Semester Specific Course
Descriptions
Fall 2008
AFS 106 A/ ARAB 101 A: Elementary
Arabic w/Lab
This
course is designed to develop students’ proficiency and communication in Modern
Standard Arabic in the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and
writing. The instructor will teach
modern standard Arabic needed in any Arabic-speaking community to read books,
newspapers, street signs and other official documents as well as listen to
radio, TV and public speaking.
Activities will include reading and writing Arabic letters, joining
letters into words and identifying letters in words, very basic Arabic grammar
and culture lessons about the Arab world, traditions and cultures. After each unit, students will have a quiz
and there will be 2 exams (midterm and final).
AFS 247 A/HIST
247 A: SPTP- Conflict in
Conflict
is a word that often comes to mind in contemporary discussions about the
African continent. But what do we mean by conflict in
AFS 347 A/HIST
347 A: SPTP -The City in
While
many African cities are relatively recent products, other areas of the
continent have urban histories far into the distant past. In this seminar we
will explore the diverse nature of urban life over nearly half a millennium of
African history. Topics include environment and the historic growth of cities,
trade and cultural interaction, colonialism, popular culture and contemporary
socio-economic issues.
ANTHROPOLOGY
ANTH 247 A: SPTP-Human Osteology
This
course provides students advanced and in-depth training in human skeletal anatomy.
Each bone in the body will be examined in great detail with emphasis on bone
biology, comparative anatomy, biomechanics, evolution, growth and development,
health and disease, demography, and secular change. Special emphasis is placed
on the basic methodology utilized in skeletal identification for bioarchaeological and forensic investigations. Students
will learn to identify and reconstruct skeletal material by utilizing basic
laboratory protocols. This course is intended for students who are serious
about pursuing a career in forensic science, law/law enforcement, anthropology,
and health related fields.
ANTH
247 A: SPTP-Bones of Contention
Did humans really evolve in Africa? Are “Hobbits” Human? Did people in the past
practice body modification? Do diseases affect the skeleton? How were ancient
surgical procedures performed? How do anthropologists go about studying these
topics? How do anthropologists answer these contested questions? The study of
the human skeleton is a major aspect of biological anthropology. Biological
anthropologists study the biology, evolution, and variation of the human
skeleton to examine the interaction between biology, culture, and the natural
environment. From these studies, anthropologists are able to reconstruct the biocultural history of past populations and learn about the
health and diversity of living populations. In this course, students will learn
about the bones of the body, learn to identify, reconstruct, and analyze human
bones, and learn to place the human skeleton in anthropological context. This
course is recommended for students interested in forensics, law, anthropology,
and health related fields.
ANTH 247 B: SPTP-Human Variation
This
course provides a broad survey of the study of human variation from a biocultural perspective. The diversity, distribution, and
adaptive significance of genetic, physiological, anatomical, and behavioral
differences between and within populations will provide the foundation for
studying the evolutionary basis of human variation. Topics to be covered in
class include simple and complex genetic traits, human adaptation to disease
and extreme climates, the "race” concept, sexual dimorphism, growth and
development, and human ecology. This course is intended for students who are
serious about pursuing a career in anthropology, biomedical science, and other
related fields.
ARAB 101 A/AFS
106 A: Elementary Arabic w/Lab
This
course is designed to develop students’ proficiency and communication in Modern
Standard Arabic in the four skills: listening, speaking, reading and
writing. The instructor will teach
modern standard Arabic needed in any Arabic-speaking community to read books,
newspapers, street signs and other official documents as well as listen to
radio, TV and public speaking.
Activities will include reading and writing Arabic letters, joining
letters into words and identifying letters in words, very basic Arabic grammar
and culture lessons about the Arab world, traditions and cultures. After each unit, students will have a quiz
and there will be 2 exams (midterm and final).
ASIAN STUDIES
This
course will examine a variety of source materials, from accounts of traditional
secret societies to modern crime reports, to provide contexts for study of the
Triad phenomenon as it has evolved in
Through
reading and examining masterpieces of modern Chinese fiction and
internationally acclaimed Chinese films against the historical context, this
course seeks to improve students’ understanding of Chinese culture and society
since 1911. It also tries to enhance students’ interests and skills in reading
and analysis of Chinese fiction and film.
BIOCH 107 A: Science of Food
Microwave
dinners, potato chips and cookie dough mixes bear little resemblance to the
food humans ate during most of our evolution.
