Course Syllabi

This course relates principles of environmental science to our daily activities, with an eye to sustainability, conservation, and systems thinking. It introduces science as a process of inquiry and discovery rather than just a pre-established set of facts. Topics relate to energy, water, and land use, and include food, electric power, materials, buildings, transportation, and waste.

Requisites - None

Breadth - Physical Science

Level - Elementary

Counts as L&S Credit

This is introductory science course for non-science majors provides an overview of scientific discovery and the nature of science. It will explore science as a process of inquiry through five broad scientific concepts representing a range of disciplines: astronomy, geology, chemistry, biology, and ecology/atmospheric sciences.

Requisites - None

Breadth - Physical Science

Level - Elementary

Counts as L&S Credit

What does it mean to think critically? To find fault? To employ intellectual rigor? Can we imagine a method of critical thought that produces writing with the potential to change the world? This course takes the definition of “critical thought” seriously in order to expand our idea of what critical communication is and has the potential to be. Explores the three modes of argument and expression: verbal, visual, numerical. Students engage in critical thinking about how these modes are structured and used. Practice in, and interpretation of, the three modes.

Requisite: Satisfied Communications A requirement

Breadth - Humanities

Level - Elementary

Counts as L&S Credit

This course fulfills the Communications B requirement.

What does science have to do with religion? What does it mean to have expertise about the natural world? And what difference do politics and funding sources make to scientific investigation? Learn how to think critically and historically about science in this course by exploring such fundamental questions across two millennia. We begin with ancient mythology and philosophy, then follow the movement of the Greek classical tradition into medieval Islam and Christendom, and finally turn to the ‘revolution’ in science of the 16th and 17th centuries with Copernicus, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton. These historical investigations provide vital insights into ideas of the ‘natural’, scientific observation, and experiment, as well as into our expectations of scientific knowledge and the scientific enterprise.

Requisites: Not open to students with credit for HIST SCI 201.

Breadth - Natural Science

Level - Elementary

Counts as L&S Credit

ILS 202 offers an introduction to the history of the sciences between the late seventeenth century and the early twentieth century, with the aim of understanding the varied ways of knowing that have come to be known as “science.” We will ask: What does it mean to know something about nature? How can we be sure this knowledge is secure? And what is this “scientific” knowledge of nature good for, according to people in particular times and places? In pursuing these questions, we will treat such pivotal intellectual developments as Newtonianism, the conservation of energy, and Darwin’s theory of evolution. At the same time, we will seek to understand the relationship between these ideas and the broader cultural context in which they took place, paying particular attention to the ways it was possible to “do science” in different times and places.

Requisites: Not open to students with credit for HIST SCI 202 or 404

Breadth - Natural Science

Level - Elementary

Counts as L&S Credit

ILS 203 is a survey of Western literature and art from classical antiquity to the medieval period, with a substantial emphasis on the textual and material remains from ancient Greece and Rome. It will provide a foundational knowledge of some of the works of art and literature that have shaped the Western intellectual tradition, as well as challenge students to contextualize their own attitudes and beliefs.

Requisites - None

Breadth - Literature

Level - Elementary

Counts as L&S Credit

The development of literature and the arts from the Renaissance to the modern period: such figures as Shakespeare and Michelangelo through T.S. Eliot and Picasso. Literature and art in the context of society and ideas. Overall, the focus of the course will not be on “art appreciation” but on how cultural contexts – the ideas and values regarding religion, philosophy, political thought, social practices, aesthetics, and related fields – shape and make possible the various expressions of Western art and literature during this period.

Requisites - None

Breadth - Literature

Level- Elementary

Counts as L&S Credit

The objective of this course is two-fold. First, this course introduces students to the basics of Western political, economic, and social thought. Through a careful reading of canonical texts, the elementary symbols and concepts of Western thought will be discussed. Our second objective is to learn how these symbols and concepts can be brought to bear on contemporary problems and how they can inform questions concerning our own political and social order. What part, for instance, does reason play in our world? What does a good citizen look like? What is the good human life? What is the place of violence? What does justice look like? Thinkers such as Homer, Thucydides, Plato, Aristophanes, Aristotle, and Augustine may be considered.

