Anthropology |
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Hour: 3A Instructor: Charis Boke |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Planthropology: Plants and Humans in Anthropological Context
Course Description: What is a plant? How do plants shape human cultures—and how are they shaped by them? In an era defined by changing climate and political turmoil, the plants of the world take on a new importance as fellow living beings. In this course, we’ll think, write, and talk about cross-cultural connections among plants and their peoples, addressing the politics, social structures, and relationships that draw the two-legged world together with the green world. We will consider anthropological and ethnographically informed writings alongside creative nonfiction and contemporary media about plants. We will work together to refine our analytical, expository, and creative approach to writing about the world. Here, writing is a mode of thinking—we hone both together.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
Chao, Sophie. 2022. In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua. Durham: Duke U. Press. Publisher link: https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-shadow-of-the-palms
Ghosh, Amitav. The Nutmeg\u2019s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press. Publisher link:
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo125517349.html
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. 2021 (6th Ed.). They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. |
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Hour: Instructor: Charis Boke |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Chao, Sophie. 2022. In the Shadow of the Palms: More-Than-Human Becomings in West Papua. Durham: Duke U. Press. Publisher link: https://www.dukeupress.edu/in-the-shadow-of-the-palms
Ghosh, Amitav. The Nutmeg\u2019s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. Chicago: U. of Chicago Press. Publisher link:
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/N/bo125517349.html
Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein. 2021 (6th Ed.). They Say / I Say: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. |
Art History |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Steven Kangas |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Pompeii in Antiquity and in the Modern Imagination
Course Description: Suddenly destroyed in 79 C.E. in the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Pompeii was rediscovered in the middle of the 18th century. Since then it has been thoroughly explored and studied and has produced many outstanding monuments of ancient art and architecture that present us with a time capsule of sorts. In this seminar we will study some of these works and explore the perspectives of visual analysis, iconography, as well as various approaches to art-historical interpretation. We will also address the inspiration that Pompeii offered to modern writers, artists, and filmmakers. Students will become familiar not only with the site of Pompeii and its environs but also with basic aspects of Greco-Roman antiquity and its reception since the 18th century. Throughout the term students will be encouraged to become more careful and aware readers of scholarly materials. They will learn how to use the library, conduct research and incorporate it into their own work, as well as write coherently about culture, with a focus on art. By the end of the term, students should be able to compose meaningful questions about objects and images and engage with visual information both orally and in writing. Furthermore, they will have gained experience in undertaking, as well as responding to, peer-review, a process that often strengthens one’s writing.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
ISBN 9780674029767, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found |
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Hour: Instructor: Steven Kangas |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
ISBN 9780674029767, The Fires of Vesuvius: Pompeii Lost and Found |
Biology |
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Hour: 12 Instructor: Carey Nadell |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Politicized Topics in Biology
Course Description: This course will explore the fact and fiction underlying politically contentious topics that have biology at their core. The majority of the course will consist of written and oral discussion of topics including climate change, genetic engineering, vaccine policy, and antibiotic resistance mitigation. One short essay will be assigned for each of these topics, and feedback will be provided through peer review and professor input. Students will also compose a final essay on a topic of their choice.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
No Textbook required |
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Hour: Instructor: Carey Nadell |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No Textbook required |
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Hour: 2 Instructor: Wilbur Ryan |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Ryan Wilbur BIOL-Biology
Course Title: Is the Concept of Naturalness Useful in Biology?
Course Description: The word “natural” has become ubiquitous in advertising and everyday speech to convey the sense that a product, process, or way of living is wholesome, virtuous, or beneficial for humans or other living organisms. In this course, we will use assigned readings, group discussions, and writing projects to explore how ideas of biological naturalness influence policy and public perception in (1) agriculture, (2) medicine, and (3) wildlife management practices. We will also examine the biological evidence in support of these perceptions to determine if and when concepts of naturalness are useful in scientific study and decision making. In the first half of the course, students will practice finding and digesting information in scientific literature as they compile and present informative briefs for their peers on topics related to each unit’s theme. Then they will each develop and answer their own research question by writing an in-depth review paper. Through interactive workshops and guided peer-review, students will become stronger and more confident writers as they learn the conventions of academic writing in the field of biology.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
No textbook required |
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Hour: Instructor: Wilbur Ryan |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No textbook required |
Classical Studies |
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Hour: 2 Instructor: Andrea Hallock |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Rome’s Many Origin Stories
Course Description: People have been writing about the beginnings of Rome for more than 2000 years, but what do we really know and why does it even matter? This class examines and compares many different visions of early Rome: from ancient myths to the first Roman historians and imperial propaganda to recent archaeological discoveries. By doing so, we will consider the complex ways in which knowledge about the past is created and transformed over time. The course focus is on close reading and writing strong argumentative essays that draw on a diverse collection of supporting evidence, experience that will prove useful in a range of social science and humanities disciplines.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Andrea Hallock |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Comparative Literature |
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Hour: 11 Instructor: Antonio Gomez |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Haunted Texts: Ghosts and the Literary Imagination
Course Description: While we tend to associate modernity with reason and science, modern literature is haunted by spectral presences that frighten us, amaze us, and force us to confront what logic cannot explain. In this course, we will analyze literary texts from different national traditions in which ghosts function as tropes of guilt, mourning, sexual anxiety, or the inhuman and posthuman within the human condition. Students will also be introduced to influential academic voices who have written about these issues. More specifically, we will learn how to establish coherent comparisons between short literary texts from different geographical and temporal contexts. A central task of comparative literature is to ground comparisons between works with heterogeneous linguistic and cultural backgrounds. As part of this process, students will learn how to frame comparisons through an aesthetic movement (such as the Gothic), a theme (such as loss), historical circumstances (such as war), or a rhetorical device (such as auditive metaphors). By the end of the course, students will have developed the ability to bring literary narratives written in different languages and circumstances into dialogue.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Antonio Gomez |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Earth and Planetary Sciences |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Emily Lacroix |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Can Soils Save Us from Climate Change?
