Search Results
Your search for courses · during 2025-26 · tagged with AMST Democracy Activism · returned 37 results
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AMST 100 Imagining America 6 credits
This course examines twentieth-century literature, film, and music in the U.S. to consider how newcomers first imagine this country and how, in turn, “America” sees them. We’ll trace how ideas of Americaness shift over time, reflecting on how understandings of citizenship, freedom, and rights depend on the variable meanings of race, gender, ethnicity, ability, and sexuality. We’ll pair our study of cultural expressions with readings in history, law, and sociology to better understand the complex ways in which “America” is perceived, written into existence, and contested.
Held for new first year students
- Fall 2025
- 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 231 Contemporary Indigenous Activism 6 credits
Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island and the Pacific Islands are fighting to revitalize Indigenous languages, uphold tribal sovereignty, and combat violence against Indigenous women, among many other struggles. This course shines a light on contemporary Indigenous activism and investigates social justice through the lens of Indian Country, asking questions like: What tools are movements using to promote Indigenous resurgence? And what are the educational, gendered, environmental, linguistic, and religious struggles to which these movements respond? Students will acquire an understanding of contemporary Indigenous movements, the issues they address, and the responsibilities of non-Native people living on Indigenous lands.
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AMST 231.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Meredith McCoy 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 330 1:15pm-3:00pm
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AMST 234 American Identities in the Twentieth Century 6 credits
What does it mean to be an American and how has that definition changed over time? This course examines how individual Americans have explored the relationship between their selves and their country’s recent history. We will read memoirs and autobiographies to explore American identities through a variety of lenses, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, citizenship status, region, and ability. Key texts will include works by Alison Bechdel, Audre Lorde, Malcolm X, and Mine Okubo.
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AMST 234.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Christopher Elias 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THAnderson Hall 329 10:10am-11:55am
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AMST 239 The Death Penalty: An American History 6 credits
A critical examination of the history of capital punishment in the United States, including its origins, development, and current status. Students will engage with broad questions and themes related to the death penalty, including its legal intricacies, religious implications, ethical components, racial and class dynamics, and political meanings. Multiple disciplinary lenses will be applied to a variety of texts, including history, journalism, memoir, court decisions, and documentary film.
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AMST 239.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Christopher Elias 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WWillis 114 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FWillis 114 1:10pm-2:10pm
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ARTH 205 Invisible From Space: Representing Ecosystems 6 credits
Since NASA's "Whole Earth" photographs emerged in the late 1960s, people have struggled with humanity's place in the cosmos and our interconnection with all life on our "blue marble." How can we comprehend the whole while valuing each component of this complex system? In the U.S., Romantic landscapes and frontier imagery continue influencing perception despite tensions with vast scales of space, time, data, history, and non-human perspectives. These challenges of seeing our planet and ourselves have inspired diverse creative responses across photography, new media, mapping, alternative archiving, theater, music, data visualization, and other interdisciplinary approaches.
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ARTH 205.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:David Bailey 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THBoliou 161 10:10am-11:55am
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ARTH 207 Cultivating the Future: “Growing” Together 6 credits
Artists have long explored the dual themes of plant cultivation and knowledge cultivation. What explains this connection between horticulture and pedagogy in art? This course examines these interconnections, beginning with early modernist art circles and following their influence on developments like Black Mountain College and Joseph Beuys's Free International University. We then explore contemporary artists who employ permaculture gardens, traditional ecological knowledge, ecofeminist principles, guerrilla plantings, and foraging as tools to foster new social, political, and spiritual understandings. Through these practices, artists cultivate not just plants but future-oriented ways of knowing and being in the world.
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ARTH 207.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:David Bailey 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THBoliou 161 1:15pm-3:00pm
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CAMS 225 Film Noir: The Dark Side of the American Dream 6 credits
After Americans grasped the enormity of the Depression and World War II, the glossy fantasies of 1930s cinema seemed hollow indeed. During the 1940s, the movies, our true national pastime, took a nosedive into pessimism. The result? A collection of exceptional films populated with tough guys and dangerous women lurking in the shadows of nasty urban landscapes. This course focuses on classic American noir as well as neo-noir from a variety of perspectives, including mode and genre, visual style and narrative structure, postwar culture and politics, and race, gender, and sexuality. Requirements include two screenings per week and several short papers.
Extra Time required. Evening Screenings.
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CAMS 225.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Carol Donelan 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THWeitz Center 132 1:15pm-3:00pm
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Extra Time Required: Evening screenings
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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 2025
- ARP, Arts Practice IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): CAMS 111 with grade of C- or better.
