Title: Architecture in East Asia

Description:The seminar examines the multifaceted-dimensions of architecture in East Asia throughout history. Students will learn fundamental architectural concepts, along with the historical contexts in which architecture responds to social changes, technological advances, and visual conventions. The seminar covers a range of materials and key epochs in East Asian history, and it also investigates how the built environment is constructed, experienced, and interacts with other cultural and visual practices.

 

Title: Australia/Aotearoa New Zealand Art Histories

Description: Looking at the impact of colonialism on artistic form and art historiography, this seminar introduces students to key themes and debates in the history of art in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. We will take a comparative approach to topics such as Indigenous media, landscape and ecology, carceral and colonial aesthetics, painting and national identity, museums, photography and installation, and contemporary exhibition cultures. Pre-requisite: one art history course of any level.

 

Title: The Art World Since 1989

Description: This course will consider the practice and theory of visual art from the late twentieth century to the present. Topics include conceptual art and institutional critique, economic and cultural globalization, the emergence of new global art centers in the wake of major political transformations, art as activism, and the impact of new technologies on making, collecting, and engaging with contemporary.

 

Title: Computational Textiles

Description: This course combines new technology (data, computation, and physical computing) with fiber and textile arts through hands-on projects and practical experimentation. Textile looms, arguably the world’s first programmable devices, weave intricate and repeatable patterns from simple threads. It is no stretch to say that innovations in the textile arts set the stage for modern computer science. Through this course, we aim to re-examine and expand the role of fiber arts in contemporary society.

 

Title: Installation Art

Description: This intermediate level studio course will examine the expansive nature of installation and its position within contemporary art discourse. Students will create a series of installations throughout the semester, focusing on sculptural and expanded mediums. We will examine the historical lineages surrounding installation, while considering its critical capacities in relation to site, intervention, bodies, public vs. private, the archive, and the built environment.

 

Title: Special Topics in Ceramics: Casting the Natural World

Description: In this introductory ceramics course, we will explore experimental construction and decorative techniques to build sculptures using paper clay. We will delve into the genre of ecological art practice through a series of engaged learning projects. Students will gather inspiration and material from the natural world to construct their projects. Topics covered will include paper clay preparation, hand-building techniques, sustainable collection methods, basic mold-making, organic burnout, surface and color, and firing and non-firing finish options.

 

Title: Comparative Medical Humanities

Description: The modern medical humanities studies key questions in twenty-first century human life: How important is empathy in medical care? Is modern medicine itself too scientific? Are stories healing? Should medical schools be reimagined as holistic institutions? How does medicine connect to projects of social and global justice? In this course, we will explore these questions by comparing the medical humanities as it is today, with the medical humanities as it was in two of its most spectacular premodern theaters: The ancient Greco-Roman Mediterranean and the classical Islamicate world.

 

Title: Dance Studies: Collective Cultural Experiences of 1970’s NYC

Description: This course will explore how the disco era and development of Latin Hustle (including music, dance, fashion, and community) spurred a cultural movement in 1970s NYC club spaces igniting creativity, self-expression, communication skills, and community connection.

 

Title: The Great American Novel

Description: This course explores the novel genre’s unique place in the American cultural imagination through in-depth readings of major works of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American fiction. It pays particular attention to the idea of “The Great American Novel” and how this ideal has shaped the development of the novel in the United States. This course fulfills the senior seminar requirement in English.

 

Title: Information poetics

Description: In this course, we will explore poetry as a site of experimental argument in a cluster of contemporary American poets whose work engages with didactic, experimental, multimedia, and essayistic styles in order to document or intervene in political and social histories. We will contextualize these poems in the longer history of experimental poetics while exploring key differences between that history and these poems, discussing how and why the authors of these poems toggle between creative and argumentative registers. How do authors use experimental literary forms to make arguments about the world they see? What political histories and futures does poetry tease out? How does poetic knowledge interrupt more sedimented or institutional norms? By engaging with our class texts, we will assess the extent to which poetry and form provide critical methods for understanding our world.

 

Title: Digital narratives

Description: This course will take an interdisciplinary look at digital media and its importance for contemporary writing and art. We will explore the narrative, temporal and visual possibilities in digital storytelling, from avant-garde poetry and interactive narratives to video games, and explore ethical and environmental impacts of digital humanities and artificial intelligence. In addition to experimental digital narratives, we will cover foundational theoretical work in the digital humanities by authors.

