General Studies
Courses
General Studies
Introduction to a liberal arts topic, covering source material in depth and stressing methodology, research, presentation, and writing. 0.25-0.5 units. Taught as a regular block prior to NSO (0.5 unit) or as adjunct (0.25 unit). (Not offered 2024-25).
The conflicts of individual freedom and institutional authority in ethics, politics, science and religion. Readings emphasize the development of these conflicts in Western culture, from antiquity to modern times, and are related to the decisions which students must make concerning the central values in their lives. Freshmen only. Students may receive separate grades for each block of this course, but must be enrolled in all the blocks in order to receive credit. (Cannot be taken for credit after General Studies 301.) (Not offered 2024-25).
This seminar on the theory and practice of peer mentoring is for peer mentors working across campus (Bridge Scholars Program (BSP), the Stroud Scholars Program, and the Peer Education Program in the Butler Center, etc.). Research demonstrates that peer mentors help fellow students succeed in college. Becoming an effective peer mentor requires self-awareness, active learning, time, practice, feedback, and a supportive community. Students will engage with readings, participate in class activities, produce reflections, and complete a final project as part of their journey to becoming an effective peer mentor. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
The ability to use data and basic algebraic models (economic, biological, physical) gives you tools to investigate more deeply key concepts in a variety of disciplines. This adjunct course is designed to help students improve their skills in college algebra and precalculus skills in a context of investigating datasets and basic models. More broadly, a course goal is to help students be more successful in rigorous, gateway or required courses to majoring in math, science, and economics at ϳԹ. Parts of the adjunct will involve teamwork with data and models, while other segments will be tailored to the individual’s progress in ALEKS (Assessment in LEarning in Knowledge Spaces) learning modules. 0.25 unit.
(Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
This introduction to the study of Africana Studies boldly centers the notion that the lives, thought, culture, politics, and economics of the people of Africa and the diaspora can be examined as a free-standing academic endeavor. In the main this tradition is constituted by thinkers, artists, political figures, and others who have elaborated a complex set of ideas broadly concerned with race and its consequences in the African diaspora. 1 unit. (Not offered 2024-25).
Whether writing a news report for a publication or drafting a press release to try and influence the news, clear concise, accurate, and error-free copy is tantamount. Students in ‘Writing the News’ will learn how to gather information and assemble it to create compelling and engaging narratives in various ways. The goal of this class is to help students understand how different kinds of writing can operate within their own guidelines, ethics, structure, style, and form. In ‘Writing the News,’ students also will gain an understanding about the various ways news originates, and the importance of local news to democracy. Students will also learn how to evaluate information in an increasingly confusing digital landscape that is rife with misinformation, and they will learn about efforts to advance equity in local news (Not offered 2024-25).
Integrates theory and experiential learning to introduce core concepts and models of effective, equitable, and intentional engagement with communities beyond the campus. This community-engaged learning (CEL) course aims to deepen the perspectives and skills needed to apply a liberal arts education toward solving public problems in inclusive, democratic ways. Pass/fail only. No laboratory. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course introduces students to theoretical concepts and interpretive methods deployed in analyzing the nature, structures, and practices of the liberal arts. The goal is to prepare students to participate in critical discussions about the different ways that people experience, interpret, and find meaning in the context of a liberal arts education. The course will focus on three major themes in philosophy of education: the aims of education; the practices and politics of knowing; and the nature of teaching and learning. The course also prepares students to work as mentors in the ϳԹ First Year Experience program. Pass/Fail only; COI required; .25 units.
(Summer only 2024-25).
This practicum provides a community-engaged experiential learning experience for students interested in working in public good sectors and changemaking. Students engage in at least 45 hours of supervised, focused capacity-building work for organizations in the nonprofit or public sector, toward mutually beneficial goals that promote student learning and community impact. Students participate in structured, guided group and individual reflection and culminate their experience in a final assignment that connects theory and practice. Through the practicum, students have the opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills to real-world contexts; learn-by-doing in unscripted, diverse, nuanced situations; and learn from practitioners. Can be taken Pass/No Credit only.
This practicum provides an immersive, embedded, community-engaged student learning experience within a single organization in the public good sector. Students engage in 40-80 hours of supervised, focused capacity-building work for the organization, toward mutually beneficial goals that promote student learning and community impact. Along the way, students participate in guided reflection and relevant skill-building, culminating their experience in a final assignment that connects theory and practice. Through the practicum, students have the opportunity to apply academic knowledge and skills to real-world contexts; learn-by-doing in unscripted, diverse, nuanced situations; and learn from practitioners. No laboratory. Offered P/NC only.
