ENROLL

Eddie E O'Byrn

This course examines motifs of Black Heroism throughout the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade and Early America. We take an interdisciplinary and Black Studies approach to topics like slave life and maroonage, freedom suits, military enlistment, and more. The course material will include fiction like Frederick Douglass' The Heroic Slave as well as theoretical texts like Neil Roberts Freedom as Maroonage. The aim of the course is to provide a look at the multifacted lives of Black people in the diaspora and early America with an emphasis on complex and quotidian resistance to domination.

Adriana Estill

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

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: AMST 115.WL0 (Synonym 61925)

Adriana Estill

Jay Beck

Sophomore Priority. Extra Time required for screenings

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: CAMS 110.WL0 (Synonym 61949)

Jason Decker

An interdisciplinary examination of issues concerning the mind and mental phenomena. The course will draw on work from diverse fields such as artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience. Topics to be discussed include: the mind-body problem, embodied cognition, perception, representation, reasoning, and learning.

Deborah Gross, Julia G. Bakker-Arkema

A mixed class/lab course with one four hour laboratory per week and weekly discussion/problem sessions. In class, the principles of kinetics will be developed with a mechanistic focus. In lab, experimental design and extensive independent project work will be emphasized.

Prerequisite: Chemistry 224 and 233 and Mathematics 120

Julia G. Bakker-Arkema, Deborah Gross

A mixed class/lab course with one four hour laboratory per week and weekly discussion/problem sessions. In class, the principles of kinetics will be developed with a mechanistic focus. In lab, experimental design and extensive independent project work will be emphasized.

Prerequisite: Chemistry 224 and 233 and Mathematics 120

Deborah Gross, Julia G. Bakker-Arkema

A mixed class/lab course with one four hour laboratory per week and weekly discussion/problem sessions. In class, the principles of kinetics will be developed with a mechanistic focus. In lab, experimental design and extensive independent project work will be emphasized.

Prerequisite: Chemistry 224 and 233 and Mathematics 120

Julia G. Bakker-Arkema, Deborah Gross

A mixed class/lab course with one four hour laboratory per week and weekly discussion/problem sessions. In class, the principles of kinetics will be developed with a mechanistic focus. In lab, experimental design and extensive independent project work will be emphasized.

Prerequisite: Chemistry 224 and 233 and Mathematics 120

Deborah Gross, Julia G. Bakker-Arkema

A mixed class/lab course with one four hour laboratory per week and weekly discussion/problem sessions. In class, the principles of kinetics will be developed with a mechanistic focus. In lab, experimental design and extensive independent project work will be emphasized.

Prerequisite: Chemistry 224 and 233 and Mathematics 120

Denise M. Hare

In the course of a few decades, China has launched itself from a poor country to a rising world power, at the same time substantially improving living standards and dramatically transforming its production base. What steps did China take to bring about these changes? We will examine China’s domestic economic reforms and development, considering the goals and impacts of various policy measures, along with on-going challenges. Topics to be considered include population, labor, income inequality, land, food production, industry, foreign relations, credit and financial markets, and the environment. While China will be our central focus, students will have some opportunities to compare and contrast with other country experiences.

Prerequisite: Eonomics 110 and 111

Jenny Bourne

Labor economics is the study of work and pay. It encompasses a wide variety of topics, including the nature of the labor contract, human capital investment, fringe benefits, search and hiring, turnover, working conditions, discrimination, union activities, income and wealth distribution, and government policies. The seminar considers labor market activities within the larger context of general household decision-making about family formation, the timing of marriage and childbirth, and the allocation of unpaid household work among family members.

Prerequisite: Economics 329, 330 and 331 or instructor permission

Faress Bhuiyan

Students will be exposed to theoretical models of economic development both from a micro and a macro perspective. Econometric models including probits, logits, instrumental variables, ordered probits, and ordered logits will be applied to micro-level data to study theoretical models dealing with migration, poverty, inequality, nutrition, development program evaluation, and decision making in the context of developing countries. Economic development will also be explored from the perspective of the "growth literature" where macro level panel data will be explored using fixed-effects and random-effects panel regression models.

