Why do animals do things that appear to be against their own self interests? For example, why do individuals risk their lives to warn others of danger or forego reproduction to help others raise offspring? Such striking examples of altruism have long puzzled evolutionary biologists. In this seminar we will explore the mechanisms underlying these and a variety of other interesting animal traits, with a particular focus on the wildlife we see regularly on the St. Mary’s College campus. In the process, we will cover a range of topics related to the processes and consequences of biological evolution, including the evolution of humans.

How do theater artists adapt works from earlier time periods for contemporary audiences, or other media for performance on the stage with live audiences? In this class, students will be introduced to contemporary adaptations of classical texts and stage adaptations of non-theatrical media to learn more about what distinguishes theater from other art forms and why it’s such a powerful experience for both artists and audiences. We’ll discuss how adaptation of older texts brings history alive in the present and allows us to examine and question the world around us and build new communities, and how cultural and social context determines what choices artists make in adapting work for the stage. The class involves regular reading, writing, and (very low-stakes) performance assignments to learn the liberal arts skills and some basic theater and dramatic writing skills. In addition to discussing and writing about plays and performances for various audiences and engaging with scholarly and popular analyses of contemporary adaptations, students will finish the course by imagining their own possible theatrical adaptations for contemporary audiences.

How can we change the world through the stories we tell about the environment? In analyzing everything from blockbuster movies to documentaries to eco-poetry, we’ll delve into the wild world of environmental media about issues such as climate change and environmental justice. In both creating and understanding the mechanics of how environmental stories are built, we’ll also be learning critical thinking, information literacy, writing, and speaking skills foundational to success at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

On a page, song lyrics and poems look similar, relying on figures of speech and poetic techniques. But what happens when we add music, performance, and technology? How do songwriters respond to, reflect, and incorporate various musical styles, genres, and themes? What makes songs so powerful? In search of answers, we will pay attention to the sound, structure, form, language, and cultural context of song lyrics across genres and periods as we investigate the historical and literary roots of poetry and song to appreciate their relationship better. We’ll examine the environment in which a song was written and discuss how personal expression, emotional authenticity, social commentary, ritual, and entertainment intersect.

Fear is a basic human emotion. Fear is stoked by the unknown and the unseen as much as it is evident in the most familiar settings of our lives. Stories that stoke our fears also entertain us. Stories that show us fear in its many manifestations, can teach us lessons about discovery and transformation. Fear is fundamental to who we are as humans and how we learn to cope and overcome. Fiction has had fear as central topic throughout the ages. The supernatural, the unexplainable, the strange, the unknown, and the foreboding of something yet to come, all have fear at their core. In this course we will read short fiction, essays, and novels that show us fear in its many forms. From ghost stories to folklore to the menace of the stranger, we will explore fear in various settings and definitions. We will engage the texts through close readings, class discussions, and in-depth writing assignments. As a CORE 101 class, this is a writing intensive course. We will use the texts and reading materials to accommodate the writing.

This seminar will take humor seriously—but without taking the fun and laughter out of it. We’re going to ask questions about how humor works, and what cultural work it does, especially in literature and media. In particular, we’ll focus on the rhetorical power and risks of satire, which uses humor as a tool for critique. In addition to contemporary satirical shows like Stephne Colbert’s and John Oliver’s and classic satires like Swift’s Modest Proposal (yes, the one about cannibalism as a solution to poverty) and Ebenezer Cooke’s “The Sotweed Factor” (a Maryland poem that was the first satire written in English in America), we’ll analyze examples that students will bring to the table. In addition to writing analytical and argumentative papers about humor and satire, students will also write a short satirical essay.

Abraham Lincoln remains a figure of extraordinary interest. But who was he? With so many Lincoln legends, is there still such a thing as the “real” Abraham Lincoln? The answer is “yes” but this seminar will examine both what Lincoln’s actual life was like and how his image has been utilized since. We will study the creation and the meanings of the image of Lincoln as the “Rail-Splitter” and “Honest Abe” while he was alive, as well as the modern images of Lincoln as cyborg, comic book hero, and vampire hunter.

In a time and culture saturated with information and images, attention has become a scarce resource. The ongoing competition for your attention has become a driving force of our economy through social media and other algorithmic metrics of digital life, which has consequences for creativity, democracy, freedom, and human experience. This class invites students to think critically about the ways humans engage with technology. We will draw from an array of sources and disciplines, including history, social and behavioral sciences, art, science fiction, and literature, to explore in depth how communication technologies and human identities are intertwined.

n this course, we will focus on the experiences and perspectives of Muslims in the US, primarily (but not exclusively) of Muslim women. Contrary to their popular representation as mere victims of male oppression, Muslim women have a long history of resistance and involvement in revolutions. We will explore Muslim engagement in various contemporary national and global justice movements, such as the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the 2017 Women’s March in DC. We will also explore debates about the shifting relationships between race, gender, class and power in relation to what constitutes justice and who is deemed worthy of it.