In this course, students will learn how our bodies use the food we eat,
and why we need particular nutrients.
They will then examine several modern agricultural and industrial
practices related to our food including transgenic crops/animals, cloning
livestock and sugar
and fat substitutes. They will learn how scientists evaluate these new
products/techniques, and the impact they have on our food, our ecosystem, and
on us. Students will gain the skills and
confidence to read popular scientific literature and use it as a starting point
to become informed enough to make an educated assessment of issues related to
science.
BIOLOGY
BIOL 101 A:
General Biology
The
three semester exams for this course will be administered in the evening. Dates for the exams will be announced on the
first day of class and students who take this course will be expected to
arrange their schedules so as to be available for these examination periods
outside of normally scheduled class time.
BIOL 121 A:. The Natural World w/Lab. (the course will have a CBL component where
a number of labs will be conducted on the St.Regis
Mohawk reservation)
A field biology-ecology course with laboratory for
non-majors emphasizing the plants and animals of the Northeast. The course
focuses on ecological factors and processes affecting individual organisms,
communities and ecosystems. Students visit a variety of aquatic and terrestrial
habitats to study local ecosystems and to learn the natural history of local
plants and animals and how to identify them. Students also learn how to conduct
a scientific study and record observational data. This semester, students will
also participate in a community service project where they will volunteer at
the Mohawk Freedom School on the St. Regis Mohawk reservation. Volunteer
activities will be integrated into the lab component and occur during the lab
time slot. This course does not count toward the biology majors, but does count
toward the outdoor studies minor and the NSC with lab distribution credit.
BIOL 227 A/B: Mammalogy
Mammalogy is a fun and field intensive
course. Mammals tend not to be very
active between
BIOL 247 E/F: SPTP-Forest Ecology
Forest
ecology provides the biological foundation for the sustainable management of
forests. This course will provide an introduction to the ecological
composition, structure, and function of forest ecosystems. Lectures will
emphasize interactions between the living and non-living components of forests,
the role of forests in global ecology, and the management of forest resources.
Labs will have a strong field component and will examine the ecology of local
forests with techniques commonly used by forest ecologists and land managers. Three hours of lecture and three hours of laboratory per week.
Prerequisites: Biology 101,102.
BIOL 247
G/PHYS 247 A: SPTP-Biophysics
Biophysics
is the study of physical processes in biological systems, and the use of
physical techniques to study biological problems.This
course will introduce biophysics from both directions. After World War II, many physicists applied
their battery of techniques to structural problems in biology. In the first
half of the course, we will study some of their successes, including the
structures of DNA, viruses and cell membranes, and the sliding filament model
of muscle contraction. In each of these
examples there is an apparent relationship between molecular structure and
biological function. In the second half
of the course we will study more recent structural and physiological techniques
and the biophysics of systems such as molecular machines and biological
self-assembly.
BIOL 347 D/GEOL 347
B: SPTP- Insect Origins
This
course will use modern understandings of insect morphology, behavior and
ecology to consider evolution of insect Orders from the Devonian to the
Holocene. Insects are arguably the
invertebrate group that most seriously affects terrestrial life today, including
our own. This has been true for 250
million years, a fact which has many implications for the direction of
terrestrial evolution. This will be a hands-on investigation course. Insect diversity will be emphasized by study
of the living fauna. Data from the geologic record of the Insecta,
including interpretations of feeding styles made from feeding traces on fossil
leaves, will provide a means for relating modern and ancient forms and their
probable ecologies. Co-evolution between
insects and plants and vertebrates and insects will provide a theme for
discussion.
BIOL
347 A/NRSCI 347 A/C: SPTP-Drugs and the
Brain w/ Lab or without Lab
Psychoactive
drugs have historically been used for recreational as well as therapeutic
purposes. This course will focus on how
such drugs modify nervous system function and human behavior. The neurochemical and behavioral techniques used to study drug
action will be addressed. In addition, students will learn how drugs are
metabolized by the body (pharmacokinetics), how drugs act (pharmacodynamics)
and how they affect behavior (psychopharmacology). They will gain a
comprehensive understanding of the neurotransmitter systems of the brain and
how different drugs affect these systems.
