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What does it take to become a great artist or writer? What could impede that path? In this tutorial we will explore how intimate relationships foster or hamper creativity—sometimes for one member of the couple, sometimes for the other.  Examples include Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, and Anaïs Nin and Henry Miller. Together we will study a range of couples and then students will research creative couples of their own choosing.

Why do people often react so negatively to those who resist new technologies? Although today’s technological resisters are not liable to be hanged, as the original Luddites were, they are frequently disparaged as “out of touch,” “behind the times,” and yes, even as Luddites. In this Tutorial, we will read works by and about people who have resisted technologies ranging from water-powered looms to artificial intelligence, seeking to understand their resistance and the reactions to it. What were their reasons for resisting these technologies? How persuasive were their arguments, and how effective were their methods of resistance? And, finally, what can we learn from them as we decide whether to accept or resist the new technologies that we face today?

Early humans built stone tools by breaking rocks. Cracks in polar ice caps affect the global climate. From the Japanese art of Kintsugi to planned obsolescence of household appliances, human effort to prevent, repair, induce, and exploit fracture has shaped our world. In this course, we will explore the poetic and practical nature of fracture across nature, science, and culture.

Martin Luther King Jr. pondered, "It may well be that our whole world is in need of the formation of a new organization, the International Association for the Advancement of Creative Maladjustment." Where do ethics and aesthetics overlap? How do 21st and 20th century visual and performance artists engage with or turn away from culture, society, or politics? Why do we need creatively maladjusted makers-thinkers-doers haunting cultural edges and societal margins?

Have you ever wondered about the mental life of a dog, a crow, or an octopus? Is it possible to even know what they are thinking? This tutorial explores the science of animal minds, from problem-solving apes to tool-using birds. Through Frans de Waal’s Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are, scientific articles, our own observations, as well as popular films, we will investigate animal intelligence in both science and fiction.

We humans, with 3 visual pigment types, can distinguish a remarkable 1 million colors. Some people have 4 cone types, however, and can see 100 times more colors. Perhaps they are closer to understanding the experience of mantis shrimp, which have 15 cones and can also see ultraviolet and polarized light. This tutorial will consider why there are such bright colors throughout nature, and why some organisms have evolved an ability to see them.

In these divided times, let's set aside our poultry disagreements and get to the meat of our differences.  From spelling to part of speech to preparation, seemingly everyone has a bone to pick.  We'll dive whole hog into the history, culture, and science of BBQ.  By reading, writing, and tasting our way through the regional styles of BBQ, we'll know a burnt end from a spare rib.  And it's hard to have beef with that.

This tutorial introduces the poetry, history, and philosophy of ancient Greece: Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, Aeschylus' tragic drama Agamemnon and Sophocles' Oedipus the King, and selections of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War.  For help in interpretation, we will study Aristotle's Poetics.  Plato, who illustrates philosophical questioning and dialogue in his Defense of Socrates, Crito, and Drinking-Party, comes last.  Although these texts illustrate different types of literature, they share a cultural context and express common themes, such as the fragility of happiness, and the question of what makes human life meaningful. This course is about literature and about life.

This Tutorial will explore iconic houses (and dollhouses!) in literature and film, and consider how domestic spaces hold, shape, shelter, haunt, and reveal the identities and private worlds of their inhabitants. We will discuss questions of belonging, go on walks around ����TV, visit local buildings, write about our favorite dwellings, learn how to read façades, watch home-centric movies, read fiction alongside essays on architecture, and try our hand at making our own miniature homes.

From Beowulf to The Creature from the Black Lagoon, many stories cast wetlands as useless wastelands: the domains of monsters, villains, and creepy-crawlies. This tutorial explores different perspectives on these misunderstood outliers. Taking an interdisciplinary environmental humanities approach, we’ll learn to understand wetlands as powerhouses of carbon capture, water filtration, and biodiversity; as havens for those seeking freedom from oppression; as cradles of human communities; and as inspiration for artists (including the creators of the DC Comics series Swamp Thing). We’ll also visit a few wetlands near campus, where we’ll have a chance to observe their soggy magic firsthand. What can wetlands, in their meditative collaborations and sometimes messy but life-giving processes, teach us about college life?

What remains in an era of Artificial Intelligence? How will/have our relationships with machines changed our human relationships? Together, we will study precursors to today’s androids and AI, media depictions of machine-human relationships, and write about/present on ethical, practical, and the sociological implications of machine life. We will show curiosity toward devices from an iwatch to a sex robot, and wonder what these devices reveal about their origins, and human desires, dreams and limitations.

An examination of foodways—behaviors and beliefs surrounding the production, distribution, processing, preparation, and consumption of food—reveals power relations and ways of constructing class, gender, and racial identities. This course analyzes Chinese and Chinese American foodways in various historical and contemporary contexts. The students will examine different types of materials, discuss and debate critical issues related to food, and, eventually, to work with two or three classmates to design and implement a final project.

