Fiat Lux Seminars: Honors Collegium 98
Fall Quarter 2002

The full range of Fiat Lux Seminars have been listed by three categories to help students navigate to their area of interest.

Arts & Humanities
Culture & Society
Science and Technology



Fundamentalism or Restoration of Eroded Islamic Values
Andras J.E Bodrogligeti, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures

The course objective is to eliminate misconceptions about Islam in the Farghona Valley often referred to as the hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism and show the real issues occupying the minds of real people.

Professor of Turkic and Iranian Studies. Main interest in the Islamic Heritage of Central Asia. Guggenheim Fellow [The Chagatay Language]. UNESCO Fellow [East-West Major Project: Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey.] Director of the Central Asia Information Project.

Ghost Stories and the Rise
of Experimental Psychology

Frederick Burwick, English

Once considered spirits trapped in afterlife by a curse, ghosts were redefined in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as hallucinations. This seminar will examine "ghost stories" in relation to the emerging science of mental pathology.

Frederick Burwick, Distinguished Scholar of the British Academy (1992) and of the Keat-Shelley Association (1998). His Poetic Madness and the Romantic Imagination (1996) received the Outstanding Book of the Year Award presented by the American Conference on Romanticism.

Looking, Thinking, and Communicating through Art
Linda Duke, Art History/Hammer Museum

What does art have to do with your everyday life? With the ways you learn and grow? How does thinking about meaning in art relate to other kinds of thinking you do - in science or English classes? In relationships? Explore the nature of art, from paintings in the classic Western tradition to multimedia installations by contemporary artists, in the galleries of UCLA's Hammer Museum. Enjoy probing discussions with your fellow students and discover your own connection with art. Learn the psychological principles behind an innovative approach to viewing art called Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), a tool for teachers and students across subject areas. The class will meet every other week for two hours, beginning First Week. The five meeting dates are: October 2, October 16, October 30, November 13, and November 27. (Special note: The class will meet at the UCLA Hammer Museum in the Orientation Room on the 3rd floor. The Museum is located on Westwood and Lindbrook. Students can ride the campus shuttle to Lot #32 and walk 2 blocks, or take the Big Blue Bus to Westwood and Lindbrook. Parking also available under the museum, with validation discount. If you need more detailed directions to the Museum, please do not hesitate to call Jeanne at 310-443-7055.)

Ms. Linda Duke studied and taught Asian art history and served as director of education at Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois before taking a similar position at the UCLA Hammer Museum in 2000. Duke is deeply interested in aesthetic meaning-making, experiential learning, and the role of the arts in education reform. She has worked closely with Philip Yenawine and Dr. Abigail Housen, creators of the VTS, and has explored its use in many community settings, including work with youth detention centers, homeless shelters, recovery programs, and an on-going partnership with Days of Dialogue in Los Angeles.

Anti-Semitism: Old, New, and Right
this Minute

Eric Gans, French and Francophone Studies

Americans, familiar with white-on-black racism, have difficulty understanding the durability and virulence of anti-Semitism. This seminar will explore the three stages of anti-Semitism: medieval, 19th-20th century, and contemporary.

Professor Gans has taught at UCLA since 1969. He offered a course on anti-Semitism & homosexuality in the European Studies program several years ago.

Families Under Glass
Sander M. Goldberg, Classics

What parents and children and husbands and wives owe to each other, what keeps families together and can split them apart, what constitutes, generates and destroys trust among family members were all recurring themes in ancient drama. The seminar will examine in detail three of the most problematic family dramas of Greece and Rome, considering what they reveal about ancient family relations, how true their characterizations are to modern conditions, and, as a kind of literary coda, how the ancient dramatists stretched the traditional boundaries of their genres to treat these issues.

Professor Goldberg is an international authority in the area of ancient comedy. At UCLA he teaches a variety of undergraduate courses, including Classics 10, "Discovering the Greeks."
  
