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First-Year College Seminars
Fall 2025 College Seminars
The following seminars will be offered in Fall Quarter 2025. Click on the ">" in front of a title to read the course description. Please confirm class days and times in CAESAR as there may be some changes.
| Title | Day | Time |
|---|---|---|
Instructor(s): Sylvester Johnson Description: This undergraduate first-year writing course is designed to teach essential writing skills that will empower students to communicate successfully and support their achievements as college students and beyond, as career professionals. This course devotes central attention to the intersection of race and technology, particularly as examined in Black Studies scholarship. Students will learn about systemic racial forms and impacts of AI technology, explore the rapidly changing world of generative AI technology, and comprehend AI’s risks, relevance, and benefits for scholarly communication. Students will discover methods to apply generative AI to advance research, analyze data, and effectively communicate insights. This course will also engage human creativity, combining it with AI-assisted ideation to elevate student’s capacity for creative writing. Designed to nurture circumspect and curious learners, this course invites students to engage with the uncharted future of AI, race, and humanity, cultivating socio-technical analysis, scholarly communication, and ethical frameworks for implementation. Join us on this exciting journey to enhance writing skills, harness the potential of AI for written expression, and study the pivotal role of race and AI for the future of humanity. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Ryan Platte Description: In this course we will examine, and learn how to write about, the role of Ancient Greece and Rome in American film and culture. Preliminary steps in this study will involve introductions to various historic eras of the ancient Greco-Roman world as well as important elements of ancient culture. Our emphasis will, however, not be analysis of antiquity itself but rather of recent American engagement with that antiquity, particularly in film. We will examine not just how antiquity perseveres in American culture, but how popular art creatively and critically engages with inherited Classical traditions. We will also consider engagement with Classical antiquity in some non-cinematic media as well, such as the graphic novel and even the architecture of the city of Chicago. In addition to the scholarly elements of this course, it will also serve as an introduction to college life itself. We will learn about specific resources on campus that exist to enable student success as well as discuss student well-being and personal success strategies. Your instructor will be your academic advisor this term and this will incorporate advising related activities to help students succeed not only in this class but at the university generally. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Tracy Hodgson Description: Do animals think? Are they self-aware? How can we humans ever hope to find out? Topics for exploration and discussion include: The evolution of cognition; the history and current state of research on animal thinking; how studies of animal thinking may help us better understand human cognition. | MWF | 1pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Lis Elliott Description: In this course, we will have two main foci: (1) communicating effectively in writing on our specific theme of “Are you what you speak?”; and (2) adjusting to college life and building the foundation of your undergraduate career. We’ll explore some sociolinguistic issues (connections between language and society) among Slavic speech communities and areas of Central Europe. Our guiding question is: Are you what you speak? Together we’ll explore questions like: Is Kashubian (Cassubian; kaszëbsczi jãzëk; or in Polish język kaszubski) a dialect of Polish or a separate West Slavic language closely related to Polish? Are Kashubian speakers Polish or Kashubian or both? In Ukraine, are Russian-speaking Ukrainians Ukrainian? Are German-speaking Turks in Germany German? We’ll look at how language can be used to build nations, resist outside influence, and sometimes to exclude—even to the point of denying identity. Topics include: language myths, the difference between language and dialect, and the role of language in shaping personal and national identities. At the same time, you’ll work on adjusting to college life. We’ll read and discuss strategies for: making the most of your studying and learning; recognizing when and how to ask for help and support (and why this shows strength, not weakness); setting and achieving academic goals. You’ll also have opportunities to get to know Northwestern’s campus better and discover the many resources here to support you throughout your academic journey. As the final writing assignment for this course, students will work on any geopolitical area in the world and examine the sociolinguistic issues particular to that region or linguistic variety. Some previous papers, for example, have looked at: the role of Japanese in Korea; Koreans in Japan and language discrimination issues; the languages of South Africa; the status of African-American English (or African-American Vernacular English, or Black English) in the US; US language change and the Internet and social media; Celtic in Ireland; the successful revival of a dead language, e.g., Hebrew, as the official language of Israel; the successful revival of a dying language, e.g., Native American/Amerindian languages, Hawai’ian, etc.; language rights in the EU; American Indian/Amerindian languages; bilingualism in the US or Canada; ASL (American Sign Language); Kurdish language discrimination in Turkey; and other topics. | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Fay Rosner Description: What do poetry, music, and painting have in common? Can a painting be musical? Can music tell a story? In this seminar, we will immerse ourselves in the works of several Influential French artists – including composer Claude Debussy, painters Berthe Morisot and Eduard Manet – and the most famous poet and art critic of 19th - century France, Charles Baudelaire. Through close readings and “slow looking” we will take our time enjoying the works of artists from these different genres, as we seek to understand how these writers, painters and musicians echo, support, and challenge one another in their work and criticism. Classroom discussion will be complemented by trips to The Art Institute, Northwestern library’s Special Collections, and musical events on campus. | TTh | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
Instructor(s): Marcelo Vinces Description: Biology is the study of life and living organisms. Like all the natural sciences, it is concerned with describing, predicting and understanding natural phenomena based on evidence from observation and experimentation. It is a data-driven endeavor. But like all human activities, it does not exist in objective isolation, but rather within a societal context. This course aims to contextualize the study of biology towards a better understanding of how social and cultural histories and dynamics have had a profound effect on biological research, and how social, political and economic problems can strongly influence the impact of scientific breakthroughs. The topics we will cover, among others: the role of subjectivity in science (the good and the bad); the cultural, political and societal barriers to reaping the benefits of biological research; the role of communications in the field of biology; and select biological topics including evolution, cancer and infectious disease. You will learn from press articles, academic literature and non-fiction general-audience books. This seminar is a liberal arts course in Biology and will thus touch on all the foundational disciplines of the Weinberg College curriculum: natural sciences, social and behavioral sciences, empirical and deductive reasoning, historical studies, ethical and evaluative thinking, and even literature and the arts. | MWF | 3pm-3:50pm |
