UCOR Section Descriptions

Course Description

What are the arts? What are methods of interpreting the arts - such as theatre, film, music, dance, and visual art - in relation to their cultural, aesthetic, and administrative contexts? Students analyze contemporary arts practices while learning about arts administration history, and community practices, such as staffing, financing, marketing, programming, and engagement. Course assignments include five “art critiques,” an art organization presentation, and a final research-based arts programming project.

Course Description

This course will look at the way an anthropologist has come to understand the impact of natural selection on who we are as human beings. It will examine Darwin's own passion about racial injustices, which led him into thinking of why there is so much variation in the world. We will examine his original works, the controversies around them, and the manner in which contemporary social scientists and theologians rely on Darwin's premises for understanding human nature.

Course Description

Appropriation of Breastfeeding is a 5-credit course designed to be taken for one-quarter of an academic year. The overall purpose of the course is to create culture of health and wellness among the students pursuing degrees in health and related disciplines. The specific aims of this course are to help the students explore personal values and attitudes toward breastfeeding and to hone new knowledge and skills to promote breastfeeding. The course will provide safe and inclusive learning environment in which breastfeeding is examined as a socio-cultural, political, and health construct through structured and direct engagement in diverse course activities.

Course Description

This course examines the construction and consequences of borders across the world. Students develop their analytical, presentation and writing skills as they learn how international boundaries work on local, national and transnational levels. Substantive topics include borderland cultures, collective identities, international order, migration processes, and security policies. Assignments involve written essays, oral presentations, in-depth research, and group collaboration.

Course Description

This course examines the construction and consequences of borders across the world. Students develop their analytical, presentation and writing skills as they learn how international boundaries work on local, national and transnational levels. Substantive topics include borderland cultures, collective identities, international order, migration processes, and security policies. Assignments involve written essays, oral presentations, in-depth research, and group collaboration.

Course Description

Grounded in theoretical perspectives of International Relations, the course materials focus on the United Nations (UN) system and its evolving roles in the pursuit of security, peace, prosperity, and justice in the world.

Course Description

How did the United States become the world's largest jailer? This course addresses many questions that arise from the phenomenon of mass incarceration (the more than tripling of the incarceration rate in America since the mid-1970s). We compare the U.S. criminal justice system to other countries in the world and explore major topics like police violence, sentencing, white collar crimes, gangs, the War on Drugs, conditions of confinement, and life after prison.

Course Description

What happens when things fall apart? What leads some societies to pull together to overcome the challenges that face it, and others to fall apart and fail? This class is focused on trying to answer that question. Looking at both empirical case studies and speculative fiction, we will seek to understand what leads societies to fail, and ask ourselves whether America is on such a path.

Course Description

Citizens and interest groups in the United States have effectuated significant societal change through political participation. Accordingly, this course covers the theoretical nature of citizenship in a democracy, exposes the impediments to democratic citizenship, and fosters an understanding of the various ways in which one can participate in the American political system. It examines examples of citizen engagement that may challenge preconceptions about the forms and forums of democratic participation in order to demonstrate to how political science takes civic engagement seriously.

Course Description

The United States is experiencing historically unprecedented levels of income and wealth inequality. This course begins by discussing the measurement of economic inequality, providing students both a historical and global perspective on current levels of inequality in the US. The course then introduces microeconomic explanations for economic inequality, focusing on the labor market. The course examines claims that inequality is detrimental to individual and societal well-being and to the political process. Finally, the course asks what, if anything, can or should be done to address economic inequality.