This course surveys the African cultures of the Western Sudan, Nigeria, Congo, and South Africa, as well as their extension in Haiti, Cuba, Brazil and the United States. Multinational dependence on African resources, media priorities, and psychological constructions are also discussed as contexts for contemporary culture and history.

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An interdisciplinary ‘gateway course’ examining the meaning of a liberal education, emphasizing seminar skills, oral and written communication, and introducing the Portfolio. It is taken with LIBS 304 or 308 in the first semester of upper-division study. (These are the prerequisites for all upper-division Hutchins courses.) Successful completion of LIBS 302 is required to continue in the Hutchins program. Students must earn a grade of C or higher to continue in Hutchins.

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This course for pre-credential multiple subject students looks at the importance of literacy and language arts in the contemporary world, including the value of writing and literature in the classroom, as well as the significance of literacy as a broader educational and social issue. Students will develop a pedagogy of grammar, examine the use of literature and the written word in the classroom, and create and teach a classroom grammar lesson.

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A close inspection of child development and elementary school pedagogy, emphasizing relevant social and cultural factors as well as major theoretical views of physical, emotional and personality growth. Subjective views of childhood experience will be contrasted with observations. Readings from Erikson, Freud, Hall, Goodall and others.

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In this course we will be putting together a volume of Zephyr, the Hutchins Literary Journal. Students will create the thematic structure and recruit written and visual work from the entire Hutchins Community (including Lower- and Upper-Division students, faculty, staff, Degree Completion students, Masters students and alumni). Students will also make all decisions regarding selection and editing, as well as organization and layout. The semester will culminate with the publication and distribution of Zephyr and the organization of a public reading for the Hutchins community.

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In this class we will be watching the HBO show: The Wire, seasons one and two, outside of class and discussing them in class. We will examine the culture of the Baltimore housing projects and break down the codes used by the drug dealers in the city. We will also learn about the Baltimore Police Department, including the techniques used by surveillance police, and assess their effectiveness. Our class discussions and debates will include issues such as the War on Drugs, police conduct, prison reform as well as many other juicy, thought provoking topics.

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In this class, we will briefly survey attempts at democracy in the past before exploring the contemporary democratic model, and assess the state of our current federal republic as a governing body for the people by the people; we will discuss how technology has changed the role of government and the role of the people and how these changes affect the possibility of democratic interaction between the people and the state; we will make these observations through readings and the utilization of the news aggregate website Reddit.com which will serve as a real-time democratic model we can manipulate and observe.

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A capstone course required for the Hutchins major. Drawing on the papers collected for his or her portfolio, the student prepares a major paper and a Senior Project synthesizing aspects of that individual’s own intellectual development. Each student makes an oral presentation of his or her project at the end of the semester. Must be taken in the student’s final semester in the major.

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A capstone course required for the Hutchins major. Drawing on the papers collected for his or her portfolio, the student prepares a major paper synthesizing aspects of that individual’s own intellectual development. This is done in a study away situation. Also available for students choosing a minor in Hutchins.

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Independent Study is an individualized program of study taken for a letter grade with a Hutchins faculty sponsor who is willing to supervise it. A student consults with a faculty member on a topic, develops a plan of study, including number of units, project outcomes, number of meetings with the faculty and deadline for completion. A Project Contract is submitted to Admissions and Records after the beginning of the semester and before the last day to add classes. May be repeated for credit. Prerequisites: LIBS 302 and consent of instructor..

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This course provides students with an opportunity to enhance their facilitation skills through serving as a seminar leader in large lecture/discussion courses. Requires the consent of instructor.

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All students develop an internship working outside the classroom. Students also prepare a portfolio project based upon a larger topic implicit in their internship. They participate with other interns in an internship class once a week to discuss their internship experience and issues related to the larger society. Grade only.