 

Title: Speculative creative writing

Description: This course will introduce students to a range of speculative fiction and poetry in English. We will examine key facets of creative writing—form, narrative, characterization, etc.—with an emphasis on how authors use these tools to develop speculative, fabulist, and magical stories. What do modern fables look like? What can you say with a science-fiction short story? What happens when we approach horror, sci-fi, and fantasy (traditionally “genre” fiction and poetry) with same interest and care that is traditionally reserved for “literary” realism? While the emphasis will be on contemporary authors, we will also discuss some older speculative texts (potentially excerpts by Hawthorne, Cavendish etc.) to consider how speculative genres have changed. Students should be prepared to draft, workshop, and revise speculative stories and poems over the course of the semester.

 

 

Title: Theater in French: From Text to Stage

Description: This course will introduce students to the French and Francophone theater tradition from medieval farce to contemporary plays. Emphasis will be placed on the role of theater as a site of contestation over ideas, cultural beliefs and social values. Students will not only read and analyze plays, but they will also direct, stage and perform selected scenes. The course will culminate in a public performance.
 

 

Title: Bauhaus–Workshops for Modernity

Description: This class explores the intricate dynamics between the Bauhaus—the most influential art and design school of the 20th century—and Germany’s tumultuous Weimar Republic era. For 14 years, educators, artists, and students from all over the world came to the Bauhaus to reshape our understanding of what it means to teach and learn collectively. With National Socialism looming, the odds were stacked against the Bauhäusler:innen, but their work continues to inspire until today. Taught in German.

 

Title: Black Women’s History

Description: “Social progress,” noted the political economist and philosopher Karl Marx, “can be measured by the social position of the female sex.” Taking this metric as the guide for an historical study of the United States in the nineteenth century, this course explores U.S. history from 1800 to 1920 through the lens of Black women’s experiences and social progress. A central question at the core of this class is inquiring about how Black women, as sociopolitical agents, rose from enslavement and sought to transform the American political tradition by expanding the meaning of citizenship, freedom, and equality. We will examine the roles and relationships of Black women within various communities and how their political strategies advanced democratic citizenship for all American women and American society. Inspired by Anna Julia Cooper’s belief that the struggle for freedom is a universal human cause, the course will focus on how Black women’s political thought and politics have shaped not just their societal status, but left an imprint on the broader pursuit for social equality. Key topics include changes in Black women’s roles, their efforts to expand the meanings of citizenship, freedom, and equality, and the impact of race and class on their contributions. We will also investigate how Black women navigated and challenged societal norms regarding political identity.

 

Title: Queer Histories in the U.S.

Description: Focusing on the twentieth century US, this course explores the historical experiences of people we might today consider lesbian, bisexual, gay, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+). Topics include the medicalization of homosexuality, persecution, queer migrations, liberation movements, HIV/AIDS, and the influence of race and class on sexual/gender identity. We will engage oral histories, podcasts, and biographies alongside academic texts, questioning how queer history is produced and what is silenced.

 

Title: Fellowship in the Humanities Institute: Can we escape the echo chamber?

Description: This seminar is for the Humanities Institute Fellows on this year’s theme “Can we escape the echo chamber?” We will discuss works by visiting speakers, sometimes with the speakers themselves. Attendance of the program’s events during the semester is required. The topics covered will include bias in a social context, conspiracy theories, deferring to experts and others.

 

Title: In Dante’s wor(l)ds

Description: This course is an introduction to Dante’s Divine Comedy and its role in Medieval European culture and contemporary global literature. The selection of canti from Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso aims at exploring the complex nature of Dante’s work that combines disciplines such as philosophy and theology, history and mythology. In our exploration of Dante’s Comedy, we will investigate different levels of signification and examine a series of parallels with apparently distant literary traditions.

 

 

Title: Neuromuscular Physiology

Description: This course will examine the pathophysiology of neuromuscular diseases and the general principles underlying how the nervous and musculoskeletal systems interact with the environment to produce coordinated movement in humans and non-human animals. Areas of discussion will include how disease states influence biomechanics of locomotion, the molecular basis for muscle contraction and the neuromuscular junction, spinal pathways, proprioceptive and other sensory feedback, and central processing.

