ENROLL

Thabiti Willis

This course looks at the ways that Africanist historians, art historians, anthropologists, and sociologists have examined gender and sexualities in selected cases on the African continent. Students will study the complexities of gender and sexual experiences, practices, identities, and communities within various historical and cultural contexts.

Held for new first year students

Peter Balaam

"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

Zaki Haidar

The encounter between Arabs and Westerners has been marked by its fair share of sorrow and suspicion. In this seminar we will read literary works by Arab authors written over approximately 1000 years--from the Crusades, the height of European imperialism, and on into the age of Iraq, Obama and ISIS. Through our readings and discussions, we will ask along with Arab authors: Is conflict between Arabs and Westerners the inevitable and unbridgeable result of differing world-views, religions and cultures? Are differences just a result of poor communication? Or is this "cultural conflict" something that can be understood historically?

Held for new first year students

Jessica Keating

Between 1300 and 1600 depictions of witches, monsters, and demons moved from the margins of medieval manuscripts and the nooks of church architecture to the center of altarpieces and heart of princely collections. Although this diabolical imagery was extremely diverse, it came from one place: the mind of the Renaissance artist. This course examines how images that came from within were devised and fashioned into works of art. It considers why fantastical imagery that showcased the artist’s imagination was so highly valued during the Renaissance--a period typically associated with the rebirth of classical antiquity. Finally, it explores the connection between illusions, visions, dreams, and other visual phenomena that highlighted the potential malfunction of the mind, and artistic creation. Some of the artists discussed include, but are not limited to, Hieronymous Bosch, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci

Held for new first year students

Baird Jarman

For over two centuries political caricature has permeated the popular culture of democratic societies. This course surveys that history, covering topics including revolutionary printmaking, editorial cartooning, political censorship, mock journalism, and anti-cartoon terrorism. We will explore pictorial protests against war, corruption, bigotry, and injustice, as well as graphic ridicule heaped upon political figures ranging from King Louis-Philippe to Boss Tweed to President Trump. But how effective is political caricature? Does it sway minds or merely reinforce extant opinions? When, if ever, does it become objectionable or libelous? Can comically exaggerated or distorted imagery actually reveal subtle insights or hidden truths?

Held for new first year students

Kathleen Ryor

This seminar will examine the role of plants have played in China from ancient times through the end of the imperial era. It will investigate the uses of different types of plants (fruits, vegetables, flowers, grasses, etc.) in such areas as medicine, food, literature, art, and landscape management. We will seek to understand the ways in which plants function across and make connection between various aspects of human activities. In addition, the course will emphasize how plants have actively helped form Chinese cultural practices and systems of meaning throughout various historical periods.

Held for new first year students

Dimitrios Pavlounis

While the relationship between media and misinformation is not new, rapid technological change, including the emergence of major social media platforms, has resulted in an information environment where we are constantly confronted by conspiracy theories, manipulated statistics, doctored images, hyperpartisan clickbait, questionable ‘research’ studies, and everything in between. Left unchecked, this flow of misinformation can exacerbate social inequalities and undermine trust in the foundations of a democratic society. This course explores how misinformation spreads across a variety of networked media channels and examines the technical, social, and economic structures that enable this spread. Using current events to ground our inquiry, we will investigate topics such as algorithmic bias and recommendation systems; the evolution of conspiracy theories; memes and visual disinformation; media manipulation tactics; and the cultural capital of social media influencers. We will also develop best practices that can help orient us within our increasingly polluted information environment.  

Held for new first year students

Stephanie Cox

First-year students interested in this program should enroll in this seminar. The course is recommended but not required for the minor and it will count as one of the electives. From cradle to grave, cultural assumptions shape our own sense of who we are. This course is designed to enable American and international students to compare how their own and other societies view birth, infancy, adolescence, marriage, adulthood, and old age. Using children's books, child-rearing manuals, movies, and ethnographies, we will explore some of the assumptions in different parts of the globe about what it means to "grow up."

Held for new first year students

Stacy Beckwith

How have Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel shaped their senses of personal and collective identity since the early twentieth century? We will explore mental pictures of the land, one's self, and others in a selection of Israeli Jewish and Palestinian short stories, novels, and films. We will also explore some of the humanistic roots of U.S. involvement in Israeli-Palestinian relations today, particularly in the realm of American initiated bi-cultural youth camps such as Seeds of Peace. Students will enrich our class focus by introducing us to perspectives on Israel/Palestine in their home countries or elsewhere. In translation.