Prerequisite: Economics 329, 330, and 331, or instructor permission

Anita Chikkatur

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: EDUC 110.WL0 (Synonym 62404)

Constance Walker

“Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought”—Audre Lorde.  In this course we will explore how poets use form, tone, sound, imagery, rhythm, and subject matter to create works of astonishing imagination, beauty, and power. In discussions, Moodle posts, and essay assignments we’ll analyze individual works by poets from Sappho to Amanda Gorman (and beyond); there will also be daily recitations of poems, since the musicality is so intrinsic to the meaning.

Michael Kowalewski

An exploration of the remarkable variety and evolution of the American short story from its emergence in the early nineteenth century to the present. Authors read will range from Washington Irving to Octavia Butler and Jhumpa Lahiri. We will examine how formal aspects such as narration, dialogue, style and character all help shape this genre over time. While our central focus will be on literary artistry, we will also consider examples of pulp fiction, graphic short stories, flash fiction and some cinematic adaptations of stories.

Susan Jaret McKinstry

You will work in several genres and forms, among them: traditional and experimental poetry, prose fiction, and creative nonfiction. In your writing you will explore the relationship between the self, the imagination, the word, and the world. In this practitioner’s guide to the creative writing process, we will examine writings from past and current authors, and your writings will be critiqued in a workshop setting and revised throughout the term. 

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: ENGL 160.WL0 (Synonym 62210)

Jessica Leiman

Samuel Johnson declared novels to be “written chiefly to the young, the ignorant, and the idle, to whom they serve as lectures of conduct, and introductions into life.” This course explores what sort of education the novel offered its readers during a time when fiction was considered a source of valuable lessons and also an agent of corruption. We will read a selection of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century children’s literature, seduction fiction, and novels of manners, considering how these works engage with early educational theories, notions of male and female conduct, and concerns about the didactic and sensational possibilities of fiction. Authors include Samuel Richardson, Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and Charles Dickens.

Susan Jaret McKinstry

Michael Kowalewski

Elizabeth McKinsey

An important preoccupation of nineteenth century America was the nature of democracy and the proper balance of individualism and the social good. An experiment in government, democracy also raised new questions about gender, class, and race. Citizenship was contested; roles in the new, expanding nation were fluid; abolition and emancipation, the movement for women's rights, industrialization all caused ferment and anxiety. The course will explore the way these issues were imagined in fiction by such writers as Cooper, Hawthorne, Maria Sedgwick, Stowe, Tourgee, Henry Adams, Twain, Gilman, and Chesnutt.

Pierre Hecker

Cross-listed with ENGL 144

Arnab Chakladar

This course will examine Anglophone fiction in the Caribbean from the late colonial period through our contemporary moment. We will examine major developments in form and language as well as the writing of identity, personal and (trans)national. We will read works by canonical writers such as V.S Naipaul, George Lamming and Jamaica Kincaid, as well as by lesser known contemporary writers.

Gregory Smith

Prerequisite: One prior 6-credit English course

Nancy Cho

Prerequisite: One English Foundations course and one prior 6 credit English course

Not open to first year students.

Kofi Owusu

Prerequisite: One English foundations course and one other 6 credit English course or instructor permission

Gregory Hewett

In this workshop, students choose to write poems from a broad range of forms, from sonnets to spoken word, from ghazals to slam, from free-verse to blues. Over the ten weeks, each poet will write and revise their own collection of poems. Student work is the centerpiece of the course, but readings from a diverse selection of contemporary poets will be used to expand each student’s individual poetic range, and to explore the power of poetic language. For students with some experience in writing poetry, this workshop further develops your craft and poetic voice and vision.

Prerequisite: English 160, 161, 263, 265, 270, 271, 273, Cinema and Media Studies 271, 278, 279, Cross Cultural Studies 270 or Theater 246

Sarah Titus

This course focuses on understanding the plate tectonics paradigm and its application to all types of plate boundaries. We will explore the historical development of the paradigm, geophysical tools used for imaging the structure of the Earth and determining plate motions, and possible driving mechanisms of this global system. Students will independently explore a particular tectonic plate in detail throughout the term. Laboratories included.

Prerequisite: One introductory (100-level) Geology course.

