1. Facing the Chronic Health Challenges of the Early 21st Century
Chronic health conditions are among the most significant challenges to human well-being in the 21st century. These include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and obesity; neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease; and mental health conditions including anxiety, depression, and addiction. Many of these conditions are triggered or worsened by the stresses of modern life, changing environmental exposures, and diets high in ultra-processed foods. Economic disparities, strained healthcare systems, and widespread misinformation often make effective care harder to access.
Despite these challenges, opportunities exist to improve health outcomes. This seminar will focus on identifying and advancing those opportunities. What can be done to better address the root causes of chronic disease, accelerate the development of effective treatments and cures, and reduce barriers to care? Topics will include strategies for reducing exposure to environmental toxins, alternatives to conventional industrial food systems, and the emerging role of personalized medicine informed by genetic risk profiles. We will also consider how to recognize and filter out pseudoscience, navigate the social media landscape, and combat the growing epidemic of loneliness—all with the goal of making meaningful changes to promote both physical and mental health.
Tom Arnold
MWF 12:30-1:20
2. Cancelled
3. Resistance: People Power and Politics Across Space and Time
How effective are popular protest and civil resistance in effecting political change? In this course, we explore 20th and 21st century cases where non-violent mass action has been used—sometimes successfully and sometimes not—in pursuit of political reform, decolonization, regime change, and more. We explore century examples from around the world, ranging from Ghandi’s civil resistance to British imperial rule in India to Syrians’ uprising against the Assad regime. Grounding our analysis in specific cases but attentive to trends across space and time, we consider questions about movements’ organizational strategies, the interplay between non-violent methods and the use force or violence, and learning from past movements. Students will apply insights from their study of past movements to contemporary cases of resistance around the world.
Kristine Mitchell
MWF 11:30-12:20
4. How Finance Made Civilizations Possible—and Continues to Shape Our Future
How did we get from clay tablets recording grain debts to millions of people trading meme stocks on their phones? This seminar traces the long, surprising arc of finance as a force that has shaped human civilization—and continues to shape our everyday lives.
Drawing on William Goetzmann’s Money Changes Everything, we examine finance as a transformative technology: a “time machine” that allows societies to shift value across generations and make the future legible. We trace how innovations such as writing, credit, bonds, and corporations emerged in early civilizations, enabling empires to expand, trade networks to flourish, and cultures to imagine longer and more complex futures. We then “zoom in” to the modern world, using Amy Edwards’s Are We Rich Yet? to understand how investing became a mass cultural practice. We explore how everyday people—from factory workers to housewives—became financial actors as brokers, marketers, media, and policymakers promoted investment as a civic duty, a source of identity, and a path to security. From here, we connect history to the present through discussions of Robinhood, meme stocks, and the GameStop short squeeze. These contemporary episodes reveal how technology, social media, and market narratives continue to reshape who participates in finance and why—often blurring the lines between empowerment, speculation, and entertainment.
A highlight of the seminar is a field trip to Philadelphia to visit the Penn Museum, where students will view some of the earliest Mesopotamian financial records, and the U.S. Mint, where modern currency is produced. Students will also participate in a virtual trading competition, gaining hands-on experience and a critical perspective on how financial platforms shape decision-making. Together, these activities invite students to explore how finance has made civilizations possible and continues to influence how individuals aspire, and societies imagine their futures.
Qing Bai
MWF 11:30-12:20
5. I Am Not Who/What You Think I Am: Being, Belonging, Becoming
How do we embrace, fashion, and embody identities and differences? How do others use, impersonate, and distort our sense of self and other? How does experience, temporality, and representation challenge social categorizations? Through literary, historiographical, and audiovisual narratives, we will comparatively analyze how individuals and groups receive, rework, and reject subject positions. Through academic, creative, and personal dialogues, activities, and assignments, we will examine transdisciplinary ideas in the humanities and social sciences. Through experiential activities at Dickinson College and Central Pennsylvania, explorations of the places we have lived and want to encounter, and conversations with members of our various communities, we will consider and give an account of what it means to be, belong, and become who/what we believe we are.
Amaury Leopoldo Sosa
MWF 11:30-12:20
6. Who was this person? Who is this person?
This seminar explores, or maybe even challenges, our understanding of the origins of Christianity by focusing on, among other topics, the life of Jesus himself, the historical narratives of his life, beliefs about him (like the virgin birth and resurrection from the dead) and the mystery of miracles. Did they really happen? The historical perspective for our explorations is primarily based on the scant historical documentation of Jesus’s life and the surviving gospels in what has come to be called the New Testament, as well as competing versions of what happened documented in the so-called Gnostic Gospels discovered in the 20th century.