Instructor(s): Almaz Mesghina Description: Race is something that is constructed and something that constricts us. The field of psychology is responsible for both, but also has solutions for both. This class considers blackness and psychology from four perspectives: 1) How psychology has helped create the notion of race, 2) How psychology has treated black minds and bodies historically, 3) How psychology has ignored the diversity of black identity and experiences, and 4) How all of these show up in the modern, everyday interactions we have. Through course readings, discussions, and written assignments, we will develop and apply an understanding of how psychology makes blackness, and the psychological implications of a race-aware society. We’ll also learn how to read, critique, and write psychological research. Course readings will include journal articles, videos, and book chapters. There is no required textbook. Because this is a College Seminar, we will also develop and apply an understanding of how to be effective, healthy college students. We will do this by reading psychology research articles and engaging in candid discussion to adopt the evidence-based strategies for thriving at Northwestern. | MW | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Rebecca Zorach Description: Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble: This course surveys the art and visual culture of economic boom and bust. We begin with historical examples from Dutch still life painting and its relationship to "tulipmania," to colonialism, print culture, and paper money in the "Mississippi Bubble," to Hollywood and the Great Depression. We then discuss selected modern art movements in relation to poverty, anti-work movements, gentrification, and the 2008-9 housing bubble (otherwise known as the subprime mortgage crisis). You will learn skills in interpreting art, understanding art movements, and analyzing the relationship of art and society. There will be short writing assignments and a final project that involves holding a debate on what the next bubble to "burst" will be. Generative AI and the contemporary art market are two possible examples. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Wen-Fai Fong Description: In this course, we will learn about major astronomical discoveries in the past century, highlighting the crucial role and contributions of women astrophysicists to our understanding of the Universe. Such fundamental contributions include developing a stellar classification system, laying a foundation for the expansion of the Universe, providing evidence for the existence of dark matter, and discovering a class of neutron stars, called pulsars. We also celebrate the first major observatories to be named after women pioneers, which are coming online now and in the next year. By bringing these contributions to the forefront, we will also examine and discuss our own biases in how we attribute credit for scientific discoveries. | TTh | pm-3:20pm |
Instructor(s): Shelby Hatch Description: In earlier times, “The Green” referred to a literal green space in the center of a town or village where residents would gather for public events. These events might be social or political in nature. In current parlance, we often use the word “green” to refer to something environmentally benign, and this includes the practice of “green chemistry.” In this course, we will blend these dualities of “green” by communicating chemistry on the metaphorical green through essays, podcasts, 1-minute documentaries, and presentations. The course will culminate with a “Chemistry on the Green” event on campus. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Melissa Rosenzweig Description: This first year seminar has two objectives: (a) to teach you about environmental justice and environmental justice movements in Chicago, and (b) to teach you strategies for writing strong arguments. The first part of the course will cover the history of the environmental justice movement in the US, including some of the movement’s main objectives, and review community case studies both successful and unsuccessful. In the second half of the class, we will focus on environmental justice movements in the Chicago area. We will rely on articles, field trips and guest speakers to get an on-the-ground grasp of EJ movements in Chicagoland. | MW | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Sherwin Ovid Description: What does it mean to engage with color theory in an expanded field? Color describes the phenomena of the light spectrum reflecting and interacting with objects in a space. Through various readings our class will explore the overlap between formal, cultural and socio-political aspects of color. In this course, students will critically explore how meaning emerges from the use of color in artistic practice and other forms of cultural expression. We will engage with different works of art to gain a deeper understanding of individual artistic expression being socially conditioned. Likewise, we will seek to understand the ways that various histories have informed given assumptions about color and its effect on language used to speak about it. How do these creative forms open possibilities for imagining other ways of being, existing, or for simply, imagining other ways of theorizing about color? By being in conversation with a variety of artistic forms, we will build an understanding to respond to the complexity and urgency of color in contemporary artistic practice. | TTh | 1pm-2:20pm |
Instructor(s): Elizabeth Smith Description: How do students build community at Northwestern University, an elite, private, PWI (predominantly white institution) in the midwestern United States? How do cultural anthropologists think and write about people and places? What is your place at Northwestern? To find out, you will research, write, and communicate using anthropology's most famous methods: participant observation fieldwork, writing fieldnotes on your observations, and creating a final ethnography on one aspect of life on campus you choose to study throughout the quarter. Weekly readings and class discussions inform your observations, building toward a final creative/academic project presentation. We pay particular attention to intersecting power structures such as racialized identities, gender, sexuality, economic inequality, and cultural production. An important part of the course consists of in-class roundtables where we host guest speakers from NU student groups alongside local organizations for dialogue on current issues facing our communities. Conducting your own participant-observation research will empower you to 1. make sense of your environment in the current moment, 2. turn an analytical eye toward Northwestern as an institution, and 3. critically develop your new role as a college student. Requirements include contribution to class discussion, hosting roundtables, developing your field research project, and your final project presentation of your research results which can be creative, analytic, or a mix of both—past students have written and performed songs and poetry or created podcasts, maps, and hand-drawn illustrations as well as more traditional academic analyses. Course materials include one book for purchase ($15/ebook or $36/print) and book chapters, articles, and film/media accessed online in Canvas (free). | WF | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Maxim Sinitsyn Description: We will discuss various findings from the fields of marketing, psychology, and economics that help us understand consumers' decision making. This background will be useful for critical evaluation of standard economic theories. | MW | 2pm-3:20pm |
Instructor(s): Sandy Zabell Description: Cryptology is the study of secret writing, or more generally secure communication. We will discuss classical methods of cryptography, followed by the use of the German Enigma machine during World War II, and end by discussing modern cryptosystems such as RSA and PGP, digital signatures, and their use in internet security. | MWF | 10am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Morgan Thompson Description: Through technologies like smartphones, social media, and Large Language Models, we produce digital traces of our everyday lives. Most of this data is collected and analyzed by governments, businesses, and scientists who use algorithms and data analytics to make decisions that impact our lives. There are two broad narratives about the societal implications of big data and technology. On one hand, technologies can improve health, increase access to education, produce economic efficiency and growth, and stimulate more green energy projects. On the other hand, when governments or companies use algorithms and machine learning to supplement or even supplant human decision-making, fundamental values like responsibility, fairness, and authenticity may be at risk. Will Big Data and machine learning usher in a new age of enlightenment and prosperity or undermine our values and result in an erosion of autonomy, self-determination, and workers’ rights? In addition to the academic content, this College Seminar will focus on improving the critical reading, thinking, writing, and time-management skills that will serve you well in your future Northwestern courses. We will also focus on setting and evaluating your own academic goals for the quarter. This seminar may serve as a space of social and advising support to aid in your transition to university and the increased academic expectations of college-level work. We will discuss grades and perfectionism, resources for help during challenges, unwritten professional norms in professor-student interactions, maintaining academic integrity, and identifying credible sources. | MW | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
