ENROLL

Christine E Castro

In this class, we will discuss Latinx social and political movements across America, from post-1848 to the twentieth century. We will work to understand both their historical and historiographical impact: What conditions were these movements responding to? What emerged from their actions? And how are these movements talked about and remembered now? We will also track state responses to these movements, including the creation of law enforcement agencies in the Southwest and national counterintelligence programs.

Meredith McCoy

Indigenous Studies is both a body of content knowledge and a research methodology. This course provides an overview of the history of exploitative research dynamics between universities and Indigenous peoples while exposing students to alternative methodologies that center Indigenous perspectives and research priorities. Students will discuss what it means to be an ethical research partner as they learn about decolonizing and Indigenous research strategies. This course brings together ideas from history, anthropology, law, public health, education, literature, art, and social work to evaluate studies relating to Indigenous peoples for their methods, contributions, and ethics.

David Tompkins

Have you just returned from Asia, Africa, Europe, or South America? This course is an excellent way to keep in touch with the culture (and, when appropriate, the language) you left behind. Relying on magazines and newspapers around the world, students will discuss common topics and themes representing a wide array of regions. You may choose to read the press in the local language, or read English-language media about your region, meeting once each week for conversational exchange. (Language of conversation is English.)

Prerequisite: Students must have participated in an off-campus study program (Carleton or non-Carleton) or instructor permission

David Tompkins

The work of Cross-Cultural Studies traverses many disciplines, often engaging with experiences that are difficult to capture in traditional formats. In this course students will create an ePortfolio that reflects, deepens, and narrates the various forms of cross-cultural experience they have had at Carleton, drawing on coursework and off-campus study, as well as such extra-curricular activities as talks, service learning, internships and fellowships. Guided by readings and prompts, students will write a reflective essay articulating the coherence of the parts, describing both the process and the results of their pathway through the minor. Considered a capstone for CCST, but for anyone looking to thread together their experiences across culture. Course is taught as a workshop. 

Alex Knodell

The material worlds of the ancient Romans loom large in our cultural imagination. No other civilization has made as direct a contribution to our own political system or to its physical vestiges of power and authority. From the architecture of the state to visual narratives of propaganda, Roman influence is ubiquitous in the monuments of western civilization. But what were the origins of the Romans? Their innovations? Their technical, artistic, and ideological achievements? How are they relevant today? This course explores these questions and more through the archaeology of the eternal city and beyond.

Austin Mason

The digital world is infiltrating the academy and profoundly disrupting the arts and humanities, posing fundamental challenges to traditional models of university education, scholarly research, academic publication and creative production. This core course for the Digital Arts & Humanities minor introduces the key concepts, debates and technologies that shape DGAH, including text encoding, digital mapping (GIS), network analysis, data visualization, 3D imaging and basic programming languages. Students will learn to hack the humanities by making a collaborative, publishable DH project, while acquiring the skills and confidence necessary to actively participate in the digital world, both in college and beyond.

Paul Petzschmann

This course explores the role of the nation and nationalism within modern Europe and the ways in which ideas and myths about the nation have complemented and competed with conceptions of Europe as a geographic, cultural and political unity. We will explore the intellectual roots of nationalism in different countries as well as their artistic, literary and musical expressions. In addition to examining nationalism from a variety of disciplinary perspectives--sociology, anthropology, history, political science--we will explore some of the watershed, moments of European nationalism such as the French Revolution, the two world wars, and the Maastricht treaty.

Cherif Keita

Keep up your French while learning about current issues in France, as well as world issues from a French perspective. Class meets once a week for an hour. Requirements include reading specific sections of leading French newspapers, (Le Monde, Libération, etc.) on the internet, and then meeting once a week to exchange ideas over coffee with a small group of students.

Prerequisite: French 204 or instructor approval

Sophomore Priority

Waitlist for Juniors and Seniors: FREN 210.WL0 (Synonym 60451)

Jayne A Swift

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.