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Courses in this area address the following issues and themes:

• Problems and possibilities before us at the start of a new century as we move toward a genuinely global culture.
• The relationship between the individual and all kinds of human groups, the context of human interaction in which the individual finds many of the dimensions of the self.
• Ideas, attitudes, and beliefs that flow between society and the individual and which result in the political and economic arrangements that make life-in-common possible.
• Historical and economic developments, geographical facts, analytical models, and moral questions necessary to understand the dynamics of individuals and their communities.
• Moral and ethical underpinnings of our patterns of social interaction and how these affect issues such as race, gender, and class.
• Questions concerning whether the goals of human dignity, political justice, economic opportunity, and cultural expression are being enhanced or destroyed by specific historical developments, cultural practices, economic arrangements, or political institutions. For example: How, in the face of that compelling force, do we shape the kind of society that values and protects the individual? How do we become the kinds of individuals who understand and help foster the just society?

This is a study of the political status given to human bodies in different epochs in the American Continent. The objective is to increase our understanding of the struggles for economic, human and civil rights dating back to Colonial Continental America and the overthrow of the European Monarchies, which led to the birth of democracy in the Western Hemisphere. A second objective is to learn how these same struggles have taken different forms throughout history and how they continue to take shape in our lives today.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202.
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This seminar will examine interdisciplinary perspectives on consumer culture from the late 19th century to the present. We will explore different theories of consumption; the major structures of consumerism such as credit, packaged goods, branding, advertising, and retail spaces; and the lived experience of consumer culture in terms of its impact on our families and communities, our environment, and ourselves. Special attention will be paid to how race, gender, age, and class have affected the experience of diverse peoples in American consumer culture. As seminar participants, we will also reflect about our own place in the American political economy, examining our own experiences in comparison to those we have read about in seminar and considering the possibilities for recovering from “affluenza.”

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Courses in this area address the following issues and themes:

• Science and technology and their relationships to the individual and society.
• The methods of science and important information that has been discovered through their applications.
• Some of the crucial issues posed by our culture's applications of science and technology and, adversely, the cultural consequences of a materialist world view.
• How science and technology impact all areas of our lives.
• How, for better and for worse, as inheritors of the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, we intervene in our material world technologically.
• Scientific aspects of particular social issues, or an issue of personal concern, the sense of science as a social endeavor.
• The values implicit in a particular technology.

As the most indispensable substance for all life on earth, water has played a crucial role in the creation and development of every human society. It underlies our most ancient mythologies and religions as well as our most basic political and economic systems. Today, the choices we make about the uses of this "Blue Gold" are increasingly critical to the future of both human civilization and the natural world on which it ultimately depends. This course is designed as an interdisciplinary exploration of the changing meaning and use of water in various eras and cultures, including our own, and an examination of its pivotal role at present as the most vital natural substance capable of helping reestablish a healthy and balanced human relationship with the natural world.

Prerequisite:LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Mechanization and automation, concepts born of the industrial revolution, continue to dominate our lives and economic means of production well into the information age. We need to understand the human fascination with the construction of devices and the aesthetic of the artificial if we are to avoid greater "dis-integration" with our present and future roles in society. This course will survey the spectrum of responses to the artificial landscape in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from the "Zen of machine" consciousness of the practitioner to the fearful jeremiad of the alienated observer. Several up-close class activities with both the artist's and gadgeteer's perspectives will complete the reconnaissance.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Courses in this area address the following issues and themes:

• Why humans create literature, epics, poetry, drama, and other literary forms, the visual arts, languages, architecture, music, dance, the writings of philosophers, and the thought and literature of the world's religions.
• The inner world of creativity and individual values as well as the questions about how we arrive at a sense of meaning and purpose, ethical behavior, and a sense of beauty and order in the world.
• Deep and significant aspects of ourselves which may otherwise remain obscure and therefore troubling.
• Important questions - and occasional answers - about life and death, about feelings, and about the ways we see things.
• The metaphors that help us recognize and become aware of the interrelations of all the areas of inquiry humanity has developed.
• Images from which we may learn about our reality or realities of other times.
• Creative and intuitive thinking processes that lead to an understanding of the aesthetic experience.
• How the arts can be an end in themselves, as well as a means to an end.