Instructor(s): Brady Clark Description: When academics discuss communication, they tend to focus on ideal uses of language involving cooperative, honest, helpful, and trustworthy speakers. Real-world communication is not like this at all. This seminar examines communication in our non-ideal world. Our focus will be several forms of deceptive communication: lying, bullshitting, and misleading. We will explore a wide range of topics: what are the linguistic cues to deceptive communication, if any? does lying necessarily involve deception? why is there so much bullshit in contemporary political speech? how is fake news related to lying, misleading, and bullshitting? is fake news a useful notion at all? Our goal will be to figure out what tools and concepts we need to understand the varieties of deception that characterize human language interaction. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Deborah Rosenberg Description: What do we do about a world that doesn't conform to our expectations? Do we set out to mold reality to our vision or accept it as it is? How do we forge ahead with our dreams if others do not share our values or goals? Cervantes' Don Quixote tackles these big questions in ways that are both moving and funny as it narrates the adventures of the bedraggled hero--a man driven mad by reading too many fantasy novels--and his earthy sidekick Sancho Panza. The novel contains themes that resonate with our lives today, exploring not only what it means to write--and read--fiction but also asking us to evaluate what kind of person we want to be in the world. In our class, we'll read the novel closely and debate how its essential questions can shape our personal choices moving forward. We will read the novel in English; no prior knowledge of Spanish is required. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Jim O'Laughlin Description: Imagining worlds gone wrong, dystopian stories plunge us into places that may seem not only unthinkable but also troublingly familiar. We'll explore a number of questions about these worlds: how do the people in them understand why things are the way they are? What stories about the past do these worlds rely on? What exactly is dystopian about these worlds, as imagined? How do the people in these worlds envision the future? What about their ways of thinking or about their practices challenges the dystopian? How do these dystopian worlds compare with worlds we already know, or with the way things were when these stories were written? Short stories, novels and films may include (among others) some of the following: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, "Friday Black"; Heather Lindsley, "Just Do It"; Sarah Langan, "Independence Day"; Ray Bradbury, "The Pedestrian"; Ted Chiang, "What's Expected of Us" or "Understand"; Kazuo Ishiguro, "Never Let Me Go"; Shirley Jackson, "The Lottery"; Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"; Ling Ma, "Severance"; Sayaka Murata, "Vanishing World"; Kenan Orhan, “The Beyoglu Municipality Waste Management Orchestra." | MWF | 3pm-3:50pm |
Instructor(s): Jonas Jin Description: We will learn about the concepts of equity and economic efficiency, using very basic economic frameworks to think about them. We will focus on the equity-efficiency tradeoff present in policymaking and discuss the philosophical merits of economic and social policies that affect our everyday lives. | MW | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Sarah Brown Description: Ever wonder how a TikTok becomes an action or how a conversation sparks a movement? In this course, we'll explore how our ideals of justice and equity aren't just abstract concepts—they're alive in our daily choices and interactions. Behind every protest sign, every viral hashtag, and every community organizing effort lies both sophisticated theoretical frameworks AND practical skills developed through generations of activism. One doesn't work without the other. As we navigate this first-year seminar together, you'll discover the false boundary between what's "personal" (your self-care practices, learning styles, and individual growth) and what's "political" (the values and systems you engage with). In truth they are inseparable—and understanding this connection is power. | TTh | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
Instructor(s): Scott Sowerby Description: This course investigates the history of gender and sexuality in early modern England by examining the social norms that shaped behavior. Notions of what was normative and what was aberrant were constantly being tested. Public scandals served as moments of stress, revealing the cultural faultlines in the changing world of early modern England. These cultural energies found their way into plays and poems, which reenacted the wider struggles over social norms. Themes covered include love, marriage, and sexual desire, including same-sex desire. | MW | 2pm-3:20pm |
Instructor(s): Rebecca Ewert Description: How does The Bachelor shed light on modern courtship rituals, and what can Dance Moms teach us about the social functions of the family? What messages can we learn about the gendered and racialized social constructions of health and illness from The Biggest Loser? Reality television shows may seem like silly “guilty pleasures,” but they are also illuminating cultural artifacts that reflect contemporary American behaviors, norms, and tastes. In this course—by reading sociological literature, paired with episodes of reality shows—we will learn to analyze these forms of entertainment through a social scientific lens. We will consider the following questions: What messages about race, class and gender do these shows promote? What kinds of citizens are viewers encouraged to become through this genre? How are social differences represented within these programs? What impact do these shows have on our society, if any? | MW | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Jonathan Brack Description: While he is remembered as a world conqueror whose military campaigns left vast destructions across Asia and the Middle East, Chinggis (/Genghis) Khan also established a durable nomad-ruled empire that transformed the two great civilizations that centered in China and the Islamic world. Under Chinggis Khan and his successors, the Mongol Empire became the largest contiguous land empire in world history, stretching from Hungary to Korea, and from Siberia to Burma. Beyond his reputation as a ruthless barbaric disrupter, Chinggis Khan has also been portrayed as an enlightened, tolerant monarch and visionary statesman. The course explores the military and political career, conquests, and imperial legacy of Chinggis Khan and his empire, focusing on the world conqueror’s changing image, from his lifetime through the 21st history. We will analyze the work of medieval authors, and compare their perspectives with later textual and visual portrayals - from Europe to China and Mongolia - where Chinggis Khan’s legacy was suppressed under Soviet influence and later revived as a national hero after the USSR’s collapse in the 1990s. This course is about how the history of Chinggis Khan and the Mongol Empire has been written about and represented. It’s also designed to help you adjust and succeed at Northwestern. Studying history develops one’s thinking and writing skills and perspective – tools essential for charting one’s successful path forward, much as Chinggis Khan did in his time. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Susan Pearson Description: This course is a history of the ideas and practices of "whiteness" in the United States from colonial times to the twentieth century. How did the idea of a "white race" come into being and why? More important, how was whiteness systematically privileged in law and policy? In this course, we will look at racial ideology, but also at laws, policies, and practices that have made “white” a privileged social position. We cover the development of New World slavery and race-based labor regimes, laws controlling access to public spaces and good based on race, how state and federal policies controlled the unequal distribution of education, housing, and property, and we also examine how different groups have had access to “whiteness” over time. This course proceeds from the (true!) premise that race is not biological or genetic, but social and cultural. The course argues, that race, moreover, is created not simply by the ideas that people have about one another, but by the structures that systematically produce differential treatment based on skin color and genealogy. Our task is to examine how some of those systems have developed in U.S. history and to trace out how they impact the world we live in today. The course is reading- and writing-intensive. Students should come prepared to engage in careful, meaningful, and sometimes difficult, discussions. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Meaghan Fritz Description: Welcome to Northwestern! Over the next ten weeks, first-year students all over campus will experience a flood of transitions as they adjust to college life. You'll experience exciting (and scary!) social transitions. Many of you might experience some degree of spatial transition, too, arriving to live on campus away, however far, from where you graduated high school. There are financial transitions, family transitions, and cultural transitions to contend with. In your courses this fall, many of you will experience academic transitions from high-school to college-level expectations of critical thinking, reading, and writing. As a student enrolled in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, you'll begin experiencing the interdisciplinarity of a liberal arts education right away, juggling multiple courses across varied disciplines starting in Week 1! This course aims to ease some of the transitions that you will experience at Northwestern as college students and as humans by defining, exploring, discussing, and reflecting on your own experiences, academic and otherwise, this quarter. To ground these conversations, we will spend the quarter reading and discussing Barbara Kingsolver's coming-of-age novel, Demon Copperhead, a work that embodies the exciting interdisciplinary overlaps of a liberal arts education. Through our exploration of Demon Copperhead, we will work together to cultivate productive study habits and to hone your critical thinking, reading, writing, and research skills for Northwestern classes. Our class will also serve as a social support system, as we work generously with one another through seminar discussion and a routine exchange of writing. Content Warning: Demon Copperhead is a beautiful coming-of-age novel told from the perspective of a narrator who is a survivor of nearly inconceivable loss. Although the story is oftentimes playful, funny, and romantic, it also touches on many sensitive and painful topics including: scenes of graphic drug use, addiction, and overdose; the U.S. foster care system; the opioid epidemic; homelessness; economic precarity; parental death; and grief. