Spring Quarter 2025 A&H courses
-This is for informational purposes only. Credits, areas of inquiry requirement, fees, and course descriptions may change. Check the time schedule or MyPlan 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, go to: http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/.
African American Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/afamst.html
Afram 318 – Black Literary Genres (5 credits)
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 330 – Music, Folklore, and Performance in Black Society (5 credits)
Focuses on cultural expressions created by people of African descent in the Unites States in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on music, folklore, dance, and humor.
American Ethnic Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/aes.html
AES 212 – Comparative American Ethnic Literature (5 credits)
AES majors only period I registration. Open to all students period II.
Diversity credit
Reviews selected texts by African American, American Indian, Asian American, Chicano/Latino, and Euro American writers. Includes a comparison of how texts envision and interpret a diverse American culture and social, political relations among peoples of the United States. Explores the power of cultural agency in the creation of America's literature.
AES 404B – Advanced AES Seminar: Visual Archives of Unfreedom and Liberation (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Comparative interdisciplinary study of race and ethnicity. Examines experiences and cultural expressions of racialized communities in the U.S. and its diasporas from a cultural studies' perspective. Explores how expressive cultures engage and transform racial formations and their intersections, animating social relations of everyday life and reshaping structures of power.
AES 440 – History and Memory: Race, Archives, and Afterlives (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Addresses questions such as: What is memorialized and archived and what is forgotten? How is history racialized and how are racial histories told? Who produces knowledge and what counts as knowledge? Examines how official and unofficial discourses deal with memory, violence, silence, haunting, history, and subjectivity, through historical and cultural studies approaches. Topics may include U.S. empire and war, slavery, and colonialism.
American Indian Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/ais.html
AIS 203 – Intro to American Indian Literature (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Introduction to Indigenous creative writing, including novels, short stories, poetry, autobiography, and plays. Explores the artistic, intellectual, political, and cultural contexts out of which the creative work of American Indian and Indigenous writers evolves and is interpreted.
AIS 321 – Powwow Cultures (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Introduction to powwow cultures in Native North America. Covers historic and contemporary powwow practices by engaging in a variety of participatory and hands-on activities, ranging from interactions with powwow musicians, dancers, organizers, and community members, via guest lectures and participation in the annual UW First Nations Powwow, to analyses of print and audiovisual media, including social media. Offered jointly with MUSIC 321.
Anthropology
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/anthro.html
Anth 233 – Language and Society (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Open to all students period II.
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 COM 233/LING 233.
Architecture
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/archit.html
Arch 150 – Appreciation of Architecture I (3 credits)
Online course. Go to time schedule for details.
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)
Historical survey of global architecture and built environments with reference to environmental, technological, and socio-cultural contexts, from 1400 to the present. For nonmajors. No pre-reqs.
Arch 231 – Making and Craft (5 credits)
No seniors
Introduces the cultures and practical realities of "making" through study of the nature of tools, techniques, and the development of built culture over time. Examines the relationships of "making" to available materials, sources of energy and the development of infrastructure. Also covers qualities and characteristics of materials.
Arch 352 – History of Modern Architecture (3 credits)
No freshmen
Architectural history from 1750 to the present.
Art History
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/arthis.html
Art H 203 – Survey of Western Art (5 credits)
Writing credit
This course introduces the major figures, styles and movements in Western art from the High Renaissance to the present. It also presents the principle issues, techniques, and interpretive methods of the discipline of art history. As well as learning to recognize the key “monuments” of European and American art from around 1500 to 1900, students will consider how a study of visual products adds to our understanding of past cultures and societies. Illustrated lectures anchor the course, but discussion is always encouraged, and sophisticated reading assignments will be provided to expand upon the text and lectures.
Art H 209A – Art Themes and Topics: Intro to Digital Art History (5 credits)
Writing credit
Introduces students to new ideas, developing themes, and current research in art history and visual culture.
