Upper Division Seminars

Julie Dugger, English/Honors

The distinction between literary fiction and genre fiction is a slippery and shifting one, with genre fiction maybe best defined as everything that gets a separate name and shelf in the bookstore (mystery, romance, science fiction, fantasy, Western, horror, etc.). Literary fiction is often described as more culturally significant and less formulaic than genre fiction, but this distinction doesn’t always hold up under examination. Literary fiction can be formulaic, genre fiction maintains a massive cultural presence, works considered insignificant in one period may be defined as canonical in another, and literary and genre writers regularly borrow from one another’s material. So why the separate bookshelves and different assessments of quality?   

This class will examine how we establish a body of literature, a readership, or a set of cultural expectations by considering genre fiction: what it is, what it does, and how it compares to literary fiction. We’ll take a close look as a class at the genres of romance (which is often stereotyped as the lowest of low fiction) and fantasy, including fictional, critical, and contextual readings. We’ll then use these as a starting point for discussions about other genres.   

Writing assignments will include two short papers (one a critical analysis and the other either critical analysis or creative fiction) and a revision of one of these papers as a final. 

Thomas Hummel, Honors

Given the ever-accumulating obligations, deadlines, and commitments that plague our creative and academic lives, it’s difficult to see beyond the project at hand. If only to maintain momentum, we chisel and chase whatever we’re working on, then chisel and chase the next. And so it goes, one by one. 

But as it does, something happens. As we make and accumulate these discrete compositions—each with its own form, subject, and concern—our individual pieces create content that they don’t contain. They give glimpses of unwritten ideas and preoccupations. Just by sheer proximity, our stand-alone pieces combine to shape a larger project. They build our bodies of work. 

This class, as both creative writing workshop and literary seminar, will consider the intricacies, pitfalls, and excitements of developing and understanding our bodies of work. Alongside the critique and creation of original compositions, students will undertake a quarter-long dialogue with a specific artist’s body of work, navigating and dissecting its inner workings. The combination of these pursuits will provide opportunities to identify primary concerns and inquires, determine which forms and methods best serve those concerns, and cultivate new modes of critical assessment. And at the end of our ten weeks, armed with a greater understanding of what our work adds up to, we’ll have a clearer sense of where we want it to go next. 

Marion Brodhagen, Biology

Why study chemical communication?  This course focuses on small molecules that plants use to communicate with each other, with insects and other animals, and with microbes (bacteria and fungi) through the air or through the soil.  It also touches on the organisms that are “eavesdropping” on the chemical conversation.  From a practical point of view, understanding this "chemical language" can (and does) allow biotechnology to exploit these signals, in order to control disease-causing microorganisms and insects.  On a more esoteric note, "eavesdropping" on the chemical conversations of our fellow earthlings allows us to understand them a little better - in terms of ecology, evolution, and molecular biology.  In this course, you’ll learn some plant science, some biochemistry, some microbiology, some molecular biology, some entomology, and some of the technical methods for studying chemical language.  You’ll also meet some of the scientists who do this work.  Student-guided discussions in previous classes included topics like the limitations of anthropocentric views of language and intelligence, whether it is ethical to harm other creatures for science, and what trees can teach us about interconnectedness. 

