A study of the geological features and processes that shape the earth's surface and subsurface. Lectures detail major components of the earth and the dynamic processes that generate them (including rocks, minerals, fossils, mountain belts, ocean basins, tectonic activity, magma formation, and climate change). Environmental issues related to geology (earthquakes, landslides, volcanic activity, groundwater contamination, and coastal and stream erosion) are major topics of discussion. Field-oriented lab exercises utilize excellent geological exposures of the Cumberland Plateau and the nearby Appalachian Mountains. Lecture, three hours; laboratory and field trips (including one weekend trip).
A study of the geological features and processes that shape the earth's surface and subsurface. Lectures detail major components of the earth and the dynamic processes that generate them (including rocks, minerals, fossils, mountain belts, ocean basins, tectonic activity, magma formation, and climate change). Environmental issues related to geology (earthquakes, landslides, volcanic activity, groundwater contamination, and coastal and stream erosion) are major topics of discussion. Field-oriented lab exercises utilize excellent geological exposures of the Cumberland Plateau and the nearby Appalachian Mountains. Lecture, three hours; laboratory and field trips (including one weekend trip).
A study of natural hazards, their triggering factors, societal impacts, and methods of prediction, mitigation, and response. The course will examine earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, mass wasting (landslides), wildfire, and extreme weather events. Special emphasis is placed on local issues. One required Saturday field trip.
Occurrence, movement, quality, and behavior of water in the hydrologic cycle with emphasis on groundwater, streams, lakes and karst systems. Includes techniques and problems of measurement and utilization. Lectures, three hours; laboratory and field trips, three hours.
Occurrence, movement, quality, and behavior of water in the hydrologic cycle with emphasis on groundwater, streams, lakes and karst systems. Includes techniques and problems of measurement and utilization. Lectures, three hours; laboratory and field trips, three hours.
Systematic study of the genesis, occurrence, composition, and classification of igneous and metamorphic rocks. Topics to include origin and crystallization of different magma types, metamorphic processes, and tectonic environments specific to certain rock suites. Laboratory work includes hand specimen and microscopic examination of igneous and metamorphic rock suites. Lecture, three hours; laboratory and field trips.
Systematic study of the genesis, occurrence, composition, and classification of igneous and metamorphic rocks. Topics to include origin and crystallization of different magma types, metamorphic processes, and tectonic environments specific to certain rock suites. Laboratory work includes hand specimen and microscopic examination of igneous and metamorphic rock suites. Lecture, three hours; laboratory and field trips.
German and German Studies
This course continues the introduction to life and culture in German-speaking societies. It enables students to more fully express their 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 course continues the introduction to life and culture in German-speaking societies. It enables students to more fully express their 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 continues to develop a deeper understanding of cultural production in German-speaking societies. Students interpret films, stories, and graphic novels that present life before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. As a bridge to 300-level courses taught in German, students broaden their understanding of literary forms, build their range of expression in spoken German, and expand their writing skills.
This course investigates identity and belonging in German-speaking countries. Students examine, research and evaluate narrative texts to understand how they are influenced by and in turn shape negotiations of nationality, identity, gender, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Through this analysis, the course questions how memory, migration, colonialism, and cultural diversity form and inform national identity.
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.
Selected plays of Aristophanes and Menander are read.
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 examines some of the most significant conflicts and turning points in the history of conception, pregnancy, and childbirth in Europe and its Caribbean slave colonies from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries. We approach women’s reproductive bodies as contested sites of political struggle over issues as diverse as slavery, colonialism, population growth and birth control, religious reform, midwifery, the medicalization of childbirth, and nation-building. Centering women’s voices and experiences of the birth process where the sources allow us, we study the cultures and communities that women of diverse racial, ethnic, and class backgrounds constructed around biological reproduction.
A general survey of the political, constitutional, economic, and social history of the United States.