Search Results
Your search for courses · during 24FA, 24FA, 24FA, 25WI, 25WI, 25WI, 25SP, 25SP, 25SP · meeting requirements for HI, Humanistic Inquiry · returned 120 results
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AFST 200 Frederick Douglass: The Politics and Philosophy of Citizenship 6 credits
This course provides a critical study of Frederick Douglass, a man who rose from slavery to establish himself as one of the most important thinkers of his time. Through a political philosophical reading of his works, the course will trace the evolution of his views on freedom, equality, citizenship, political and moral responsibility, among others. Questions that will guide our discussions include: what does it mean to be free? What are the responsibilities of citizens in a liberal democracy? What lessons can the black experience teach us about these? In addition to Douglassâ primary texts, the class will read secondary texts that celebrate his political philosophical legacy
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One course that applies toward the Humanistic Inquiry requirement with a grade of C- or better.
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AFST 200.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Chielo Eze đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 303 1:15pm-3:00pm
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AFST 213 Race, Racism, and the Beloved Community in the US 6 credits
Race and racism played a significant role in the construction of the United States of America. But so did the quest for a more perfect union and the beloved community. This course introduces students to the complexity of racial ideology and the ways it privileges one group of people while placing others at a disadvantage. We shall examine the experiences of all racialized groups (Blacks, Asians, American Indians, Latinos) and how they resisted the injustice against them. Most importantly, we shall analyze how their quest for liberation brought America closer to its foundational ideal that all humans are created equal and are endowed with unalienable rights. Offered at both the 200 and 300 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly. Students who have previously taken any AFST course should register for AFST 300; students who have not should register for AFST 213.
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AFST 213.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Chielo Eze đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 330 1:15pm-3:00pm
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AFST 225 Black Music, Resistance, and Liberation 6 credits
For every defining moment in black history, there is a song. Every genre of black music makes a statement not only about the specific historical epoch it was created but also about the peopleâs dreams. For black people, songs are a means of resistance to oppression and an expression of the will to live. Through the analysis of black music, this course will expose students to black peopleâs struggles, hopes, and aspirations, and also American history, race relations, and much more. The class will read insightful texts, listen to songs, watch films, and engage in animated discussions.
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One course that applies toward the Humanistic Inquiry requirement with a grade of C- or better.
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AFST 225.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Chielo Eze đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 330 1:15pm-3:00pm
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AFST 300 Race, Racism, and the Beloved Community in the US 6 credits
Race and racism played a significant role in the construction of the United States of America. But so did the quest for a more perfect union and the beloved community. This course introduces students to the complexity of racial ideology and the ways it privileges one group of people while placing others at a disadvantage. We shall examine the experiences of all racialized groups (Blacks, Asians, American Indians, Latinos) and how they resisted the injustice against them. Most importantly, we shall analyze how their quest for liberation brought America closer to its foundational ideal that all humans are created equal and are endowed with unalienable rights. Offered at both the 200 and 300 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly. Students who have previously taken any AFST course should register for AFST 300; students who have not should register for AFST 213.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One course that applies toward the Humanistic Inquiry requirement with a grade of C- or better.
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AFST 300.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Chielo Eze đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 330 1:15pm-3:00pm
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AMST 115 Introduction to American Studies 6 credits
This overview of the âinterdisciplinary disciplineâ of American Studies will focus on the ways American Studies engages with and departs from other scholarly fields of inquiry. We will study the stories of those who have been marginalized in the social, political, cultural, and economic life of the United States due to their class, race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, citizenship, and level of ability. We will explore contemporary American Studies concerns like racial and class formation, the production of space and place, the consumption and circulation of culture, and transnational histories.
Sophomore Priority
- Fall 2024, Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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AMST 115.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Christopher Elias đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THWeitz Center 230 1:15pm-3:00pm
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AMST 115.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Christopher Elias đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WWillis 204 11:10am-12:20pm
- FWillis 204 12:00pm-1:00pm
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AMST 142 U.S. Latinx Identity and Representation: Cultures of Belonging 6 credits
Popular culture and mass media serve as key sites of identity formation. In this course we will examine U.S. Latinx identity formation by focusing on three case studies: Selena Quintanilla, the singer; telenovelas; and the Disney films Coco and Encanto. These case studies will help us explore how transnationalism, intergenerational knowledge and trauma, and civic and cultural belonging contribute to the shaping of U.S. Latinx collective identities. We will attend to the particular processes of production and reception as we study how audiences engage with cultural producers both in private and in public (notably on social media).
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AMST 215 Trains of Thought: Contemplating Local Commuter and Passenger Rail 6 credits
Meeting with mass-transit professionals, urban planners, and community organizers to discuss contemporary rail policy, students in this seminar will search local archives and develop public-facing informational materials about the Dan Patch Corridor, which passes through Northfield. This rail line was identified by MnDOT in 1998 as the most feasible southbound commuter-rail route for the Twin Cities. From 2002 until 2023, however, the state legislature prohibited it from further transportation studies. Meanwhile, grassroots rail advocates proposed reestablishing long-distance passenger service from Minneapolis to Kansas City. What are the arguments for and against reviving rail services? What does the community think?
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AMST 215.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Baird Jarman đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THBoliou 161 1:15pm-3:00pm
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AMST 217 Race, Gender, and Sports in America 6 credits
How have American sports made visible discourses about race and gender? How do Americans who engage with sportsâboth as spectators and participantsâimagine athletics when viewed through raced and gendered lenses? How do sports reflect assumptions about race and gender? Examining moments in the history of American athletics both from the distant and more recent pasts, students in this course will explore those issues while training a precise, critical eye on American culture and society. Key discussions will center on questions of the athletic body, integration, privilege and inequality, protest, power, and commercialism.
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AMST 221 Indigenous Chicago: Indigenous Histories and Futures in Zhegagoynak 6 credits
Before Chicago as we know it today existed, many Indigenous nations had long standing relationships with this place. They knew it as Zhegagoynak, Gaa-zhigaagwanzhikaag, Zhigaagong, Ć ikaakonki, ShekĂąkĂŽheki, Sekakoh, and GuuĆĄge honak, among others. This course emerges from four years of community-engaged curriculum development and examines Chicago histories through five themes: Chicago's lands and environment, Chicago as a Native place, Chicago as a place of convergence, activism and resistance in Chicago, and community-driven education movements in Chicago. Drawing from History, American Studies, Education, and Indigenous Studies, students will also examine how research and curricula can center Indigenous perspectives and sources.
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AMST 221.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Meredith McCoy đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THWillis 114 10:10am-11:55am
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AMST 238 9/11 and the War on Terror in American Culture 6 credits
An exploration of how the terrorist attacks of 9/11/2001 and the subsequent War on Terror impacted American culture. We will focus on issues of both form (the elements determining the look and feel of post-9/11 artwork) and content (the social and moral concerns driving post-9/11 culture). Shared texts will include novels, short stories, poetry, music, art, and films. Particular attention will be paid to themes such as race and racism, religion and religious discrimination, immigration and xenophobia, debates over American exceptionalism, critiques of American capitalism, the “death of irony,” attempts to define “truth,” and the spread of conspiracy theories.
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AMST 238.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Christopher Elias đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THWillis 203 10:10am-11:55am
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AMST 263 Ethics of Indigenous Engagement 3 credits
This course explores ethical questions raised in academic civic engagement with Indigenous Nations, communities, and organizations. How might curricular, co-curricular, and institutional engagement proceed âin a good wayâ? How can we interrupt a history of extractive relationships between academic institutions and Native peoples? How should partnerships reflect Indigenous sovereignty and work from meaningful overlaps between academic and Indigenous priorities? What is the right relationship between scholarship and advocacy? How can Indigenous knowledges, values, and pedagogies reshape academic inquiry? These questions will be explored through case studies, conversations with Indigenous partners, and structured reflection on student's varied engagement experiences.
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AMST 263.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Michael McNally đ« đ€ · Meredith McCoy đ« đ€
- Size:25
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- THLeighton 426 3:10pm-4:55pm
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AMST 396 Producing Latinidad 6 credits
As Arlene DĂĄvila points out in Latinos Inc, Latinidadâthe term that names a set of presumably common attributes that connects Latinxs in the U.S.âemerges in part from communities but, importantly, is developed heavily by the media, advertising, and other political and social institutions, including academia. In this course we consider how ideas and imaginings of who Latinxs are and what Latinidad is develop within political spaces (the electorate, the census), in local places, and through various media, including television, advertising, and music. We will consider how individual writers and artists contribute to the conversation. Throughout, we will engage with social and cultural theories about racial formation, gender, and sexuality.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): AMST 115 with grade of C- or better.
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AMST 396.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Adriana Estill đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THHasenstab 109 10:10am-11:55am
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ARCN 101 The Human Story: Archaeology and the Anthropocene 6 credits
What are the origins of our species? How did our ancestors evolve in Africa and disperse to nearly every corner of the globe? How did people create tools and homes, transform landscapes, and build cities? What are the origins of art? Of agriculture? Of mass-transport and communication technologies? Writing is about 5000 years old, meaning over 99% of the human past (c. 4 million years) is documented only through the material record of fossils, artifacts, and environmental impacts. This course examines the material worlds of humanity, and how archaeology provides a unique, âbig-pictureâ story of our shared past.
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ARCN 101.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Alex Knodell đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WAnderson Hall 121 11:10am-12:20pm
- FAnderson Hall 121 12:00pm-1:00pm
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ASST 285 Mapping Japan, the Real and the Imagined 6 credits
From ancient to present times, Japan drew and redrew its borders, shape, and culture, imagining its place in this world and beyond, its From ancient times to the present, Japan drew and redrew its borders, reimagining its cultural and racial identity, and its place in this world and beyond. This course is a cartographic exploration of this complex and contested history. Cosmological mandalas, hell images, travel brochures, and military maps bring to light Japanâs religious vision, cartographic imagination, and political ambition that dictated its geopolitical expansion and the displacement of minority peoples at home, defining its real and imagined boundaries. We will explore a variety of maps, focusing on those in Carletonâs unique library collection.
