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Your search for courses · during 25SP · meeting requirements for HI, Humanistic Inquiry · returned 50 results
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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 🏫 👤
- 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 Rich 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 🏫 👤
- 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 “interdisciplinary discipline” 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
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AMST 115.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Christopher Elias 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- M, WWillis 204 11:10am-12:20pm
- FWillis 204 12:00pm-1:00pm
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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, Šikaakonki, Shekâkôheki, Sekakoh, and Guušge 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 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THWillis 114 10:10am-11:55am
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AMST 396 Producing Latinidad 6 credits
As Arlene Dávila points out in Latinos Inc, Latinidad—the term that names a set of presumably common attributes that connects Latinxs in the U.S.—emerges 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 Rich 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 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THHasenstab 109 10:10am-11:55am
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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 Japan’s 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 Carleton’s unique library collection.
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ASST 285.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Asuka Sango 🏫 👤
- 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.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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CCST 208.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: David Tompkins 🏫 👤
- 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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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 232/PSYC 232 with a grade of C- or better.
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CGSC 330.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Jay McKinney 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLanguage & Dining Center 104 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLanguage & Dining Center 104 2:20pm-3:20pm
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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 207 History, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome: 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, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome Program.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome Program.
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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
- 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 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Éva Pósfay 🏫 👤
- 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 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 “normal” 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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLanguage & Dining Center 205 10:10am-11:55am
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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 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 304 9:50am-11:00am
- FLeighton 304 9:40am-10:40am
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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 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 426 1:15pm-3:00pm
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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 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 236 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 236 2:20pm-3:20pm
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HIST 201 History, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome: 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, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome Program.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome Program.
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HIST 201F History, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome: 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, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance 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: History, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome: 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.
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HIST 206 History, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome: 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, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance Rome Program.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IS, International Studies
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Acceptance in the Carleton OCS History, Religion, and Urban Change in Medieval and Renaissance 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 🏫 👤
- 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 Required
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HIST 220.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Rebecca Brueckmann 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 202 10:10am-11:55am
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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 🏫 👤 · Seungjoo Yoon 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 236 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 236 12:00pm-1:00pm
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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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 236 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 236 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, Spain’s 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 🏫 👤
- 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 Rich 2
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HIST 287.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Antony Adler 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 330 1:10pm-2:10pm
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HIST 298 What is History? 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
- 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 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Amna Khalid 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THLibrary 344 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 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 301 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.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry
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IDSC 251.01 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
- Size:18
- Grading:S/CR/NC
- MHasenstab 105 3:10pm-4:45pm
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IDSC 251.02 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Laurence Cooper 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLanguage & Dining Center 244 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLanguage & Dining Center 244 12:00pm-1:00pm
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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.
Sophomore Priority
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2, Writing Rich 2
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PHIL 119.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Hope Sample 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤 · Hope Sample 🏫 👤
- 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, “I pretend to be the person I’m portraying.” 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 actor’s race and gender independent of those of the person they portray? We’ll evaluate competing answers to such questions from philosophers, cognitive scientists, and theater practitioners.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2, Writing Rich 2
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PHIL 209.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Andrew Knoll 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 303 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 303 12:00pm-1:00pm
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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 one’s agency within it. We will especially focus on the tradition’s 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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 426 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 426 2:20pm-3:20pm
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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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 304 10:10am-11:55am
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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.
- Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry WR2, Writing Rich 2
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POSC 160.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Mihaela Czobor-Lupp 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- T, THWeitz Center 233 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.
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RELG 110.00 Spring 2025
- Faculty: Chumie Juni 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 105 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FHasenstab 105 2:20pm-3:20pm
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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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 330 2:20pm-3:20pm
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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 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- 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 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLibrary 344 3:10pm-4:55pm
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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 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 303 10:10am-11:55am
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