Art H 212 – Chinese Art and Visual Culture (5 credits)
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 309A – Topics in Art History: Art and Climate Change (5 credits)
Topics vary. Check MyPlan for updates to course description.
Art H 400A – Art History and Criticism: Haiti and Print Culture (5 credits)
Courses on special topics, frequently by visiting faculty, which cannot be offered on a continuing basis. Check MyPlan for updates to course description.
Art H 400B – Art History and Criticism: Contesting the Status Quo: Art and Social Action since 1960 (5 credits)
In some sense, all art is political. That is to say, all art takes a stand—or is positioned by interpreters so that it does—in relation to the dominant values of its time. Since the 1960s, however, one might say that artists have become particularly conscious of the political resonances of their art. Amidst a general climate of social unrest and direct action, from the civil rights movements in the early sixties to the momentous events of 1968, the emphasis of many artists increasingly shifted from aesthetic to sociopolitical concerns. Rather than present a broad survey of this trend, this class will examine several of the most significant, self-conscious politics of artistic production from the 1960s to the present. Though a great deal of the class material will be presented in lecture format, discussion will be encouraged at all times. Although no previous art history experience is required, some familiarity and interest in contemporary art, history, politics, and/or critical theory is recommended.
Asian Language and Literature
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/asianll.html
Asian 207 – Special Topics in Literature and Culture of Asia: Science and Speculative Fiction of Southeast Asia (5 credits)
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. Jointly offered with G Lits 251/Comp Lit 251.
Built Environment
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/be.html
B E 210 – A Global History of the Built Environment I (5 credits)
This course critically examines built environments over time using a global perspective beginning with First Societies through 1st millennium CE. The global perspective encourages thinking about history in a transnational and transgeographical manner. The course is broadly structured around the concept of "time cuts" that allow for comparisons across regions and cultural formations. There are no prerequisites.
Cinema and Media Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/cms.html
CMS 274 – Perspectives on Media: Critical Concepts (5 credits)
Introduction to media studies, with particular attention to critical concepts including, but not limited to, audience studies, formal analysis, and ideological critique. Specific media analyzed varies. Course overlaps with TCOM 247.
CMS 275 – Visual Culture: The 1990s (5 credits)
Diversity credit
An introduction to the study of visual texts such as film, television, comics, or digital media. Focus on the representation of cultural differences including, but not limited to, sexuality, gender, ability, and race. Topics vary.
Classics
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/clas.html
Clas 326 – Women in Antiquity (5 credits)
Diversity credit
A broad survey of primary sources in medicine, law, philosophy, religious ritual, myth, history, and ethnography, informed by perspectives from literature, art, and archaeology. Provides students the tools to analyze the social roles of women in ancient Greece and Rome.
Clas 420 – Freedom in Ancient Rome and the Modern World (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Writing credit
Freedom – libertas, in Latin – was a fundamental concept in ancient Rome, central throughout its history to, and in all aspects of, its political and social life. Indeed, the word libertas became literally synonymous with (that is, a name for) the ‘Roman Republic’. This course examines 'freedom' in ancient Rome, from its founding in the 8th century BC to the 4th century AD, when Christianity became the dominant religion in the Roman Empire. Through selected readings in both primary and secondary sources, we will examine the various forms of freedom important to Romans and how their views evolved (or remained the same) over time, specifically: personal freedom (including slavery), political freedom, religious freedom, and intellectual freedom (i.e., the freedom to write or say what one wants). In addition, however, we will also examine various perspectives on ‘freedom’ expressed in the modern world, including (but not limited to) the United States, and what they owe or do not owe to Roman concepts. Readings in Orlando Patterson’s landmark book Freedom, an historical overview of the concept, will provide a benchmark for this, but will be supplemented by other readings as well.
Clas 430 – Greek and Roman Mythology (3 credits)
Note: Section B offers writing credit. Visit time schedule for details about registration in linked English course.
Principal myths found in classical and later literature.