The GS: Internship Adjunct provide students with a significant learning experience outside the classroom setting, usually being placed with a company, non-profit or community-based organization. The internship represents an educational strategy that links classroom learning with the application of knowledge in an applied work setting. Students participate in an internship for at least four weeks and no less than 40 hours of supervised work. The General Studies: Internship Adjunct is taken under the pass/fail grading option. The course is a no credit option. The GS: Internship Adjunct does not meet divisional distribution requirements. Prerequisite: Sophomore, Junior or Senior status.
Students are provided with a significant learning experience outside the classroom setting, usually being placed with a company, non-profit or community based organization. The internship represents an educational strategy that links classroom learning with the application of knowledge in an applied work setting. Students participate in an internship for at least four weeks and no less than 40 hours or supervised work.
Regular meeting with instructor to provide aid for those whose backgrounds make formal college writing difficult; practice in expository prose. (Not offered 2024-25).
Language practice and support for any student whose native language is not English. Review of and practice in American academic writing conventions, mechanics, and English grammar. Writing Intensive. (Not offered 2024-25).
This 0.25 credit course develops active reading strategies and skills necessary for students to read successfully at the college level. The course will be taught primarily in a workshop format, using group discussions, directed readings, small group activities, and written reading-response assignments. Students at all levels of reading proficiency are encouraged to enroll in order to improve reading comprehension and speed, expand critical reading skills, and enhance reading proficiency across the liberal arts curriculum. (2 consecutive blocks) (Not offered 2024-25).
Students will develop their linguistic and cultural competencies in the context of investigating contemporary social, economic, and political issues in the United States, such as immigration, American identity, and globalization. Students in this course will: 1) refine grammatical structures and syntax to provide clear communication of thought; (2) complete short oral presentations and demonstrate the ability to participate in class; (3) read primary and secondary sources and critically analyze them; and (4) create an argumentative thesis, choosing reliable sources for support. By the end of the class, students will be able to write thesis-driven, documented essays in a variety of rhetorical modes. They will develop strategies for listening comprehension, build their vocabularies, and speak confidently in class. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
This course will introduce culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students to the linguistic and cultural expectations of a US liberal arts context through practice with a variety of academic assignments, skill work, and academic English support. Course topics may include navigating writing assignments (research, analysis, reflection), academic skill development (reading, note taking, oral presentation strategies, principles of ethical scholarship, discussion-based learning), and other topics as needed within the scope of this course. Pass/Fail only.
An interdisciplinary exploration of the relation of scientific and religious ways of knowing and understanding the world and our role in it, emphasizing the communal character of science and religion, and analogies in their methods of inquiry. Examination of significant scientific/religious issues confronting society, such as 'creation science,' abortion and genetic engineering; and how they might be resolved.) (Summer only 2024-25).
The Foundations of Radical Nonviolence course examines the theory and practice of radical nonviolence. The course has a cultural and systemic lens, covering a broad range of disciplines including philosophy, religion, art, history, and science, as well as modern day practitioners in order to examine nonviolence as a powerful social force. Students will meet many guests who are practitioners and activists, exploring war and its effects on humans and the planet, strategic nonviolent conflict, prison abolition, civil disobedience, forgiveness, restorative justice, and nonviolent history. Creativity and independent research are highly encouraged in this course, and there is a heavy focus on connecting theory and practice. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. Meets the Equity and Power: EPUS requirement.
This course, designed for culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) Global Scholars, will promote academic success during their transition to ϳԹ. Meetings occur three times each block and may cover a range of topics including but not limited to FYP coursework, research and ethical scholarship skills, writing in academic genres, reading and oral presentation strategies, language support, and culturally-contextualized rhetorical practices. This class runs on the 'P' track (S/CR/NC).
This adjunct course is designed for students to work individually or in groups on a digital research project. Under the supervision of faculty, IT specialists and/or librarians, students research a focused topic grounded in their major or another field in which they have expertise and learn how digital technology can best be used in this scholarly endeavor. Course meets two times per week over the course of two blocks, two-and-a-half hours each meeting. Course may be repeated with a different research project. .5 units. Instructors: Faculty with the support of IT staff and Librarians.
The ϳԹ Social Action Institute is a 6- week mentored internship program in which students engage in activist and/or advocacy work that aims to confront the escalating surveillance and criminalization of BIPOC communities by collaborating directly with community-based organizations in the U.S. Southwest (Denver, Albuquerque, Phoenix, El Paso, Austin, and San Marcos, Texas). Students work in one of three program tracks: Community Organizing, Environmental Justice Work, or Immigrant Detention Work. During the program, students learn skills to engage in activism/advocacy work, consider anti-racist approaches to community- engaged work, participate in discussions focused on conceptions of social change, and explore activist/advocacy/legal and policy career possibilities. The program begins with a one- week, 40- hour orientation on campus that prepares students for the five-week, (40 hr. a week) internship experience. Students write several reflective papers and prepare a substantive presentation for their respective host community organization. (Not offered 2024-25).
