Winter Quarter 2024 A&H courses
-This is for informational purposes only. Class times, areas of inquiry requirement, fees, and course descriptions may change. Check the time schedule for updates before enrolling in any course.
-Always refresh and check your degree audit after registering for courses or changing your schedule.
For more A&H courses, use the Time Schedule: http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/.
African-American Studies
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/afamst.html
Afram 318 – Black Literary Genres (5 credits)
MW 3:30-5:20
Diversity credit
Considers how generic forms and conventions have been discussed and distributed in the larger context of African American, or other African diasporic literary studies. Links the relationship between generic forms to questions of power within social, cultural, and historical contexts. Offered jointly with ENGL 318.
Afram 337 – Popular Music, Race, Identity, and Social Change (5 credits)
TTh 3:30-5:20
Diversity credit
Focuses on popular music, shifting formations of race and identity and social change in various cultural, historical, and political contexts. Explores popular music as a tool for social change, a vehicle for community-building and a form of political and aesthetic expression.
Afram 350 – Black Aesthetics (5 credits)
TTh 4:30-6:30pm
Draws on both multi-media and print sources, including fiction, poetry, prose, films, polemics, historiography and speeches to explore the idea of a black aesthetic in various cultural, historical, and political contexts within the twentieth century.
Afram 404 – Advanced African American Studies in Humanities: Black Arts Movement (5 credits)
T 2:30-4:20
Diversity credit
Advanced and interdisciplinary engagement with racial formation, Black cultural production, and resistance among people of African descent throughout the Diaspora. Draws upon cultural studies perspectives with an emphasis on literature, film, music, performance, visual and material culture. Topics include art, labor, migration, politics; racial capitalism and political economy; social movements and cultural history; black intellectual traditions.
American Ethnic Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/aes.html
AES 440 – Race, Archives, Memory (5 credits)
MW 9:30-11:20
Diversity credit
What is memorialized and archived and what is forgotten? Who produces knowledge and what counts as knowledge? Through historical and cultural studies approaches, this course examines how official and unofficial discourses deal with memory, violence, silence, haunting, history, and subjectivity. Topics may include U.S. empire and war, slavery, and colonialism. Prerequisite: AES 150 or AES 151.
AES 446 – Music in American Cultures (3 credits)
TTh 1:30-2:50
Compares musical history and experience of selected American cultures that have fed into the American musical mainstream or had significant popularity on its periphery. Case studies may include African Americans, Latino/a Americans, Jewish Americans, Asian Americans, or European Americans. Considerations of social identity as well as musical styles. Offered: jointly with MUSIC 446.
Asian American Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/asamst.html
AAS 402 – Contemporary Asian-American Literature (5 credits)
MW 12:30-2:20
Diversity credit
Examines Asian American literature from the 1950s to the present that require analyses of structures of power and possibilities for empowerment of an American "minority" group. Multi-ethnic focus, including Filipino American, Japanese American, Chinese American, Korean American, Vietnamese American, and South Asian American subjects.
American Indian Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/ais.html
AIS 305 – American Indian and Indigenous Storytelling (5 credits)
MW 11:30-1:20
Diversity credit
Explores American Indian and Indigenous storytelling and oral traditional knowledge, with particular emphasis on the Coast Salish tribal groups of western Washington where the University of Washington is situated. Through hearing, reading, interpreting, memorizing, and sharing traditional stories, myths, and legends, students learn how stories impart concepts, values, morals, science, history, beliefs, and philosophies.
AIS 310 – Linguistic Approach to Culture: Southern Lushootseed Seasonal Calendar (5 credits)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Diversity credit
This course begins with readings and research to build discussions pertaining to cultural calendars, historical ways of life and cultural sensitivities. Topics of research and study will include stories of seasons, the moons cycles tides, commonly used language terms and a geographical study that demonstrates plant, food sources and typical weather all of which takes place during each season and month. The historical studies will provide the necessary connections that will build an understanding to what cultural aspects still continue today and aid in the production of modern cultural calendars as each student will construct an individual calendar through their own research. Although not required, this course is an excellent avenue for additional study of the 3-course Lushootseed language sequence.
AIS 377 – Contemporary American Indian Literature (5 credits)
MW 12:30-2:20
Diversity credit
Creative writings (novels, short stories, poems) of contemporary Indian authors; the traditions out of which these works evolved. Differences between Indian writers and writers of the dominant European/American mainstream. Offered jointly with ENGL 359.
Architecture
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/archit.html
Arch 150 – Appreciation of Architecture I (3 credits)
TTh 3:30-4:50
Historical survey of global architecture and built environments with reference to environmental, technological, and socio-cultural contexts, from prehistory to 1400. For nonmajors.