Clas 432 – Classical Mythology in Film (5 credits)
By studying major, in most cases authoritative, versions of ancient myths that were turned into films and comparing the ancient and modern renditions, students will be able to observe what modern cinematic narrators were drawn to and interested in achieving in their filmed versions of the myths and at the same time gain further insights both into the ancient stories and modern narratives. We shall focus on thematic differences and similarities, cinematic technique, and intended audiences, among other things, including how to read films as literary narratives. Finally we will explore in particular the mythological structure of the katabasis (see below), which plays out in the lives of every human being as well as many films.
Clas 445 – Greek and Roman Religion (5 credits)
Religion in the social life of the Greeks and Romans, with emphasis placed on their public rituals and festivals. Attention is given to the priesthoods, personal piety, rituals of purification and healing, and the conflict of religions in the early Roman Empire. Many lectures illustrated by slides. Offered jointly with RELIG 445.
Communications
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/com.html
Com 200 – Introduction to Communication (5 credits)
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 220 – Intro to Public Speaking (5 credits)
Designed to increase competence in public speaking and the critique of public speaking. Emphasizes choice and organization of material, sound reasoning, audience analysis, and delivery.
Com 270 – Interpersonal Communication (5 credits)
writing credit
Introductory course on face-to-face communication in social and personal relationships including acquaintanceships, friendships, romantic partnerships, and both hated and loved ones. Learn to maximize communicative effectiveness in relationships with knowledge of how communication functions.
Comparative History of Ideas
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/chid.html
Chid 110 – Question of Human Nature (5 credits)
What does it mean to be human in an era of human-driven mass extinction? In this course, we will trace how “the human” has been constructed in western culture through the exclusion of a racialized and animalized “other.” Drawing on frameworks and methods from indigenous epistemologies, critical animal studies, multispecies ethnography, and the environmental humanities, we will explore what it means to decenter the human and what social, political, and ecological worlds this makes possible. Syllabus will utilize scholarship, literature, film television, podcasts, and more. Students will pursue a creative or academic project of their choice related to course themes.
Chid 120 – Yoga Past and Present (5 credits)
To be arranged. Go to Time Schedule for details.
Diversity credit
Studies yoga and its history, practice, literature, and politics. From the ancient past to modern yoga, studies essential texts and ideas, as well as the effects of class, religion, gender, nationalism, development, Marxism, colonialism, and physical culture on yoga. Offered jointly with RELIG 120.
Chid 201 – Radical Poetics: The Literary Legacy of Tupac Shakur (5 credits)
This course explores the literary and philosophical influences present in the work of artist and activist, Tupac Shakur. We’ll study primary and secondary texts, including books explicitly referenced by Shakur, like Machiavelli’s The Prince and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Our goal will be to understand their central theories, and at the same time, consider how Tupac's past engagement with these thinkers has changed the way we read them from the present. Other writers and artists we will consider; Amiri Baraka, Michel Foucault, Antonio Gramsci, Saidiya Hartman, Arthur Jafa, Kendrick Lamar, Toni Morrison, Huey P. Newton, Rakim, Shakespeare, Afeni Shakur, and Malcolm X.
Chid 370 – Cultural Impact of Information Technology: Migration and Media – Tools, Information, and Communications of Migrations (5 credits)
This course explores how media shapes the experiences of diasporas before, during, and after migration. We will examine tools, data, and communications patterns that impact migrants’ lives. You’ll engage with films, podcasts, and other multimedia to understand the transmission of information across time and space while connecting your experiences with migration narratives. Offered jointly with Comm 302A.
Dance
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/dance.html
Dance 100 – Understanding Dance (5 credits)
Online synchronous. Go to time schedule for details.
Introduces the aesthetics and 4creative processes in dance and choreography. Pays attention to how dance is practiced in social arenas, popular entertainment, and concert settings. Includes independent field trips to local dance settings.