The authors of these gospels were writing in wartime, under occupation, and leading endangered lives, so our explorations are contextualized in this reality, which may offer indications for why the gospels were crafted the way they were, and what that means for people today
Abraham Quintanar
MWF 11:30-12:20
7. The tin foil hat society
Who shot JFK? Did John Wilkes Booth survive his capture at Garrett’s Farm? What is hidden under Fort Knox? These and many more questions tell the story of hidden actors who are believed to influence our societies, but what about the actors with smaller roles who impact our everyday lives? In this course we will learn about what makes a belief a conspiracy theory and what are the micro-conspiracies that we believe. This exploration will be done through the lens of the JFK assassination and why there are so many competing theories for what happened on that fateful day in Dallas.
William Goble
MWF 11:30:12:20
8. Yossarian Lives! Catch-22 from Homer to Here and Now
That’s some catch, that Catch-22. Joseph Heller coined the term in 1961, and today we would be hard pressed to find someone who can’t define it, or worse, who doesn’t feel as if they have been trapped in one. But if you look, you may find the Catch-22 goes further back than you think. It is already there in Homer, for instance, in Achilles’ choice, and it has been with us ever since. In this seminar, we go looking for the Catch-22 anywhere we might find it. We’ll start by reading Heller’s novel and watching the film and television adaptations. Then, we’ll continue the search in literature, film, music, art, history, economics and politics. Yossarian believed that “they” have the authority to do anything that you can’t stop them from doing. We will look high and low to see if he was right, if he was always right, if he will always be right. Yossarian lives, we are told, but what’s the catch?
Scott Farrington
WF 11:30-12:45
9. Designing Your Life in College and Beyond: Leadership, Purpose, and Growth
Starting college is both exciting and overwhelming—new opportunities, greater independence, and the challenge of managing it all at once. This seminar is designed to help you build the personal leadership skills you need not only to thrive in your first year, but to carry with you throughout your academic, professional, and personal life. Using Stephen R. Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People as our guiding framework, we will explore what it means to “lead yourself” with purpose, clarity, and intention. Throughout the semester, we will focus on key questions: How do I manage my time when everything feels important? How do I set meaningful goals and actually follow through on them? What habits support academic success—and which ones hold me back? What does it mean to communicate effectively and build strong relationships in a diverse community? And how can I make choices today that align with the life I want to create? Through discussions, reflective writing, hands-on activities, and personal leadership exercises, you will learn practical strategies for organization, time management, decision-making, and problem-solving. You will also develop foundational habits such as proactive thinking, prioritizing what matters most, and strengthening your integrity and resilience. By the end of the seminar, you will leave with a personalized set of tools to navigate college more confidently, manage challenges with greater ease, and build habits that will continue to support your growth long after your first year.
Fatou Thioune
MW 11:30-12:45
10. Music, Mediated: How Technology Impacts How We Listen and Hear
This course centers on the topic of how technology has shaped the way we listen and hear, exploring numerous sources historical, recent, and contemporary, but it serves primarily to introduce you to college and to collegiate-level learning, discourse, writing, and research. It is intended to help students plan and make the most of their collegiate experience. Coursework centers on reading, class discussion, writing, and research.
Robert Pound
MWF 11:30-12:20
11. Navigating the Flow of Time
Starting out in college, students often move into a new relationship to time. On the one hand, your’re in control of your own time in ways you haven’t been before. On the other hand, multiplying new claims on your time may feel overwhelming. This course will help students reflect on human relationships to time in ways that will help students think about how to move through their own time deliberately. We’ll examine about how the emergence of new technologies like calendars, clocks, and phones have shaped human relationships to seasons, hours, and moments. We’ll research the emergence of, benefits of, and perils of “time discipline” and the rise of economies of attention that threaten to fragment our time. We’ll discuss the political value of time and how wasted time can be a weapon of power or a form of resistance. We’ll bring together perspectives from scientists and artists about the perception of time and the experience of memory making. We’ll investigate practices of projection that allow us to possibly chart our futures. Finally, we’ll reflect together on how we want to relate to time in our own lives.
