Autumn 2013 Discovery Core

Choosing Your Autumn Quarter Courses

If you are undecided about what major to choose, don't worry! The first year curriculum provides the perfect opportunity to explore and there will be many opportunities for you to discuss your options for a major. So, for now, choose what most excites you.

We are assuming that you will be a full-time student taking 15 hours of credit, 5 or 10 of those in the Discovery Core I and one or two 5 credit elective courses. As you consider what to register for, think about what most interests you, and - if you already know what you'd like to focus on - think about what courses will best prepare you for your chosen major.   Our CUSP Advisors are ready to help you through this process when you attend an Orientation session and register for your first quarter courses.

Discovery Core I Options for Autumn

I. Art and Performance: Video, Place and Technology (10 Credits) 

This course introduces students to performance, video, and site-based art. Through an interdisciplinary studio setting students will learn to use digital video equipment, video editing software, and performance concepts as means for investigation and experimentation. Students will be introduced to a variety of readings, screenings, experiential activities, and discussions on art and performance in which they will engage with a range of art practices. They will further reflect and experiment with these practices through writing, dialogue, and the creation of individual and group projects.

II. Place and Displacement in the Americas: Human Rights, Culture and Ethnicity (10 Credits) 

This course explores four main topics: human rights, social class & race, cultural productions, and physical & social environments. Our analysis will span across South, Central, and North America and use a combination of film, fiction & poetry, social science, journalism, and testimony. Some of our questions will include: What are human rights, social justice and environmental justice? How does the violation of human rights lead to the relocation of peoples and recreation of their communities? How does the meaning of place vary among social, ethnic and economic groups, and how do problems like homelessness, pollution, displacement, and discrimination affect the way places are imagined and experienced? Case studies include: Urban homelessness, Native American reservation life, Central American refugees, and Mexican/Chicano communities, among others.

III. Stability and Change in Everyday Life (10 Credits) 

Students in this course will be introduced to key academic skills and socio-cultural concepts by critically analyzing how social structures are produced in and through ordinary activities. The course will be organized around a series of scaffolded project-based assignments that will provide students with the opportunity to ask interdisciplinary questions, explore multiple methods of inquiry and discovery, and build social consciousness about how the world works and our place in it.

IV. Thinking Beyond Borders: Philosophical Explorations of Science Fiction (10 Credits) 

This course explores philosophical and ethical questions of humanity through science fiction film and text. We are interested in the thresholds between humans and machines, emotions and logic, bodies and minds, and disrupting the binary divisions that govern social relations among Earthlings. We will also consider how the narratives and technologies of science fiction (or should we say “science fact”?) already pervade our lives and shape our identity and everyday interactions—from iPhones to Facebook, we are already blurring the boundaries of our humanity.

V. Global Comics and Cultural Critique (10 Credits) 

This course will use comics and graphic novels as a strategy to engage multilingual students with thinking and writing critically about texts at the college-level. The integrated presence of graphic images helps to contextualize written language and assists in comprehension of complex texts for students developing language skills. Comics are an international means of expression and are found in various forms in countries all over the world. As such, they provide a bridge between cultures. The course will expose students to American history, culture and language through comic books, strips and graphic novels, and will provide an opportunity for students to share their experience with comics from their own cultural backgrounds.

VI. Universal Magnetic: Globalization and the Aesthetics of hip-hop(10 Credits) 

Over the past two decades, hip hop culture, and particularly rap music, has become one of the most popular modes of youth expression on the planet. As we acknowledge both the globalization and commodification of the culture, this class also looks at hip hop as the always localized, even neighborhood-based response to the multiple and damaging effects of globalization, including but not limited to, forced migration, economic exploitation, systemic poverty, racial profiling, mass incarceration, etc. So what exactly do we mean when we talk about the cultural aesthetic of hip hop culture, and what, if anything, can we generalize about hip hop's political imagination? How have these forces shaped the musical and lyrical content of the art form?

VII. The Arts in Healthcare (5 credits)

This class will look at a variety of arts such as visual arts, sculpture, music, and movement to learn how these arts are being used to promote wellness and healing in today's healthcare settings. Assignments include weekly participation in an expressive art and visitng a hospital to assess its artistic qualities.

VIII. "Low" Cultures and Social Criticism (5 credits)

 How does Honey Boo Boo disrupt normative understandings of gender, age and class? What does The Waking Dead have to do with the sub-prime mortgage crisis? Why have South Park episodes been linked to geopolitical unrest? In this course, we will focus on cultural forms that are often regarded as beyond the pale of serious academic inquiry in order to consider the high stakes of “low” culture. Working from the premise that low culture is critically important precisely because it is “accessible,” this course will utilize silly, satirical, crass and otherwise debased popular texts as points of entry to critical conversations about such issues as nativism and state racism, sexual difference and social belonging, and debt and structural poverty.