 

 

Title: Neuroendocrinology

Description: This course will examine hormonal processes and the neuroendocrine systems that regulate behavior in human and non-human animals. We will integrate multiple levels of biological organization, from molecules to organisms, to understand interactions among hormones, the nervous system, behavior, and the environment. Hormones are a critically important mechanism for integrating internal physiological state with the environment to generate behavior across diverse species, with consequences for individuals, health and medicine, society, and evolution.

 

 

Title: Advanced Laboratory in Physics

Description: A survey of experimental techniques selected from the fields of atomic, nuclear, quantum, biological, medical, and condensed matter physics, as well as materials science and astrophysics.

 

 

Title: Global Politics in/and the Global South

Description: This course addresses the lack of attention that the Global South has received in global politics by focusing on how states, peoples, and actors in the Global South have engaged in and thought about global politics. As such, we will explore both theories of global politics coming from the Global South, as well as how Global South states and peoples have contested and resisted their marginalization through their relations with the Global North, international institutions, and each other.

 

Title: Memory Disorders and Dementia

Description: This seminar will examine memory disorders and dementia from a neuropsychological perspective. Topics will include amnesia, neuroanatomy of memory, evaluation of patients with memory loss, neuropsychology of Alzheimer’s disease, and other dementia syndromes.

 

Title: Data Analysis in R

 

 

Title: Islam, Christianity and Judaism

Description: This course explores the underlying religious meanings, values, and life experiences of individuals identifying themselves as Muslims, Christians, and/or Jews. The course also attempts to foster a critical awareness and knowledge of the interconnections and divergences between these three religions.

 

 

 

New Title: Soils and the Environment

 

 

New Title: Logic

 

 

New Title: Democracy and Identity in India

New Description: How has democracy flourished or faltered amidst the powerful caste, religious, regional, and class divisions of Indian society? Starting from the birth and evolution of India’s postcolonial political system, we will examine how people’s identities have been structured by law and federalism, mobilized in elections and social movements, and changed by migration, media, and economic growth. Topics covered include religious violence, caste-based reservations, secessionism, and diaspora identities.

 

 

New Title: Arab Politics after Uprisings

New Description: Why did authoritarianism prevail in the Arab world after the popular uprisings of the 2010s? This course will introduce the political economies, elites, ideas, and military-state relations that shaped monarchies and one-party states in the 20th century, exploring how people mobilized for their rights and interests in different systems. It will then analyze how conflict, migration, uprisings, and external alliances reshaped Arab political orders in the early 21st century, and continue to do so.

 

 

 

 

Title: Slavery in the Enlightenment

Description: This course explores the contradictions between Enlightenment ideals of liberty and the reality of slavery, focusing on how figures like John Locke and Thomas Jefferson supported both freedom and the slave system. It highlights the contributions of enslaved people and abolitionists, who challenged these contradictions and expanded Enlightenment principles to advocate for true equality and human rights. Students will examine how the antislavery and abolitionist struggles created an “enslaved Enlightenment” that expanded the intellectual limitations of the European Enlightenment and helped redefine modern concepts of civil rights, justice, and equality.

 

 

Title: Social Justice in Book Arts

Description: Utilizing early and contemporary artists’ books, the course examines the methods and rationales of artists who explore challenging and at times disturbing topics as artwork in the book form. Through the physical handling and study of relevant works including those held at Denison Library along with discussion and readings focused on social justice and practice in Book Arts, the course will culminate with the creation of a print portfolio under the Scripps College Press.

 

 

Title: Collective Cultural Experiences of 1970’s NYC

Description: This course will explore how the disco era and hustle culture (including music, dance, fashion, light/sound technologies) in the 1970s club spaces of the South Bronx and New York City ignited creativity and fostered community. Students will learn how to utilize key elements of disco club culture–music, DJ, fashion, spatial technologies, queer and straight integration—to create their own dance party and how all of this can be used to negotiate social change.

 

 

Title: The Digital World

Description: This course will examine questions that arise from extant and potential advances in digital technology, including: Could AI systems pose risks to humanity’s efforts towards justice, to its development, or even to its survival? How could such risks be mitigated? Would adopting a digital currency be wise, or even possible? Could a virtual world be as real, or as valuable, as the physical world? We will examine these topics from the perspectives of philosophy, computer science, and economics.