We will cover all the major drug classes including stimulants (such as
cocaine, amphetamines and caffeine), opiates and alcohol. We will also discuss topics such as drug
addiction, drug abuse and the clinical use of drugs for the treatment of mood disorders,
anxiety and schizophrenia. The laboratory component will utilize the nematode
C. elegans as a model system to explore drug action.
Students will learn basic nematode research techniques and will then carry out
independent research projects for a great portion of the semester.
BIO 347E/F:
SPTP- Immunology
The
immune system boasts powerful mechanisms that protect the body from invading
pathogens. We will explore the
development and function of a diverse repertoire of T and B lymphocytes, the
range of powerful antibody-mediated responses, and the pre-programmed responses
of phagocytic cells and natural killer cells. These basic concepts will then be integrated
to analyze the immune system’s function in disease states including cancer,
organ transplant, autoimmunity, infectious disease, and immunodeficiency.
BIOL 447 A:
SPTP- Pharmacology
Pharmacology
is a survey course that introduces the student to the physiology and treatment
of the leading causes of death globally. It is my goal that the student’s take
away a detailed understanding of the pathophysiology
and the mechanisms of drug action at the systemic, cellular and molecular
levels. Moreover, the student's will gain insight into the policy and process
of drug discovery and development. The course requires the integration of
multiple disciplines including chemistry, cell biology and physiology.
no descriptions this semester.
no descriptions this semester.
CHINESE
CHIN
347A: SPTP- Advanced Mandarin Chinese
This course will offer advanced instruction in
speaking, reading, writing and listening in Mandarin Chinese. Appropriate for
any student with two years of Chinese or the equivalent.
COMMUNITY
BASED LEARNING
no descriptions this semester.
CS 348 A: SPTP- Database Systems
This course will cover the logical and physical
structure of databases including a thorough development of the relational model
and SQL (Structured Query Language). Topics include relational algebra,
database design, object oriented databases, XML, concurrency control, and
security. Course assignments and projects will use a real database management
system such as mySQL.
ECONOMICS
ECON 108
A/ENVS 108 A: Economics for Environmentalists.
An introduction to the basic concepts,
tools and theories of microeconomics that are applied to problems typically
associated with the use of the environment. The course begins with basic
microeconomic principles, advances to important economics
theories that are commonly used to describe environmental resource allocation
problems and concludes with an examination of case studies. Case studies
include air pollution and acid rain, destruction of rainforests, climate
change, alternative sources of energy and waste disposal. This course does not count
toward the major or minor in economics or economics-environmental studies and
is not open to declared economics majors or first-year students. If you have
received credit for ECON 100, you can not take this
course. Prerequisite ENVS 101 or permission of the
instructor. Also offered as ENVS 108.
ECON 247 A: SPTP- Investment Essentials 10/20-12/12 (0.5 units)
Essentials of Security Markets –
Covers the basics of equity and credit instruments, including the Efficient
Market Hypothesis, The structure of security markets, and the fundamentals of
long term investing. Daily discussions
emphasize current economic conditions and market activity.
ECON 148 A:SPTP-Ecnonomics and the
Presidency 10/20-12/12 (.5 unit)
Analyzes the major economic issues
raised in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Likely topics include interest rates and the Federal Reserve, budget
deficits and the national debt, free trade versus protectionism, immigration,
health care reform and social security
ECON 248 A and
B: Sophomore Seminar-Two Great Books (.5 unit)
This
course will meet for 90 minutes each week and will be a semester-long
discussion of two great books by economists chosen because the authors disagree
significantly on some of the most fundamental issues in social thought. This
fall we will read books by F.A. Hayek and John Kenneth Galbraith, two of the
most prolific and wide-ranging economists and social thinkers of the 20th
century. Our collective project in this class will be to understand what each
author is trying to argue, examine how and why they disagree with each other,
and to explore the relationships between their views and social issues of
contemporary concern. In addition, this
course will ask you to write and speak with each other as part of the learning
process and will focus on improving those skills as you begin to articulate
your own perspective on the issues under discussion. In particular, we will pay
attention to what it means to talk with, and learn from, people who disagree with you, and how such
situations can lead to real learning rather than frustration or anger. Finally,
you will be asked to be consciously reflective about the ways in which the
experience of confronting serious thinkers, including your peers, who disagree
in good faith, speaks to the learning goals of St. Lawrence and liberal
education more generally. Prerequisite:
ECON 100 or Permission of the Instructor. Open only to Sophomores.