Course Description: Climate change is one of the greatest crises facing our planet. Soil carbon sequestration, the removal of carbon from the atmosphere and its storage in soil, is a core component of all major proposed climate change mitigation pathways. However, the tangible practices that lead to soil carbon sequestration are still being defined. In this seminar, we will examine multiple strategies for increasing soil carbon sequestration through reading, writing, and discussion. By the end of this course, students will be able to articulate the nuanced benefits and drawbacks of various soil carbon sequestration strategies and argue for enhanced investment in a strategy of their choice.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
No required textbook, readings on canvas. |
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Hour: Instructor: Emily Lacroix |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No required textbook, readings on canvas. |
East European, Eurasian & Russ |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Stuart Finkel |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Prisonhouse or Brotherhood of Nations? The Peoples of the Former Soviet Union in History, Literature, & Film
Course Description: The immense geographic area encompassed by the Russian Empire until 1917 and after this the USSR covered, as one early Soviet film proudly asserted, "One Sixth of the Earth." In a country marked by great national, religious, and cultural diversity, the question of how to reign over this complex multinational empire perplexed both the Tsarist and Communist regimes. While the Soviet government, in particular, claimed to be fostering a "brotherhood of peoples," it was often accused instead of creating a "prisonhouse of nations." In this course we will examine the historical events and transformations affecting the many peoples that lived in this vast expanse, as well as the representation of their experiences in literature, film, and other cultural forms. We will investigate 19th century Russian imperialism, tsarist state policy toward non-Russian groups, and the formation of national identities in the eventful period leading to the overthrow of the Romanov monarchy in 1917. We will then explore the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics within the context of Revolution and Civil War and follow the evolution and contradictions of nationality policy up to the Soviet collapse in 1991.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Stuart Finkel |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Engineering Sciences |
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Hour: 11 Instructor: Paul Meaney |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Analyzing Medical Imaging: Developments and Controversies
Course Description: Medical imaging has evolved significantly over the last 100 years and has transformed modern medical practice. Today, very few clinical decisions are made without relying on information obtained with contemporary imaging modalities. The future of medical imaging may be even more promising. New technologies are being developed to observe the structural, functional, and molecular characteristics of tissues at ever-finer spatial scales. In this first-year seminar, we will write as a way to explore the use of imaging to screen for disease. We will also explore the costs to the health care system of routine application of imaging technology and the benefits of the information provided by medical imaging. Students will be required to read, present, and discuss materials in class and write papers analyzing the development, uses, and benefits of medical imaging. The papers will progress incrementally in complexity from a short paper to a research paper.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
No textbook required. |
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Hour: Instructor: Paul Meaney |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No textbook required. |
English |
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Hour: 3A Instructor: Aden Evens |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Literature of the Machine
Course Description: This course asks what machines are and how they are represented in literature. Examining a variety of texts but primarily novels, we will discuss changing conceptions of the machine over the past two centuries and explore the fears and hopes about technology expressed in those texts. Readings will include Franz Kafka, H.G. Wells, Kurt Vonnegut, J.G. Ballard, Mark Leyner, Angela Carter, David Foster Wallace, and short stories. If there is room, these fictions will be supplemented by readings in philosophy and literary theory. We may also consider some films that engage with machines (eXistenZ or 2001: A Space Odyssey for example), and may even include other kinds of texts such as computer games or hypertexts.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
J. G. Ballard, Crash. ISBN: 978-1250171511. List price: $18.
Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire-Machines of Doctor Hoffman. ISBN: 978-0140235197. List price: $22.
Mark Leyner, The Tetherballs of Bougainville. ISBN: 978-0679763499. List price: $17.
Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano. ISBN: 978-0385333788. List price: $18.
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine. ISBN: 978-0393927948. List price: $23. |
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Hour: Instructor: Aden Evens |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
J. G. Ballard, Crash. ISBN: 978-1250171511. List price: $18.
Angela Carter, The Infernal Desire-Machines of Doctor Hoffman. ISBN: 978-0140235197. List price: $22.
