Archives
2007-2008
Across Cultures in a Global World
2006-2007
Humanities in a Global & Digital World
2005-2006
Opening up the World
2004-2005
A Quarter for your Thoughts
2003-2004
2002-2003
2001-2002

The Danz Courses in the Humanities provide unique opportunities for University of Washington first-year students to engage in challenging, cross-disciplinary work. These courses introduce students to the study of the humanities (including literature, history, philosophy, cultural studies, and film) and build the intellectual foundation for a liberal arts education through the study of human thought, values, beliefs, creativity, and culture. Teams of talented faculty from diverse disciplines bring their perspectives to the Danz Courses in the Humanities, encouraging students to become active and creative learners within the university community. Offered for VLPA, I&S, and Writing credit, a Danz Course is offered Autumn, Winter, and Spring Quarters.

The Danz Courses in the Humanities are made possible by the generous financial support of Fredric Danz, a College of Arts and Sciences alumnus (‘40) and longtime benefactor of the humanities at the University of Washington with additional thanks to the Graduate School for their support of the graduate student teacher assistants.

Danz Course Archives

Autumn 2007 • Humanities 204 (VLPA, I&S, W, 5 credits)
The Role of Perspective in History, Science, and Design

Axel Roesler (Visual Communication Design)
Phillip Thurtle (Comparative History of Ideas)

Course syllabus (pdf)

Powerful, influential, and elegant, the discovery of perspective marks a turning point across the cultures of the world. By linking instruments with maps and concepts, its invention transformed the art and science of navigation while redrawing the relationship between people and their environment. In this course we will explore the role of perspective in history, science, geography, knowledge, and design.

Perspective techniques have allowed scientists to explore micro- and macro- levels of the world. They enable photographers to show some aspects of an image while omitting other parts of the picture. In a digital and global age of omnipresent and proliferating images, perspective techniques inform how we see ourselves and others. At the same time, they raise questions about objectivity by demonstrating the constraints and limits on any form of vision, knowledge, or expertise. In this course students will discover the principles of perspective, their implications, and they will apply perspective techniques in the critique and design of artifacts, plans, images, and narratives.

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Winter 2008 • HUM 206 (VLPA, I&S, W, 5 credits)
Latinos Shaping U.S. Popular Music

Michelle Habell-Pallán (Women Studies) and
Shannon Dudley (Ethnomusicology)

Course Website | e-flyer (pdf) | Undergraduate Advising Podcast

Latino contributions to popular music in the United States have too often been relegated to the margins of a narrative dominated by African and European Americans—an overly black and white view of our musical history. Latin music is often portrayed as an exotic resource for “American” musicians, as suggested by pianist Jelly Roll Morton's reference to "the Latin Tinge." This course turns that phrase and that perspective on its head. "American Sabor" addresses problems of cultural representation that concern an increasingly visible and influential community in the U.S.

We will document the roles of U.S. Latino musicians as interpreters of Latin American genres. We will also highlight their roles as innovators within genres normally considered indigenous to the U.S., such as rock and roll, R & B, jazz, country/western, and hip hop. The course distinguishes regional centers of Latino population and music production—exploring unique histories, artists, and musical styles. At the same time it draws out broader patterns of boundary crossing, language, social struggle, generational difference, racial/ethnic/class/gender identification, and other factors that shape the experiences of U.S. Latinos everywhere.

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Spring 2008 • HUM 208 (VLPA, I&S, W, 5 credits)
Violence, Myth, and Memory:
Southeast Asia at the Crossroads of Modernity

Francisco "Kiko" Benitez (Comparative Literature) and
Laurie Sears (History)

Course Syllabus (PDF)

This course is built around three popular films: Apocalypse Now: The Director's Cut (2001, orig. 1979), The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), and Fight For Us (1989). We will use these films as starting points to explore ideas of violence, narrative, and global modernity in U.S. relations with Viet Nam, the Philippines, and Indonesia. We will trace the ways in which these films evoke founding myths of Southeast Asian societies, regulate ethnic and religious tensions, and reflect anxieties about modernity.

For Viet Nam, we will read Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War to investigate celebrated stories of female courtesans who serve as metaphors for the beleaguered nation. We will read Jessica Hagedorn's novel Dream Jungle about two seemingly distinct events in the Philippines under Marcos: the discovery of a Stone Age tribe and the filming of Apocalypse Now. We will look at how colonial encounters (with both Spain and the U.S.) and the Catholic passion play serve as a complex founding myth for lowland Filipino society. Turning to Indonesia, we will see how the film and novel, The Year of Living Dangerously, resembles a Javanese shadow play. The movie and novel explore the U.S. and British involvement in the fall of Indonesia's first president Soekarno in 1945-68 and the violence that accompanied his fall.