EDUCATION
no descriptions this semester.
ENG 190 A: Introduction to Fiction
This
course seeks to develop a general critical approach that can be used to examine
stories of all kinds. It uses as its
framework narrative Homer’s The Odyssey, the epic narrative of the ancient
Greek world which for nearly three thousand years has been teaching the art of
inventing interesting stories. Plato and Aristotle provide basic theoretical
principles for analyzing fiction; these principles are applied to two dozen
short stories by Chekhov, Hemingway, O’Connor, Welty,
ENG 190 B: Adaptations
As
a way of beginning to understand the novel’s unique characteristics, we will
examine what happens to the form when it is translated into another
medium. What can be retained and what
must be transformed when a novel is made into a film? We will look at adaptations that attempt a
more or less faithful imitation of the original text (the Merchant/Ivory
version of Remains of the Day, for example) as well as those that completely
re-contextualize the source material (Apocalypse Now as a reading of Joseph
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness), paying attention to ways in which novelistic
techniques such as narrative and point of view are rendered in visual form.
ENG 190 C: Fairy Tales
“Mirror, mirror, on the wall, / Who’s the fairest one of all?” As anyone who has read the Brothers Grimm
knows, the answer is “Snow White.” With
skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood, and hair as black as ebony, she
surpasses her wicked stepmother in beauty and therefore seals her death
warrant. But why does the stepmother sit
around talking to a mirror? Why does
Snow White have to escape from her stepmother by moving in with seven
dwarfs? And why must she die before she
can meet her prince? What’s really going
on in fairy tales? We will answer such
questions by reading a series of tales, including “Snow White,” “Cinderella,”
and “Beauty and the Beast.” These
readings will also help us explore more broadly what a fairy tale is and how
fairy tales vary by time and place to meet different needs. Students will deliver oral presentations,
write critical essays, and create their own fairy tales.
ENG 243 D:
Techniques of Creative Nonfiction- w/CBL (COMMUNITY BASED LEARNING COMPONENT)
This
course focuses on the elements of creative nonfiction writing outlined in the University
Catalog, but with an important addition: a Community Based Learning (CBL)
component in which students will complete 1-2 hours of work per week outside of
class with a community partner. Experiences in these placements will provide
essential material for writing assignments, especially literary journalism and
personal essay, as well as ongoing discussions of what it means to be a writer
in the community, and the convergence of literature and social justice.
ENG 247 A: SPTP-WorldLit-Love,War,Self
When
was love invented? What existed before it, and what is the nature of its
continuing hold in thought and culture? Why is hatred regarded as a bad, while
war is often seen as a good? Why do we have something called a self? Why do we
define this self as different from other selves, instead of similar to them?
These questions form the first step in understanding
our life and thought in the present as a cultural inheritance rooted in the
past. ENG 247C explores this inheritance of thought and literature on love,
war, and self through a reading of Western literary masterpieces from Homer to
Milton, surveying the genre of lyric, epic, drama, essay, and the short tale.
The course will regularly draw from our contemporary attitudes toward love,
war, and selfhood in our explorations of these classic texts.
ENG 247 C:
SPTP-Contemporary Issues ( 0.5)
This half-unit course seeks to strengthen the
ability of students to be good leaders and good citizens by asking them to
develop a fuller understanding of some of the critical issues facing the nation
as we approach the November, 2008 presidential election. The wars in
ENG 247 C: SPTP-Research As Personal Narrative ( 0.5)
This
half unit course will consider research in the personal understanding of
academic disciplines, and will consider research in how disciplines form an
academic community. We will examine research in an academic context, in a
social context, in a technological context, and how all of this intersects in
the work done at a library at a liberal arts college.
ENG 247 E:
SPTP-
Sophomore Seminar: What’s Important to
Me? Reading Willa Cather’s The Professor’s House ( .5
unit)
Set
in the middle of the “Jazz Age” of the 1920s made famous by F. Scott
Fitzgerald’s writing generally and his The Great Gatsby particularly, Willa
Cather’s The Professor’s House is a detailed meditation on personal values,
social values, and the meaning of each person’s life. How should I best spend
my time?, it asks. What questions, issues, and things
are most important to me? Should I be altruistic or narcissistic? What are the
ultimate meanings I find in work, in family, in friends? Cather accomplishes
this interplay of issues by creating a unique form for her story: there is an
inset short story that might stand alone but it is set within the bookends of
two other narrative section that render the professor’s personal and family life
story, a place which complicates its meanings and foregrounds the conflicting
values between and among characters. Our seminar’s purpose will be to read the
novel carefully and completely, to contextualize it within Cather’s career and
within the history it delimits, and to wonder over and debate the questions of
values it raises as they apply to each of us in our lives today. Enrollment
limited to Sophomores.