Mark Leyner, The Tetherballs of Bougainville. ISBN: 978-0679763499. List price: $17.
Kurt Vonnegut, Player Piano. ISBN: 978-0385333788. List price: $18.
H. G. Wells, The Time Machine. ISBN: 978-0393927948. List price: $23. |
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Hour: 3B Instructor: Jeffrey Sharlet |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Investigative Memoir
Course Description: In this course we’ll encounter the most unreliable narrators imaginable: ourselves. In recent years, a number of popular memoirs have been exposed as deliberate fictions; frauds. Such scandals distract us from more interesting questions about the role of memory in any attempt at reconstructing the past. While contemporary critics weigh the balance of fact and fiction in modern memoir, a number of writers have turned to the methods of research—archival and secondary sources, and fieldwork—to rebuild the autobiographical genre as an investigative endeavor in which their own memories are suspects. By reading their work, we’ll consider questions of memory, history, and the documents between them; self-knowledge and self-representation; the meanings of fact in works of literature; allegory as argument; and personal stories as public narratives. We’ll approach these matters through theory and practice in short response papers and reported autobiographical prose. Our goal will be to develop both voice and wit, to learn to draw on our creative abilities in our critical writing and our critical abilities in our creative writing.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
Villavicencio, Karla Cornejo. The Undocumented Americans. One World. 978-0399592683.
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home Mariner, ISBN: 978-0618871711
Hanif Abdurraquib, Go Ahead in the Rain. ISBN: 978-1-4773-1648-1
Laura Cumming. Five Days Gone. ISBN: 978-1501198717 |
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Hour: Instructor: Jeffrey Sharlet |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Villavicencio, Karla Cornejo. The Undocumented Americans. One World. 978-0399592683.
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home Mariner, ISBN: 978-0618871711
Hanif Abdurraquib, Go Ahead in the Rain. ISBN: 978-1-4773-1648-1
Laura Cumming. Five Days Gone. ISBN: 978-1501198717 |
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Hour: 3B Instructor: Sandhya Dirks |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Writing into the Blue: Grief, Mourning, Loss and the Power of Words to Heal
Course Description: "Grief" is the word we use to describe the deeply human process of living with and processing loss. It's not just something we experience around the loss of a loved one. Grief can come from the loss of a relationship, the loss of something we believed in, or even a reckoning with something greater, like the loss of humanity on a large scale. Many of us were shaped by the COVID pandemic, a mass death event, which caused so many ripples and waves of losses, so many kinds of grief. This class will look at the way grief and writing are twinned together. We will examine how grief is both part of a literary tradition and how writing into grief can become its own ritual of mourning. What does it mean to exist in a time of great grief, and how can we write about our own grief, as we also explore the way in which larger griefs connect and impact us all? We will learn how to write about grief using the tools of literary journalism and essay writing.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
TBA by instructor |
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Hour: Instructor: Sandhya Dirks |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
TBA by instructor |
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Hour: 10 Instructor: Nicole Morris Johnson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Early Black Portraiture: Pre-1950 Literary Snapshots of Africana Life at Dartmouth and Beyond
Course Description: This first-year writing seminar offers an intensive examination and critical analysis of early African American ‘written portraits.’ Self-creation is a key motif of his tradition, which dates to the narrative of emancipation. The tradition expands throughout the 20th century to include the use of various forms of auto/biography for some as tools to preserve snapshots from specific moments in history from a variety of vantage points. Participants in “Early Black Portraiture” will engage a range of genres [to include the slave narrative, journal entries, and archival documents] from the 1800s to 1950 and consider the ways that people of African descent have created and defined public personas through their written innovations. The course is driven by the premise that writing is both a practice and process and is itself an essential form of thinking. Accordingly, classroom activities will place great emphasis on peer review and revision. Major writing assignments include a visual analysis of a photograph of Frederick Douglass, a comparative essay that considers the WPA narratives and Charlotte Forten’s diary entries, and an essay analyzing the letters of Frederick Douglass McCoy (held in the Rauner Special Collections Library) alongside life writing from earlier periods.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Nicole Morris Johnson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Film Studies |
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Hour: 3A Instructor: Joanna Rapf |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Women & Comedy Film
Course Description: This seminar focuses specifically on women in film comedy in the United States, from the early twentieth century to the present day. In exploring this subject, students will be asked to think and write about what cultural factors have led some to argue that women aren’t funny, and why the field of comedy has traditionally been dominated by men. We will interrogate Hollywood's hegemony by calling attention to and studying the attitudes women endorse, the roles women play, and the stereotypes they reinforce or challenge. With an emphasis on writing, students in this class will be asked to keep a journal dealing with specific topics each week. There will also be three papers of increasing complexity: a response paper, an argument, and a substantial research paper, the topic of which will be developed with the instructor around the middle of the term. With all three, there will be ample opportunity for revision. Through close “readings” of films, students should not only improve their writing, but also their visual literacy. Our approach encourages a reassessment of film history and new ways of thinking about the potential women have for influencing society through laughter. A society without laughter is not a free society.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Joanna Rapf |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
