Cross-listing: Previously approved to be crosslisted with STS and Native American/Indigenous Studies (does not need new signature)   

 

ARHI 186C SC: Asian Export Art

New Description: Since the sixteenth century, porcelain, textiles, lacquer, and other luxuries from Asia entered royal courts and people’s homes, shaped consumer tastes and social habits, and forged connections across the globe. This seminar course will examine what we call Asian export art and how cross-cultural encounter and exchange shaped the visual and material culture of the early modern and modern world. We will also trace the history of Asian art collections in the United States. One required field trip.

 

 

ARHI 186M SC: Seminar in Modern Art

New Description:Topic changes with each offering. For spring 2026, the topic is “Crip Aesthetics.” Taking “crip” as both noun (a derogatory term reclaimed by disability justice activists) and verb (akin to queering), this course approaches modern and contemporary art through the lens of critical disability studies. We will discuss what new paradigms and aesthetics emerge when disability and access are not afterthoughts but starting points. Previous coursework in art history preferred but not required.

 

ENGL 120 SC: Eighteenth-Century British Literature

New Title: The 18th Century in Adaptation

New Description: This course introduces students to British and Anglophone literature in the long 18th century (1690-1830) through investigation of 18th century fiction, poetry, and archives and 20/21st century adaptations of 18thC stories. Grounding our conversations in postcolonial, queer, and disability studies scholarship, we will discuss how 18thC literary experiments responded to the British empire, plantation economies, the age of revolutions, shifting gender norms, and new understandings of the body.

 

ENGL 191 SC:Poetry Writing Workshop

New Title: Poetry, Form, and Process

New Description:  This creative writing seminar, geared toward poetry, introduces students to experimental and constraint-based forms, including procedural, ritual, conceptual, and durational writing. We will look how authors use constraint and experiment to expand the field of the possible, will borrow their methods to write poetry, and will develop constraint-based projects of our own. This course is a workshop course in whichstudents will write new poems every week and submit 3-4 poems to workshop with the class.

 

HMSC/HIST 123 SC: Intro Phil Hist Culture

New Description: This course focuses on major works in late- and post-Enlightenment (19th-century) thinking about culture: Kant’s Third Critique, Schiller’s Aesthetic Education, Arnold’s Culture and Anarchy, E.B. Tylor’s Primitive Cultures, and Huysmans’ Against Nature. It addresses the emergence of the idea of culture in the context of political struggles over the modern relationship between individual and society and the contingent historical factors responsible for these struggles.

 

HUM195 SC: Asian Philosophical Traditions

New Description: This seminar is for the Humanities Institute Fellows on this year’s theme “Asian Philosophical Traditions”  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 philosophical texts, ideas, and concepts in the Classical Chinese, Classical Indian (including Buddhist), Near-Eastern, and Zoroastrian traditions.

 

MS 057 SC: Introduction to Game Design

New Title: Game Design

New Description: Play is everywhere: from ants staging mock battles, to lobsters flipping rocks for pleasure, to children inventing games of skill and chance. What might it mean, then, to intentionally design experiences of play? In this intermediate course, students will explore game design as both a formal and artistic practice. Through a play-centric, iterative approach, students will create a variety of non-digital games to examine how mechanics, narrative, and aesthetics shape meaning and play.

 

NEUR 155L:Sel Tpcs in Computational Neuro

New Description: This course will introduce foundational models that were developed to understand the relationship between brain and behavior. We will learn about these models by reading scientific papers, running simulations, and fitting them to real data sets.

New Prerequisite: A course in programming (such as CSCI004), and math (such as MATH031 or higher), and an upper-division quantitative course (such as NEUR133L or BIOL175), and permission of the instructor. This course is designed for juniors and seniors.     

 

PHIL 144 SC: Logic

New Description: An introduction to the identification and formal evaluation of arguments. We will, in addition, investigate scientific and probabilistic reasoning, though no prior technical competence is assumed.