Zenzele Isoke

This course is designed to introduce students to thirty years of black feminist politics, writing, social and cultural analysis, and research. This course begins with a sketch of contemporary thinking about blackness by noted scholars who illuminate the relationship between blackness, black life, systems of sex/gender, biopolitics, and black/queer feminist knowledge production. We go on to historicize the formation of black feminism as a dynamic and fluid area of study within and across the humanities and social sciences. The history of black feminist thought presented in black women’s studies as an inherently decolonial and transformative praxis that centers intellectual radicalism both inside and outside of the academy.

Annette Igra

Gender, race, and class shaped women's participation in the arenas of work, family life, culture, and politics in the United States from the colonial period to the late nineteenth century. We will examine diverse women's experiences of colonization, industrialization, slavery and Reconstruction, religion, sexuality and reproduction, and social reform. Readings will include both primary and secondary sources, as well as historiographic articles outlining major frameworks and debates in the field of women's history.

Noël Voltz

The transition from slavery to freedom; the post-Reconstruction erosion of civil rights and the ascendancy of Booker T. Washington; protest organizations and mass migration before and during World War I; the postwar resurgence of black nationalism; African Americans in the Great Depression and World War II; roots of the modern Civil Rights movement, and black female activism. 

William North

In this course we will explore a variety of distinct but interconnected worlds that existed between ca.300 and ca.1050. We will interrogate primary sources, especially written and visual materials, as they bear witness to people forming and transforming political, social, religious, and cultural values, ideas and structures. We will work to understand how communities adapt to new conditions and challenges while maintaining links with and repurposing the lifeways, ideas, and material cultures of the past. We will watch as new and different groups and institutions come to power, and how the existing peoples and structures respond and change. Projects in this course will build capacity to interpret difficult primary documents, formulate research questions, and build arguments that combine rigor and humane sympathy.

Seungjoo Yoon

Adeeb Khalid

Jennifer L Schaefer

Fluid borders, imagined frontiers, and contested territories have shaped Latin American history from the colonial period through the present. The course asks, how did people cross borders and form new identities? How did they engage with the landscape around them? Focusing on regions including Patagonia, the Gran Chaco, the Brazilian Sertão, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, this course explores the complexity of regional, national, and transnational identities. Course themes include the relationship between mapping and power, peoples’ relationship with the environment, the enslavement of African and Indigenous peoples in frontier regions, conflicts over contested regions, and processes of nation-building.

Thabiti Willis

Susannah Ottaway

A two-credit course in which students work with faculty oversight to complete a variety of public history projects with community partners. Students will work on a research project requiring them to identify and analyze primary sources, draw conclusions from the primary source research, and share their research with the appropriate audience in an appropriate form. We meet once a week at Carleton to ensure students maintain professional standards and strong relationships in their work. Potential projects include educational programming, historical society archival work, and a variety of local history opportunities. 

Extra Time Required

Adeeb Khalid

Amna Khalid

At the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 India and Pakistan, two new nation states emerged from the shadow of British colonialism. This course focuses on the political trajectories of these two rival siblings and looks at the ways in which both states use the other to forge antagonistic and belligerent nations. While this is a survey course it is not a comprehensive overview of the history of the two countries. Instead it covers some of the more significant moments of rupture and violence in the political history of the two states. The first two-thirds of the course offers a top-down, macro overview of these events and processes whereas the last third examines the ways in which people experienced these developments. We use the lens of gender to see how the physical body, especially the body of the woman, is central to the process of nation building. We will consider how women’s bodies become sites of contestation and how they are disciplined and policed by the postcolonial state(s).