Held for new first year students

Amy Csizmar Dalal

What should technology know about us? What actions should technology be allowed to conduct on our behalf? Who makes these decisions, and whose voices are excluded from these conversations? Can algorithms ever be truly fair, just, and unbiased, or are they forever doomed to perpetuate existing inequities? We'll address these questions, and many more, as we explore the history, present, and possible futures of the design, implementation, deployment, and usage of algorithms, apps, systems, devices, and all things tech. This course will equip you to perform the complex ethical reasoning required of living in a technically-focused society.

Held for new first year students

Denise M. Hare

China’s incredible economic transformation and growth trajectory started simply, by most accounts, with a few carefully chosen modifications to the incentive structure faced by farmers. The move away from collective farming is credited with unleashing productivity forces well beyond initial expectations and paving the way for a continuing series of market-oriented reforms, first in the rural and later in the urban sector. What is less well known, however, is that China also experienced a short-lived farm production boost in an earlier era, shortly after formation of the People’s Republic of China. In contrast to the decentralization moves in the 1980s, rather the 1950s was characterized by gradual introduction of collective resource ownership and management, ultimately leading to commune style farming. We will draw from a variety of analytical sources, including economics, sociology, political science, anthropology, and history, to understand how China transformed itself twice, in opposite directions, exploring the impetuses behind these changes, their impacts, and their legacies.

Held for incoming first year students

Jeff Snyder

How and why have standardized tests become so central to our educational system? This seminar will explore the following topics, among others--the invention of standardized tests and the growth of the testing industry; psychometrics (the science of mental measurement); and the controversies surrounding the use of standardized tests, including charges that they are culturally biased and do not positively contribute to student learning. Our analyses will be informed by a close examination of authentic testing materials, ranging from intelligence tests to the SAT.

Held for new first year students

Jessica Leiman

Held for new first year students

George Shuffelton

Humans have been reading for 5,000 years, a period too short to be explained in evolutionary terms but long enough for the purposes and social values of reading to have changed considerably.  This class begins with an examination of the cognitive process of reading and then considers what reading has meant to readers at different times.  We'll examine the motivations and reading practices of medieval monks, Renaissance diplomats, enslaved Americans, and midwestern housewives.  We'll reflect on what happens when we read a difficult poem, and we'll read Napoleon's favorite novel as example of how reading can be enchanting, inspiring, and dangerously self-destructive.  We'll consider our own histories as readers and examine reading at the present moment, including the way reading on screens may (or may not) be changing our habits.

Held for new first year students

Nancy Cho

Held for new first year students

Pierre Hecker

With an emphasis on critical reading, writing, and the fundamentals of college-level research, this course will develop students' knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the relationship between drama and film and the social and cultural contexts of which they are (or were) a part and product. The course explores the various ways in which these plays and movies (which might include anything and everything from Spike Lee to Tony Kushner to Christopher Marlowe) generate meaning, with particular attention to the social, historical, and political realities that contribute to that meaning. An important component of this course will be attending live performances in the Twin Cities. These required events may be during the week and/or the weekend.

Held for new first year students. Extra Time required.

Arnab Chakladar

With an emphasis on critical reading and writing in an academic context, this course will examine how contemporary writers from a range of global locations approach the question of the writing of the self and of the nation. Reading novels from both familiar and unfamiliar cultural contexts we will examine closely our practices of reading, and the cultural expectations and assumptions that underlie them.

Held for new first year students

Paul Petzschmann

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, America often served as a canvass for projecting European anxieties about economic, social and political modernization. Admiration of technological progress and political stability was combined with a pervasive anti-Americanism, which was, according to political scientist Andrei Markovits, the "lingua franca" of modern Europe. These often contradictory perceptions of the United States were crucial in the process of forming national histories and mythologies as well as a common European identity. Accordingly, this course will explore the many and often contradictory views expressed by Europe's emerging mass publics and intellectual and political elites about the United States during this period.

Held for new first year students

Sandra Rousseau

Can everyone read graphic novels? Of course; however, their accessibility doesn't mean they are simple. In this course, students will learn to read graphic novels as cultural products generated by artists, places, and institutions. Coming from French-speaking countries in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, these texts argue for different (and sometimes contradictory) definitions of the genre; but also bring to the fore political and societal issues at stake in the francophone world. Using the tools of contemporary theory, students will draw connections between art and cultural representations. Conducted in English. Texts in translation.

