Core Courses

Core A and B

Scripps College has a long and distinguished tradition in teaching in the Humanities. New students must fulfill their general education requirement in the Humanities by taking the Core Curriculum in Interdisciplinary Humanities (Core). The Core is a sequence of two courses designed to encourage increasingly sophisticated and focused interdisciplinary investigation of a broad range of historical and contemporary issues. Core classes are taught by faculty members drawn from each of the college’s academic divisions (arts, letters, natural sciences, and social sciences).

During the first semester, all first-year students take Core A, in which students may select from a wide range of topics. Core A courses will be interdisciplinary, and students will be introduced to different kinds of materials and academic discussions of complex topics. Students will also develop skills in academic writing, including constructing, supporting, and revising arguments.

In the second semester of the first year, students choose from a range of Core B courses which will continue to develop skills from Core A. Core B courses will place a greater emphasis on research methods and information literacy. All sections will culminate in an end-of-semester project developed over the course of a significant portion of the semester. The culminating work for Core B sections will be showcased in an event at the end of the semester. Core A Courses for Fall 2025:

Cosmopolitanism & Revolutions

Stranger than Fiction

Tourism: Past and Present

Marginalization and Representation

Communicating Climate Change

Performing the Nation

Art and Activism

Social Justice/Practice in Book Arts

Latin Am: The people take power : Poder Popular

Speed

Performance, Dance, Social Justice

Music & Power

Film and Revolution Across the Americas in the Long Sixties

Protesting Women

Sex and the State

Christian Herstory: 4BCE-1000CE

(Dis)Ability?

CORE 010A SC

Core III: Histories of the Present

Fall 2025 is the final semester in which CORE003 SC is offered.

Core III courses are small seminars designed to foster innovation and collaboration among students and faculty. The seminars involve considerable student participation and afford the opportunity to do more individualized, self-directed scholarship in association with a single faculty member working in the area of expertise from an interdisciplinary perspective. The work of the seminars culminates in a self-designed project exploring a particular topic through the lens of “histories of the present.” Exceptional student work will be disseminated to the wider College community. Depending on instructor and subject matter, the Core III seminars involve research, internships with fieldwork, exhibits, performances, conferences, and multimedia projects. Consult the Scripps Portal for Core III offerings for the current semester. Core III course offerings vary each year and may include:

“America” in recent music & literature

Animal Rights and Speciesism

Antiracist and Transnational Feminist Coalitions

Art, Ecology, and Fieldwork

Bad Writing

Bodies in Motion: Representation and Simulation

Building Los Angeles

Capitalism/Anti-Capitalism

Caribbean Women’s Literature

Challenges from the global south - “America”

Children’s Literature

Collective Songwriting: Theory and Knowledge Production