Catamount Core: D1,  AH3

This course will teach students to harness the power of theoretical scholarship on social marginalization, oppression, and privilege in making sense of a society structured by intersecting systems of social hierarchy. Through their coursework, students will deepen their understanding of the ways in which intersecting systems of social power divergently shape contemporary American lived-experiences. With a focus on race and gender, students will investigate where, how, why theoretical insights constitute essential practical and political tools, equipping us to effectively challenge the intersecting systems of social power operative in our contemporary American social/cultural/political context. This course will also help students continue to develop a set of critical thinking and communication skills can be usefully applied in a variety of different domains both within and outside of academia. Through written work and through collaborative discussion, this course will help students develop their capacities to, e.g., communicate clearly and concisely, accurately reconstruct an argument, analysis, or position from a piece of text, apply theoretical tools in analyzing current events, cultural phenomena, etc., critically evaluate a position, argument, or theoretical framework, construct persuasive defense of a position, and anticipate and address potential objections.

Catamount Core: D2

Major/Minor Requirements

Elective for Health &  Society (HSOC) major and minor

For optimal well-being, is happiness the ultimate goal or should one focus more on personal growth, positive relationships, and a purpose driven life? While there is no current consensus on a single definition of well-being, researchers agree that well-being is a multidimensional construct involving biological, social, and psychological influences occurring over the course of one’s life. Optimal well-being is a state where one experiences good emotional, physical, and social health. So how do we attain positive states of well-being? Is optimal well-being the absence of suffering? Positive emotions, absence of negative emotions or cognitions, mastery in chosen field, and satisfying interpersonal relationships provide us the ability to face life’s challenges successfully. However, the pursuit of optimal well-being and the different ways of knowing about aspects of well-being differs across cultures and societies. The central theme of this course is to explore the main research topics guiding our understanding of the different ways in which well-being is conceptualized and pursued in different cultures and societies across the East and West. How we know what we know about well-being differs across cultures, and students will explore these different ways of knowing and its application. Students will engage in in-class activities each week to explore their own well-being based on the readings and lectures. The human potential to develop an optimal social, physical, and psychological well-being is best understood when we can appreciate the strength of integrating the different perspectives on well-being across cultures and societies.

Catamount Core: GC1

may count towards the following major/minor requirements: HSCO (toward the 9 additional credits)

During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States worsened considerably. Vermont, in particular, was especially impacted, standing out as having the highest per capita overdose fatality rate in the country. This course will inquire into the historical, social, and economic underpinnings to this contemporary problem, and explore how professionals in fields from medicine to social work are trying to address it. Key course themes include the role of stigma and racism in shaping the current crisis, reasons why the opioid epidemic has occurred in four distinct waves, and implications for future policy and treatment.  As a writing-intensive course, students will have opportunities to express their ideas in written form throughout the semester. Because the opioid crisis is best understood from an interdisciplinary perspective, students from a diverse range of academic interests and backgrounds are also encouraged to join this seminar.

Catamount Core: D2

This course takes its inspiration from an essay by Hannah Arendt, “Thinking and Moral Considerations,” which we will read in the course and in which she explores the problem of the move from theoretical discussions of justice to real political action in the world. While all recognize the need to base political action on firm philosophical principles, the life of the mind, in its constant questioning, problematizing, and reconsideration of its own foundations, does not at first glance seem to support political action, which ideally rests on commitment to firmly held convictions. And yet no thinker would want to shut down the possibility of acting for political change, broadly defined, on account of the ever-changing interrogations of what we mean by “equality,” “justice,” and so on.

The course will examine the ways power and privilege have been theorized, with attention to class, gender, race, and other categories, by those who go on actively to support, and also to engage in, activity that promotes political change in the world that is in line with the complexity of their own abstract reflections about engagement with the world. We will spend time looking at the relationship between education and democracy, with readings that trace the necessity of an informed citizenry, the obstacles to cultivating a life of the mind in a democracy and ways to overcome them, and the question of how best to cultivate cosmopolitanism in education. In the second section of the course, we will inquire why the habits of mind encouraged by the formation of intellect (the questioning, creative life of the mind as opposed to the goal-oriented, narrowly focused problem-solving of intelligence) so often lead, not to withdrawn contemplation but rather to progressive political engagement (and to resistance from dominant mainstream culture threatened by intellect). We will then examine theoretical and autobiographical writings by those who have both articulated and lived theories of social change across questions of class, race, culture, and sexuality and how the life of the mind informed, shaped, and altered the course of their political engagement. These figures include a diverse range of intellectuals, artists, and political figures from both within and beyond the United States.

