Search Results
Your search for courses · during 24FA, 25WI, 25SP · meeting requirements for IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies · returned 87 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 Douglass’ 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 220 Color, Class, and Status in Black America 6 credits
As a racial category and identity, “Black” is often treated in a homogenous, monolithic way, obscuring the internal diversity and inequality within the black population in the U.S. In this course, we consider the inequalities within black communities and the black population living in the U.S., historically and through to the present. “Colorism,” or skin tone stratification, represents one status linked to class and ranking in society; but does colorism matter more than other statuses to class? Class differences are in fact profound within black communities, and they are correlated to multiple social statuses–skin tone, immigrant status, national origin, and even political orientation. We will examine how these status, color, and class interact, and how they shape class relations and tensions, lived experience, and notions of authenticity (“blackness”) in everday life and popular culture. Course topics include the Black middle class; education; neighborhood segregation; gender and sexuality; and media representations and popular culture.
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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 people’s 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 people’s 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 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.
- 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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AMST 100.00 Walt Whitman’s New York City 6 credits
"O City / Behold me! Incarnate me as I have incarnated you!" An investigation of the burgeoning metropolitan city where the young Walter Whitman became a poet in the 1850s. Combining historical inquiry into the lives of nineteenth-century citizens of Brooklyn and Manhattan with analysis of Whitman’s varied journalistic writings and utterly original poetry, we will reconstruct how Whitman found his muse and his distinctively modern subject in the geography, demographics, markets, politics, and erotics of New York.
Held for new first year students
- Fall 2024
- AI/WR1, Argument & Inquiry/WR1 IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies
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Student is a member of the First Year First Term class level cohort. Students are only allowed to register for one A&I course at a time. If a student wishes to change the A&I course they are enrolled in they must DROP the enrolled course and then ADD the new course. Please see our Workday guides Drop or 'Late' Drop a Course and Register or Waitlist for a Course Directly from the Course Listing for more information.
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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
- Fall 2024, Spring 2025
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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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 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 sports—both as spectators and participants—imagine 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 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 250 Asian American Reckonings 3 credits
As both targets of racism and beneficiaries of privilege, Asian Americans defy easy categorization. In a timely intervention, Cathy Park Hong, in her 2020 essay collection Minor Feelings, undertakes an “Asian American Reckoning.” Following Hong’s lead, this five-week course will reckon with Asian America in its most vexing aspects. Through an exploration of memoir, cultural criticism, poetry, fiction, and film/media, we will think hard about questions of privilege and discrimination, interracial politics, settler colonialism, and transnational ties. Grappling with the past and looking towards the future, this course asks: What does it mean to be Asian American?
Meets for the 1st 5 Weeks
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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 “in a good way”? 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 269 Woodstock Nation 6 credits
“If you remember the Sixties, you weren’t there.” We will test the truth of that popular adage by exploring the American youth counterculture of the 1960s, particularly the turbulent period of the late sixties. Using examples from literature, music, and film, we will examine the hope and idealism, the violence, confusion, wacky creativity, and social mores of this seminal decade in American culture. Topics explored will include the Beat Generation, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, LSD, and the rise of environmentalism, feminism, and Black Power.
Extra time
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AMST 321 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 345 Theory and Practice of American Studies 6 credits
Introduction to some of the animating debates within American Studies from the 1930s to the present. We will study select themes, theories, and methodologies in the writings of a number of scholars and try to understand 1) the often highly contested nature of debates about how best to study American culture; and 2) how various theories and forms of analysis in American Studies have evolved and transformed themselves over the last seventy years. Not designed to be a fine-grained institutional history of American Studies, but a vigorous exploration of some of the central questions of interpretation in the field. Normally taken by majors and minors in their junior year.
- Winter 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies No Exploration
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AMST 396.00 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 Requirement 2
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): AMST 115 – Introduction to American Studies with grade of C- or better.
