Liberal Arts

Curriculum & Courses

Learning Outcomes

    1. 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.
    2. 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.
    3. Critical and Analytical Thinking: Students will be able to analyze, evaluate, and construct arguments, engaging with ideas, evidence, and artifacts.
    4. Effective Communication Skills: Students will be able to speak and write effectively, communicating with precision, clarity, and rhetorical force.

    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.
    2. Students will demonstrate understanding of the methods used in the humanities, such as argumentation and interpretation.
    3. 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.
    4. Students will evaluate claims and the evidence and/or reasons given in support of these claims, as found in primary and secondary sources.
    5. 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).

    1. Students will increase their knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the natural world, science, and mathematics.
    2. Students will demonstrate knowledge of the nature of science and/or mathematics as a knowledge making process. 
    3. Students will develop and evaluate claims that involve a scientific or mathematical component.
    4. Students will display curiosity about nature, natural science, and/or mathematics.
    5. Students will confidently attempt reasoning tasks that involve a scientific or mathematical component.
    6. Students will demonstrate appreciation for the role of science and/or mathematics both in everyday life and in contemporary issues.

  • 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.

    1. Students will formulate inquiries emerging from readings of texts.
    2. Students will establish research methods.
    3. Students will analyze and synthesize multiple texts and cite evidence. 
    4. Students will construct a complex claim and an argument.
    5. Students will practice the writerly process (i.e. revision, reflection, and peer review).

    1. Students will question and explore how human behavior, societal arrangements, and cultural practices vary across time and space.
    2. Students will demonstrate understanding of the investigative methods used in the social sciences. 
    3. Students will evaluate and develop claims based on primary and secondary sources. 
    4. Students will communicate clearly in written and oral forms.
    5. Students will write citations and bibliographies in accordance with one or more social science disciplines.

Courses

Title Catalog Instructor Schedule

Description

Symbiosis describes the relationships that bind organisms in a life together. Symbioses can be between species or within species¿bee to flower, mother to child, and even parasite to host. Drawing from ecological, evolutionary, and behavioral research, we will carefully consider the dynamics of cooperation and dependency across cells, food webs, and even urban neighborhood. Studying symbiosis is not only a window into a myriad of extraordinary biological relations, it is also fundamental to systems thinking in the context of sustainability. Weekly readings, in-class exercises, small collaborative projects will be integral to our study, leading to an understanding of how observation and experiment can help us unpack the many complexities of living together.
We will consider the work by Lynn Margulis, Robin Wall-Kimmerer, Charles Darwin,Suzanne Simard, Harry Harlow, Thomas Schelling, Vi Hart, and many others.
Weekly readings, in-class and out-of-class exercises, small collaborative projects.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1041

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Area of Study

Art and Science, Sustainable Design

Location

Lakeview - 1503

Description

This is a course on music and cinema in the late-20th and early-21st centuries. The focus will be on original scores for full-length films made over the last forty years, with historical, contemporary, and animated subject matter. Students will learn about the history of film scoring and evaluate uses of music by featured composers in selected films. Topics include narrative underscoring, musical motives, diegetic and extradiegetic music, and sonic signifiers of time and place. Course objectives include building strong audio-visual listening skills and acquiring the vocabulary to speak and write about film music and its historical and cultural contexts effectively. Screenings and viewings will vary but typically include examples of feature-length films with original music by composers including Terence Blanchard, Wendy Carlos, Alexandre Desplat, Patrick Doyle, Danny Elfman, Michael Giacchino, Philip Glass, Hildur Gu?nadottir, Joe Hisaishi, James Horner, Quincy Jones, Dario Marianelli, Ennio Morricone, Rachel Portman, Howard Shore, Gabriel Yared, and Hans Zimmer. Readings will vary but typically include works by musicologists and film theorists such as Michel Chion, Rebecca Coyle, Dean Duncan, Julie Hubbert, Lawrence Kramer, Frank Lehman, Richard Leppert, and Laura Mulvey, as well as film critics and journalists. Students will write 15-20 double-spaced pages during the semester, including revisions based on instructor and peer feedback. Assignments may include discussion threads, a close listening essay, an original research paper, and an oral presentation.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1040

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 pervaded by some sort of tension or problem. A film can be said to imagine this tense or problematic 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 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 several philosophical texts covering topics in film aesthetics, metaphysics, ethics, and political philosophy, including Susanne Langer¿s ¿A Note on the Film,¿ Bertrand Russell¿s The Problems of Philosophy, Friedrich Nietzsche¿s ¿On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense,¿ Robert Nozick¿s Philosophical Explanations, Simone Weil¿s ¿The Iliad, or the Poem of Force,¿ and Erich Fromm¿s On Disobedience. 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 Moon, Akira Kurosawa¿s Rashomon, Steve McQueen¿s Lovers Rock, Lucrecia Martel¿s Zama, Mathieu Kassovitz¿s Hate, Abbas Kiarostami¿s Where Is the Friend¿s House?, the Coen brothers¿ No Country for Old Men, Spike Lee¿s Do the Right Thing, 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

1018

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

MacLean 920

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

1024

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

Online

Description

An investigation of group and social psychology, including the impact that groups have on individuals, the way individuals relate to groups to which they belong, and the nature of conscious and unconscious group processes.

A scholarly, critical examination of the scientific literature will serve as the foundation of our learning throughout the course, including how social psychological research is conducted. The course will typically include a selection of readings, lectures, discussion, videos, interactive group work, papers and/or exams to promote and assess student learning. Authors may include Wilfred Bion, Irvin Yalom, Steve Pinker, Daniel Kahneman and others.

In addition to completing papers or exams, students may, for example, lead or participate in group discussions or other activities and reflect on the process, or work on a data collection project.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1042

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

MacLean 908

Description

This course provides an introduction to social theories on tourism and travel activities. Drawing from anthropological and ethnographic research, students will explore the significance of tourism over the 20th century, developing alongside travel and information technologies well into present day tourism behavior and the global leisure industry. Media including travel photography, travelogue, home movies, or virtual reality - all provide sociomaterial examples of the significance of the tourist gaze and imaginary not only for personal recreation, but also influencing representation of the global south, in historically distorted and problematic ways. Course readings and films challenge students to consider these theories in the contexts of the varied sites and forms of tourism practiced around the world today. Learning content allows students to survey and examine mass tourism as well as tourism that makes an effort to get 'off the beaten track' in search of authenticity and adventure. Topics covered span from heritage, eco, and sex tourism, to ¿voluntourism,¿ dark and tragic tourism, including ¿staycations¿ and ¿holistays.¿ Students apply these insights during experiential learning activities of local tourist sites, commercialism, and cultural production of leisure settings in Chicagoland. Students engage in ethnographic exercises, submit a photo essay, and plan a dream excursion, implementing ethical considerations addressed in the course via travel design, and future tourism activities.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1043

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

Online