Spring Quarter 2026 A&H courses
This is for informational purposes only. Areas of inquiry, degree requirements, fees, and course descriptions may change. Check the time schedule or MyPlan BEFORE you register.
Always refresh 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
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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.
American Ethnic Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/aes.html
AES 212 – Comparative American Ethnic Literature (5 credits)
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.
American Indian Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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.
Architecture
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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)
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 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/SPR2026/arthis.html
Art H 209A – Art Themes and Topics: Intro to Digital Art History (5 credits)
Writing credit
$5 course fee
Introduces students to new ideas, developing themes, and current research in art history and visual culture.
Art H 209B – Art Themes and Topics: Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance Imagination (5 credits)
Writing credit
$5 course fee
Introduces students to new ideas, developing themes, and current research in art history and visual culture.
Art H 209C – Art Themes and Topics: Women Artists in Western European & American Art (5 credits)
$5 course fee
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)
$30 course fee
Online course. Go to time schedule for details.
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 260 – Fashion, Nation, Culture (5 credits)
This course provides a broad introduction to Italian culture by examining the category “fashion” —beginning with late medieval livery, and the Renaissance emphasis on adapting one’s clothes, speech and personal style to the occasion. The early modern emphasis on manners, and the plethora of “how-to” manuals, corresponded with a growing identification of “dressing up” with effeminacy. We will examine the problem of gender and consumption, so as to contextualize the English adoption of the three-piece suit as modest masculine attire. We will also consider the role of clothing in constructing Italian, French, and American national identity. In this light, students will study both the post-war Italian idealization of American culture, and American idealization of Italian fashion.
In analyzing literature, images, films, and material objects, we will focus on a series of questions: How can clothes constitute identity? And can clothes constitute national identity? What is the role of gender in the production and consumption of “beauty”? Which early modern elements of style and behavior remain current today, and why? What is “Italian” about Italian style? Offered jointly with ITAL 260/JSIS A 260.
Art H 309A – Topics in Art History: Jacob Lawrence and American Art (5 credits)
$10 course fee
Topics vary. Check MyPlan for updates to course description.
Art H 347 – Pompeii (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Explores the power differential between men and women, slaves and masters, and citizens and foreigners in the cultural melting pot of ancient Pompeii, which was preserved by a volcanic eruption in 79 CE. Graffiti, skeletal remains, everyday objects, humble and world-class art and monuments will be analyzed. Offered jointly with CL AR 347.
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.
Asian Language and Literatures
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/asianll.html
Asian 207 – Special Topics in Literature and Culture of Asia: Haunted by History: Asian Horror Cinema (5 credits)
Students over the age of 18 only.
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 CMS 297A.
Built Environment
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/be.html
B E 211 – A Global History of the Built Environments II (5 credits)
This course critically examines built environments over time using a global perspective beginning 1st millennium CE to the present. 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 and connections across regions and cultural formations. There are no prerequisites.
Cinema and Media Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/cms.html
CMS 320B – Cinema and Nation: Vampires, Vamps, and Villains – Introduction to Weimar Film (5 credits)
In this course we will utilize films from pre-WWI to the rise of Hitler as a means to explore urgent topics such as sexuality, the evolution of gender roles, the rise of the metropolis, the influence of mass media, criminality, technology and the apocalyptic effects of modern warfare. Through our examination of avant-garde-, horror-, science fiction-, Hollywood- and propaganda-films, we will gain insight into one of the most tempestuous and transformative periods in German history. This class incorporates creative projects as assessment, allowing students to collaborate and apply their own areas of knowledge to the course. Offered jointly with German 371.
Classics
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/clas.html
Clas 328 – Sex, Gender, and Representation in Greek and Roman Literature (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Affirmation and inversion of gender roles in Greek and Roman literature, myths of male and female heroism; marginalization of female consciousness; interaction of gender, status, and sexual preference in love poetry. Readings from epic, drama, historiography, romance, and lyric.