Food is central to our lives; it is expressive of individual and national identities, cultural practices, and religious affiliations.  For something so important it is unsurprising that food issues are ethical and political issues, and our attention will be directed at several of these: e.g., Should we eat animals? Should we eat local? What about genetically-modified crops? How are our choices about what we eat related to environmental justice? Should we help address global malnutrition?  What is the state’s responsibility to provide reliable information to consumers about the food they buy?

This tutorial examines the affinities between Russian and African-American literature in the development of cultural nationalism. It addresses the question of how national identities are constructed, and it draws attention to the similar manner in which 19th and 20th century Russian and African-American intellectuals such as Feodor Dostoevsky and W.E.B. DuBois defined their respective national identities. We will examine how social institutions, namely Russian serfdom and American slavery, impacted on the formation of these identities. We will also examine how and why the Soviet Union, as a communist state, increased its political and social appeal to many African-American intellectuals during the 20th century. 

During the 20th and into the early part of the 21st Century, the growth of sport in American society created many opportunities for athletes to participate. In the early 1900’s the group of professional athletes was racially comprised of whites.  Over time however, more black athletes slowly gained access to different sports. Tutorial students will explore the question whether participation by black athletes helped fuel 20th and 21st Century societal change. The course draws on disciplines of Sociology and History.

Constructions of gender have been among the most contested sites of public debate in contemporary America. This course aims to explore notions of male identity as fluid social and individual process, while shedding light on the historical and social implications therein. Drawing on historical studies, literature, religious perspectives, and cultural criticism, this tutorial provides students with a useful primer on conversations regarding the intersections between American culture and male identity. Among the course modules addressed, we will explore: 1) racialized masculinities; 2) gender and violence; 3) Red Pill philosophy; and 4) Muscular Christianity.

The duality of poisons, as weapon and remedy, will be explored through both interpersonal crimes and mass poisonings. Scientific, historical, and cultural aspects of several poisons will be explored through topics such as toxicology, the Borgias, and cozy murder mysteries. Focus will then shift to the ethics and politics of mass harm, structural negligence, and the impact of systemic failings on the environment and vulnerable communities.

The meanings and experiences of freedom in the United States have neither been self-evident nor universal. Has freedom merely been the absence of restraint? What conditions have been necessary for people to fully express themselves as human beings? What has it meant to say that “we are fighting for our freedom,” or that this is a “free country”? How have African Americans and Indigenous peoples experienced freedom? This tutorial explores freedom throughout American history.

Speculative fiction writers, musicians, and filmmakers often use their work to imagine what a post-apocalyptic world looks like. What new dangers would we encounter? What old problems might we solve? As Afrofuturist Ytasha Womack argues, however, for many aggrieved populations, the apocalypse has already happened. For indigenous people, colonialism was an apocalyptic event. For many Africans, the transatlantic slave trade was an apocalypse. In this tutorial, by attending to speculative musical, written, and artistic imaginings of Afro- and indigenous futurist artists working across media to better understand the future, the past, and the present.

We will dive into the world of dyes, fiber arts, and textiles from the lenses of science, art, culture, and history. We will read about the origins of textiles and dyes. We will examine the chemistry of dyes and make our own dyes in the laboratory. We will jump around the world to learn about fiber arts in a variety of cultures and histories. Get your reading glasses and lab goggles ready! (Goggles are provided)

In 1707, thousands of British sailors died because no one knew what time it was back home. A linguistic theory once claimed Hopi speakers couldn't conceive of time as a flow — because their grammar wouldn't allow it. Today, McDonald's and Amazon workers learn their schedules mere days in advance, making childcare planning difficult. In Ethiopia, farmers call sunrise midnight, and the year is 2018.  We'll explore a deceptively simple question: How do we tell time? We'll examine how our conceptions of time shape — and have been shaped by — human experience, and explore personal strategies for managing time in college and in life.

What does it mean to make the most of your time at ����TV? In this tutorial, you will interrogate your reasons for attending college against historical, philosophical, and social purposes of higher education. You will engage with pedagogical debates, including how AI is challenging humanistic values of learning, and, ultimately, create an education manifesto. As a class, we will explore the multitude of offices and resources at the college, identify their purposes, how they reflect socio-economic trends, and map how they can benefit your learning.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres describes climate change “as a crisis multiplier.” We will consider whether scientific and technological advances and economic resources will be adequate for addressing the climate change problem. What is the likelihood of an effective climate policy response? How has the climate change problem evolved since becoming a policy issue in the 1980s, and how has the debate been influenced by rapid technological advances in renewable energy, and the changing economic and political environment? How and why has the policy response to climate change lagged technological advances? How has U.S. climate policy shifted during different presidencies? How does the role of civil society, and concern for equity, justice and human rights play into the climate debate? We’ll use examples beginning with the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change and ending with President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from international climate agreements.

Mathematics emphasizes the contents of results, rather than their originators: a true statement is true regardless of who proved it. Paradoxically, many fundamental results are named after their discoverers, conjecturers, or the first (or sometimes, second) person to prove them. This tutorial will explore the people behind mathematics and its development, including examining the contributions of women and global mathematicians, the effects of intellectual and political environments, and their impacts beyond math.