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CAMS 270.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Rini Matea 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THWeitz Center 133 10:10am-11:55am
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Extra Time Required:
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ECON 270 Economics of the Public Sector 6 credits
This course provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the government’s role in the U.S. economy. Emphasis is placed on policy analysis using the criteria of efficiency and equity. Topics include rationales for government intervention; analysis of alternative public expenditure programs from a partial and/or general equilibrium framework; the incidence of various types of taxes; models of collective choice; cost-benefit analysis; intergovernmental fiscal relations.
- Winter 2026
- QRE, Quantitative Reasoning SI, Social Inquiry
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): ECON 110 with a grade of C- or better or received a score of 5 on the Macroeconomics AP exam and ECON 111 with a grade of C- or better or received a score of 5 on the Microeconomics AP exam OR has received a score of 6 or better on the Economics IB exam.
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ECON 270.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Aaron Swoboda 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THWillis 203 10:10am-11:55am
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ECON 271 Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment 6 credits
How do we address increasingly urgent problems of environmental degradation and depletion of natural resources? This course develops the economic approach to addressing a wide variety of related issues, while also considering how issues of law and political economy affect resource allocations and the desirability and feasibility of various policies. Topics covered include climate change, energy production, air quality regulation policies, wildlife management, endangered species protection, water resource management, and valuation of the environment.
- Winter 2026
- QRE, Quantitative Reasoning SI, Social Inquiry
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Student has completed any of the following course(s): ECON 111 with a grade of C- or better or ECON AL (Cambridge A Level Economics) with a grade of B or better or has received a score of 5 on the AP Microeconomics test or a score of 6 or better on the IB Economics test.
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ECON 271.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Mark Kanazawa 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THWillis 211 10:10am-11:55am
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ENGL 141 Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump 6 credits
The last few years have placed Latinx communities under siege and in the spotlight. The demands of the census and new policies around immigration mean that who counts as Latinx and why it matters has public visibility and meaning. Simultaneously, the last few years have seen an incredible growth of new literary voices and genres in the world of Latinx letters. From fictional and creative nonfiction accounts of detention camps, border crossings, and asylum court proceedings to lyrical wanderings in bilingualism to demands for greater attention to Afrolatinidad and the particular experiences of Black Latinxs–Latinx voices are rising. We will engage with current literary discussions in print, on social media, and in literary journals as we chart the shifting, developing terrain of Latinx literatures. Offered at both the 100 and 200 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly.
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ENGL 241 Latinx Voices in the Age of Trump 6 credits
The last few years have placed Latinx communities under siege and in the spotlight. The demands of the census and new policies around immigration mean that who counts as Latinx and why it matters has public visibility and meaning. Simultaneously, the last few years have seen an incredible growth of new literary voices and genres in the world of Latinx letters. From fictional and creative nonfiction accounts of detention camps, border crossings, and asylum court proceedings to lyrical wanderings in bilingualism to demands for greater attention to Afrolatinidad and the particular experiences of Black Latinxs–Latinx voices are rising. We will engage with current literary discussions in print, on social media, and in literary journals as we chart the shifting, developing terrain of Latinx literatures. Offered at both the 100 and 200 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly.
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ENTS 210 Environmental Justice 6 credits
The environmental justice movement seeks greater participation by marginalized communities in environmental policy, and equity in the distribution of environmental harms and benefits. This course will examine the meaning of “environmental justice,” the history of the movement, the empirical foundation for the movement’s claims, and specific policy questions. Our focus is the United States, but students will have the opportunity to research environmental justice in other countries.
X-List GEOL 210
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GWSS 212 Foundations of LGBTQ Studies 6 credits
This course introduces students to foundational interdisciplinary works in sexuality and gender studies, while focusing on the construction of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer identities in the United States. In exploring sexual and gender diversity throughout the term, this seminar highlights the complexity and variability of experiences of desire, identification, embodiment, self-definition, and community-building across different historical periods, and in relation to intersections of race, class, ethnicity, and other identities.
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GWSS 212.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Candace Moore 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 402 10:10am-11:55am
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GWSS 265 Black Feminist Thought 6 credits
This seminar offers students an opportunity to engage closely with key concepts, figures, and arguments in the Black Feminist intellectual tradition. We will focus primarily on texts by key figures/scholars from the Americas/Caribbean—in order to situate Black Feminisms within a transnational feminist context. We will take a historical approach, starting in the 19th century and work our way to more contemporary figures and texts throughout the term. Some of the key figures we will examine are Sojourner Truth, Anna Julia Cooper, Ida B. Wells, Angela Y. Davis, Sylvia Wynter, Hortense Spillers, Saidiya Hartman, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and Patricia Hill Collins. Offered at both the 200 and 300 levels; coursework will be adjusted accordingly.