Arch 151 – Appreciation of Architecture II (3 credits)
TTh 10:30-11:50
Historical survey of global architecture and built environments with reference to environmental, technological, and socio-cultural contexts, from 1400 to the present. For nonmajors.
Arch 351 – World Architecture, 700-1750 (3 credits)
MWF 8:30-9:20
Surveys episodes in the history of world architecture during the period from about 700 to 1750.
Art History
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/arthis.html
Art H 200 – Art in the Modern Imagination: From Athena to Lady Gaga (5 credits)
TTh 11:30-1:20
Quiz M/W, times vary
$30 course fee
Writing credit
Informs ability to see art as a tool to examine history, ideology, beauty, and ultimately the image-saturated present. Also, to distinguish between historical context and modern projection on artworks. Further, to discover how art transcends its context and still speaks in a language in which people can become literate.
Art H 204B – Visual Culture: Arts of Africa (5 credits)
TTh 9:30-10:50
Quiz M/W, times vary
$30 course fee
Study of art and visual culture as instruments of knowledge and methods of human expression that operate in many arenas of history, tradition, and the contemporary environment.
Art H 212 – Chinese Art (5 credits)
To be arranged. Check time schedule for details.
$30 course fee
Surveys the highlights of Chinese visual arts from the Neolithic to the present. Studies jade, bronze, lacquer, silk, Buddhist sculpture, ceramics, calligraphy, painting, architecture, film, and installation art forms at a moment in Chinese history when work in those media was especially innovative and important.
Art H 220 – American Art (5 credits)
MW 9:30-10:50
Quiz T/Th, times vary
Writing credit
$30 course fee
For almost four centuries, American Art has resisted easy definition. Does its history begin with works created by Indigenous peoples thousands of years ago, or with Euro-American colonial occupation? Where are its geographic borders? What, exactly, makes someone an “America artist”--and why do any of these things matter today?
This quarter, we won’t try to define American art once and for all. Instead, we will think carefully about how and why the idea of American art has shifted, expanded, and contracted in step with the transforming nation. Moving chronologically from roughly 1650 to the present, our discussions will center on themes including art’s role in the construction of ideas about race, gender, class, and ethnicity; cross-cultural encounter; national identity formation; the US’s relationship to Europe; the development of modernism and global art institutions; activism and protest; and conceptions of the modern artist. As we work to understand images, visual practices, and artistic styles within their specific social, historical, and cultural contexts, we will engage with recent scholarship, primary source documents, and specific artworks of a variety of media, including but not limited to print, painting, sculpture, photography, installation, performance, and architecture.
Art H 260 – Fashion, Nation, Culture (5 credits)
TTh 2:30-3:50
Quiz F, times vary
$30 course fee
Introduction to Italian culture focusing on fashion and manners from the late Middle Ages to today. Explores common assumptions about nation, gender, clothes, make-up, and manners, through literary and visual analysis. In English. Offered jointly with ITAL 260/JSIS A 260.
Art H 273 – History of Photography (5 credits)
To be arranged. Check Time Schedule for details.
Is it possible today to imagine a world without photography? Photographs inform and impact so many aspects of our lives, we know—but how, specifically? This course is a survey of photography from its beginnings in the early 19th century to the digital imaging of today. Online video lectures, course readings and discussion forums will address photography’s multiple histories and theorizations: as an artistic medium, as a social text, as a technological adventure, and as a cultural practice. Key photographers, cultural movements and recurring themes will be explored with close attention to the social and cultural contexts in which photographs were produced, circulated and consumed. Further, we will explore critical approaches to, and complex theories concerning the operations and impact of photography, emphasizing a consideration of how photographic media impacts each of us, today.
Asian Language and Literatures
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/asianll.html
Asian 207A – Special Topics in Literature and Culture of Asia: Haunted by History: Asian Horror Cinema (5 credits)
TTh 1:30-3:20
What makes Asian horror so unique? Why is Asian horror so popular among the global audience? Along with the uncanny thrills and entertainment value these films offer, Asian horror cinema has stood out in its symbolic, allegorical, and figurative representation of social issues. From the global success and stunning popularity of Ring (リング, Dir. Nakata Hideo, 1998) to the recent emergence of art-house horror or post-horror films such as The Wailing (곡성, Dir. Na Hong-jin, 2016) and Mekong Hotel (แม่โขงโฮเต็ล, Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2012), Asian horror cinema has engaged global audiences with a diverse array of themes and aesthetic styles as well as political and cultural realities.
Horror genre has long been associated with ahistorical, apolitical, trashy, B-sentimental, and “low” taste. Yet, at the same time, as the most affectively and sensorially experienced film genre, horror films also “move” us through vicarious revenge, psychological reparation, and, of course, pure entertainment. This affective dimension of horror foregrounds the cultural politics of Asian horror cinema.