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ARCN 112 Archaeology of Native North America 6 credits
When did humans first migrate to North America? How long have people lived in Minnesota? This course will examine the material culture of Indigenous peoples throughout the North American continent above Mexico, from c. 20,000 years ago to present. Cultural groups include the Inuit, Iroquois, ancient Puebloans, Cahokia, Great Plains villages, and Pacific Northwest (Kumash) peoples. We will study Indigenous oral histories, genetic data, linguistics, material remains, and ethnohistorical accounts to examine migration, trade, and contact, with an emphasis on decolonization and Indigenous archaeologies.
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ARTH 160 American Art to 1940 6 credits
Concentration on painting of the colonial period (especially portraiture) and nineteenth century (especially landscape and scenes of everyday life) with an introduction to the modernism of the early twentieth century. The course will include analysis of the ways art shapes and reflects cultural attitudes such as those concerning race and gender.
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ARTH 214 Queer Art 6 credits
Beyond surveying the rich history of arts by LGBTQA+ individuals, this course takes as its object of study the ways in which the arts have been used to question, undermine, and subvert the gendered and sexual norms of dominant cultures—in short, to queer them. In so doing, such visual and performative practices offer new, alternative models of living and acting in the world based on liberatory politics and aesthetics. This course will consider topics such as: censorship of queer artists; art of the AIDS crisis; activist performance; the sexual politics of public space; and queer intersections of race, class and gender in visual art among others.
Extra time
- Spring 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies LA, Literary/Artistic Analysis
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One Art History (ARTH) course with a grade of C- better.
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ARTH 240 Art Since 1945 6 credits
Art from abstract expressionism to the present, with particular focus on issues such as the modernist artist-hero; the emergence of alternative or non-traditional media; the influence of the women’s movement and the gay/lesbian liberation movement on contemporary art; and postmodern theory and practice.
- Fall 2024
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies LA, Literary/Artistic Analysis WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One Art History (ARTH) course with a grade of C- better.
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ARTH 341 Art and Democracy 6 credits
What does it mean to say that a work of art is “democratic?” For whom is art made? And who can lay claim to the title “artist?” These questions animate contemporary art production as artists grapple with the problems of broadening access to their works and making them more socially relevant. In this course we will consider the challenges involved in making art for a sometimes ill-defined “public.” Topics to be discussed include: activist performance art, feminism, public sculpture, the Culture Wars, queer visual culture, and the recent rise of social practice art.
Extra time
- Winter 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies LA, Literary/Artistic Analysis
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Student has completed any two courses in ARTH with grades of C- or better.
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CAMS 100.00 Rock ‘n’ Roll in Cinema 6 credits
This course is designed to explore the intersection between rock music and cinema. Taking a historical view of the evolution of the "rock film," this class examines the impact of rock music on the structural and formal aspects of narrative, documentary, and experimental films and videos. The scope of the class will run from the earliest rock films of the mid-1950s through contemporary examples in ten weekly subunits.
Held for new first year students
- Fall 2024
- AI/WR1, Argument & Inquiry/WR1 IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies
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Student is a member of the First Year First Term class level cohort. Students are only allowed to register for one A&I course at a time. If a student wishes to change the A&I course they are enrolled in they must DROP the enrolled course and then ADD the new course. Please see our Workday guides Drop or 'Late' Drop a Course and Register or Waitlist for a Course Directly from the Course Listing for more information.
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CAMS 258 Feminist and Queer Film Theory 6 credits
The focus of this course is on spectatorship—feminist, lesbian, queer, transgender. The seminar interrogates arguments about representation and the viewer’s relationship to the moving image in terms of identification, desire, masquerade, fantasy, power, time, and embodied experience. The course first explores the founding essays of psychoanalytic feminist film theory, putting these ideas into dialogue with mainstream cinema. Second, we consider the aesthetic, narrative, and theoretical interventions posed by feminist filmmakers working in contradistinction to Hollywood. Third, “queering” contemporary media, we survey challenges and revisions to feminist film theory presented by considerations of race and ethnicity, transgender experience, and queerness.