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ASST 285.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Asuka Sango đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 236 1:15pm-3:00pm
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CCST 208 International Coffee and News 2 credits
Have you recently returned from studying or living abroad? This course is designed to help you keep in touch with the culture you left behind, while deepening your understanding of current issues across the globe. Relying on magazines and newspapers in the local language or in English-language media, students will discuss common topics and themes as they play out in the countries or regions where they have lived or studied. Conducted in English. Recommended preparation: Participation in an off-campus study program (Carleton or non-Carleton), substantial experience living abroad, or instructor permission.
- Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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CCST 208.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Laura Goering đ« đ€
- Size:25
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- THLanguage & Dining Center 335 3:10pm-4:20pm
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Recommended Preparation: Participation in an off-campus study program (Carleton or non-Carleton), substantial experience living abroad, or instructor permission.
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CCST 208.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Laura Goering đ« đ€
- Size:25
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- THLanguage & Dining Center 345 3:10pm-4:20pm
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Recommended Preparation: Participation in an off-campus study program (Carleton or non-Carleton), substantial experience living abroad, or instructor permission.
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CCST 208.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:David Tompkins đ« đ€
- Size:25
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- THLeighton 301 1:15pm-2:25pm
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Recommended Preparation: Participation in an off-campus study program (Carleton or non-Carleton), substantial experience living abroad, or instructor permission.
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CCST 398 The Global Panorama: A Capstone Workshop for European Studies and Cross-Cultural Studies 2 credits
The work of Cross-Cultural Studies and European Studies traverses many disciplines, often engaging with experiences that are difficult to capture in traditional formats. In this course students will create an ePortfolio that reflects, deepens, and narrates the various forms of experiences they have had at Carleton related to their minor, drawing on coursework and off-campus study, as well as such extracurricular activities as talks, service learning, internships and fellowships. Guided by readings and prompts, students will write a reflective essay articulating the coherence of the parts, describing both the process and the results of their pathway through the minor. Considered a capstone for CCST and EUST, but for anyone looking to thread together their experiences across culture. Course is taught as a workshop.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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CCST 398.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Paul Petzschmann đ« đ€
- Size:15
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- TLeighton 426 1:15pm-3:00pm
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CGSC 330 Embodied Cognition 6 credits
This seminar will consider recent work in philosophy, cognitive science and linguistics critical of views of human cognition as “disembodied” and Cartesian. Philosophical sources of the early critiques of symbolic AI and “cartesianism” will be considered (Merleau-Ponty, Dewey), as will the enactive (Cuffari, Di Paolo, and De Jaegher) and ecological (Chemero, Cowley, Steffensen) critiques of language, and current work on embodied cognition by Eleanor Rosch, Hubert Dreyfus, John Haugeland, Andy Clark and Evan Thompson. The seminar will include materials relevant to students in philosophy, linguistics, psychology and cognitive science.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): CGSC 130 or CGSC/PSYC 232 with a grade of C- or better.
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CGSC 330.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Jay McKinney đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THHulings 316 1:15pm-3:00pm
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CLAS 123 Greek Archaeology and Art 6 credits
This course explores the archaeology and art of the Ancient Greek world. Beginning with prehistory, we will track the development of the material culture of Ancient Greece through the Classical and Hellenistic periods, and conclude by discussing aspects of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires that followed. We will focus throughout on aspects of archaeological practice, material culture and text, art and society, long-term social change, and the role of the past in the present.
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CLAS 123.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Alex Knodell đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WLanguage & Dining Center 104 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLanguage & Dining Center 104 1:10pm-2:10pm
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CLAS 214 Gender and Sexuality in Classical Antiquity 6 credits
In both ancient Greece and Rome, gender (along with class and citizenship status) largely determined what people did, where they spent their time, and how they related to others. This course will examine the ways in which Greek and Roman societies defined gender categories, and how they used them to think about larger social, political, and religious issues. Primary readings from Greek and Roman epic, lyric, and drama, as well as ancient historical, philosophical, and medical writers; in addition we will explore a range of secondary work on the topic from the perspectives of Classics and Gender Studies.
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CLAS 214.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Clara Hardy đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLibrary 344 1:15pm-3:00pm
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CLAS 240 Rome: From Village to Superpower 6 credits
This class will investigate how Rome rose from a humble village of outcasts and refugees to become the preeminent power in the entire Mediterranean. We will trace Rome’s political evolution from kings to the Republic, alongside their gradual takeover of the Italian peninsula. We will study how Rome then swiftly overpowered what had been the most powerful kingdoms in the Mediterranean and established themselves as dominant. Who were these Romans and what were their political, military, religious, and social systems that enabled them to accomplish so much? What critical events shaped their development and ultimately led to total political control of the Mediterranean world?
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CLAS 240.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Jake Morton đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLanguage & Dining Center 104 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLanguage & Dining Center 104 2:20pm-3:20pm
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CLAS 384 Food and Foodways of the Ancient Mediterranean 6 credits
We need food to live, but food also plays a crucial cultural, social, and economic role in our lives. As such, the study of food and foodways offers a cornucopia of approaches and insights into the lives of ancient peoples. This seminar will explore what, why, and how food was consumed, produced, traded, and thought about in the ancient Mediterranean world. We will study archaeological and literary sources of ancient evidence alongside modern scholarship and theoretical frameworks. Topics in the second half of the course will be driven by student interests as they develop their own research and present it at the department Symposium.
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): Two Classics (CLAS) courses with a grade of C- or better.
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CLAS 384.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Jake Morton đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLibrary 344 1:15pm-3:00pm
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DANC 266 Reading the Dancing Body 6 credits
Dance is a field in which bodies articulate a history of sexuality, nation, gender, and race. In this course, the investigation of the body as a “text” will be anchored by intersectional and feminist perspectives. We will re-center American concert dance history, emphasizing the Africanist base of American Dance performance, contemporary black choreographers, and Native American concert dance. Through reading, writing, discussing, moving, viewing videos and performances the class will “read” the gender, race, and politics of the dancing body in the cultural/historical context of Modern, Post Modern and Contemporary Dance.
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DANC 266.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Judith Howard đ« đ€
- Size:20
- T, THWeitz Center 165 1:15pm-3:00pm
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DGAH 110 Hacking the Humanities 6 credits
The digital world is infiltrating the academy and profoundly disrupting the arts and humanities, posing fundamental challenges to traditional models of university education, scholarly research, academic publication and creative production. This core course for the Digital Arts & Humanities minor introduces the key concepts, debates and technologies that shape DGAH, including text encoding, digital mapping (GIS), network analysis, data visualization, 3D imaging and basic programming languages. Students will learn to hack the humanities by making a collaborative, publishable DH project, while acquiring the skills and confidence necessary to actively participate in the digital world, both in college and beyond.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry QRE, Quantitative Reasoning
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DGAH 110.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Austin Mason đ« đ€
- Size:40
- T, THLeighton 304 1:15pm-3:00pm
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ENTS 220 Sovereignty and Sustainability 6 credits
This course explores the legal, cultural, and environmental foundations of Tribal and Indigenous environmental stewardship and natural resource management. Students will examine the historical significance of treaties, Tribal sovereignty, and federal trust responsibility, as well as key laws that have shaped Tribal resource use. The evolution of Tribal co-management with federal and state agencies will be analyzed through case studies, highlighting challenges and successful partnerships. Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) and Indigenous worldviews on land stewardship will complement critical discussions on climate change, environmental justice, and the ongoing balance between economic development and ecological sustainability in Tribal resource use.Â
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ENTS 220.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Roger Faust đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WWeitz Center 233 9:50am-11:00am
- FWeitz Center 233 9:40am-10:40am
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ENTS 320 Seminar: Listening to the Land 6 credits
For many Indigenous peoples, land is a relative, a teacher, and a source of knowledge. This seminar examines Indigenous relationships with land through the writings of Native authors, scholars, and activists, exploring Traditional Ecological Knowledge, stewardship, and environmental challenges. We will consider how Indigenous knowledge informs responses to climate change, land use, biodiversity loss, and other environmental threats, while also recognizing land and non-human beings as active participants in cultural and ecological systems. Through a reading-group format, discussions will foster critical reflection and connections to broader environmental issues. Students will also conduct an independent research paper, applying course themes to a focused topic of inquiry.
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EUST 110 State of the Nation: the Politics of Citizenship 6 credits
This team-taught interdisciplinary course explores the relationship between memory, place and power in Europe’s cities. It examines the practices through which individuals and groups imagine, negotiate and contest their past in public spaces through art, literature, film and architecture. The instructors will draw on their research and teaching experience in urban centers of Europe after a thorough introduction to the study of memory across different disciplines. Students will be challenged to think critically about larger questions regarding the possibility of national and local memories as the foundation of identity and pride but also of guilt and shame.
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EUST 207 Rome Program: Italian Encounters 3 credits
Through a range of interdisciplinary readings, guest lectures, and site visits, this course will provide students with opportunities to analyze important aspects of Italian culture and society, both past and present, as well as to examine the ways in which travelers, tourists, temporary visitors, and immigrants have experienced and coped with their Italian worlds. Topics may include transportation, cuisine, rituals and rhythms of Italian life, urbanism, religious diversity, immigration, tourism, historic preservation, and language. Class discussions and projects will offer students opportunities to reflect on their own encounters with contemporary Italian culture.
Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History in Rome Program.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History in Rome Program.
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EUST 278 Cross-Cultural Psychology Seminar in Prague: Politics & Culture in Central Europe-Twentieth Century 6 credits
This course covers important political, social, and cultural developments in Central Europe during the twentieth century. Studies will explore the establishment of independent nations during the interwar period, Nazi occupation, resistance and collaboration, the Holocaust and the expulsion of the Germans, the nature of the communist system, its final collapse, and the post-communist transformation.
Acceptance in Carleton OCS Cross-Cultural Psychology Seminar in Prague program.
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in Cross-Cultural Studies in Prague Program and student has completed any of the following course(s): PSYC 110 with a grade of C- or better.