Genre cinema commonly exists upon the repetition of motifs and expected codes. At the same time, cultural, geopolitical, and historical specificities also affect the formation of a cinematic genre. This course in particular explores the ways in which Asian horror cinema narrativizes, visualizes, and politicizes socio-historical issues in the region. The course also examines how the genre itself creates cultural space for articulating such issues. Throughout the course, students will read the “political unconscious” of Asian horror cinema and theorize the genre’s specificity and intra-Asian relationship. Offered jointly with CMS 272A.
Asian 207B – Authenticity and its discontents in Southeast Asian Translation (5 credits)
MW 11:30-1:20
contact instructor for add codes
Introduction to the literature of one or more Asian traditions considered in its cultural context. Content varies depending on the specialization and interest of instructor. Texts in English translation. Offered jointly with Comp Lit 250A.
Chicano Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/chist.html
CHSTU 332 – Chicano Film (5 credits)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Diversity credit
Provides a historical overview of the evolution of Chicano culture through film. Critically examines the portrayal and self-portrayal of Chicanos in film and selected works of narrative. Taught in English.
CHSTU 466 – Chicano Literature: Fiction (5 credits)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Examines nineteenth- and early twentieth-century fiction, as well as contemporary works in attempts to trace the development of Chicano fiction in the proper historical trajectory. Taught in English.
Classics
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/clas.html
Clas 239 – Greece: From Ancient to Modern (5 credits)
TTh 10:30-12:20
How are Ancient and Modern Greece connected to each other? Learn about great moments in Ancient Greek culture (tyranny and democracy, tragedy and comedy, athletics and art) and the complex ways Modern Greece has drawn on this heritage by exploring ancient and modern texts and images. Offered jointly with JSIS A 239.
Clas 328A – Sex, Gender, and Representation in Greek and Roman Literature (3 credits)
MWF 2:30-3:20
Diversity credit
This class explores how the categories of gender and sexuality were defined, represented, replicated, and policed in ancient Greece and Rome. What were the expectations for proper male and female behavior in Greece and Rome? What were considered appropriate sexual objects and sexual acts? How were men and women, and their gender and sexual roles, represented in literature? How did the Greeks and Romans make sure that the boundaries of these roles were maintained? No prior knowledge is needed.
Clas 430 – Greek and Roman Mythology (3 credits)
To be arranged. Online course.
Check Time Schedule for details on registration.
Principal myths found in classical and later literature.
Communications
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/com.html
Com 200 – Introduction to Communication (5 credits)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Quiz F, times vary
Introduces theories and research in communication. Explores the myriad ways scholars approach fundamental issues of contemporary human communication. Focuses on theories and research of communication (e.g. relational, group, political, cultural, and international). Acts as a gateway to knowledge about the communication discipline.
Com 231 – Intro to Rhetoric (5 credits)
To be arranged. Go to time schedule for details.
Introduces students to the over two thousand year old discipline of rhetoric. Through contemporary examples of texts and images from politics and popular culture, students will explore concepts such as: the public, identity, persuasion, difference, and ethics.
Com 234 – Public Debate (5 credits)
MW 10:30-11:20
Quiz TTh
Examines public debate in a democracy by developing a rhetorical perspective of public argument and skills to evaluate debates critically. Develops an understanding of rhetoric, values, audiences, tests of reasoning, and sources of information. Sharpens critical skills and applies them to contemporary controversies in the public sphere.
Comparative History of Ideas
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/chid.html
Chid 212 – Critical Perspectives on Belonging in Western Europe (5 credits)
MW 9:30-11:20
Quiz F, times vary
Hybrid course. Go to Time Schedule for details.
Diversity credit
Emergence of ideals now associated with Western Europe through analysis of literary, artistic, or cinematic sources. How those ideals contrast with reality as experienced by marginalized others within and without its borders.
Chid 250B – Special Topics: Climate Change and the Emotions (5 credits)
TTh 12:30-2:20
From historic fires, floods, and temperatures to species extinction, we are living in a time of tremendous ecological loss. This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to the feelings that arise in the face of the climate crisis, such as ecoanxiety and climate grief, while surfacing other feelings that attend our connection to the natural world, including wonder, joy, and love.
Chid 250F – Special Topics: Religions and Horror Films (5 credits)
TTh 4:30-6:20pm
From the Exorcist (1973) and the Wicker Man (1973) to Midsommar (2019) and the VVitch (2016), religious themes have been a major element of modern horror films in the history of western cinema, particularly in the field of religious studies and comparative religion. We will explore modern scholarship on the intersection of horror/monster theory and religious studies, through engagement with several films spanning from the 1970s to the current folk horror revival and associated writings in the fields of comparative religion, psychoanalysis, philosophy, etc. We will explore cosmic horror, folk horror, exorcism/possession, the divine feminine, and cults.