 

SPAN 177 SC: Theater and Social Change

New Description: This class examines the stage as a space of struggle that reveals the intersections of gender, sexuality, and nationality in Spain and Latin America, with attention to how spectacle and performance contest power structures, amplify marginalized voices, and shape as well as preserve collective memory in the public sphere, thereby fostering civil dialogue. We study Lorca’s impossible theater, Argentinian theater of crisis, Astrid Hadad’s performances of Mexicanidad, Juan Mayorga’s plays, and others.

 

WRIT 197J SC: Special Topics in Writing

New Title: Write Like a Child

New Description:How can writing from the point of view of a child help writers develop their craft and technique? How can one realistically capture the authentic voice of children, adolescents, and teens or write about children without sentimentalizing or romanticizing them? Given the assertion that childhood yields a lifetime of writing material, the ability to write from the child’s point of view is a valuable technique for any writer to master.

 

 

This course juxtaposes North and West African traditional storytellers and traces the migration of their traditions across the Atlantic into the modern Era. We’ll look to the Moroccan hlayqi, whose corpus includes classical Arabic epics and 1001 Nights, and to the West African griot whose narrative practice connects with Afro-Caribbean from the colonial period to the emergence of Hip-Hop. We will examine the legacy of these storytellers as chroniclers of their communities which continues today

 

Through an interdisciplinary cultural studies lens, we study conceptualizations, manifestations, and the workings of queerness in the United States and Latin America. We analyze a novel, poems, films, songs, photographs, and art. We explore questions of linguistic and cultural translation as we situate each text within sociopolitical debates about the meanings and possibilities of queer Latinidad in the Americas. Students expand their own course interests via an independent research project.  

 

This course blends studio experimentation with global material histories, inviting students to explore paper as an expressive, conceptual, and handmade medium. Through hands-on techniques, readings, and critical dialogue, students examine papermaking as an artistic practice and cultural process. The course culminates in a limited-edition portfolio of student-made paper with original written research, synthesizing material practice and inquiry.

 

This course considers the role of drama in challenging structures of power, examining examples of how theatre and public spectacles have been utilized to control or to contest the political stage. Students will study US American plays, in written, stage, and filmed forms, researching and analyzing the transition from the page to the stage, and ultimately attempt to mount their own short production of one of these works.

 

This course considers the ways philosophers, political scientists, historians, and others have explored justice as a concept and in the real world. We will begin by examining multiple and distinct theories of justice. We then apply these theories to specific examples of justice and war, a long-standing area of concern. Most of the topics in the second part of the semester will be selected and facilitated by student groups. Students complete an independent research project on topics related to issues of justice in current times.

 

Health Behaviors         

This course explores how certain various behaviors (e.g., physical activity, sleep) contribute to health.  We will read and critique the literature from various fields, including psychology and sociology. We will also explore the question of what contributes to health through popular press pieces and film. Topics of study include physical activity, sleep, meditation, and relationships. 

 

Can human societies achieve greater material prosperity while improving environmental and social outcomes? This class explores “limits”-oriented arguments (e.g., Paul Ehrlich, Club of Rome, degrowth) and “abundance”-oriented perspectives (e.g., Julian Simon, Bjørn Lomborg, ecomodernists), alongside empirical work on technological change, energy systems, environmental quality, and institutional constraints. Students will design and execute a substantial related project at the end of the semester.

 

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.

 

This class begins with a survey of the founding principles and histories of women’s colleges in the United States; next it turns to focus specifically on Scripps College, by developing tools for revealing and exploring stories of Scripps College people through learning how to access, evaluate and interpret Scripps College archival materials in Denison Library, as supervised by Prof. Hao Huang with expert guidance from Director Jennifer Martinez-Wormser.

 

Children’s literature often inculcates virtues, values, and morality, as well as conveying ideas about culture and identity. This course studies children’s reading, character formation, and aspirations for social change. Starting with tools for gaining literacy, students examine children’s literature in historical/cultural context. Students will develop projects rooted in archival research and literary analysis, supplemented by concepts from developmental psychology and the philosophy of education.