Catamount Core: AH3

Do we have free will, or do we not? Before we can answer this question, we ought to answer two related questions: first, what do we mean by 'free will', and second, why do we care? This course seeks to analyze these and related questions by examining the nature of the will and what it means for the will to be free or unfree. We will also examine the broader question of the ways in which we value free will, and of how our understanding of free will affects our social practices and institutions. This course will look at a range of approaches to understanding free will, including the philosophical literature on the meaning of free will and of its metaphysical possibility and the scientific literature on willpower and neurobiological determinism. We will also discuss whether the concept of free will has any value for us.

Catamount Core: SU

 Climate resilience starts with directed action at the local level. Resiliency has become the critical factor in understanding how communities can plan to sustainably adapt to ecological and economic challenges of the future. Despite the multitude of federal and state laws protecting the environment and governing the use of natural resources, it remains a fact that the primary environmental decisionmaker in our country is the individual landowner. This class will examine critically the historic development of a sacrosanct legal right in the United States—the right to own private property. We will explore land-use in the United States beginning with European colonizers first contact with Indigenous people, tracing historical developments all the way up to modern day issues related to sprawling growth and development. Readings and discussions will expose students to the fundamental theory and practice of land use planning from a sustainability and resilience perspective. We will explore the ongoing evolution of property law in United States and the growing movement for ecological rights. We will grapple with the tensions that exist between private property rights and the authority of towns to engage in land use planning to address environmental, economic, and social issues on a local level. We will ask the questions—how can communities transition towards a new set of land rights paired with responsibilities to the broader community? How can we better incorporate ecological thinking into land use planning and governance? An interdisciplinary course integrating ecology, property law, land-use regulation, and political philosophy—students will learn about the tools land-use planners can employ to shape quality of life and plan for an uncertain future. Students will contemplate larger questions of human use and manipulation of space working in groups to construct their own designs using the modern tools of land-use design and regulation. Course Topics: Land-Use History, Property Law, Land-Use Regulation, Ecological Law and Natural Rights, Ecological Planning, Political Philosophy

Catamount Core: D1, AH2

n this class we will start by considering that “race” as a meaningful biological category, especially in the service of racial hierarchies, constitutes one of the most pernicious science fictions of recent human history.  Pseudo-scientific narratives establishing fundamental, socially meaningful differences among “races” have rationalized slavery, segregation, and many other forms of oppression. It’s no surprise, then, that writers of science fiction and fantasy (often collectively labeled “speculative fiction” or “sf” these days) have been well-positioned to challenge racism and to expose its effects.

The works we’ll read during this class will frequently challenge basic assumptions about race (and class and gender), but they’ll also push us to read in new ways. Speculative Fiction challenges readers through shocks to the imagination as we’re invited to view our societies radically transformed and our texts playing by new rules. We’ll spend some of our time orienting ourselves in the new worlds and their new rules (which have implications in terms of social and literary models). As diverse readers ourselves, some of us may come to these texts with a background in fantasy, science fiction, dystopian narratives and the like; others will be new to these genres. Those with familiarity can teach us to see these texts through the eyes of experience; those who are new to this sort of work will teach us to see things we haven’t noticed yet!

Under review for Catamount Core: GC1

This course examines populism and authoritarianism as contemporary challenges to democracy with long historical roots. From earlier political philosophies to the rise of populist movements in the early 20th century and the emergence of conspiracy groups and authoritarian political figures on the contemporary political landscape, the tension between the rule of law and political control has animated much of the discourse around democratic norms in the United States and elsewhere. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to populist and authoritarian ideas, and we will consider historical and contemporary analyses of these phenomena across the political spectrum while also examining literary and cinematic portrayals of authoritarian and populist movements.

