Fall 2023 UNIV 299 Courses
What’s the Big Idea: The Culture of Complexion
Professor Kiara Lee
CRN 45395 | Online | Asynchronous
Where do our thoughts and biases about skin complexion come from? How do we digest mainstream culture and its perpetuation of colorism, discrimination where one’s value is based on the shade of their skin? In what ways are seemingly different facets of complexion, like skin bleaching and sun tanning, so wildly different, yet, similar? Can the power that comes with complexion, something that is out of our own control, ever be taken away? Students will investigate these questions and more with local, global and racialized lenses while making sense of the culture of complexion in their own lives and in their own skin.
What’s the Big Idea With…Death?
Professor Amy Tudor
CRN 42035 | Online | Asynchronous
How does a house become haunted? Why do we embalm our dead when many other cultures do not, and what is a green burial? What do we mean when we discuss “quality of life” or talk about a “good death,” and do we know anything about what happens after death? And why are we so obsessed with True Crime as entertainment?
If you’ve ever expressed an interest in subjects like these, you may have been dissuaded from studying or even talking about them because they’re “morbid” or “depressing.” Not so! True, many people find issues around death and dying difficult, but being able to openly discuss them is both personally and culturally important. In fact, research shows that avoiding talking about death makes dying more difficult, while learning about it allows us to approach both our deaths and our lives in richer and more fulfilling ways.
Join Amy Tudor, Ph.D., a thanatologist and certified Death Doula, for this in-depth but surprisingly light-hearted look at death and dying in history, art, folklore and contemporary culture.
Spring 2023 UNIV 299 Courses
What’s the Big Idea? Global Comics and Social Change
CRN 42961 | M,W | 2 p.m.-2:50 p.m. | Hibbs 327 | Hybrid Asynchronous
The Iranian Green Movement. Corruption in Egypt. The American Civil Rights Movement. The mystery of a father’s immigration journey. Coming out in rural Pennsylvania. Masked crusade. The comics we’ll read this semester touch on all these topics in an effort to articulate big ideas. Together, we’ll ask what makes comics and graphic narratives particularly adept at addressing social conditions, individual identity, and change. Whether encountering superheroes, family memoir, urban noir, or even film, we’ll develop skills for analyzing graphic materials through close reading and an awareness of structure and genre. We’ll consider the ways that circulation, translation, and marketing impact our access to these texts and their ability to speak to each other. Finally, we’ll identify and complicate key themes across texts including family, history, and memory; urban life and social protest; and re-framings of gendered, religious, and ethnic identity.
What’s the Big Idea: A Fair Trial
CRN 41205 | T,R | 2 p.m.-3:15 p.m. | Harris Hall 4169 | Face-to-Face Instruction
The right to a fair trial is seen as a pillar of any free and just society, but just what does such a right require of the legal system and its participants? In this section of UNIV 299, we’ll consider the scope and significance of the idea of a free trial. We'll explore the many elements of criminal and civil trials and the questions of fairness they raise. What is an impartial jury? Why must there be a right to call and confront witnesses? Why should one be presumed innocent until proven guilty? What does the right to a lawyer entail? This course will consider these questions and others from legal, historical, philosophical, and social scientific perspectives.
What’s the Big Idea: Understanding the World of Work
CRN 36217 | M,W | 4 p.m.-5:15 p.m. | Harris Hall 2101 | Face-to-Face Instruction
Research shows that over our lifetimes, we will spend more time working than anything other than sleeping. But how often do we stop to really think about “work” as an area to study? In this seminar, students will explore the history, current challenges, and expectations for the workforce of the future. How did the industrial revolution upend gender roles in the US? Why are most jobs today in the service sector? How can entrepreneurial thinking impact your future? Will AI transform your job prospects? This section of UNIV 299 will use readings, films, and guest speakers to create an engaging and thought-provoking class experience.
J-Term UNIV 299 Courses (12/27/22-1/12/23)
What’s The Big Idea with the Hero’s Journey?
Professor Tanya Boucicaut
CRN 45154 | M-F | Online Asynchronous
Students in this class will have an opportunity to explore the big idea of storytelling and personal narrative writing. This course will take students on an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary journey to analyze the concept of the monomyth. This course will draw upon the works of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey, the film, The Lion King, and other texts that explore the Hero’s journey template. This course will also reflect on the ethical implications and responsibility of truth-telling in the creation of personal stories, particularly of cultures that are not of one’s origin. This course will culminate in the creation of a mini-radio play in the form of a podcast.