Can the Cold War help us to understand the current era? In this seminar we will examine this critical part of American history through the medium of film. Besides discussing the elements of the Cold War that are captured by the films, we will compare their “reality” to the history of the time period. Moving beyond the Cold War, we will examine what film can tell us about our current events.

By focusing on understanding Islamophobia as anti-Muslim racism, this course challenges the idea that the problem is one of individual bias and that simply knowing more about Islam will necessarily lead to a decrease in anti-Muslim racism. Instead, it suggests that learning more about how structures of violence, inequality, and war have produced anti-Muslim racism and discrimination and its wide-ranging impact on everyday life is essential in order to challenge its assumptions, logics, and practices. While the class materials draw from recent debates about police brutality, racial injustice, and #BlackLivesMatter, they also show that similar policies extend to both earlier moments and other marginalized communities in the history of the United States.

How do individuals become great leaders? Do they ever feel that they cannot “be themselves” while in a leadership role? And how do people think about and develop their careers over time? This course allows us to delve into these questions from a psychological perspective. We will focus on both leadership and career development theories and research. In working with these topics, we will hone skills in writing, presenting, and thinking critically. Through this class, you will also analyze your own leadership experiences and work on career planning.

For as long as love has existed (and when hasn’t it?), music has had something to say about it. In this course we will study two of the most famous and beloved musical disquisitions on love, the operas La Boheme (1896) and Madam Butterfly (1904), by Italian composer Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924). Indeed, these works are as relevant today as they ever were, dealing as they do with issues both of public health (La Boheme) and of race and colonialism (Madam Butterfly). We will consider not only the literary sources that inspired them, but also how they in their turn inspired two of the most significant musicals of the late twentieth century, Rent (1996, inspired by La Boheme) and Miss Saigon (1989, inspired by Madam Butterfly).

We are surrounded by advertising and packaging for food and over the counter medicines that make claims about their ingredients and our health. In this class, we will examine some of the definitions and legal restrictions on labeling, the history of some of these regulations, as well as the public perception of these claims. Topics may include food allergy labeling, artificial versus natural ingredients, types of sweeteners, and types of preservatives. At the end of this course, students will have a better understanding of how to read a food or drug label and glean relevant information as a consumer.

David Bowie, Ballet tights, green bandanas, #MeToo, and white pantsuits: Fashion, throughout history, has been intertwined with protest. The body, dressed and undressed, says something about a person’s political and social leanings. This course will explore the ways in which governments – but also social and political activism – have shaped, and been shaped by fashion across the globe.

“I don’t see race.” We’ve all heard people say it. But the reality is that we do. So what if we put that realization front and center, thinking about how seeing itself—our literal sense of sight—might create and reinforce racial categories? And how might our racial identity change the way we see (and hear) the world? As we explore these issues, we’ll focus on the lives of people from Africa and the African Diaspora (although we’ll consider other racial groups, too). Our examples will range across time and cultures as we consider how vision has been a tool of both racial domination and Black resistance. In the process, we’ll touch on a broad range of topics, including how plantation slavery led to present-day surveillance technologies, how the aesthetics of hip hop videos promote Black liberation, and how keeping rituals hidden lets African religions evade Western domination.

What is the relationship between body and mind? Is mind reducible to brain? Are we our ultimately just our minds? Is our body merely a vehicle of mind? Or are our bodies constitutive of our mental capacities in essential ways? Whereas some traditions argue for a dualistic separation of mind and body, others hold that we can only realize our full potential by cultivating mind-body integration. While we will start from traditional conceptions of mind-body dualism, the bulk of the course will concentrate on how intelligence arises out of our embodiment and on the significance of mind-body integration, especially on practices related to the development of mindfulness.

Your friend posts online “I just ran a 5K in 10 minutes, so training is going really well.” Do you know whether they are just faster than average or full of baloney? What if your roommate reminds you that you can save 8 gallons of water a day by turning off the sink while you brush your teeth. Using our resources responsibly is certainly important, but is 8 gallons a day a reasonable estimate or wildly exaggerated? This course will focus on math and science literacy and the skills needed to decide if a claim is ridiculous or plausible.

The concept of receiving an education is complex. In this seminar, we will delve deep into the realm of teaching and learning, including related fields, to help you develop your own Weltanschauung (loosely translated as worldview) through analysis of ideas posed by philosophers, theorists, and influencers, both past and present. The conceptual framework for our work will be developed based on the urgent need for increased equity and access to an education in the United States.

Meaningful reading for one’s personal life during and after college is the subject of this course. We will discuss whether and how fiction can teach us about life, truths and character strengths as we read a sample of philosophical and fictional works about friendship and other related virtues. Our discussions will focus on fictional characters who through their interactions and conduct represent various virtues, traits and character strengths relating to Friendship, such as wisdom, honesty, loyalty, and justice — and on characters who represent the opposite vices.

