Courses

Today, power flows through media in digital networks. In order to gain access to that power (and not be controlled by it), you have to be fluent in the media used within those networks. Contemporary Media Literacies asks you to rethink what it means to be literate in a globally connected world, taking literacy beyond traditional print-based media to multiple forms of knowing, including genres that consider visual representations, spatial relationships, sounds, gestures, and movement, as well as any multi-modal combination of these literacies. This course immerses you in the theory and practice of multiple literacies and considers how globalization has created more complex working and living environments. You will explore an area of research within your field of study that addresses real-world problems. The project results in a well-researched, multi-modal, multi-genre digital portfolio that is a critical and intellectual investigation, illustrating disciplinary and professional knowledge by applying contemporary media literacies with rhetorical intention.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

Can we appreciate the arts of cultures foreign to us? Is translation necessary? Does a culture’s sense of time and space affect its artistic expressions? Global arts provide a helpful window into the hearts of other cultures. In this course we will expand our ways of thinking/sensing/feeling to prepare for a comparative exploration of the arts of four different cultures beyond our own. We survey the past and present arts of these countries for clues to common themes and ideas while attempting to discover the distinct world views represented.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

This course asks, “How so?” in the context of American history. We are going to be looking at American history, our past up to our present, in terms of freedom and civil rights, the franchise, and economic and social welfare, seeing their pursuit as three separate but often overlapping and intertwined stories. (For shorthand purposes, keep in mind the acronym FFW—freedom, franchise, and welfare.) We will trace this pursuit over the course of three centuries, keeping in mind the three (conceptually) separate stages. We will identify the major issues of each stage through the voices of both contemporaries (opponents as well as proponents of change) and modern commentators and scholars. We will watch how and how far we have gone through each of the three stages of progress and try finally to assess just where we are on this journey or arc today. This is a very important (and ongoing) American story. But it is also, more generally, the story of the modern world, or, to put it another way, the story of the (ongoing) human experience in the modern world.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

Napoleon once famously admonished Europe to “let China sleep, for when she awakes she will shake the world.” In recent years the People’s Republic of China has certainly stirred, and the whole world has taken notice. However, China’s economic stirrings have been accompanied by mounting social and cultural tensions at the heart of Chinese society. In this course we will examine the political, social and cultural roots of modern China and discuss the varied nature of the nation’s future challenges. Topics will include state, society, and mass culture in the throes of reform, the global implications of China’s economic and diplomatic “Grand Strategy,” the widening urban-rural divide, and the role of the individual and individual dissent in modern Chinese society.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

September 11, 2001, obviously changed the world, and one of the ways this is apparent is with the increased interest of Americans in the Islamic world. This course seeks to place the modern Islamic world in an historical context, with an emphasis on how people in the West perceive Islam, as well as how Muslims see themselves. We will begin by tracing the roots of Islam to the era of the prophet Muhammad and charting the rise and fall of the Ottoman Empire, but our primary focus is the contemporary history of several countries within the Islamic realm. We will not focus on Islam as a religion. Themes for the course include the Islamic world’s relations with the West; the differences within Islam as well as within and between Islamic countries; gender relations within the Islamic world; the Arab-Israeli conflict and its significance to the broader Islamic world; and the rise of modern terrorism in the Middle East. We will finish the course by focusing on the Arab-Israeli conflict and its general significance for the Islamic world. Students will come away from the course with an understanding of the historical roots of Islam and of the contemporary Islamic world.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

Voices from Latin America: The Modern Period” aims to educate students about contemporary Latin American society and culture from the perspective of historical memory. After brief explorations of Latin America’s modern history and historiography, the course delves into the study of historical memories of the Cold War period in two Latin American countries: Chile and Guatemala. The course looks at the relation between history and memory through documentary films, a classic novel, and some scholarly sources. For the final project students will have the opportunity to create an electronic portfolio based on one of the Latin American countries using the online service WordPress.com.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

Booklist:

• John C. Chasteen, Born in Blood in Fire, 3rd edition (WWNorton, 2011).
• James A. Wood, Problems in Modern Latin American History, 4th edition (Rowman and Littlefield, 2014).
• Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, any paperback edition will do (recommend Harper Perennial reprint edition of 2006 translated by Gregory Rabassa).