Chid 480A – Advanced Special Topics: Dream Work (5 credits)
TTh 3:30-5:20
Writing
We will track the ubiquitous figure of the creator be it the artist, author, activist, or casual social media user as a worker who is transformed by technology, creativity, and social struggle. What does dream work reveal about our desires, aspirations, agency and the material conditions of capitalism?
Cinema and Media Studies
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/cms.html
CMS 315 – History of New Media (5 credits)
MW 3:30-5:20
Open to all students starting period III
This course will engage and explore robotic and virtual servants and assistants in film, television, and commercial advertisements from the 20th and 21st centuries. Students will watch, analyze, and discuss media from a range of decades and genres, examining these posthuman assistants as new media and considering their intersection with race, gender, sexuality, and class. How have media representations of these assistants changed, and not changed, over time? To what extent do these depictions vary across genre and medium? How do fictional assistants compare to their real-world counterparts, such as Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa? How and why are fictional and real-world virtual/robotic assistants raced, gendered, and classed, and what are the implications of these markings? And what purpose—beyond simply service or assistance—do these aides ultimately serve for global consumers?
CMS 321 – Oppositional Cinema/Media: Punk (5 credits)
WF 12:30-2:20
Diversity credit
Open to all students starting period III
Approaches film and related media as socially and politically engaged practice, with focus on screen media produced or received in "opposition" to dominant cultural and entertainment industry norms.
Drama
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/drama.html
Drama 103 – Theatre Appreciation (5 credits)
Group Start Online course, to be arranged. Go to Time Schedule for details.
Covers the art of live theatrical performance. Discussion of how theatre is assembled, who the artists are, what they do, how theatre differs from other media, and how the various genres and styles of performance function, to create a deeper understanding of live performance.
Drama 270 – Theatre of Social Change (5 credits)
TTh 11:30-1:20
This course explores a range of performance practices, styles, and forms through which theatre has been uniquely successful in advocating, envisioning, and staging political and social change. It is not so much a course on social issues themselves, but on the genres of social change that contain them. It is about the ‘how’ of change.
Rallies, protests, ‘actions’ all speak to individuals with a proclivity toward change. Participants are there because there is already a will. How to speak to those without the will is the challenge of theatre for social change. Socially engaged, activist theatre is not a contemporary invention. For hundreds of years theatre in many forms has been reaching out across constituencies with a variety of approaches. We will consider some of the more successful forms.
DXArts
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/dxarts.html
DXArts – Digital Art and New Art Media (5 credits)
To be arranged. Group start online course. Go to Time Schedule for details.
$20 course fee
Investigates and illuminates Digital Art and New Media from a creative, theoretical, and historical perspective. Towards an exploration and discovery of the future of art, examines the paradigm shifts implicit in the inception and expansion of media art, as well as the dynamic core ideas that underscore digital art practices in the early twenty-first century.
English
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/engl.html
Engl 257 – Asian-American Literature (5 credits)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Diversity credit & writing credit
No seniors period I registration
Restrictive immigration legislation and American foreign policy have deeply impacted Asian American populations, thus putting its peoples in a unique position for defining Americanness. How do artists with an Asian ancestry challenge a country that ostensibly celebrates diversity yet looks with suspicion on the foreign? We’ll look at the creation of “Asian American literature” as a category to examine this question. Why was Asian American literature created? Who is Asian American literature for? To explore these questions, we will consider the short stories of Jhumpa Lahiri; the essays of Carlos Bulosan and Alex Tizon; the comedy of Eddie Huang and Margaret Cho; and novels (in whole and in part) by Annie Choi, Bich Minh Nguyen, Kirstin Chen, and Celeste Ng.
Engl 258 – African American Literature (5 credits)
TTh 3:30-5:20
Diversity credit & writing credit
No seniors period I registration
Introduction to various genres of African American literature from its beginnings to the present. Emphasizes the cultural and historical context of African American literary expression and its aesthetics criteria. Explores key issues and debates, such as race and racism, inequality, literary form, and canonical acceptance.
Engl 259A – Literature and Social Difference (5 credits)
MW 1:30-3:20
Diversity credit & writing credit
No seniors period I registration
Literary texts are important evidence for social difference (gender, race, class, ethnicity, language, citizenship status, sexuality, ability) in contemporary and historical contexts. Examines texts that encourage and provoke us to ask larger questions about identity, power, privilege, society, and the role of culture in present-day or historical settings.