Requisites - None

Breadth - Humanities or Social Science

Level - Elementary

Counts as L&S Credit

The development of Western political, economic and social thought from the Reformation to the present day: the origins, logic and evolution of liberalism, Marxism, and organic conservatism as the principal systems of thought of the modern age. Through a careful reading of canonical texts, the elementary symbols and concepts of Western thought will be discussed. From these readings, student will learn how these symbols and concepts can be brought to bear on contemporary problems and how they can inform questions concerning our own political and social order.

Requisites - None

Breadth - Humanities or Social Science

Level - Elementary

Counts as L&S Credit

Writing intensive course based on the conventions in which Western writers have expressed religious ideas. Readings from Jewish, Christian, and other spiritualities. This course introduces some key aspects of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought and historical experience by exploring a range of texts from antiquity to the modern era. We begin by considering major themes in the sacred scriptures of each religion – themes conveyed via such literary genres as narrative, law, prophecy, gospel, epistle, apocalyptic, and poetry – with a focus on ways in which later texts interact with earlier ones. The middle unit of the course examines different approaches, in the medieval and early modern periods, to knowing and experiencing the divine. We will consider how monotheistic thinkers drew on Greek ideas about reason and knowledge, and we will read bits of philosophical theology, mystical writing, and polemical treatises on the nature of religious and intellectual authority. In the final course unit we will read two spiritual autobiographies and a novel to explore relationships among religious tradition, identity and the search for meaning in the modern world.

Requisites: Satisfied Communications A requirement

Breadth - Humanities

Level - Intermediate

Counts as L&S Credit

This course fulfills the Communications B requirement.

This is an interdisciplinary, cross-college course that will bring together Theatre and non-Theatre students, scientists and non-scientists. The aim is introduce students to ways of encountering science and art so that one can think critically about why these two domains have for so long been seen as separate and even mutually excluding, and how one might bring them back into some sort of dialogue. While the title of the course suggests the main trajectory (“Theatre”), there will be room for students to pursue collaborative research and projects based in art forms other than theatre: spoken word, multimedia art, installation art, applied theatre, and the like. Students will read or view a variety of plays that address scientific themes and characters. As well, we'll view and discuss more contemporary multimedia (sometimes virtual) art/theatre/installations with scientific form and/or content. These primary materials would be supplemented by short, layperson-accessible essays on scientific ideas, sometimes supplemented by video material on particular ideas from physics, cosmology, cognitive science, biology, and genetics.

Requisites: Sophomore standing

Breadth - Literature

Level - Intermediate

Counts as L&S Credit

Introduces students to the major works of Machiavelli through the close reading of his writings in cultural and historical contexts. Discussion and targeted writing assignments will aim at cultivating in students 1) a broad understanding of Machiavelli's principal intellectual attitudes, 2) a deeper understanding of his literary sensibility, and 3) the ability to articulate controversies and complexities surrounding his thought.

Requisites: Satisfied Communications A requirement

Breadth - Literature

Level - Intermediate

Counts as L&S Credit

Examines the concept of magical realism and its cultural implications. Provides a critical framework for evaluating literature, art and movies and engaging in basic research, particularly when it comes to narrative analysis. Pays particular attention to the Latin-American boom, a time of big writers and big literature that presses the limits between fiction and reality, modernity and postmodernity.

Requisites: Sophomore standing

Breadth - Literature

Level - Intermediate

Counts as L&S Credit

Explores Latin American art and literature through historical and psychoanalytic approaches. Topics include: the relationships between literature, art, and violence; how art, literature, and activism contribute to social change; the role of avant-garde movements in art and literature; and the role of art and literature as a mode of empowerment for marginalized groups.

Requisites: Sophomore standing

Breadth - Literature

Level - Intermediate

Counts as L&S Credit

Required Capstone for Juniors and Seniors seeking ILS Certificate.

What does it mean to be an individual? In what sense is individualism valuable, and why? What is the relationship between individuals and societies? While these are perennial themes in art, philosophy, literature, and social inquiry across a variety of cultures, and feature prominently in the ILS curriculum, they are especially important in the literature and philosophy of 19th century America. Students enrolled in ILS 400 will explore these themes through a range of 19th century American literature, including the poetry of Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, autobiographical works of Harriet Jacobs, Williams Apess, and Frederick Douglass, philosophical works by Henry David Thoreau, and essays by W.E.B. DuBois.

Requisites: Junior standing and declared in Certificate in Integrated Liberal Studies

Level - Advanced

Counts as L&S Credit