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CAMS 270 Nonfiction 6 credits
This course addresses nonfiction media as both art form and historical practice by exploring the expressive, rhetorical, and political possibilities of nonfiction production. A focus on relationships between form and content and between makers, subjects, and viewers will inform our approach. Throughout the course we will pay special attention to the ethical concerns that arise from making media about others’ lives. We will engage with diverse modes of nonfiction production including essayistic, experimental, and participatory forms and create community videos in partnership with Carleton’s Center for Community and Civic Engagement and local organizations. The class culminates in the production of a significant independent nonfiction media project.
Extra Time
- Fall 2024
- ARP, Arts Practice IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): CAMS 111 – Digital Foundations with grade of C- or better.
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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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EDUC 110 Introduction to Educational Studies 6 credits
This course will focus on education as a multidisciplinary field of study. We will explore the meanings of education within individual lives and institutional contexts, learn to critically examine the assumptions that writers, psychologists, sociologists and philosophers bring to the study of education, and read texts from a variety of disciplines. What has “education” meant in the past? What does “education” mean in contemporary American society? What might “education” mean to people with differing circumstances and perspectives? And what should “education” mean in the future? Open only to first-and second-year students.
- Fall 2024, Winter 2025, Spring 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies SI, Social Inquiry WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Student has Sophomore Priority.
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EDUC 250 Fixing Schools: Politics and Policy in American Education 6 credits
How can we fix American public schools? What is “broken” about our schools? How should they be repaired? And who should lead the fix? This course will examine the two leading contemporary educational reform movements: accountability and school choice. With an emphasis on the nature of the teaching profession and the work of foundations, this course will analyze the policy agendas of different reform groups, exploring the dynamic interactions among the many different stakeholders responsible for shaping American education.
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EDUC 338 Multicultural Education 6 credits
This course focuses on the respect for human diversity, especially as these relate to various racial, cultural and economic groups, and to women. It includes lectures and discussions intended to aid students in relating to a wide variety of persons, cultures, and life styles.
Extra time
- Spring 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies SI, Social Inquiry
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): One 100 or 200 level Educational Studies (EDUC) course with grade of C- or better.
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EDUC 367 Culture Wars in the Classroom 6 credits
This course examines past and present school controversies, including school prayer, banned books, and student protests. Who controls the curriculum? How do we teach contentious issues such as evolution, racism, and climate change? To what extent do teachers and students enjoy the right to free expression? These are the kinds of questions “Culture Wars in the Classroom” will explore, as we consider the purpose of public education in a diverse, multicultural nation.
- Winter 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies No Exploration
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ENGL 211 Haunting the Margins of American Literature 6 credits
Nineteenth-century Americans were hardly strangers to ghosts and the world beyond. In fact, many actively sought communion with the dead by attending table-rapping séances and sitting for spirit photographs. This class will analyze a variety of literary hauntings from the long nineteenth century to explore the cultural anxieties and desires they might represent. Paying particular attention to questions of race, gender, and sexuality, we will consider how figures ghosted from history become present in ways that demand attention and, at times, redress. Authors will include Edgar Allen Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Rose Terry Cooke, Alice Brown, and Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins.
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ENGL 213 Being Queer in Nineteenth-Century America 6 credits
What forms of community, gender identification, and desire were imagined as possible in the literature and life writing of nineteenth-century Americans? How did race and class shift the terms of what could be imagined, and how did these possibilities change with the sexual taxonomies developed by scientists? This course will explore these questions by reading American literary texts from 1799 to 1899 alongside shorter works of history and theory. We will consider not only the discourse around wealthy, white “romantic friendships,” but also the ways that poor and non-white bodies were deemed queer in conduct manuals and scientific texts.
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ENGL 227 Imagining the Borderlands 6 credits
This course engages the borderlands as space (the geographic area that straddles nations) and idea (liminal spaces, identities, communities). We examine texts from writers like Anzaldúa, Butler, Cervantes, Dick, Eugenides, Haraway, and Muñoz first to understand how borders act to constrain our imagi(nation) and then to explore how and to what degree the borderlands offer hybrid identities, queer affects, and speculative world-building. We will engage the excess of the borderlands through a broad chronological and generic range of U.S. literary and visual texts. Come prepared to question what is “American”, what is race, what is human.
