Communities & Spaces of Care: College Life Lessons Through Japanese Society and Popular Media

Assistant Professor Francesca Pizarro (Department of Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese and Russian Studies) and Christine Green (Student Success Specialist)

Course Description: This course explores Japanese popular media representations of community, care, and resilience in the face of challenges such as disaster recovery, an aging population, social isolation, and rural depopulation. Through manga, anime, and film, students will consider societal and cultural responses to stress, trauma and fraying communal and environmental ties. Using Japan as a case study, the course will consider how communities and spaces of care might be built and maintained.

The course foregrounds a "politics of care," which reframes care as a necessity and shared responsibility that impacts relationships, communities, and institutions. Through group discussions, media analysis, and self-reflection activities, students will consider how these insights can be used to examine their own first-year college experiences. The course will also familiarize students with college resources and provide them with a toolkit for navigating academic and personal challenges through a more community-centered, socially engaged approach to resilience and care.

In the Know: The Politics of Knowledge Production

Assistant Professor Aline Lo (English Department) and Assistant Professor Cayce Hughes (Associate Chair Sociology Department)

Course Description: As you enter college, you will be consuming a great deal of knowledge, and will end up producing knowledge as well. In this course, we will think critically about the politics of knowledge production in the humanities and social sciences, two academic disciplines that rely on different methods and ideas of data. So, we’ll be asking questions like, How do we know what we know? What does “good” evidence look like? How do we claim authority in knowledge production? Whose stories and perspectives are privileged, why, and with what consequences? Together, we’ll come to better understand how knowledge is constructed and what methods and perspectives can help us determine our own learning journeys.

Embodied Politics: Gesture, Movement, and the Construction of Power

Patrizia Herminjard (Lecturer in Dance) and Associate Professor Elizabeth Coggins (Associate Chair, Political Science Department)

Course Description: In this course, we will use dance and political science to study the critical role of movement and gesture in politics. From the symbolic use of body language (e.g., gesturing) during speeches to protest marches, physical expression can shape public perception, galvanize support, and challenge authority. Movement and gesture in politics convey power, solidarity, and emotion in ways that words alone cannot. This interdisciplinary course will explore creative process by focusing on five core principles —collaboration, deconstruction, repetition, reaction, and listening. Each principle will be explored from the perspectives of both dance and political science. For instance, when focusing on the principle of deconstruction, we will employ choreographic compositional techniques to analyze how embodied knowledge can be manipulated, as well as, creative process approaches to deconstruct critical complementary arguments and theories of political science research.

Comedy and Culture

Associate Professor Scott Krzych (Associate Chair, Film & Media Studies) and David and Lucile Packard Professor Heidi R. Lewis (The Feminist & Gender Studies Department)

Identity: Inheritance, Metaphor and Ethics

Professor Neena Grover (The Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) and Associate Professor Sara Hanson (Department of Molecular Biology)

Course Description: Identity is informed by culture, inheritance, and more recently by genetic testing. In the current era, it is important to recognize the limitations of genetics on who we are. This course will examine cellular components of inheritance and their relationship to identity. Students will learn about human genome, genome testing, and genome editing technologies. They will examine elements of identity in the context of ability and disability. We will discuss ethics and language of genomics along with limitations of our understanding of biology and inheritance.

Cultivating Resilience

Assistant Professor Maybellene Gamboa (The Organismal Biology and Ecology Department) and Assistant Professor Juan Miguel Arias (Education Department)

Course Description: Resilience–the ability of an individual or system to return to a stable state following disturbance–is important for systems and selves to thrive in increasingly complex and unpredictable contexts. Cultivating Resilience is an interdisciplinary course that explores cultivated and natural ecological systems through Western and Non-Western ways of knowing. Emphasizing field experiences and community agriculture, we will examine the role of reciprocity in maintaining stability, biodiversity, and ecosystem function at local gardens and open spaces. Students will develop tools for reflection, communication, artistic expression, and critical inquiry in ecological and sociocultural disciplines. Students will apply their understanding of resilience and reciprocity to develop personal capacity and deeper conceptions of community at Colorado College.