Do you ever wish that your brain came with an owners’ manual? Let’s explore the neuroscience behind how your brain helps you learn and remember things, think and communicate ideas, and experience emotion, stress, or sensations. Our brains make us who we are, and this knowledge can help you better succeed as a learner, as a member of the St. Mary’s community, and as a human in the world. The only prerequisite needed is your own brain and a sense of curiosity about it!

During one of his TED Talks , Peter Gray, a research professor of psychology at Boston College, said “from a biological perspective, play is nature’s means of ensuring that young mammals, including young human beings, acquire the skills that they need to develop successfully into adulthood. With this seminar, you will be able to reap the benefits of play. It is beneficial for regulating stress levels, improving brain function, stimulating your mind, boosting activity and improving your relationships. We will explore all types of play such as physical play, social play, constructive play, competitive play, independent play, and games with rules.

Mind over matter. We say this often when the needs of the body become so inconvenient, stressful, and overwhelming that we want to forget we have a body at all. But can this ever be done? Do our muscles or our skin or our nerves ever forget? And why would we want them to do so? Through the reading and discussion of short stories, poems, graphic novels, and essays from such writers as Garth Greenwell, Alison Bechdel, Alexander Chee, Carmen Maria Machado, and Natalie Diaz, we will explore the wonders of the body. We’ll also discuss the myth that we can appreciate life without our bodies and how this myth has created challenges in the telling of stories about sexuality and intimacy, disease and pain, and physical trauma. Through close readings, class discussions, and writing assignments, we will search for the language of our physical nature and try to answer the question of how well language is equipped to tell the story of our animal bodies.

In this first-year seminar, we will examine our society’s complicated relationship with the Internet, a technology whose rapid evolution has made it nearly ubiquitous, touching many features of life, from our education and employment, to transportation and our social lives. We will begin by discussing the origins of the Internet and its growth over the past half century, along the way examining a cross section of the seemingly countless impacts the Internet has on us. A partial list of those topics includes: the Internet and political discourse, especially around ideas of “truth”; the impact of the Internet on journalism; Internet privacy and security; “net neutrality” and Internet access; Internet storage energy-use; social media and other social impacts; and the future of the Internet, particularly the Internet of Things. To enrich our discussions and responses, we will examine books, essays, short stories, articles, video essays, films, TV shows, songs and other media about the Internet.

The songs of Mark Knopfler. A meditation on their musical, literary, cultural, artistic, historical, political, philosophical, and economic meanings. A semester-long trace of one artist’s search for the human as expressed in lyrics and music. Particular attention is paid to Knopfler’s achievements in encapsulating entire artistic genres, historical periods, and philosophical discussions into individual songs.

Most of us go through our day-by-day lives with little realization of the effect we have on the
world around us. You can’t live without affecting all the living things around you. This course
takes a deep look at how the world is adapting to stresses our species put on it, and how these adaptations can affect the future of life on this planet.

It seems that we live in a society divided — each side convinced that it is right and the other is ignorant, immoral, and hardly worth serious consideration. And yet, the more we get to know one another individually, the more we appreciate their good points even as we may continue to disagree with them. Our treatment of each other is highly influenced by our relationships with them. In this seminar we will explore the question of what makes each of us who we are — our personal identity, and its impact on how we should regard and treat each other.

What is American Islam? Who are U.S. Muslims? What is Islamophobia? Is it a form of racism? Why shouldn’t I be an Islamophobe? What does Islam have to do with the Civil Rights movement? What about #BlackLivesMatter and the Women’s March in Washington, DC? Can Muslims be feminists? Why did Allah make some Muslims funny? In this course, we will focus on the experiences and perspectives of Muslims in the US, primarily (but not exclusively) of Muslim women. We will explore Muslim engagement in various contemporary national and global justice movements, such as the #BlackLivesMatter movement and the 2017 Women’s March in DC. We will also explore debates about the shifting relationships between race, gender, class and power in relation to what constitutes justice and who is deemed worthy of it.

This course explores Latinx cultures in the US with an emphasis on the creation of empowered subjectivities through their representation in various genres and media. We will analyze film and television, music, graphic novels, fiction and nonfiction, podcasts and academic writing.

This course reviews the history of higher education in the United States through the lens of student activism. Since the 17th century, student activism has existed in the U.S. For example, in 1639, three years after its founding in 1636, Harvard College experienced its first wave of student activism. The issue, at that time, focused on the quality of student dining. In the 18th century, another food related protest occurred, The Great Butter Rebellion. In hopes of evoking change, Asa Dunbar, Class of 1767, yelled in the dining hall: “Behold, our butter stinketh! Give us, therefore, butter that stinketh not” (Jason, 2018). While the 19th century saw a lull in student protests and activism, the country engaged in Civil War which resulted in a new wave of student activism. In the 20th century, student activism shifted; students began to challenge the status quo around issues of race, gender, access, and even foreign policy. In present times, the focus of student activism focused on issues of justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and belongingness. However, what makes student activism successful? How can we measure success in the form of progress? And what, if any, role will you take in progressing social justice?