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ENGL 228 Banned. Censored. Reviled. 6 credits
What makes a work of art dangerous? While present-day attacks on books, libraries, and schools feel unprecedented, writers and artists have always had to fight efforts to suppress their work, often at great personal and societal cost. We will study literature, films, graphic novels, images, music, and other materials that have been challenged and attacked as offensive, taboo, or transgressive, and also explore strategies of resistance to censorship.
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ENGL 230 Studies in African American Literature: From the 1950s to the Present 6 credits
We will explore developments in African American literature since the 1950s with a focus on literary expression in the Civil Rights Era; on the Black Arts Movement; on the new wave of feminist/womanist writing; and on the experimental and futuristic fictions of the twenty-first century. Authors to be read include Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Alice Walker, August Wilson, Charles Johnson, Ntozake Shange, Gloria Naylor, Suzan-Lori Parks, Kevin Young, and Tracy Smith.
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ENGL 233 Writing and Social Justice 6 credits
Social justice is fairness as it manifests in society, but who gets to determine what fairness looks, sounds, feels like? The self-described Black Canadian poet Dionne Brand says that she doesn’t write toward justice because that doesn’t exist, but that she writes against tyranny. If we use that framework, how does that change our own writing and our own notions of justice in our or any time? What is the role of literary writing, especially fiction, the essay, and poetry in the collective and individual quest to understand and build conditions that could yield increased potential for social justice? In this course, students will read, analyze, discuss, and write about various texts that might be considered to be against myriad tyrannies, if not necessarily toward social justice. Authors may include Octavia Butler, Phillip Metres, Toni Morrison, Myung Mi Kim, and M. NourbeSe Philipe.
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ENGL 255 The Poetics of Disability 6 credits
Scholar Michael Davidson has suggested that “perhaps the closest link between poetry and disability lies in a conundrum within the genre itself: poetry makes language visible by making language strange.” In this class we will read a wide range of poets who tackle ideas of normalcy and “ability” by centering disability consciousness and culture. We will engage with poetry’s capacity as a genre to destabilize our assumptions and generate new imaginaries. Alongside contemporary U.S. poetry, we will study contemporary theory in the field of disability studies in order to better understand the critical conversations around the meaning, nature, and consequences of disability.
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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.
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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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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 125 African American History I: From Africa to the 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 126 African American History II 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 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 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 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 301 Indigenous Histories at Carleton 6 credits
Carleton’s new campus land acknowledgement affirms that this is Dakota land, but how did Carleton come to be here? What are the histories of Indigenous faculty, students, and staff at Carleton? In this course, students will investigate Indigenous histories on our campus by conducting original research about how Carleton acquired its landbase, its historic relationships to Dakota and Anishinaabeg people, histories of on-campus activism, the shifting demographics of Native students on campus, and the histories of Indigenous faculty and staff, among others. Students will situate these histories within the broader context of federal Indian policies and Indigenous resistance.
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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.
HIST 205 is recommended but not required.
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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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LING 135 Introduction to Sociolinguistics 6 credits
There is a complex relationship between language and society. This course examines how language variation is tied to identity and the role of language in human social interaction. We will consider language as it relates to social status, age, gender, ethnicity, and location as well as theoretical models used to study variation. We will also examine how language is used in conversation, in the media, and beyond using ethnography of communication and discourse analysis. You will become more aware of how language is used in your own daily life and will be able to argue sociolinguistic perspectives on language attitudes.
- Fall 2024, Spring 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies SI, Social Inquiry
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LING 145 Dialectology 6 credits
This course explores dialectology, the study of dialects. Participants learn the field’s history before turning to World Englishes, with special attention to the current dialects of American English. We analyze the earliest colonial American English dialects, highlighting language contact with indigenous and other languages, the linguistic impact of the Atlantic slave trade, and subsequent impacts of westward migration. Participants also assess speakers’ perceptions of dialects; analyze dialectal variation as portrayed in media, either accurately or stereotypically; and re-examine what constitutes standard/non-standard dialects, and how ‘standardness’ has changed over time. Not open to students who have taken LING 140.