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GWSS 312 Queer and Trans Theory 6 credits
This seminar offers students familiar with the foundational terms and concepts in gender and sexuality studies the opportunity to engage in more advanced explorations of relevant topics and debates in contemporary queer and trans theory. Seeing queer theory and trans theory as theoretical traditions that are historically and philosophically entangled but which at times necessarily diverge, the course focuses on “state of the field” essays from Gay and Lesbian Quarterly and Transgender Studies Quarterly as well as works that put gender and sexuality studies into conversation with disability studies, critical race theory, indigenous studies, and critiques of neoliberalism and imperialism.
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GWSS 312.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Candace Moore 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THLeighton 402 3:10pm-4:55pm
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HIST 114 Indigenous Histories, Time Immemorial to 1887 6 credits
Indigenous presence in North America pre-dates the United States by millennia and persists in spite of colonial attempts to eliminate Indigenous peoples. As Part I of the Indigenous Histories in the United States survey, we begin with Indigenous Knowledges of place, time, and identity since time immemorial. We then move through thousands of years of stories of diplomacy, captivity, colonialism, resistance, removal, and reconstitution. We conclude in the mid-1880s, a drastic period of change for lands, humans, and more-than-human relations. This course takes an ethnohistorical approach which centers Indigenous perspectives and draws on History, Indigenous Studies, and Anthropology.
Extra Time Required: If the ACE collaboration continues, students will travel to Hocokata Ti in Prior Lake, MN for a training and archives tour.
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HIST 114.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Meredith McCoy 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- T, THWillis 203 1:15pm-3:00pm
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HIST 123 U.S. Women’s History Since 1877 6 credits
In the twentieth century women participated in the redefinition of politics and the state, sexuality and family life, and work and leisure as the United States became a modern, largely urban society. We will explore how the dimensions of race, class, ethnicity, and sexuality shaped diverse women’s experiences of these historical changes. Topics will include: immigration, the expansion of the welfare system and the consumer economy, labor force segmentation and the world wars, and women’s activism in civil rights, labor, peace and feminist movements.
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HIST 123.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Annette Igra 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 330 3:10pm-4:55pm
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HIST 126 Black Freedom: Reconstruction to #BlackLivesMatter 6 credits
This course analyzes Black Freedom activism, its goals, and protagonists from Reconstruction until today. Topics include the evolution of racial segregation and its legal and de facto expressions in the South and across the nation, the Great Migration and Harlem Renaissance, Black activism in the New Deal era, the effects of World War II and the Cold War, mass activism in the 1950s and 1960s, white supremacist resistance against Black rights, Black Power activism and Black Internationalism, the “War on Drugs,” racialized welfare state reforms, and police brutality, the election of Barack Obama, and the path to #BlackLivesMatter today.
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HIST 126.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Rebecca Brueckmann 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 402 1:15pm-3:00pm
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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.
- Fall 2025, Spring 2026
- HI, Humanistic Inquiry IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies
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HIST 205.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:George Vrtis 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 426 8:15am-10:00am
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HIST 205.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:George Vrtis 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 426 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 212 The American Revolution at 250 6 credits
This course explores the causes, experiences, and consequences of the American Revolution, from the radical ideas and the alarming deeds that created the United States to the diverse array of individuals who shaped and who were shaped by its creation. In connection with the 250th anniversary of the Revolution, this course will take a fresh look at how historians, museum curators, and filmmakers explain this pivotal story and its meaning. Ken Burns’s new PBS documentary, American Revolution, will anchor this course.
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HIST 212.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Serena Zabin 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 236 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 236 12:00pm-1:00pm
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HIST 213 Politics and Protest in the New Nation 6 credits
In the first years of the United States, men and women of all races had to learn what it meant to live in the nation created by the U.S. Constitution. This class will focus on the American attempts to form a more perfect union, paying close attention to the place of slavery, Native dispossession, sexuality, and politics during the years 1787-1840. Throughout the course we will examine the ways in which the politics and protests of the early Republic continue to shape the current United States.
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HIST 213.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Serena Zabin 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- T, THLeighton 304 10:10am-11:55am
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HIST 216 History Beyond the Walls 6 credits
This course will examine the world of history outside the walls of academia. Looking at secondary-school education, museums, and public policy, we will explore the ways in which both general and specialized publics learn and think about history. A central component of the course will be a civic engagement project.