Staging Race in the American Musical
Raymond Knapp, Musicology

A consideration of how race and ethnicity have been depicted and embodied on the American musical stage, from blackface minstrelsy and The Mikado to Show Boat, Porgy and Bess, The King and I, West Side Story, and Fiddler on the Roof.

Raymond Knapp is an Associate Professor in Musicology, specializing in the symphonic tradition from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries, and, more recently, in the American Musical. He is currently working on projects ranging from Haydn, Beethoven, and Mahler, to a textbook based on his course on the American Musical.

Museums & the Fabrication of Identity:
A Critical Investigation

Donald Preziosi, Art History

A critical investigation of the ways in which museums and other art institutions fabricate and maintain connections between artworks and the mentality, character, and identity of ethnic, racial, and national groups.

Donald Preziosi is a Professor of Art History at UCLA, Director of the UCLA Museum Studies Program, and Research Associate in Visual Culture at Oxford, where he delivered the annual Slade Lectures in Fine Arts in 2001. He is the author of eleven books on art and architectural history, museology, aesthetics, and the history of art institutions and professions.

Origins of Identity: History and Memory
Karen Rowe, English

Who we are or may become originates in a history, each unique by virtue of ethnic heritage, gender, sexuality, spirituality, and individual talent. In personal writings and poetry, women voice maternal stories that also recollect a communal history replete with images of homelands, political struggle, and ancestral rituals. This seminar studies how memory imprints identity, how the past suffuses our present. Remember, Audre Lorde proclaims, "poetry is not a luxury" but a "litany of survival."

A Professor of English, Karen Rowe is currently Chair of the Faculty in the College of Letters and Science. Her research ranges from Renaissance and early American literatures to later British and American women writers, from continental fairy tales to women's education and curriculum reform. She was Founding Director of UCLA's Center for the Study of Women and teaches courses cross-listed through the Women's Studies Program.

Africa in a Global Context
Dominic Thomas, French and Francophone Studies

This seminar will consider recent socio-political events in Africa - genocide in Rwanda, conflict in Somalia, transition to democracy in South Africa, rise of Islam - and attempt to gain a better understanding of the complicated and tenuous relationship between international intervention and exploitation.

Dominic Thomas is an Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies where he teaches courses on Africa and on immigration and racism in France. His book, Nation-Building, Propaganda and Literature in Francophone Africa, is forthcoming from Indiana University Press (Fall 2002).

"The Hobbit": Tolkien's View of Good & Evil
in the Community

Jules Zentner, Scandinavian

The Hobbit will be read and analyzed in terms of J.R.R. Tolkien's view of the battle between Good & Evil as it affects the world, individuals and members of communities. This seminar meets for 75 minutes per week. The course will meet Week One through Week Nine.

Dr. Zentner received his doctorate from UC Berkeley after doing much of his preparation at the University of Uppsala and University of Stockhom in Sweden. He has taught at Berkeley, the Univ. of Minnesota, and UCLA.




Where Do You Come From? Diversity
and Identity in America?

Edward A. Alpers, History

This seminar explores issues of diversity and identity by posing the complex question, "Where do you come from?" We will follow this question both by reading selections from a number of different American authors and by asking it of ourselves and our families.

Professor Alpers has been teaching at UCLA since 1968 and is constantly astonished by the diversity of experiences of our undergraduates. His own personal history and his scholarly work on Africa and the African Diaspora bring him to the current topic.

The Traditional Chinese Family:
Myth and Reality

Cameron Campbell, Sociology  [homepage]

Among the most widely noted differences between China and the West before the twentieth century were the organization of the family and its role in society. New analyses making use of innovative data and methods, however, has begun to refine our understanding of the Chinese family, in some cases overturning the received wisdom. This seminar will review the 'traditional' Chinese family and examine the new evidence about it.

Cameron Campbell is an Assistant Professor of Sociology. His research focuses on family and social organization in China, and on comparisons between European and Asian families. While his published work focuses on the family in the past, more recently he has begun work on the twentieth century.