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EUST 398 The Global Panorama: A Capstone Workshop for European Studies and Cross-Cultural Studies 2 credits
The work of Cross-Cultural Studies and European Studies traverses many disciplines, often engaging with experiences that are difficult to capture in traditional formats. In this course students will create an ePortfolio that reflects, deepens, and narrates the various forms of experiences they have had at Carleton related to their minor, drawing on coursework and off-campus study, as well as such extracurricular activities as talks, service learning, internships and fellowships. Guided by readings and prompts, students will write a reflective essay articulating the coherence of the parts, describing both the process and the results of their pathway through the minor. Considered a capstone for CCST and EUST, but for anyone looking to thread together their experiences across culture. Course is taught as a workshop.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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EUST 398.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Paul Petzschmann đ« đ€
- Size:15
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- TLeighton 426 1:15pm-3:00pm
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FREN 208 French and Francophone Studies in Paris Program: Politics and Cultures in Contemporary France 6 credits
This course seeks to deepen students’ knowledge of contemporary French culture through a pluridisciplinary approach, using multimedia (books, newspaper and magazine articles, videos, etc.) to generate discussion. It will also promote the practice of both oral and written French through exercises, debates, and oral presentations.
Acceptance in the Carleton OCS French and Francophone Studies in Paris Program.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS French and Francophone Studies in Paris Program.
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FREN 210 Coffee and News 2 credits
Keep up your French while learning about current issues in France, as well as world issues from a French perspective. Requirements include reading specific sections of leading French newspapers, (Le Monde, Libération, etc.) on the internet, and then meeting once a week to exchange ideas over coffee with a small group of students.
Sophomore Priority
- Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): FREN 204 with a grade of C- or better or received a score of 4 or better on the French Language and Culture AP exam or received a score of 6 or better on the French: Language B IB exam or received a score of 205 on the Carleton French Placement exam. .
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FREN 210.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Ăva PĂłsfay đ« đ€
- Size:15
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- WLanguage & Dining Center 335 3:10pm-4:20pm
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FREN 210.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Ăva PĂłsfay đ« đ€
- Size:15
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- MLanguage & Dining Center 330 3:10pm-4:20pm
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FREN 210.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Ăva PĂłsfay đ« đ€
- Size:15
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- WLanguage & Dining Center 335 3:10pm-4:20pm
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Sophomore Priority
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GERM 209 German for Music Enthusiasts 2 credits
From chart-topping hits to old classics, explore the sounds of the German-speaking world while honing your language skills. Each weekly session explores the cultural and social context of selected songs, providing valuable insights into contemporary German society. Engage in interactive singing sessions to learn and perform these songs, improving your pronunciation and language fluency. No prior musical experience is required.
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): GERM 204 with a grade of C- or better or received a score of 4 or better on the German Language and Culture AP exam or received a score of 6 or better on the German: Language B IB exam or received a score of 205 on the Carleton German Placement exam.
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GERM 221 Modern Love: Sex, Gender, and Identity in Austria-Hungary around 1900 6 credits
We explore literature, music, and the fine arts of German-speaking countries around the topics of gender and sex(uality). We focus on the years between 1880 and 1920 in Austria-Hungary, but also venture into more recent times and other localities. How did images of men and women change over time? How did science factor into these images? What was/is considered ânormalâ when it comes to sex(uality) and gender, and what German-speaking voices have been pushing against those norms? How did these voices use literature, music, and the fine arts to reflect or criticize such norms? Taught in English.
Taught in English
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GERM 221.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Juliane Schicker đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLanguage & Dining Center 205 10:10am-11:55am
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GERM 240 Half-Lives: Science, Protest, and Nuclear Power in Germany 6 credits
Why did a country known for ground-breaking scientific research decommission its final nuclear power plant in 2023? What historical factors inform Germanyâs resistance to nuclear power? And how have literature, poetry, theater, and film responded to scientific progress in the Atomic Era? In this course, taught in English, we will explore the role of science and research in Germany and learn about the countryâs singular and volatile response to nuclear power. Key topics include environmental activism, policy responses, and current events that impact Germanyâs energy grid. In tandem with this historical inquiry, we will analyze works of literature, theater, and other media that depict the narrative fascination with nuclear physics, including the blockbuster Oppenheimer and the Netflix series Dark. In translation. Taught in English.
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GERM 320 Life under Socialism: Culture and Society in East Germany 6 credits
What was life like under “actually existing socialism?” What films, books, music, and other media did people in the German Democratic Republic (or East Germany) consume and how did they cope with their country’s dictatorship? How can the experiences of people—particularly women—living in the GDR provide useful context for contemporary socio-political issues in the United States and beyond? We will discuss topics such as gender equality, education, health care, and queer life in the GDR. Taught in German.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): GERM 204 with a grade of C- or better or received a score of 4 or better on the German Language and Culture AP exam or received a score of 6 or better on the German: Language B IB exam or received a score of 205 on the Carleton German Placement exam.
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GWSS 212 Foundations of LGBTQ Studies 6 credits
This course introduces students to foundational interdisciplinary works in sexuality and gender studies, while focusing on the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities in the United States. In exploring sexual and gender diversity throughout the term, this seminar highlights the complexity and variability of experiences of desire, identification, embodiment, self-definition, and community-building across different historical periods, and in relation to intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and other identities.
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GWSS 212.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Candace Moore đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 426 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 426 2:20pm-3:20pm
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GWSS 243 Women’s and Gender Studies in Europe Program: Situated Feminisms: Socio-Political Systems and Gender Issues Across Europe
This course examines the history and present of feminist and LGBTQ activisms across Western and East-Central Europe. We study the impact of the European colonial heritage on the lives of women and sexual/ethnic minorities across European communities, as well as the legacies of World War II, the Cold War, and the EU expansion into Eastern Europe. Reproductive rights, LGBTQ issues, “anti-genderism,” sex work, trafficking, and issues faced by ethnic minorities are among topics explored. These topics are addressed comparatively and historically, stressing their ‘situated’ nature and considering their divergent sociopolitical national frameworks.
Acceptance in OCS Women's & Gender Studies in Europe Program
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS Women's and Gender Studies in Europe program.
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GWSS 325 Women’s & Gender Studies in Europe Program: Gender and the Biopolitics of Health across Europe
Addressing the impact of Anglo-American influences in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, this course examines European, including East-Central European, approaches to key gender and sexuality topics. It raises questions about the transfer of feminist concepts across cultures and languages. Some of the themes explored include nationalism and gender/sexuality, gendered dimensions of Western and East-Central European racisms, the historical influence of psychoanalysis on Continental feminist theories, the implications of European feminisms in the history of colonialism, the biopolitics of gender, homonationalism, as well as Eastern European socialist/communist theories of women’s emancipation.
Acceptance in the Carleton OCS Women's and Gender Studies in Europe program.
Students register either for GWSS 225 or GWSS 325. Those who have not taken a previous Gender Studies course should register for GWSS 225, unless they obtain permission from the instructor. Students who have completed a 100- or 200- level Gender studies course, may choose to register for either GWSS 325 or GWSS 225.
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS Women's and Gender Studies in Europe program.
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HIST 111 Uncharted Waters: The History of Society and the Sea 6 credits
This course introduces students to maritime history, marine environmental history, and issues in contemporary marine policy. While traditional histories have framed the sea as an empty space and obstacle to be traversed, or as a battleground, we will approach the ocean as a contact zone, a space of labor, and as the site of focused scientific research, thereby emphasizing human interaction with the oceans. We will examine how people have come to know, utilize, and govern the world’s oceans across time and space, and we will explore how this history informs contemporary issues in maritime law, governance, and ocean conservation.
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HIST 111.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Antony Adler đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 304 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 304 9:40am-10:40am
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HIST 112 Freedom of Expression: A Global History 6 credits
Celebrated as the bedrock of democracy, freedom of expression is often seen as an American or western value. Yet the concept has a rich and global history. In this course we will track the long and turbulent history of freedom of expression from ancient Athens and medieval Islamic societies to the Enlightenment and the drive for censorship in totalitarian and colonial societies. Among the questions we will consider are: How have the parameters of free expression changed and developed over time? What is the relationship between free speech and political protest? How has free speech itself been weaponized? How does an understanding of the history of free speech help us think about the challenges of combating hatred and misinformation in today’s internet age?
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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HIST 112.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Amna Khalid đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 330 2:20pm-3:20pm
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HIST 116 Intro to Indigenous Histories, 1887-present 6 credits
Many Americans grow up with a fictionalized view of Indigenous people (sometimes also called Native Americans/American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians within the U.S. context). Understanding Indigenous peoples’ histories, presents, and possible futures requires moving beyond these stereotypes and listening to Indigenous perspectives. In this class, we will begin to learn about Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island and the Pacific through tribal histories, legislation, Supreme Court cases, and personal narratives. The course will focus on the period from 1887 to 2018 with major themes including (among others) agency, resistance, resilience, settler colonialism, discrimination, and structural racism.
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HIST 116.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Meredith McCoy đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 426 1:15pm-3:00pm
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HIST 125 Roots and Resistance: Africa to the U.S. Civil War 6 credits
This course is a survey of early African American history. It will introduce students to major themes and events while also covering historical interpretations and debates in the field. Core themes of the course include migration, conflict, and culture. Beginning with autonomous African politics, the course traces the development of the United States through the experiences of enslaved and free African American women and men to the Civil War. The main aim of the course is for students to become familiar with key issues and developments in African American history and their centrality to understanding U.S. history.
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HIST 125.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Rebecca Brueckmann đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 236 3:10pm-4:55pm
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HIST 126 Black Freedom: Reconstruction to #BlackLivesMatter 6 credits
This course analyzes Black Freedom activism, its goals, and protagonists from Reconstruction until today. Topics include the evolution of racial segregation and its legal and de facto expressions in the South and across the nation, the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance, Black activism in the New Deal era, the effects of World War II and the Cold War, mass activism in the 1950s and 1960s, white supremacist resistance against Black rights, Black Power activism and Black Internationalism, the “War on Drugs,” racialized welfare state reforms, and police brutality, the election of Barack Obama, and the path to #BlackLivesMatter today.
