2023-2024 Upper Division Seminars

Christie Scollon, Psychology, Honors

Culture is to humans what water is to fish. Trying to understand humans outside the context of culture is like studying fish without considering water.  This course gives students an overview of how culture shapes our everyday lives, including how we think and interact with others.  Some questions we will address are: What is culture? How did different cultures form? How do psychologists study culture? How can we be culturally competent in a globalized world? There is an option to have this course fulfill the Psychology Major Block B requirement (equivalent to PSY341).  Please see Professor Scollon for more information. 

Julie Dugger, Honors 

What do we understand nature to be, especially in a world we increasingly see as shaped by human activity? What is—or what might be—the relationship between nature and human culture, language, or spirituality? Between natural and urban or agricultural environments? And how do we define our individual selves in connection to the natural world?   

The Romantic period developed much of the understanding of nature and of the individual self that many people are still working from today, but others are reconsidering. This class will look at English-language Romantic and revisionist works on nature and the self from the late 18th century to the 21st. Authors we’ll read may include (but are not limited to) William Wordsworth, William Blake, Frederick Douglass, Henry David Thoreau, Lesley Marmon Silko, James Rebanks, J. Drew Lanham, Helen Macdonald, Ada Limón, Lyanda Lynn Haupt, and Rena Priest.   

Students will complete short informal writing assignments throughout the term, and a final project in which they may choose between critical or creative writing options. 

Melanie Bowers, Political Science, Honors 

In academia we often focus on the myriad problems facing society. While this is important, it can also skew our perspective and make us think that the world is irreparably broken. In reality, governments, organizations and private citizens work every day at all levels to improve things. In this course, we will explore the ways that institutions and individuals can, and do, create change. Through academic and popular texts, podcasts, and documentaries we will work to answer key questions like how we define problems and who gets to identify solutions, how those without power find influence, the mechanisms that facilitate systemic change, and the everyday tools that average people can access to alter the environments and situations they face. Through theory and real-world examples, we will evaluate tools for change that range from social media campaigns to long-term community organizing. By looking at these tools and case studies of change, we will also interrogate a central question: is it better to work within the system or try to tear it down? Although we will explore these topics in a US context, many of the theories and ideas we explore have broad applicability and students will have the opportunity to explore international contexts through their class assignments. This class does not assume prior knowledge, but students will be asked to reflect on their life experience as we move through class content.

Kristen Chmielewski, Health and Human Development 

Historian Douglas C. Baynton writes, “Disability is everywhere in history, once you begin looking for it, but conspicuously absent in the histories we write." Building upon that idea, disability is everywhere in society. Ideas about disability shape our language—“the blind leading the blind”—and our insults. Disability provides motivation for villains in children’s movies, like Captain Hook, and moments of tragic catharsis in classic literature, like in Of Mice and Men. Disability shapes educational policies, practices, and curriculum while also affecting employment policies, like subminimum wage and retirement and disability benefits and stipulations. Everyone, if they live long enough, will experience disability at some point in their lives. Disability is everywhere in the United States but is conspicuously absent from most conversations of identity, justice, and equity.

In this seminar, students explore the historical roots of current issues faced by the disabled community to examine how definitions of disability have changed over time and how current injustices are engineered and enforced rather than inevitable and natural. Each week will focus on a different facet of life—law, education, the medical system, immigration, media representation, recreation, and employment—with one class covering readings and discussion that provide historical context and the other focusing on readings, discussion, and activities related to current issues. The culminating work in the course will be a “Disability Excavation” project in which the students conduct original archival research—either in the WWU archives or online—to trace the history and evolution of a disability issue they have encountered in their own lives or in their field. 

Luis Portugal, Modern & Classical Languages 

The Baroque is generally characterized as the aesthetic of extravagance, exaltation, and exuberance that took place in the 17th century. It is also considered as the aesthetic of colonization exported from Europe to other parts of the world. However, many Latin American artist and intellectuals from the 20th century have reinterpreted the Baroque in Latin America with a different light, viewing it as an expression of resistance and counter-conquest. For these intellectuals, the Baroque was and continues to be an integral part of the ongoing process of the Latin America identity. In this course, we will focus on some cultural influences (especially artistic and theological) of the Baroque in Latin America, examining its role in the colonial period and how it has been constantly reinterpreted throughout the region’s history. We will also explore both positive and negative views of the Latin American Baroque, evaluating its significance as a means of resistance and its association with European domination. By doing so, we will gain a deeper understanding of the Baroque’s impact on the Latin American identity, both in the past and the present. 