Rehabilitation and the Crisis
of Contemporary Juvenile Justice

Robert Emerson, Sociology

The first juvenile courts in the U.S. at the end of the 19th century emphasized the individualized treatment of youthful offenders separate from the adult criminal justice system. These rehabilitative ideals faced increasing challenge in the later years of the 20th century. This course will examine these challenges to the classic juvenile court, including the due process revolution and increasing legalization, deep questioning of the feasibility of "treatment," growing bureaucratization, and persistent dilemmas in the juvenile court response to serious youth violence.

Robert M. Emerson teaches courses on conflict resolution, social control institutions, and ethnographic field research in the Department of Sociology. He has published a case study of a classic juvenile court, Judging Delinquents: Context and Process in Juvenile Court, and continues to follow key changes and developments in contemporary juvenile justice.

Debt and Forgiveness:
United States Consumer Bankruptcy Policy

Kenneth N. Klee, Law

This seminar begins by briefly examining the role of debt and forgiveness in the ancient world and in United States history. The bulk of the seminar focuses on consumer bankruptcy policy under the 1978 Bankruptcy Code and recent congressional reform initiatives. This seminar meets every other week for 2 hours. The meeting schedule is: 10/1, 10/15, 10/29, 11/19, and 12/3.

Professor Klee joined the UCLA Law faculty in July 1997 after teaching bankruptcy and reorganization law as a visiting lecturer since 1979. He taught at Harvard Law School during 1995-1996 academic year as the Robert Braucher Visiting Professor from Practice.

Endangered Languages and You
Paul V. Kroskrity, Anthropology

This seminar treats the topic of language endangerment by identifying a worldwide problem and examining the possible responses, which might partially rectify the situation. By some estimates, less than 20% of the world's languages will survive beyond the present century. Global economic forces and other political economic factors are clearly responsible for a pattern of language shift which threatens most of the world's indigenous and subnational languages which are not identified with particular nation-states or which lack international currency. But what is the human cost of such language death both to the speakers of these languages and to us as thoughtful world citizens? In this seminar we discuss what are the consequences of language death and what can be done to provide alternatives for those communities who seek to preserve their distinctive linguistic resources.

Paul Kroskrity has conducted long term fieldwork in two Native American communities--the Western Mono of Central California and the Arizona Tewa over the past 30 years. This research has lead to body of original research on such topics as language ideology, language and identity, and language revitalization. Kroskrity is a Professor of Anthropology and has served as the chair of UCLA's Interdepartmental Program in American Indian Studies since 1985.

Women Rebuilding Los Angeles: Creating
an Alternative Vision of Urban Development
in the Post-April 1992 Environment

Judith Magee, History

On the evening of April 29, 1992, Los Angeles burned. Ten years later have the citizens of Los Angeles rebuilt a city that is based on diversity? This seminar provides a perspective on the issues that precipitated the social crisis that became manifest on April 29, 1992, and the issues that have followed from it. In particular the seminar will examine how some women, in part, reconstructed Los Angeles neighborhoods, communities, and buildings, places that often have bitter political histories but offer important public memories. Students will connect the civil unrest of April 1992 to Los Angeles' urban future, coming to an understanding of how the themes of ethnic, labor, and women's history intersect. Specifically, students will examine the history of two buildings and two neighborhoods: Bidy Mason's homestead, the Embassy Auditorium, Little Tokyo, and South Central.

Magee is ABD in American History at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has taught Asian American Women, U.S. History Since 1865, and Feminist Movements in the United States at the University of Colorado. Currently she handles the recruitment and admissions process for the Department of Urban Planning.

Slide Rules, Punch Cards, and Relatives:
How Computing Used to be Done

David D. McFarland, Sociology

Long before contemporary computers there were abaci and addiators, sectors and slide rules, early computers the size of a building - as well as the original digital devices better known as fingers. This seminar will study highlights of such developments of early computational devices and techniques, especially those relevant to contemporary social science computation.

David McFarland is an Associate Professor of Sociology. He is completing a book on Mathematical Sociology and beginning his next project, on antecedents of contemporary computing, with special attention to kinds of computation done (or not done) by social scientists since about 1890.
  
