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

This seminar explores the politics and practices of a countersexual society, drawing on the framework developed by trans studies scholar Paul B. Preciado. This framework challenges the heteronormative social order and reimagines the body as a space for freedom and expression. The course critically engages with traditional narratives of gender, race, and sexuality, examining the oppressive conventions that sustain them. We will investigate countersexual practices¿such as casual pleasure, pain, race play, drug use, and BDSM¿as sites of political action and resistance, reframing them as alternatives to normative structures. Our inquiry will begin with an examination of sexuality in early 20th-century sexology and feminism, extending to more recent trends in queer of color critique, Black feminism, and trans studies. Additionally, we will explore contemporary case studies in performance and body art to understand the role of the body¿s materiality in pursuing a countersexual revolution.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1037

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Area of Study

Gender and Sexuality

Location

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

Description

This course explores the theme of estrangement in literature, examining how characters, narrators, and societies experience alienation, dislocation, and otherness. We will analyze texts that depict estrangement through social, racial and philosophical lenses, considering how literary form and narrative structure contribute to feelings of displacement. Through close reading, discussion, and critical writing, students will engage with questions such as: How do literary techniques heighten feelings of estrangement? In what ways does estrangement function as a political or existential condition? And how does literature both reflect and resist social alienation? Readings will include theoretical works such as Mikhail Bakhtin¿s The Dialogic Imagination, which introduces concepts of heteroglossia and the carnival as spaces of subversion, and Ralph Ellison¿s Invisible Man, a novel that powerfully illustrates racial and existential alienation in 20th-century America. Additional readings may include works by Franz Kafka, Samuel Beckett, and Toni Morrison, among others.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1039

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

Description

Form and structure from Western classical music traditions have much in common with that of contemporary popular music. The forms, performance practices, and rhythmic and harmonic structures established long ago in the music of the streets and courts of Europe were conveyed by colonial and economic forces into the musical cultures of many continents where they were absorbed and transformed into the diverse and vibrant popular music of today. This course is a study of the astonishing historical consistencies underlying the formal construction, performance, and social functions of contemporary dance music, songs, and instrumental music. With the music you listen to today as the starting point of our studies, we will examine the musical structures of creators like Bach, Mozart, Stravinsky, Son House, Duke Ellington, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell, Imogen Heap, Beyonce, and Steve Reich to reveal the underlying architecture which ties all of these traditions to the music on your own playlist. We will also study how those forms of music illustrate the social and economic systems which sustain them. Much of our work and assignments will be in deep listening, the practices of musical analysis, and the visualization of musical forms.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1038

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

Online

Description

Across all cultures, physical and mental health has long been associated to what we eat. Modern nutritional science has brought a whole new level of understanding¿as well as complexity¿to that connection. Can disease be prevented, or wellness and longevity increased, by what we chose to habitually eat or not eat? What are some of the most prevalent nutritional fads and frauds? To help us distinguish facts from the hype and the myths, this course provides a core introduction to the various categories of foods, to nutrition science, and how these function relation to our physiology and our health.

Prerequisites

Prerequisite: First Year English requirement.

Class Number

1043

Credits

3

Department

Liberal Arts

Location

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