Under the College of Arts & Sciences' new undergraduate curriculum, interdisciplinary learning experiences are available to its students through nearly 250 course clusters. Below is a sample of four of those clusters.
March 30, 2001
Description: This cluster will focus on gender and its relationship to sexuality and gender identity from a number of different perspectives. The course will examine how families, schools and popular media shape gender identity. It will look at the ways boys and girls, men and women resist dominant forms of gender construction and dominant definitions of gender roles in these institutions. It will examine the power and interests served by particular constructs of masculinity and femininity and the importance of critically examining the normative assumptions that influence how gender is treated in institutions of education and culture.
Courses include: Gender and Education; Topics in Women's Studies - Women, Feminism and Popular Culture; Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Identity Development; Construction and Experience of Black Adolescence.
Description: The Roaring '20s was the era in which 20th-century music and literature were forever changed. This generation produced new works that we find unusual in style and origin. Whites and blacks, men and women experienced Harlem as one of the focal points for this explosive change. In this cluster, students will not only read the writers of the period, but will also listen to and see the expressive artists of the age. The cluster will examine works of literature, art and music from numerous angles, situating them in the political and social context of the time.
Courses include: Afro-American Modern Writers Since the Harlem Renaissance; Literature Studies of the Harlem Renaissance; Jazz in American Culture.
Description: Sponsored by International Studies, this cluster will introduce students to some of the important issues regarding human use of the natural environment. Students will gain an interdisciplinary perspective on issues of global concern, such as the fate of shared global resources and issues of environmental degradation. They also will be exposed to the diversity of local practices in the exploitation and conservation of environmental resources. Students will learn the geology of ores and fossil fuels and will examine the environmental consequences of mining and using these products.
Courses include: Culture and Environment; Environmental and Energy Issues; Human Use of the Earth; Resources of the Earth; Introduction to Environmental Ethics; Brave New Crops.
Description: The goal of this program is to combine language learning with a study of the culture, society and politics of Western Europe, particularly France and Germany. The focus will be on the age of nationalism (1789-1914) with a special emphasis on the tense Franco-German relations of the period. Students will also examine cultural history and the symbolic representations of political issues in prose, drama, poetry, art, music and popular culture. The course will culminate with a three-week class trip to Paris and Berlin to introduce students to some of the historic sites they have studied in both countries.
Courses include: Focus on France and Germany: Franco-German Relations in the Age of Nationalism 1789-1914; Focus on French Identity: France as "Mre Patrie" 1789-1914; Focus on Germany: Imagining Germany 1789-1914.
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