After-School Movement in L.A. Public Schools: Challenges and Controversy
Kathy O'Byrne, Psychology

Public schools in Los Angeles are under scrutiny for low student test scores, high student-teacher ratios and i nsufficient resources. The after-school program movement has been designed to address some of these challenges. Take a look at the facts about the state of our schools, the controversy over how best to serve children and families, and the efforts from the public and private sector to address these issues. The course includes guest speakers and opportunities to participate in local after-school programs in middle schools.

Kathy O'Byrne is a licensed psychologist and Executive Director of the UCLA Center for Experiential Education and Service Learning (CEESL). She works with a Los Angeles County collaborative task force formed to design, implement and evaluate after-school programs for middle schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. The Center (CEESL) places UCLA undergraduates in after-school programs through service-learning courses in several disciplines, credit-bearing internships and educational award programs.

Legal Recognition of Race and Ethnicity: A Critical Appraisal Using U.S. and African Examples
Frances Olsen, Law

This seminar draws on African examples to evaluate "colorblindness" in American Constitutional interpretation. It analyses the history of legal recognition of race and ethnicity in the U.S. and the (pseudo-)science of defining race. We then explore relationships between ideas of the "Black Power" movement (1960s and 70s) and contemporary Critical Race Theory. Finally, we examine the debate in Ethiopia regarding the extensive legal significance their 1995 Constitution gives to ethnicity and the contrasting debate in Mauritius regarding "communities." This class will meet every other week for two hours, beginning First Week. The five meeting dates are: October 2, October 16, October 30, November 13, and November 27.

Frances Olsen has taught at 7 universities in the United States, 6 universities in Europe, 5 universities in Asia; and she has just returned from teaching Ethiopian Constitutional Law at Addis Ababa University, Africa. She has talked at some 200 universities and published in 2 dozen countries. She represented the Native Americans at the last major uprising (Wounded Knee, South Dakota, 1973), participated in both U.N. Conferences on Women (Beijing, 1 995), and has been teaching a course on Civil Disobedience at the Law School the past 3 years.

Scientific Revolutions
Theodore Porter, History

We often think of science as advancing methodically and relentlessly. But in one of the most influential academic books of the last half century, Thomas Kuhn argued that scientists are quite tenacious, and in a way, conservative, in holding to their core assumptions, and that scientific chance sometimes occurs by radical breaks, or revolutions. We will read that book, along with a few papers about key episodes of scientific change, and talk about how our understanding of science should change in the light of its history.

Theodore Porter teaches history of science in the Department of History at UCLA. He has written books and articles about how the ideas and practices of science participate in the larger cultural and political environment, and especially about the uses of numbers, measures, and statistics in science and in public life.

Music and Social Identity
William G. Roy, Sociology

Music has an uncanny ability to bring together people of different life experiences and parts of society. However, it can also reinforce the social boundaries that separate people. All music carries connotations of particular races, classes, and genders. People often think that various types of music sound like African-American, Hispanic, or white music, or sounds masculine or feminine. At the same time, music can be a way that people express membership in a race, gender, or class. This seminar will explore how different styles and genres from classical to hip hop (with special focus on blues and heavy metal) are imbued with social identities. It will draw on sociological and musicological literature. Classes will both discuss the readings and listen to music that exemplifies the concepts from the reading.

William G. Roy is a Professor of Sociology. His Publications include Socializing Capital: The Rise of the Large Industrial Corporation in America, and Making Societies: The Social Construction of Our World. He has won the Distinguished Teaching Award at UCLA and the Distinguished Contribution to Teaching Award from the American Sociological Association.

Deconstructing Our Reactions to Disability and Difference: Brain, Body, and Society
Catherine Sammons, Social Welfare/
Jayne Spencer, History

Diversity in the human experience is a major theme of our era, especially in the realm of disability differences. Social policy dictates values of equality and inclusion, but the daily reality of interpersonal relationships is far more complicated. How can we view disability in its proper context, reconciling emotional responses with cultural values? This seminar will take a closer look at the interface of social justice, community customs, and personal reactions. Join us for lively discussions and an interdisciplinary sampling of how culture, family, peers, and environment inform our understanding and reactions to disability differences. This course will meet for 1 hour 45 minutes on the following dates: 10/1, 10/15, 10/29, 11/12, 11/19, and 12/3.

