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IntroSems are designed with you in mind. Browse this catalog website to learn more and look for the 2024-25 seminars to post here in August, when you'll be able to start signing up for priority enrollment in 3 IntroSems every quarter.

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TAPS 180Q: Noam Chomsky: The Drama of Resistance

"Day 14 Occupy Wall Street September 30 2011 Shankbone" by David Shankbone - Own work. Licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

Course Description

This seminar focuses on the ideas and analysis of Noam Chomsky, Laureate Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona and Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT, and a dedicated activist who has spent his life challenging the reigning political and economic paradigms by which the United States is ruled. After discussing his revolutionary model for linguistics (concentrating on the possible link between language and freedom), we will address Chomsky's work on U.S. foreign policy (in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and East Timor, Central America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East); the media ("manufacturing consent"); "terrorism"; ideology and culture; student/popular movements; the "new world order" (at home and abroad); and the importance of resistance. Chomsky's work will provide a useful mode of analysis as students explore their own ways of understanding and challenging the political, economic, and social forces that shape our lives. This seminar would best suit students who have an interest in current events and a desire to make future current events more humane.


Meet the Instructor: Rush Rehm

Rush Rehm, professor of drama and classics, works extensively in the area of Greek tragedy. His books include Aeschylus' Oresteia: A Theatre VersionGreek Tragic TheatreMarriage to Death: The Conflation of Wedding and Funeral Rituals in Greek TragedyThe Play of Space: Spatial Transformation in Greek Tragedy; and Radical Theatre: Greek Tragedy and the Modern World. He teaches courses on dramatic literature of various periods, as well as teaching acting and directing to drama students.