French |
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Hour: 10 Instructor: Yasser Elhariry |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Writing You: French Autofiction
Course Description: Look around you and you’ll notice that the world is full of books and stories and films and shows and narratives that all take the first-person pronoun I for granted. What you probably didn’t know is that the modern French literary tradition offers an exceptionally rich history and storied pedigree of the first-person narrative—autofiction—first championed by trailblazing feminist authors like Simone de Beauvoir, Nathalie Sarraute, Marguerite Duras, and Annie Ernaux, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023. Writing You: French Autofiction is an invitation to interrogate and write critically about the many underlying and not-always-obvious assumptions at play in first-person writing. You will learn how to read, interpret, and write creative criticism that blurs the line between the personal and the critical, in the spirit of the trans-generic border-crossings of autofiction. You will research and analyze pressing topics that run the gamut from the difficult to the quirky: questions of class, race, gender, postcolonialism, and sex tourism brush shoulders with pop music, pigeons on the grass, oranges, and Marilyn Monroe. You will then flex your freshly toned autofictive muscles to compose an original, hybrid piece of writing that interweaves personal and critical reflections.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Yasser Elhariry |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Geography |
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Hour: 9L Instructor: Coleen Fox |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Into the Wild
Course Description: The US Wilderness Act of 1964 states that wilderness exists “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor and does not remain.” This straightforward definition belies the ambiguity and controversy surrounding both the idea of wilderness and its expression on the landscape. In this class, we will draw on personal narratives, art, scientific research, literature, and policy documents to explore the historical context and contemporary debates concerning wilderness in the US and around the world. We will investigate the idea of wilderness at a variety of scales, from the personal to the global. At the personal scale, we will focus on the transformative nature of journeys into the wilderness. At the national and global scales, we will analyze the science, discourse, and politics of wilderness protection.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
Krakauer, J. Into the Wild |
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Hour: Instructor: Coleen Fox |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Krakauer, J. Into the Wild |
German |
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Hour: 3B Instructor: Eric Miller |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Franz Kafka: Parable and Paradox
Course Description: Franz Kafka (1883-1924) wrote parables of the paradoxes, of the absurdity, of modem existence and consciousness. His stories and novels both depict and enact our most urgent questions, our deepest fears, our inchoate hopes. Kafka is arguably the greatest writer of the 20th century, and he is certainly its most influential, but was almost completely unknown to the general public until a good quarter century after his death, and first became widely known, not in his native German, but in English translations. In this course we will read two of Kafka's three novels, as well as a broad selection of his shorter works. All the readings will be accompanied by handouts, mainly in the form of "Questions for Further Thought", whose purpose is to stimulate analysis and discussion, and to help students become active participants in the process of interpreting texts. The fundamental format for the class meetings is that of seminar discussions. Important material concerning historical and biographical background, as well as particular schools of interpretation, will be introduced in the handouts and woven into the class discussion in the form of mini-lectures, as and when the need arises. The aim of the readings, of the supporting materials, and especially of the seminar discussions is for students to hone their abilities to think clearly, critically, creatively, and bravely about the goals we have, the assumptions we make or fail to make, the traps we fall into, the lessons we can learn, when we engage with and try to make sense of very difficult literary works.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories, edited by Nahum Glatzer, foreword by John Updike (Schocken 1995). ISBN 978-0805210552
Franz Kafka, The Trial, a new translation based on the restored text, translated by Breon Mitchell (Schocken 1999). ISBN 978-0805209990
Franz Kafka, Amerika, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir (Schocken 1946), reprinted in 1996 with a foreword by E. L. Doctorow. ISBN 978-0805210644
Guides to interpretation will be made available in class.
|
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Hour: Instructor: Eric Miller |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Franz Kafka, The Complete Stories, edited by Nahum Glatzer, foreword by John Updike (Schocken 1995). ISBN 978-0805210552
Franz Kafka, The Trial, a new translation based on the restored text, translated by Breon Mitchell (Schocken 1999). ISBN 978-0805209990
Franz Kafka, Amerika, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir (Schocken 1946), reprinted in 1996 with a foreword by E. L. Doctorow. ISBN 978-0805210644
Guides to interpretation will be made available in class.