Not open to students who have taken LING 140
- Winter 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies SI, Social Inquiry
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Not open to students who have taken LING 140 – Language in the US.
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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 232 Golden Age of R & B 6 credits
A survey of rhythm and blues from 1945 to 1975, focusing on performers, composers and the music industry.
Not open to students who have taken MUSC 132
- Fall 2024
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies LA, Literary/Artistic Analysis WR2 Writing Requirement 2
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Not open to students that have taken MUSC 132 – Golden Age of R & B
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MUSC 244 Music Studies at the Border 6 credits
Where is music found? What can we learn about musical practices beyond the score and recording? This course introduces students to hands-on, ethnographic approaches to the study of music. We will consider the ethical, legal, interpersonal, and philosophical challenges of writing about the musical lives of others — and ourselves. Throughout the course, we will work together to design and carry out ethnographic research projects. Selected interested students will develop and carry out a project involving a significant on-site project through a significant on-site visit to the U.S./Mexico border during December. Previous coursework in music is helpful, but not required.
An optional, Carleton-funded site visit during the first week of December is planned to travel to the U.S./Mexico border. Students enrolled in MUSC 244 will indicate their interest in this visit by the Fall 2024 drop/add deadline; due to limited funding, only 12 students will be able to participate. Participants will be selected by random lottery among those who are interested. Students participating in the December travel are required to enroll in a 2-credit Winter 2025 MUSC 245 (Thursdays 10:45–11:50am, first five weeks).
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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 Oyèrónké Oyewùmí, 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 260 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 324 The Self 6 credits
When one is told, “Take good care of yourself!” the reflexive ‘yourself’ refers to both the object and agent of care. What is it, this ‘self’, 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 one’s self is socially constructed, how do we change society to avoid its possible disfiguring influences on the self and to enable every self’s 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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POSC 122 Politics in America: Liberty and Equality 6 credits
An introduction to American government and politics. Focus on the Congress, Presidency, political parties and interest groups, the courts and the Constitution. Particular attention will be given to the public policy debates that divide liberals and conservatives and how these divisions are rooted in American political culture.
- Fall 2024, Winter 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies QRE, Quantitative Reasoning SI, Social Inquiry
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POSC 204 Media and Electoral Politics: 2024 United States Election 6 credits
Our analysis of media influences on politics will draw from three fields of study: political psychology, political behavior and participation, and public opinion. Students will conduct a study of the effects of campaign ads and news using our multi-year data set of content analyzed election ads and news. We study a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods to learn how political communication affects U.S. elections.
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POSC 252 Theoretical Foundations of the American Regime 6 credits
In this course we will examine the theoretical foundations of the American regime as understood by the founders (including John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton); by dissenters among their ranks (the Antifederalists); by earlier thinkers on whom the founders drew (Locke, Montesquieu, and Aristotle); and by later figures, including political actors (such as Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass) and philosophically minded observers (such as Alexis de Tocqueville).
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POSC 266 Urban Political Economy 6 credits
City revenue is increasingly dependent on tourism. Cities manufacture identity and entertainment, whether we think of Las Vegas or Jerusalem, Berlin or Bilbao, the ethnoscapes of Copenhagen or the red light district of Amsterdam. As cities compete in the global economy to become playgrounds for a transnational tourist class, what is the role of urban residents? Who governs? Who benefits? Short essays or exams will be required.
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POSC 273 Race and Politics in the U.S. 6 credits
This course addresses race and ethnicity in U.S. politics. Following an introduction to historical, sociological, and psychological approaches to the study of race and ethnicity, we apply these approaches to understanding the ways in which racial attitudes have been structured along a number of political and policy dimensions, e.g., welfare, education, criminal justice. Students will gain an increased understanding of the multiple contexts that shape contemporary racial and ethnic politics and policies in the U.S., and will consider the role of institutional design, policy development, representation, and racial attitudes among the general U.S. public and political environment.