What's the Big Idea: The Culture of Complexion
Professor Kiara Lee
CRN 42964 | M-F | Online Asynchronous
Where do our thoughts and biases about skin complexion come from? How do we digest mainstream culture and its perpetuation of colorism, discrimination where one's value is based on the shade of their skin? In what ways are seemingly different facets of complexion, like skin bleaching and sun tanning, so wildly different, yet, similar? Can the power that comes with complexion, something that is out of our own control, ever be taken away? Students will investigate these questions and more with local, global and racialized lenses while making sense of the culture of complexion in their own lives and in their own skin.
What’s the Big Idea with Pseudoscience?
Professor Jake Khoury
CRN 43133 | M-F | Online Asynchronous
Even in our age of unprecedented scientific and technological progress, many of us are still swayed by misrepresentations of nature and scientific knowledge. Such ideas are covered with a veneer of scientific legitimacy, making them more appealing and enticing. But, scientific legitimacy itself raises a number of questions, and what this term means remains, in many ways, an open question. Pseudoscience can help us to better understand what makes science legitimate, as knowing what something is not can help us to understand what it is. Therefore, in this course, we will explore several foundational inquiry questions: How does contemporary science get done? What is the nature of scientific knowledge? What is pseudoscience? What distinguishes good science from bad science, and science from pseudoscience? How should we approach scientific information?
Summer 2022 UNIV 299 Courses
What is the Big Idea with Food?
Professor Joe Cates
Food is universal; all humans need to eat. Food is not just fuel for the body; humanity’s search for and relationship with food have shaped the course of history. For example, we define historical development using changes in food as a marker of civilization (hunter/gatherers vs. agricultural societies), integrate food into religious rituals (communion), use food to mark rites of passage (wedding cake), and eat in historically and culturally specific ways – not to mention that cooking is often considered a creative art, and that the arts often incorporate and emphasize food. Even so, food is fuel for the body – and our food supplies and sources often serve to inscribe significant economic and political boundaries. This course will examine food from a variety of disciplines. Using analytical lenses from sociology, anthropology, philosophy, art, literature, history, political science, psychology, economics and religious studies, students will explore: the cultural, historical, sociological, economic, psychological, spiritual, and political dimensions of food;
how food shapes national, regional, gender, ethnic, racial, class, religious, and personal identity;
how the media and industry affect the food we eat;
food as a venue for creative and personal expression;
the production, consumption, and distribution of food;
food as a source of conflict: global food and agricultural problems and food-related social problems, including food security and scarcity, food and agricultural situations in developing nations, the impact of globalized, industrialized agriculture on local communities, farmers, consumers and the environment.
What's the Big Idea with Learning?
Professor Allison Tharp
UNIV 299 Fall 2022 Courses
What’s the Big Idea: Creativity and How We Learn
Professor Tara Burke
CRN 43815 | T,R | 2 p.m.-3:15 p.m. | Hybrid-Asynchronous
What does creativity have to do with learning? With wellbeing? What is creativity, anyway? Are humans inherently creative, and if so, how can we access and use our creativity for learning, discourse, and growth? How do we learn? What does the body have to do with how we learn, how we feel, and how we relate to our own thoughts—to each other? This UNIV 299 course will situate these questions about human creativity and learning in several contexts: personal, relational, historical, and global. Students will learn practical methods to enhance their personal relationships to creativity and learning, and probe these questions through larger contextual lenses and creative research projects. Anyone can learn and engage in this course; self-proclaimed creative or artistic merit is not required.
What’s the Big Idea: The Great Migration
Professor Nikki Fernandes
CRN 43756 | M,W, F 2 p.m.-2:50 p.m. | Face to Face
The big idea for our section of UNIV 299 is migration--the often long term relocation of an individual or a group from one place to another. Over the course of the semester, we’ll consider an array of seemingly simple questions and wrestle with their complicated answers: Why do people leave their homes? What do they leave behind? What do they find when they leave? What are the short-term and long-term effects of their movement? With what ease (or difficulty) do they make the journey?
What’s the Big Idea: Understanding the World of Work
Professor Virginia Wray Totaro
CRN 44443 | T,R | 2 p.m.-3:15 p.m. | Face-to-Face
Research shows that over our lifetimes, we will spend more time working than anything other than sleeping. But how often do we stop to really think about “work” as an area to study? In this seminar, students will explore the history, current challenges, and expectations for the workforce of the future. How did the industrial revolution upend gender roles in the US? Why are most jobs today in the service sector? How can entrepreneurial thinking impact your future? Will AI transform your job prospects? This section of UNIV 299 will use readings, films, and guest speakers to create an engaging and thought-provoking class experience.