|
History |
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Hour: 9L Instructor: Naaborko Sackeyfio-Lenoch |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Slavery in West Africa
Course Description: This seminar will examine slavery and the slave-trade, a theme that has arguably generated the most comprehensive literature in West Africa. Through selected readings, discussion and writing assignments we will discuss and critique the classic issues historians have been concerned with: demographic, socio-political, and economic impact of slavery and the slave trade on West African societies. You will write 2 short essays and a final research paper. The purpose of each writing assignment is to develop specific skills that combine careful analysis of ideas, perspectives and historical evidence with writing. We will emphasize how to structure essays, develop an argument/thesis through supporting evidence, engage with different historical perspectives and sources of evidence through comparison and contrast, and interpret what we read and discuss in written form.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
No required textbooks. |
|
Hour: Instructor: Naaborko Sackeyfio-Lenoch |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
No required textbooks. |
|
Hour: 2A Instructor: Paul Musselwhite |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: American Foundings
Course Description: American history is singularly endowed (or burdened) with “founding” moments and “founders.” American society recognizes many foundings, from Jamestown and Plymouth Rock to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and Reconstruction as a “second founding,” and it remembers moments of “founding” for religious groups and social movements, from Seneca Falls and Stonewall. We also struggle to settle upon individual “founders” and debate their character and their “intent.” This course will ask what “founding” means, and why it has a particular power in American historical memory, considering founding’s distinct appeal in the context of settler colonialism and its relationship to the ideas of the Enlightenment. It will explore original “founding” documents (from the seventeenth to the nineteenth-centuries) in depth, ask what kinds of texts or images can be considered “founding,” and consider how historical actors styled themselves as “founders.” It will also investigate how subsequent historical narratives have sought to shape “founding” narratives from messy historical realities and biographies. A final project will ask students to develop their own critical reinterpretation of a founding moment – either well known or underappreciated.
|
Textbook(s)Required: |
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (Random House, 1997) |
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Hour: Instructor: Paul Musselwhite |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (Random House, 1997) |
Humanities |
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Hour: 12 Instructor: Laura Edmondson, Miya Xie, Victoria Somoff |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
HUM2, Winter 2026 works will include:
Aeschylus, Agamemnon. Aeschylus, Oresteia, trans. Peter Meineck (Hackett Publishing, 1998). ISBN: 978-0-87220-390-7
Christa Wolf \u201CA Letter about Unequivocal and Ambiguous Meaning\u201D
William Shakespeare, Macbeth (c. 1606). Norton Critical Edition, 2025. ISBN: 978-1-324-04437-6
Jean de Mandeville, The Travels of Sir John Mandeville (1357, selections)
John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667, selections). Penguin Classics, 2003. ISBN: 978-0-140-42439-3
Georges M\u00E9li\u00E8s, short films 1896-1908 (including The Trip to the Moon, 1902)
Charles Chestnutt, The Conjure Woman and Other Tales (1899)
Elena Garro, \u201CThe Tlaxcaltecs Are to Blame\u201D (1963)
Wangechi Mutu (painting)
Margaret Bourke-White, \u201CThe American Way\u201D (1937 photograph)
Heinrich von Kleist, The Broken Pitcher (1811)
\u201CThe Great Moon Hoax\u201D (1835)
Dashiell Hammett, \u201CThey Can Only Hang You Once\u201D (short story, 1932)
Akira Kurosawa, High and Low (film, 1963)
Jorge Luis Borges, \u201CNarrative Art and Magic\u201D (essay) |
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Hour: OT Instructor: Victoria Somoff, Laura Edmondson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
HUM2, Winter 2027 works will include (additional works to be determined):
Sophocles, Antigone (c. 441 BCE)
Anonymous, \u201CNineteen Ancient Poems\u201D (Han Dynasty, 2nd c. CE)
Tao Qian, \u201CPeach Blossom Spring\u201D (421 CE)
William Shakespeare, King Lear (1606)
Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard (1904)
Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)
Selections from Audre Lorde\u2019s The Cancer Journals (1980)
Michel Foucault, selections from Technologies of the Self (1982)
Lee Chang-Dong, Oasis (2002)
Steve McQueen, The Lynching Tree (2013)
John Trengrove, Thando Mgqolozana, and Malusi Bengu, Inxeba (2017)
Contemporary Ukrainian poetry, TBD |
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Hour: OT Instructor: Miya Xie, Laura Edmondson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
HUM2, Winter 2027 works will include (additional works to be determined):
Sophocles, Antigone (c. 441 BCE)
Anonymous, \u201CNineteen Ancient Poems\u201D (Han Dynasty, 2nd c. CE)
Tao Qian, \u201CPeach Blossom Spring\u201D (421 CE)
William Shakespeare, King Lear (1606)
Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard (1904)
Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)
Selections from Audre Lorde\u2019s The Cancer Journals (1980)
Michel Foucault, selections from Technologies of the Self (1982)
Lee Chang-Dong, Oasis (2002)
Steve McQueen, The Lynching Tree (2013)
John Trengrove, Thando Mgqolozana, and Malusi Bengu, Inxeba (2017)
Contemporary Ukrainian poetry, TBD |
|
Hour: OT Instructor: Laura Edmondson |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
HUM2, Winter 2027 works will include (additional works to be determined):
Sophocles, Antigone (c. 441 BCE)
Anonymous, \u201CNineteen Ancient Poems\u201D (Han Dynasty, 2nd c. CE)
Tao Qian, \u201CPeach Blossom Spring\u201D (421 CE)
William Shakespeare, King Lear (1606)
Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard (1904)
Albert Camus, The Plague (1947)
Selections from Audre Lorde\u2019s The Cancer Journals (1980)
Michel Foucault, selections from Technologies of the Self (1982)
Lee Chang-Dong, Oasis (2002)
Steve McQueen, The Lynching Tree (2013)
John Trengrove, Thando Mgqolozana, and Malusi Bengu, Inxeba (2017)
Contemporary Ukrainian poetry, TBD |
Italian |
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Hour: 12 Instructor: Matteo Gilebbi |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: What is (Italian) Cinema?