Engl 265 – Environmental Humanities (5 credits)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Diversity credit & writing credit
No seniors period I registration
Introduces the study of the environment through literature, culture, and history. Topics include changing ideas about nature, wilderness, ecology, pollution, climate, and human/animal relations, with particular emphasis on environmental justice and the unequal distribution of environmental crises, both globally and along class, race and gender lines.
Engl 270 – The Uses of the English Language (5 credits)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Writing credit
No seniors period I registration
Surveys the assumptions, methodologies, and major issues of English in its cultural settings. Connects English language study with the study of literature, orality and literacy, education, ethnicity, gender, and public policy.
Engl 308 – Marxism and Literary Theory (5 credits)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Open to all students on 11/20
This course begins with a world changing text by Marx and his collaborator, Engels, and then proceeds to examine the debates that have emerged among theorists who have taken up Marxist ideas and run with them. These thinkers have expanded on Marx’s and Engels’s insights about class conflict and history, and have sought to understand how capitalism, racism, and sexism intersect and thus work together to create dominant systems of power, or hegemony. At the center of the course is the question of how 19th century Marxist ideas about political economy (aka economics), history, and philosophy have been taken up by 20th and 21st century scholars, and how a distinct tradition of interpreting literature, culture, and society from a Marxist perspective, using Marxist tools, has developed over time.
By contrast to other models of literary and cultural criticism which often seek to find in art and other cultural texts transcendent messages and universal meanings, Marxists situate literary and cultural texts within their historical contexts of production and reception. In so doing, they seek to understand how power dynamics (including those informed by class, race, gender, and sexuality) create meaning, and how the conflicts that result from the imposition of power impact the meaning, message, genre, style, and form of literature and all other forms of cultural production.
Our study of Marxist theory will necessarily involve close, intensive reading of dense and often highly philosophical texts. Through engagement with these texts we will seek to understand how a materialist method indebted to Marx and Engels shapes contemporary literary and cultural studies scholarship, and how diverse critical practices (given labels such as “critical theory,” “feminist theory,” “critical race theory,” "postcolonial studies," and “cultural studies”) sit within an expansive Marxist intellectual tradition. Over the course of the quarter we will treat several literary texts and contemporary films. We will consider how our understanding of each is shaped by the Marxist frameworks that the course introduces, and how each, in turn, may be used to reveal the possibilities and pitfalls of Marxist methodologies.
Engl 317 – Literature of the Americas (5 credits)
MW 9:30-11:20
Diversity credit
Open to all students on 11/20
Examines writings by and about people of the Americas, with a focus on intersections of gender, colonialism, race, sexuality, and ethnicity.
Engl 319 – African Literatures (5 credits)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Diversity credit
Open to all students on 11/20
Introduces and explores African literatures from a range of regions. Pays particular attention to writings connected with the historical experiences of colonialism, anti-colonial resistance, and decolonization. Considers the operations of race, gender, nationhood, neocolonialism, and globalization within and across these writings.
Engl 327 – Narratives of Bondage and Freedom (5 credits)
MW 2:30-4:20
Diversity credit
Open to all students on 11/20
This course honors the political intent of slave narratives—to advocate for the freedom of enslaved people—while approaching them as sophisticated works of literature. As we trace the genre from its beginnings in Britain’s slaveholding colonies to its development in the United States, we’ll pay particular attention to how enslaved or formerly enslaved authors got their stories into print. How did these authors navigate constraints posed by limited literacy, money, and autonomy to reach an audience of middle-class white people with money to spend on luxury items like books? What rhetorical techniques and textual strategies did they use to convince this readership to support the abolition of slavery? How did antislavery networks and societies both help and hinder Black authors? And how did slave narratives help shape other kinds of texts by Black authors, from newspapers to novels? Through activities including a visit to the UW’s special collections library, the exploration of online archives, and experimentation with digital platforms used for editing and transcription, we’ll explore how slave narratives have been preserved for future generations of readers, and how we can make them accessible to a broad reading public.
No prior familiarity with slave narratives is necessary to succeed in this class, but consistent attendance will be important because we will be working on collaborative projects during our class time. Assignments will be geared toward making what we learn visible to others. They will include two short presentations and a final project consisting of a digital exhibit or a lesson plan.
Engl 340 – Irish Literature (5 credits)
MW 1:30-3:20
Open to all students on 11/20
Examines how Irish writers have responded to Ireland's history of being divided by both British colonialism and religious conflict. Covers how these authors brought literary experimentation and innovation to Celtic storytelling traditions. Varied readings, with some imagining a unified Irish identity, while others explore the continued legacies of colonialism on issues of gender, race, religion, and citizenship.