This course affords you the opportunity to investigate current global conflicts from multiple perspectives. Begin by examining the definition of warfare, the key terms associated with warfare, and how both have changed over time. Become familiar with the history of warfare, its weapons, and how wars begin and end. The latter half of the course provides an overview of ongoing contemporary military conflicts between the United States and various adversaries including China, Russia, Iraq, North Korea, and Afghanistan. An emphasis is placed on how technology is changing the way the United States (and our adversaries) achieve military objectives in the air, on land, in and under the sea, and in cyberspace.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

In this course, you will develop and refine your personal and professional goals while creating an online portfolio. You will reflect on your experiences and frame them with a new vocabulary and style. By better understanding your story, who you are, and how you present yourself online, you will develop online presentation strategies  for meeting your goals. Through the lens of the rhetorical triangle, each week you will engage in a variety of activities, readings, videos, and discussions with other students centered on the questions of Who Am I, Who is My Audience, and What is My Message. This project will help you organize your experiences in a concrete and creative format so that you can authentically communicate your story online.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

We live in dangerous times. Violence, mischief, and mayhem have long characterized criminal behaviors that represent humanity’s dark underbelly. While it may be possible to isolate certain psychological types susceptible to recruitment by terrorist organizations, it is simplistic to profile individual terrorists and religious extremists without understanding the true nature of the systems that spawn them. Because we cannot separate individuals from the societies they belong to, it is essential to understand the cultural, political, and economic conditions that encourage terrorism and violence. In response to pervasive frustrations or manifold abuses, violence can transcend the individual to become governmental policies or social movements, propelled and justified by revolutionary ideology or religious beliefs. The course asks hard questions not only about the perpetrators of political and religious extremism around the world, but also about the social, economic, and political structures that give rise to violent acts against perceived enemies. The dangers we face in a liberal democracy are not imagined. The lesson of 9/11 is that our enemies are real. While we may easily identify one strand of radical Islamic orthodoxy as a legitimate enemy committed to our destruction, we must also ask what, if any, real differences separate a Christian fundamentalist who terrorizes abortion clinics in Florida from a Muslim suicide bomber intent on our destruction. More than an analysis of individual personality types, the course examines the premise that all social, political, and economic systems have their darker sides. It seeks to engage those contradictions through films, readings, and dialogue to imagine creative solutions that enhance our lives as well as transform the structures that encourage terrorism.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

Course Description: In this course, you will develop your own ethical leadership perspective and connect it to your own work experiences and goals. We start by reflecting on different types of leadership and relating these to your own core values. Next, we’ll identify common ethical frameworks and behaviors people bring to the workplace, and we’ll practice developing empathy and resolving conflicts that happen when these worldviews clash. We’ll explore successful examples of companies that have consciously balanced the tradeoffs of sustainability and profit. We’ll also analyze cases where there have been failures in ethical leadership and generate ideas for creating an organizational culture that makes these failures less likely. Finally, we’ll expand our scope to include leading ethically over the long-term, with virtual teams, and in global organizational settings.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

Together, we’ll develop and enhance critical intercultural competency skills, focusing on recognizing the needs of oppressed and marginalized groups, with a particular lens on issues of race and gender equity. You’ll examine your existing cultural perspectives and interconnections with groups that have a history of oppression, with sensitivity and respect for differences in perspectives, experiences, and values of others. We’ll explore ways to develop effective change strategies that will help you to promote social justice and intercultural understanding within your communities and beyond. You will emerge from this course with a holistic, empathetic approach to fostering connections between individuals and across cultures.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.

The intent of this course is to assist you in developing self-awareness related to formal project management and
to build on your foundation, while expanding your understanding of both project management concepts and the
practical techniques to facilitate your professional and personal growth. Upon completion of the course, you’ll
have designed your own repeatable process for effective project management that will serve you throughout
your professional career.

Course Summary: A broad overview of the course content and learning outcomes.