Challenges students to integrate knowledge from several disciplines, applying academic learning and critical thinking skills to modern-day issues. Encourages students to work with others and become engaged citizens in the context of today's world.

Focuses on the development of a rural creative economy through an exploration of the history, economic development theory, city planning, government granting, and creative placemaking and the direct application of those efforts in North Adams, MA. Using the design thinking model, students will investigate the economic, political and cultural history of North Adams to generate a historical narrative of the progression from manufacturing center, to rustbelt community to an artist-belt center of activity. Students will conduct extensive research in the community exploring the history and current state of North Adams’ creative placemaking efforts and use their new understanding to develop, prototype and test ideas generated to further the community’s creative economic development.

Develop the skills to navigate and engage in effective intercultural communication in professional and personal contexts. Explores how cultural values, language, identity, and power shape interactions across diverse communities. Through case studies, discussions, and experiential activities, students will refine their ability to adapt, interpret, and respond to cultural differences, fostering global competence in an interconnected world.

Employs economic and social reasoning to investigate the causes of discrimination and poverty in the United States and to a lesser extent elsewhere in the world. Attempts to answer questions such as How is poverty defined? What are the dimensions of poverty? Why are some people poor and not others? Course material on discrimination focuses on the root causes of discrimination and evaluates the amount and extent of discrimination in the labor and housing markets.

Investigates the environmental history of North America with a focus on how landscapes, in both literal and figurative aspects, have changed. Uses topics (e.g. ice age, colonization, automobiles, mining, suburbanization, consumerism) or regions (e.g., Boston, Cape Cod, Florida), to investigate how humans have impacted and been impacted by the environment. Seminar-style class with discussion and student presentations.

Considers various ways that nature has been represented over time, from prehistoric cave paintings to modern Hollywood films; analyzes and compares environmental representations to each other; examines the current scientific knowledge and environmental context related to particular representations of nature.

Explores how creators use language and image to write about their own lives and the lives of others. Students will engage with texts spanning multiple disciplines, from creative nonfiction to archival, ethnographic and oral history projects. From this knowledge and their Core experience, students will craft a life writing project for an audience of their choice. By composing and reflecting on this project, they will better understand how to make knowledge live in their lives.

Invites students to identify a topic of their choice at the intersections of sex and violence, and spend the course engaged in an extensive process of research and writing on this topic, culminating in an article-length manuscript and presentation. Students will engage in a rigorous, iterative process of peer review. Readings will be advanced, technical, and often related to provocative topics. The course is designed to be preparatory for graduate study in the humanities and social sciences.

Focuses on communication, using music as a challenge to convey our thoughts, ideas, and beliefs more effectively. Looks at the cantatas as a model for perfection in musical art from the 18th century and how the music expresses balance, rhythmic patterns, emphasis on motives, unity, and variety, as well as principles of morality, ethics, spirituality, and meditation. Considers the history and socialization of coffee, including varieties, blends, brewing techniques, free trade use, and the effects of coffee in everyday consumption.

Provides an in-depth study of theatrical works by women within the context of feminist theory. Examines how feminism has shaped theatre across time. Highlights identity and the situated nature of knowledge creation. Covers the lost theatrical traditions of women, challenges of representation, diverse feminisms, and intersectionality. Engages problems faced by women in theater and presents possibilities for dismantling patriarchal institutions and misogyny through feminist interventions in the field.

Examines the moral traditions and ethical principles relevant to life, and their application in present-day clinical care and biomedical research. Introduces students to the historical, theoretical, and thematic dimensions of health care ethics. Focuses on main ethical terms and concepts, as well as decision-making procedures that students can use to discern and defend moral courses of action in health care.

Analyses popular Indian cinema through integrative frameworks of analysis to consider distinctive features of movies such as storylines, characters, cinematic techniques, the use of song & dance sequences to engage with themes that may include imaginations of the postcolonial nation-state, representations of changing gender roles, rising Hindu nationalism, migrants and the Indian Diaspora, audiences in India and abroad, Bollywood going global, and Indian cinema of the 21st century.

Facilitates students’ theoretical and experiential exploration of social justice as both a process and an outcome. Requires students to integrate concepts of oppression, liberation, and justice into the academic and professional fields of interest to them. Includes critical analyses of justice and injustice in students’ fields of study, as well as reflection on students’ identities and roles in combatting injustice.