This is a class on wonder and awe. Wonder is a core human experience. What is it and why does it matter? Unsurprisingly, wonder intersects with perhaps every field of human inquiry. This class will explore wonder in the arts, humanities, sciences, and in daily life. The core question will be how and why one might set the intention to live a wonderful life. And what it means to set that intention now.

We are always in a state of transformation, always engaged in the dynamic process of becoming. There is something exciting about embracing this fluid possibility of evolution and change, of embracing the infinite. From Lin-Manuel Miranda’s reimagining of American history in Hamilton and Christopher Nolan’s mind-bending films to Ferran Adrià’s experiments with molecular gastronomy, this course explores both critical theory and applied artistic practice, providing students with a hands-on encounter with the transformative power of the creative process.

Queer Here explores queer spaces and queer times. Students map queer and trans places across history—undergrounds and publics, closets and piers, parades and protests, cities and small towns. Through queer archives, zines, literature, and art, they encounter queer counter-memories and trace how queer life has been lived and contested. Connecting past to present, the course attends to shifting legal landscapes while asking what a good queer life can look like here, now, at ����TV.

We will be exploring the human/animal distinction from a variety of perspectives—philosophical, scientific, ethical, literary, artistic, and musical.  Working with our own field recordings of birds, bats, and other creatures, as well as crowd-sourced recordings world-wide, we will embark on a journey into the Umwelt (the perceptual world) of non-humans.  This imaginative journey will help to foster a deepened understanding of the living beings that surround us, and a healthy humility regarding our own Umwelt and its limitations.

Adam Smith is one of the foundational figures of modern social thought. Most students know something about his thinking but are often surprised by his actual words. In this course, students will read excerpts from his major work in order to learn about some of his influential ideas, but also just to develop techniques for reading important but difficult texts.

In this Tutorial, we work with books as physical objects. We will learn traditional skills such as papermaking, binding, and decoration. We will also analyze historical books and create contemporary versions of centuries-old forms. What kind of almanac, for example, does a ����TV student need? What form of artist’s book represents the college experience? We will develop skills of reading, writing, discussion, research, and revision on the way to crafting papers, presentations, and creative projects.

The global popularity of Kpop facilitates sociological inquiry into fandoms, fan-fiction, aging, youth, fashion, and questions such as: How do Kpop idols embody, reflect, and contribute to cultural beauty norms? What is the role of commodification, alienation, and capitalism in the global Kpop economy, merchandising, promotions and industry structure? How do Kpop idols promote and facilitate a parasocial relationship with fans? How are masculinities and femininities constructed or subverted? How is sexuality marketed, embodied and/or challenged?

We'll examine early and late 20th century dystopian novels, all of them periodically banned books, from Huxley and Orwell to Atwood and Butler.  These texts offer powerful commentary on the forces, state or corporate, that can limit both free will and human empathy, whether through biological determinism and eugenics, government intrusion, patriarchy, or ideologies that demonize the “other.”  All of these books imagine a future the authors hoped would be far off.

1968’s student-led campus protests made way for the establishment of many Asian American and ethnic studies courses and multicultural programs. Yet lots of Asians and Asian Americans remain neglected and alienated in US higher education. Studying literature, art, media, and scholarly sources, this course examines queer, feminist, and critical ethnic analyses of college (and its racial and colonial histories) to imagine ways for Asian/Americans to survive higher education and query it as an institution.

Chocolate features broadly in Western popular culture. We seem to strongly associate chocolate with holidays and happiness. However, is chocolate really all about joy? Have you ever wondered about the dark side of chocolate or the cultural differences in chocolate marketing, consumption, and perception? Through an interdisciplinary approach, you will challenge our society’s stereotyped notions about this confection while will also explore why a Liberal Arts education truly is “like a box of chocolates.”

The discipline of statistics provides methods to analyze, understand and explain the data that permeate our lives. But this tutorial is not just about statistics. Instead, it is about issues of justice in the application of statistics. JUST statistics. In this tutorial, we investigate contemporary and historical sources of injustice in the collection, analysis and use of data; we will also use principles of data ethics to explore the responsible uses of data and statistics not only to redress current harms, but also to bring about a more equitable and just world.

Blackness has no single meaning. Shaped by histories of cultural contact, difference, and labor linked to slavery and colonialism, ideas of blackness emerged through unequal exchange and imperial systems that produced racial, gendered, and sexualized categories persisting today. Through history and cultural archives—literature, film, music, testimony—we will examine how Black communities across Africa, Arabia, the Americas, and beyond have lived, resisted, and claimed identity.

In this tutorial, we will explore challenges faced by women in the Arab world, paying close attention in particular to the confluence of gender, class, and patriarchy. We will examine topics such as education, economic independence, sexual harassment, national independence, female genital mutilation. Materials studied will include movies, novels, and/or short stories in translation.