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POSC 302 Subordinated Politics and Intergroup Relations 6 credits
How do social and political groups interact? How do we understand these interactions in relation to power? This course will introduce the basic approaches and debates in the study of prejudice, racial attitudes, and intergroup relations. We will focus on three main questions. First, how do we understand and study prejudice and racism as they relate to U.S. politics? Second, how do group identities, stereotyping, and other factors help us understand the legitimation of discrimination, group hierarchy, and social domination? Third, what are the political and social challenges associated with reducing prejudice?
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POSC 304 Media and Electoral Politics: 2024 United States Elections 6 credits
Our analysis of media influences on politics will draw from three fields of study: political psychology, political behavior and participation, and public opinion. Students will conduct a study of the effects of campaign ads and news using our multi-year data set of content analyzed election ads and news. We study a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methods to learn how political communication affects U.S. elections. Students enrolled in the POSC 304 version will conduct more extensive analysis of data for their seminar papers.
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POSC 315 Polarization and Democratic Decline in the United States 6 credits
The United States is more politically polarized today than at any time since the late nineteenth century, leaving lawmakers, journalists, and experts increasingly concerned that the toxicity in our politics is making the country vulnerable to political instability, violence, and democratic decline. Moreover, citizens are increasingly willing to call into question the legitimacy of this country’s core electoral and governing institutions. How did the U.S. get to this point? What can be done about it? This course will examine political polarization as a central feature of American politics and the consequences for American democracy.
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PSYC 384 Psychology of Prejudice 6 credits
This seminar introduces students to major psychological theories and research on the development, perpetuation and reduction of prejudice. A social and historical approach to race, culture, ethnicity and race relations will provide a backdrop for examining psychological theory and research on prejudice formation and reduction. Major areas to be discussed are cognitive social learning, group conflict and contact hypothesis. Psychology 256 or 258 recommended preparation.
- Winter 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies SI, Social Inquiry
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): PSYC 110 – Principles of Psychology with a grade of C- or better or received a score of 4 or better on the Psychology AP exam or received a score of 6 or better on the Psychology IB exam.
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PSYC 389 LGBTQ+ Psychology 6 credits
In this seminar, we will examine the psychology of LGBTQ+ people, focusing on topics such as LGBTQ+ identity development; predictors and consequences of anti-LGBTQ+ bias and discrimination; the health and well-being of LGBTQ+ people; and familial and relationship dynamics of LGBTQ+ populations. We will consider psychology's history of—and potential for—both contributing to and dismantling the inequities faced by LGBTQ+ populations.
- Spring 2025
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies SI, Social Inquiry
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): Psychology 110 – Principles of Psychology or GWSS 110 – Introduction to Gender, Women's & Sexuality or GWSS 200 – Gender, Sexuality and the Pursuit of Knowledge or GWSS 212 – Foundations of LGBTQ Studies with a grade of C- or better or received a score of 4 or better on the Psychology AP exam or received a score of 6 or better on the Psychology IB exam.
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RELG 100.01 The Historical Jesus and the Christ of Faith 6 credits
For nearly two thousand years, Christians have considered Jesus the unique, miracle-working Son of God who came to earth to save humanity from its sins. But does this picture hold up to historical scrutiny? Who do historians think Jesus was? This seminar introduces the tools of historical inquiry that scholars use to reconstruct Jesus's original message. It also surveys how Americans in different cultural contexts have imagined Jesus, from the liberating Christ of Black theology, to the eastern sage and hippie of the 1960s, to the rabbi who never intended a non-Jewish movement.
Held for new first year students
- Fall 2024
- AI/WR1, Argument & Inquiry/WR1 IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies
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Student is a member of the First Year First Term class level cohort. Students are only allowed to register for one A&I course at a time. If a student wishes to change the A&I course they are enrolled in they must DROP the enrolled course and then ADD the new course. Please see our Workday guides Drop or 'Late' Drop a Course and Register or Waitlist for a Course Directly from the Course Listing for more information.