Emily Pawley
MWF 12:30-1:20
12. Modernity and Its Legacy: Past Ideas and Their Contemporary Importance
In this learning community, we examine the ways in which Du Bois, Marx, Darwin, Shelley, and Freud identified both new fields of intellectual study (race, capitalism and exploitation, evolution and genetics, technology and ethics, psychology and psychoanalysis) and new ways of thinking about scientific and social issues. In addition, the works of these thinkers had – and in many ways continue to have – tremendous influence on the ways in which societies have been organized and understood. While our primary focus will be on the ideas that these writers examined, we will also concern ourselves with the ways in which 20th- and 21st-century discourses grapple with their complexities.
Karl Qualls
MW 11:30-12:45
*This seminar is part of the learning community, “Modernity and Its Legacy.”
13. Awe, Wonder, and Transcendence
Some of the most powerful emotions humans experience are awe, wonder, and transcendence. These feelings can be sparked by many types of experiences, such as seeing beauty in the natural world, experiencing an event with other people, engaging in religious or spiritual practices, wondering at the mysteries of science and of life, and feeling gratitude. Awe experiences transport us out of our everyday lives and create feelings of connection with other people, with nature, with the divine, or with the universe.
Through first-person accounts, analytic essays, research studies, and our own experiences, we will explore feelings of awe and the experiences that trigger them. We will consider how people come to understand and make meaning of these experiences in their own lives. Finally, we will examine the impact that awe can have on our physical health, mental health, sense of self, and our relationships with others.
Megan Yost
WF 11:30-12:45
14. Modernity and its Critics
In this learning community, we examine the ways in which Du Bois, Marx, Darwin, Shelley, and Freud identified both new fields of intellectual study (race, capitalism and exploitation, evolution and genetics, technology and ethics, psychology and psychoanalysis) and new ways of thinking about scientific and social issues. In addition, the works of these thinkers had – and in many ways continue to have – tremendous influence on the ways in which societies have been organized and understood. While our primary focus will be on the ideas that these writers examined, we will also concern ourselves with the ways in which 20th- and 21st-century discourses grapple with their complexities.
Dan Schubert
MW 11:30-12:45
*This seminar is part of the learning community, “Modernity and Its Legacy.”
15. Cancelled
16. Memoirs of Difference: Living and Triumphing in Marginalized Bodies
People hold deep cultural ideals about “normal” human bodies that are embedded into all aspects of social life and dictate behavior, identity, and opportunities. Individuals who do not fit into these norms can be publicly scrutinized, marginalized and shamed. What does it feel like to live in the bodies of people who are marginalized? How is social stigma from not “fitting in” experienced and embodied by people whose gender identity, race, body size, or (dis)ability fall outside perceptions of normal? How do marginalized people triumph over public judgement and social stigma to be their authentic selves? In this seminar, we will apply an anthropological lens to read memoirs of people who do not fit into societal norms, such as a famous actor’s public experience with gender transition, a Black woman’s experience living in a racialized and large body, and an Olympic and world champion runner who endured public challenges to her biological sex and gender identity. We will also watch films by and about artists whose disabilities empower their creative expression. Ultimately, our anthropological focus will enable us to view experiences of marginalization with empathy, to have a more nuanced understanding of normalcy, and to recognize the universal right to dignity.
Karen Weinstein
MF 11:30-12:45
17. Puzzles, Patterns, and Stories in the Films of David Lynch
David Lynch is one of the most distinctive filmmakers of the last half-century—winner of the Palme d’Or, creator of Twin Peaks, and an artist whose work ranges from early experimental shorts to spectacular feature-length films, including Blue Velvet, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive. His films move between industrial cities, quiet suburbs, highways, and backstage spaces; they draw on familiar genres such as mystery, melodrama, and noir, but reorganize them in unusual ways. Plots restart from different perspectives, scenes repeat with small changes, and characters appear to double or shift roles. Across this variety, his films frequently present stories that are built from unusual arrangements of information—events offered out of sequence, narrative threads that intersect oddly, sound and image combinations that suggest multiple possible connections. These features raise practical questions for viewers: How do we follow a narrative when its own structure is unstable? What kinds of interpretations become viable when a film does not point clearly toward a single explanation? Working with a selection of Lynch’s films and television episodes, we will take up these questions through discussion, close analysis of scenes, and a series of interpretive essays.