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HIST 126.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Rebecca Brueckmann đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 202 1:15pm-3:00pm
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HIST 141 Europe in the Twentieth Century 6 credits
This course explores developments in European history in a global context from the final decade of the nineteenth century through to the present. We will focus on the impact of nationalism, war, and revolution on the everyday experiences of women and men, and also look more broadly on the chaotic economic, political, social, and cultural life of the period. Of particular interest will be the rise of fascism and communism, and the challenge to Western-style liberal democracy, followed by the Cold War and communism's collapse near the end of the century.
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HIST 141.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:David Tompkins đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 426 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 426 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 150 Politics of Art in Early Imperial China 6 credits
Poetry has been playing an important role in politics from early China down to the present. Members of the educated elite have used this form of artistic expression to create political allegories in times of war and diplomacy. Students will learn the multiple roles that poet-censors played in early imperial China, with thematic attention given to issues of self and ethnic/gendered identity, internal exile and nostalgia, and competing religious orientations that eventually fostered the rise of Neo-Confucianism. Students will write a short biography of a poet by sampling her/his poems and poetics (all in translation) from the common reading pool.
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HIST 150.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Seungjoo Yoon đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 301 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 301 12:00pm-1:00pm
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HIST 153 History of Modern China 6 credits
This course examines major features of the trajectory of China’s recent past spanning from the seventeenth century through the present. Students will analyze deep socio-cultural currents that cut across the changes in socioeconomic as well as political arenas. Themes for discussion will include state formations, social changes, economic developments, religious orientations, bureaucratic behaviors, and cultural refinements that the Chinese have made. Students are also expected to develop skills to frame key historical questions against broader historiographical contexts by engaging in analyses of many different types of primary sources.
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HIST 153.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Seungjoo Yoon đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 236 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 236 2:20pm-3:20pm
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HIST 154 Social Movements in Postwar Japan 6 credits
This course tackles an evolving meaning of democracy and sovereignty in postwar Japan shaped by the transformative power of its social movements. We will place the anti-nuclear movement and anti-base struggles of the 1950s, the protest movements against revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of the 1960s, and environmentalist movements against the U.S. Cold War projects in Asia to see how they intersect with the worldwide “New Left” movements of the 1960s. Topics include student activism, labor unionism, Marxist movements, and gangsterism (yakuza). Students will engage with political art, photographs, manga, films, reportage, memoirs, autobiographies, interview records, novels, and detective stories.
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HIST 154.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Seungjoo Yoon đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 202 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 202 2:20pm-3:20pm
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HIST 161 From Mughals to Mahatma Gandhi: An Introduction to Modern Indian History 6 credits
An introductory survey course to familiarize students with some of the key themes and debates in the historiography of modern India. Beginning with an overview of Mughal rule in India, the main focus of the course is the colonial period. The course ends with a discussion of 1947: the hour of independence as well as the creation of two new nation-states, India and Pakistan. Topics include Oriental Despotism, colonial rule, nationalism, communalism, gender, caste and race. No prior knowledge of South Asian History required.
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HIST 161.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Amna Khalid đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 202 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 202 12:00pm-1:00pm
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HIST 170 Modern Latin America 6 credits
This course focuses on some of the principal challenges that Latin Americans have confronted over the first two centuries of post-colonial existence (ca. 1820-2020). Case studies will highlight themes and concerns still pertinent today, such as: political instability and authoritarianism, economic underdevelopment and poverty, neo-colonial challenges to national sovereignty, deeply ingrained socioeconomic and racial inequalities, and popular struggles to attain meaningful political, economic, and cultural rights, among others.
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HIST 170.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Andrew Fisher đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 236 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 236 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 201 Rome Program: Building Power and Piety in Medieval Italy, C.E. 300-1150 6 credits
Through site visits, on-site projects, and readings, this course explores the ways in which individuals and communities attempted to give physical and visual form to their religious beliefs and political ambitions through their use of materials, iconography, topography, and architecture. We will also examine how the material legacies of imperial Rome, Byzantium, and early Christianity served as both resources for and constraints on the political, cultural, and religious evolution of the Italian peninsula and especially Rome and its environs from late antiquity through the twelfth century. Among the principal themes will be the development of the cult of saints, the development of the papal power and authority, Christianization, reform, pilgrimage, and monasticism.
Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History in Rome Program.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History in Rome Program.
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HIST 201F Rome Program: Building Power and Piety in Medieval Italy-Latin 2 credits
This course will offer reading and discussion of historical materials related to HIST 201 in their original Latin.
Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History in Rome Program.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History in Rome Program AND student has completed the following course(s): LATN 204 with a grade of C- or better or received a score of 205 on the Carleton Latin Placement exam.
- HIST 201: Rome Program: Building Power and Piety in Medieval Italy, C.E. 300-1150
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HIST 205 American Environmental History 6 credits
Environmental concerns, conflicts, and change mark the course of American history, from the distant colonial past to our own day. This course will consider the nature of these eco-cultural developments, focusing on the complicated ways that human thought and perception, culture and society, and natural processes and biota have all combined to forge Americans’ changing relationship with the natural world. Topics will include Native American subsistence strategies, Euroamerican settlement, industrialization, urbanization, consumption, and the environmental movement. As we explore these issues, one of our overarching goals will be to develop an historical context for thinking deeply about contemporary environmental dilemmas.
- Winter 2025, Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies
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HIST 206 Rome Program: The Eternal City in Time: Structure, Change, and Identity 6 credits
This course will explore the lived experience of the city of Rome in the twelfth-sixteenth centuries. Students will study buildings, urban forms, surviving artifacts, and textual and other visual evidence to understand how politics, power, and religion (both Christianity and Judaism) mapped onto city spaces. How did urban challenges and opportunities shape daily life? How did the memory of the past influence the present? How did the rural world affect the city and vice versa? Students will work on projects closely tied to the urban fabric.
Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History in Rome Program.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History in Rome Program.
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HIST 209 Slavery in the Atlantic World 6 credits
This course explores the history of enslavement in the Atlantic World, including West Africa, South America, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe. The course examines the intersecting themes of power, labor, law, race, gender, sexuality, and resistance. It will consider how these themes each shaped the construction of different institutions of enslavement while simultaneously focusing on the experiences of the enslaved who lived and died within in these systems. Using a comparative methodology, we will ask canonical questions, such as what constitutes a slave society and which forms did resistance, rebellion, and revolution by enslaved people take.
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HIST 209.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Rebecca Brueckmann đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 304 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 304 12:00pm-1:00pm
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HIST 220 From Blackface to Blaxploitation: Black History and/in Film 6 credits
This course focuses on the representation of African American history in popular US-American movies. It will introduce students to the field of visual history, using cinema as a primary source. Through films from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the seminar will analyze African American history, (pop-)cultural depictions, and memory culture. We will discuss subjects, narrative arcs, stylistic choices, production design, performative and film industry practices, and historical receptions of movies. The topics include slavery, racial segregation and white supremacy, the Black Freedom Movement, controversies and conflicts in Black communities, Black LGBTQIA+ history, ghettoization and police brutality, Black feminism, and Afrofuturism.
Extra time
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HIST 220.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Rebecca Brueckmann đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 236 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 229 Working with Gender in U.S. History 6 credits
Historically work has been a central location for the constitution of gender identities for both men and women; at the same time, cultural notions of gender have shaped the labor market. We will investigate the roles of race, class, and ethnicity in shaping multiple sexual divisions of labor and the ways in which terms such as skill, bread-winning and work itself were gendered. Topics will include domestic labor, slavery, industrialization, labor market segmentation, protective legislation, and the labor movement.
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HIST 229.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Annette Igra đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 202 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 231 Mapping the World Before Mercator 6 credits
This course will explore early maps primarily in medieval and early modern Europe. After an introduction to the rhetoric of maps and world cartography, we will examine the functions and forms of medieval European and Islamic maps and then look closely at the continuities and transformations in map-making during the period of European exploration. The focus of the course will be on understanding each map within its own cultural context and how maps can be used to answer historical questions. We will work closely with the maps in Gould Library Special Collections to expand campus awareness of the collection.
Extra time is required for a one-time map show in the library which we will schedule at the beginning of term.
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HIST 231.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Victoria Morse đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 426 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 426 2:20pm-3:20pm
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HIST 233 The Byzantine World and Its Neighbors 750-ca. 1453 6 credits
The Byzantine world (eighth-fifteenth centuries) was a zone of fascinating tensions, exchanges, and encounters. Through a wide variety of written and visual evidence, we will examine key features of its history and culture: the nature of government; piety and religious controversy; art and music; the evolving relations with the Latin West, Armenia, the Slavic North and West, and the Dar al-Islam (the Abbasids and Seljuk and Ottoman Turks); gender; economic life; and social relations.Extra Time for special events and a group project (ecumenical council).
Extra Time for special events and a group project (ecumenical council).
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HIST 233.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:William North đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 304 8:30am-9:40am
- FLeighton 304 8:30am-9:30am
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HIST 245 Ireland: Land, Conflict and Memory 6 credits
This course explores the history of Ireland from Medieval times through the Great Famine, ending with a look at the Partition of Ireland in 1920. We examine themes of religious and cultural conflict and explore a series of English political and military interventions. Throughout the course, we will analyze views of the Irish landscape, landholding patterns, and health and welfare issues. Finally, we explore the contested nature of history and memory as the class discusses monuments and memory production in Irish public spaces.
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HIST 245.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Susannah Ottaway đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 426 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 426 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 251 Japan and Europe: Worlds Apart? 6 credits
This course examines Japanese and European history from c. 1500 to 1900, tracking the disparate ways in which these regions changed over this time period and highlighting their entanglement. We will focus on three modules, each centered on the era when European global expansion was at its peak and when Japan was isolationist. We will explore developments in regional and global trade networks and state and financial institutions, in addition to news networks, the world of publishing, and the social world of intellectual exchange. Finally, the course compares changing views and practices in the fields of science and medicine.