Dr. Catherine Sammons, a clinician and manager in the Neuropsychiatric Hospital, is also affiliated with the Department of Social Welfare, School for Public Policy and Social Research. Jayne Spencer lectures in History and Latin American Studies, and is a faculty member of the Tarjan Center for Developmental Disabilities at UCLA. As Chair of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Disability, she currently works with UCLA faculty on the initiative to create a Disability Studies minor at UCLA. She conducted a field study in Venezuela in 1990 on independent living strategies for people with limited mobility.

Gun Control
Eugene Volokh, Law   [homepage]

Would gun control make us more or less safe? This class tries to take a calm, evenhanded look at the data -- not just the slogans -- involved in the gun control debate.

Eugene Volokh specializes in constitutional law, copyright law, cyberspace law, and firearms regulation policy at the School of Law. Before going into teaching in 1994, he clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.




Perceiving Our Visual World: A Bird's Eye View
Aaron Blaisdell, Psychology

We will explore how we humans perceive the world around us by trying to understand how pigeons view the same world. How much of the world that we see is "out there" and how much is a useful construction of our brains? Do humans and other animals share a similar world or is there more than one way to see the world? Answers to these comparative questions can illuminate philosophical and scientific problems about our perception of reality.

Aaron Blaisdell is an Assistant Professor in Psychology in Learning and Behavior at UCLA. His primary research interests are Pavlovian processes of learning and memory, and avian visual perception and cognition.

Keeping Safe, Staying Sane:
Sexual Orientation and Health

Susan Cochran, Epidemiology

Until 1974, health care professionals considered homosexuality a mental illness. But since then scientific understanding has changed radically. This seminar will explore emerging research findings, including methods to reduce HIV infections among gay men, models of gay affirmative health care, and effects of social discrimination on lesbian/gay men's mental and physical health.

Susan D. Cochran is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, and the Department of Statistics. Jointly trained in both clinical psychology and epidemiology, her research interests focus on the physical and mental health of lesbians and gay men and the social and intrapsychic factors that influence their access to and use of preventive health services.

Advanced Life Support Systems
for Space Travel

Audrey E. Cramer, Ethology and Ecology

Occupying space for an extended period of time, either on a lunar base, the International Space Station, or on a humanned mission to Mars, requires the development of Advanced Life Support Systems (ALS). Because it is not economically feasible to completely supply oxygen and food to a space crew for an extended period of time, systems will need to be developed that produce food, purify water, detoxify waste, and re-supply oxygen in an enclosed, controlled bioregenerative system. This seminar will discuss and explore the unique problems that arise with the long-term occupation of space, including gray water use, carbon dioxide recycling, plant growth and production, protein consumption, sodium recycling, and hydroponics agriculture.

Audrey E. Cramer is the Director of the Undergraduate Research Center for the Life and Physical Sciences in the College of Letters and Science. Her primary research focuses on the cognitive processes used in the choice of foraging routes by vervet monkeys. She has also conducted research for NASA at the Kennedy Space Center on Bioregenerative Systems for long-term space missions. She is currently a member of the Science and Technical Advisory Panel for the Air and Space Gallery at the California Science Center.

Stress! Causes, Symptoms, and Remedies
Carlos V. Grijalva, Psychology

This seminar is intended to gain a better understanding of "stressors" in our lives and the impact they can have on mental and physical health. The causes and symptoms of stress will be examined and stress management techniques will be highlighted.

Carlos V. Grijalva is a professor of behavioral neuroscience in the department of psychology. He has been on the faculty since 1982 and has taught both undergraduate and graduate courses in behavioral neuroscience, and on the psychobiology of emotion and stress. He served as Associate Dean in the Division of Honors and Undergraduate Program, College of Letters and Science from 1991-1996.