Gregory Steirer
MF 11:30-12:45
18. Philosophers and Prophets: Science Fiction Across Media
Science fiction is the modern world’s most powerful thought experiment: it asks what humans become when technology, power, and imagination reshape everyday life. This course reads science fiction across short stories, novels, film/TV, and digital media to examine how speculative narratives act as philosophy, political critique, and cultural prophecy. Students will learn core tools of close reading and media analysis while producing academic writing and creative-critical projects that connect speculative futures to present debates about AI, surveillance, race, gender, labor, climate, and reality itself.
Nan Ma
MW 11:30-12:45
19. Cancelled
20. Modernity and its Critics
In this learning community, we examine the ways in which Du Bois, Marx, Darwin, Shelley, and Freud identified both new fields of intellectual study (race, capitalism and exploitation, evolution and genetics, technology and ethics, psychology and psychoanalysis) and new ways of thinking about scientific and social issues. In addition, the works of these thinkers had – and in many ways continue to have – tremendous influence on the ways in which societies have been organized and understood. While our primary focus will be on the ideas that these writers examined, we will also concern ourselves with the ways in which 20th- and 21st-century discourses grapple with their complexities.
Peter Schadler
MW 11:30-12:45
*This seminar is part of the learning community, “Modernity and Its Legacy.”
21. Invisible Carlisle: Reclaiming the waste we create
Invisible Carlisle focuses on the history, perception, and uses of trash and waste in our society. For instance: the anthropological and archaeological study of trash, the cultural and historical meanings of waste, ideas of reducing over-consumption/production and transforming waste into useful products and creating artworks regarding these topics. Students will have the opportunity to experience different types of writing and artmaking. From researching and writing from the perspective of a single use take out container to creating artworks from found objects, students will learn about sustainability and climate change not only in the world but, importantly, in the Carlisle area. Through field trips both on and off campus we will experience and get to know our local waste management facilities, mines, thrift stores, and the Dickinson College Farm's biodigester, among other relevant places. We see the class as an introduction to Carlisle and Cumberland County through an unexpected point of view.
Rachel Eng
MW 11:30-12:45
*This seminar is part of the learning community, “Invisible Carlisle: Reclaiming the waste we create.”
22. Invisible Carlisle: reclaiming the waste we create
Invisible Carlisle focuses on the history, perception, and uses of trash and waste in our society. For instance: the anthropological and archaeological study of trash, the cultural and historical meanings of waste, ideas of reducing over-consumption/production and transforming waste into useful products and creating artworks regarding these topics. Students will have the opportunity to experience different types of writing and art-making. From researching and writing from the perspective of a single-use take out container to creating artworks from found objects, students will learn about sustainability and climate change not only in the world but, importantly, in the Carlisle area. Through field trips both on and off campus we will experience and get to know our local waste management facilities, mines, thrift stores, and the Dickinson College Farm's Biodigester, among other relevant places. We see the class as an introduction to Carlisle and Cumberland County through an unexpected point of view.
Hannah Roman
MW 11:30-12:45
*This seminar is part of the learning community, “Invisible Carlisle: Reclaiming the waste we create.”
23. The Rocks We Rely On
From the foundations of cities to the circuitry of smartphones, mining has shaped the material and social architecture of human societies for thousands of years. Yet the search for and extraction of Earth’s mineral resources is an endeavor fraught with competing economic, environmental, and human rights concerns. This seminar explores the tensions and tradeoffs that arise wherever and whenever we mine the Earth. Consider electric vehicles (EVs), a central component of efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, which are the product of complicated supply chains that begin with dozens of mines found around the globe. How should we balance the benefits of rechargeable batteries and vehicle electrification with the costs of extracting cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo, lithium from Chile, or manganese from South Africa? In addition to metals, we will also examine the extraction of more “mundane” industrial minerals such as sand. Sand is the most extracted solid material on Earth and is essential to construction of buildings, roads, and bridges. However, we are facing critical shortages of construction-grade sand around the world. Yes, we are really running out of sand! Beyond contemporary mines and controversies, students will also investigate historical and local legacies of mineral extraction, such as Pennsylvania’s iron industry, which supported the American revolution and dominated U.S. production in the 19th century. Through books, articles, documentaries, guest speakers, and field experiences, students will develop new geological, economic, environmental, and societal perspectives on the relationship between human societies and the rocks upon which we rely.