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RELG 100.02 The Qur’an as Literature 6 credits
The Qur'an is best known as the sacred text of Islam, but it is also one of the most widely read, dynamic, and influential texts in human history. It is not every text that can compel people to regard it as divine revelation. In fact, Muslims consider the Qur'an's literary composition a miracle. This course explores the literary style and structure of the Qur'an through close reading of its English translation. It also introduces students to the history of the Qur'an and its significance in Muslims' everyday lives. No background knowledge is assumed; nor is this an introduction to Islam.
Held for new first year students
- Fall 2024
- AI/WR1, Argument & Inquiry/WR1
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Student is a member of the First Year First Term class level cohort. Students are only allowed to register for one A&I course at a time. If a student wishes to change the A&I course they are enrolled in they must DROP the enrolled course and then ADD the new course. Please see our Workday guides Drop or 'Late' Drop a Course and Register or Waitlist for a Course Directly from the Course Listing for more information.
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RELG 100.03 Christianity and Colonialism 6 credits
From its beginnings, Christianity has been concerned with the making of new persons and worlds: the creation of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. It has also maintained a tight relationship to power, empire, and the making of modernity. In this course we will investigate this relationship within the context of colonial projects in the Americas, Africa, India, and the Pacific. We will trace the making of modern selves from Columbus to the abolition (and remainders) of slavery, and from the arrival of Cook in the Sandwich Islands to the journals of missionaries and the contemporary fight for Hawaiian sovereignty.
Held for new first year students
- Fall 2024
- AI/WR1, Argument & Inquiry/WR1 IS, International Studies
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Student is a member of the First Year First Term class level cohort. Students are only allowed to register for one A&I course at a time. If a student wishes to change the A&I course they are enrolled in they must DROP the enrolled course and then ADD the new course. Please see our Workday guides Drop or 'Late' Drop a Course and Register or Waitlist for a Course Directly from the Course Listing for more information.
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RELG 100.04 Religion, Science, and the Moral Imagination 6 credits
How do we imagine the relationship between religion and science? Are they at odds, in harmony, or different ways of imagining ourselves, our world, and our futures? This course explores historical understandings of religious and scientific thought, and asks how the two came to be separated in the modern world. We use the imagination to explore the power dynamics and moral judgments embedded in assumptions about matter, nature, bodies, persons, and progress. We draw on literature, philosophy, and theology to consider questions about authority, ethics, and existential hope, focusing on climate crisis, AI and personhood, racism, and the possibility of alternative futures. Argument & Inquiry
Held for new first year students
- Fall 2024
- AI/WR1, Argument & Inquiry/WR1
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Student is a member of the First Year First Term class level cohort. Students are only allowed to register for one A&I course at a time. If a student wishes to change the A&I course they are enrolled in they must DROP the enrolled course and then ADD the new course. Please see our Workday guides Drop or 'Late' Drop a Course and Register or Waitlist for a Course Directly from the Course Listing for more information.
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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 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 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.
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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 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 221 Judaism and Gender 6 credits
How does gender shape the Jewish tradition, and how have Jewish historical moments, texts, and practices shaped Jewish notions of gender? Taking Judaism as a test case, this course will explore the relationship between historical circumstance, positionality, and the religious imaginary. We will examine the ways that Jewish gender and theology inform each other. We will see how gender was at play in Jewish negotiations of economic and social class, racial and ethnic status, even citizenship. Following the threads of practice and narrative, we will think about how intersectional gender has shaped the stories Jews tell, and the stories that are told about them.
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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 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 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 265 Religion and Violence: Hindus, Muslims, Jews 6 credits
Why do religious people do violence—in their words and deeds, against themselves and others? Is violence a distortion of real religion? Is it the inevitable result of certain beliefs? Or are these the wrong questions? This course considers several case studies of religious violence drawn from different traditions and time periods, including ancient paganism, early Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and so-called cults. Our approach will be historical, literary, and comparative. We will seek to understand how violence can be meaningful as a religious act, and how adherents of the same religious tradition can have widely diverse views on violence and nonviolence.