 

This course is an historical survey of LGBTQIA+ culture and civil rights in 20th-century America with special emphasis on California, where pivotal firsts and significant controversies steered national dialogue in the Gay Liberation Movement. Topics will be interdisciplinary, as they intersect with race, ethnicity, religion, class, federalism and law. This course incorporates an application of Foucauldian analytical methodologies and training in the use of primary archival sources.

 

Southern California is home to nearly one million people with roots in Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA). These include substantial Arab, Armenian, and Iranian communities, some of which date to the 19th century. Yet, despite this longstanding presence, SWANA life in Southern California has often gone unrecognized. This course explores the structural roots of this invisibility and the ways that scholars, artists, and writers have sought to recover and engage with archival traces of SWANA SoCal.

 

Toxic   

Toxins are everywhere. They can be found in wildfire smoke and ash, in pesticides sprayed on crops, in home cleaning products, and many other places. But if toxins are everywhere, they do not always take the same form, nor do they affect everyone in the same ways. Drawing from  anthropology, history, gender studies and STS, this Core course asks: What are the social, historical, and political trajectories that shape our encounters with toxins? How do toxins, in turn, shape our social worlds?

 

This course explores the failure of spying in the United States and in the United Kingdom since World War Two. It asks, why does grooming sociopaths and pathological liars never work? In examining events like MK Ultra, support for the Mujahideen and 9/11, and men like double-agent Kim Philby and counter-espionage fanatic James Jesus Angleton, we will discover why espionage damages the nation it is trying to protect.

 

 

This course seeks to examine how people experience gender - what it means to be a man or a woman - in their work life. Gender operates both in paid and non-paid work spaces, shaping the way work is defined, organized, rewarded, and experienced. Drawing on ethnographic stories and media sources, we will explore lived experiences and narratives of people performing various forms of work, including manufacturing, care, domestic, entertainment, and digital work.

 

 

 

This course introduces students to a variety of methodological approaches for playing, thinking, and writing about video games. We will examine video games as textual, algorithmic, personal, and political media. In addition to reading, students will play and reflect on a variety of games. Through assignments that explore writing about games as an iterative process, students will develop skills in close play analysis, game studies research, and academic writing.

 

In this course, we will learn about the different ways in which food is preserved around the world and examine the impact of preserved foods on local cultures and cuisines.  We will read and discuss scholarly articles addressing food preservation from, but not limited to, cultural anthropology, sociology, and archeology.  The course will culminate in a final project in which each student investigates a specific food culture and demonstrates a food preservation technique from it.

 

 What is death? Why do we care about it? Is death bad? Should we fear it? Why do we mourn the dead? What ought to be done with the dead? Has death changed? Can one be dead? Drawing upon philosophical, historical, psychological, religious, and pop culture perspectives, we will investigate death.

 

New Courses Approved March 2026

 

ANTH 134 SC

Health, Capitalism, and the Body

What is capitalism? And how does capitalism shape the workings of health care systems, as well as the ways we think about health, illness, and our own bodies? This cultural and medical anthropology course approaches capitalism as a political-economic system and a situated social practice. Topics include: workers’ health; disability; the body as commodity; the circulation of pharmaceuticals; health financing and insurance; the labor of care. Course meets Social Science general education requirement.

 

ART 130  SC

Introducton to Fiber Arts

This studio course is an introduction to fiber and textile arts focusing on basic techniques in spinning, natural dyeing, weaving, embroidery, sewing, and additional fiber practices (such as tufting). Hands-on projects and practical experimentation are augmented by critiques, presentations, readings and discussions of conceptual and formal ideas in the history of fiber arts. Course meets Fine Arts general education requirement.

 

ASTR002L

Operation Spaceflight

How does science advance human knowledge? This course is offered in partnership with the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education (NCESSE). Students will be divided into ten interdisciplinary teams and compete to write the best proposal for a micro-gravity experiment to be performed by astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS). The winning experiment will be launched to the ISS in late Spring 2027. Course meets Natural Science general education requirement.