Autumn 2006, Humanities 201
Diagnosing Injustice: Ethics, Power, and Global Health
Sara Goering (Philosophy) and Janelle Taylor (Anthropology)

To understand and to address illness, we tend to look first to the body of the individual sufferer. Yet if we look instead to global patterns of power and inequality, illness comes into focus as a problem of injustice—and by the same token, it becomes clear how injustice can cause people to sicken, suffer, and die. This course highlighted the problem of global health disparities, and introduced students to conceptual tools from medical anthropology and medical ethics for critically analyzing health and illness in global, social, and ethical perspectives. What do we as citizens of a wealthy and powerful country, or as citizens of the world more generally, need to understand about the connections between power and health? What are our responsibilities? What are some of the complications and difficulties that arise in trying to implement solutions to global health problems—and what are some examples of positive and successful efforts? Such are the questions that guided our exploration of a range of specific topics, including poverty and structural violence, war and terror, and biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Course materials included films as well as readings, teaching methods included use of digital communications as well as more traditional methods, and discussions were enriched by several guest speakers.

Winter 2007 , Humanities 202
When Technologies are New
Philip Howard (Communication) and Simon Werrett (History)

New technologies have a big impact on cultures and communities, but these cultures and communities always adapt technologies in surprising ways. To explore the connections between scientific discovery and social change, this course will draw examples from both the rich history of engineering and the immediate modernity of digital technologies. What role do artists, science fiction writers, and philosophers have in shaping our collective assumptions of and aspirations for science? How is science itself culturally organized? From the development of gunpowder and armaments in China and Russia, to the opportunities for digital surveillance and resistance in Argentina and Tanzania, we will explore the social rhythms to the development of new technologies, analog and digital. This course has several objectives: to teach students about the dynamics of scientific exploration and social change; to give students cultural literacy and practical familiarity with new technologies, both analog and digital; and to inspire students to develop their own sophisticated critiques about the role of technology and innovation in society.

Spring 2007, Humanities 203
The World in Motion: Animation in Theory and Practice
Stephanie Andrews (DXARTS) and Phillip Thurtle (Comparative History of Ideas)


A 5-credit writing link—ENGL 197 K—was available for this course. Details

This class studied animation to explore what it means to live in a world of constant change and transformation. Students learned by viewing a diverse selection of animated work, reading about how media informs our perceptions of time and space, and working on creative projects. They finished the quarter with a piece of creative digital animation that developed the themes of the class in innovative directions. More specifically, students asked: What does it mean to be animated? What techniques are used to create the illusionary gestures of animation? How do animation practices differ in different parts of the world? How has time-based media developed in the West? How can technology expand our perceptions about animation? We spanned the globe from Africa to Asia to Europe, pondering what it means to live in an animated world and exploring possibilities for putting this world in motion.

Course website

Autumn 2005, Humanities 201
Becoming Strangers: Travel, Trust, and the Everyday
Brian Reed (English) and Phillip Thurtle (Comparative History of Ideas)

This course pondered occasions when everydayness gives way to oddity, strangeness, and unfamiliarity by examining scenarios in which people deliberately venture beyond their comfort zone, to risk vulnerability in quest of novelty. Because movement through space serves as a paradigm for leaving behind the familiar, travel figured centrally in class discussions. Students also discussed how the creative process itself can serve as a model for "making one's home strange," a means of doffing habit to perceive anew the world around us as well as exploring the interpersonal dimension of these voyages into the unknown. Course lectures introduced a great deal of diverse material at a fast pace and therefore twice-weekly discussion sections supplemented the course lectures throughout the quarter in order to provide opportunities for covering ideas, readings, and other materials in greater depth. To spark discussion, students were asked to turn in at least one question pertaining to course themes at every section. Students presented their final projects at a public reception in Mary Gates Hall. The development of this course was inspired in great part by the Summer Institute on the same theme.

Winter 2006, Humanities 202 (VLPA/I&S, 5 credits)
Violence, Myth, and Memory
Francisco "Kiko" Benitez (Comparative Literature) and Laurie Sears (History)

This course used three popular films--Apocalypse Now, The Year of Living Dangerously, and Perfumed Nightmare--as starting points to explore ideas of violence, narrative, and global modernity in U.S. relations with Viet Nam, the Philippines, and Indonesia. The faculty traced the ways in which these films evoke founding myths of Southeast Asian societies, regulate ethnic and religious tensions, and reflect anxieties about modernity. Through film and literature, students investigated the following topics:

• Vietnamese female courtesans who served as metaphors for the beleaguered nation
• Two historical events in the Philippines under Marcos (the discovery of a Stone Age tribe and the filming of Apocalypse Now)
• How colonial encounters with both Spain and the U.S. and the Catholic passion play serve as a complex founding myth for lowland Filipino society
• How the Year of Living Dangerously resembles a Javanese shadow play in which characters are modeled after mythical images drawn from Indic Mahabharata stories, as well as how the film depicts the U.S. and British involvement in the fall of Indonesia's first president Soekarno in 1965-66 and the violence that accompanied his fall.