Held for new first year students

George Vrtis

Held for new first year students

Jennifer L Schaefer

Beloved or dangerous. Ordered or chaotic. Modern or backward. What motivated these conflicting descriptions of Latin American cities? Why were cities like Buenos Aires, Havana, Mexico City, and Rio de Janeiro so important as places of political and economic power? How were these cities sites of cultural exchange for immigrant, Afro-Latin American, and Indigenous communities? In this course, we will answer these questions by exploring the histories of Latin America cities from the colonial period to the present. We will consider how urban spaces shaped people’s identities and daily lives and how these cities became places of national and global influence.

Held for incoming first year students

Seungjoo Yoon

An introduction to the study of historical biography. Instead of what we heard or think about Confucius, we will examine what his contemporaries, both his supporters and critics, thought he was. Students will scrutinize various sources gleaned from archaeology, heroic narratives, and court debates, as well as the Analects to write their own biography of Confucius based on a particular historical context that created a persistent constitutional agenda in early China. Students will justify why they would call such a finding, in hindsight, "Confucian" in its formative days. Themes can be drawn from aspects of ritual, bureaucracy, speech and writing

Held for new first year students

Antony Adler

This course provides an introduction to the global history of exploration. We will examine the scientific and artistic aspects of expeditions, and consider how scientific knowledge--navigation, medicinal treatments, or the collection of scientific specimens--helped make exploration, and subsequently Western colonialism, possible. We will also explore how the visual and literary representations of exotic places shaped distant audiences’ understandings of empire and of the so-called races of the world. Art and science helped form the politics of Western nationalism and expansion; this course will explore some of the ways in which their legacy remains with us today.

Held for new first year students

Austin Mason

Why did barbarians invade? Traders trade? Pilgrims travel? Vikings raid? Medieval Europe is sometimes caricatured as a world of small villages and strong traditions that saw little change between the cultural high-water marks of Rome and the Renaissance. In fact, this was a period of dynamic innovation, during which Europeans met many familiar challenges—environmental change, religious and cultural conflict, social and political competition—by traveling or migrating to seek new opportunities. This course will examine mobility and migration in northern Europe, and students will be introduced to diverse methodological approaches to their study by exploring historical and literary sources, archaeological evidence and scientific techniques involving DNA and isotopic analyses.

Held for new first year students

Neil Lutsky

This interdisciplinary course addresses one of the signal features of contemporary academic, professional, public, and personal life: a reliance on information and arguments involving numbers. We will examine how numbers are used and misused in verbal, statistical, and graphical form in discussions of world events, health, science, and social issues.

Held for new first year students

Lin Winton

Data visualization and activism have a common goal: to make the invisible more visible. This seminar will focus on the strengths and limitations of graphs and other charts to illuminate and convince. We will examine landmark visualizations that have changed history, starting with W.E.B. Du Bois's famous "data portraits", which debuted at the 1900 Paris World's Fair to tell a complex story of agency, sophistication, and oppression of African Americans in post-emancipation America. As we discuss the role of data viz in activism, we will learn to create our own visual arguments. No previous experience with statistics or graphing software is necessary.

Held for new first year students Only students eligible for TRIO should select this course. If you apply to TRIO but are not admitted, you will be allowed to change your course selection. TRIO Student Support Services is a program that serves U.S. citizens and permanent residents who meet established income requirements, are first-generation in college, and/or who have a documented disability., Instructor Permission Required

George Cusack

In this seminar, we will use games (both by studying them and by playing them) as a lens through which we can explore all manner of fascinating questions. How do the games we play shape our culture and our communities?  What makes a game fun, engaging, addictive, boring, brutal, or banal? How can games encourage certain kinds of behavior, even after we've stopped playing them?  Could we make Carleton itself a bit better--or at least more fun--if we gamified certain aspects of life here? To aid our exploration, we’ll draw on readings from multiple genres and employ a variety of research methods to analyze games from social, textual, and design perspectives. This course will also include weekly lab sessions on Wednesday evenings (6:15-8:30PM).  Students will be required to attend at least eight out of ten lab sessions.

