Other Courses
Faculty members in Letters & Science have been encouraged to assign Lincoln at Gettysburg or an excerpt from it in their lower-division or upper-division courses. As these courses come to our attention we will list them below.
Lower-division courses
College Writing R1A, section 21: Persuasion: Words vs. Swords, Carolyn Hill, Tuesday and Thursday 2-5:00 p.m., Room L11 Unit Two (6 units).
Upper-division courses
African American Studies 124, sec. 1: Political Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr., Professor Charles Henry, Tuesday and Thursday 9:30-11:00 a.m., 103 Moffitt (3 units)
Professor Henry will talk about the Gettysburg Address in this upper-division course.
Political Science 191: The Presidency in American Political Development, Terri Bimes, Monday 2-4:00 p.m., 791 Barrows Hall, contact department for a course control number (4 units, letter grade)
This is a junior seminar open to Political Science majors only. The instructor will be assigning part of Garry Wills' book and framing the class around the question, "Does rhetoric matter?"
Sophomore Seminars
History 84, Sec. 1: Concept and Image: Movies as Historical Documents for the Study of the United Sates, 1920-1945, Professor Samuel Haber, Wednesday 2:00-5:00, 125 Dwinelle Hall (2 units, P/NP)
We will be studying the history of this country over a brief period of twenty-five years. Yet during those years the nation entered into and responded to three drastically different eras – those of prosperity, depression, and war. Movies provide invaluable evidence of what it was like to be alive in these eras. Movies have great advantages and great shortcomings as historical documents. We will examine both. What are the advantages and shortcomings of images and concepts as ways of knowing? Can movies adequately cope with a complex historical event? In what sense can movies tell the truth? In what way do movies help define the values of their audiences and in what way are the movies themselves shaped by existing values of their audiences? These are some of the questions that we will try to answer. In addition to viewing the movies, each student must purchase and study closely a reader providing information and background for the course. At the end of the semester, each student must submit a ten-page typewritten critical summary paper tying the course together in his/her own way. No additional reading is required for this paper, only additional thinking.
Mass Communications 84, Sec 1: The Disappearance of Information, Professor Thomas Leonard, Monday 12-1:00, 247 Evans Hall (1 unit, LG)
This Sophomore Seminar will have a Wills-related discussion in early September. Garry Wills sees a classical revival in the landscape and language of Civil War America, especially in coming to terms with its bloodiest battle. It was not "a democratic muse unacquainted with the library" that inspired Lincoln, he argues. Wills shows that vast research is necessary to understand why the 272 words of the Gettysburg Address were persuasive, in 1863 and to this day. Indeed, he finds that even knowing what those famous words were, exactly, requires enormous scholarship.
Doe Library, with a Greek god at its front door in a war helmet, looking out on a landscape to memorialize war dead (and a Director of the CIA) may appear in a new light after you have read Wills.
The signature Presidential address in our collections is the manuscript John F. Kennedy used on Charter Day in 1962. In Memorial Stadium, Kennedy borrowed words from Lincoln's generation and commended Berkeley's contributions to the Cold War. You can read and hear the speech on the web site of the John F. Kennedy Library (search Berkeley Charter Day). We will meet at the Bancroft Library to examine the text he used.