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Charly Yarnoff Description: We live in a time when hostility toward immigrants has made many Americans forget that, as Barack Obama said, "We are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too." This hostility has obscured the complex reality of the lives of immigrants. In this course, we will study fiction and poetry by immigrants and their children in order to understand that complex reality. We will explore such questions as: How do social attitudes and institutions impact the lives of immigrants as they seek to pursue the "American Dream"? What happens to the relationships between parents and children through the process of acculturation into American society? How do differences in national origin connect with other differences, particularly gender, race, ethnicity, and class? | MWF | 10am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Kalisha Cornett Description: From its inception, cinema was defined by movement and modernity, both of which are represented by the invention and proliferation of the automobile in early 20th century America. This class offers a chance to investigate the fascinating phenomenon of ‘automobility' and the moving image by engaging with close readings of classic films and foundational texts in film studies. Questions about film genre and the Hollywood film industry will help illuminate our analysis of an array of cultural objects, from contemporary posters and advertising to art exhibits and literature. What is the allure of road travel in America? Why and how does it persist? We will bring our collective understanding of the historical significance of the American road film to bear on more contemporary examples of the genre in final projects that engage with intersectionality and cultural studies. | MW | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Guy Ehrlich Description: Whether as a dangerous rival of traditional Jewish life or the only escape from the cruel, alienated modern world, love has always been a preoccupation in modern – and postmodern – Hebrew literature and culture. This course observes and discusses various depictions of the notion of “love” from the early 20th century onwards, as captured in Hebrew novels, short stories, films, and other cultural representations. Throughout the course we will explore notions such as the eruption of love and its decline; the myth of love; the diasporic Jewish men’s complex attitude toward Eros and the suffering of the abandoned wives of the shtetl; the gendered roles and power relations; the queer alternatives of love; and postmodern love. The literary and cultural texts will be accompanied by theoretical essays. While focusing on the concept of love, this course also provides an introduction to Hebrew literature and culture. As a College Seminar, it will also help students become more familiar with the university and its academic culture, set their academic goals, and navigate their transition into university life. No previous knowledge of Hebrew, Israel or Judaism is required! All the Hebrew texts will be read in translation. | MW | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Evan Mwangi Description: This course will examine the use and representations of landscape in both rural and urban fictions, poetry, and cinema from different parts of the world and periods. We will discuss the symbolic and aesthetic effects generated through references and depictions of various landscapes. Topics will include landscape and identity, modernity and ecological impacts on landscapes, how to navigate the modern academic landscape, landscape and power, landscape and the sea, and urban landscapes. We will also learn how to adduce evidence from artistic objects to support our arguments and how to write strong essays on different topics. Students will also revisit important topics, such as how to use of hard data to support interpretation of an artistic texts; different types of paragraphs; how to use secondary sources, including views of scholars you disagree with; how to write a strong thesis and a punchy conclusion; and how to do impactful interdisciplinary research. Artists and theorists discussed will include Rachel Teukolsky, Eric Hayot, Carwyn Graves, Abdulrazak, Gurnah, Ousmane Sembene, Anita Desai, J.M. Coetzee, H. Rider Haggard, Alison Booth, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o. Teaching Methods: Interactive lectures, debates, role play, one-on-one meetings with the professor, small group discussions, library and archival visits.
| MW | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Lisa del Torto Description: This seminar explores language as part of our everyday social experience. We’ll considering such questions as: Why do we call some language varieties "dialects" and others "languages?" Why do some people think you have an accent while others think you don't? Has your own language changed since you came to Northwestern? What patterns govern the conversations we have, and how do we create social relationships, communities, and identities in those conversations? Why do some people mix multiple languages? Is it, like, ok for me to, like, use like so much? What about um or ain't or ya know? Students will formulate and consider their own questions about language and social life in papers and presentations. | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Myrna Garcia Description: This College Seminar for first-year students will explore the topic of Latinx Migrations and Mo(ve)ments in a small, discussion-oriented class. Students will engage in critical thinking, writing, and speaking while interrogating questions of migration, belonging, and social movements. By engaging with academic material, art, and epherma in Latinx immigration activism, the class will foreground the critical dimensions of college-level work and practices. The College Seminar will also introduce students to skills such as effective communication, time management, help-seeking, and resourcing that are necessary to thriving at Northwestern. | MWF | 11am-11:50am |
Instructor(s): Elvia Mendoza Description: This course will introduce students to how Latinx artists and writers use art, film, and literature to reflect the complexity of their lives and the experiences of others. In what ways do these artistic expressions and the methods used by these artists help us gain a deeper understanding of the stories and histories they visualize and convey? Additionally, how might they give form to what can be felt, sensed, intuited, or remembered but not seen? To explore these questions, we will engage with a variety of visual and written works, including multimedia installations, paintings, collages, documentary and narrative films, poetry, and novels created by Latinx, Latin American, and Caribbean artists and writers. We will examine the power and potential of these works to foster a critical understanding of issues related to migration, displacement, sexual reproduction, policing, and the politics of memory. Students will also have opportunities to experiment with selected artistic forms throughout the course. | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Robert Launay Description: Anthropologists are committed to understanding other cultures in their own terms. One way of developing such an understanding is to read works that they have written or recited. This class will focus on two such works from cultures as different from each other as they are from ourselves. Njal's Saga is a medieval Icelandic story of a series of revenge killings that spins further and further out of control. Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee is a fictional account of how a real 8th century magistrate solves three mysterious Through each of these books, we will explore the different ways in which cultures understand and implement law and lawlessness, justice and injustice, loyalty and treachery. | TTh | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