Basic skills of the discipline, focusing primarily on news, analysis, feature and editorial writing (including research, fact-checking, interviewing), but dealing also with editing, layout, journalistic ethics, libel laws.
A semester-long extended format course, designed and executed with faculty supervision, that combines practical experience in journalism with theoretical reading, an annotated portfolio of work completed, and a journal of reflections leading to an overview of the semester. The course can be taken twice and is limited to one unit counting towards the degree. (Not offered 2024-25).
An intermediate course in the behind-the-camera arts of lighting, set design, cinematography, and sound recording. The focus will be on film and video making in a studio environment. Scenes will be staged and shot to demonstrate the effects of various approaches to scene design and cinematography. (Summer only 2024-25).
A study of present-day Italian society through its history, literature and film. The starting point of the course is Neorealism, a revolutionary movement in cinema which became the repository of partisan hopes for social justice in the postwar Italian state. A selection of texts and films produced between 1945 and 1985 will attempt to show in what ways Italian society has fulfilled, and disappointed, the promise of Neorealism. This course will also serve as the culminating experience for the Italian Minor. (Not offered 2024-25).
Selected topics will be discussed and will vary from year to year.
Survey of the influence of the news media in American Politics with particular attention to the ethical problems faced by working journalists. Emphasis on the conflict between the public's right to know and the individual's right to privacy. Jointly taught by a professional journalist and a member of the ϳԹ faculty. (Not offered 2024-25).
Meets the Critical Perspectives: Social Inequality requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
An investigation into the strengths and limitations of nonviolent conflict in bringing social and political change. After a week investigating social movement theory drawing from several disciplines, students participate in a workshop in which they envision, organize and strategically guide a virtual nonviolent social movement. Class requires substantial engagement in class and group projects and a final exam. (Not offered 2024-25).
What is “Europe”? What does it mean to be “European”? Who gets to define the boundaries of Europeanness, and what groups have been included or excluded, centered or marginalized as a result? This course seeks to answer such epistemological questions by unraveling and deconstructing some of the central, naturalized, imposed, and often monolithic narratives that have been projected onto and out from Europe. Examining these mechanisms from a critical perspective, students will look at the diverse cultural, linguistic, national, religious, ethnic, racial, and other factors that have continued to shape Europe throughout its history. They will consider debates around issues of identity and ideology, including the histories and legacies of colonialism, imperialism, fascism, and racism, and learn to view Europe as a place of multiplicity and difference, changing institutions, and ever-shifting borders. Taking a transdisciplinary approach that includes literary studies, art history, race and ethnic studies, film and media studies, cultural studies, history, and geography, among other fields and theoretical frameworks, “Unraveling Europe” unsettles the common assumption that Europe is and always has been fundamentally European. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
A survey of African history followed by discussion of current political, social, and environmental issues in southern Africa. Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Meets the Critical Perspectives: Global Cultures requirement. (Summer only 2024-25).
This course will examine the complex set of ideas concerning politics, history, literature, and various aspects of human culture that are characteristic of the interdisciplinary tradition of Africana Studies. The emergence of a tradition of African and diasporic thinkers is one of the most significant events of modernity’s colonial and post-colonial experience and marks a major turn in the history of thought more generally. (Not offered 2024-25).
Stuart Hall asks in the title of a classic 1993 essay, “What is this ‘Black’ in Black Popular Culture?”. Building from foundational texts that seek to define the Africana aesthetic, this course will examine the variety of aesthetic practices—sonic, visual, written, culinary, etc.—that make up Africana expressive culture. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
What are the interrelationships between science and literature? In what ways does literature mirror, reject, distort, or even anticipate changes in scientific views of the earth and the cosmos? By relating scientific essays and demonstrations to literature, we will explore how authors such as Thomson, Wordsworth, Pynchon, Stoppard, Whitemore, Borges and Calvino have employed scientific concepts. (May be offered with Emphasis on Writing.) (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
This half-unit (0.50 credit) course focuses on readings in contemporary environmental politics and the rhetoric of these readings. We will examine how the environment is mobilized as a political device and how public opinions and policies may be shaped by particular rhetorical strategies. The course will be taught in a workshop format, using group discussions, directed readings, small group activities, individual meetings, and a series of written reading-response assignment. One of ϳԹ's foremost objectives as a leading liberal arts institution is to prepare its students 'with mental agility and the skills of critical judgments essential to learning (2006-2007 ϳԹ Catalog of Courses, p. 15). Reading is one of the principal means by which we expose students to a variety of ideas, data, disciplines, and epistemologies. This course attends to reading in both theory and practice to challenge students to engage with texts more critically and actively. By focusing upon critical readings of environmental politics, students will develop strategies and knowledge that translate across the liberal arts curriculum. (Offered as a half-block and extended format course.) (Not offered 2024-25).