Drama
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/drama.html
Drama 103 – Theatre Appreciation (5 credits)
Group Start online course. 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 171 – The Broadway Musical (5 credits)
Diversity credit
This historical and cultural study of the Broadway musical examines how this uniquely American art form was created predominately by people marginalized from mainstream society; surveys its evolution including the mid-20th Century “Golden Age” and its current 21st Century resurgence; and explores how musicals have both reflected and shaped American culture — especially regarding issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, social justice, and equity.
English
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/engl.html
Engl 204 – Popular Fiction and Media (5 credits)
Writing credit
No seniors period I
Introduces students to the study of popular culture, possibly including print or visual media, understood as sites of critical reflection. Particular attention to dynamics of production and reception, aesthetics and technique, and cultural politics. Topics may foreground genres (science fiction; romance) or forms (comics; graffiti).
Engl 206 – Rhetoric in Everyday Life (5 credits)
Writing credit
No seniors period I
Introductory rhetoric course that examines the strategic use of and situated means through which images, texts, objects, and symbols inform, persuade, and shape social practices in various contexts. Topics focus on education, public policy, politics, law, journalism, media, digital cultural, globalization, popular culture, and the arts.
Engl 257 – Asian-American (5 credits)
Writing credit
Diversity credit
No seniors period I
Examines the emergence of Asian American literature as a response to anti-Asian legislation, cultural images, and American racial formation. Encourages thinking critically about identity, power, inequalities, and experiences of marginality.
Engl 259 – Literature and Social Difference (5 credits)
Writing credit
Diversity credit
No seniors period I
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)
Writing credit
Diversity credit
No seniors period I
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 307 – Cultural Studies (5 credits)
Open to all students period II
Overview of cultural studies with a focus on reading texts or objects using cultural studies methods and writing analytic essays using cultural studies methods. Focuses on culture as a site of political and social debate and struggle.
Engl 322 – Medieval and Early Modern literatures of Encounter (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Open to all students period II
Cultural encounters across medieval and early modern worlds, with particular attention to how these works depict cultural difference, race/racism, and geopolitical power.
Engl 327 – Narratives of Bondage and Freedom (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Open to all majors period II
This course examines a series of narratives about the experience of Black enslavement and the question of “freedom” written over a two-hundred-year period. It begins with so-called slave narratives written by formerly enslaved individuals in the nineteenth century who offered first-hand accounts of slavery to make a case for recognition of Black humanity and for slavery’s abolition. The course then moves to a series of so-called neo-slave narratives, contemporary fictionalized accounts of enslavement that explore the meaning of both bondage and freedom in the past and for our present. Along the way, we will consider a range of short theoretical writings by Black Studies scholars and historians of slavery that will inform our understanding of what it means to revisit the 400-year history of Atlantic slavery in the present moment.
Engl 352 – Literatures of the U.S. to 1865 (5 credits)
Open to all students period II
An introduction to American literature and culture during the decades leading up to the Civil War. This is a period when American authors: 1) struggled with numerous issues of race, slavery, gender, and class; 2) strove to develop a national mythology and identity against the backdrop of shifting national boundaries, increasing immigration, worldwide empire and trade, and a heterogeneous population; 3) tried to salvage religious faith in the wake of modern science and the Enlightenment ; 4) addressed massive social changes brought about by the Industrial Revolution; 5) and took democracy seriously enough to trace through its implications even to the point where, as in the case of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, such implications start to become startling and strange. The period is much too complex to be organized into a dominant, easily defined thesis or polemic, and in fact the strategy of choice for many of the writers whom we’ll be exploring is the complex interchange of alternative perspectives and voices. In keeping with this emphasis on the diverse interchange and inclusivity of alternative voices and points of view, we'll explore--in addition to writings by Melville, Hawthorne, Emerson, and Thoreau traditionally taught in nineteenth-century courses on American literature--Chief Black Hawk's Autobiography, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, encoded sections of queer sexuality in Whitman's Song of Myself, and Margaret Fuller's proto-feminism as well as her encounter with native tribal cultures in the 1840s. Class sessions will consist of lectures followed by time for class discussion and for questions which the class raises in response to class materials.