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HIST 251.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Susannah Ottaway đ« đ€ · Seungjoo Yoon đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 236 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 236 12:00pm-1:00pm
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HIST 262 Borders Drawn in Blood: The Partition of Modern India 6 credits
Indiaâs independence in 1947 was marred by its bloody partition into two nation states. Neighbors turned on each other, millions were rendered homeless and without kin, and gendered violence became rampant, all in the name of religion. Political accounts of Partition are plentiful, but how did ordinary people experience it? Centering the accounts of people who lived through Partition, this course explores how divisions and differences calcified, giving birth to national and religious narratives that obscure histories of intersecting identities. With right wing Hindu nationalism ascendant in India and Islamic nationalism in Pakistan on the rise, Partition alas is not over.Â
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HIST 262.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Amna Khalid đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 426 1:15pm-3:00pm
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HIST 264 A History of India Through Food 6 credits
Indian cuisine is today famed worldwide and known for its complex diversity. This course will explore food as a gateway through which to understand a broader history of society, economy and politics in the Indian subcontinent. An analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of food and spices, beginning in the ancient era and ending in contemporary times, will allow us to examine community formation, patterns of wealth distribution, and state-building strategies. We will look at topics including farming and the environment, medical and religious systems, culture, caste, and colonialism.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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HIST 264.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Brendan LaRocque đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 202 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 202 9:40am-10:40am
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HIST 265 Central Asia in the Modern Age 6 credits
Central Asia–the region encompassing the post-Soviet states of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, and the Xinjiang region of the People’s Republic of China–is often considered one of the most exotic in the world, but it has experienced all the excesses of the modern age. After a basic introduction to the long-term history of the steppe, this course will concentrate on exploring the history of the region since its conquest by the Russian and Chinese empires. We will discuss the interaction of external and local forces as we explore transformations in the realms of politics, society, culture, and religion.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Russophone Studies in Central Asia program.
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HIST 270 Nuclear Nations: India and Pakistan as Rival Siblings 6 credits
At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 India and Pakistan, two new nation states emerged from the shadow of British colonialism. This course focuses on the political trajectories of these two rival siblings and looks at the ways in which both states use the other to forge antagonistic and belligerent nations. While this is a survey course it is not a comprehensive overview of the history of the two countries. Instead it covers some of the more significant moments of rupture and violence in the political history of the two states. The first two-thirds of the course offers a top-down, macro overview of these events and processes whereas the last third examines the ways in which people experienced these developments. We use the lens of gender to see how the physical body, especially the body of the woman, is central to the process of nation building. We will consider how women’s bodies become sites of contestation and how they are disciplined and policed by the postcolonial state(s).
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HIST 270.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Amna Khalid đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 236 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 236 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 274 The Andes Under Inca & Spanish Rule 6 credits
This course examines imperial rule in the Andes under both Inca and Spanish rule. Indigenous intermediaries will be highlighted throughout, including the ethnic lords (kurakas) who mediated the competing interests of their communities and the state, as well as the indigenous and mestizo writers who drew from Andean and European traditions to craft a new kind of history of the Andes and the Inca dynasty. Visions of the Inca past and the strategies of survival developed by ethnic lords and communities during Spanish rule will inform our study of the Great Andean Rebellion, which foreshadowed the Latin American wars of independence by a generation.
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HIST 274.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Andrew Fisher đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 330 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 276 In Search of Moctezuma: Reimagining Mexico’s Indigenous Past 6 credits
Even while still on the campaign trail, Spainâs conquistadors endeavored to describe Mexico's native societies to other Europeans. Thus began a centuries-long fascination with all things Mesoamerican, real and imaginary. This course explores how the Mesoamerican past has been imagined by indigenous and non-indigenous people. Potential subjects include Spanish conquistadors and missionaries, early Mexican nation-builders and artists, professional and pseudo-archaeologists, apocalyptic doomsayers, promoters of the Mexican tourist industry, and the counterculture and Chicano movements of the 1960s. Importantly, we will also consider how Mexico's indigenous groups have come to understand their own past from the time of Spanish rule to the present day.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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HIST 276.01 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Andrew Fisher đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 301 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 301 2:20pm-3:20pm
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HIST 287 From Alchemy to the Atom Bomb: The Scientific Revolution and the Making of the Modern World 6 credits
This course examines the growth of modern science since the Renaissance with an emphasis on the Scientific Revolution, the development of scientific methodology, and the emergence of new scientific disciplines. How might a history of science focused on scientific networks operating within society, rather than on individual scientists, change our understanding of “genius,” “progress,” and “scientific impartiality?” We will consider a range of scientific developments, treating science both as a body of knowledge and as a set of practices, and will gauge the extent to which our knowledge of the natural world is tied to who, when, and where such knowledge has been produced and circulated.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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HIST 287.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Antony Adler đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 330 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 298 Junior Colloquium 6 credits
In the junior year, majors must take this six-credit reading and discussion course taught each year by different members of the department faculty. The course is also required for the History minor. The general purpose of History 298 is to help students reach a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of history as a discipline and of the approaches and methods of historians. A major who is considering off-campus study in the junior year should consult with their adviser on when to take History 298.
Required for History majors and minors
- Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): Two 6 credit History courses excluding HIST 100, Independent Study and Comps with a grade of C- or better.
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HIST 298.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Rebecca Brueckmann đ« đ€
- Size:18
- T, THLeighton 202 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 298.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Andrew Fisher đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 303 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 303 9:40am-10:40am
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HIST 298.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Amna Khalid đ« đ€
- Size:18
- M, WLeighton 202 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 202 9:40am-10:40am
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HIST 308 American Cities and Nature 6 credits
Since the nation’s founding, the percentage of Americans living in cities has risen nearly sixteenfold, from about five percent to the current eighty-one percent. This massive change has spawned legions of others, and all of them have bearing on the complex ways that American cities and city-dwellers have shaped and reshaped the natural world. This course will consider the nature of cities in American history, giving particular attention to the dynamic linkages binding these cultural epicenters to ecological communities, environmental forces and resource flows, to eco-politics and social values, and to those seemingly far-away places we call farms and wilderness.
HIST 205 is recommended but not required.
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HIST 308.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:George Vrtis đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLibrary 344 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 320 The Progressive Era? 6 credits
Was the Progressive Era progressive? It was a period of social reform, labor activism, and woman suffrage, but also of Jim Crow, corporate capitalism, and U.S. imperialism. These are among the topics that can be explored in research papers on this contradictory era. We will begin by reading a brief text that surveys the major subject areas and relevant historiography of the period. The course will center on the writing of a 25-30 page based on primary research, which will be read and critiqued by members of the seminar.
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HIST 320.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Annette Igra đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 303 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 336 Controversial Histories: Ideological Conflict and Consensus in Historical Perspective 6 credits
This seminar explores how people in diverse times and places discussed, debated and decided the issues and ideals that shaped their lives, communities, and world. Particular attention will be paid to the role of institutions and individuals; communicative networks and textual communities; the forms and functions of polemical discourse; and the dynamics of group formation and stigmatization in the historical unfolding of conflict and consensus. Theoretical readings and select case studies will provide the common readings for the seminar. Each student will pursue a research project of 25 pages on this theme in a period and region of their choosing.Â
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HIST 336.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:William North đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THHasenstab 105 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 347 The Global Cold War 6 credits
In the aftermath of the Second World War and through the 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for world dominance. This Cold War spawned hot wars, as well as a cultural and economic struggle for influence all over the globe. This course will look at the experience of the Cold War from the perspective of its two main adversaries, the U.S. and USSR, but will also devote considerable attention to South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Students will write a 20 page paper based on original research.
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HIST 347.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:David Tompkins đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 301 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 398 Advanced Historical Writing 6 credits
This course is designed to support majors in developing advanced skills in historical research and writing. Through a combination of class discussion, small group work, and one-on-one interactions with the professor, majors learn the process of constructing sophisticated, well-documented, and well-written historical arguments within the context of an extended project of their own design. They also learn and practice strategies for engaging critically with contemporary scholarship and effective techniques of peer review and the oral presentation of research. By permission of the instructor only.
Concurrent enrollment in HIST 400 is required.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
- HIST 400: Integrative Exercise
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HIST 398.01 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Annette Igra đ« đ€
- Size:15
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- T, THLeighton 202 3:10pm-4:55pm
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HIST 398.02 Winter 2025
- Faculty:David Tompkins đ« đ€
- Size:15
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- T, THLeighton 330 10:10am-11:55am
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IDSC 251 Windows on the Good Life 2 credits
Human beings are always and everywhere challenged by the question: What should I do to spend my mortal time well? One way to approach this ultimate challenge is to explore some of the great cultural products of our civilization–works that are a delight to read for their wisdom and artfulness. This series of two-credit courses will explore a philosophical dialogue of Plato in the fall, a work from the Bible in the winter, and a pair of plays by Shakespeare in the spring. The course can be repeated for credit throughout the year and in subsequent years.
- Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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IDSC 251.01 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Laurence Cooper đ« đ€
- Size:18
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- MHasenstab 105 8:00pm-9:45pm
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IDSC 251.02 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Laurence Cooper đ« đ€
- Size:18
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- MHasenstab 105 3:10pm-4:45pm
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IDSC 251.01 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Laurence Cooper đ« đ€
- Size:18
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- MHasenstab 105 3:10pm-4:45pm
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IDSC 251.02 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Laurence Cooper đ« đ€
- Size:18
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- MHasenstab 105 8:00pm-9:45pm
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IDSC 251.01 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Laurence Cooper đ« đ€
- Size:18
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- MHasenstab 105 3:10pm-4:45pm
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IDSC 251.02 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Laurence Cooper đ« đ€
- Size:18
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- MHasenstab 105 8:00pm-9:45pm
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LTAM 398 Latin American Forum 2 credits
This colloquium will explore specific issues or works in Latin American Studies through discussion of a common reading, public presentation, project, and/or performance that constitute the annual Latin American Forum. Students will be required to attend two meetings during the term to discuss the common reading or other material and must attend, without exception. All events of the Forum which take place during fourth week of spring term (on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning). A short integrative essay or report will be required at the end of the term. Intended as capstone for the Latin American Studies minor.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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MELA 230 Worlds of Jewish Memory 6 credits
Judaism emphasizes transmitting memory from one generation to the next. How have pivotal events and experiences in Jewish history lived on in Jewish collective memory? How do they continue to speak through artistic/literary composition and museum/memorial design? How does Jewish collective memory compare with recorded Jewish history? We will study turning points in Jewish history including the Exodus from Egypt, Jewish expulsion from medieval Spain, the Holocaust, and Israeli independence, as Jews in different times and places have interpreted them with lasting influence. Research includes work with print, film, and other visual/ performative media.