 

Title: Karl Marx: Critic of Everything

Description: Few thinkers inspire as much reverence and revulsion as Karl Marx. But how often is he actually read? A thorough introduction to Marx’s life, works and times, this class discusses some of his most impactful writings on capitalism and socialism, labor, history and revolution. We will read these difficult texts closely, slowly parsing key terms (such as capital, alienation, commodity, ideology, historical materialism, the dialectic), and getting a better sense of their continued importance.

 

 

 

 

Title: Cinema

New Description: An introduction to film analysis starting with the birth of cinema and extending to contemporary film. We will explore films from across the globe—from the more traditional “classical style” to the experimental and quirky—while developing an understanding of the history of film. We study film theory; we consider film as a distinct mode of seeing, thinking, and feeling; and we consider how films both resist and conform to our attempts to theorize them.

 

 

Courses Approved by Faculty March 2025

 

Title: Extractivism in Latin America

Description: This cultural anthropology course examines how the extraction of natural resources (such as gold, tin, rubber, oil, and gas) has profoundly shaped social, political, and economic life in Latin America and the Caribbean. Topics may include: colonialism and resource capitalism; the role of transnational corporations; state investments in extractive development; green energy transitions; toxins and environmental contamination; Indigenous and environmental justice movements.

 

Title: Livable World

Description: This seminar explores the concept of livability in the face of contemporary global challenges, including environmental degradation, natural disasters, wars, inequality, and aging populations. Rather than framing these issues solely as components of planetary crises or sustainability debates, the course adopts anthropological perspectives to examine how individuals and communities experience, navigate, and respond to these conditions while questioning and reimagining what a livable world is.

 

Title: Disease Ecology and Evolution

Description: This class will cover the biology of infectious diseases spanning from the cellular to ecosystem scales, ranging from human to sea star hosts, and covering ecological to evolutionary timeframes. While some basics of parasitology and immunology will be introduced, the course will focus on the ecology and evolution of host-parasite interactions. Topics will include: defense and virulence, ecological roles of parasites, epidemiology and disease modeling, infection heterogeneity, and host-parasite interactions.

 

Title: Our Chemical Footprint

Description: The course is designed to develop problem solving skills in chemistry and environmental science, and apply the fundamental ideas of chemistry to environmental concepts and incorporate them into environmental issues faced by communities. We will learn how the chemicals that we create and use impact our environmental systems. Major topics include water, air, and land pollution, climate change, energy creation and impact on the planet.

 

Title: Conservation Paleobiology

Description: Conservation Paleobiology is a newly emerging, solutions-oriented discipline that aims to address the impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss by sourcing knowledge from geohistorical records (e.g., fossils, sediments, and other natural temporal archives). In this course, we will “put the dead to work” by applying knowledge gleaned from paleontological and geohistorical data to modern conservation efforts and resource management.

 

Title: Writing SWANA America

Description: We explore the writing and lives of Southwest Asians and North Africans in North America. We begin with the continent’s first Arabic-language writers, mostly enslaved Muslim West Africans, then move to writing by and about 19th - and early 20th -century immigrants from Lebanon, Armenia, and other parts of West Asia. Finally, we explore SWANA-American literature of the 20th - and 21st centuries, with a particular focus on the complexities of how SWANA-Americans are racialized and how the Iranian Revolution, 9/11, and the “War on Terror” have reshaped the material realities and Orientalist stereotypes that SWANA-American writers negotiate.

 

Title: Ways of Writing, Ways of Seeing

Description: Some of the most compelling writing with images and about images exists at the intersection of fiction and essayism. In this course, we will discuss a selection of such hybrid works on film, photography, painting, sculpture, architecture, and the human experience by authors including Anne Carson, W.G. Sebald, Susan Sontag, Walter Benjamin, Roland Barthes, Annie Ernaux, Esther Kinsky, and Peter Weiss. Through our own close examination of images, we will learn how (not) to write like these authors.

 

Title: European Union

Description: What is the EU-a dream or a delusion?-a model for the future or a parochialism of post-imperial Europe? This course offers a history of the EU as a concept and an institution. We examine the modern structures of the Union in light of the political, cultural, and economic history of Europe. The course pays particular attention to obstacles to unity; key principles of inclusion and exclusion (nation, race, and religion); and the role played by imperial dynamics in underpinning the Union.