French
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/french.html
French 378 – Contemporary France (5 credits)
MW 1:30-3:20
This wide-ranging course probes what France is today by considering the people, moments, and documents from the French Revolution to the present that complicate narratives of France as a unified cultural space. One of the principal ways in which it does this is by juxtaposing moments in history in metropolitan France and the former colonies or present-day overseas departments and regions, where connected events such as the Revolution of 1848 play out in very different ways (the definitive end of hereditary monarchy in France vs. the abolition of slavery in the French Caribbean). It also does this by examining how the idea of France is complicated internally by a number of opposing tendencies: its equally important revolutionary and reactionary political traditions; its determined monolingualism and, in spite of it all, thriving minor languages; its credo of a singular culture (Republican Universalism) in the face of ascendant race-consciousness; its anti-immigrant reflexes and status as the birthplace of human rights. We will do so by examining a variety of types of texts: historical, scholarly, political, literary, and cinematic. All readings, discussions, and assignments in English. Open to all. French majors and minor may opt for some readings in French. No pre-reqs.
Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/gwss.html
GWSS 454 – Women, Words, Music, and Change (5 credits)
TTh 3:30-5:20
Add code required.
Comparative analysis of use of myths, tales, music, and other forms of expressive culture to account for, reinforce, and change women's status and roles. Offered jointly with ANTH 454.
Global Literary Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2023/glits.html
Glits 313B – Literature Across Places: Travel, Migration, Exile (5 credits)
MW 1:30-3:20
The fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 signaled a new era of openness and global mobility, both voluntary and forced. It spawned new forms of transcultural writing and reflection, which we will discuss in this course along with some earlier German travel writing. Questions include: How are modern travel and migration experiences narrated by a diverse group of writers? Whose voices do we hear in their stories? How are they portraying self and Other? Which encounters and experiences do they feature in their texts? We will discuss some fictional East-West travelogues, the poetics of walking and contemporary slow travel, Mediterranean journeys, tales of displacement and post-migration. Texts by Alina Bronsky, Abbas Khider, Saša Stanišić, Yoko Tawada, Adalbert Stifter, Elias Canetti, Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Judith Hermann, Christoph Ransmayr and others.
All texts in English translation. Format: Brief lectures and discussion. Requirements: Class work, tests, reading journals, individual presentations and team projects. Jointly offered with Comp Lit 320A/German 298A.
Glits 313C– Literature Across Places: Epic Emotions from Classical Greece to Contemporary India (5 credits)
MW 1:30-3:20
This is co-taught upper-level seminar open to all majors. We will be discussing and comparing two major Epic poems, the Iliad on Ancient Greek side and the Mahābhārata on the Indian side, with a focus on emotions. Did you know that, according to one leading specialist on the subject, it takes “more than a life-time” to learn another culture’s emotions? We suspect that sometimes it can take “more than a life-time” to understand other people’s emotions even within one’s culture. The Iliad and the Mahābhārata took many lifetimes to be created and they can tell a lot about emotions, in Antiquity and today. So, we’ll think through emotions as we read parts of these two culturally contrasting and very different but also in some ways similar epics. There are no prerequisites and no previous knowledge of the Iliad or the Mahābhārata is assumed. Offered jointly with Asian 498B/Comp Lit 251B/Clas 369A.
Glits 314A – Literature Across Genres: Webtoons: Korean Comics, Global Context (5 credits)
MW 3:30-5:20
This course will cover the rise of webtoons (a specialized term for webcomics) as an artform and industry. It will explore how technology transformed manhwa using vertical scrolling layouts that altered the way comics are aesthetically designed, read, and distributed not just in Korea but throughout the world. It will also look at how those webtoons are adapted into other forms like dramas and video games, further contributing to the spread of Korean culture. Finally, we will analyze several popular webtoons and themes and how they reflect Korean society and culture as well as global influences.
Glits 314C – Literature Across Genres: Mass Culture in Latin American Literature (5 credits)
TTh 12:30-2:20
Literary work developed across various forms of imaginative expression, such as the adaptation of prose fiction to theater, or treatment of a common theme in multiple genres (such as poetry, legend, opera, comics, fictional and non-fictional narrative, essays).
History of Modern Europe
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/modeuro.html
HSTEU 210 - Paris (5 credits)
TTh 10:30-12:20
Quiz F, times vary
Writing credit
Paris (HSTEU210) is an interdisciplinary course spanning the entire history of the city of Paris, from its real and mythical origins to the present. Lectures and readings will emphasize political, cultural, and urban history, including the centrality of Paris in the history of France and as the capital of a global empire. We will explore the Parisian landscape, both real and figurative, through a variety of lenses: social geography, cultural and artistic representations, architecture and urban planning, business practices, race and sexuality, political violence, and civic and religious ceremony.