For their final project, each student conducted an oral history interview with a member of the local Filipino, Vietnamese, or Indonesian American community, transcribed a section of the interview into a monologue, and then worked in groups of five or six to combine their individual monologues into six-minute "dramas." This course inspired Benitez and Sears to submit a proposal to the Ford Foundation under the rubric "Difficult Dialogues." It was successful and began in 2006-2007.

Spring 2006, Humanities 203 (VLPA/I&S, 5 credits)
Architectural and Cinematic Spaces
Yomi Braester (Comparative Literature) and Vikram Prakash (Architecture)

This course explored the ways in which buildings and films tell rich stories about our identity as members of specific communities in time and place. Each week focused on a different location--from the Forbidden City in Beijing to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem--and examined how architecture and cinema have defined the site's history and memory. Students learned how to excavate the multiple layers of material history, cultural symbolism, and subjective memory in architectural and cinematic spaces. The faculty also focused on the way places and films expose or cover up alternative narratives and how architects and filmmakers tease out the stories hidden in structures and images. They looked at how architects and filmmakers produce various orders of space and time. Throughout the quarter students screened films, read selected readings, and visited locations in the city both independently and with their sections. For the final assignment, students created short films that demonstrated two alternative readings of a particular space.

Autumn 2004, Humanities 101
Religious Fundamentalisms, Politics, and Media in America
David Domke (Communications) and Kari Tupper (Women Studies and Comparative History of Ideas)

This course examined three periods of American history in which "political fundamentalism" gained ascendancy. Explored were the social, political, legal, and economic contexts that gave rise to political fundamentalism, the relations between religion and politics among U.S. leadership, and the effects of these processes on citizens. The course developed a conceptual and practical understanding of how politics, religion, and media intersect in the United States, both historically and contemporarily. Interdisciplinary readings were drawn from political speeches, legal trials, media and historical accounts, and popular fiction.

Winter 2005, Humanities 102
Eye and Mind: Art, Science, and Perception
Elizabeth Rutledge (Diabetes Research Center, Molecular & Genetics Core) and Philip Thurtle (Comparative History of Ideas)

Taught by a molecular biologist and an historian of science and technology, this class encouraged students to consider the commonality in human understanding and observation through a study of "emergence" as a quality of living beings and a component of creative thinking. Students learned about the role of perception in art and the life sciences by concentrating on their provocative points of intersection. For instance, students were encouraged to explore how recent artists have used biological materials and how biology is now beginning to rely on pattern recognition in data analysis. Students were required to present their own research in the form of a final project.

Spring 2005, Humanities 103
Dante: Medieval Man in the New Millennium
Mary O'Neil (History) and Donna Yowell (Italian Studies)

Through a reading of Dante's Comedy as both a compendium of medieval thought and a paradoxically modern poem, students explored the ways in which the medieval and the modern converge rather than oppose one another. Writing as a fourteenth-century Florentine and an exile, Dante provides a vivid commentary on the divisiveness and possibilities of politics, the agony of civil wars, the corruption of the Papacy, the failures of Empire, and hopes for a new world order.

Autumn 2003, Humanities 101
Myth Narrative and the Quest for Identity
Gary Handwerk (Comparative Literature) and Michael Shapiro (Asian Languages & Literatures)

This course examined questions of human identity through close critical analysis of literary, artistic, and musical examples from across time and culture. Utilizing these varied sources, students focused on foundational questions of the humanities: what do we read for and why? what is aesthetic experience and what are its purposes? how have artistic and literary creations throughout history and from across the world contributed to our sense of identity in contemporary times? Selected readings included Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Aristotle, Poetics; Kalidasa, Shakuntala; excerpts from the Natyashastra, ascribed to Bharata; Shakespearian sonnets, medieval and Hindi lyric poetry; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony.

Winter 2004, Humanities 102
Religious Fundamentalisms, Politics, and Media in America
Kari Tupper (Women Studies and Comparative History of Ideas) and David Domke (Communications)

This course examined three periods of American history in which "political fundamentalism" gained ascendancy. Explored were the social, political, legal, and economic contexts that gave rise to political fundamentalism, the relations between religion and politics among U.S. leadership, and the effects of these processes on citizens. The course developed a conceptual and practical understanding of how politics, religion, and media intersect in the United States, both historically and contemporarily. Interdisciplinary readings were drawn from political speeches, legal trials, media and historical accounts, and popular fiction.