Melanie Bowers, Political Science/ Honors

Despite decades of work to try to end homelessness, it continues to be an issue in virtually every community in the US.  While many people conceptualize homelessness as a personal problem, the reality is that it is a community-level issue, one that both affects and is affected by larger structural dynamics. US cities play a distinct role in this realm, both because they house the bulk of the nation’s homeless population and because their policies and practices simultaneously help ameliorate and amplify the problem. In this class we will explore homelessness through the lens of the city, investigating how policy, social norms and the urban landscape shape and are shaped by those who reside in them without shelter. Though we will briefly cover the personal drivers of homelessness, this class focuses on community-level dynamics like the history of housing provision in the US, structural determinants of homelessness (housing prices, economic inequality, mass incarceration etc), local policy responses, anti-homeless protest and organizing, and the ways that social entrepreneurs are innovating to address some of the most difficult challenges of our time. This is an inherently interdisciplinary topic and we will take an interdisciplinary approach, with insights from public policy, non-profit/charitable service providers, and academic disciplines like history, urban studies and political science.  In doing this we will ask pressing questions like whether housing should be a right, how personal interest intersects with public interest, and what responsibility housed residents have for those who lack shelter. In many cases, the questions we ask do not have a single, clear answer. Because of this, students should focus on engaging fully in the course, challenging and developing their thinking on these topics in ways that critically assess alternative ideas and participating in the learning community rather than focusing strictly on the “right answer. The course is appropriate for students of all majors and does not assume any prior knowledge of the US housing and homelessness issues.    

Susan Haines, Dance

Methods and practices that examine the relationship of movement and movement ecology for healthy human beings and a healthy environment. The emphasis of this class is on current research about the detrimental effects of our consumerist and sedentary culture, the relationship between body and the environment, the negative effects of diet and fitness culture, and systems of practice for implementing more movement into daily living. Students will analyze how connecting to their physicality, natural environment, and community can support wellness and sustainability. 

We will be investigating varied movement to promote cellular health (*NOT* movement for weight loss or to change body size or shape!) and engaging in outdoor movement and writing experiences that foster a connection to a sense of “place”. The intent of the course is to expand the resources and knowledge of students within a safe, involved, and information-packed environment.

Cornelius Partsch, Modern and Classical Languages

Moved by a drawn-out, bloody civil war in Syria, Chancellor Angela Merkel, in 2015, attempted to gather support for Germany absorbing larger numbers of immigrants by asserting “we can do this!”  Germany permitted about one million refugees to enter in the following year, although many were subsequently denied refugee status. Germany attempted to establish a political, as well as a sociocultural framework for “integration” and “welcome,” which is now viewed as an important, if imperfect, model for a European refugee policy. Still to this day, the Mediterranean Sea is among the world's hotly contested, obsessively controlled, and often dangerous borders. Every day, unauthorized migrants and refugees bound for Europe put their lives in the hands of maritime smugglers. 

This course examines the refugee crisis in and around the Mediterranean, southern Europe, as well as the situation in Germany, as a case study for issues that are relevant and urgent in many countries around the world, such as immigration policy, enforcement, the economics of immigration and migrant labor, activism, integration, cultural identity, nativism, and racism. Thus, multiple perspectives, comparisons, and multiple disciplines will inform the work to be done in the course. It has been suggested that today we live in a new nomadic age, an age of global movement and migration. Students in this course will gain an understanding of the three major routes across (and around) the Mediterranean by examining the reasons for undertaking the perilous journey - which are highly varied -, the experience of migration, and the bureaucratic process asylum seekers and immigrants have to navigate after having arrived in Germany. Students will be engaged in assessing the influence of political ideologies, social organization, and cultural perceptions on the issue of immigration and in analyzing and interpreting fictional representations as well as non-fictional discourse. The course will raise and address ethical questions of complicity, in political, narrative, and personal terms. 

Georgianne Connell, Biology

The problems facing our world today demand that we communicate scientific findings in an accessible way to the public. This seminar will explore scientific illustration as an avenue of accessible dissemination. Scientific illustration techniques will be introduced and practiced throughout the 10-week quarter utilizing specimens from Animalia, Plantae, and Protista. Students will learn about the life history of various species and the role they play in world issues. Compound and dissection microscopes will be used as a tool to enhance scale and detail during studio sessions. In addition, the class will evaluate and discuss examples of modern-day scientific illustration. As a culminating project, students will select a scientific topic which will serve as the theme for an art project that they will present to non-science major students at WWU. Course open to major and non-science majors. A background in art is not required, beginners welcome.  