Jackson School of International Studies: Jewish Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/jewst.html
Jew St 215 – Ladino Language and Culture (5 credits)
TTh 10:30-12:20, F 10:30-11:20
Ladino (also known as Judezmo or Judeo-Spanish) is the traditional language of Sephardim, descendants of the Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula who settled in many parts of the world. This course introduces students to the Ladino language, Sephardic culture and cross-cultural encounters throughout the Balkans, Eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East. In addition to a grammar review, students will start building a vocabulary base in this course by exploring various primary source materials (both in Rashi and its Romanization).
Conducted in English and Ladino, this is a language and culture class that introduces listening, speaking, and writing skills with a heavy emphasis on reading. This course is part of a two-course sequence and is a requirement for the Spring 2023 course “Guided Readings in Ladino.”
No prior knowledge of Spanish or Hebrew is required.
Landscape Architecture
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/landscape.html
L Arch 353A – History of Modern Landscape Architecture (5 credits)
TTH 4:00-5:50
Writing credit
Development of profession and art of landscape architecture in the United States, Europe, South America, and Japan in relation to prevailing social, economic, political, and cultural factors. Relationships with other professions, especially architecture and urban planning, and other arts, such as painting and sculpture. Open to non-majors.
L Arch 361A – The Human Experience of Place (3 credits)
TTh 10:00-11:20
Diversity credit
Interdisciplinary approaches to exploring the reciprocal relationship between people and the landscapes of everyday life. Through readings, discussion, in-class activities and mini-projects, students study place attachment, relationships to nature, environmental attitudes and perception, personal space, territoriality, urban public space, diversity, participation, and the politics of space. Open to nonmajors.
Linguistics
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/ling.html
Ling 200 – Intro to Linguistic Thought (5 credits)
MWF 2:30-3:20
Quiz TTh, times vary
RSN credit
Not open for credit to students who have completed LING 201 or LING 400.
Language as the fundamental characteristic of the human species; diversity and complexity of human languages; phonological and grammatical analysis; dimensions of language use; and language acquisition and historical language change.
Ling 233 – Language and Society (5 credits)
MWF 2:30-3:20
Quiz Th, times vary
Diversity credit
Introduces the study of sociolects, the varieties of language that arise from differences in cultural and societal groups, often reflective of power inequalities. Raises awareness of the role that society and the individual play in shaping sociolects via the systematic observation and critical discussion of linguistic phenomena. Offered jointly with ANTH 233/COM 233.
Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/neareast.html
Melc 229 – Introduction to Islamic Cultures (5 credits)
TTh 12:30-2:20pm
Quiz F, times vary
Covers major developments in the formative, classical, and modern periods of Islamic civilization from seventh century Arabia to the contemporary Muslim world. Looks at the development of Islamic religious thought and legal practice as well as the Muslim polities, cultures, and intellectual traditions of Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. Offered jointly with JSIS A 210.
Melc 269 – Musical Cultures of the Silk Road (5 credits)
W 1:30-3:20
Diversity credit
Explores music cultures of the Silk Road lands of Central Eurasia, China, and the Middle East from anthropological perspectives. Examines the interconnections between music and culture, and the political ramifications and the sociohistorical contexts of colonization, imperialism, and sovereignty on the production of musical expressions. Topics include culture, ethnicity, diversity of musical expression, literature, religion, and colonialism. Offered jointly with MUSIC 269.
Melc 305 - The Biblical Prophets: Royal Literature in the Bible and the Ancient Middle East (3 credits)
MW 3:30-4:50
Explores the Biblical prophets (in translation) within their Near Eastern contexts. Historicity, literary and rhetorical sophistication, and ideological agendas. Seeks to uncover the meaning and distinctiveness of Israelite prophecy within the context of the larger Near East. No knowledge of the Bible required. We'll be looking at how political rhetoric was formed and used in the ancient Middle East (2000 to 500 BCE), and how ancient scribes reformed their cultures' myths about kingship to support their rulers.
Melc 332 – Arab-American Writers (5 credits)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Explores the influences of Arab American writing both in the United States and the Arab world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Discusses issues of emigration to the United States from the Arab world and its impact on the formation of a distinctive Arab American identity. Offered jointly with Glits 253A/Comp Lit 362A.
Melc 335 – Language Conflict and Identity in the Middle East and North Africa (5 credits)
W 1:30-3:20
Hybrid course. Go to Time Schedule for details.
Explores social and linguistic aspects of the languages and cultures of the Middle East and North Africa, focusing on the relationship between language and national/ethnic identity from the perspective of group conflict. Considers language policies in colonial and post-colonial states, and individual strategies of accommodation and resistance to these policies.
