Atoms in Art & Culture

A Discovery Core Experience

May be taken as either BCORE 110 (Natural Sciences), or BCORE 104 (Arts & Humanities). Also fulfills the Community Engaged Learning (E) designation.

About This Course

Our inventions are all around us. And we have reinvented ourselves to accommodate them. The clock on our phones dictates the way we spend our time with people. The lights in our cities influence the way we sleep and how fireflies mate. The colors in advertisements guide the way we think about products and people. In this class, we will explore the atoms–the materials–that make up our world and how their properties have affected our culture, art, and history. You will learn how to re-frame scientific concepts into the context of stories. We will communicate our research through comics in which we will draw connections between atoms and art; between materials and culture; between matter and what matters.

Why Should I Take This Course?

We bake cakes, we make paint, we play with light, we create art, we tell stories. This class lets you explore the objects around us and connects those objects with their effects on our psychology, ecology, history, and art. The class lets you be creative and curious.

Selected Texts & Films

Alchemy of Us by Ainessa Ramirez

Selected Projects & Activities

We’ll get creative — doing things like explore the interaction of gatorade with light and developing a Comic Book describing the interaction between science and society.

Why Is This a Community-Engaged Learning (E) Course?

This course carries a Community-Engaged Learning & Research (CELR) designation because students collaborate directly with a community partner to create work that has real public impact. In our class, that partner is the King County Library System’s Bothell branch, whose mission to make knowledge accessible aligns closely with our course’s goal of connecting scientific ideas with everyday life. Through this partnership, students transform complex scientific concepts into creative, public‑facing displays and activity stations that help library patrons explore the cultural and material stories behind scientific innovation. The Bothell Library provides a real audience and authentic context for students’ work, while students contribute engaging educational materials that support the library’s community programming. This reciprocal collaboration embodies the core of CELR: students learn by doing meaningful work with and for the community, practicing communication, creativity, and interdisciplinary thinking while contributing to a shared public resource. In this course, your learning doesn’t stay in the classroom — it becomes part of the broader community’s learning as well.

Professor Gavin Doyle (He/Him/His)

School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences

About Professor Doyle

“We draw connections between matter and what matters.” — Professor Doyle

  • JD, Law, Loyola Law School-Los Angeles
  • MFA, Theatre Performance, University of Louisville
  • Certificate in African-American Theatre, Theatre Performance, University of Louisville
  • BA, Biology, Roanoke College
  • BA, Theatre, Roanoke College

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Dr. Charity Lovitt (She/Her/Hers)

School of Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics

About Professor Lovitt

  • Ph.D, Chemistry, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • BS Chemistry, Kentucky Wesleyan College

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