John Harris, Journalism

This seminar will examine iconic visual images — both still and video— and the role they have played in American history. These will include images produced by both citizens and professional journalists. The seminar will take a narrative approach, starting with photos from Civil War battlefields and will culminate with the citizen-produced video of George Floyd’s murder, for which the teenager who made it earned a Special Citation from the Pulitzer Prizes. Along the way we will consider images from politics, conflict, sports, entertainment and more. Students will come away with a better historical context for the imagery they see today, and hence an expanded visual literacy. 

Katherine Anderson, English

Since its beginnings in Gothic literature, the horror genre has been devalued as an art form, dismissed as a source of cheap thrills and creepy voyeurism. Yet to categorize horror as pure (and trashy) entertainment that lacks deep cultural value would be to make a serious error. This class examines the horror genre as an iteration of the Gothic and a valuable signifier of social anxieties and cultural critique, particularly in relation to constructions of embodied selfhood and identity. Analyzing a variety of films from Hollywood’s B-movies and slasher films to global iterations of arthouse cinema (and a few written texts), we’ll interrogate representations of gender and sexualities, race and ethnicity, class, youth culture, religion, immigration, and more, in relation to the ethics of horror creation and consumption. Some of the questions we’ll consider include: Which cultural fears and anxieties does horror engage and why? When, how, and why does horror transgress or uphold cultural norms? How, if at all, does horror change its shape and its cultural fears or preoccupations across space/place and time, and conversely, how has it stayed the same throughout its many forms and cultural histories? What does horror have to do with the body? Why does horror both frighten and fascinate us? Ultimately, what can horror teach us about ourselves?   

Jerry Ek, Anthropology

The goal of this course is to examine the factors that promote and inhibit the long-term sustainability of human societies. This seminar will provide students with an introduction to the interdisciplinary fields of sustainability and resilience science, and examine the reciprocal relationship between social and environmental dynamics.  The course will draw upon a broad range of theories, concepts, and perspectives useful for modelling human-environmental dynamics, including ecology, anthropology, archaeology, traditional ecological knowledge (TEK), geography, philosophy, and folklore.   

As defined here Sustainability is the capacity of any system or society to continue basic functions, practices or lifeways indefinitely. Resilience is the ability of a system (social, ecological, etc.) to withstand disturbances and thrive in the face of change. These two concepts represent both academic interests as well as key modern social, economic, and environmental goals: to create societies that enhance, rather than degrade, the world around them, and that in turn that can withstand inevitable instabilities and disjunctions from environmental, social, and technological change. The course will encourage students to adopt a holistic view, as sustainability and resilience thinking requires consideration of entire ‘systems.’ This includes understanding dynamics in complex systems based on quantitative and qualitative data, fact-based decision-making, and the ability to work with and consider the needs of diverse stakeholder groups. This course will adopt a very broad and holistic approach to the topic, ranging from theoretical frameworks to model sustainability and resilience to specific modern, historical, and ancient case studies. 

Bill Lonneman, Nursing

“Bioethical questions often involve overlapping concerns from diverse fields of study including life sciences, biotechnology, public health, medicine, public policy, law, philosophy, and theology. They arise in clinical, research, and political arenas, usually in response to advances in biology, health care, and technology, particularly biotechnology.” -- Johns Hopkins, Berman Institute of Bioethics, 2022

This course will take a holistic, interdisciplinary view of bioethics. We’ll begin with a bit of history and an introduction to major bioethical principles, theories, and approaches. We’ll then look at some specific topics including informed consent and decisional capacity; decisions to forgo life-sustaining treatment; Death with Dignity; issues around mental health and disability; genetic testing; and how to live responsibly in today’s world. Each week we will discuss case studies together. We’ll have guests visiting class and sharing their own experiences throughout the quarter. Students will have a chance to explore an issue of their choosing both in a paper and in class discussion. No prior knowledge or courses in ethics or philosophy are required; all are welcome!