Engl 362 – Latino Literary Genres (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Open to all students period II
Considers how conventions of genre have been distributed in U.S Latino literature and beyond in networks of Latino transnationalism and trans-border exchanges. Links the relationship between generic forms to questions of power within social, cultural, and historical contexts.
French
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/french.html
French 228 – The Water Crisis in Literature and Film (5 credits)
Interprets a variety of texts (literary, cinematic, etc.) that address the water crisis to understand how water's meaning has changed as people become more conscious of risks in supply (pollution and natural/man-made scarcity) and as access to it is increasingly mediated in light of things like privatization and commodification. Offered jointly with LIT 228.
Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/gwss.html
GWSS 251 – Gender and Popular Culture (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Introduction to critical examination of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality in music, film, television, and the internet. Explores cultural meanings and social uses of popular culture by various communities in local and global contexts. Analysis of commercial and independent pop culture. Examination of popular culture forms varies depending on instructor.
GWSS 325 – Black Feminist Art and Performance (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Explores how black artists from around the world create work that engages with feminist concerns about identity and power. Covers artists working in a variety of mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, new media, dance, and performance. Assignments are built to develop skills in experiencing and interpreting art, and provide creative outlets of producing knowledge about that art. Recommended: GWSS 200 or GWSS 235/ANTH 235.
Global Literary Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/glits.html
Glits 315C – Literature Across Disciplines: The Naked Truth: Crisis and Dissolution in Fin-de-Siecle Vienna (5 credits)
How was gender portrayed in Vienna 1900, and what did people do to resist and undercut rigid
definitions and stereotypes? Why were healthy expressions of sexuality forbidden during this
time? How does a society react when their stable, comfortable world begins to collapse? What
do you do when language fails and you can no longer describe your thoughts and feelings? This
course, The Naked Truth: Crisis and Dissolution in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna, seeks to hold up a mirror to Vienna at the turn of the century, examine these urgent questions and use them as a lens to understand contemporary society. We will engage in an interdisciplinary exploration of the literature and the visual culture this time period against the backdrop of the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the aftermath of its disintegration into World War I. With an emphasis on the relationship between different disciplines (literature, art, critical theory, history and psychology) the course will be organized around major themes from the period, such as sexuality, gender, decay, and the crisis of identity and language.
Through written, analytical responses as well as creative individual and group projects, students
will have the opportunity to delve into other cultural aspects of the city, both from the turn of the
century and contemporary Vienna. Taught in English. Offered jointly with German 351A.
Jackson School of International Studies – Jewish Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/jewst.html
Jew St 175 – Popular Film and the Holocaust (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Introduces films about the Holocaust with particular emphasis on popular films. Develops the requisite tools for analyzing films, a historical perspective of the Holocaust, and the problems involved in trying to represent a historical event whose tragic dimensions exceed the limits of the imagination. Offered jointly with GERMAN 195.
Korean
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/korean.html
Korean 360A – Korean Literature and Culture: Violence and Trauma in Contemporary Korean Literature (5 credits)
To understand a culture, one must understand its past—including the dark and traumatic aspects—and to understand 21st century Korea, one must understand how violence colors much of its 20th century. This course explores the different theories and usage of trauma and violence within Korean literature, and how it reflects the cultural and historical narratives of Korean society. We will explore a variety of types of structural, psychological, and personal violence as seen in literary works from the 1950s to the 2020s. This includes: Our Twisted Hero, There the Petal Silently Falls, The Vegetarian, The Red Room, short stories, webtoons, and graphic novels. Students will also study the effect of war, colonialism, division, state violence, and Korean cultural practices on literature and how these experiences created transgenerational trauma that still resonates in Korean society and shapes its literature.