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: GEOL 220.WL3 (Synonym 61737)

Clint Cowan

This course is based on field examination of outcrops of Lower Paleozoic sedimentary rock. We will interpret the processes involved in the creation, movement, and deposition of these ancient sediments, and try to determine their paleoenvironments. Also of interest are the transformation of these sediments into rock and the analysis and correlation of strata. Weekly laboratories, one overnight trip, and one Saturday trip are required. Please note the late laboratory times. Both paleobiology and geomorphology prepare students for work in sedimentology. This course is intended for upperclass Geology majors, and much of the work is done in teams.

Prerequisite: Three 200-level Geology courses

Extra Time for weekend field trips.

Seungjoo Yoon

How do Shintoism view childbirth and death? How do Buddhism and biotechnology intersect in the making of Japan? How do Japanese perceptions about health and medicine evolve with settler colonialism? This course examines the meaning of body, health, and medicine in Japan’s recent past when biomedicine came to replace classical Chinese medicine and to gradually occupy a hegemonic position in its pharmaceutical regime. Reading materials are drawn from illustrations, travelogues, and poems, as well as medical journals and reports. Themes include body and modern self, family and reproductive justice, medical colonialism, hygienic modernity, narcotics and ethnopsychology, and national healthcare system.

Victoria Morse

Enthusiasm, artistry, invention, exploration.... How do these notions of Renaissance culture play out in sources from the period? Using a range of evidence (historical, literary, and visual) from Italy and France in the fourteenth-sixteenth centuries we will explore selected issues of the period, including debates about the meaning of being human and ideal forms of government and education; the nature of God and mankind's duties toward the divine; the family and gender roles; definitions of beauty and the goals of artistic achievement; accumulation of wealth; and exploration of new worlds and encounters with other peoples.

Susannah Ottaway

For the first four weeks, the course covers the comparative history of famine, and will be led by internationally renowned economic historian Cormac O’Grada, the 2020 Ott Family Lecturer in Economic History at Carleton College.  We examine causes and consequences (political, economic, demographic) and the historical memories of famines as well as case studies from Imperial Britain, Bengal and Ireland. In the second half of term, the course broadens its focus to examine the persistence of hunger and the nature of public policies related to food provision in comparative historical contexts.

William North

What roles do images play in premodern societies? What are these images thought to be and to do? Why, at particular moments, have certain groups attempted to do away with images either completely or in specific settings? How do images create and threaten communities and how is the management of the visual integrated with and shaped by other values, structures, and objectives? This course will examine these and related questions by looking in depth at image-making and veneration and their opponents in a range of case studies (from the medieval west, Byzantium, Muslim lands, and Protestant Europe) and by examining theoretical discussions of images, vision, and cognition from the fourth through sixteenth centuries. This course is discussion intensive and each student will develop a research project on a topic of their own design.

Prerequisite: Previous history course or instructor consent

David Tompkins

In the aftermath of the Second World War and through the 1980s, the United States and the Soviet Union competed for world dominance. This Cold War spawned hot wars, as well as a cultural and economic struggle for influence all over the globe. This course will look at the experience of the Cold War from the perspective of its two main adversaries, the U.S. and USSR, but will also devote considerable attention to South America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Students will write a 20 page paper based on original research.

Brooke Okazaki

Western music, especially classical music, is often called a “dead” genre. Part of this has to do with its associations with wealth, its aging audience base, and its seeming loftiness. But is this music really dead? In this class we will explore the history of Western music, with classical music as a starting point, but will examine the numerous ways music functions throughout cultures to tell different kinds of stories. We work from the assumption that no music (or art in general) is apolitical; because of this it behooves us to examine the ways the music of the past is deployed in service of social and political values today, whether it is to convince us to buy pizza or to incite revolution.

Sarah N Lahasky

This course is designed to increase your awareness of the role of music as a part of social, political, and economic life. While popular music consumption for entertainment is one interaction that you might have had with music, there are myriad other meanings and uses for music in the United States and around the world. Some of these uses and meanings are obviously apparent to the average listener, and others are less so. Throughout the course, we will be exploring a variety of ways that people use, engage, and identify with music from various regions. The course is organized geographically, beginning with the US/Western Europe and then moving to parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Each week, we will focus on particular themes related to “traditional,” classical, or popular music to analyze in the context of our geographic case studies. Throughout the course, you will have the opportunity to apply concepts from class to your own musical case study. The culminating course project will consist of an ethnography of your chosen case study. No musical experience necessary.