Clas 329 – Greek and Roman Slavery (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Examines slavery in ancient Greece and Rome, investigating chattel slavery and serfdom, the slave supply and slave numbers, the economic role of slavery, the legal status and treatment of slaves, the resistance of slaves, the freeing of slaves, and ideologies of and attitudes toward slavery.
Clas 430 – Greek and Roman Mythology (3 credits)
Principal myths found in classical and later literature.
Communications
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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 231 – Intro to Rhetoric (5 credits)
Online course. 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. Course overlaps with ENGL 306.
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/SPR2026/chid.html
Chid 200 – Art, Memory, and Violence in the Americas (5 credits)
Students will think critically about art, violence, memory, and social activism in the Americas. Centering what Peruvian scholar Anibal Quijano termed “the coloniality of power”, we will examine discourses of state authoritarianism, gendered strategies of torture, and the role of race in political violence. Students will also learn about the politics of struggle, resilience and hope. In addition to ethnography and social scientific analysis, we will rely on films, documentaries, historical fiction, plays, and testimonials to interrogate the complexities and intersections of art, memory, and violence in the Americas.
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.
Chid 220 – Special Topics: Literature and Science – Telling Tales of Science (5 credits)
Modern science is typically understood as a research enterprise, one with practical applications to be sure, but at its basis as a process of investigation into or discovery of facts about the natural world. But science is in equally fundamental ways a social, civic, cultural, and political enterprise, deeply intertwined with the ways in which human beings define themselves and organize their activities. Our topic in this course will be the latter; public science and nature writing texts, a series of short papers and group discussion activities.
Chid 234 – Environmental Justice and the Humanities: Sacred Bodies (5 credits)
Introduces central concepts and concerns within the environmental humanities. Includes scholarly debates in the field in relationship to wider cultural, political, and historical contexts as well as the imperatives of environmental justice.
Chid 250B – Special Topics: Revolution! (5 credits)
In 2019, protesters in Hong Kong began chanting: “The Revolution of Our Times!” (时代革命). But what does that mean? If an era is entitled to its own revolution, what do all revolutions have in common? How are they different? Revolution seems to indicate a radical change: out with the old; in with the new! Yet the logic of being ‘against’ something means that the ‘old’ has a way of determining what the ‘new’ will be. Etymologically, “revolution” comes from an astronomical term “to turn around”; but after revolving, an orbiting body ends up right where it began. Historically, the post-revolutionary order often turns out to be as bad as—or worse than—the oppressive, undemocratic, non-egalitarian regime that was overturned. What determines whether a revolution will succeed or fail in its goals? How and why do revolutions go wrong? In this course, we will explore these questions through representations of revolutions in film, song, visual art, narrative, and drama. We'll watch Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, listen to Lin Manuel Miranda's Hamilton, read Hannah Arendt's On Revolution, and look at Hong Kong protest art. Designed for: Anyone interested in changing society, rebelling against authority, and discovering how revolutions play out in history, film, music, and literature. Offered jointly with German 385A/Engl 385/Glits 251A.
Chid 250C – Special Topics: Icons and Idols – India’s Image Controversies (5 credits)
This undergraduate course introduces students to India’s image wars ranging from disputatious medieval events to modern media controversies students learn the contexts that make images meaningful, learn concepts key to the study of any visual culture and acquire an understanding of the politics of iconoclasm and iconophila in one of the worlds most populous countries.
Dance
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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/SPR2026/drama.html
Drama 103 – Theatre Appreciation (5 credits)
Oline 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/SPR2026/engl.html
Engl 201 – Intro to English Within the Humanities (5 credits)
Writing credit
Online course. Go to time schedule for details.
Concepts in the study of language, literature, history, culture, and civilization. Offers substantive encounters with a range of humanities and methods of study.