This class teaches students how to analyze Korean literature within its cultural and historical context while exploring the ways violence is expressed in canonical and popular fiction. Students will also learn about psychological, sociological, and literary theories pertaining to violence and trauma, which can give greater insight into struggles facing contemporary Korea as well as other societies. All readings will be in either English or translated from Korean into English. No knowledge of Korean is required. Offered jointly with G Lits 253A/Comp Lit 322C.
Landscape Architecture
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/landscape.html
L Arch 212 – Designing the Future (5 credits)
Ecological/environmental instability and resulting social/cultural disruptions make the world in which spatial designers work increasingly uncertain. Lectures and guest speakers explore diverse ways in which design may create more sustainable futures. Course activities, including in-class design exercises, internet research, group discussions, take home projects, etc. encourage synthetic/integrative thinking.
L Arch 322 – Intro to planting design: Living Systems in Cities (3 credits)
Cr/NC only
Traditional ways plants are used in landscape design. Composition and design characteristics of plant materials. Technical considerations for selection, climate, cultural suitability, availability, costs, and maintenance. Open to nonmajors.
Middle Eastern Languages and Cultureshttps://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/melc.html
Melc 230 – Muslim Beliefs and Practices (5 credits)
Examines the origins and development of central beliefs in various Muslim traditions, such as monotheism, prophecy, divine judgment, and predestination. Looks at ritual and socio-cultural practices in Muslim societies in Asia, Africa, and Europe. Offered jointly with RELIG 211.
Melc 233 – Israeli Culture and Society: Tale of Two Cities: Jerusalem and Tel Aviv (3 credits)
Explores aspects of Israeli culture and society. Topics vary. Offered jointly with JEW ST 233.
Melc 269 – Music Cultures of the Silk Road (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Hybrid course
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 320 – Jewish Poetry (5 credits)
From 17th century Yemen to Madonna music videos, from medieval Germany to Leonard Cohen in concert, from the Bible to Primo Levi’s post-Holocaust poetry – Jewish prayer has inspired poetry and song across millennia. By examining modern poems that respond to elements of traditional liturgy, students in this course can learn how literature over the ages revisits and reinterprets foundational texts, bringing them alive for new generations. No prerequisites. All readings will be in English. The course considers texts written originally in English, Hebrew, Aramaic, Yiddish, and Italian. Any students who wish to read some of the texts in Hebrew may register for an additional 2-3 credits of Independent Study (MODHEB 490 or MODHEB 600). Offered jointly with Comp Lit 322D/Chinese 373A.
Melc 334 – Arab Culture (5 credits)
Hybrid course
Surveys the linguistic, geographical, historical, social, religious, and cultural aspects of the modern Arab world and its connections to the Arab-American community. Focuses on the Arabic language, the Arab family, the role of the past, and social change in marginalized communities as a lingering outcome of colonial times. Highlights racial bias and awareness of multicultural issues that reveal current power inequalities across the Arab world.
Melc 343 – Classical Persian Literature (5 credits)
Introduces themes, forms, and historical development of Persian literature from the tenth to nineteenth centuries CE. Topics include lyric and epic forms, Sufism, premodern poetics, and reception history of English translations. Reading include Rumi, Hafez, Khayyam, Ferdowsi, Sa'di among others. No prior knowledge of Persian language or literature required.
Music
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/music.html
Music 116 – Elementary Music Theory (2 credits)
Group-start online course. Go to time schedule for details.
For nonmusic majors. For people with no hands-on music experience. Rudiments of music; notation of time, small pitch structures (e.g., some scales, chords, rhythmic patterns), some analysis.
Music 120 – Intro to Classical Music (5 credits)
Lecture is online synchronous. Quizzes are in person. Go to time schedule for details.
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)
Group-start online course. Go to 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 162A - American Pop song (5 credits)
Music 162A is online. Go to 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 162B - American Pop song (5 credits)
To be arranged. Music 162B is optional for students interested in writing credit. Registration in a lab (in person) is required. Go to time schedule for details.
Music 185 – The Concert Season (2 credits)
Group-start online course. See 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.
