Sample of Previous Exploring Transfer Classes

This course provides an overview of the U.S. justice system by facilitating learning and questioning about the justice system and the centrality of race, ethnicity, and politics in the system. We begin with examining the roots of the modern justice system and its place within the broader U.S. government framework. In part II of the course, we explore how the current system functions and study the experiences of justice-involved people. Specifically, we cover the legal processes and actors significant to the system, such as police officers, lawyers, jurors, and judges. Moreover, we humanize and witness the experiences of individuals who are/have been detained, incarcerated, and on probation/parole to identify critical lessons that can inform our thinking about the role and practice of punishment in the United States. The course concludes by studying historical and contemporary efforts to reform and abolish the system.

What guides our choices? What gives those choices meaning? In this course, we will unpack these two seemingly simple questions from the perspectives of evolution, psychology, and literature, and we will discover frameworks for understanding how value shapes our experiences. Literature is replete with characters who seek to make sense of their own choices. When we identify with character and situations within the context of a story, we can apply that understanding to our own decisions in life. Similarly, in evolutionary theory, animals (including people) behave for reasons of “fitness.” What does this mean, and how does it apply to humans? For example, is autism an adaptation? What about depression? Finally, in psychological theories, animals (including people) behave for reasons of motivation or reinforcement. Do these processes help us understand our initial two questions? For example, if people make choices in order to achieve rewards, why do they sometimes regret these same choices? Taken together, evolution, psychology, and literature speak to the meaning of value—a concept that is forever shaping the form of our living.

In this course, students will have an opportunity to better understand the scientific process so that they may have a more informed understanding of climate change and possible responses. Students will develop skills in critical thinking, digital literacy, scientific literacy, and science communication.

The American Dream captures the idea that a person can pursue their dreams and improve their lives regardless of how or where they grew up.  During the past few decades, this dream has appeared more elusive in the United States due to rising income inequality and declining social mobility. In this interdisciplinary course, we will examine some of the drivers of these trends, including discrimination, wage policies, globalization, and automation. We also will explore differences across countries, as rising inequality, declining mobility and the causes of these trends are not unique to the U.S. Nevertheless, we will see that the ability of people to move up the income ladder varies a lot across countries, and even across regions in the U.S. One goal is to understand which places offer more opportunity and social justice. Key to these discussions will be the role that public policy can play. 

During the past few decades, income inequality has risen in the United States while economic mobility has declined. Thus not only is the U.S. more unequal than before, it is more difficult to move up the income ladder. Meanwhile rhetoric around populism has increased, and populist politicians have gained electorally both in the U.S. and elsewhere. Interestingly, this does not always translate into increased demands for redistributive policies. In this class, we will explore these phenomena and the potential links between them. We will close by examining the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on inequality and populism. Each topic will include an empirical component, as we will discuss how data are used to quantify and analyze problems. These discussions will highlight how the increasing access and use of large datasets have improved our understanding of economic and political trends in the country.

This course is fundamentally about race as a social construction globally and the historical and continuing importance of race in politics. Among other topics, we will consider and discuss how race is defined and understood and how race shapes and is shaped by political and legal institutions. We will also explore how race influences self and group identities, political attitudes and opinions, social and political lives, and political behavior. While we will mainly examine race in the United States context, we will also study the way race works and has political and social implications in other parts of the world, including Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America. In the course, we emphasize taking a multidisciplinary approach to explore race and politics and drawing from the fields of critical race and ethnic studies, history, law, philosophy, political science, and sociology. As this is a social science course that relies on the consideration and analysis of evidence to reach understandings and conclusions, we will frequently engage with and utilize social science data, including qualitative and quantitative data and primary and secondary sources.

Reading and Writing the Short Story” is for students who are interested in learning the craft of storytelling through reading and writing short fiction. This course will build on foundations of close reading, analysis, and in-depth discussions of published short stories by well-known and lesser-known authors from a diverse multitude of places and times. Students will examine exceptional short stories for their central craft elements, which they will also draw upon as they write their own stories. This course will introduce the major fundamentals of story writing, including plot, conflict, characterization, setting, narrative point-of-view, dialogue, as well as figurative language, tone, diction, and more. There will be some time set aside for discussion of the historic origins of the short story and its significance for marginalized writers through the last two centuries. Each week, students will write their own stories by learning how to draft and effectively revise their work, as well.

Every decision we make, from what to eat to where to live, has an environmental consequence. How do these consequences fit into the global-scale changes occurring on Earth? How can we make these decisions in an informed and ethical manner? 

This course will examine environmental ethics and issues of global environmental change in the framework of planetary boundaries and environmental justice with a focus on solutions. Specific topics addressed include various ethical theories used to approach changing environments; different metrics and methods used to study changing climate and environmental circumstances; how to sort and adjudicate competing interests; public policy options and advocacy initiatives as well as biodiversity loss; climate change; and food and development.

• Heroism and Individuality in Greek Mythology
• Reaching for a New Language: Reading and Writing Poetry
• Introduction to Racial Literacy in Contemporary American Literature
• Quantitative Methods in Public Health
• Race and Politics in the United States and Beyond
• Racial Literacy in Contemporary American Literature
• Food justice and the Prison Industrial Complex
• Feminist Utopias and Afrofuturism
• Where is the American Dream: Inequality and Social Justice