Courses | Maymester: May 14 - May 31, 2013

This is a multidiscipline course that will teach students how to write an art proposal, how to look at the landscape sculpturally, how to gather field research, and how to talk with experts about important environmental topics. Emory and Georgia Tech students will work together on public art that will benefit the culture of the City of Atlanta. In the end, the class will deliver a set of finished proposals to the Atlanta Beltline for an interpretive permanent public art installation. Throughout the course, students will engage with outside participants about their research. The course will include field trips, field research, critiques and presentations. Fulfills a Visual Arts major/minor requirement.

This course will combine the study of Shakespearean drama with a range of international and new media connections. Co-taught via videoconferencing, the course also will link electronically with faculty, students, and other visitors from several countries abroad. Participants will also be contacting individuals overseas as part of their course assignments. Students will analyze Shakespeare’s texts from an international perspective, watching productions, for example, with disparate global influences. As part of this study, they will discuss ways that traditions (arts, cultural, historical etc) abroad are being showcased through Shakespearean performances. As the course proceeds, students will concurrently develop their own Shakespearean projects, incorporating a range of interests. These might include current arts trends (music, dance, art), historical material, interdisciplinary perspectives etc. Part of the course goal will be to enable students to craft projects that either fall outside their usual skill set or to bring talents into the classroom that often remain separated from their academic pursuits. By the end of the course, students will have gained significant proficiency in approaching Shakespearean drama as well as acquired facility with new technologies and a diverse group of international cultural forms. The course is designed to fulfill the Writing Requirement.

This is primarily a writing course that centers on human memory and personal narrative. The goals of the course are two-fold. First, through course readings and discussion the students will learn about the nature and types of memory. We will study the biology of memory through a few important scientific works, with particular attention to brain structures such as the hippocampus and the amygdala and the roles memory may play in human evolution. Students will also learn about the types of memory, such as implicit and explicit memory, autobiographical memory, and so on. This will lead to discussions on some of the debates about memory that have unfolded over the past three decades. This will give students a scholarly foundation as they embark on the second goal for the course, the writing of personal history. Students will research, write about and discuss different aspects of their memory alongside readings and discussions of various literary memoirs. They will also be required to become historians of the past, by conducting research. This course is designed to attract students from across the disciplines, from neuroscience to history and literature.

Partial differential equations (PDEs) are a formidable tool for describing real-life problems. In this course we use PDEs for cardiovascular problems and other real-life situations. Students will visit radiology labs and learn about image processing, and numerical simulations in medicine.

This course will provide an in-depth presentation of the psychological research relevant to the study of “evil” behavior. Specific topics to be covered are: 1) introduction and overview of psychopathological conditions and diagnoses relevant to evil behavior, including psychopathy, antisocial personality disorder, and delusional disorders; 2) epidemiological and etiological research evidence concerning major categories of psychopathology relevant to evil behavior; 3)a critical analysis of the distinctions between normal human behavior, moral depravity and psychopathology; 4) a description of prevention, treatment and control strategies aimed at reducing evil behavior in society; 5) an overview of relevant cross-cultural, legal and ethical issues related to the psychology of evil, at both an individual and a group level. Course will include case studies and analysis, guest speaker, debate and role playing.

Is there a relationship between madness and creativity? Between personality and creativity? Are there such things are creative people versus non-creative people? Does a person need to have psychological pain or a troubled life in order to generate great art, music, literature or dance? Must creative people be bi-polar or strung out on drugs? Is it necessary to take a bullet in order to be a hip-hop sensation?

But there are other questions. What about creativity in plain old normal people? Is creativity limited only to the arts? Does it play a role in business success? Science? Politics? Is creativity in non-artistic domains the same as it is in the arts? Does the Saturnine hypothesis remain in force?

In this seminar we will examine these and other questions through examination of the lives and works of creative people—writers, singers, dancers, painters, sculptors, business people, scientists, world leaders and politicians. We'll determine whether a) they do or do not fit with a DSM-IV diagnostic category; and b) if they do fit, whether their abnormality precedes or is the result of their fame. If they are not abnormal, we will try to determine whether there are simply creative personalities out there. We'll consider how they got that way. Heredity? Environment? Luck? Ultimately we will decide whether or not the Saturnine hypothesis or any other theory of creativity is viable and consider the implications of that viability or lack thereof.

We're all going to learn about some creative people we never heard of and we're going to learn some more things about people that we already know about. The Maymester will be busy, but informative and, hopefully, fun—the best combination for learning. You will also have a chance to express your own creativity in the form of a final "creation" that represents your "answer" to the question of the relationship between personality and creativity.

Required text: Creativity, M. Csikszentmihalyi
Readings will also be provided in class or online.