Instructor(s): Joanna Grisinger Description: This course explores the relationship between law and civil rights in modern American history – in particular, African Americans’ efforts to secure their legal, political, civil, and economic rights. How and why did the American civil rights movement pursue legal change (in the courts, in the legislatures, and in administrative agencies)? How and why did legal actors (including judges, White House officials, members of Congress, and state governors) engage with civil rights reformers? What are the benefits of pursuing legal change, and what are the limits? In order to answer these and other questions, we will read and discuss material including court cases, statutes, speeches, memoirs, newspaper articles, photographs, and songs. By the end of the quarter, students will be able to read and analyze diverse primary sources carefully and accurately, with attention to the author’s perspective, position, and credibility, and to the source’s general context; read, evaluate, summarize, and engage with scholarly works by others, and be able to analyze authors’ arguments for evidence, context, strength, and credibility; make clearly written and organized arguments that are well supported by primary sources; and understand how to work with integrity and to properly cite facts, ideas, and scholarship. Students will also engage with primary documents and scholarly research related to social inequalities and diversities; better understand how such differences as race, class, and gender are related; better understand the impact that histories, institutions, and/or social structures have on local issues and on individual experiences and identities, including their own; and think and write more critically about political, social, economic, and/or cultural issues related to social inequalities and diversities. Students will also practice setting and evaluating academic goals; communicating effectively and respectfully; studying effectively; and knowing when and how to ask for help. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Kathleen Carmichael Description: Ever since Pentheus' fatal decision to spy on the revels of Dionysus, audiences have had a guilty fascination with the spectacle of addiction—a fascination which crosses not only centuries but disciplines, captivating scientists, policymakers, philosophers, artists, and laypeople alike. This class will trace the evolution of literary representations of addiction across several centuries, from classical depictions of god-induced madness, through the Gothic narratives such as Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde, temperance classics such as Ten Nights in a Barroom (whose impact has often been compared to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin), to the twentieth- and twenty-first century comedies and confessionals that make the bestseller lists today. Through these readings and related critical texts, we will examine the ways that such literature provides a staging ground for public controversy and emerging theories about the artistic, cultural, ethical, and scientific significance and ramifications of addiction. Course readings/viewing will include works of fiction, journalism, and writings from the natural and social sciences as well as popular films. We will also consider practical topics such as how University library resources and experts can help students locate and evaluate key sources and develop authoritative arguments. | MW | 2pm-3:20pm |
Instructor(s): Sean Ebels Duggan Description: Modern logic came of age in the run-up to World War II. This course will read some popular histories of those advancing the new logic and their lives in the midst of the impending Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938. Logic, at least as practiced by a group of philosophers in Vienna, was seen as a threat by the Nazis. We'll read some accounts of why, along the way meeting some curious characters in philosophy, mathematics, and literature, and learning of how their politics and outlooks interacted (often in surprising ways): W.H. Auden, Rudolf Carnap, Kurt Gödel, Martin Heidegger, Iris Murdoch, Rainer Maria Rilke, Bertrand Russell, Susan Stebbing, and Ludwig Wittgenstein, among others. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Domenic DeSocio Description: This course offers a study of Berlin, Germany's world-famous role as a major center of contemporary dance music (techno, house, disco) and nightclub culture. Beginning in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War and the reunification of Berlin, the city quickly became home to cutting-edge DJs, party planners, club owners, and dancers, including notorious clubs like Tresor and Berghain. Coming together, they pioneered new ways to express oneself and connect with one another through music and dance. This course examines many aspects of this culture, from the unique genres of music and how DJs create music to the technology of sound, the experience of dancing and of clubs as spaces, and the politics of belonging, representation, and identity on the dance floor, in particular its complicated exchanges with Black communities and music in Chicago and Detroit, the birthplaces of this music. We also will consider the social, cultural, and political implications of nightlife and dance music as a site of community-building, friendship, and love within contemporary Western society, especially for queer communities. As a College Seminar, the course will introduce you to college life and the essential, but mostly unwritten, rules, expectations, resources, and habits for you to succeed as a student. This "hidden curriculum" will include topics such as time management, emotional health, academic integrity and the mechanics of citation, and how to seek help. Our assignments will include a variety of small, weekly writing assignments and short summative, comparative, and analytic essays to begin your familiarization with college writing. There will also be an experiential component to the course involving events with DJs in which you will talk about practical topics such as the work of DJing and making music and the politics and logistics of dance. | MWF | 10:00am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Ricardo Court Description: Together we will explore the making of the first great political scientist of the modern age starting with a close reading of his secret diplomatic communications, his villainous guidebook The Prince, his licentious play The Mandrake, ending with his resigned (and some say cynical) later histories. So much of our exploration of the inner workings of states and regimes begins with Machiavelli, who raised ire and admiration, no less for his willingness to say out loud what others whispered, than for the temerity to show what makes power work. Class descriptions from the past two years can be viewed on the class descriptions page. https://class-descriptions.northwestern.edu/ Class descriptions prior to that can be viewed in CAESAR in the Class Search and Catalogs sections. | MWF | 2pm-2:50pm |
Instructor(s): Ben Gorvine Description: While those going into the field of mental health typically think about it as a "helping profession", there is much more than meets the eye when it comes to the psychological, economic, and political forces that have defined the development of the field. The course will focus on the contemporary framework for defining mental illness - the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (now in its 5th edition) - with a particular focus on some of the problems that have emerged from the disease-based framework utilized in the manual, and the assumptions that it makes about disorders and typical development. We will explore the role of state mental hospitals in the U.S. in the early to mid-20th century, and we will examine the political forces that drove the de-institutionalization movement of the 1970s and 1980s, with additional consideration of the contemporary implications of the closing of state hospitals. Finally, the course will focus on the evolution of psychotherapy in the modern marketplace, and some of the challenges posed by the demands of the health insurance industry and academic research. The aggressive way in which the psychiatric medications have been marketed, and the implications for diagnosis and treatment will also be discussed. Along the way, we will explore critiques of the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, and modern psychiatry. Some of these themes will also be explored through analysis of popular films and other media. Students will be evaluated on the basis of class attendance and participation, co-leading a class discussion with peers, and writing assignments including short reaction papers and a longer research paper. | MW | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