This course will explore film as a storytelling medium, as well as the unique ways in which this medium has been and continues to be used by filmmakers around the world. Moving chronologically, we will examine a variety of narrative film forms, including the classical Hollywood style, innovations within this form, as well as multiple, international alternatives from the 1960s up to the present. Through frequent film screenings and readings in film theory, psychoanalysis, semiotics and cultural studies, students will develop a basic understanding of film language as well as a deeper understanding of how films operate, how they create meaning, and how, as viewers, we participate in this process.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Bollywood has become a catchword today yet, in this era of Slumdog Millionaires, a key question remains: what is Bollywood? Is it just one thing? Does it refer to a film style, a national cinema, a global phenomenon, or all of the above? In this course, we will address this question by looking at several Bollywood films from the 1950s up to the present. We will explore the multiple elements of these films, including their vibrant song and dance sequences, mixing of genres and film styles, and convoluted narratives, from numerous perspectives, including those of film theory, postcolonial studies, and gender studies, to name but a few. Students will also conduct their own research on this cinema and its influences on musical styles, cultural trends and fashion industries around the world which, in turn, will serve as the basis for a brief research paper. In the process, students will develop an understanding of the cinematic history of this film industry as well as an ability to engage in critical discourse concerning cinema and culture, even as they apply an interdisciplinary and multicultural approach to multiple themes.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Courses in this area address the following issues and themes:

• Reality as a result of many factors, some of them psychological, some biological, some philosophical, some social and the many aspects of being or existence as reaching from the physical to the metaphysical.
• Consciousness as, somehow, the result of our gender, our ethnicity, our health, the ways in which we were reared, the social stratum in which we find ourselves, the beliefs that were engendered in us, and other factors.
• Consciousness as occurring across a spectrum of potentials (conscious/unconscious, rational/irrational, egocentric/transpersonal, masculine/feminine) that influence our personal and collective realities.
• Human needs at various levels of emotional, religious or spiritual, intellectual, and transpersonal or universal disciplines, practices, and experiences.
• One of the major concerns of people in all places at all times has been: what are the components of being human?
• The range of answers which are sometimes perplexingly inconsistent with one another, and yet their very divergence itself suggests something about the powerful complexity of the human individual.
• The study of biology as it relates to psychology, and consciousness as it affects and is affected by perceptions of reality.
• Meaning-making as a necessary human achievement, and identity formation as it is understood in the light of developmental psychology and the nature-nurture controversy.

This course examines sexualities and genders through a variety of lenses including evolutionary biology, psychology, anthropology, politics, feminism, and “sexology.” We will pay particular attention to personal, collective, and institutional power differentials between the sexes, confronting traditional assumptions of the natural, normal, and moral. We will investigate contemporary challenges to established gender roles and sexual expression, the commoditization of sexuality, and the complex relationships between biology, culture, and sexual preferences and gender identities.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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Confronting death can bring us fully to life. This course will examine biological dying, the sociology and psychology of death, and the spiritual dimensions of passing beyond through literature, art, film, medicine, guided meditations, and humor. Written and experiential assignments will engage our analytic, creative, and spiritual minds. This course may be emotionally challenging.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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In this class, we will look at the connections between the personal and the geographic. This course will examine the self and our personal histories using the ideas, tools, and methods commonly used in geography – including mapping, coring, pattern analysis, and spatial analysis. This class will use both writing and artistic techniques to examine ideas of space and place, and to create a series of maps of our interior and exterior worlds. We will also use geomorphic process concepts like erosion, sedimentation, and geologic history as metaphors to examine the internal and external forces that have molded us into the person we are. We will seminar on these ideas and create weekly projects to share in class. A paper and/or project, which will be largely autobiographical, will be required at the end of the semester. At least one weekend field trip may also be required.

Prerequisite: LIBS 302 or LIBS 101-202
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