Introducing the Meliora Humanities Seminars!
by Sara Kowalski, Class of 2017, Humanities Fellow
The Meliora Humanities Seminars (Meliora Seminars for short) are an exciting new program at Rochester. Capped at fifteen students and exclusively for first-years, these courses are unlike any other. They are all interdisciplinary, integrate community-engaged and community-aware aspects, and provide a close-knit classroom atmosphere in which students make discoveries through discussion. First-year students gain valuable experience researching, reflecting on, writing about, and communicating their ideas.
Check out the course offerings currently available for this academic year. We are looking forward to additional seminars in the future, so don’t worry if you can’t take these right now.
DAN 167M: Ecolinguistics: Language and Movement
Fall 2017 | Instructors: Anne Wilcox and Solveiga Armoskaite
This course is all about “the convergence and divergence of language from verbal and nonverbal perspectives.” Each year is themed, and this semester is about “memory and forgetting” (bonus points if you recognize this year’s Humanities Center theme!). The students set out to answer the question of what role language, both verbal and nonverbal, have in memory.
To do so, this multidisciplinary course draws on linguistics, dance and somatics, neuroscience and psychology, anthropology, and more! For example, students spent a unit exploring “cultural memory,” during which they went on a field trip to the Ganondagan State Historic Site. In another unit, they explored the topic of trauma, its effect on memory, where it sits in your body and mind, and how it is expressed in verbal and nonverbal language.
Ecolinguistics will be available again next year, with the exciting new theme of “evidence,” so if you find yourself at Rochester at the time, please apply for it!
(PS: No formal dance experience and no formal linguistic training is required. Just come with an open mind!)
CLA 167M: Democracy: Past and Present
Fall 2017 | Instructor: Nick Gresens
In this course, students learn about the ancient world and, in particular, Athenian Democracy (the philosophy of democracy emerging from ancient Athens). They then take this knowledge and apply it to the modern struggles of American government and politics. Students set out to answer the questions, “Is democracy a good system?” and “What does a (successful) democracy require?”
This course is highly discussion-based, and the students have quickly bonded into a tight-knit group of individuals who listen to one another, respect each other’s varying perspectives and values, and respond to each other’s ideas and questions in sophisticated ways.
This course will be offered again in Spring 2019. So if you find yourself at Rochester at the time, please apply for it!
UEH 167M: Climate Futures
Spring 2018 | Instructor: Leila Nadir
This course analyzes and discusses climate change from the perspective of the humanities. Students will discover and articulate how the future of our planet is “imagined” and how we conceptualize the ideas of climate, future, and sustainability at all.
When evidence from the natural sciences fails to bring about political change, perhaps culture, language, ideology, and narratives may be more effective. Students will explore creative attempts at this in the emerging genre of literature called “cli-fi” or climate fiction, which aims to bring culture into the climate change discussion by depicting climate change’s effects on people’s cultures and communities.
Students will immerse themselves in ongoing “environmental justice” activism, and they will have the chance to analyze and express climate change through film and in art.
This course will be offered again in Fall 2018. So if you find yourself at Rochester at the time, please apply for it!
ENG 167M: The Outlaw Robin Hood: Resistance, Violence, and Social Change in Popular Culture
Spring 2018 | Instructor: Tom Hahn
In this course, students will investigate the fascinating character of Robin Hood. Whether he was man or myth, centuries of popular culture have made him very real. This course dissects Robin Hood as a “media creature.” This multi-disciplinary course intersects with literature, history, folklore, media studies, music and film studies, visual and cultural studies, and even more!
Professor Hahn is a Robin Hood expert, and he own a veritable museum of Robin Hood-related objects stretching back through centuries. He will open up his collection to students in this course, so they will be able to analyze and discuss these historical objects on a biweekly basis. Students will be able to integrate their diverse interests and research whatever aspect of Robin Hood’s character and history that interests them most.
This course will likely be held again in the near future, so keep it in mind. And please feel free to look for Professor Hahn’s non-Meliora-Seminar Robin Hood course, ENG 251: Robin Hood in Popular Culture.
And remember, if you are going to be a first year at Rochester, definitely apply for a Meliora Seminar that looks interesting to you!