Alyson Thibodeau
MWF 11:30-12:20
24. Mental Illness: From Movies to Memoirs
In the movie Trainspotting, actor Ewan McGregor portrays Mark Renton, a young heroin addict. How accurate is the movie’s portrayal of drug addiction? What can we learn about drug addiction from watching a movie such as Trainspotting? This course will attempt to answer such questions by studying the topic of mental illness from a variety of perspectives. First, we will examine selected mental illnesses (e.g., drug addiction) from a scientific perspective, reading scholarly articles on a particular condition. Such articles will focus on the etiology, symptoms, treatment, and prognosis of a particular illness. Second, we will examine mental illness from a “popular” or media account of the condition. To this end, we will read about selected mental illnesses as described in non-scholarly publications (e.g., Time magazine) and depicted in classic movies (e.g., Psycho). Finally, we will examine mental illness from a “first-person” perspective, reading memoirs or autobiographies from people suffering from certain mental illnesses. In the end, the goal of the course is to help students recognize that our understanding of mental illness is influenced by the many ways mental illness is depicted and represented in our society. A discussion-style approach will be adopted in which we review primary and secondary sources pertaining to a certain mental illness. Out-of-class watching full-length feature films followed by in-class discussion of these films will occur. Written assignments also will accompany the viewing of the films. Students, furthermore, will select a memoir, autobiography or a case-study presented in a textbook involving a person living with a particular mental illness (e.g., depression) to serve as the primary source for an individual research paper at the end of the semester.
Anthony S. Rauhut
MWF 12:30-1:20
25. Understanding the Human Place in Nature
This course will engage with an absorbing and relevant topic: What is the ‘human place in nature’? In the course, we will explore the complex interactions between humans and the natural world through multiple and overlapping perspectives, disciplines and “ways of knowing”. We will consider nature as something wholly independent of human beings that not only supports our existence but structures the world we live in. We will discuss how nature is a social as well as biophysical entity as what we consider nature (or ‘natural’) depends on our worldviews, position in society and life experiences. Finally, we will view nature as something we work to create. Nature existed before humans arrived and will continue on after we disappear; but while we are here, we continually reshape, restructure and reorganize the natural world. Ultimately, how we understand the ‘human place in nature’ has consequences, positive and negative, because perspectives vary across and within societies and can be used by people to advance certain economic, political and social agendas. The course takes an interdisciplinary approach in which we read material from the natural sciences, nature literature and prose, history, philosophy and ethics, politics, religion, cultural studies, sociology and policy. We will also employ ‘found objects’, view art and photographs, watch films and take field trips.
Michael Beevers
MF 11:30-12:45
26. What is it like to be a ______ ?
Can bees feel pain? Do plants smell their surroundings? What is it like to be a bat? How do our environments shape our perception? Can we shape our own perception? Sensory experience provides the raw material through which we and other species understand the world. This first-year seminar will explore the fascinating and multifaceted study of the senses in relation to perception and consciousness. We will investigate this topic with an interdisciplinary approach, reading scholarship in philosophy, science, social science, and the arts. Our discussions about these texts and ideas will be enriched by excursions outside the classroom to investigate and hone our powers of perception on Dickinson’s campus and in the surrounding area. Ultimately, we will consider the implications of our findings for how humans understand and relate to each other and other species in the web of life.
Maggie Douglas
MF 11:30-12:45
27. Fast Cars, Big Questions: Motorsports and American Culture
From roaring engines and packed grandstands to spectacular crashes that dominate highlight reels, motorsports have captured American attention since the birth of the automobile. While NASCAR may be the most recognizable name, motorsports extend far beyond oval tracks. This first-year seminar explores that broader world—from grassroots road and stage rallies to major professional racing series—as a lens for understanding American culture and society. Designed for both die-hard fans and complete newcomers, the course uses motorsports to tackle big sociological questions. Why do danger and risk play such a central role in the sport’s appeal? How do race, ethnicity, gender, and class shape who participates and who is celebrated? What do fans gain from their identities as supporters, and how have money, media, and commercialization shaped the meaning of racing over time? Through case studies, discussion, and hands-on activities, students will examine how motorsports reflect broader cultural values and social tensions. The seminar emphasizes active learning and real-world engagement. Students will analyze live and recorded motorsport events, conduct an ethnographic interview with someone involved in racing, and study influential figures such as Linda Vaughn, Danica Patrick, Shirley Muldowney, Kyle Petty, Al Unser Jr., Leonard T. Miller, and Wendell Scott. Along the way, students will build essential college skills in critical thinking, oral communication, and academic writing that apply across majors. Participants will also research the history and culture of a motorsport of their own choosing. No prior knowledge is required—just curiosity and a willingness to explore how motorsports, culture, risk, and community intersect.