Sophomore Priority

Sarah N Lahasky

Throughout history, people have relocated for a variety of reasons, both voluntarily and forcibly. What sorts of consequences do mass movements of people have on cultural practices? This course will examine the legacy of the slave trade with relation to African-influenced music developments throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. We will first consider the nuances of West African music practices and beliefs before and during the slave trade. Then, we will explore a variety of sacred and secular traditions that developed in the New World as a result of the African Diaspora, including spirituals, the blues, jazz, rock and roll, and hip hop in North America; tango, blocos afro, cumbia, and candombe in South America; and Santería, reggae, timba, rara, and steel pan in the Caribbean. As part of this exploration, we will consider difficult questions, such as what is “black music”?; What ethical considerations must we think about in relation to who can/should play black music?; and What sorts of similarities and differences exist between African-influenced music styles in the Americas, and why? Lastly, we will consider how music in Africa has changed in more recent times due to a return of African-Americans back to their ancestral roots as well as other points of contact between the Americas and Africa, especially in relation to genres like Afrobeat, highlife, and gumbe. No previous musical experience required.

Allison Murphy

Are human beings radically individual and atomic by nature, political animals, or something else? However we answer that question, what difference does it make for our understanding of the ways in which larger political communities come into existence and are maintained? In this course we will explore these and related questions while reading two of the most foundational works in political theory, Plato’s Republic and Hobbes’s Leviathan, as well as several contemporary pieces influenced by these thinkers.

Daniel Groll

How should we live? This is the fundamental question for the study of ethics. This course looks at classic and contemporary answers to the fundamental question from Socrates to Kant to modern day thinkers. Along the way, we consider slightly (but only slightly) more tractable questions such as: What reason is there to be moral? Is there such a thing as moral knowledge (and if so, how do we get it)? What are the fundamental principles of right and wrong (if there are any at all)? Is morality objective?

Allison Murphy

Is there a key to a happy and successful human life? If so, how do you acquire it? Ancient philosophers thought the key was virtue and that your chances of obtaining it depend on the sort of life you lead. In this course we’ll examine what these philosophers meant by virtue and how they understood its implications for your everyday life. We will situate the ancient understanding of virtue in the context of larger questions of metaphysics (the nature of being and reality), psychology, and ethics, as they arise in foundational works from Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics.

Huan Gao

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: POSC 120.WL0 (Synonym 62471)

Mihaela Czobor-Lupp

Richard Keiser

Prerequisite: Sophomore Standing

Not open to first year students.

Christina Farhart

Prerequisite: Statistics 120, 230, 250, (formerly Mathematics 215, 245, 275) or AP Statistics (score of 4 or 5)

Tun Myint

What are the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic on global politics and public policy? How do state responses to COVID-19 as well as historical cases such as the Black Death in Europe, the SARS outbreak in East Asia and Middle East, and the Ebola outbreak in Africa help us understand the scientific, political, and economic challenges of pandemics on countries and communities around the world? We will apply theories and concepts from IR, political economy, and natural sciences to explore these questions and consider what we can learn from those responses to address other global challenges like climate change.

Summer Forester

Feminist security studies question and challenge traditional approaches to international relations and security, highlighting the myriad ways that state security practices can actually increase insecurity for many people. How and why does this security paradox exist and how do we escape it? In this class, we will explore the theoretical and analytical contributions of feminist security scholars and use these lessons to analyze a variety of policies, issues, and conflicts. The cases that we will cover include the UN resolution on women, peace, and security, Sweden’s feminist foreign policy, violence against women, and conflicts in Syria, Uganda, and Yemen.

Julie Neiworth

A summary of theoretical approaches, historical influences and contemporary research in the area of human and animal learning. The course provides a background in classical, operant, and contemporary conditioning models, and these are applied to issues such as behavioral therapy, drug addiction, decision-making, education, and choice. It is recommended that students enroll concurrently in Psychology 211. A grade of C- or better must be earned in both Psychology 210 and 211 to satisfy the LS requirement.