G. McGrew, AMSEC

‘Food and Chemistry’ will discuss more than just the chemistry behind food, drink, flavor, texture, and nutrition.  This highly interdisciplinary course will navigate the significant intersections of food and food technologies – historical and modern – with race, class, and gender, culture and trade, survival, the environment, propaganda, and political conflict.  Students will learn foundations of general and organic chemistry alongside topics in home cooking, molecular gastronomy, biochemistry, biology, and even some condensed matter physics.   

What are modern uses of chemistry in food enhancement?  What are the controversies that come with these advances?  How does the chemistry of food shape our daily lives, the future of planet Earth, and everything in between?  

Students will participate in readings, group discussions, and complete a multi-part writing project that ties their major to a topic in food chemistry; it will include instructor and peer feedback and revision. The end of the quarter will include student presentation and discussion of special topics. 

Jose Serrano-Moreno, Biology 

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), chronic illnesses are defined as those conditions that require more than 1 year of medical attention or limit activities of daily living or both. In this class-seminar, we will   study and discuss the molecular and physiological basis of the most devastating chronic pathologies in the Western hemisphere: diabetes and heart failure 

In this course, students will engage in group discussions, short group presentations, and group and individual written analysis, with the aim of critically examining recent primary literature related to the cellular and physiological mechanisms underlying the etiology and progression of diabetes and heart failure. In addition, given the tremendous individual and social impact of those pathologies, we will also examine some meta-analysis studies showing correlations between the patients’ prognosis and output with their socioeconomic status and race. 

 In a nutshell, the course's overarching goal is to appreciate the scientific and social complexities associated with these illnesses and explicitly show how rigorous scientific knowledge can be helpful to improve life at individual and collective levels.

Jim Cooper, Biology 

This seminar class will focus on the most recognizably human part of our skeleton, the skull. We will approach the subject from three perspectives: 1) Biological – How skulls develop, skull biomechanics, and the evolutionary origins of the skull; 2) The skull as a symbol – We will examine skull imagery from multiple cultures (e.g., Baron Samedie, La Calavera Catrina), the use of skulls as warnings, skulls as objects of worship or ancestor reverence, and as means of spiritual control; and 3) Historical – We will read The Mismeasure of Man by Steven J. Gould, which explores how European scientists attempted to develop systems for quantifying differences in skull form among different groups of humans and how this approach was misused (often horribly). Each student will also complete a creative project focused on skulls (e.g., they can use the flesh-eating beetle colony in the Cooper lab to process skulls for their own collections). 

EJ Colen, English

Black feminism is a school of thought that looks at the ways racism, sexism, class oppression, and gender identity are inextricably bound. What would it mean to imagine a world outside or beyond the strictures of white supremacy? What does it mean to imagine a world that centers on black feminist voices, queer and trans voices, voices of indigenous populations? These are the questions we will keep in mind as we navigate and engage with the course materials.     

In this class we will read, respond to, and analyze a wide range of texts. We will begin with a short history of feminism, black feminism, and afrofuturism. Operating within this framework, we will examine the work of black feminist authors writing dystopian and apocalyptic narratives that simultaneously lay bare social injustice and failings of contemporary political and social structures of privilege and reimagine worlds that focus on underrepresented and disadvantaged populations. Students will exercise and refine textual and cultural analysis skills by examining how an author utilizes context, form, language, and elements of style. Students will engage in close analytical readings of texts, active engagement on class discussion board, brief presentations, and a final essay or creative project. 

Ryan Castle, Business & Economics 

This course will explore the legal and political foundations of the LGBT and Religious civil rights movements. How is this clash manifesting itself in everyday lives as well as behind the scenes with lawyers, judges, and politicians? What are the legal and policy solutions? Students will attempt to answer these questions in class and through an in-class presentation based on a research topic of their choice. For a solid foundation, we will start with a general overview of the Constitution and Civil Rights laws. With that needed context, we can then dive into the past, present, and future of the Religious and LGBT rights movements, largely from a legal perspective. Class will be structured using the Socratic method with student discussion, interspersed with lecture. Students will learn how to analyze a body of law, to read court decisions and legislative statutes, to create public policy, to communicate professionally, and to challenge their own biases.