Jennifer L Schaefer

Yellow fever, malaria, chagas, dengue, tuberculosis, and cholera preoccupied physicians, scientists, politicians, and urban planners in Latin America from the colonial period through the present. This course explores how ideas about health and disease were connected to race, ethnicity, and status during the colonial period and linked with nation-building during the nineteenth century. It examines how health and disease intertwined with imperialist projects and intersected with modernization campaigns during the twentieth century. It also considers the relationship between medical institutions, physicians, midwives, and healers. Other course topics include how perceptions about health, including mental and reproductive health, shaped people’s experiences.

Amna Khalid

In the junior year, majors must take this six-credit reading and discussion course taught each year by different members of the department faculty. The course is also required for the History minor. The general purpose of History 298 is to help students reach a more sophisticated understanding of the nature of history as a discipline and of the approaches and methods of historians. A major who is considering off-campus study in the junior year should consult with their adviser on when to take History 298.

Prerequisite: At least two six credit courses in History (excluding HIST 100 and Independents) at Carleton.

Required for History majors and minors

George Vrtis

To many Americans, wild lands are among the nation’s most treasured places. Yellowstone, Yosemite, Mount Rainier, Joshua Tree, Grand Canyon – the names alone stir the heart, the mind, and the imagination. But where do those thoughts and feelings come from, and how have they both reflected and shaped American culture, society, and nature over the last three centuries? These are the central issues and questions that we will pursue in this seminar and in its companion course, ENTS 307 Wilderness Field Studies: Grand Canyon (which includes an Off-Campus Studies program at Grand Canyon National Park).

Prerequisite: Acceptance in Wilderness Studies at the Grand Canyon OCS program. History 205 is recommended but not required.

Spring Break OCS Program Course. ENTS 307 required for Spring Term registration.

Serena Zabin

This course is the second half of a two-course sequence focused on the study of the founding of the United States in American public life. The course will begin with a two-week off-campus study program during winter break in Washington, D.C and Boston, where we will visit world-class museums and historical societies, meet with museum professionals, and learn about the goals and challenges of history museums, the secrets to successful exhibitions, and the work of museum curators and directors. The course will culminate in the winter term with the completion of an exhibit created in conjunction with one of the museums located on Boston’s Freedom Trail.

Prerequisite: History 315

Participation in Winter Break History Program

Victoria Morse

This course is designed to support majors in developing advanced skills in historical research and writing. Through a combination of class discussion, small group work, and one-on-one interactions with the professor, majors learn the process of constructing sophisticated, well-documented, and well-written historical arguments within the context of an extended project of their own design. They also learn and practice strategies for engaging critically with contemporary scholarship and effective techniques of peer review and the oral presentation of research. Concurrent enrollment in History 400 required. By permission of the instructor only.

HIST 400 required.

Laurence Cooper, Alan Rubenstein

Laurence Cooper, Alan Rubenstein

Eddie E O'Byrn

What does it mean to be heroic? Are heroes in the Western world consistent across contexts and vantage points? In this introduction to philosophy, we explore some lauded philosophical discussions on heroism, ethical complications, and shifts in the valuation of heroic and ethical acts. Students will read contemporary and historical philosophical texts by figures such as Thomas Carlyle, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and others. Students will explore illustrations of heroism by the primary authors and we will explore counter examples that challenge these views. Finally, students are invited to explore the meaning of heroism today utilizing the course's philosophical resources.

Jason Decker

Anna Moltchanova

Douglas B Marshall

An introduction to the philosophy of mathematics focusing on the history and development of mathematical proofs. The course is organized around three central questions: i. What is the relationship between a mathematical proof and our knowledge of the theorem that it proves? ii. Do some mathematical proofs go beyond establishing the truth of their theorems and actually explain why the theorems are true? iii. How has our mathematical knowledge grown throughout history? We will first address these questions by reading and discussing Imre Lakatos's book Proofs and Refutations. We will continue with readings drawn from classic and contemporary sources in the history and philosophy of mathematics. This course has no formal prerequisites, though it does presuppose a willingness to read, assess, and write about mathematical proofs.  

