Professor explaining concepts to two students in a classroom
Liberal Arts

Curriculum & Courses

Learning Outcomes

  • LA_SLG1) Ways of Knowing Students: Students will demonstrate awareness and appreciation of multiple ways of knowing, as reflected in the fields of study and areas of expertise within the humanities, social sciences, and sciences.

    LA_SLG2) Cultural Breadth and Global Awareness: Students will demonstrate familiarity with a range of cultural, social, and intellectual traditions in the context of a changing, globalized world.

    LA_SLG3) Critical and Analytical Thinking: Students will be able to analyze, evaluate, and construct arguements, engaging with ideas, evidence, and artifacts.

    LA_SLG4) Effective Communication Skills: Students will be able to speak and write effectively, communicating with precision, clarity, and rhetorical force.

  • HUM_SLG 1) Students will study and question how crucial ideas about human and non-human nature, knowledge, experience, and value have been developed, supported, and/or expressed in major areas of the humanities, such as philosophy, religion, literature, (including poetry and the dramatic arts), and music in various cultures and time periods.

    HUM_SLO1.1) Students will demonstrate understanding of the methods used in the humanities, such as argumentation and interpretation.

    HUM_SLO1.2) Students will demonstrate understanding of the crucial ideas in the humanities as they have been explored in different cultures and times, and/or in connection to issues that currently affect individuals and societies across the globe.

    HUM_SLO1.3) Students will evaluate claims and the evidence and/or reasons given in support of these claims, as found in primary and secondary sources.

    HUM_SLO1.4) Students will construct their own claims and defend them in written and/or oral forms, and using proper methods of documentation (e.g. citation and bibliography).

  • SCI_SLG1) Students will increase their knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the natural world, science, and mathematics.

    SCI_SLO1.1) Students will demonstrate knowledge of the nature of science and/or mathematics as a knowledge making process. SCI_SLO1.2) Students will develop and evaluate claims that involve a scientific or mathematical component.

    SCI_SLO1.3) Students will display curiosity about nature, natural science, and/or mathematics.
    SCI_SLO1.4) Students will confidently attempt reasoning tasks that involve a scientific or mathematical component.

    SCI_SLO1.5) Students will demonstrate appreciation for the role of science and/or mathematics both in everyday life and in contemporary issues.

  • FYS_SLG1) Students will learn to embrace the writing process and establish writerly habits, while developing guided critical reading, thinking, and writing skills necessary for their success in upper-level course work. Students will learn to collaborate and to take their work, and the work of their peers seriously, thereby establishing best practices of critique.

    FYS_SLO1.1) Students will formulate inquiries emerging from readings of texts.

    FYS_SLO1.2) Students will establish research methods.

    FYS_SLO1.3) Students will analyze and synthesize multiple texts and cite evidence. FYS_SLO1.4) Students will construct a complex claim and an argument.

    FYS_SLO1.5) Students will practice the writerly process (i.e. revision, reflection, and peer review).

  • SOSCI_SLG 1) Students will question and explore how human behavior, societal arrangements, and cultural practices vary across time and space.

    SOSCI_SLO1.1) Students will demonstrate understanding of the investigative methods used in the social sciences. SOSCI_SLO1.2) Students will evaluate and develop claims based on primary and secondary sources. SOSCI_SLO1.3) Students will communicate clearly in written and oral forms.

    SOSCI_SLO1.4) Students will write citations and bibliographies in accordance with one or more social science disciplines.

Courses

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

The adage 'you are what you eat' presents both a biological fact and statement of cultural and individual identity. As consumers in the most literal sense, our understanding of nutrition, global agriculture, food safety, and desires to embrace 'fast' or 'slow' food all demand a working literacy in the biology of the organisms that make up our food ecology. We will learn about the basic ecology and evolutionary history of food, examine the economics of food, food sovereignty, as well as the rise of GM foods and the unprecedented global agriculture system that characterizes our food-lives today. Given how personal our interests (and tastes) in food are, the second half of the semester will focus on researching innovation in food production and use from a sustainability perspective — synthesizing information, forming insights, and creating text and image to be combined into an collaborative all-class food zine project.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1044

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Area of Study

Books and Publishing, Art and Science, Sustainable Design

Location

Online

Description

What does it mean to think well? In this course we will explore classical logic from a modern formal point of view as a prerequisite for investigating this question. Topics covered will include propositional logic, truth tables, validity and soundness of arguments, inductive vs. deductive logical systems. There will be significant emphasis on natural deduction as a type of game that features its own particular set of permissible moves?much like chess or checkers. This is not a course focused on rhetoric or debate, but rather on the experimental creative process of constructing logically sound arguments and the way in which abstract information can be organized visually. In our exploration of these subjects, collaborative learning techniques will be utilized extensively. This will include in-class group work, regular homework assignments, a two-stage collaborative midterm. The final will be a self-directed project. A familiarity with any kind of mathematics, such as a high-school-level understanding of algebra, would be helpful, but it is not required.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1046

