Between Europe & Asia: Explorations in Culture, Law & Cognitive Science

Overview

The cognitive sciences play an integral role in scientific inquiry concerning the construction of cultural space, the role of the brain in human language, and the defining parameters of individual and collective memory.  Students in this cluster will explore and analyze the complex interworkings of biological and cultural principles through an integrated cross-disciplinary view of these important questions.  The courses in this cluster incorporate humanities, social science and natural science methods.  Some courses will focus more directly on the cognitive sciences and some more directly on the culture in other forms.  Study of the cognitive sciences and culture will take place within the context of neurolinguistics, legal reform in Eurasia, comparative world religions and the literatures of Russia and Poland.

Courses

Seminar: Linguistics 133S Neuroscience & Human Language

Edna Andrews, Professor and Chair, Department of Slavic & Eurasian Studies; Director, Center for Slavic, Eurasian & East European Studies

The relationship of brain and language is explored through a variety of methodologies and approaches, including studies of first and second language acquisition across cultures, multilingualism, language disorders, and imaging studies contributing to understanding current neurobiological, neuro-physiological and neurolinguistic perspectives of representation of language in the brain.  Other topics considered in this course include the relationship of memory systems to language acquisition, maintenance and loss, the role of language and memory in the construction of identity at the individual and group levels.  Readings and case studies will focus on the latest theoretical contributions to the field, as well as classical contributions from the 20th century, including Vygotsky, Luria, Sacks, Kosslyn, Lieberman, Ojemann, Fabbro, Paradis, and Dowling.
[ - ] Hide course description

Seminar: Russian 119S The Empire’s Western Front: Russian & Polish Cultures

Beth Holmgren, Professor, Department of Slavic & Eurasian Studies

Where does Europe end?  Where dos Asia begin?  What constitutes the “West” and the “East”?  These questions, hotly debated in the lands between Europe and Asia for the last two centuries, generated the most magnificent culture clash between the Russians and the Poles — between a young Russian empire eager to define its manifest destiny in East and West and a once powerful Polish state occupied by neighboring empire (including Russia) and redefining itself as the “martyr” of Europe.  Through the 19th and 20th centuries, a defiant Poland figured for Russians as a provocative outpost of the West — a hotbed of political unrest and the home of extraordinary artists (poets, playwrights, political philosophers, filmmakers) who exported the Polish national cause in their work.  Tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, in turn, figured for the Poles as an alternatively threatening and compelling East — the site of repressive empire, great literature, and a powerful new international ideology in the 20th century.

Tracing the sociopolitical background of the 19th century anti–tsarist uprisings, the 1920 Soviet–Polish campaign, Poland’s postwar sovietization, and the rise of Solidarity, we’ll explore through fiction, film, and memoirs how Russians and Poles brilliantly constructed their respective national identity vis–a–vis an “other” they imagined as complicated foe or friend.  The course will include works by Aleksander Pushkin, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Aleksander Herzen, Isaac Babel’, Adam Mickiewicz, Stefan Zeromski, Czeslaw Milosz, Aleksander Wat as well as films by Andrzej Wajda.  All works assigned in English translation.
[ - ] Hide course description

Seminar: Russian 118 Islam & Orthodoxy

David Need, Visiting Instructor, Department of Religion

Since the 10th century CE, Orthodox Christianity and Islam have influences identity, culture and ethics in Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucuses, supplying terms for self and other but also generating utopian visions of universal justice and polity.  This course introduces students 1) to the history, distinctive doctrines, institutions, controversies, and influences of Orthodox Christianity and Islam in Russia, Central Asia and the Caucuses, and 2) to issues related to identity formation, ideology and difference in religious discourse.  Particular attention will be paid to the relationship fo religious identity to other identity terms (tribal, clan, nation, state), to the different subjectivities made possible by differing ideologies and world views, and to the instrumental and ethical dimensions of identity claims.  The historical dimension of the course provides for the study of these issues in relation to the specific case of Eurasia, beginning with the Byzantine and Muslim missions to the Volga region in the 9th century CE, ending with the reemergence of Orthodoxy and Islam in the post-Soviet era, and including close readings of the social–religious functions of monasticism and Sufi brotherhood, and explorations of the influence of both Orthodoxy and Islam on arts and literature.
[ - ] Hide course description

Seminar: Public Policy 135S Law & Globalization in Emerging Markets

Michael Newcity, Senior Lecturing Fellow, Center for International Development, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy; Deputy Director, Center for Slavic, Eurasian & East European Studies

Using the Eurasian nations as a case study, we will examine how the processes of law and economic reform in these countries are shaped by external influences as well as by purely domestic factors.  In this context, we will examine the effect that membership in the World Trade Organization, the European Union, the Council of Europe, NATO, and other such organizations has on these processes as the nations of Eurasia seek a new role in the globalized world economy.  We will examine the strategies followed to establish a respect for the rule of law and constitutionalism, new concepts of property ownership, market economics, foreign investment, and greater protection of human rights.  We will also assess how effective these reform strategies have been and the factors contributing to their success or failure.
[ - ] Hide course description

Focus 99 Special Topics in Focus: Culture, Law & Cognitive Sciences

Michael Newcity, Senior Lecturing Fellow, Center for International Development, Terry Sanford Institute of Public Policy; Deputy Director, Center for Slavic, Eurasian & East European Studies

Students and faculty will meet weekly in this half-credit course to discuss issues of common interest that bridge the topics of individual seminar courses.
[ - ] Hide course description