Course Description: Cinema is a form of expression that, by integrating different media and disciplines (including writing, music, dance, theater, architecture, fashion, etc.) creates something that is beyond the sum of its parts. But how does cinema integrate all these other media into something new? What are the specific tools needed to read, understand, and critically analyze this multifaceted form of expression, and how can we use them effectively? In this course we will tackle these questions through an exploration of Italian cinema. Italian filmmakers played a pivotal role in advancing the language of cinema, via both technical and narrative experimentation. While Italian films are, of course, artifacts of a specific culture, they also transcend national boundaries and influence cinema around the world. At the same time, Italian filmmakers have always been avid watchers and attentive critics of foreign films – in particular, French, German, Russian, Japanese, and American – which, in turn, left a mark on their work. For these reasons, we will watch and analyze five Italian films to explore what cinema in general is and does. Importantly, the critical tools acquired in this course will help you tackle the complexity of other texts and develop a critical reading of those texts. Finally, critical analysis of films, like that of any other text, should not happen in a vacuum. Watching a film with a critical eye, like doing any critical reading, is a social interaction. For this reason, this course is organized as a student-led seminar and all writings rely on peer reviews. In this class you will become part of the same learning community: we will take responsibility for collaborating, sharing each other's work and reflections, and respecting each other's opinions.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Matteo Gilebbi |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Jewish Studies |
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Hour: 2 Instructor: Elyse Singer |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Dance, Performance, and Jewish Culture
Course Description: This course engages with Jewish Dance from the hora and traditional folk dances to Dirty Dancing and contemporary Jewish Hip Hop social media videos. Students will learn critical tools and methods for writing analytically about dance and performance through the dual lens of performance studies and Jewish studies. We will examine contemporary questions in the interdisciplinary field of Jewish Dance Studies, with a special focus on ideas related to gender, embodiment, diaspora, and cultural identity. Two essays and a group project provide opportunities for research into key historic figures or events within the global world of Jewish Dance and performance, including Yiddish theater culture, Chassidic dance, modern dance in Israel and the Middle East, Broadway, film, and television. We will examine the dancing Jewish body as a contested embodied site for knowledge production and nation building, while addressing current debates around dismantling eurocentrism in dance practice and scholarship.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Elyse Singer |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Latin Am/Caribbean Studies |
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Hour: 10 Instructor: Jorge Cuellar |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Central American Studies
Course Description: This First-Year Seminar offers an interdisciplinary introduction to the transnational histories, politics, cultures, and diasporas of 20th and 21st century Central America. Taking this region as our focus for the term, this course will address the tensions of state, race, politics, and economic development in the region, covering topics such as colonial capitalism, US imperialism, the “Central American Wars,” environmental crisis, migration and insecurity, narco-trafficking and youth gangs, social movements, emergent tourist economies, the politics of development, and issues around mestizaje, indigeneity, and Afro-indigeneity. Deploying the mixed and multi-disciplinary approaches of Central American Studies, we will study transnational worlds of people from Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama to better understand the centrality of the isthmian region to hemispheric politics and the vital role of these nations’ people to the formation of Latin American culture, past and present. In this seminar you will produce a Primary Source Analysis and a Final Research Paper, in addition to iterative assignments and in-class exercises to build writing and research skills
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Jorge Cuellar |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Middle Eastern Studies |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Lewis Glinert |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Jerusalem: Vision and Reality
Course Description: Jerusalem has always mesmerized minds -- Royal City of Solomon, mystical core of the world, site of a foretold apocalypse, twice razed to the ground, focus of Jewish, Christian and Islamic control, since 1948 once more a Jewish capital but still savagely fought over. In this writing course, we will sample the symbolism of Jerusalem in Jewish, Christian and Islamic intellectual and artistic expression, from the Bible down to the present. Why has this city evoked such passions?
