Catamount Core:  OC, GC1

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: OC, D1

This seminar supports students to engage in critical, political analyses of racism, carcerality, and abolition in and outside of educational settings, including early childhood and childhood education, higher education, and community education. Concepts such as race, power, privilege, oppression, and justice will be examined as they relate to perpetuating and disrupting carceral culture in education. Students will investigate how carceral culture shows up in their lives and experiences of education. Through the study of transformative justice and abolitionist movement organizers in and outside of education, students will develop dreams, visions, and practices for disrupting, dismantling, and refusing systems of violence and rebuilding educational cultures of liberation. Our study will be centered on the historical and contemporary abolitionist work of Black, Indigenous, queer, trans, disabled, and poor organizers and scholars of abolitionist education across Turtle Island. Through community dialogue, solidarity practices, written and arts-based work, this course embodies abolitionist praxes of (1) examining histories of punitive violence and repair at the personal, interpersonal, community, institutional, cultural, and systemic scales, (2) repairing and re-patterning our expectations of what education is, and (3) visioning systems of education where we have everything we need and are in right relationship with all our relations.

Catamount Core: OC,D1, AH2

In 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!

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: OC, GC2, AH3

This seminar will cover a variety of topics about ethics and food. We'll decide on the topics by class vote. Past versions of the class have covered meat production and consumption, food workers, organic production, and food and identity.

Catamount Core: OC, S1

The American Psychiatric Association reports that 43% of US adults feel more anxious in 2024 than they did in 2023. More specifically about 70% of adults are particularly anxious about issues such as current events, 2024 election, the economy, gun violence and immigration. However, only 24% of adults reportedly sought professional mental health support in the past year. Is this an epidemic as we experienced Covid or is there something else happening? What is "normal" anxiety as a fundamental aspect of coping in a complex world? This course will examine an overview of the current science and other literature on this question. Perhaps more importantly, the course will also examine how we define anxiety from both psychological and neuroscience perspectives as well as how well this compares to real world experiences in both western and eastern cultures. To this end, we will draw on examples from a variety of sources as well as science such as history, philosophy, art, etc. How do you define anxiety - what does it mean to you? What about ways to address anxiety proactively? Thus, 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 science, personal experiences, and examples drawn from the study of many liberal arts sources to gain a personal understanding of their own thought processes. In this way, students can explore their own ways to confront this clearly important subject!

Catamount Core: OC, 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: OC, 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: OC, D1, S1

This course introduces students to major issues raised by the experiences of people of Asian ancestry in the United States. Asian America comprises complex, diverse, and rapidly changing populations.  The course begins with a critical examination of ethnoracial categories and the historical contexts for their usage.  We will consider the notions of “race” and “ethnicity” as social constructs and develop an understanding of their meanings through social analysis and interpretation. 

The course explores the similarities and differences of Asian American groups through a comparative approach.  Students will be introduced to key areas where social science research has produced significant empirical findings and theorization. Topics include: histories of immigration; contemporary immigration trends; assimilation; transnationalism; anti-Asian racism; intergroup conflict; political economy; popular culture; ethnoracial identity; and the second generation.  The course has four main objectives: i) to offer critical perspectives on the social, political, and cultural formation of “Asian Americans”; ii) introduction to the major themes, arguments, and frameworks of analysis in the field of Asian American studies; iii) knowledge of the socio-historical conditions and contemporary issues concerning people of Asian descent in the U.S.; iv) understanding of diversity experiences and the state of current ethnoracial relations.

Catamount Core:  OC, GC1
During the quiet hours of a chilly Thursday morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his military troops across Russia’s South-Western border into Eastern Ukraine, forever engraving the date February 24, 2022 in Ukrainian and Russian histories. Not only is this act of war a complete escalation from Putin’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, but it is also one of the most aggressive assaults in contemporary European history. Importantly, in the weeks preceding the war, there were widespread talks in Western Europe and America about Ukraine joining NATO. Seizing an opportune moment, Putin claims to have invaded Ukraine because he has “no other option” and needs to protect “Russian security.” The interplay between these events are not merely coincidental, but speak to a larger, widespread ideological and culture war between Russia in the “East” and Europe in the “West,” exploiting Ukraine to be a shield and prize between the two worlds. Putin’s actions necessitate an investigation into this ideological war, and what he specifically means by “Russian security.” In this course, we will unpack Putin’s motives through examining Russia’s cultural, social, political relationship with Ukraine across time and space.

Catamount Core: OC, 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: OC, GC1

In this course, students will learn about the history of attempts to establish peace in Israel-Palestine, from early British colonial efforts through current negotiations. They will explore which aspects of these efforts were promising, and whether anything could have been handled differently. Discussions will focus on activities by Israelis and Palestinians, as well as involvement by outside powers (both regional and global).

Catamount Core: OC, GC1

Social Action Campaigns is an experiential course, using a “problem-based learning” model.  Students will study issue-based campaigns through developing and implementing their own issue-based campaigns for change. Campaigns are “strategic sequences of actions toward achievable demands”; as they develop their own campaigns, students will also explore historic and contemporary issue-based campaigns – including base-building, power analysis, goal-setting, strategy choices, and impact.  Readings, short lectures, and movies will contextualize issue-based campaigns within the social change repertoire.

In the first 2 weeks, students will form teams and develop issue-based campaigns.  These teams will work together over the entire semester to set campaign goals and strategy, and to build support for the campaign through outreach.  Out-of-class group work, meetings, and events are a required component of the course.  Students will be expected to track these hours of work on the campaign with a goal of @25 hours of campaign work during the semester. The main course product will be a portfolio of campaign work over the course of the semester.  As individuals, students will also complete reading response/analysis assignments, and an individual analysis of their campaign’s process + outcomes.  

Catamount Core: OC, D2

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.