CCST 230 is equivalent to MELA 230.
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MELA 230.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Stacy Beckwith đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLanguage & Dining Center 244 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLanguage & Dining Center 244 12:00pm-1:00pm
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MUSC 205 Disability in Popular Music: Representations, Roles, and Receptions 6 credits
How do public discourses around bodies and minds shape different styles of popular music? How do musicians and fans challenge ableism? Are certain disabilities more prominent in certain kinds of musics? And: can any of this even be heard? To address these questions, we will explore the life and music of artists such as Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Victoria Canal, Billie Eilish, and Django Reinhart, and examine how disability functions in subcultures such as punk, hip hop, and K-pop. Readings will be drawn from cultural disability studies, music theory, media studies, and the medical humanities.
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MUSC 205.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Jeremy Tatar đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WWeitz Center 230 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FWeitz Center 230 1:10pm-2:10pm
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PHIL 116 Sensation, Induction, Abduction, Deduction, Seduction 6 credits
In every academic discipline, we make theories and argue for and against them. This is as true of theology as of geology (and as true of phys ed as of physics). What are the resources we have available to us in making these arguments? It’s tempting to split the terrain into (i) raw data, and (ii) rules of right reasoning for processing the data. The most obvious source of raw data is sense experience, and the most obvious candidates for modes of right reasoning are deduction, induction, and abduction. Some philosophers, however, think that sense perception is only one of several sources of raw data (perhaps we also have a faculty of pure intuition or maybe a moral sense), and others have doubted that we have any source of raw data at all. As for the modes of “right” reasoning, Hume famously worried about our (in)ability to justify induction, and others have had similar worries about abduction and even deduction. Can more be said on behalf of our most strongly held beliefs and belief-forming practices than simply that we find them seductive—that we are attracted to them; that they resonate with us? In this course, we’ll use some classic historical and contemporary philosophical texts to help us explore these and related issues.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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PHIL 116.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Jason Decker đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 305 3:10pm-4:55pm
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PHIL 119 Meaning of Life 6 credits
Does life have a meaning? To answer this, we will explore various cross-cultural approaches to the meaning of life, both those that affirm meaning and deny it. We will cover, for example, approaches to the meaning of life grounded in divinity, creativity, striving, and more. We will also inquire into related questions about agency: Is fate compatible with meaning in life? Is meaning distinct from happiness? Is meaning a moralized concept? In addition, there will be room for student choice of topics.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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PHIL 119.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Hope Sample đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THWeitz Center 230 1:15pm-3:00pm
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PHIL 124 Friendship 6 credits
What is friendship? Are there different types of friendships? What makes a friendship good? While this course will familiarize you with a variety of scholarly views on friendship from both historically canonical and contemporary sources, our main goal is to become more reflective about our lived experience of friendship here and now.
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PHIL 124.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Allison Murphy đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 305 1:15pm-3:00pm
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PHIL 202 Philosophy Lab: Leading a Pre-Collegiate Philosophy Program 3 credits
This course will prepare students to teach modules on philosophy at the Area Learning Center. Students will select philosophical topics based on their interests and develop materials for teaching those topics. In addition to preparing modules, students will learn some of the pedagogical theory behind doing philosophy at the pre-collegiate level.
Meets M/W only
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): Two Philosophy (PHIL) courses with a grade of C- or better.
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PHIL 202.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Daniel Groll đ« đ€ · Hope Sample đ« đ€
- Size:15
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- M, WLeighton 301 12:30pm-1:40pm
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PHIL 209 Philosophy of Theater: Actors, Characters, Performances 6 credits
Ian McKellen explains that when he acts on stage, âI pretend to be the person Iâm portraying.â But how do you pretend to be a person? Is it different from playing make-believe or code-switching your behavior between family, friends, and classmates? Is it different from what writers do when they write about fictional people? And just what is a person, anyway? A particular body? A set of beliefs and desires? Is an actorâs race and gender independent of those of the person they portray? Weâll evaluate competing answers to such questions from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and theater practitioners.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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PHIL 209.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Andrew Knoll đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 303 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 303 12:00pm-1:00pm
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PHIL 213 Ethics 6 credits
How should we live? This is the fundamental question for the study of ethics. This course looks at classic and contemporary answers to the fundamental question from Socrates to Kant to modern day thinkers. Along the way, we consider slightly (but only slightly) more tractable questions such as: What reason is there to be moral? Is there such a thing as moral knowledge (and if so, how do we get it)? What are the fundamental principles of right and wrong (if there are any at all)? Is morality objective?
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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PHIL 213.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Daniel Groll đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 236 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 236 2:20pm-3:20pm
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PHIL 218 Virtue Ethics 6 credits
What is a good human life? Who is a good person? From the time of Plato and Aristotle onwards, many philosophers have thought about these questions in terms of two central ideas. Virtues, such as justice or courage, make us a certain type of person (they give us a certain character). Wisdom enables us to make good judgments about how to act. How do virtue and wisdom work together to produce a good human life? Is a good life the same as a happy life? We will reflect on these and related questions as we read texts from Alasdair MacIntyre, Philippa Foot, and other significant thinkers in the contemporary virtue ethics tradition. We will also consider the application of virtue ethics to specific areas, such as environmental ethics, as well as the parallels between Western virtue ethics and the tradition of Confucianism in ancient China.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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PHIL 218.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Allison Murphy đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 303 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 303 1:10pm-2:10pm
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PHIL 219 American Pragmatism 6 credits
The class is a survey of this distinctly North American tradition, which understands knowing the world as inseparable from exercising oneâs agency within it. We will especially focus on the traditionâs directedness towards various dimensions of social improvement and the notion that philosophy is a tool in the realization of an inclusive American democracy.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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PHIL 219.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Anna Moltchanova đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 426 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 426 2:20pm-3:20pm
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PHIL 257 Contemporary Issues in Feminist Philosophy 6 credits
We will analyze different theories about the distinction between sex and gender. Then we will turn to contemporary issues in feminism for the remainder of the course. These issues include, but are not limited to, conservative feminism, reproductive justice, fetishes, disability, ethics of pronouns, whether men are oppressed, and responsibility for oppression. We will read selections from OyĂšrĂłnkĂ© OyewĂčmĂ, Robin Dembroff, Karina Ortiz Villa, Robin Zheng, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Audre Lorde, and more. In addition, there will be room for student choice of topics.
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PHIL 257.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Hope Sample đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WWeitz Center 230 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FWeitz Center 230 2:20pm-3:20pm
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PHIL 260 Critical Philosophy of Race 6 credits
What is race? How do we define racism? How have philosophers defined race historically? What does it mean to examine race philosophically? US history, culture, and politics are haunted by the specters of race, racism, and slavery. Ideas about race and racism permeate nearly all aspects our lives evidenced by the mainstream media’s obsession with questions like: Does racism still exist? Should critical race theory be taught in schools? Do “Black Lives” or “All Lives” matter? In this course, we will investigate the ways in which ideas about race and racism in the US have been and are continuously re-defined for the sake of preserving white supremacy and white-supremacist institutions.
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PHIL 260.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Cynthia Marrero-Ramos đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 301 3:10pm-4:55pm
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PHIL 270 Ancient Greek Philosophy 6 credits
Is there a key to a happy and successful human life? If so, how do you acquire it? Plato and Aristotle thought the key was virtue and that your chances of obtaining it depend on the sort of life you lead. We’ll read texts from these authors that became foundational for the later history of philosophy, including the Apology, Gorgias, Symposium, and the Nicomachean Ethics, while situating the ancient understanding of virtue in the context of larger questions of metaphysics (the nature of being), psychology, and ethics.
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PHIL 270.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Allison Murphy đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 304 10:10am-11:55am
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PHIL 272 Early Modern Philosophy 6 credits
Our inquiry into seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy is not limited to any geographic region: it is open to Indigenous philosophical traditions as well as those of Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia. We will cover selections from Anton Wilhelm Amo, Mulla Sadra, Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz, Im Yunjidang, Isaac Newton, Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, and more. The topics include, but are not limited to, the mind body distinction, divinity, love, freedom, virtue, and the good life. The final paper project for this course asks you to creatively connect philosophical concepts, themes, or problems from different units of the course.
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PHIL 272.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Hope Sample đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THWeitz Center 230 10:10am-11:55am
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PHIL 274 Existentialism 6 credits
We will consider the emergence and development of major themes of existentialism in the works of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, as well as “classical” existentialists such as Heidegger, Sartre and De Beauvoir. We will discuss key issues put forward by the existentialist movement, such as “the question of being” and human historicity, freedom and responsibility and look at how different authors analyzed the nature and ambitions of the Self and diverse aspects of subjectivity.
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PHIL 274.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Anna Moltchanova đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 304 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 304 2:20pm-3:20pm
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PHIL 275 Latina Feminist Philosophy 6 credits
Latina feminist philosophers have developed and continue to develop valuable philosophical contributions to feminist scholarship and the discipline of philosophy more broadly. This course sheds light on these contributions by exploring the major questions, concepts, and debates within the Latina (and Latinx) feminist philosophical tradition. We will specifically explore the relationships between race/ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and identity; lived experience, embodiment, and knowledge; and the possibilities for self/social transformation through the process of creative writing.