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Lewis Glinert |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Andrew Simon |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Steamships to Social Media: History of Technology in the Middle East
Course Description: What may pandemics and their maritime passage in the past teach us about Covid-19 today? How may cameras assist us in picturing the past and archiving the present in the Arab world? And what is the relationship between social media and mass demonstrations in Iran, Egypt, and the the United States? In this first-year seminar, we will explore the impact, significance, and surprising stories of numerous technologies throughout Middle East history. We will cover devices we often take for granted as well as things that command our attention. Cameras, clothing, and the Internet, dams, printing presses, and modes of transportation will all surface in readings that transcend any single historical genre, bridging the local and the global, the social and the cultural, the intellectual and the environmental. The scope of this course is consciously panoramic in nature. In traversing nearly two hundred years of history, from the Ottoman Empire to the present day, we will examine a wide array of case studies that unfold across the Middle East and occasionally travel further afield. To assist us on this journey, we will conduct close readings of several primary sources, from films and photographs to comics and music videos. These materials will inspire lively discussions that engage larger themes, including modernity, mediation, power, politics, infrastructure, and identity. In the spirit of intervening in broader debates and developing one's writing skills, students will have the opportunity to undertake a wide variety of assignments, from a film review to a critical biography. Likewise, students will have the chance to pursue a final research project on a topic of their choosing that advances an original argument. By the end of the quarter, it will be clear that the trajectories of objects, small and large, were essential to the making of the modern Middle East.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Andrew Simon |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Philosophy |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Kenneth Walden |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: An Intellectual History of New England
Course Description: This course will survey the distinctive literary and intellectual tradition that has shaped New England for the past four centuries. Topics may include the moral and political thought of the Puritans, the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Parker, and Margaret Fuller, the reception of romanticism in Emily Dickinson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the abolitionist movement in Boston, the pragmatism of William James and John Dewey, and the contrasting reactions to modernity found in the poetry of Wallace Stevens and Robert Frost. We will be concerned throughout with questions about the unity and coherence of these movements and with whether there is a distinctively New England intellectual tradition.
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No required textbooks available |
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Hour: Instructor: Kenneth Walden |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Physics |
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Hour: 3A Instructor: James Whitfield |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: What Is Real? Physics, Perception, and the Power of Writing
Course Description: This course will explore the fundamental question of what constitutes reality through the lens of modern physics, philosophy, and technology. We will explore various scientific writing styles and examples connected to the theme of our course. Student will use writing to explore, analyze, and argue for their own positions on the nature of reality, and to respond to the position of their peers. Daily and in-class writing exercises will help students develop their science-writing, peer-editing, and problemsolving skills. The two major assignments are one essay and a second, longer paper. The writing process will be iterative, and feedback will be provided via peer review and via direct professor input.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
None. |
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Hour: Instructor: James Whitfield |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None. |
Psychological & Brain Sciences |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Charlotte Leferink |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Autism and the Social Brain
Course Description: Autism is a well-known developmental condition that is characterized by divergent processing of social cues. A puzzle for neuroscience is: what neural and cognitive mechanisms underpin autism spectrum condition? In this course, we will read empirical studies from the field of cognitive neuroscience. We will form research questions about the social brain that characterizes autism. We will also practice communicating findings across audiences, between the scientific community and beyond them. This course will focus on writing clearly about empirical findings related to social neurological processing in autism. Students will write an analysis of a peer-reviewed editorial article and analyze a piece of popular media. Students will also participate actively in class discussions, take part in two class debates, and give a presentation.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
NO TEXTBOOK IS REQUIRED FOR THIS COURSE. |
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Hour: Instructor: Charlotte Leferink |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
NO TEXTBOOK IS REQUIRED FOR THIS COURSE. |
Sociology |
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Hour: 11 Instructor: Emily Walton |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Race and Ethnicity: Social Constructions and Social Realities
Course Description: In this course we start from the premise that racial and ethnic distinctions are socially constructed. We will also explore the very real consequences of racial distinctions by interpreting the social science literature on inequality, considering the manifestations of interpersonal and institutional forms of racism, and discussing prospects for change in the future. We approach the sociological content of the course through a number of writing components. First, you will respond to course readings through informal writing in reading journals and short reflection pieces throughout the term. Second, you will engage in formal writing through two main assignments: a short, written analysis of personal experiences with race and ethnicity embedded in a sociological context, and a somewhat longer research paper in which you will draw on outside sources to explore a research question related to race and ethnicity. In addition to out-of-class writing, you will participate in writing workshops and discussions, primary source analysis exercises, and peer feedback sessions.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
None required |
|
Hour: Instructor: Emily Walton |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None required |
|
Hour: 10A Instructor: Jason Houle |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Inequality in America
Course Description: When we think about social inequality, it’s tempting to view it as the inevitable byproduct of effort, where those at the top are rewarded for their perseverance, and those at the bottom should work harder to “pull themselves up by their bootstraps.” In this class, we will interrogate these naïve assumptions and explore sociological understandings of social stratification and inequality in the context of 20th and 21st century United States. We will specifically focus on how sociologists write, craft arguments, and develop and test theories about social inequality. As part of this process, you will learn how to write (and read) formal sociological research papers, such as those that appear in academic journals, and how to package these ideas to public audiences (such as op-eds). Substantively, we will focus on a range of topics, including (but not limited to): social mobility, poverty and social welfare policies, race and gender stratification, the causes and consequences of rising wealth and income inequality, and the changing face of inequality before and after the Great Recession.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
none required |
|
Hour: Instructor: Jason Houle |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
none required |
Spanish |
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Hour: 10A Instructor: Joseph Aguado |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Unforgettable Memories: Spaniards in Nazi Concentration Camps
Course Description: In this writing course, expressing your ideas coherently and thoughfully is as important as discussing the topic of the Spaniards in Nazi concentration camps. How have writers and filmmakers dealt with painful memories from Nazi concentration camps? Is it possible to remember extreme experiences-like those coming from survivors of concentration camps-without being engulfed by their horrors? We will be dealing with these questions in four major writing assignments.