Extra Time Required.
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HIST 216.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Serena Zabin 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 236 1:50pm-3:00pm
- FLeighton 236 2:20pm-3:20pm
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HIST 226 U.S. Consumer Culture 6 credits
In the period after 1880, the growth of a mass consumer society recast issues of identity, gender, race, class, family, and political life. We will explore the development of consumer culture through such topics as advertising and mass media, the body and sexuality, consumerist politics in the labor movement, and the response to the Americanization of consumption abroad. We will read contemporary critics such as Thorstein Veblen, as well as historians engaged in weighing the possibilities of abundance against the growth of corporate power.
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HIST 226.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Annette Igra 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THLeighton 330 3:10pm-4:55pm
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HIST 314 Crime and Punishment: Early American Legal History 6 credits
In this advanced seminar, you will learn to research and write a compelling microhistory about early America (1607-1860) through legal documents such as depositions, complaints, accusations, confessions, and laws themselves. The archives of American law are rich with evidence about a diverse array of people, events, and places; your 20- to 25-page paper, based on your original research, will have many topics from which to draw. The seminar will include common readings with a variety of approaches to legal history as well as extensive peer review.
Recommended Preparation: At least one US History course and/or HIST 298.
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HIST 314.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Serena Zabin 🏫 👤
- Size:20
- T, THLeighton 202 1:15pm-3:00pm
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MUSC 126 America’s Music 6 credits
A survey of American music with particular attention to the interaction of the folk, popular, and classical realms. No musical experience required.
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MUSC 126.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Andy Flory 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- M, WWeitz Center M215 9:50am-11:00am
- FWeitz Center M215 9:40am-10:40am
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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 2025, Winter 2026, Spring 2026
- IDS, Intercultural Domestic Studies QRE, Quantitative Reasoning SI, Social Inquiry
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POSC 122.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Christina Farhart 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- T, THHulings 316 1:15pm-3:00pm
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POSC 122.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Adam Le 🏫
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 304 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLeighton 304 12:00pm-1:00pm
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POSC 122.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Ryan Dawkins 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- M, WLanguage & Dining Center 104 11:10am-12:20pm
- FLanguage & Dining Center 104 12:00pm-1:00pm
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POSC 210 Misinformation, Political Rumors, and Conspiracy Theories 6 credits
Why do people believe in conspiracy theories, hold on to misinformed beliefs even in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, and/or spread political and social rumors that may have little basis in fact? Who is most vulnerable to these various forms of misinformation? What are the normative and political consequences of misperceptions (if any)? This course explores the psychological, political, and philosophical approaches to the study of the causes, consequences, and tenacity of conspiracy beliefs, misinformation, and political rumors, as well as possible approaches that journalists could employ to combat misperceptions.
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POSC 210.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Christina Farhart 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- T, THHasenstab 105 10:10am-11:55am
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POSC 228 Power and the American Presidency 6 credits
The power of the executive branch is loosely defined in the second article of the U.S. Constitution. While the presidency was designed to be clearly subordinated to Congress, presidential has exploded over time and has reshaped American politics around presidential prerogatives. Today, the other branches of the government defer to the president, while voters look to the president to solve a snowballing set of public problems. However, citizen expectations of the president have outpaced even the growth in executive power, which has simultaneously upended the constitutional order while still leaving the average American chronically dissatisfied with government in Washington. This course is designed to explore the dynamics, the drama, and the intrigue associated with the rise of the imperial presidency in America.
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POSC 228.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Ryan Dawkins 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 105 9:50am-11:00am
- FHasenstab 105 9:40am-10:40am
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POSC 271 Constitutional Law I 6 credits
This course will explore the United States Constitution and the legal doctrines that have emerged from it, using them as lenses through which to understand the history—and shape the future—of this country. Using prominent Supreme Court opinions as teaching tools and loci of debate (including cases on the Court’s recent and current docket), this course will explore the different kind of theoretical approaches with which to make Constitutional arguments and interpret the Constitution. It is one of two paired courses (the other being POSC 272) that complement each other. Both courses will address the structure and functioning of the United States government, and will explore in greater depth the historic Constitutional “trends” towards greater equality and more liberty (albeit slowly, haltingly, and with steps both forward and backward). This course will focus in particular on how matters of racial justice have been a Constitutional issue from the very beginning of the nation—and very much remain unfinished legal work. In exploring matters of personal liberty, this course will focus in particular on First Amendment freedom of religion. Finally, in examining governmental structures, this course will emphasize federalism and the distribution of power between the national and state governments, including the rise of a nationwide economic system and the modern administrative state. The course will require close reading of judicial opinions and other texts, and learning how to construct arguments using logic and precedent. A special feature of this course will be detailed examination and intra-class mock debate of the cases the Supreme Court will hear this fall challenging raced-based affirmative action programs at private and public universities.