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PHIL 275.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Cynthia Marrero-Ramos đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLibrary 305 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLibrary 305 12:00pm-1:00pm
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PHIL 323 Living Wisely 6 credits
For Aristotle, and many following him, practical wisdom (phronesis) guarantees both goodness and happiness. Sounds like a deal! Unfortunately, itâs not clear how we go about getting, or even recognizing, this intellectual virtue. Its insights cannot be demonstrated like a mathematical proof or captured in abstract rules. But weâre not stuck with undefended intuitions or a relativism that makes what is good or beneficial up to us. What is this wisdom supple enough to navigate between such extremes? Weâll read original thinkers in the broader Aristotelian tradition and scholars interpreting Aristotleâs texts as we think about this and related questions.
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One 100, 200 or 300 level PHIL course NOT including Independent Studies with a grade of C- or better.
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PHIL 323.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Allison Murphy đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 303 10:10am-11:55am
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PHIL 324 The Self 6 credits
When one is told, âTake good care of yourself!â the reflexive âyourselfâ refers to both the object and agent of care. What is it, this âselfâ, and how do you take good care of it? This course will discuss historical and contemporary answers to these questions, as well as the related notions of identity, personhood, agency, and self-knowledge. Moreover, some philosophical traditions deny the existence of the self; in their account of living well, what is experiencing the living? Or, if we understand the self as relational, does one need to take care of others to take care of oneself? Finally, if oneâs self is socially constructed, how do we change society to avoid its possible disfiguring influences on the self and to enable every selfâs flourishing?
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One 100, 200 or 300 level PHIL course NOT including Independent Studies with a grade of C- or better.
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PHIL 324.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Anna Moltchanova đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 304 3:10pm-4:55pm
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POSC 160 Political Philosophy 6 credits
Introduction to ancient and modern political philosophy. We will investigate several fundamentally different approaches to the basic questions of politics–questions concerning the character of political life, the possibilities and limits of politics, justice, and the good society–and the philosophic presuppositions (concerning human nature and human flourishing) that underlie these, and all, political questions.
- Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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POSC 160.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Laurence Cooper đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THWeitz Center 233 1:15pm-3:00pm
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POSC 160.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THWeitz Center 233 1:15pm-3:00pm
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POSC 251 Science and Humanity 6 credits
The modern age has been characterized by the unprecedented advance of natural science and the attempt to achieve technological mastery of nature. How did this come about? What worldview does this express, and how does that worldview affect the way we live and think? We will investigate these questions by studying classic works by some of modernityâs philosophic founders (including Bacon, Descartes, and Hobbes) as well as some of its most penetrating interpreters and critics (including Jonathan Swift, Rousseau, and Nietzsche).
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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POSC 251.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Laurence Cooper đ« đ€
- Size:20
- T, THWeitz Center 233 3:10pm-4:55pm
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POSC 260 “A Savage Made to Inhabit Cities”: The Political Philosophy of Rousseau 6 credits
In this course we will study what Rousseau considered his greatest and best book: Emile. Emile is a philosophic novel. It uses a thought experiment–the rearing of a child from infancy to adulthood–to explore human nature and the human condition, including their political dimensions. Among Emile's themes are natural goodness and the origins of evil; self-love and sociability; the differences and relations between the sexes; citizenship; and the principles of political right. The book also addresses the question of how one might live naturally and happily amid an unnatural and unhappy civilization.
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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POSC 260.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Laurence Cooper đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THWeitz Center 233 1:15pm-3:00pm
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Majors who will use this course for the 300 level elective should notify the instructor
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POSC 276 Imagination in Politics: Resisting Totalitarianism 6 credits
Ideological fanaticism is on the rise today. Individuals prefer the incantation of slogans and clichés to autonomous thinking, moderation, and care for the diversity and complexity of circumstances and of human beings. The results are the inability to converse across differences and the tendency to ostracize and exclude others in the name of tribal and populist nationalism, as well as of racism. Hannah Arendt called totalitarianism this form of ideological hypnosis, which characterizes not only totalitarian political regimes, but can also colonize liberal-democracies. In this class we will read some of the works of Arendt to better understand the power of imagination to enhance critical and independent thinking and resist totalitarianism.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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POSC 276.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Mihaela Czobor-Lupp đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THWeitz Center 133 1:15pm-3:00pm
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RELG 110 Understanding Religion 6 credits
How can we best understand the role of religion in the world today, and how should we interpret the meaning of religious traditions–their texts and practices–in history and culture? This class takes an exciting tour through selected themes and puzzles related to the fascinating and diverse expressions of religion throughout the world. From politics and pop culture, to religious philosophies and spiritual practices, to rituals, scriptures, gender, religious authority, and more, students will explore how these issues emerge in a variety of religions, places, and historical moments in the U.S. and across the globe.
- Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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RELG 110.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Sonja Anderson đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 330 2:20pm-3:20pm
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RELG 110.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Kambiz GhaneaBassiri đ« đ€
- Size:30
- M, WHulings 316 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FHulings 316 2:20pm-3:20pm
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RELG 110.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Chumie Juni đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 105 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FHasenstab 105 1:10pm-2:10pm
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RELG 110.02 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Chumie Juni đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 105 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FHasenstab 105 2:20pm-3:20pm
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RELG 120 Judaism: Text, History, Practice 6 credits
What is Judaism? Who are Jewish people? What are Jewish texts, practices, ideas? What ripples have Jewish people, texts, practices, and ideas caused beyond their sphere? These questions will animate our study as we touch on specific points in over three millennia of history. We will immerse ourselves in Jewish texts, historic events, and cultural moments, trying to understand them on their own terms. At the same time, we will analyze them using key concepts such as ‘tradition,’ ‘culture,’ ‘power,’ and ‘diaspora.’ We will explore how ‘Jewishness’ has been constructed by different stakeholders, each claiming the authority to define it.
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RELG 120.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Chumie Juni đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 304 1:15pm-3:00pm
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RELG 121 Introduction to Christianity 6 credits
This course will trace the history of Christianity from its origins in the villages of Palestine, to its emergence as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and through its evolution and expansion as the world’s largest religion. The course will focus on events, persons, and ideas that have had the greatest impact on the history of Christianity, and examine how this tradition has evolved in different ways in response to different needs, cultures, and tensions–political and otherwise–around the world. This is an introductory course. No familiarity with the Bible, Christianity, or the academic study of religion is presupposed.
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RELG 121.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Sonja Anderson đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 330 2:20pm-3:20pm
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RELG 122 Introduction to Islam 6 credits
This course is a general introduction to Islam as a prophetic religious tradition. It explores the different ways Muslims have interpreted and put into practice the prophetic message of Muhammad through analyses of varying theological, legal, political, mystical, and literary writings as well as through Muslims’ lived histories. These analyses aim for students to develop a framework for explaining the sources and vocabularies through which historically specific human experiences and understandings of the world have been signified as Islamic. The course will focus primarily on the early and modern periods of Islamic history.
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RELG 122.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Kambiz GhaneaBassiri đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 303 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 303 12:00pm-1:00pm
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RELG 130 Native American Religions 6 credits
This course explores the history and contemporary practice of Native American religious traditions, especially as they have developed amid colonization and resistance. While surveying a broad variety of ways that Native American traditions imagine land, community, and the sacred, the course focuses on the local traditions of the Ojibwe and Lakota communities. Materials include traditional beliefs and practices, the history of missions, intertribal new religious movements, and contemporary issues of treaty rights, religious freedom, and the revitalization of language and culture.
Sophomore Priority
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RELG 130.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Michael McNally đ« đ€
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 426 10:10am-11:55am
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RELG 155 Hinduism: An Introduction 6 credits
Hinduism is the world’s third-largest religion (or, as some prefer, “way of life”), with about 1.2 billion followers. It is also one of its oldest, with roots dating back at least 3500 years. “Hinduism,” however, is a loosely defined, even contested term, designating the wide variety of beliefs and practices of the majority of the people of South Asia. This survey course introduces students to this great variety, including social structures (such as the caste system), rituals and scriptures, mythologies and epics, philosophies, life practices, politics, poetry, sex, gender, Bollywood, and—lest we forget—some 330 million gods and goddesses.
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RELG 155.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Kristin Bloomer đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 402 1:15pm-3:00pm
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Extra Time Required. Students must attend a required field trip to the Hindu Temple of Maple Grove on a Saturday or Sunday morning (date TBD).
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RELG 213 Religion, Medicine, and Healing 6 credits
How do religion and medicine approach the healing of disease and distress? Are religion and medicine complementary or do they conflict? Is medicine a more evolved form of religion, shorn of superstition and pseudoscience? This course explores religious and cultural models of health and techniques for achieving it, from ancient Greece to Christian monasteries to modern mindfulness and self-care programs. We will consider ethical quandaries about death, bodily suffering, mental illness, miraculous cures, and individual agency, all the while seeking to avoid simplistic narratives of rationality and irrationality.
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RELG 213.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Sonja Anderson đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 330 12:00pm-1:00pm
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RELG 218 The Body in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam 6 credits
Mind and body are often considered separate but not equal; the mind gives commands to the body and the body complies. Exploring the ways the three religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam think about the body will deepen our understanding of the mind-body relationship. We will ask questions such as: How does the body direct the mind? How do religious practices discipline the body and the mind, and how do habits of body and mind change the forms and meanings of these practices? Gender, sexuality, sensuality, and bodily function will be major axes of analysis.
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RELG 218.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Chumie Juni đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 330 9:40am-10:40am
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RELG 219 Religious Law, Il/legal Religions 6 credits
The concept of law plays a central role in religion, and the concept of religion plays a central role in law. We often use the word ‘law’ to describe obligatory religious practices. But is that ‘law,’ as compared with state law? Legal systems in the U.S. and Europe make laws that protect religious people, and that protect governments from religion. But what does ‘religion’ mean in a legal context? And how do implicit notions of religious law affect how judges deal with religion? We will explore these questions using sources drawn from contemporary religions and recent legal disputes.