 

Title: The Meaning of Life

Description: What is the purpose of the universe? What is the point of leading and living a human life? Why bother putting effort into a life that will end and into work that will eventually, after a long enough time, come to nothing? What makes life meaningful? In this class, we will address questions of meaning, death, and time.

 

Title: The Aztecs in the Digital Age

Description: This course considers how content creators and scholars are using digital media to share information about the Aztecs in ways that were impossible through traditional (old) media. Some creators use their social media platforms to represent Aztec myths and history, while others use generative AI to imagine what life in the Aztec capital (Tenochitlan) would have been like. What promises and drawbacks are there in representing the Aztecs and other Indigenous cultures in these ways?

 

 

 

Title: Seminar in Modern Art

New Description: The seminar will examine in depth one movement, artist, or other selected topic within the art of the 20th century. Open to juniors and seniors. Topic changes each year. In fall 2025, this course examines the intersection of art and technology since 1945, from early digital art to recent experiments in artificial intelligence. The class will involve visits to local museum collections and exhibitions. Course meets Letters general education requirement.

 

 

Title: Science & The Environment

New Description: This course is an introduction to environmental science with applications in chemistry, geology, and ecology, and is a core requirement for Environmental Analysis and Environmental Science majors. Topics include a survey of Earth systems, land resources, f ood production, water resources, energy, pollution, and sustainability, all couched in the context of climate change. The laboratory includes an introduction to ecosystem analysis, mapping, and statistical analysis.

 

New TItle: Earth Surface Environments

New Description: Earth Surface Environments is a survey and analysis of the geological and biological processes that shape terrestrial environments. The course introduces key concepts of plate tectonics, geologic time, and rock identification, and explores climate dynamics, weathering, and the evolution of mountains, rivers, deserts, coastlines, soils, karst systems, and glaciers.

 

NewTitle: Earth History & Evolution

New Description: Earth History & Evolution explores the interactions of life and our dynamic Earth over geologic time. The course introduces key concepts of plate tectonics, geologic time, rock identification, and tracks the evolution and extinctions of life from the simplest single-celled organisms of the ancient Earth to today’s diverse floras and faunas.

 

New Title: Natural Disasters

New Description: Natural Disasters explores the impact of geologic processes on life, the environment, and human civilization. The course introduces key concepts of plate tectonics, geologic time, and rock identification, and analyzes the processes and repercussions of earthquakes, landslides, volcanism, tsunami, wildfires, meteorological events, and/or extraterrestrial impacts in the modern day and through Earth History.

 

New Title: Cell and Molecular Neuroscience

 

New Title: Systems & Behavioral Neuroscience

 

New Title: Senior Seminar/Thesis

New Description: A seminar for students writing a thesis with a substantial component in philosophy. The seminar will introduce students to methods of philosophical research and analysis, focusing on using these methods in the development of their theses. Students will complete their thesis by the end of the Fall semester. Exception for a two semester thesis may be granted to accommodate dual majors or special circumstances.

 

New Course Number: WRIT161 IO (formerly WRIT169A0)

New  Description:  This course examines the history, theory, and praxis of classroom-based and/or specialist tutoring, in which a writing consultant familiar with a course’s subject matter works with the faculty member to support student writing. Students will develop a working Inside-Out pedagogical praxis for this kind of tutoring and pilot it in other Inside-Out courses. Students will write responses to the readings, observe and critique tutoring sessions, and produce a publishable article.

 

New Course Number: WRIT163 IO (formerly WRIT169 BIO)

New Description: In this course, we discuss the concept of literacy as it is implemented in college composition courses and writing centers, with attention to the ways that literacy functions in minoritized populations and excluded contexts (such as inside prisons). We will historicize literacy and discuss its theory, scholarship, and practice in the discipline of Writing Studies; we will also develop a working InsideOut pedagogical praxis.

 

 

 

Title: Panoramania!

Description: “Panoramania” was coined to describe the enormous 360-degree painted canvases-some of the first immersive reality spectacles-that took New York and London audiences by storm in the 1820s. This course will explore a range of media and arts designed to engage and extend human vision, as well as the historical foundations for these aesthetic and optical experiments. Team Taught. Students must also be available on Fridays for occasional full-day field trips and screenings.