 10:00 + W @ 12:00
CORE 6: TOPICS IN SOCIAL & BEHAVIORAL SCIENCE
The following courses offered in the spring have been approved by the Core Council as also satisfying
Core 6:
• Economics 2000
• Education 3200
• Political Science 1000
• Psychology 1000, 1100
• Sociology/Anthropology 1000, 1100, 1110
IDST-1610: Human Development in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Instructor: Dr. Stacy DeZutter. Human development permeates every aspect of our lives from our own individuation to our families, our work, and the rearing of our children. One can argue that all the compartmentalized studies of the social and behavioral sciences have as a source of origin human growth and development. It encompasses one's entire experience within this world. Human Development in Cross-Cultural Perspective demands an immediate and personal perspective, as well as a multi-disciplinary approach including such disciplines as psychology, biology, sociology, anthropology, education, and others.
TTh @ 1:00
IDST-1660: Get Creative! Interdisciplinary Approaches for Developing Creativity
Instructor: Dr. Stacy DeZutter. This course explores social-sciences-based approaches to understanding, explaining, and enhancing creativity. The course will provide an interdisciplinary perspective on topics foundational to any effort to augment one's own creativity or that of others, including how creativity should be defined, how creativity can be understood as both an individual and a social phenomenon, what processes are involved in creativity and innovation, and how creativity can be fostered in individuals and in groups.
TTh @ 10:00 + W @ 12:00
CORE 7: TOPICS IN NATURAL SCIENCE WITH LABORATORY
The following courses offered in the spring have been approved by the Core Council as also satisfying
Core 7:
CORE 8: TOPICS IN MATHEMATICS
The following mathematics courses offered in the spring have been approved by the Core Council as satisfying Core 8:
CORE 9: TOPICS IN MATHEMATICS, NATURAL SCIENCE, OR COMPUTER SCIENCE
The Core Council has approved the following courses offered in the spring as satisfying Core 9:
FINE ARTS
The following courses offered this spring meet the Fine Arts requirements:
Any IDST course with a Fine Arts focus or the two semester Heritage sequence will meet this requirement. In addition, completing four semesters in Singers or a music ensemble, or completing four semesters of studio music lessons (voice or instrument) or significant participation in four Millsaps Players productions will satisfy the fine arts requirement.