Melc 392 – Politics and Poetics of Translation (5 credits)
MW 1:30-3:20
Diversity credit
Study of translation through close examination of medieval and modern Middle Eastern literary texts. Explores how translation is shaped by profoundly unequal power dynamics and effects of imperial domination of English in translation practices. Includes translations from Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish into English and translations among these languages. Knowledge of a second language not assumed. Offered jointly with Glits 312/Comp Lit 396B.
Music
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/music.html
Music 120 – Survey of Music (5 credits)
MTWTh 9:30-10:20
Quiz Th/F, times vary
Studies in listening, with emphasis on the changing components of Western art music. Illustrated lectures, laboratory section meetings, and presentations by guest artists.
Music 131 – History of Jazz (5 credits)
To be arranged. Group start online course. Check time schedule for details.
Extensive overview of important musicians, composers, arrangers, and stylistic periods of jazz history from emergence of the first jazz bands at the turn of the twentieth century through post-modern bebop era of the 1990s.
Music 160 – American Folk Music (5 credits)
MTWThF 8:30-9:20
Explores the U.S. as a complex multicultural society through folk music traditions of European Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, Mexican Americans, and Jewish Americans. How racial, ethnic, and cultural groups have influenced each other and the power dynamics; historical/contemporary inequities in race, ethnicity, class, national origin, and immigration status. Folk music as a means of protesting social injustices.
Music 162 – American Pop Song (5 credits)
To be arranged. Group start online course. Check time schedule for details.
Historical, social, and stylistic study of popular idioms from the late nineteenth century to the present. Most attention to contemporary idioms (rock, country-western, soul, hip-hop). Various facets of the industry examined to learn how they influence taste and musical style.
Music 185 – The Concert Season (2 credits)
To be arranged. Group start online course. Check time schedule for details.
Performances from the School of Music concert season, supplemented by lecture topics related to concert repertoire. Analysis of applicable musical topics appropriate for enhanced appreciation of historical and cultural contexts of works performed. Attendance at ten concerts required.
Music 251 – Music of the Americas (5 credits)
MTWF 10:30-11:20
Note: class also offered on Thursdays.
Music of the Americas.
Philosophy
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/phil.html
Phil 102 – Contemporary Moral Problems (5 credits)
MWF 9:30-10:20
Quiz TTh, times vary
Writing credit
Philosophical consideration of some of the main moral problems of modern society and civilization, such as abortion, euthanasia, war, and capital punishment. Topics vary.
Phil 243 – Environmental Ethics (5 credits)
MW 11:30-12:50
Quiz TTh, times vary
Writing credit
Focuses on some of the philosophical questions that arise in connection with environmental studies. Topics to be considered include: the ideological roots of current issues, values and the natural world, public policy and risk assessment, intergenerational justice, and social change. Offered jointly with ENVIR 243.
Polish
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/polish.html
POLSH 420 – Polish Literature in Translation: Culture and Communism (5 credits)
TTh 1:30-3:20
Topics vary and may include overview of contemporary Polish culture: literature (prose, poetry, and drama), film (feature, documentary, and video art), music, theatre, art, and architecture, as well as an introduction to the cultural life in Poland in the twenty-first century.
Scandinavian Studies
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/scand.html
Scand 156 – Swedish Literature and Culture (5 credits)
MW 12:30-2:20
Introduction to modern Swedish literature, culture, and contemporary discourses on race, multiculturalism, gender equality, and LGBTI.
Slavic
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/slavic.html
Slavic 320 – Eastern European Fiction: Migrant Writers & Their Journeys (5 credits)
MW 11:30-1:20
Introduces post-WWII Eastern European fiction created during and after the communist era, both in Eastern European countries and in exile. Includes works by Polish, Czech, Yugoslav, post-Yugoslav, Hungarian, and Baltic writers. Taught in English.
Slavic 426 – Ways of Feeling (5 credits)
MW 1:30-3:20
Investigate the diversity of human experience by focusing on culture specific aspects of linguistic expression of emotion. Examination of the meaning and form of emotion words in different languages, facial expressions, cultural attitudes to emotion and emotional behavior, and gender-specific emotional expressions.
Textual and Digital Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/WIN2024/txtds.html
TXTDS 401 – Text Technologies (5 credits)
TTh 2:30-4:20
Historical, conceptual, theoretical, and critical perspectives on world texts from antiquity to the digital age. Manuscript circulation of texts in the Middle Ages and modern times; global histories of the rise and spread of print technologies; preservation, access, reuse, and recycling of text. Impacts of digitization and textual data on reading and on repositories and institutions, such as libraries. No pre-reqs. Open to all students.