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No required textbooks available |
|
Hour: Instructor: Joseph Aguado |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Women's, Gender, and Sexuality |
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Hour: 9L Instructor: Douglas Moody |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: He, She, or It: Reconstructing Gender in Science Fiction
Course Description: In this seminar, we will explore strange new worlds of thought and seek out new intellectual life and advanced lines of research-based inquiry to inspire your critical thinking and provide you with strategies for effective academic research and composition. The literary and cinematic genres that we are exploring fall within the realm of “speculative” or “science” fiction (and we will consider both of these terms, but SF will suffice for now) and many of the historical and theoretical perspectives we explore in this course come from the field of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Gender studies, as you will discover, has arisen out of centuries of “feminist movement,” and one cannot fully appreciate the significance of feminism and its influences on social change without considering other closely related issues of race and ethnicity, social class, and sexual orientation through an “intersectional” lens. The influences of science fiction and speculative fiction in literature, film, television, and in the popular imagination have been very significant for our cultures in a postmodern world, and in this class we will consider a wide range of the social concepts, gender constructs, technological influences, and cultural theories that have been informed by feminism as we read speculative fiction stories and a variety of nonfiction texts, as well as view and examine various electronic media.
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Textbook(s)Required: |
There are three required texts for the class and all other materials are available through the library and the Canvas course website. The three required books are: 1) LeGuin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness. Ace Books, 1987; ISBN-13: 978-0441478125; 2) Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Anchor Books, 2017; ISBN-13: 978-0525435006; 3) Wells, Martha. All Systems Red. Tor.com Book, 2017; ISBN-13: 978-0765397539 |
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Hour: Instructor: Douglas Moody |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
There are three required texts for the class and all other materials are available through the library and the Canvas course website. The three required books are: 1) LeGuin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness. Ace Books, 1987; ISBN-13: 978-0441478125; 2) Atwood, Margaret. The Handmaid's Tale. Anchor Books, 2017; ISBN-13: 978-0525435006; 3) Wells, Martha. All Systems Red. Tor.com Book, 2017; ISBN-13: 978-0765397539 |
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Hour: 3A Instructor: Samuel Hunter |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: Having a Body Online: Queer and Trans Digital Media
Course Description: Digital media structure daily life for billions of people across the globe through an intensifying matrix of interconnected machines around our physical bodies. The navigation of sexual and gendered norms and formation of identities that follow from “having a body” now often take place alongside or through constantly changing digital media such as social networks, dating apps, streaming video platforms, and generative AI models. This course mobilizes the insights of queer and trans studies to examine various confluences of digital media with gender & sexuality in the recent past, always-updating present, and imagined future. We will engage these ideas by developing practices of critical reading and writing in the humanistic traditions of media studies and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies that address the cultural, economic, political, and social implications of digital media. You will learn how to read qualitative scholarly arguments, analyze digital media objects, conduct academic research, craft and refine evidence-based arguments, and participate in discussions about complex topics with nuance and empathy.
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No required textbooks available |
|
Hour: Instructor: Samuel Hunter |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
No required textbooks available |
Writing Program |
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Hour: 2A Instructor: Katherine Riley |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
Description: |
Course Title: The Art of Human Dialogue
Course Description: AI Chatbots possess emergent and shocking discourse and dialogue abilities. The same abilities are so intuitive, powerful, and fundamental to us as humans that this technology causes us tremendous excitement and concern. Even as we laud its possibility of transformative social benefits, we fear its catastrophic risks. This interdisciplinary writing course aims our critical gaze deep into these ancient human abilities, investigating them with questions such as: Why are they necessary to us? How do we do them? How do we judge them? What ‘human art’ lies within them that AI is existentially threatening? “Know your enemy and know yourself,” said the ancient philosopher Sun Tzu in The Art of War. Warning: we will be critically interrogating AI Chatbot use in this course through precisely defined assignments involving Socratic dialogue, dialogue in the modern wild, and dialogue we create in our stories and films. Our goal is to develop understanding of the benefits and detriments of this tool to our own human art and thereby build a human argument for best practices regarding this ubiquitous instrument that we can no longer put back in the box, but with which we each as humans can individually choose whether or not to engage, and whether or not to do so with knowledge and agency.
|
Textbook(s)Required: |
None |
|
Hour: Instructor: Katherine Riley |
Requirements Met: WCult: None; Distrib: None |
No description available |
Textbook(s)Required: |
None |
|
