First Year SEMINARS

Jeanne Britton
Ph.D., Comparative Literature,
University of Chicago

Britton’s research examines connections between the philosophical tradition of sympathy in novels of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She also studies British and French literature, and has an interest in the history of science. She previously taught at the University of Chicago.

Monstrosity in European Literature and Film
What is a monster? What are the cultural concerns over the concept of monstrosity, from the Renaissance to the 20th century? And how do we understand cannibals, Frankenstein, and Dracula? This course examines novels, films, and drama in answering these questions.

Lane DeNicola
Ph.D., Science and Technology
Studies, Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute

Lane DeNicola’s expertise encompasses the social and political dimensions of scientific visualization, immersive media, and information technology, especially geospatial systems. He previously taught at Washington State University Vancouver.

iPod Politics: Technological Design and Everyday Life
This course is an introduction to critical analysis of information technology, everyday experience, and approaches to technological design. It looks at the use and design of technologies common in the United States, both as a social phenomenon and political process.

Nancy Kang
Ph.D., English Literature,
University of Toronto

Kang specializes in ethnic literatures of the United States, particularly Native American, African American, and Asian American writing of the 20th century. Her research examines interracialism, hybridity, vernacular culture, and the ways in which certain historical events have prompted solidarity and friction between these minority groups. She previously taught at the University of British Columbia.

Spirit and Reason, Roots and Wings: Negotiating American Indian Identity
For Native American writers, colonization, stereotyping, and cultural erasure have had lasting effects. This course looks at the transformative power of language and how it helps us understand diversity, as well as challenge problematic definitions of American Indian selfhood.

Michael Lundblad
Ph.D., English Language and
Literature, University of Virginia

Lundblad’s research focuses on 19th- and 20th-century American literature, cultural studies, and critical theory, as well as on environmental and animality studies. He has taught at the universities of Virginia and Nevada.

The Nature of the Beast in American Culture
This course explores the role of beasts and animals in American literature and film, focusing on the question, “What kind of beast may be lurking inside of you, barely kept in check by your self-control?” Issues of environmentalism, social justice, animal rights, and race and gender are considered in context of this course.

William Robert
Ph.D., Religious Studies,
University of California, Santa Barbara

Robert’s research encompasses modes of religious experience at the intersection of mysticism, politics, and gender. He coined the term “technomystical confession” to describe the cultural displacement of confessional religious sites and practices by the mystical forces of technology. Prior to SU, he taught at Louisiana State University.

Love, Death, and Other Passions
Passions are extreme experiences that bring human beings up to and beyond their limits. Through the lens of religion, psychoanalysis, and sexuality, this course explores love and death as “passions” through which people experience the impossible.

Fereshteh Toosi
M.F.A., Art,
Carnegie Mellon University

Tossi is an interdisciplinary visual artist whose teaching assumes no boundaries between research, theory, and practice. She recently completed a one-year appointment at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, where she was an instructor of digital media.

Salt Stories
Using ethnographic methods and writing, this course explores the history of place and community art projects in the Syracuse area. Its emphasis is on the history of Onondaga County and the indigenous peoples of Central New York, as well as the environmental health of Onondaga Lake.

Alicia Ory DeNicola
Ph.D., Anthropology,
Syracuse University

Alicia DeNicola is an anthropologist of work who bridges the gap between political and economic structures and the ethnographies of local identities through work and labor. A former instructor at Skidmore College in New York and Williamette University in Oregon, she does comparative research in the U.S. Pacific Northwest and northern India.

Self, Identity, and Work
Who are you, and how do you know? Do the choices we make, the movements of our bodies through space, or the works we embark on during our lifetimes tell us and others who we are? Are you your work? Using anthropological methods of inquiry, this course explores cross-cultural themes of identity, hierarchy, and power through everyday practices of work and labor.

Karen Hall
Ph.D., English, Syracuse University

Hall studies cultural texts through literary contexts, and examines imperialism and empire through popular culture and new media forms. She previously taught at Ithaca College in New York.

Let’s Play War: Kids, Popular Culture, and Practicing Citizenship
War toys abound in the lives of American children. The course explores toys as texts, the audience reception of toys, and the role war-play has in shaping the perception of self and our nation.

Jenna Loyd
Ph.D., Geography,
University of California, Berkeley

Loyd’s research encompasses comparative and multiracial urban studies, feminist and anti-racist theories of health and social reproduction, and the political geographies of social change. She previously taught at California State University, Fullerton.

Whose City? Urban Living and Global Justice
A majority of the world’s population lives in urban areas. How are people living in a time in which wealth is sharply polarized within and among nations? Who lives, who dies, and who decides? Should there be human rights for the living? Is there such a thing as “overpopulation?” What about ecology? This course investigates these and other questions as they pertain to roles of the state, large-scale economic interests, and global grassroots movements struggling to create an alternative world.

Daniel Prosterman
Ph.D., History,
New York University

Prosterman specializes in the meaning of democracy in urban America, from the Great Depression to the Cold War, placing his subjects within a global context. He previously taught at Yeshiva University in New York.

The Culture of Fear in Cold War America
By reviewing a diverse array of evidence, including comic books, movies, and government propaganda, this course looks at the influence of the Cold War on American society and, more broadly, considers the domestic nature of so-called “foreign” conflicts.

Vincent Stephens
Ph.D., American Studies,
University of Maryland, College Park

Stephens’ research examines how gender and sexual identity inform issues of citizenship and the development of ethical cultures within subcultures. He has taught at Bowling Green State University in Ohio and at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Intimate Citizenships:
“Feeling National” through Popular Culture
This course explores how popular depictions of race, sexuality, spirituality, and kinship identify one’s sense of national belonging. Assignments and discussions draw connections between the popular media and themes of skin color, desire, nationhood, spirituality, and kinship.