 

CLAS020 SC

Greek and Roman Theater/Drama

What was ancient theater like? This course investigates the rise of dramatic performance in the ancient Mediterranean, tracing how ritual storytelling shaped the theatrical forms of Greece and Rome. We examine tragedy, comedy, and satyr drama (e.g., Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plautus, Seneca) as living performance traditions. Topics include myth and ritual, dramaturgy, acting styles, theatre architecture, music, and costumes. We also explore the historical conditions that produced ancient drama and how these works continue to inspire new performances and adaptations.

 

FGSS 126 SC

Global Feminisms

This course examines women, gender, and queer politics  through transnational and global lenses. The  pivotal role of women and LGBTQ+ communities in social justice struggles historically and in the current period will be underscored. Nationalist, decolonial, post/colonial and Indigenous feminist perspectives will be emphasized. Intersectionalities of race, caste, class, religion will be woven into the analysis of social movements in diverse regions of the world. Course meets Gender and Women’s Studies general education requirement. (This course will replace FGSS188E).

 

FREN151  SC

Rousseau: Inventing Authenticity

An award-winning philosopher and bestselling novelist, J.-J. Rousseau is considered one of the first celebrities of the modern era. While offering an overview of his major works, the course focuses on his autobiographical texts, situating his struggle for self-representation within his views on society and his growing fame. Attending to his longing for authenticity, we will reflect on the challenges of being oneself under public scrutiny and ask whether a life can truly align with one’s values. Course meets Letters general education requirement.

 

HMSC137 SC

Critical Indigenous TheoryCritical Indigenous Theory provides the conceptual tools needed to critique the processes of colonial violence and, in turn, affirm Native life, culture, and knowledge. In this course, we will consider foundational and newer works in this field, taking up topics such as Indigenous epistemologies, research methods, cosmologies, ecologies, and futures. Course work includes hands-on workshops, nature walks, and conversations with Native culture bearers. Course meets Race and Ethnic Studies general education requirement.

 

CHST117  CH

Bad Bunny & the US Culture Wars

Addressing the controversy behind Bad Bunny’s 2026 Superbowl performance, this course explores the political and cultural significance of what many are calling a pivotal moment in the globalization of the US American culture wars. Contextualizing our discussion within the broader history of colonialism, displacement, and diaspora in the Americas, we will examine how Puerto Rico became the center of the intersection of pop culture & the politics behind the struggle to define American identity.

 

MS 157 SC

Interactive Media Studio

This advanced course focuses on the production and analysis of interactive media art. Building on prior course work in creative coding, digital art, and media studies, students will develop interactive media projects, including but not limited to digital games and simulations, while critically engaging with the cultural, political, and artistic impact of interactive media art.

 

NEUR100

Statistics for Neuroscience

An introduction to data analysis and statistical reasoning for neuroscience. Students will learn how to work with neural and behavioral datasets, visualize and summarize data, build and interpret statistical models, and evaluate the strength of scientific evidence. Emphasis is placed on reproducible research practices using interactive coding notebooks and real experimental data. Course meets Mathematics general education requirement.

 

PHIL105  JT

Philosophy of Physics

This course will examine what exists and the nature of what exists, with a focus on entities that play a pivotal role in contemporary and historical physical theories. Questions to be considered include: Do space and time exist? If so, how do they differ? What is the fundamental nature of matter? Is there genuine randomness in the world? This course assumes little to no familiarity with physics or college-level mathematics, although such familiarity may be helpful. Course meets Letters general education requirement.

 

POLI 133 SC

The Politics of Commoning       

This course introduces the commons as a field of inquiry, politics, activism and culture. We will investigate the historical and accelerating processes of enclosure, encroachment, and exclusion in the US and globally. We will also engage with counter movements to reclaim and protect the commons. This course and especially the group project aspect will encourage students to think about and engage in acts of commoning (ongoing commons struggles and forms of resistance). Course meets Social Science general education requirement.