Instructor(s): David Smith Description: For many, music serves a valuable function in everyday life. Music can serve as a mode of artistic expression, a method of relaxation, a means of influencing mood, and an avenue toward transcendence. This course will focus on the human experience of music by integrating research and theory from cognitive, social, developmental, and perceptual psychology. Special attention will be given to topics such as the development of musical expertise, the effect of music on cognition, effective music teaching, and the cultural significance of music. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Michele Zugnoni Description: Embark on a captivating exploration of heroic journeys, including your own journey into Northwestern University. In this course, we'll examine timeless tales, classic to contemporary. From ancient legends like the epic of Gilgamesh to modern bestselling novels, our journey will traverse cultures and millennia. We'll analyze cinematic masterpieces from studios like Marvel, Disney and Universal, watching as heroes embark on epic quests that inspire and captivate. Through immersive discussions, written analyses, and interactive activities, we'll unravel the archetypal stages of the hero's journey - from the call to adventure to the ultimate showdown with destiny. More than an academic pursuit, this seminar is a call to adventure, an invitation to embark on your own heroic odyssey. In this course, you'll craft your own hero's journey narrative, exploring themes of courage, resilience, and personal growth as they apply to your journey into college. The hero's journey you create will become a time capsule - your professor will email it back to you in four years so you can relive the heroic journey you took during your first quarter at Northwestern. | MW | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Krista Thompson Description: This seminar introduces students to histories of photography and lens-based practices, attentive to the role the medium has played in Black communities in the United States from the mid nineteenth century to the present. Studying photographic technologies from the daguerreotype to the meme, the course explores how notions of citizenship, justice, social visibility, criminality, race, and gender have been variously negotiated through engagements with photography. We also explore the meaning of photographic forms from the U.S. in the Caribbean and Africa. Course goals and learning objectives: This course is both an exploration of photography and a forum for students to hone the skills and habits of mind needed to succeed at Northwestern. This includes identifying and evaluating arguments and presenting ideas orally and in writing. We will also spend time discussing how to navigate the university and how to keep your balance in the years to come. Assignments: weekly response papers, an oral presentation, and final research project. Reading are available on the Course Canvas site. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Scott Ogawa Description: We will read Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress and use it to discuss the sources and ramifications of Progress, broadly defined. Focus will nevertheless be placed on economic progress, especially in recent centuries. We will also read parts of Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind and use it to discuss political polarization and open discourse on college campuses. Additional readings, topics, and discussion will be based on student interests and input. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Robert Ward Description: Welcome to “Race and Technology: Being Human in the Post-Racial United States”. This course is designed to introduce and prepare you for college life at Northwestern University. The primary goal is to equip you with the academic skills necessary for success, including identifying and utilizing essential university resources. This course will focus on three interconnected themes: race, college writing, and the impact of technological advances such as generative AI and social media on each. We will explore how power, class, and technology influence the performance of race, ethnicity, and culture. Racial ideology, a complex and integral part of the American experience, will be examined through storytelling, academic articles, news items, personal experiences, and research data. We will also explore how modern technological advances shape our collective thinking and relationships. We will address critical questions such as: How do social media, search engines, and generative AI alter our perceptions of the world? Can technological developments in late capitalism help level the social playing field and end segregation? Should technology serve the best interests of all citizens in society? Reading, writing, and research are the pillars of this course, with a special focus on the role of technology, particularly generative AI, in these practices. While we will cover the fundamentals of crafting a strong research paper or project, we will also critically reflect on the ethical and efficient use of AI tools like ChatGPT. An essential component of the class will be to discuss, assess, and evaluate what generative AI can and cannot support, and how to determine fair and ethical use of such technologies. Join us as we navigate these complex and nuanced issues, developing the skills and knowledge needed to thrive in your undergraduate journey and beyond. | TTh | 2pm-3:20pm |
Instructor(s): Ben Frommer Description: During the Second World War millions of Europeans made the decision to resist domestic terror and foreign occupation. They acted out of a range of motives, personal and collective, and in a myriad of ways, from armed violence to passive noncompliance. Some resisted from the start; others when they were personally threatened; and many only when Nazi defeat became imagineable and then inevitable. Some who once opposed fascism decided to bend to it, while others later joined the resistance, or played a double game from the start. Many, regardless of their choice, paid the ultimate price for it, while others gained from their decisions. From the Nazi seizure of power to postwar efforts to seek justice for crimes against humanity, this course will examine the dilemmas, ethics, and consequences of resistance agains the Nazis and their Axis partners among state officials, soldiers, and civilians. We will read firsthand testimony and secondary scholarship and watch both documentaries and feature films that grapple with the dilemmas of resistance during the Second World War. | TTh | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
Instructor(s): Michal Wilczewski Description: Brothels, bathhouses, and backrooms—take a tour through the sexual underworld of Eastern Europe. In “Sex and the Slavic World,” we uncover the more salacious parts of history that no one dare talk about, covering the history of sexuality in Eastern Europe from the mid 19th century to mid 20th century. We will discuss fin de siècle culture and sexual decadence; the medicalization of sexuality; prostitution and sex-trafficking; sex reform and sexology; the World Wars and sexuality; gender and sexuality under state socialism, and representations of queerness in Eastern Europe. Additionally, as a College Seminar, this course will help students develop the tools they need to help them transition to college life including creating healthy study habits, nurturing meaningful relationships, and gaining awareness of the so-called "hidden curriculum." | MW | 2pm-3:20pm |
Instructor(s): Juan Martinez Description: We'll read and write stories that engage with the supernatural, the fantastic, and the strange in this class, and we'll look at the history of strange fiction and its relationship to our own lives---and how one can make sense of the other. Some of it will be spooky, some of it will be funny. The goal is to see how these narratives give us a mirror image---sometimes distorted, sometimes not distorted enough---of the world we find ourselves in. Texts include: The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories (ed, Jeff Vandermeer & Ann VanderMeer) ISBN: 9780765333629. Available at campus bookstore. | TTh | 2pm-3:20pm |
Instructor(s): Anthony Chen Description: This course explores the idea that the extreme level of political polarization and economic inequality that prevails in our own time can be traced to the conflicts and dilemmas of the "long 1970s." This fall, special attention will be devoted to the role of campus protest. In addition to exploring primary sources from the period, students will read an interdisciplinary selection of monographs, book chapters, and journal articles. Grades will be based on class discussion as well as a combination of short and long writing assignments. | MW | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Caitlin Fitz Description: The American Revolution: a war waged by high-minded gentlemen in wigs. Or was it? This course explores the conflict in all its messy (and surprisingly manure-smeared) reality, particularly its fraught relationship to democracy, settler colonialism, human bondage, and human freedom. Especially because this class convenes on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we will also consider the Revolution as a touchstone in modern-day culture wars, from Supreme Court originalism to the 1619 Project to the Hamilton musical. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Will Reno Description: This course surveys the changing American strategies in the conduct of warfare since the end of the Cold War in 1989. The course opens with a consideration of the massive military buildup and assault on Iraq in 1991. The American military presence in that region never went away. This presence provides us with a framework for analyzing the changing character of warfare. Consideration of the Iraq War (2003-2011) focuses on the development of counterinsurgency and the emergence of multi-domain warfare (i.e., political warfare, information warfare, etc.) and increased reliance on low-profile Special Operations Forces. Our attention then turns to recent challenges of hybrid warfare (i.e., hacking and fake news and their roles in conflicts), and the advent of flexible responses such as increased American reliance on drones and contractors in the conduct of warfare. The course ends with the consideration of several emerging American war-fighting strategies. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Kristen Landau Description: What was your childhood like? Do you have fond memories of summer vacation at the beach, or time spent fighting with siblings and banished to your room? Maybe there are some times you'd prefer to forget. Are you still a child, or is that age gone for good? This course is dedicated to studying childhood as lived experience—shaped by race, class, gender, environment, and more—and as a cultural category from the present and into the deep past. We will explore a range of themes from an anthropological perspective, including play and toys, learning styles, parenting strategies, children's spaces/places, and funerary practices. We will then apply these themes to the history of childhood as we know it through archaeology around the world. In the process, you'll to reflect on your own childhoods, form a supportive community for adulting at Northwestern, and lay the foundations for what you wish to accomplish during this "college" life stage. | MW | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Fred Rasio Description: For many centuries scientists and philosophers speculated about the existence of other worlds—planets orbiting other stars, some perhaps harboring life, or even entire alien civilizations. It is only in the last 30 years that astronomers have been detecting exoplanets, and astrophysicists are now modeling these worlds guided by rich data sets, some suggesting the possibility of alien life. In particular the James Webb Space Telescope has opened an exciting new epoch of exploration, revealing for the first time the detailed atmospheric chemistry of exoplanets and the physical conditions on the surfaces of alien earths. This seminar will cover the brief history of this field and recent developments, through (nontechnical) readings and class discussions. | MW | 2pm-3:20pm |
Instructor(s): Matt Hurtgen Description: Despite massive external changes, Earth’s surface has remained suitable for life for most of its history. For instance, the sun emitted about 30% less heat energy when the Earth formed 4.6 billion years ago, and calculations suggest that the Earth’s surface should have remained frozen until approximately 2 billion years ago. However, geologic evidence supports the existence of liquid water and life since at least 3.8 billion years ago. This seminar will explore the Gaia hypothesis, developed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis, which asserts that the Earth functions as a self-regulating system, with life playing a central role in sustaining the planet’s habitability. | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Megan Geigner Description: The Great American Graphic Novel explores the representation of the multiple perspectives of the American experience and US history through popular graphic novels. The central question of this seminar is: How do graphic novels and comics illustrate American identity? Through a robust reading schedule (comics read fast, so we can read many of them!), we will encounter unique and varied views on the themes of religion, (dis)ability, immigration, race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, and citizenship, and how those ideas have changed conceptions of Americanness over time. Students will enhance their reading of examples of multiple subgenres of the form–superhero comics, graphic nonfiction, web comics, and all ages comics–with scholarly, journalistic, and popular culture criticism. This seminar transitions students into college-level inquiry and into being conscientious and ethical members of a learning community composed of diverse perspectives. Students will demonstrate their new knowledge about graphic novels and comics and American identity through drafting and revising journal entries, analytical papers, and creative assignments. | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Glenn Sucich Description: Depictions of "hell" have differed dramatically throughout history. In the Hebrew Bible, for instance, the underworld, or Sheol, is represented as a neutral place where all people, the wicked and the righteous, go after death. By contrast, the New Testament describes hell as a place reserved exclusively for the wicked, where the "Devil and his angels" are made to suffer "eternal fire" (Matt 25:41). Similar differences can be found in later texts as well. The physical hell of Dante's Inferno, with its descending rings and fantastical torments, is far different from the internal, personal hell from which Satan and others suffer in Milton's Paradise Lost. For Dante, hell is a physical place; for Milton, it is a psychological state. Why? This course will examine the ways in which interpretations of hell and its inhabitants reflect the religious, political, and intellectual ferment of particular cultures at particular historical moments. | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Tom Gaubatz Description: Overview How do video games tell stories, and what kind of stories do they tell? What are the formal elements and techniques that games use to tell stories, and how do individual games deploy them to give shape to the player’s experience? How are these stories shaped by the cultures that produce them, and what meanings can they carry for the players who consume them? In this course, we explore these questions through a study of the Japanese Role-Playing Game—the JRPG. Evaluation Method Weekly writing assignments, reflection exercises, class participation, final paper Course Materials Required All materials will be provided in PDF format. | MWF | 10am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Bruce Carruthers Description: Individually and collectively, we think about what might happen. We consider the future over a range of time-horizons, from the immediate (what will happen in the next hour) to the distant (how will things look in a century). We worry about our own individual futures (will I have a job when I graduate from Northwestern?), we worry about other peoples’ futures (will my child get a job after they graduate from college?), and we worry about our collective futures (what will climate change do to our society over the next 50 years?). Frequently, we make plans for the future, either to create a future that we seek, or to avoid a future that is problematic. Public policy is often concerned with how to create better collective futures, and the tricky part is figuring out which alternatives are better than others, and for whom. Sometimes people make contingency plans, deciding what to do if something happens (for example, disaster planning). Such activity generally involves making two types of guesses: what will or could happen in the future, and what will our future preferences be about those various possibilities. In certain cases, the predictions we make are “self-fulfilling” in that the prediction helps to make itself come true (bank runs are a classic example). In this course, we will work through a series of examples where people have thought about the future, sometimes focused on its very specific features. Prompted by weekly required readings, we will discuss these examples seminar-style in order to hone our own thinking about the future. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Tristram Wolff Description: From its beginnings, the rise of the novel has been fed by anxieties about the overactive imaginations of passionate readers, and the dangerous effects of popular literacy. As studies of emotional over-investment and varieties of censorship, the narratives in this course address when and how literature and reading become dangerous (whether to individuals, social values, or the powers that be). How do the enthusiasm, madness, naivete, subversion, or transgression that reading leads to — prove revelatory? And, from a different point of view, how are concerns about the effects of reading and the spread of literacy partly motivated by the desire to control information, freedom, and social mobility? Broadly speaking, how do reading and literary interpretation teach us new techniques for how (or how not) to interpret the world? The course offers a brief introduction to the remarkable story of the modern novel, while exploring the influence of fictional and nonfictional literary works on us as readers. Learning Objectives • To practice critical reading, as preparation for college literacy across the humanities • To increase facility in college writing through short essays analyzing literary readings • To practice collaborative learning in a small seminar setting, through engaged and respectful dialogue, debate, and analytic discussion • To discuss (and occasionally read about or explore) college life at Northwestern Class Materials (Required): (NB: available at Bookends & Beginnings) • J. W. von Goethe, The Sorrows of Young Werther (ISBN 978-0140445039) • Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey (ISBN 978-0141439792) • Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass (ISBN 978-0143107309)• Toni Morrison, A Mercy (ISBN 978-0307276766) | TTh | 11am-12:20pm |