IX. The Future of the Earth (5 Credit)

 There’s talk and disagreement all around us about environmental issues such as “sustainability,” “being green,” “climate change,” “global warming,” “carbon footprints,” “conservation,” “recycling,” and “fair trade.” What do they all mean? How can we separate fact from fiction? What are the connections between these terms? What do our environmental problems mean for your own future as well as the future of the earth? How are these topics approached in the University?

We will dig into environmental issues to understand how these terms are being used in both popular culture and by scientists. As a class we will explore what these issues mean for our future—will climate change lead to environmental collapse or to warmer weather? If everyone bought “green,” “recycled,” or “natural products,” would we be sustainable? Will there be any fish left in the ocean?

This course is an introduction to environmental science and environmental studies at UWB. Throughout the course you will explore interdisciplinary perspectives that combine economics, anthropology, geography, ecology, and climate science. Through this course you will gain academic skills as well as understand how these issues may impact your own choices and lifestyle.

X. Weighed and Measured: Human Bodies and Cultural Norms  (5 Credits)

This course uses the human body as its specific object of study. U.S. culture is saturated with media that subjects physical bodies to heavy scrutiny: images in advertisements and fashion/health magazines, the news, TV shows, movies, etc. We see this same scrutiny in other areas such as science and medicine, literature, and the law. At every turn, we are urged to be fitter, healthier, prettier, safer, and on guard for those who do not conform to these narrowly defined norms. This course will challenge students to think critically about how these norms have been shaped by history, social narratives, and politics.

XI. Decision Management for Fun and Profit (5 Credits) 

Why do some people continually make brilliant decisions while others commit one blunder after another? Do they understand their situation better? Are they just smarter? Is it just plain luck? The correct answer is none of the above. The real key is how decision makers manage their decision processes. Exploring scholarship from psychology, economics, statistics, strategy, medicine, and other fields, this course examines and explains the fundamental nature of decision problems, highlighting ten specific decision issues crucial to managing the decision-making process—and ultimately better decisions.

XII. Introduction to Modern Social Thought: Darwin, Marx, and Freud (5 Credits) 

This course serves as an interdisciplinary introduction to modern social thought. Examining the theories of Charles Darwin, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud we explore how human beings think of themselves and relate with each other.  The course touches upon elements in anthropology, biology, history, linguistics, political science, religion and sociology to understand important changes in modern secular thought. By the end of the class, students will be able to relate these abstract theories and their impact to their daily lives. The course also introduces students to the scientific method as it relates to the social sciences, and to college level research and writing.  Students will be able to use assignments for their e-learning portfolios.

XIII. Dinner Table: Social Justice and Food Production  (5 Credits)

Increased globalization of economies and trade has fueled the need for a large workforce of low wage workers. The most easily exploitable and thereby highly prized labor force is comprised of immigrant workers, with undocumented immigrant laborers suffering the worst of these labor abuses. By employing the theme of a dinner table, participants in this course will examine impacts of the global economy on immigrant labor exploitation and the resultant need for social justice. This theme will be explored at the local, regional, and national level by using examples such as laborers in the Seattle area, the Olympic Peninsula, the Yakima Valley, and branching to the East Coast and South.

XIV. Bad Habits and Good: Addiction, Biology, & Religion (5 credits) 

Addiction is a major feature of contemporary life, and our increasingly easy access to addictive commodities causes a range of individual and social problems. We now know that addiction is a disease of the brain, related to neural circuits of reward and feedback. This course takes up the study of human habit in both physiology and religious studies. Religions give rise to communities of complex habit formation, offering methods to interrupt and redirect the habitual feedback loops that keep us stuck in certain behaviors. We will learn about the biology of addiction, as well as Buddhist, Jewish and Christian practices of re-habituation, through a combination of interactive exercises, a journal, guest talks, discussion, and readings.

XV. Understanding Weather (5 Credits) 

 Students experience weather but do not have a solid grounding in the science. This course provides a scientific explanation of the how and why of weather. The course emphasizes conceptual and mathematical understanding of weather. It will cover energy, wind, pressure, clouds, precipitation, major storms, important weather patterns (ENSO, PDO, etc), and the differences between weather and climate. Qualitative and quantitative skills will be used to create and read weather maps, study patterns and trends, and collect and interpret local weather data.