Serendipity in Science
Herbert D. Kaesz, Chemistry and Biochemistry

An inquiry into unexpected discoveries in science that have had significant impact on society and an analysis of the circumstances, which brought these about. Serendipitous i.e. fortuitous observations become significant only where the observer can recognize or correctly interpret the discovery as in the case of the mold metabolite penicillin discovered by Fleming in 1928 giving rise to a new class of antibiotics. Discoveries in medicine which derive from an indigenous oral tradition prior to their entry into Western European practice will also be discussed. A librarian will address the seminar regarding use of library and computerized search facilities. Grading will be based on student's active participation in discussions and on the quality of at least one oral and written report.

Professor Kaesz was born in Alexandria, Egypt and emigrated to the U.S. when he was seven years old. Prof. Kaesz began his career at UCLA in 1960, and his research interests are in the field of organometallic chemistry. In 1998, Prof. Kaesz received the American Chemical Society Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry. His hobbies include woodworking and hiking.
  
Utopian Visions of Human Biology
John Merriam, Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology

Nature-nurture, eugenics, genetic determinism, gene therapy and, now, human cloning continue to produce controversy. We will evaluate the scientific merit of different positions in that controversy, and the moral and ethical limits over using DNA science.

Professor Merriam has been a professor of genetics since 1968, and teaches introductory genetics, advanced human genetics and advanced genetics laboratory of model organism regularly. His graduate training emphasized combining human genetics with studies on model organisms.

The Perils of Living in Space: An Introduction to the Earth's Space Environment
Mark Moldwin, Earth and Space Sciences

With the International Space Station, mankind has taken the first step of permanently living in space beyond the protective cocoon of the Earth's atmosphere. This seminar will explore the Earth's space environment and the dangers that current and future astronauts and satellite systems face. Discussion topics include interplanetary and interstellar travel, the prospects for extra-terrestrial life, and how the variable Sun influences the Earth's space environment.

Mark Moldwin is a Professor of Space Physics within the Department of Earth and Space Sciences and the Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA. He studies the space environment of the Sun and its interaction with the Earth using both ground-based and space-based instrumentation.

Preserving Biodiversity: Public Policy
and Science

Philip Rundel, Molecular Medicine /Organismic Biology, Ecology, and Evolution

Preserving biodiversity in the world today requires both effective public policies as well as a scientific approach to ecosystem management. This seminar will focus on issues of legislative mandates, resource management policies, and scientific research in developing and implementing effective programs for preserving biodiversity. Issues and problems will be considered from international and national levels to concerns locally in the Santa Monica Mountains. This seminar meets every other week for 2 hours.

Dr. Rundel has been a University of California faculty member for more than 30 years. His research focuses on adaptations of plant species to environmental stress in Mediterranean-type environments, deserts, and tropical forest ecosystems. He has worked extensively on aspects of conservation planning and implementation here in California, as well as in Chile, Southeast Asia, and South Africa.

Science and Politics: What We Have Here
is a Failure to Communicate

Ashwin Vasavada, Earth and Space Sciences

Many of society's foremost challenges, such as climate change, bioterrorism, or energy policy, are science-based but have broad social, economic, and environmental impacts. This course will examine how science policy decisions are made, how science and scientists influence (or fail to influence) decision-making, and how the cultures of scientists and policymakers clash. We will look in detail at a few current issues by studying Congressional transcripts, policy reports, and scientific articles, developing an understanding of both the policies and the underlying science. Throughout, we will see the many opportunities for science, math, and engineering majors to serve society in traditional and non-traditional ways.

Ashwin Vasavada is a planetary scientist in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences (starting Fall 2002). He recently returned from Washington, DC, where he spent a year working as a Science Fellow in the U.S. House of Representatives, working on issues including bioterrorism, climate change, Federal R&D funding, and science education. His planetary science research has focussed on polar ices on Mercury and the Moon, the weather on Jupiter, and the climate history of Mars.





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