Michele Lee Kozimor
WF 11:30-12:45
28. Persephone and Hades through the Ages
Ancient myths are constantly being reinvented, but what does this process reveal about the values and tastes of contemporary audiences? What does it take to turn a myth centering on sexual violence into a story about female empowerment? And what is at stake in labeling the myth of Persephone and Hades a love story? In this seminar will examine what today’s depictions of this myth, like that of the popular web comic Lore Olympus and the currently touring Broadway musical Hadestown, can reveal about contemporary pop culture; we will consider how it has been used in the hands of modern poets like A.E. Stallings, Rita Dove, Isaac Stackhouse Wheeler, and Louise Glück; and we will question how these iterations do or do not differ from the earliest sources by reading translations of the ancient Greek Hymn to Demeter and the Roman poet Claudian’s Rape of Prosperina. In the final project of this class, students will produce their own personal, creative interpretations of the myth.
Lucy McInerney
MW 11:30-12:45
29. Just Kidding: Humor and the Good Life
In this seminar, we’ll examine the nature of humor and its place in the good life. What is it, exactly, that makes something funny? If humor, like beauty, is supposed to be "in the eye of the beholder," why do so many people agree on who or what are the best comedies, comedians, or comedic actors? What is the purpose of humor or comedy? Is it merely to entertain? Or should it do something more than this? And is there such a thing as an "ethics" of humor? When is it okay, or not okay, to laugh? The seminar will be divided into three sections: the first focuses on the main philosophical theories of humor; the second focuses on the aesthetics of humor; and the third focuses on the ethics of humor. Our readings will be mostly philosophical, spanning from Plato and Aristotle to present day.
Jim Sias
MWF 12:30-1:20
30. It’s Time to Light the Fires and Kick the Tires: The Relevance of Dirt Track Racing in Central Pennsylvania
Dirt track racing occupies a distinctive place in American cultural life, blending sport, technology, spectacle, and community. This seminar introduces students to the history and culture of dirt track racing in rural America, with a focus on sprint car racing in Central Pennsylvania. Students will gain a historical overview of dirt track racing, explore the distinctive mechanics and technologies of sprint cars, and examine the tracks, drivers, and traditions that shape the region’s racing culture. Students will engage with diverse sources such as books, academic articles, racing broadcasts, podcasts, and more. This seminar may include a trip to Williams Grove Speedway and/or the Eastern Museum of Motor Racing to provide an experiential context for understanding the cultural significance of sprint car racing in Central Pennsylvania.
Melissa Innerst
MWF 11:30-12:20
31. Heated Rivalry
In late 2025 and early 2026, interest in the Canadian series Heated Rivalry swept across North America and beyond. The 6-episode series, based on a romance novel by author Rachel Reid, follows the decade-long arc of the relationship between two male professional hockey players. The audience(s) have experienced this series in many dimensions: romance, sex, fear, bravery, lying, relationships with parents, friendships, neurodivergence, discrimination, sport, fandom, music, identity, representation, and more. During this first-year seminar we will explore these impacts of Heated Rivalry, and contextualize with other media, including Brokeback Mountain, the 2005 award-winning film based on author Annie Proulx’s short story, and Miracle, the 2004 film dramatizing events related to the US Men’s Ice Hockey team win over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Winter Olympics. Along with way to the cottage we’ll develop skills in the areas of critical analysis, writing, and information literacy. Join me on the journey.
Kirsten Guss
WF 11:30-12:45
32. Bodies By Design: Power, Technology, and the Politics of Enhancement
In a quickly changing world, the ability to alter oneself has now become quite feasible. New technology, viral marketing, and ease of accessibility promote fast methods of change to a general audience. However, who allows these decisions? What governing bodies control the safe distribution of these drugs? Should you trust them? In this course we will explore the use and misuse of pharmaceuticals drugs, the process of their discovery, and the viral marketing that propels their popularity and accessibility. Conversations centered around the ethical and equitable use of body changing pharmaceuticals will also be a significant portion of the class. Additional exploration of the politics and policy of these drugs will be a major theme of the course.
