This course utilizes the sketchbook as a site for studio explorations. Students will observe, collect, imagine, experiment and reflect to create multiple projects housed exclusively in a book format. Materials will include drawing, collage and aqueous media. While there is no prerequisite, previous experience with drawing, painting or collage processes is suggested.
A liberal arts education provides students with writing, speaking, and analytical skills to succeed in business. This course provides students with an actionable job search strategy that utilizes those “liberal arts skills,” that guides students to identify business career paths that employ those skills, and that emboldens students to acknowledge and emphasize their liberal arts skills and how these skills can benefit their employers in the near and long term. In particular, this course (i) covers job search strategies and career planning for students pursuing jobs in business or adjacent to business (ex. consulting, law, and STEM); (ii) uses real-world examples of jobs at existing companies to demonstrate how to find jobs, network, apply for jobs, and interview successfully; and (iii) incorporates personal finance topics throughout, especially compensation and benefits (i.e., we talk about money in this course). Summary course exercises will tie multiple concepts together, such as using an individual industry to illustrate how to find and attain various jobs. Course work and lessons, with an emphasis on group learning in pairs or small groups, followed by large group discussions, will apply students’ liberal arts skills of writing, speaking, and critical thinking and analysis. By the end of the course, students will have an actionable job search plan to supplement their broad understanding of applying a liberal arts education to different career paths in business.
Explores the lives, thought, and writings of three Imperial Roman intellectuals: Lucius Annaeus Seneca (Roman senator and private tutor to Nero), Epictetus (a formerly enslaved person turned philosopher), and Marcus Aurelius (a particularly fusty Roman emperor). In addition to hailing from three very different social strata, these three intellectuals have been preserved for us in three very different literary forms: letter-essays, semi-formal conversations (transcribed by a student), and a personal journal never intended for publication.
This course explores the historical development Chinese perceptions and interpretations of the West from the 16th century onwards. By analyzing political manifestos, intellectual writings, travelogues and more, students will gain a deeper understanding of how these sources influenced the Chinese understanding of the West and informed their political behavior. Ultimately, this course seeks to foster a nuanced appreciation of the cultural dynamics that shaped Chinese perspectives, allowing students to gain insights into the multifaceted nature of cross-cultural encounters–then and now.
Survey of Indigenous history of the United States from 1838 to present. Topics covered include Native survival in the Removal era; issues of tribal sovereignty during westward expansion; transitions in federal Indian policy in the Long Civil War Era; the loss of tribal lands to the U.S. during the allotment era; Native political resilience from the Ghost Dance Movement to American Indian Movement; Native responses to environmental crises from the near extinction of the Bison to Standing Rock and beyond. Coursework will include contributing to a database about the Bell Route of the Trail of Tears through Sewanee.
This course will explore the centrality of Indigenous people in Southern history, featuring trips to historic sites and museums in the area. Readings will cover topics including the Mississippians and other cultures of the “Old South”; the evolution of slavery and its role in Native dispossession; Indigenous resistance in Tennessee from the Revolutionary era through the Civil War and beyond. Students will conduct their own research for a digital history project covering the local Trail of Tears and longer Native history of the Domain and surrounding area.
This course is a seminar that explores historic preservation in the United States. As a discipline, historic preservation has evolved a great deal since its inception as a grass-roots movement in the mid-19th century, and yet is still evolving to become more inclusive of the breadth of American society. Students will critically analyze what kinds of buildings and sites are preserved, what methods and ideas are used to preserve these structures, and what people’s stories are told through interpretation of the sites.
This course examines Haiti as an ideal of black liberation within African-American thought and action from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century. It explores how Haiti and its citizens influenced the cultural, political, and intellectual dimensions of African-American life. It examines such topics as the “Specter of the Haitian Revolution,” Haiti’s influence on Black Liberation movements, African American Migration to Haiti, the American Civil War and Haitian diplomatic recognition, Haiti’s impact on the Harlem Renaissance and African American intellectuals, and the African American response to the American Occupation of Haiti (1915-1934). The course also has an IGS designation for the tracks of 1) Latin America & the Caribbean 2) Global Politics.
The idea of “the classic” has long been important to humanistic learning. But what is a classic? And where does the notion originate that one should study literary classics? This course explores an important point of origin in the American founding, when it was popular to consult Greco-Roman authors for wisdom, imitate their forms, and contemplate Rome’s rise and fall as a cautionary tale of imperial hubris. Ancient texts–including the Iliad and the Aeneid–found fertile soil in the colonial Americas. The course samples these “classics” alongside works by new practitioners such as Aphra Behn, Phillis Wheatley, and Olaudah Equiano.
This course will examine the conceptual separation of nature from culture that underpins the secular politics of Modernity. Readings will focus on how this divide has shaped human engagement with environment, ecology, and climate in a variety of global contexts and engage with Indigenous practices that precede or resist the paradigm of Modernity. This course will ask students to interrogate various logics driving policy decisions and environmentalist discourses and will offer alternative frameworks for thinking about the place of humanity in the global anthropocene.
Augustine was born in the fourth century after Christ and is widely seen as one of the most influential fathers of the church. In his Confessions he looks back at his life from birth onward and gives us key insights not only into his own spiritual journey, but also into Roman life and thought of the time. In this class we will read in Latin selections from his Confessions, giving particular attention to the historical, philosophical, and religious context of the work.
In this seminar, we will cover some theoretical issues related to human attention, such as the problem of 'limited attentional resources' and a variety of inattentional blindness phenomena and their possible mechanisms. Our primary focus will be on applied issues, such as attention and multitasking, attention and meditation, and attention under various clinical conditions, including ADHD, RAS, and neuropsychological syndromes.
Advanced seminar on "religious freedom" talk, its histories, and political consequences. Readings will emphasize case law in the U.S., as well as broader theoretical and methodological questions that "religious freedom" offers studies of religion and secularism.