Held for new first year students Extra Time

William North, Sindy Fleming

As we listen to people discussing critical issues facing individuals, communities, countries and the planet, what do we see happening? Is communication occurring? Do the sides hear each other and seek to understand another point of view, even if in disagreement? Is the goal truth or the best policy or victory for a side? What skills, approaches, and conditions lead to genuine discussion and productive argument? How can we cultivate these as individuals and communities? This Argument and Inquiry seminar addresses these questions in both theory and practice by allowing students the opportunity to read, view, discuss, and analyze theoretical discussions and case studies drawn from the past and present on a range of controversial topics.

Held for new first year students, Extra Time Required

Cherlon Ussery

Held for new first year students

Brooke Okazaki

From Beethoven to Tuvan throat singing, music from all over the world frequently depicts nature and humans’ relationships with it. Yet, music has also historically contributed to the destruction of the environment. In the western medieval world, flocks of sheep were raised and slaughtered to make precious vellum to write notes upon, pythons used to make Japanese shamisen have become endangered, and more recently, the carbon footprint of streaming and downloading music online has grown exponentially. How might we as music consumers and concerned global citizens intervene? In this course we will think critically about the history of music technologies and their impact on the environment in our quest to imagine a sustainable music culture. 

Held for incoming first year students

Anna Moltchanova

Held for new first year students

Daniel Groll

Everyone has a family of one kind or another. Whether you love them, hate them, or both at the same time, your family has played a huge role in making you the person you are. That fact raises all kinds of interesting philosophical questions such as: what limits should there be on how parents shape their kids' lives and values? Are there demands of justice that are in tension with the way families are "normally" constituted? What duties do parents have to their children and vice versa? And what makes a person someone else's parent or child in the first place--genetics, commitment, convention? This course will explore all these questions and more.

Held for new first year students

Jason Decker

This seminar will introduce the student to the study of philosophy through a consideration of various epistemic and metaphysical issues surrounding science and religion. What distinguishes scientific inquiry from other areas of inquiry: Its subject matter, its method of inquiry, or perhaps both? How does scientific belief differ from religious belief, in particular? Is the scientist committed to substantive metaphysical assumptions? If so, what role do these assumptions play in scientific investigation and how do they differ from religious dogma (if they do)? Our exploration of these questions will involve the consideration of both classic and contemporary philosophical texts.

Held for new first year students

Arjendu Pattanayak

In this course we use the language of complex adaptive systems to consider models of global earth energy systems, as well as local processes. We will consider the physical, economic, material, and social impact of these energy systems via case studies, paying attention to ethical issues. This will allow us to define and identify desirable traits of sustainable energy systems which we will practice by observing, mapping, and evaluating real experimental sustainable systems. We will compare and contrast constraints and opportunities in future energy systems. 

Prerequisite: Requires concurrent registration in IDSC 198

Held for new first year students participating in FOCUS program

Caleb S Hendrickson

For much of recorded history, what we now call “art” and what we now call “religion” were inseparable. In the modern period, art and religion have gone their separate ways. What, if anything, continues to connect them? Is art inherently religious? Can religion be considered a form of art? In this class, we look at modern works of art (from Renaissance painting to contemporary performance art) alongside the sights and sounds of religion (including the symbols, rituals, and architecture of multiple religious traditions), seeking points of confluence and displacement between these apparently disparate areas of culture. 

Held for new first year students

Kristin Bloomer

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

Annette Nierobisz

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged, a series of cultural messages quickly materialized in U.S. society. Statements such as, “we’re all in this together” and “the silver linings of coronavirus,” emphasized unity and gratitude while existing socio-political and generational divides were reinforced with “it’s a hoax” and “young people are spreading the virus.” What do these messages reveal about ourselves and society? This A&I seminar introduces students to the formal discipline of sociology through deconstructing rhetorical responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We seek to understand why these cultural messages are problematic using an intellectual perspective that emphasizes “the social construction of reality.”

Held for new First Year Students

David Wiles

The stories we encounter from sources as diverse as theater, television, film, literature, the internet and the news, may lead us to believe things about the lives we lead and the world we live in that may or may not be "true." This course will examine some of the stories we encounter, look at ways that popular culture oversimplifies or falsifies them and look at ways that theater and literature question and complicate them. The course will focus in particular on plays, films, TV shows, news and short fiction that deal with race, gender, gender identity, class, sexuality and criminal justice. 

Held for new first year students