Miguel Leal
WF 11:30-12:45
33. History of medicine and public health
This course will examine the history of medicine by focusing on major turning points that reshaped and demonstrated moments in public health and public health policy. Beginning with the Bubonic plague, we will make our way through some of the most defining diseases and developments in public health history. We will look at the development of the smallpox vaccine and later the eradication of smallpox. We’ll also look at the 19th century theories about how cholera spread in London and how those theories were shaped by social reforms. Typhoid Mary and her quarantine will provide insight into the increasing power of public health departments and how those departments are willing to exert their power. We’ll also examine the AIDS crisis: how it was able to spread silently for many years and how the patients dictated the response to the epidemic. Critical in examining this history is also understanding the different factors that govern public health policy. Who is ill? How is illness defined? Who makes decisions about disease definitions?
Kendall Thompson
MR 3:00-4:15
34. More Human than Human: The Arts & Sciences Confront Evolution
This course examines how human beings have approached the matter of their own evolution from the nineteenth century to the present. We will look at how philosophers, scientists, religious thinkers, writers, artists, and filmmakers have narrated where homo sapiens has come from and engaged questions of where we may be going as a species. Course texts will range from evolutionary theory (by Darwin and other scientists) to works of speculative fiction (such as Jeff Vandermeer’s Borne), movies (such as Her and Blade Runner), and music (such as that of Sun Ra and Janelle Monae); and we will read, talk, and write how theories of human evolution affect (and are affected by) race, technology (especially AI), gender, climate change, genetic modification, and politics.
Cotten Seiler
MF 11:30-12:45
35. Cancelled
36. How to Be Disagreeable
The First-Year Seminar (FYS) introduces students to Dickinson as a “community of inquiry” by developing habits of mind essential for liberal learning. Among those skills is the ability to converse with people whose perspectives differ from your own. As the philosopher Karl Popper said, “the growth of knowledge depends entirely upon disagreement.” Yet when you come across perspectives that differ from your own, what do you do? Do you tune that person out or ignore that idea? Do you walk away? Do you censor your own thoughts and silence your own voice for fear of conflict? Or do you know how to constructively disagree? In this class, you will learn how to be disagreeable, to sit with (not agree with) ideas that may make you uncomfortable, to explore multiple perspectives, to evaluate those perspectives, and to speak truth. You will engage in different types of conversations across differences: debate, dialogue, deliberation, and discussion. You will explore how your identity and values shape your perspectives, how you can help co-create democratic learning spaces, how you can listen well and ask curious questions, how you can inhabit another person’s perspective (and why you would want to), and how you can identify misinformation and respond to it. Writing assignments will challenge you to explore the complexity of seemingly black-and-white topics and hunt down the truth behind misinformation. The course will teach you to engage in conversations across differences of opinion and facts so that you can become open-minded students and fair-minded citizens in a democracy.
Noreen Lape
WF 11:30-12:45
37. Incendiary Objects: A Century of Controversy in Modern Art
Modern art is often associated with challenging accepted tastes. Even Impressionist art, one of the most popular styles of modern art today, was highly controversial in late 19th century France, when critics considered it a form of visual anarchy. This seminar will examine works of art--including Matisse's distorted subjects, Duchamp's famous urinal and the comic-book inspired paintings of Pop Art--to consider why certain artists, particular works of art, and entire movements, have generated controversy across the twentieth century. Are there common elements these "incendiary objects" share? What makes a work of art contentious? Students will research a specific controversial work which interests them, and we will consider through readings and discussion why so much of modern art is characterized by critical offense and even public outrage. We will look at works of art firsthand on a field trip to view modern collections at the Barnes Foundation and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Elizabeth Lee
WF 11:30-12:45
38. Cancelled
39. Cancelled
40. Playing to Learn: Harnessing Technology in K-12 to Facilitate Deeper Mathematical Understanding
What is the intersection between mathematics, art, and education? Can that intersection be employed to encourage students to learn math as they create their own works of art? This seminar focuses on one way to teach pattern recognition, one of the core tenets of mathematical understanding, by focusing on the geometric patterns that emerge by starting with regular polygons. Students learn to reason mathematically by searching for similarity in the images they create.
Steve Erfle
MW 11:30-12:45
*Learning communities are clusters of seminars that faculty have developed around a similar theme. Seminars in a learning community often share readings, may meet together during class sessions, and/or collaborate to organize out-of-class events such as an invited speaker.