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RELG 287 Many Marys 6 credits
The history of Christianity usually focuses on Jesus: the stories and doctrines that have revolved around him. This course will focus on Mary and the many ways she has contributed to the various lived traditions of Christianity. We will, for example, consider the mother of Jesus (Miriam, as she was first called) as she has figured 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. Case studies, texts, images, and film will be our fare.
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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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SOAN 125 Southeast Asian Migration and Diasporic Communities 6 credits
2025 is the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Many Southeast Asian (SEAn) refugees resettled in the U.S. in the aftermath. First, we begin in Southeast Asia (SEA) to understand the social, political, and historical circumstances that have led to SEA migration. Then we will examine how SEAn have adapted to life in the U.S. and how those communities—many are here in Minnesota—are thriving today. We’ll work on a project in collaboration with SEAn organizations to commemorate the 50th anniversary and also travel to SEAn communities in the Twin Cities, dates TBD.
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SOAN 214 Neighborhoods and Cities: Inequalities and Identities 6 credits
Inequalities and identities are well understood yet too often disconnected from the context of space and place. In this class, we discuss the ways that neighborhoods and cities are sites of inequality as well as identity. Neighborhoods are linked to the amount of wealth we hold; the schools we attend; the goods, services, and resources we have access to; and who our neighbors are. Neighborhoods are also spaces where identities and community are created, claimed, and contested. They can also be sites of conflict as they change through gentrification or other processes that often reflect inequalities of power, resources, and status. In this course, special attention will be paid to how race, gender and sexuality, and immigration shape inequalities and identity in neighborhoods and cities. This course will also include an academic civic engagement component, collaborating with local communities in Minnesota. The department strongly recommends that Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses numbered 200 or above.
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SOAN 225 Social Movements 6 credits
How is it that in specific historical moments ordinary people come together and undertake collective struggles for justice in social movements such as Black Lives Matter, Me Too, Standing Rock, immigrant, and LGBTQ rights? How have these movements theorized oppression, and what has been their vision for liberation? What collective change strategies have they proposed and what obstacles have they faced? We will explore specific case studies and use major sociological perspectives theorizing the emergence of movements, repertoires of protest, collective identity formation, frame alignment, and resource mobilization. We will foreground the intersectionality of gender, sexuality, race, and class in these movements.
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SOAN 252 Growing Up in an Aging Society 6 credits
Both the U.S. and global populations are trending toward a world with far fewer young people than ever before. So, what does it mean to grow up in a rapidly aging society? This course explores age, aging, and its various intersections with demographic characteristics including gender, sexuality, race, and social class. We situate age and aging within the context of macro-structural, institutional, and micro-everyday realms. Some topics we will examine include: media depictions and stereotypes; interpersonal relationships and caregiving; the workplace and retirement; and both the perceptions and inevitable realities of an aging population.
The department strongly recommends that Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses numbered 200 or above
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SOAN 278 Urban Ethnography and the American Experience 6 credits
American sociology has a rich tradition of focusing the ethnographic eye on the American experience. We will take advantage of this tradition to encounter urban America through the ethnographic lens, expanding our social vision and investigating the nature of race, place, meaning, interaction, and inequality in the U.S. While doing so, we will also explore the unique benefits, challenges, and underlying assumptions of ethnographic research as a distinctive mode of acquiring and communicating social knowledge. As such, this course offers both an immersion in the American experience and an inquiry into the craft of ethnographic writing and research. The department strongly recommends that Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses numbered 200 or above.
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SOAN 283 Immigration, Citizenship, and Belonging in the U.S. 6 credits
Immigration has been a defining feature of the United States that is tied to legal and cultural forms of citizenship, and more broadly, to questions of belonging. This course explores these three concepts through multiple aspects of immigration, including the migration experience, immigration policy, community, education, culture, and others, for both immigrants and the children of immigrants. Special attention is given to how differences among immigrants—such as race, gender, class, national origin, and others—matter in all of these areas. These questions and issues are explored through academic readings, popular and public discourse, immigrant voices, and civic engagement in local communities.
The department strongly recommends that 110 or 11 be taken prior to enrolling in courses number 200 or above.