ENG 247 G: SophSEM:
Writing Right: A Short Course on Basic
English Grammar
This
is a seminar for students who want to learn basic
English grammar. Like it or not, we are
often judged on our ability to write and speak according to the rules of the
English grammar. We'll find all kinds of creative ways to learn English
grammar. We'll read, write, speak and
compete. We'll witness dramatic
improvement in our written work IF we learn the rules. Imagine life without
comma splices! Awesome!
ENG 250 A:
Critical Analysis: (Graphic Novels and Postmodernist Critique)
For
the past twenty years, the graphic novel has proven to be an active site for
experimentation with literary theories and for commentary on shifting social
values. In particular, the writers and artists of graphic novels have drawn
upon the aesthetics and techniques of postmodernist fiction to create political
critiques, social allegories, and assessments of popular culture. We’ll be
examining texts from Warren Ellis’s /Transmetropolitan/,
featuring radical journalist Spider Jerusalem, to Frank Miller’s /Give Me
ENG 309 A:
Feature Writing
Through
classroom instruction, guest lecturers and actual reporting assignments,
students will learn how to produce high-quality enterprise news stories which
are characterized by a careful marshaling of the facts, putting information in
context, an obsession for accuracy and writing with authority. Students will be
asked to step outside the college environment and be energetic reporters who
cover topics that matter to people in
ENG 347 A: SPTP-Conspiracy Theory
The
threat of conspiracy has haunted American culture since colonial times. The
flip side of American idealism often seems to be the fear that these ideals
will be subverted by an ominous collective Other—whether
occult, as in
ENG 347B: Writing About History Creatively
This course will offer students who have a passion
for history theopportunity to write about it in a way
they haven't before: for a
rapidly-growing popular audience. Short
and long published pieces inthe genre of popular
history will be read and analyzed for such elements as subject, narrative voice
and structure, while exerciseswill help students find
and develop story ideas that will beinteresting and
relevant to both them and potential readers.Ultimately,
they will conceive, research, write, revise and edit their own historical
articles and essays, and workshop them with the rest of the class.
ENG 365 A/PCA 355 A: World Drama: Case Studies in Intercultural
Performance
This course
explores performances that exist at the intersection of cultures. Rather than a survey or overview of any one
country’s dramatic literature or performance traditions, this course takes as
case studies artworks that reach across geographic and temporal borders to
convey meaning to audiences. For
instance, we may investigate French director Ariane Mnouchkine’s use of Indian dance to stage Shakespeare’s
Twelfth Night, or look at how the Takarazuka Revue,
ENVS 108
A/ECON 108 A: Economics for Environmentalists.
An introduction to the basic concepts,
tools and theories of microeconomics that are applied to problems typically associated
with the use of the environment. The course begins with basic microeconomic
principles, advances
to important economics theories that are commonly
used to describe environmental resource allocation problems and concludes with
an examination of case studies. Case studies
include air pollution
and acid rain, destruction of rainforests, climate change, alternative sources
of energy and waste disposal. This course does not count toward the major or
minor in economics or
economics-environmental studies and
is not open to declared economics majors or first-year students. Prerequisite ENVS 101 or permission of the instructor. Also offered as ECON 108.
FILM STUDIES
FILM 247 A/
This course
will examine a variety of source materials, from accounts of traditional secret
societies to modern crime reports, to provide contexts for study of the Triad
phenomenon as it has evolved in
FILM 247 B/ASIA 247 B/LTRN 247 B: SPTP-Chinese
Culture through Fiction and Film
Through
reading and examining masterpieces of modern Chinese fiction and
internationally acclaimed Chinese films against the historical context, this
course seeks to improve students’ understanding of Chinese culture and society
since 1911. It also tries to enhance students’ interests and skills in reading
and analysis of Chinese fiction and film.