Catamount Core: S1

This Honors College Spring seminar for first time students will focus on the impact of isolation on social development in our COVID world. We will explore how COVID related experiences have changed the way adolescents navigate social relationships. And, how social isolation impacts identity development.

Catamount Core: AH2

In the wake of World War II, we see the mass publication of literary works grappling with the devastation of war time trauma from the Holocaust and Eastern Bloc. Interestingly, in the late 1970s, and with the publication of Marvel in 1982, graphic novels became a popular aesthetic medium for artists striving to etch their memories and histories into illustration. This shift became particularly true for members of the Holocaust and Socialist post-memory generations in the Eastern Bloc, who struggled to depict their intergenerational trauma and political oppression. This course seeks to understand why. In this seminar, we examine graphic novels from WWII and the Eastern Bloc to understand how this art form resonates and resounds with war time trauma, memory, and identity. Through examining the graphic novels Maus, We Are On Our Own, Yossel, When I Grow Up, The Ukrainian and Russian Notebooks, Marzi: A Memoir, The Queen of Snails, Soviet Daughter, and Letting It Go in the context of social and political history, we will explore concepts such as remembrance, testimony, alienation, intergenerational trauma, gendered violence, totalitarianism, and political dissent.

Catamount Core: S1

How is it that human thinking has evolved the ability to engage in complex thinking focused on the self? Metacognition involves self-awareness and understanding of your own thought processes and as such promotes learning, goal setting, problem solving, personal insight and future planning to name a few important functions. This course will examine an overview of the current science on metacognition. Perhaps more importantly, the course will also draw on examples from creative writing, history, philosophy, art and more of people using metacognition to understand the world and their places in it. Students will also have the opportunity to explore examples on their own and in line with personal interests. This course is a seminar requiring students to engage in classroom discussion and reflective writing using assigned readings as well as self-selected readings. The goal is for students to use both science and examples drawn from the study of many liberal arts sources to gain a personal understanding of their own thought processes.

Catamount Core: AH3

Do we have free will, or do we not? Before we can answer this question, we ought to answer two related questions: first, what do we mean by 'free will', and second, why do we care? This course seeks to analyze these and related questions by examining the nature of the will and what it means for the will to be free or unfree. We will also examine the broader question of the ways in which we value free will, and of how our understanding of free will affects our social practices and institutions. This course will look at a range of approaches to understanding free will, including the philosophical literature on the meaning of free will and of its metaphysical possibility and the scientific literature on willpower and neurobiological determinism. We will also discuss whether the concept of free will has any value for us.

Catamount Core: S1

This course provides a foundational understanding of the diversity of religion and its effect on American political culture in the US by examining institutional, US Constitutional, governmental and religious actors which have created the religious marketplace of the US. The purpose of this course is not to support any particular policy perspective or ideology on any of these issues, but to employ social science research to understand the diverse positions on these policy areas, to identify assumptions underlying different positions, and to assess the effects of public debate on these issues on democratic governance and civility. In particular, we will examine religions’ role in the founding of the US, a critical understanding of religion in the 1^st Amendment, how the Courts have been the battle ground of religious liberty, and the marriage of conservative Christian ideology with conservative politics since the 1970s.

Catamount Core: D2

CAS: Non-European

Over the past decade-and-a-half anime, manga, video games, toys, J-pop music, and horror movies, among other cultural and consumer products from Japan, have garnered a larger presence in the American, as well as global, popular culture scene. What does the expanding consumption of Japanese popular culture on the global market place tell us about globalization in the 21st century? How do global flows transform popular cultural products when they are consumed in different cultural contexts? What tools of social and cultural analysis help us to better understand popular culture from Japan, and how do scholars of Japanese culture interpret and study Japanese popular cultural products?

Globalization and Japanese Popular Culture looks beyond the glitzy surface of anime and manga to examine how popular culture in Japan has spread beyond its borders, the impact of cultural flows from Japan on patterns of consumption, and the uneven ways in which cultural products find audiences in different parts of the world. Through the course readings and discussions, we will examine the above and other questions concerning Japanese popular culture in the digital age of globalization. Students will be introduced to key concepts and debates concerning popular culture global flows and be given the opportunity to apply insights gained through course readings, lectures, and discussions to a Japanese popular culture research project of their own design.