Instructor(s): Mary McGrath Description: The problem of climate change is a predominantly political problem, involving dynamics of power, aversive tradeoffs, struggles over the distribution of losses and gains, and navigation of our responsibilities to others around us as well as those who are geographically and temporally distant. In this class we will examine multiple dimensions of the political problem of climate change, considering the role of public opinion, partisanship, climate activism, interested actors, and other topics. | TTh | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
Instructor(s): Chad Horne Description: In the social contract tradition in political philosophy, exemplified by theorists like Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, the idea of the "state of nature" plays an important role. The state of nature refers to the condition of human beings prior to the development of formal political institutions. For social contract theorists, the justification of political authority hinges on the state's ability to solve the problems that befall us in our natural, pre-political condition. Perhaps needless to say, there have been some developments in our understanding of non-state societies since the heyday of the social contract tradition some three hundred years ago. In this seminar, we will read the classic social contract theorists alongside recent work from anthropologists, historians, and political scientists. Our aim will be to better understand the pre-political condition of our species and to explore the moral and political implications of that condition for us today. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Nir Avni Description: There are several tricks (really, mindsets) that tend to come in handy in all quantitative disciplines---math, the sciences, engineering, and economics---but are rarely taught explicitly. The academic goal of this seminar is to train you to use them. We will cover: order of magnitude estimations (also known as Fermi problems), using symmetry to guess natural laws, and exploration as a method of problem solving to help you level up your game for any future quantitative challenge. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Richard Walker Description: In this seminar we will survey various topics in politics, philosophy and economics. Exactly what we end up covering will depend a little on what most interests the group, but provisional topics include alternative voting mechanisms, Rawls' theory of justice, the ethics of nationalism, the economic effects of immigration, how economists and regular people think about risk and uncertainty, prediction markets and the wisdom of crowds, the pros and cons of a basic income policy, behavioural economics, and the evolution of "moral" behaviour. The aim is to find interesting things to read, talk and write about. | MW | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Sarah Dimick Description: How have trees—their branches, their shade, their rings, their stillness—inspired poets, politicians, scientists, and artists? When we pay sustained attention to the trees around us, how do they imprint on our ideas? In this seminar, we read widely, moving through environmental history, memoirs, short stories, science writing, and poetry featuring trees. We learn about the women of Kenya's Greenbelt Movement—who have planted more than 51,000 trees—as well as the foresters of Norway's Future Library, a forest that will be harvested to publish literary works sealed until 2114. We consider how trees are entangled in struggles for environmental justice and the project of collective flourishing in the era of climate change. The trees we encounter in this class are living organisms, but they are also metaphors, communicators, and bellwethers. By each selecting a tree to observe on a regular basis, we will put down roots on Northwestern's campus. Through measurements, sketches, journal entries, and other forms of observation, we will attend to these trees in the kind of detail that can shift into care and attachment. Teaching Method: Seminar-based discussions. Class Materials (Required): Wangari Maathai. Unbowed. 2006. May Thielgaard Watts. Tree Finder: A Manual for Identification of Trees by their Leaves. 1939. C.D. Wright. Casting Deep Shade. 2019. Texts will be available at: Primary texts will be available at the Norris Bookstore and on reserve in the library. Other texts will be available on Canvas. | MW | 2pm-3:20pm |
Instructor(s): Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern Description: Using the current Russia-Ukraine war as a springboard, this course provides a historical and cultural backdrop of the conflict outlining Ukraine as a colonial addendum of Poland, Russian Empire, and the USSR. Students will focus on thirty-year long history of Ukraine after the 1991 collapse of the USSR against a broad historical, political, socio-economic, and cultural perspective. Students will discuss the formation of a modern post-colonial nation bringing together insights into art history, comparative literature, nationalities and imperial studies, social and political history, and genocide studies. We will use op-eds by the famous world poli sci pundits, journalism blogs of Ukrainians who write during air raids, video clips and movies filmed over last thirty years in the independent Ukraine, poems and novels reflecting the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Based on high level of interaction, this course will explain why Ukraine suddenly moved from a peripheral position in the new and minds of European scholars into the central place of the world politics. | MW | 3:30pm-4:50pm |
Instructor(s): Ray San Diego Description: Do happiness and success ever feel like diametrically opposed concepts? Education, despite being touted as a great equalizer, is a highly contested site of struggle. It is a struggle to get in, a struggle to get through, and a struggle to figure out what happens after. Throughout each of these eras, academic and journalistic coverage of the Asian American student experience argue that social, cultural, political, economic, and familial pressures converge and compound on this population leading to unfulfilling, unpleasant, and unbelievable outcomes. Following that claim, this course explores these interlinked and overlapping themes for the quarter: 1)The persistence of the model minority myth and its impact on higher education, and 2) Asian American student mental health and well-being. We will study student activism and the emergence of Ethnic Studies/Asian American Studies in higher education, explore contemporary intersectional Asian American student experiences, and explore what wellness and self-care could be and do during this stage of life. In what ways do Asian American students survive, negotiate, and resist external and internal pressures of success and excellence? How do Asian Americans begin to redefine success on their own terms? Texts for this course may include selections from Mimi Khúc’s Dear Elia, erin Ninh's Passing for Perfect; Christine Yano, Neal Akatsuka, and the Asian American Collective's Straight A's: Asian American College Students in Their Own Words, and Debbie Lum's documentary Try Harder! | TTh | 12:30pm-1:50pm |
Instructor(s): Jeff Rice Description: These days the media is filled with stories about Free Speech on College Campuses, issues of 'wokeness' etc. This seminar is going to confront these topics head on; allowing us to direct a develop thoughts on what it means to be a student in 2023 in a Liberal Arts University. What is the relationship between free speech and intellectual inquiry? Debate, open discussion, hearing and speaking, trigger warnings, and hate speech. What does open mean, are limits required or a slippery slope? How should students, faculty and administrators handle these issues? How much of political correctness is, in fact, curtesy to others? How much is wokeness a term used to describe open access to the marketplace of ideas? How accurate are these terms when used in denunciation of current university culture? These are the issues we will be discussing in this class and we will operate with open discussion combined with mutual respect in order to maintain civility. | TTh | 9:30am-10:50am |
Instructor(s): Axel Mueller Description: In this seminar we will examine some of the fundamental ideas and questions behind democracy and provide a reading of their "inventors". Some of the questions are: What is democracy & what makes it valuable? Is it a form of government, a value, an ideal, a political system, a form of life, a bit of all this? Is it government by the majority or by all the people all the time? Why should the whole of the people decide and not the specialists in the respective questions? Are all democratically taken decisions automatically legitimate (what about minorities' rights?)? How should & could all citizens in a democracy participate in politics? By direct self-government of the people or only by voting representatives? Is everything democratically decidable or does the individual have unalterable rights? Is tolerance and/or free speech necessary for democracy and how far can it go? | MW | 9:30am-10:50am |