Philosophy
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/phil.html
Phil 149 – Existentialism and Film (5 credits)
What makes life worth living? Is morality just a convenient fiction? What is the nature of the human condition? Is God dead, or just playing hard to get? Investigates the works of several existentialist philosophers, including Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Beauvoir, and uses their works to interpret and analyze the philosophical content of angst-ridden cinema of the French New Wave and Hollywood film noir.
Phil 240 – Intro to Ethics (5 credits)
Critical introduction to various philosophical views of the basis and presuppositions of morality and moral knowledge. Critical introduction to various types of normative ethical theory, including utilitarian, deontological, and virtue theories.
Polish
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/polish.html
POLSH 325 – Science Fiction in Eastern Europe: Brave New World (5 credits)
Covers science fiction in film and literature of Central and Eastern Europe as shaped by world wars, totalitarianisms, and revolutions. Explores radical and uncompromising thought experiments and daring aesthetics found in works by Polish, Russian, and Czech artists and others against the volatile cultural modernity of the twentieth century. Offered jointly with Comp Lit 421A/G Lits 252B.
Russian
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/russian.html
Russ 323 – Revolution: 20th Century Russian Literature and Culture (5 credits)
Explores Russian literature and culture during the twentieth century before perestroika, a period of "revolutions" and unprecedented change in political, cultural, and economic life. Authors include Babel, Bulgakov, Il'f and Petrov, and Nabokov. Periods include symbolism, revolution, Soviet, Stalinist, the "thaw", and post-Soviet.
Scandinavian Studies
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/scand.html
Scand 100 –Intro to Scandinavian Culture (5 credits)
The Scandinavian experience from the Viking Age to the present day. Covers the background for contemporary Scandinavian democracy with major emphasis on the cultural, political, and religious development of the Scandinavian countries.
Scand 334 – Immigrant and Ethnic Folklore (5 credits)
Survey of verbal, customary, and material folk traditions in ethnic context. Theories of ethnic folklore research applied to the traditions of American communities of Scandinavian, Baltic, or other European ancestry. Offered jointly with C LIT 334.
Slavic Languages and Literatures
http://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/slavic.html
Slavic 370 – What’s in a Language Name? (5 credits)
Open to all students period II
Diversity credit
Examines the relationship between language policy and social organization; the impact of language policy on immigration, education, and access to resources and political institutions; language policy and revolutionary change; language rights. Offered jointly with Engl 478.
South Asia
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/sasian.html
S Asia 498A – Special Topics: Partition Literature and Film (5 credits)
This course surveys the powerful literature and film that addresses the 1947 Partition of South Asia into the nations of India and Pakistan. We will read a selection of short stories and a graphic novel, and watch a film and the recent television series Ms. Marvel, to ask: how do works of fiction address historical moments of trauma such as the Partition? How do partitions continue to affect life in South Asia? What are some of the modes (realistic, non-realistic) that have been used to represent Partition? This course is intended for undergraduate students interested in South Asian literatures and history; fictional representations of trauma; memory; and fictional modes such as realism, fantasy, and graphic narratives. Graduate students may be accommodated with permission of instructor (they will have additional secondary readings and a longer analytical final essay). Students with advanced proficiency in Hindi or Urdu have the option to complete readings in the original language. Jointly offered with Glits 313C.
Textual and Digital Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/txtds.html
TXTDS 220 – Making Manuscripts: Manuscript and Handwriting Technologies from Antiquity to Today (5 credits)
While we are experiencing a rapidly evolving digital tools market, the most enduring writing technology has been the pen/quill and paper/parchment, which dominated writing from late antiquity and is still used today. In this course we will explore how writing styles have changed over more than a thousand years, with a focus on medieval handwritten manuscripts. We will also reflect on modern-age applications of handwriting technologies, on the evolution of different styles and methods in the age of print and digital, and on the interaction between form and function over time. In pursuing these questions, we will study some of the most significant fragments and books held by the university libraries at the UW Special Collections.