Daniel Groll

The idea that various things are socially constructed is ubiquitous. But what exactly does it mean for something to be socially constructed? And what things are socially constructed? Race? Gender? Quarks? Mental Illness? Everything? We will read, among others, Sally Haslanger (Resisting Reality), Ian Hacking (The Social Construction of What?), Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking) and Ásta (Categories We Live By).

Prerequisite: One previous course in Philosophy

Laurence Cooper

Mihaela Czobor-Lupp

Caleb S Hendrickson

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.

Kristin Bloomer

Hinduism is the world's third-largest religion (or, as some prefer, “way of life”), with about 1.2 billion followers. It is also one of its oldest, with roots dating back at least 3500 years. “Hinduism,” however, is a loosely defined, even contested term, designating the wide variety of beliefs and practices of the majority of the people of South Asia. This survey course introduces students to this great variety, including social structures (such as the caste system), rituals and scriptures, mythologies and epics, philosophies, life practices, politics, poetry, sex, gender, Bollywood, and—lest we forget—some 330 million gods and goddesses.

Sonja Anderson

Who was Jesus? What’s in the Bible? How did Christianity begin? This course is an introduction to the oldest Christian documents we have (27 books in the New Testament) as well as several ancient texts that did not become part of the Bible. We will study this literature critically and historically by situating it within its ancient Jewish, Greco-Roman context, but we will also learn about the different ways modern readers have interpreted it. As we work our way through the texts, we will pay special attention to three topics of enduring debate and political significance in the history of biblical interpretation: (1) suffering, liberation, and empire; (2) antisemitism, and (3) gender, sexuality, and marriage.

Chumie Juni

Mind and body are often considered separate but not equal; the mind gives commands to the body and the body complies. Exploring the ways the three religious traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam think about the body will deepen our understanding of the mind-body relationship. We will ask questions such as: How does the body direct the mind? How do religious practices discipline the body and the mind, and how do habits of body and mind change the forms and meanings of these practices? Gender, sexuality, sensuality, and bodily function will be major axes of analysis.

Chumie Juni

How does gender shape the Jewish tradition, and how have Jewish historical moments, texts, and practices shaped Jewish notions of gender? Taking Judaism as a test case, this course will explore the relationship between historical circumstance, positionality, and the religious imaginary. We will examine the ways that Jewish gender and theology inform each other. We will see how gender was at play in Jewish negotiations of economic and social class, racial and ethnic status, even citizenship. Following the threads of practice and narrative, we will think about how intersectional gender has shaped the stories Jews tell, and the stories that are told about them.

Caleb S Hendrickson

This class examines the ethical principles that often guide decision-making in health care. It focuses on principles espoused by many religious and humanistic traditions, within the context of a modern, pluralistic society. Using plentiful case studies, we consider a number of issues in bioethics, including assisted suicide; maternal-fetal relations; artificial reproduction, including human cloning; the use of human subjects in research; health care justice and reform; triage and allocation of sparse medical resources; and public health issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kristin Bloomer

Sonja Anderson

When will the world end, and how? What’s wrong with the world—morally, politically, naturally—such that people have seen its destruction as necessary or inevitable? Are visions of “The End” a form of sophisticated resistance literature, aimed at oppressive systems of power? Or are they evidence of a disturbed mind disconnected from reality? This seminar takes a deep dive into the contours of apocalyptic thought, which in its most basic form is about unmasking the deceptions of the given world by revealing the secret workings of the universe. We will begin with the earliest apocalypses, found in ancient Jewish and Christian texts, and move into modern religious and “secular” visions of cosmic collapse. Our approach will be historical and comparative, and we will explore topics ranging from doomsday cults to climate catastrophe, visions of heaven to tours of hell, malevolent angels to meddling UFOs, all the while asking how the apocalyptic imagination creates, as one thinker put it, “another world to live in.”

Asuka Sango

Prerequisite: Religion 300 and acceptance of proposal for senior integrative exercise and instructor permission.