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 302A – Critical Practice: The Lonely Londoners (5 credits)
Open to all students period II
Writing credit
This course is designed to develop your skills in using theory to read literary (and other) texts. We will be approaching (reading) Sam Selvon's The Lonely Londoners (1956) from different perspectives, accounting for empire, race, gender, sexuality, trauma and language. The Lonely Londoners has become an iconic representation of not only 'Windrush Britain' but of diaspora in general. These heteroglossic, liminal narratives - or 'ballads' - continue to influence how we discuss migration, alienation modernity and urban space. Pre-req: Minimum grade of 2.0 in English 202.
Engl 308 – Marxism and Literary Theory (5 credits)
Open to all students period II
Introduces Marxist theory and methodology. Explores how and why Marx's writings, Marxist theory, and materialist methods became central to the study of literature and culture over the course of the twentieth century.
Engl 310 – Bible as Literature (5 credits)
Open to all students period II
Introduction to the development of the religious ideas and institutions of ancient Israel, with selected readings from the Old Testament and New Testament. Emphasis on reading The Bible with literary and historical understanding.
Engl 317 – Literature of the Americas (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Open to all students period II
Examines writings by and about people of the Americas, with a focus on intersections of gender, colonialism, race, sexuality, and ethnicity.
Engl 331 – Globalization and Nationalism in the Age of Empire 5 credits)
Diversity credit
Open to all students period II
How empire and colonialism have shaped the modern world, including the global flows of people, commodities, and ideas. Includes colonialism and imperialism, the slave trade and abolition, extractive industry, and resource frontiers; nationalism, independence and resistance movements. Connections between empire and cultural production.
Engl 368 - Women Writers (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Open to all students period II
Investigates how perceptions of "woman writer" shape understandings of women's literary works and the forms in which they compose. Examines texts by women writers with attention to sociocultural, economic, and political context. Considers gender as a form of social difference as well as power relationships structured around gender inequality.
Engl 372 – World Englishes (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Open to all students period II
Examines historical, linguistic, economic, and sociopolitical forces involved in the diversification of Global/New Englishes. Attention to changing power relations, language hierarchies, and inequalities associated with the teaching, learning, and use of English. Explores current debates on linguistic imperialism and resistance, concepts of 'mother tongue', nativeness, comprehensibility/intelligibility judgments, and language ownership.
In this course, we examine some of the current debates around the role and status of English in the world. We consider historical, ideological, cultural, political and economic bases for the spread of English as an international language and explore how this spread has affected the language ecologies of societies around the globe, and is related to the proliferation of world Englishes.
Engl 386 – Asian American Literature (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Open to all students period II
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. This course is not meant to be a comprehensive survey of Asian American literature, rather the goal is to read writing that represent the range and scope of Asian American literature and Asian American communities. Through this examination, it will be possible for students to read any Asian American writing and understand the social, historical, and cultural context by which to critically understand the literary work and the community it represents. Required reading: Interior Chinatown by Charles Yu (a novel), Uncle Rico's Encore: Mostly True Stories of Filipino Seattle by Peter Bacho (a memoir), No-No Boy by John Okada (a novel), Yokohama, California by Toshio Mori (a collection of short stories).
Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/gwss.html
GWSS 258 – Body Politics (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Introduces foundational concepts in feminist inquiry via a focus on the body as a social-historical-environmental situation, in terms of gender, sexuality, race, class, ability, and health. Explores how something as intimately experienced as the body is shaped by political, economic, cultural, and scientific structures. Uses diverse material and methods to examine the ways bodies are made through medicine, media, ecology, labor, and violence.
GWSS 272 – Gender and Fandom (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Examines gender, race, and sexuality in transformation of cultural products by online fandoms, in both domestic and transnational contexts, across a wide variety of media.
Global Literary Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/glits.html
Glits 251B – Global Literature Themes: The Occult (5 credits)
An introduction to literary study. Literature from around the globe, with emphasis on modes of aesthetic representation. Analysis of how formal and rhetorical features shape meaning in literature. Topics vary.
