Time travel? Pop culture? Some LSU courses are out of the ordinary | Entertainment/Life

Browsing a university course catalog can be like scrolling through a satellite TV menu: Mostly, you’ve already seen it, aren’t interested or don’t understand what the subject is about.

Occasionally, though, something makes you go, “Hmmm.”

Certainly, any course that includes Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Doctor Who and Harry Potter stands out, especially because it’s a history course rather than English literature.

“British Heroes in Popular Culture” (HIST 3118) covers fictional works and their characters, but with a view to how they reflect actual historical events and cultural changes in Britain.

“I also realized that by combining those, I could teach them an enormous amount of British history because you can’t really understand ‘Lord of the Rings’ without understanding Britain in World War I and World War II,” said Meridith Veldman, the history professor who has taught the course for several years.

Depictions of Sherlock Holmes have changed radically as the story has been reimagined for television and movies, Veldman noted. James Bond movies shine light on vast cultural differences, much to the surprise of students who have only seen current versions.

“Watching a Sean Connery film is, for them, a real shocking experience, so much so that I’ve been very vociferously challenged by young women saying this is so sexist, so racist … that there is no way we should watch this, and that leads to a really good discussion,” Veldman said. “What is that reaction telling us? How is that a part of historical change?”

And there’s no historical change quite like time travel, even if it doesn’t involve a DeLorean equipped with a flux capacitor.

“The History of Time Travel” (HIST 3119) is a course title not quite meant to be taken literally. Rather, said professor Andrew Burstein, it’s about trying to get inside the minds of people from different time periods.

“The study of history is kind of time traveling,” Burstein said. “Anyone interested in history is imagining breathing life into past people, past historical actors. Everyone who comes to this class already has a rich historical imagination. That’s really the only qualification I need — that and that they like to read.”

That reading mixes nonfiction, such as accounts of dreams written by past generations, with fictional works like “Rip Van Winkle,” Washington Irving’s story of an 18th century man who fell asleep for 20 years, missing the American Revolution in the process, and “Kindred” by Octavia Butler, a tale of a Black professional woman from the 1970s transported back to slavery in the 19th century.

“She knows so many things about the real world and is trying to get inside the head of the enslaver,” Burstein said. “How do you engage with the mind of someone whose prejudices are so deep-rooted? How do you survive?

“So, it’s really interesting. It was written four decades ago, but it still resonates with the politics of this moment. … You really feel you are in the Deep South under slavery.”

And one way to feel is to act things out, which is what happens in another LSU course that is neither theater nor history.

The Honors College course “Reacting to the Past” (HNRS 2033) requires students to study events surrounding the French Revolution and the formation of India and Pakistan following the end of British colonial rule. But that’s not what makes Leslie Tuttle’s class unusual.

After studying the topics conventionally, each class member is assigned a role to play, and for three weeks, the students assume those role to advocate for what that character wanted. There is no script; the students try to become the character.

“Once the simulation begins, in the French Revolution, the group of legislators trying to make a constitutional monarchy has to come to grips with the fact that the king does not want to play along,” Tuttle said. “In the India-Pakistan game, they have to come to grips with the fact that both Muslims and Hindus are very, very nervous about being engaged in a nation together. The students have to struggle with these real historical complexities, and the idea is they have to represent their characters’ interests in trying to argue for a solution.

“The thing that makes it for a teacher a little terrifying but also satisfying is you never knew in any given day what’s going to happen in class.”

The process of studying a person’s perspectives well enough to argue on their behalf — and hearing from classmates who have done the same — engages the students more than taking notes from lectures, Tuttle said.

“It can feel like a bit of a risk for students, but students who take on that risk find it liberating and love it,” she said. “It’s amazing how many say to us ‘I wish I could take the class again.’”