First-Year Seminar (101-6-22)

Topic

Islands

Instructors

Daniel Sepinuck Immerwahr
847/491-7418
Harris Hall - Room 225

Meeting Info

Kresge Centennial Hall 2-440: Tues, Thurs 3:30PM - 4:50PM

Overview of class

NOTE: This class is open only to first-year undergraduates selected to be Kaplan Humanities Scholars.

Throughout the past five hundred years, islands have witnessed some of humanity's most daring experiments in autonomy and revolution, alongside of some of its most ambitious experiments in domination and administration. Is there something about the nature or scale of islands that tempts such experimentation? One thing seems certain: islands loom large in the imagination. A large body of influential writing, painting, and dreaming about islands has accompanied—and even preceded—encounters with them. In this exciting and experimental course, taught by two award-winning teachers, we will examine islands in both their historical and their imaginary aspects, ranging across a wide variety of novels, plays, movies and historical texts. We'll study islands as utopias, colonies, refuges, social laboratories, revolutionary spaces, objects of "discovery," centers of power, prisons, legal anomalies, and, most recently, harbingers of our environmental fate.

Course Outings

You might not associate Chicago with islands, but the city actually has three (of very different sorts!): Goose Island, Northerly Island, and a neighborhood officially known as "The Island." We will make a class trip to at least one to explore up close how it fits with our course themes. We will also visit the Regenstein Halls of the Pacific (Chicago Field Museum) and attend the Chicago Shakespeare Theater's dazzling new production of Shakespeare's The Tempest. Note: The Kaplan Institute pays for these outings.

Class Materials (Suggested)

Sample Texts may include:

William Shakespeare, The Tempest

Aimé Césaire, Une Tempête

Shawna Yang Ryan, Green Island

Epeli Hau'ofa, "Our Sea of Islands"

Susan Buck-Morss, Hegel, Haiti, and Modern History

R. L. Stevenson, Treasure Island

Ian Fleming, Dr. No

Benh Zeitlin (dir.), Beasts of the Southern Wild

Rom Clements and John Musker (dir.), Moana

David Vine, Island of Shame

Kathy Jetñil-Kijiner, video poems.

Craig Santos Perez, from unincorporated territory

Bob Marley, Catch a Fire and Burnin'

Marlon James, A Brief History of Seven Killings

Ishirō Honda (dir.), Godzilla

Thor Heyerdahl, Kon-Tiki

Thomas Cole II, "(The) Bikini: Embodying the Bomb"

Raymond Craib, Adventure Capitalism

Class Notes

NOTE: This class is open only to first-year undergraduates selected to be Kaplan Humanities Scholars.

Class Attributes

WCAS First-Year Seminar

Enrollment Requirements

Enrollment Requirements: Reserved for First Year & Sophomore only
Add Consent: Department Consent Required
Drop Consent: Department Consent Required