FILM 347 A: SPTP-The Cinema of Disaffection
The processes
of globalization leave disrupted lives in their wake—refugees, downsized workers,
immigrants, homeless people, victims of violence or
what we might call the peoples of the margins and peripheries. Bauman refers to
these persons as “human waste of modernity.” Alienation here appears in many
spheres—cultural, social, economic, and political and is expressed in a range
of psychological responses—disaffection, resentment, rage, and resignation. The
course will focus on transnational cinema which explores the lives of
disaffected persons produced by the ebbs and flows of globalization. We will
view film against the reading of theoretical literature on globalization and
modernization in order to connect the narrative construction of transnational
filmmakers to the distant and abstract social forces identified by social
theorists with structure, limit, and perhaps
determine the quality of human lives.
FINE ARTS
FA 247A: SPTP--African-American
Art and Visual Culture
This course will examine the history of artworks produced by and about
African Americans, while at the same time analyzing issues of the construction
and contestation of racial and cultural identities through visual
discourse. How do images create (or help
to create) identities, and to what extent can they be used to combat as well as
reinforce stereotypes? We will cover a
wide variety of works by such artists as Robert Duncanson, Edmonia Lewis, Henry
Ossawa Tanner, Aaron Douglas, Jacob Lawrence, Romare Bearden, Betye Saar, David
Hammons, Adrian Piper, Fred Wilson, Lorna Simpson, and Carrie Mae Weems. Prerequisite: FA 116 or 117.
FA 247 E: SPTP-Book Arts
Artist’s books
are works of art that are made real in the form of a book. This course will examine the interplay
between words and images as well as the sequential movement from page to page
that this form offers. Students will
explore how both original and appropriated texts and images are juxtaposed to
create meaning. A variety of binding
techniques and formats will be presented.
The content of certain book projects will be determined by students in
the class. Creative writing and image
development will be emphasized in the course with revision and multiple drafts
required for projects. Permission of the
instructor is required for this class. The
course is limited to 12 students.
GNDR 247 A/ GOVT 276 A: SPTP-Women and Politics
In this
course, students will be active participants in exploring the many dimensions
of politics in the
GNDR 317 A: Sexual Citizenship.
Gay/lesbian/bisexual/trangendered (GLBT) people in the
GNDR
347 A: SPTP:GenderMvmnts&EmbodiedRes
In this course
we will explore how dance/movement perform, revise or reinscribe
notions of cultural identity, including representations of gender, race, and
sexuality. This course will provide an analysis of the relationship between how
individuals experience their bodies and cultural interpretation of the meanings
produced by the body. The body is both a tool for learning and a way of
knowing. We will use dance/movement and choreography as forms of inquiry as we
explore the body as a site for knowledge. Students will learn: how embodied
experience is gendered, raced, and sexualized; to design, implement, and
critique creative movement and performance; to choreograph creative enthnographic movement phrases; to improve their movement
quality and body mechanics and establish a positive body language; and to
understand the process of choreography as a moment of discovery, while learning
to represent what is discovered through performance.
GEOL 347 B/BIOL 347 D:SPTP: Insect Origins
This course
will use modern understandings of insect morphology, behavior and ecology to
consider evolution of insect Orders from the Devonian to the Holocene. Insects are arguably the invertebrate group
that most seriously affects terrestrial life today, including our own. This has been true for 250 million years, a
fact which has many implications for the direction of terrestrial evolution.
This will be a hands-on investigation course.
Insect diversity will be emphasized by study of the living fauna. Data
from the geologic record of the Insecta, including
interpretations of feeding styles made from feeding traces on fossil leaves,
will provide a means for relating modern and ancient forms and their probable
ecologies. Co-evolution between insects
and plants and vertebrates and insects will provide a theme for
discussion.
GOVT 247 A: SPTP-SophSEM: Reading Dewey’s Democracy and Education
The idea that education is critical for the development of citizens has
a long history in political theory. In the early 1900s, John Dewey contributed
to this tradition in hopes of articulating visions of democracy, education, and
citizenship based on the recognition that people are both socially defined and
individuals, and that we need to learn in ways that
are meaningful in themselves, rather than simply preparation for the future.
His vision of education is very different from that dominating current
education policy, and his vision of democracy is one that demands more from
citizens than currently dominant models of citizenship. In this course, we will
carefully read Democracy and Education, in order to consider how Dewey’s
perspective might be helpful us to consider what an ideal education might look
like, what experiences at St. Lawrence might best contribute to this kind of
education, and how this education might influence future citizenship.