CONTESTING EXTINCTION: IMAGINING MULTISPECIES FUTURES

Autumn 2025

Through a multi-disciplinary approach, we will look at how current threats to the planet's biodiversity are inseparable from threats to cultural diversity. Course readings will indulge in, but ultimately resist, the apocalyptic appeal of art that depicts terminal extinction scenarios. Course assignments are oriented toward imagining and generating collective, livable futures in the wake of biodiversity loss associated with the Sixth Mass Extinction. All readings in English.

Jason Groves, German Studies

5 credits, Diversity (DIV); Social Sciences (SSc)

THE RESISTANCE STARTS NOW: MEDIA AN D POPULAR CULTURE IN THE FIGHT AGAINST AUTHORITARIAN POWER.

Autumn 2025
Across the globe, democracy is under siege. How can we protect our basic rights, once thought to be inalienable, and restore those that have been stolen? The simple answer: Resistance. Through film and texts — including the writings of Martin Luther King, Malcom X, and Angela Davis —students will explore a partial history of protest and resistance, strategies and tactics of resistors, and the role of violence, if any, in resistance.

Richard Block, German Studies

5 credits, (DIV) Diversity, (SSc) Social Science

Campus Tour: A Multicultural Introduction to German Studies

Autumn 2025

This class provides an introduction to the modern university and an exploration of the relationship between knowledge and power. Using the lens of visual and written contributions from German speaking lands, we will examine how they speak to contemporary issues such as race, gender and climate change. Readings will include thinkers whose marginalized status have challenged and produced alternatives to the dominant culture.
You will learn about the foundations of the modern university, why you are studying here, and what you can get out of your college experience. 

Vienna 1900 in English: The Naked Truth: Crisis and Dissolution in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

Spring 2025

How was gender portrayed in Vienna 1900, and what did people do to resist and undercut rigid definitions and stereotypes?  Why were healthy expressions of sexuality forbidden during this time?  How does a society react when their stable, comfortable world begins to collapse?  What do you do when language fails and you can no longer describe your thoughts and feelings?  This course, The Naked Truth: Crisis and Dissolution in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, seeks to hold up a mirror to Vie

 Modern Prose: Travel and Narration

Spring 2025

How are modern travel and migration experiences narrated by a diverse group of writers? Whose voices do we hear in their stories? How are they portraying self and Other? Which encounters and adventures do they feature in their texts? We will discuss the poetics of walking and contemporary slow travel, fictional East-West travelogues, Arctic adventures, Italian journeys, tales of displacement and post-migration stories.

Subscribe to