 

POLI149 SC

Underworlds and Otherworlds

Understood as “the art of the possible,” politics represents the negotiation of competing interests and demands within a constrained system of electoral rules and governance procedures. In contrast, this course will explore forms of politics that contest the boundaries of the possible, unsettle shared understandings of the real, and engage in the prefigurative work of bringing future worlds into being. Underworlds: the fugitive space of evasion and escape. Otherworlds: the future taking shape. Course meets Social Science general education requirements.

 

RLST 172  SC

Christianity, Fantasy, & Fiction

An advanced, reading- and writing-intensive seminar informed by literary theory and religious studies that examines an array of English-language works of fantasy and fiction associated with Christian authors from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This course includes selections from the works of George MacDonald, Hope Mirrlees, Lord Dunsany, J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Frank Herbert, Ursula K. LeGuin, and others. Course meets Letters general education requirement.

 

SPAN132 SC

 

Brujería, curandería, y cultura

 As concepts and practices,  brujería and curandería are deeply woven into the cultural fabric of Latin America. Many of those practices originate in Indigenous traditions that have merged or meshed with traditions from Europe and Africa. We will explore brujería and curandería through a variety of cultural works such as short stories, film, music, and visual art pieces. A significant portion of this course will be dedicated to working with plants considered to be curative and magical. This course meets the Letters and Race and Ethnic Studies general education requirements.

 

Revised Courses:

BIOL 154L

New Title: Animal Behavior w/Lab

New Description: Lectures, discussion, and videos will cover the biological approach to behavior. Topics covered include the physiological, neurological, genetic, evolutionary, and ecological aspects of behavior, with an emphasis on behavioral ecology. In the lab component students will design and conduct research related to lecture topics.

 

CHEM014L

Basic Principles of Chemistry I

New Prerequisite: completion of Precalculus (MATH023, MATH025, or equivalent) or placement into Calculus I (MATH030) or higher

 

CHEM 128 

Inorganic Chemistry

New Description: A foundational course focused on chemical structure and bonding throughout the periodic table. Special emphasis will be placed upon transition metal chemistry. Topics include elementary group theory, atomic structure, ionic and covalent bonding, molecular orbital and valence bond theory, periodic trends, inorganic mechanisms, coordination chemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, and organometallic chemistry.

New Prerequisite: CHEM 015L, CHEM 029L, or CHEM 042L and Math 030

 

CLAS019

New Title: Myth in Film: Adapting the Past

New Description: What happens to classical mythology or ancient history when it is adapted to film? What gets lost/added in translation? This course explores how different genres/media (e.g., epic, drama, biography, visual art) are adapted in cinema and how these films have shaped our ideas of power, race, community, and sexuality. Students screen files, study theories of adaptation/translation (e.g., Benjamin, Elliott, Hutcheon), and learn about ancient literature and history (e.g., Medea, Spartacus; Rome).

 

ENGL178  SC 

New Title: Politics and Aesthetics

 

FGSS 188E SC

New Title: Feminist & Queer Sinophone Stds

New Description: The course draws together ethnic, feminist, queer, and trans studies with the emerging interdisciplinary field of Sinophone studies. By studying Sinitic-language cultures, we decenter the “west” in our historical and contemporary understandings of colonization and globalization. The course examines media, literature, science, and social movements to reconsider how race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and other axes of difference and identity developed locally and dynamically across regions. Course meets Gender and Women’s Studies and Race and Ethnic Studies general education requirements.

 

GRMT 115 SC

Ways of Writing, Ways of Seeing

New Description:  Some of the most compelling writing with 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, Roland Barthes, Annie Ernaux, Teju Cole, Saidiya Hartman, and Peter Weiss. Through our own close examination of images, we will learn how (not) to write like these authors. Course meets Letters general education requirement.