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

MacLean 111

Description

In this course, we will explore the music of dance, opera, and concert stage created in Europe in the first half of the 20th century. These music-based art forms emerged in the midst of two massively destructive and disruptive world wars, a deadly worldwide pandemic, and a multitude of revolutionary artistic, political, and social movements. The radical music forms share space with the visual arts of the era. Impressionism, primitivism, historic nationalism, neo-classicism, futurism are terms used to categorize both music and art. We will investigate how these movements bring to life the underlying currents, stresses, and archetypal impulses at play in aspects of this dynamic European cultural context. Our screenings will include performances of orchestral works by Claude Debussy, Anton Webern, and Olivier Messiaen, operas by Giacomo Puccini and Johann Strauss, ballets by Igor Stravinsky and Eric Satie and performances of pieces created for experimental electronic and mechanical instruments. We will read primary sources such as A Futurist Manifesto by Luigi Russolo and writing by composers of the music we study such as The Poetics of Music by Igor Stravinksy. Our assignments consist of graphic musical analyses, first person writing on your musical experiences, at home screening, listening and reading, and a final essay on the nature of Western music.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1051

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

Online

Description

A film is a composition of moving images and (usually) sounds that constructs a world, a world typically animated or pervaded by some sort of tension or problem. A film can be said to imagine this problem-filled world, to think through it, and to offer it to us, its spectators, to imagine and to think through as well. Often, the worlds and problems imagined in cinema are philosophically rich: they present metaphysical paradoxes, ethical dilemmas, existential conundrums, socio-political impasses, and aesthetic provocations. In such cases, to imagine and think through a cinematic world entails a kind of cross-pollination of philosophy and film, in which we approach film philosophically and philosophy cinematically. In this course we will pursue this bi-directional approach to cinema and philosophy, exploring the ways in which philosophical concepts and arguments clarify and deepen our understanding of films and the ways in which films think through and give a kind of sensuous flesh to philosophical problems. We will read excerpts from four philosophical texts covering topics in film aesthetics, metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy: Susanne Langer’s “A Note on the Film,” Bertrand Russell’s The Problems of Philosophy, Albert Camus’s The Myth of Sisyphus, and Iris Marion Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference. We will watch ten films drawn from across film history and around the world, including Agnès Varda’s Cléo from 5 to 7, Duncan Jones’s Source Code, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Steve McQueen’s Mangrove, Lucrecia Martel’s Zama, Mathieu Kassovitz’s Hate, Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House?, and Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. You will be required to watch most of these movies outside of class, but in two or three instances we will have in-class screenings. Coursework will include short Canvas Discussion Board posts, one in-class presentation, and a final paper.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1034

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

MacLean 920

Description

This course will introduce students to the ways in which colonialism in the Atlantic World(s) made the modern Americas. Emphasizing the long-term cross-cultural interactions and exchanges between Africa, the Americas, and Europe, we will explore the dynamics of conquest, enslavement, and colonialism and their reciprocal relationships to consumption, resistance/revolt, and freedom. We will use a combination of primary documents, images, relevant news articles, documentaries, music, podcasts, and academic readings to explore the comparative historical experiences of Indigenous peoples, Africans, Creoles, and Europeans from the 1440s-1800s. Evaluation will be based on in-class participation, writing assignments, and short reflection papers.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1045

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

Online

Description

This course is an introduction to the principles of ecology, emphasizing detailed field investigations of natural communities. Natural History studies allow for many aspects of knowledge to be applied to the understanding of a Biological concept. Among the topics explored are the dynamics of lake ecosystems, forest succession, trophic structure in streams, dune ecology, and territorial behavior in breeding birds and mammals. Lecture/Discussions examine major themes in modern ecology, including energy flow, nutrient cycling, and species diversity. Selections from nineteenth- and twentieth-century American naturalists (Thoreau, Muir, Burroughs, and Leopold) provide perspective on the relationship of humanity to nature. Global warming and pollution dynamics are explored. Lab activities at the Field Museum of Natural History, Lincoln Park Zoo, and the Shedd Aquarium strengthen the understanding of these concepts.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1055

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

Online

Description

It is the purpose of this course to examine the many theories that fall into the psychodynamic paradigm. This will include examining the work of Freud and those who have branched off from his basic ideas? such as Adler, Jung, Reich, Klein, Fairbairn, Kohut, Guntrip, Winnicott, Erikson, Mahler, Stern, Sullivan, Jacobson, Bion and Lacan, to name but a few. Students can expect a required final paper, and additional quizzes and shorter writing assignments.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1027

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Area of Study

Gender and Sexuality

Location

Lakeview - 202