- Fall 2025
- SI, Social Inquiry
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POSC 271.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Steven Poskanzer 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 002 11:10am-12:20pm
- FHasenstab 002 12:00pm-1:00pm
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POSC 272 Constitutional Law II 6 credits
This course will explore the United States Constitution and the legal doctrines that have emerged from it, using them as lenses through which to understand the history—and shape the future—of this country. Using prominent Supreme Court opinions as teaching tools and loci of debate (including cases on the Court’s recent and current docket), this course will explore the different kind of theoretical approaches with which to make Constitutional arguments and interpret the Constitution. It is one of two paired courses (the other being POSC 271) that complement each other. Both courses will address the structure and functioning of the United States government, and will explore in greater depth the historic Constitutional “trends” towards greater equality and more liberty (albeit slowly, haltingly, and with steps both forward and backward). This course will focus in particular on how gender equality is very much unfinished Constitutional work on our way towards a “more perfect union.” This topic will include an examination of the Court’s recent controversial decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In exploring matters of personal liberty, this course will focus in particular on First Amendment freedom of speech and other fundamental rights protected under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. Finally, in examining governmental structures, this course will emphasize the separation of powers across the branches of the federal government. The course will require close reading of judicial opinions and other texts, and learning how to construct arguments using logic and precedent. POSC 271 is not a prerequisite for POSC 272. The two courses can be taken independently, although having taking POSC 271 will provide students with a broader and more nuanced foundation for exploring the themes covered of this course
- Winter 2026
- SI, Social Inquiry
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POSC 272.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Steven Poskanzer 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WHasenstab 105 9:50am-11:00am
- FHasenstab 105 9:40am-10:40am
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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 302.01 Spring 2026
- Faculty:Christina Farhart 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- T, THHasenstab 002 1:15pm-3:00pm
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POSC 312 The Rural-Urban Divide 6 credits
The rural-urban divide is a prominent fixture of partisan and political conflict in the United States. It is a source of profound social, cultural, and economic differences in how people think about the world and a major driver of political polarization. Yet, few people understand how fundamental geographic space is to understanding American politics today. This course is a research seminar designed to explore the yawning perceptual gap between how rural and urban Americans think about their communities and their politics. The course addresses critical questions related to partisan polarization, race and ethnicity, political and economic inequality, and the quality of representation.
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POSC 312.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Ryan Dawkins 🏫 👤
- Size:15
- M, WHasenstab 109 9:50am-11:00am
- FHasenstab 109 9:40am-10:40am
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RELG 219 Religious Law, Il/legal Religions 6 credits
The concept of law plays a central role in religion, and the concept of religion plays a central role in law. We often use the word ‘law’ to describe obligatory religious practices. But is that ‘law,’ as compared with state law? Legal systems in the U.S. and Europe make laws that protect religious people, and that protect governments from religion. But what does ‘religion’ mean in a legal context? And how do implicit notions of religious law affect how judges deal with religion? We will explore these questions using sources drawn from contemporary religions and recent legal disputes.
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RELG 219.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Chumie Juni 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WLeighton 330 12:30pm-1:40pm
- FLeighton 330 1:10pm-2:10pm
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SOAN 114 Modern Families: An Introduction to the Sociology of the Family 6 credits
What makes a family? How has the conception of kinship and the ‘normal’ family changed over the generations? In this introductory class, we examine these questions, drawing on a variety of course materials ranging from classic works in sociology to contemporary blogs on family life. The class focuses on diversity in family life, paying particular attention to the intersection between the family, race and ethnicity, and social class. We’ll examine these issues at the micro and macro level, incorporating texts that focus on individuals’ stories as well as demographics of the family.
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SOAN 114.01 Winter 2026
- Faculty:Liz Raleigh 🏫 👤
- Size:30
- M, WLeighton 426 8:30am-9:40am
- FLeighton 426 8:30am-9:30am
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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 252.01 Fall 2025
- Faculty:Annette Nierobisz 🏫 👤
- Size:25
- M, WWeitz Center 230 9:50am-11:00am
- FWeitz Center 230 9:40am-10:40am
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