 

NEUR 133L

New Title: Computational Neuroscience

New Prerequisite: MATH030 SC AND an introductory programming course (such as CS004 or DS001) or permission of instructor. A statistics course (such as Neurostatistics, Biostatistics, or Psychological Statistics) is strongly recommended.  

 

POLI 109 SC

New Title: Borders & Bars

Borders and Bars is a class that explores the intersections between carcerality and migration today. Drawing from examples across the globe, the course examines the systems that police, surveil, confine, and contain people in movement. Themes include but are not limited to: border externalization, immigration laws, the humanitarian industrial complex, labor and racialization, surveillance technologies, centers, camps, prisons, and other spaces of confinement. Course meets Social Science general education requirement.

 

New Core Courses: 

 

CORE A: Are you an Animal?

Are you an authentic and autonomous human who can engage in critical thinking and make informed choices, or are you an animal body carrying a brain programmed by corporate bots? In this course, you’ll explore the animal-human boundary across time and media and in oral, aural, and visual forms. Topics include animal rhetoric, vegetarianism, PETA, “human nature,” athletes, animal sexuality, bioethics, emotional support animals, human variation and discrimination, circuses, and furries.

 

CORE A: Lights, Camera, Murder!

This class is a historical approach to the understanding and construction of criminal personality types and crimes from 18th to 21st-century France and the United States. Through fictional and non-fictional narratives, court transcripts, psychological studies, films, and documentaries, the class traces the historical and cultural approach of each nation to justice and, ultimately, seeks to bring to light the definition of human nature upon which each legal system is built.

 

CORE A: LA Rock n’ Roll Communities

This course explores how rock ‘n’ roll music produced in and about Los Angeles represents LA realities. How and what “local truths” are perceived and communicated by popular music performers in this area? Over four periods of time and four genres, young people in LA created countercultures and communities.  Their music provides insights into specific time periods of localities, and how music was integral to creating identity.

 

CORE A: Home

This course explores issues related to housing in the US, with particular attention to the reality and perception of homeownership. We will cover questions such as: How did homeownership become associated with the ‘American Dream?’ How do housing policies contribute to residential segregation? Does homeownership truly offer a path to prosperity?

 

CORE A: Schools of Magic

The politics and pedagogy of magic schools, examined through lenses of genre, educational theory, and ethics. From individual tutoring to studying in traditional academies with learned faculties to apprenticing with master-practitioners to undergoing unsupervised deadly ordeals, young adult fantasy fiction explores the gaining and wielding of occult power. We identify contrasting theories of education with reference to students’ own real-life experiences in liberal education.

 

CORE A: Queer History in Popular Music

The study of Western popular music as a social and cultural system. Focus is on how queer identity intersects with popular music. Lecture, reading and listening assignments aim to examine how queer perspectives in and around popular music in the last 100 years challenge dominant cultural narratives and heteronormative assumptions.

 

CORE A: Politics of Belonging

How do human beings make sense of belonging in the modern world? How do political phenomena like nations, states, documentation and migration change the way we experience belonging, and how does the need for belonging shape politics? Through historical, philosophical, literary, audiovisual, and social scientific texts, we will explore different intellectual lenses through which to address these questions and reflect on what belonging means in Southern California.

 

CORE A: Not Your Sunday School Christianity 

This course explores aspects of ancient Christianities that largely remain hidden, forgotten, or poorly known, including Christian slavery abolitionist movements, same-sex “marriages,” the celebration of transgender and non-binary saints, matriarchal and matrilineal Christian societies, extensive women’s rights developed by Christians, etc. The course challenges contemporary ab/mis/uses of Christian tradition by highlighting how its diversity and complexity can aid constructive projects today.

 

CORE A: Sound, Music & Power

 The course begins by interrogating the terms sound, music, and power, and then examines how the practices of sounding and music deploy power, ideology, compliance and coercion by considering specific examples.  We will also investigate how shifts in the sociopolitical, cultural, spiritual and technological arenas have influenced the power of music and how we experience sound. Examples include classical, contemporary popular, Muzak and avant garde music, and ecological soundscapes, among others.