Schedule of Classes

Term

School

Subject

General Education

RESULTS:College of Arts & Sciences, Advent Semester 2025

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Geology

A study of the chemistry, crystal structure, and properties of minerals. Lectures focus on the connection between the atomic structure and chemical bonding of minerals and the macro-scale physical properties that dictate their role in society. Laboratory work uses the physical properties of minerals observed in hand samples, combined with microscopy and X-ray diffraction to identify the most abundant minerals in the Earth’s crust.

A study of the diverse geochemical and geophysical processes within our solar system, touching on terrestrial planets, gas giants, and minor bodies, including icy satellites. Lectures focus on the formation of the solar system, the interior structure of terrestrial planets, planetary atmospheres, volcanism, surface processes (fluvial, aeolian, impact), meteorites as clues to the solar system’s origin, and current NASA missions. One required weekend field trip.

Geomorphology is the study of surficial landforms (erosional and depositional) and the processes that create them. This course investigates major controls on the development and evolution of erosional and depositional landforms, with attention to the ways earth surface processes respond to tectonic and climatic forcing. Significant emphasis is on weathering, fluvial, and slope-related (mass-wasting) processes, with additional consideration given to glacial, eolian, karst, eathering, and pedogenic (soil-related) processes. The coursework will involve collecting and interpreting field data from different geomorphic environments on the Cumberland Plateau and quantitative analysis of remote sensing data. Further course in introductory physics highly recommended.

Oral presentations of important topics and published data in forestry, geology, and other environmental sciences. Course goal is to train students through practice to give and critique oral presentations appropriate for scientific or other professional research. Each student gives several presentations and formally critiques other presentations as part of the course.

German and German Studies

This course is an introduction to life and culture in German-speaking societies. It enables students to express ideas in German about everyday topics, including friends, relationships, weather, clothing, food, and daily routines. Through communicative activities, students learn to ask and answer questions, seek information and share opinions, navigate a variety of conversational settings, and develop sensitivity for cultural difference.

This intermediate-level course integrates German language learning with developing a deeper understanding of cultural production in German-speaking societies. Exploring the spatial and human diversity of German-speaking Europe, students study familiar and essential topics from German perspectives and make cross-cultural comparisons about topics such as cities, travel and the self, consumption and consumerism, historical transformations, the environment, and visions of the future.

This course investigates fairy tales and their meanings in German culture. Students examine, research and evaluate these tales to understand how they are influenced by and in turn shape negotiations of nationality, identity, gender, class, and sexual orientation. Through this kind of analysis, the course questions how oral tradition, literary form, and visual media construct the meanings of fairy tales.

This course centers on key topics and concepts in the field of German Studies. Through readings of primary and secondary materials, the course develops students' critical and research skills. Each student completes a senior research project, which results in a substantial essay written in German. Topics may include an exploration of literary concepts, periods, and authors, or focus on cultural issues.

Global Citizenship

Students reflect on the study away experience, use storytelling techniques to consider and express the personal impact of study away, and undertake a project that puts into action the awareness, skills, and attitudes of global citizenship. Through topics including culture shock, identity development, and readjustment to social life in the US, students work to integrate their study away experience with their academic and co-curricular work at Sewanee and beyond.

Greek

An intensive, introductory course in classical and koine Greek emphasizing forms and syntax and with extensive readings. Four class hours per week.

A continuation of the study of grammar with readings from a variety of classical authors. Four class hours per week.

History

Two principles central to modern American culture are "separation of church and state" and individual freedom of religious choice. For most of Western history, however, these principles would have been largely incomprehensible. This course examines the close relationship between religion and "the state" in ancient Greece, ancient Rome, and medieval Europe, analyzing the ways in which they reinforced each other as well as instances in which they came into conflict. More broadly, the course examines ways in which religion reinforced or challenged social norms relating to gender, hierarchy, and the identification of "insiders" and marginalized groups.

The course delves into the intellectual, social and cultural aspects of the Native American/European encounter in what came to be called Latin America in the first century after the arrival of Columbus. It examines such facets as the underlying religious and political legitimation of the Iberian conquests, indigenous responses, and the issue of "othering" and mutual perceptions. It also scrutinizes material and institutional factors such as Spanish imperial and Indian policy, forms of surplus extraction established by the Spanish, and political arrangements embracing native peoples and Europeans.

This course examines the period after 1500 when the people of the British Isles began to explore the world beyond their shores, to encounter unfamiliar cultures and peoples, and to exploit resources and peoples in Africa and the Americas. It considers the understandings and agendas the British brought to these encounters and how interactions with distant lands and peoples altered the way the British saw themselves and their own culture before and after the political crisis of 1776 that ruptured the empire they created.

This course focuses on Race, Class, and Identity in American history since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 to the present, emphasizing specific political, social, and economic developments. It examines such topics as expansion, Populist and Progressive movements, the Great Depression, the World Wars, reform and dissent in the 1960s and the Vietnam conflict.

This course will examine the colonial legacies of museums while investigating current museum practices. Through critically engaging with the display and representation of Indigenous and African diasporic arts and history in the colonial, modern, and contemporary eras, students will address issues of interpretation, deaccessioning, and repatriation. The central questions considered in this course will include: How have the dual histories of settler colonialism and slavery influenced collection and exhibition practices? What are the future directions in contemporary museum practice? How have people resisted and shaped museum exhibitions connected to their history and culture?

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