First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar: Family

Semester and Year	FA 2012
Course Number	FIRST-UG35
Section	001
Instructor	Patrick McCreery
Days	Mon,Wed
Time	11:00 AM - 12:15 PM
Units	4.0
Level	U
Foundation Requirement

Notes/Restrictions

Open to Gallatin first-year students only.

Description

In our society, the concept of “family” is paradoxically omnipresent but elusive: politicians seek to define it, marketers struggle to reach it, artists attempt to represent it, and many individuals hope to transcend it. This course offers both a critical examination of family in the United States and a survey of the academic disciplines that study it. As we will see, legal, social, and personal definitions of family are fluid because historical processes such as slavery, immigration, and demands for gay rights re-shape popular conceptualizations of family. Similarly, disciplines such as history, sociology, biology, law, literature, and literary theory routinely offer new and sometimes contradictory ways of understanding family. This course will use these disciplines to illuminate the complicated ideas and emotions that can surround what arguably are our closest relationships. Works we may study include Alice Walker's The Color Purple , Nancy Polikoff's Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage , and the photography of Sally Mann.

Syllabus

FIRST-UG35

Course Type

First-Year Program: Interdisciplinary Seminars (FIRST-UG)