This course examines what it means to read on both a theoretical and practical level. Focusing on readings concerning the transactional theory of reading, students will consider the influence of the background knowledge and beliefs they bring to texts as well as the way in which the text can prompt transformations in their thinking and believing. In the process of reading and discussing the assigned materials, the students will also develop and polish college level reading skills. This course will be taught in a seminar fashion, with small and whole group discussion, assigned readings and reading-response short papers. Meets the Writing in the Discipline requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
Provides an opportunity for students to improve their writing skills through practice and criticism. This course must be taken in conjunction with a Writing in the Disciplines course if taken in fulfillment of the Writing Proficiency Requirement. (Must be taken on a P/NC basis: first taught in academic year 2010-11.) Meets the Writing Enhancement requirement. (Not offered 2024-25).
This course will examine contemporary understandings of “Latin America” from a multidisciplinary perspective. Recognizing the constructed nature of the term, the course offers an overview of critical topics, such as: colonialism and its effects; linguistic and cultural diversity; environmental issues; class, gender, race and ethnicity; and US-Latin America relations. Meets the Equity and Power: EPG requirement.
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
This course has two purposes: (1) to delve into the complex processes involved in writing and talking about writing; and (2) to prepare students to work as writing consultants in the ϳԹ Writing Center. Key course themes include the theory and practice of writing, the theory and practice of tutoring, critical thinking, self-awareness, and team building. Students will have the opportunity to discuss and apply theories to specific tutoring situations, role play, solve problems in groups, and practice tutoring. Applications are due in the fall; check the Writing Center webpage for exact dates. The course is held annually during half-block.
This seminar brings together various methodological and theoretical approaches to interpreting Africana life, culture, thought, and politics. Focusing largely on emergent scholarship, we will examine a selection of humanistic and social scientific studies of various local, national, and international contexts. These texts demonstrate the ways in which innovative interdisciplinary methods are crucial for understanding the complexity of the Africana world. The key question guiding the seminar is, “How do scholars of Africana Studies come to devise their research questions and why are these questions important for humanistic and social scientific inquiry?” (Not offered 2024-25).
Supervised reading and structured reflection following a student's participation in a ϳԹ Student Exchange or Affiliated study abroad program, culminating in a research essay and/or extensive creative work plus a reflective journal/portfolio on the international experiences. A presentation to the college community may be incorporated into the independent study, but will not substitute for written work.
This course has two components: a practicum in journalism and an integrated project designed to accompany the student's course work in the minor. The student's work in the practicum will be evaluated by the on-site supervisor; the supervisor's reports will be reviewed by the minor advisor. The project should be designed by the student in consultation with the minor advisor and course instructor(s). The project should involve a critical component: it should enable the student to explore and critically reflect upon the construction of newsworthy material, the formal and generic constraints of journalistic writing, and the shaping ideologies, both subjective and institutional, of specific instances of journalism. (Only open to students who are pursuing the Thematic Minor in Journalism.)
Supervised readings or in-field investigations in areas of interest to the students that are interdisciplinary in nature and cross divisional lines within the college. The readings and/or investigations will be followed up with discussions and written reports. Must be approved and supervised by two faculty members from different divisions of the college.
Guided exploration of a topic in urban studies chosen with the instructor's approval. Satisfies the integrative experience requirement for the Urban Studies thematic minor. (Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
Seminar exploring the nature of interdisciplinary research and the processes through which research integration occurs. Designed so that Independently Designed Majors can complete a research proposal to carry out in their senior thesis, but others may be admitted with the consent of the department.
(Not offered 2024-25).
Facilitates the development of the research skills, audience awareness, clarity of purpose, and persuasive rhetoric necessary for writing grant applications for individuals and for groups. Provides students the opportunities to write a grant for an individual project and experience aspects of the grant-writing process for an organization. Meets once per week over 4 blocks. As this course requires substantial writing, revision, and response, course seats will be capped at 12.
Placeholder Course for students during preregistration. They should use this course at preregistration time instead of leaving the block blank! The correct version will be added to the students schedule after preregistration is over.
Placeholder for the Spring Abroad Registration during Pre-registration.
This course will provide students with strategies for approaching advanced writing projects, such as senior thesis papers, grant and scholarship applications, and essays for graduate and professional schools. Students will learn methods for research, invention, drafting, organization, and revision. By the end of the class, students will have produced a significant piece of writing for a class or an independent project. As this course requires substantial writing, revision, conferencing, and response, course seats will be capped at 12.
Thesis subject of integrative project to be developed by the student with the approval of the advisor. For liberal arts and sciences majors or students doing the integrative project of Thematic Minors. Offered any block of the year.
Completion of the senior thesis and oral defense with faculty sponsors. Liberal Arts and Sciences majors only. Offered any block after 400 Senior Thesis I.
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Not offered 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).
(Summer only 2024-25).