Prerequisite: Psychology 110 or Neuroscience 127 or instructor permission

Julie Neiworth

This course accompanies Psychology 210. Students will replicate classical studies and plan and conduct original empirical research projects in the study of human and animal learning and memory. Psychology 211 requires concurrent or prior registration in Psychology 210. A grade of C- or better must be earned in both Psychology 210 and 211 to satisfy the LS requirement.

Prerequisite: Psychology 110 or Neuroscience 127 or instructor permission; Concurrent registration in Psychology 210

PSYC 210 required previously or concurrently.

Julie Neiworth

This course accompanies Psychology 210. Students will replicate classical studies and plan and conduct original empirical research projects in the study of human and animal learning and memory. Psychology 211 requires concurrent or prior registration in Psychology 210. A grade of C- or better must be earned in both Psychology 210 and 211 to satisfy the LS requirement.

Prerequisite: Psychology 110 or Neuroscience 127 or instructor permission; Concurrent registration in Psychology 210

PSYC 210 required previously or concurrently.

Kathleen Galotti

Prerequisite: Psychology 110 or instructor permission

Chumie Juni

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.

Chumie Juni

What is Judaism? Who are Jewish people? What are Jewish texts, practices, ideas? What ripples have Jewish people, texts, practices, and ideas caused beyond their sphere? These questions will animate our study as we touch on specific points in over three millennia of history. We will immerse ourselves in Jewish texts, historic events, and cultural moments, trying to understand them on their own terms. At the same time, we will analyze them using key concepts such as ‘tradition,’ ‘culture,’ ‘power,’ and ‘diaspora.’ We will explore how ‘Jewishness’ has been constructed by different stakeholders, each claiming the authority to define it.

Asuka Sango

Lori Pearson

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.

Caleb S Hendrickson

Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg

Anthropology is the study of all human beings in all their diversity, an exploration of what it means to be human throughout the globe. This course helps us to see ourselves, and others, from a new perspective. By examining specific analytic concepts—such as culture—and research methods—such as participant observation—we learn how anthropologists seek to understand, document, and explain the stunning variety of human cultures and ways of organizing society. This course encourages you to consider how looking behind cultural assumptions helps anthropologists solve real world dilemmas.

Sophomore Priority.

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: SOAN 110.WL0 (Synonym 62333)

Liz Raleigh

Sociology is an intellectual discipline, spanning the gap between the sciences and humanities while often (though not always) involving itself in public policy debates, social reform, and political activism. Sociologists study a startling variety of topics using qualitative and quantitative methods. Still, amidst all this diversity, sociology is centered on a set of core historical theorists (Marx/Weber/Durkheim) and research topics (race/class/gender inequality). We will explore these theoretical and empirical foundations by reading and discussing influential texts and select topics in the study of social inequality while relating them to our own experiences and understanding of the social world. 

Sophomore Priority.

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: SOAN 111.WL0 (Synonym 62320)

Annette Nierobisz

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.

Wes Markofski

Many thinkers have contributed to the development of sociology as an intellectual discipline and mode of social inquiry; however, few have had the influence of Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber. This course focuses on influential texts and ideas generated by these and other theorists from sociology’s “classical era,” how these texts and ideas are put to use by contemporary sociologists, and on more recent theoretical developments and critical perspectives that have influenced the field. 

Prerequisite: The department strongly recommends that Sociology/Anthropology 110 or 111 be taken prior to enrolling in courses numbered 200 or above

Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg

This course explores different genres of writing and different audiences for writing in the social sciences, focusing particular attention on scholarly articles published in professional journals in sociology and anthropology. To that end, students both analyze sociological and anthropological articles regarding commonalities and differences in academic writing in our two sister disciplines. Students work on their own academic writing process (with the help of peer-review and instructor feedback). The writing itself is broken down into component elements on which students practice and revise their work.

Prerequisite: Completion of Sociology/Anthropology 240 or submission of a topic statement in the preceding spring term and submission of a comps thesis proposal on the first day of fall term. Senior Sociology/Anthropology major or instructor permission

Andrew Carlson

A study of significant American plays from the early twentieth century to the present, including playwrights such as Tennessee Williams, August Wilson, Alice Childress, Suzan Lori-Parks, and Lauren Yee. We will read plays from a theatrical lens, discussing them as blueprints for performance by examining their structure, characters, language, and theatricality. We will also discuss how these plays are in conversation with contextual historical events and notions of American identity.