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RELG 219.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Chumie Juni đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 330 1:10pm-2:10pm
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RELG 227 Liberation Theologies 6 credits
Is God on the side of the poor? This course explores how liberation theologians have called for justice, social change, and resistance by drawing on fundamental sources in Christian tradition and by using economic and political theories to address poverty, racism, oppression, gender injustice, and more. We explore the principles of liberationist thought, including black theology, Latin American liberation theology, and feminist theology through writings of various contemporary thinkers. We also examine the social settings out of which these thinkers have emerged, their critiques of “traditional” theologies, and the new vision of community they have developed in various contexts.
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RELG 227.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Lori Pearson đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 330 1:15pm-3:00pm
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RELG 233 Gender and Power in the Catholic Church 6 credits
How does power flow and concentrate in the Catholic Church? What are the gendered aspects of the Church’s structure, history, and theology? Through readings, discussions, and analysis of current media, students will develop the ability to critically and empathetically interpret issues of gender, sexuality, and power in the Catholic Church, especially as these issues appear in official Vatican texts. Topics include: God, suffering, sacraments, salvation, damnation, celibacy, homosexuality, the family, saints, the ordination of women as priests, feminist theologies, canon law, the censuring of “heretical” theologians, Catholic hospital policy, and the clerical sex abuse crisis.
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RELG 233.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Sonja Anderson đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 330 12:00pm-1:00pm
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RELG 261 Race & Empire in American Islam 6 credits
From colonial times when Muslims were brought to America as slaves, to the aftermath of the Spanish-American War when the United States found itself ruling over a large Muslim population in the Philippines, to the more recent War on Terror, Muslims and Islam have long been entangled in the politics of race and empire in America. This course will examine these entanglements through primary and secondary sources to better understand the role that race, religion, and empire have played in the forging of American Islam today.
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RELG 261.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Kambiz GhaneaBassiri đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLibrary 344 3:10pm-4:55pm
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RELG 278 Love of God in Islam 6 credits
As the chosen messenger of God's final revelation, Muslims consider Muhammad to be God's beloved par excellence. He is believed to have not only received God's words but to have also experienced the divine. For Muhammad's followers, love has been a central means of attaining experiential knowledge of God. The Islamic tradition, particularly in the form of Sufism, developed a highly sophisticated literature for understanding God through love. This course will trace and analyze the historical development of this literature and the practices associated with it from the Qur'an (600s) to Rumi (1200s).
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RELG 278.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Kambiz GhaneaBassiri đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLibrary 344 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLibrary 344 1:10pm-2:10pm
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RELG 282 Samurai: Ethics of Death and Loyalty 6 credits
This course explores the history of samurai since the emergence of warrior class in medieval times, to the modern developments of samurai ethics as the icon of Japanese national identity. Focusing on its connection with Japanese religion and culture, we will investigate the origins of the purported samurai ideals of loyalty, honor, self-sacrifice, and death. In addition to regular class sessions, there will be a weekly kyudo (Japanese archery) practice on Wednesday evening (7-9 pm), which will enable students to study samurai history in context through gaining first-hand experience in the ritualized practice of kyudo.
Extra Time for weekly kyudo (Japanese archery) practice on Wednesday evening (7-9 pm)
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RELG 282.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Asuka Sango đ« đ€
- Size:15
- M, WLeighton 236 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 236 9:40am-10:40am
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RELG 287 Many Marys 6 credits
Christianity, by its very name, focuses on Jesus. This course shifts the focus to Mary, his mother: her various manifestations and her contributions to the myriad experiences of peoples around the world. Race, gender, class, and feminist and liberation theologies come into play as Mary presents as: the Mother of God; queen of heaven; a Black madonna; a Mestiza madonna; an exceptional woman with her own chapter in the Qur'an; various goddesses in Haitian Vodoun, Hinduism, and Buddhism; a tattoo on the backs of U.S. prisoners–and so on. In addition to considering Miriam (her Jewish name) as she appears in literature, art, apparition, and ritual practice around the world, we will also consider Mary Magdalene, her foil, who appears in popular discourse from the Gnostic gospels to The Da Vinci Code.
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RELG 287.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Kristin Bloomer đ« đ€
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 301 3:10pm-4:55pm
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RELG 300 Theories and Methods in the Study of Religion 6 credits
What, exactly, is religion and what conditions of modernity have made it urgent to articulate such a question in the first place? Why does religion exert such force in human society and history? Is it an opiate of the masses or an illusion laden with human wish-fulfillment? Is it a social glue? A subjective experience of the sacred? Is it simply a universalized Protestant Christianity in disguise, useful in understanding, and colonizing, the non-Christian world? This seminar, for junior majors and advanced majors from related fields, explores generative theories from anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary studies, and the history of religions.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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RELG 300.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Lori Pearson đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 301 10:10am-11:55am
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RELG 329 Modernity and Tradition 6 credits
How do we define traditions if they change over time and are marked by internal conflict? Is there anything stable about a religious tradition—an essence, or a set of practices or beliefs that abide amidst diversity and mark it off from a surrounding culture or religion? How do people live out or re-invent their traditions in the modern world? In this seminar we explore questions about pluralism, identity, authority, and truth, and we examine the creative ways beliefs and practices change in relation to culture. We consider how traditions grapple with difference, especially regarding theology, ethics, law, and gender.
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RELG 329.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Lori Pearson đ« đ€
- Size:15
- M, WLeighton 303 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 303 9:40am-10:40am
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RELG 344 Lived Religion in America 6 credits
The practices of popular, or local, or lived religion in American culture often blur the distinction between the sacred and profane and elude religious studies frameworks based on the narrative, theological, or institutional foundations of “official” religion. This course explores American religion primarily through the lens of the practices of lived religion with respect to ritual, the body, the life cycle, the market, leisure, and popular culture. Consideration of a wide range of topics, including ritual healing, Christmas, cremation, and Elvis, will nourish an ongoing discussion about how to make sense of lived religion.
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RELG 344.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty:Michael McNally đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 303 10:10am-11:55am
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RELG 399 Senior Research Seminar 6 credits
This seminar will acquaint students with research tools in various fields of religious studies, provide an opportunity to present and discuss research work in progress, hone writing skills, and improve oral presentation techniques.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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RELG 399.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Kristin Bloomer đ« đ€
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 236 10:10am-11:55am
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SPAN 203 Social Justice and Cultural Immersion in Mexico 6 credits
This course is the second part of a two-term sequence, starting with a special section of SPAN 204 in the fall. The course offers an immersive experience in language and culture, focusing on boosting Spanish skills through instruction and immersion while exploring social justice issues. Participants connect with local leaders to deepen their understanding of Mexican culture. Upon returning to campus, students analyze their experiences through reflections and present their findings in a poster presentation. This program aims to equip participants with language proficiency and cultural sensitivity for a globalized world.
Open only to students who participate in Social Justice & Cultural Immersion in Mexico winter break program
- First Five Weeks, Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Student is a member of the SPAN 204 203 Winter Break Program.
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SPAN 203.00 First Five Weeks, Winter 2025
- Faculty:Fernando Contreras Flamand đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WLanguage & Dining Center 345 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLanguage & Dining Center 345 2:20pm-3:20pm
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First five weeks, open only to students who participate in Social Justice & Cultural Immersion in Mexico winter break program
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SPAN 246 Not by Blood: Family Beyond Kinship 6 credits
Motherhood is central in Latin-American literature of the twenty-first century. Beyond the tendency to represent motherhood as a paradise of love and snuggles, Latin-American writers have been proposing new reconfigurations of family. Families that are not bonded by blood. In this class we will study novels, poems, and short stories about these non-traditional families, for example, families that are led by trans-women, families that are formed between species (with plants or animals), among others. We will analyze what insights these fictional families can offer on topics such as race, reproductive rights, legalization of abortion, marriage equality, and new feminisms.
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): SPAN 205 with a grade of C- or better or received a score of 205 on the Carleton Spanish Emmersion Placement exam.
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SPAN 246.00 Fall 2024
- Faculty:Ingrid Luna đ« đ€
- Size:20
- M, WWeitz Center 233 9:50am-11:00am
- FWeitz Center 233 9:40am-10:40am
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SPAN 320 Death and Dying Under Capitalism: An Ecological and Humanistic Perspective 6 credits
Within the capitalist system, the concept of dying well (Ars moriendi) has progressively lost its collective sense and meaning, relegated instead to the realm of individual responsibility. Simultaneously, the notion of a dignified death has ceased to be an inalienable right for all individuals, becoming contingent upon inherited privileges and access to private resources. Death, transformed into a taboo, coexists with an apocalyptic culture and a state of eco-anxiety stemming from ecological crises and the looming extinction of numerous species, potentially including humans. Some of our guiding questions will be: What implications does dying under capitalist conditions entail? Can cultural representation do more than merely comply with, comment or oppose these scenarios? Our exploration will encompass a diverse array of texts, films, and workshops featuring various guest speakers.
- Winter 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One SPAN course numbered 205 or higher excluding Independent Studies with a grade of C- or better.
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SPAN 320.00 Winter 2025
- Faculty:Palmar Ălvarez-Blanco đ« đ€
- Size:25
- M, WWeitz Center 233 11:10am-12:20pm
- FWeitz Center 233 12:00pm-1:00pm
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SPAN 349 Madrid Program: Four Masters of Spanish Art 6 credits
This course offers an in-depth view of four of the greatest Spanish masters of all timeâEl Greco, VelĂĄzquez, Goya, and Picasso. The course combines class lectures at the Complutense University in Madrid with weekly museum visits and excursions outside Madrid to study, in person, iconic works of Western art such as El Grecoâs The Disrobing of Christ in Toledoâs cathedral, VelĂĄzquezâ Las Meninas and Goyaâs Black Paintings at the Prado Museum, and Picassoâs Guernica at the Reina SofĂa Museum. Special attention will be given to artistic theory in the seventeenth and twentieth centuries.
Acceptance in Carleton OCS Madrid Program
- Fall 2024
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS Experiencing Spain program AND student has completed the following course(s): SPAN 205 or a higher course with a grade of C- or better.