Spring 2004, Humanities 103
Contracts of the Heart: Gift and Sacrifice
Raimonda Modiano (Comparative Literature) and Martin Jaffee (Comparative Religion)

This course investigated the origins of culture, religion, and community by means of two foundational structures of exchange: gift and sacrifice. Through a broad survey of theories and practices of gift and sacrifice in ancient (Roman, Hebrew, Hindu and Islamic) and contemporary cultures, the course addressed whether gift and commodity exchange are opposed or congruent economies; whether conceptions of the sacred are inextricably linked with violence; whether the constitution of communities presupposes sacrificial scapegoats; and whether capital punishment may not be a modern version of ancient sacrificial rites. Readings included works by Aeschylus, Shakespeare, and Soren Kierkegaard, and material on interpretations in literature, religion, and art of the sacrifice of Abel by Cain, of Isaac by Abraham, and the sacrifice of Christ.
Autumn 2002, Humanities 101
Myth, Narrative and the Quest for Identity
Gary Handwerk (English and Comparative Literature) and Michael Shapiro (Asian Languages and Literature)

This course examined questions of human identity through close critical analysis of literary, artistic, and musical examples from across time and culture. Utilizing these varied sources, students focused on foundational questions of the humanities: what do we read for and why? what is aesthetic experience and what are its purposes? how have artistic and literary creations throughout history and from across the world contributed to our sense of identity in contemporary times? Selected readings included Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe; Sophocles, Oedipus Rex; Aristotle, Poetics; Kalidasa, Shakuntala; excerpts from the Natyashastra, ascribed to Bharata; Shakespearian sonnets, medieval and Hindi lyric poetry; Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony.

Winter 2003, Humanities 102
Significant Others: Masculinity and Femininity in Personal and Cultural Contexts
John Toews (History) and Kari Tupper (Women Studies and Comparative History of Ideas)

This course examined the ways in which intimate and familial relationships shape the development of masculine and feminine identities. Taking a transhistorical and interdisciplinary approach, students studied people whose work was shaped in relationship to significant others: husbands and wives, siblings, lovers, and parents and children. The course paired texts (representations of sculpture, painting, poetry, drama and film, fictional prose, essays, treatises, and letters) by women and men who were (and are) historical contemporaries to explore how conventions of masculinity and femininity can be bent or transformed by individual acts. Readings included works from such celebrated pairs as Heloise and Abelard, John Stuart Mill and Harriet Taylor Mill, Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, and Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.

Spring 2003, Humanities 103
Self and Society: Changing Conceptions of Humanity in the Ancient Mediterranean World
Scott Noegel (Near Eastern Languages and Civilization) and Sarah Stroup (Classics)

This course offered a comparative introduction to the intellectual, spiritual, and social life of the ancient Near Eastern and Greco-Roman worlds by exploring how the ancients, both in the Near East, Greece, and Rome conceived of themselves and of others and how they constructed notions of text, the divine, the body, gender and sexuality, space and time, nature, and human intervention. Students thought across geographic, chronological, and disciplinary boundaries and considered the similarities as well as distinctive aspects of the cultures studied. Selected primary readings included excerpts from Euripides, Hippocrates, Plutarch, Horace, Plato, the Bible, Cicero, Ovid, Sappho, and Homer.

In Vivo: Traversing Scientific and Artistic Observations of Life
Phillip Thurtle (Communications and CHID) and Elizabeth Rutledge (School of Medicine)

Taught by a molecular biologist and a scholar of digital communications, this class encouraged students to consider the commonality in all human understanding and observation. Students read scientific and critical theoretical explorations of life as emergent phenomena, attended a series of lecture/discussions, and designed and completed a research project exploring the topic of emergence.

Darwin's The Origin of the Species
Keith Benson (History) and Leah Ceccarelli (Speech Communication)

This class combined historical perspectives and rhetorical close reading in an examination of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species. Students studied the influences on the production of this revolutionary text as well as the influence it had on its many audiences. In doing so, students came to a deeper understanding of the history of this epochal work. At the same time, students came to recognize how persuasive arguments can be designed from the resources available to them.

From Citizen to Self: Constructions of the Family from Antiquity to the Renaissance
Catherine Connors (Classics) and Mary O'Neil (History)

Through a series of case studies drawing on literary, historical and philosophical texts from Greek and Roman antiquity through the Renaissance, this course explored changing definitions of the family and its relation to the individual and the state.