Glits 252D – Global Literature Genres: Reporting Cultures in 21st Century Latin America (5 credits)
Literary journalism tells events through descriptive profiles of individual subjects—persons or groups—to create a narrative with a social purpose that addresses the entire social spectrum, not just the famous, powerful, or politically connected. A literary journalism article, or “piece” (the word in Spanish for both the style of writing and the piece is la crónica) reveals ordinary people’s lived experiences and revealing remarks that symbolically depict larger social forces at play. Readers learn about these societal trends through the individual perspective of the subject’s “felt life.” Argentinian literary journalist Martín Caparrós called this process of reporting “an interest in the everyday; finding the miracle in the details.”
Literary journalists conduct in-person, on-site reporting from a location, just as investigative journalists do. The key distinction between the two genres is that literary journalists write as participant observers whose intimate perspective, voice, and tone matters in a piece as much as their subjects’ ideas. Peruvian literary journalist Marco Avilés wrote that “crónicas are the space where journalism can shine as bright as a short story or a novel.” The primary written narrative in a crónica often mixes with other storylines, contextual details, and digressions that either ground or reframe subjects’ thoughts; the piece becomes a growing web of revealing details, rather than cut-and-dry facts (who, what, where, when). Literary journalism thus entails immersion reporting with a detective mindset and a personal interest in the story, using a narrative technique that frees the sincere voice of the subject, the creative voice of the writer, and the curious mind of the reader. In the words of Mexican literary journalist Alma Guillermoprieto, “In a news report, the journalist is answering questions for the reader, whereas in literary journalism the journalist is generating information that would never have occurred to the reader.” Offered jointly with Spanish 338A.
Glits 253 – Literature and Identities: Violence and Trauma in Korean Literature (5 credits)
Analysis of literary strategies in texts that grapple with social, cultural, and personal identities. Engagement with the ways texts deploy narrative, imagery, metaphor, and other elements to achieve their rhetorical purposes. Topics vary. Offered jointly with Korean 360A.
Glits 315C – Literature Across Disciplines: Vienna in 1900 (5 credits)
Explores literature in conjunction with other fields of study, such as environmental humanities, medical humanities, or studies of literature and law, literature and art. Topics vary.
History of Modern Europe
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/modeuro.html
HSTEU 210 – Paris (5 credits)
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.
History of North America (USA & Canada)
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/histam.html
HSTAA 365 – Culture, Politics, and Film in 20th Century America (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Explores relationship between film and twentieth century U.S. cultural, social, and political history. Examines the ways that films responded to, participated in, and helped shape understandings of modernity, national identity, political power, race and ethnic relations, gender, and crises such as economic depression and war.
Jackson School of International Studies – Jewish Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/jewst.html
Jew St 210 – Jewish Humor (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Jewish humor plays an important role in American popular culture. Investigates the modern history of Jewish humor through the writers, comedians, and actors who have shaped American comedy. Discusses the purpose of humor and the role that Jewish humor plays in shaping American and American Jewish identity.
Landscape Architecture
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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 Cultures
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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 307 – From Israelites to Jews: The First Six Centuries (3 credits)
Traces the Israelites, from the Babylonian destruction of the Jerusalemite Temple (586 BCE) to events following the destruction of the second Temple (first century CE). Focuses on primary historical and literary sources as well as archaeological and artistic evidence. No knowledge of Hebrew or the Bible required. Offered jointly with JEW ST 317. Offered jointly with Glits 311B/Jew St 395A.
Melc 310 – Jewish Literature (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Overview of 3000 years of literary creativity. Considers multiple genres, including Bible, Midrash, medieval poetry, Hasidic tale, modern fiction, TV satire, and popular music lyrics, with emphasis on how later literature reinterprets and re-imagines earlier texts. Explores diversity in Jewish writing, focusing on Jews as minority and diaspora communities as well as on centers and margins within Jewish cultures. Course overlaps with: ENGL 312/JEW ST 312.
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 371 – Ottoman Literature (5 credits)
Writing credit
This course examines Ottoman court literature and visual culture as elite practices embedded in imperial governance. Focusing on poetry, historiography, calligraphy, manuscripts, architecture, and visual representation, we explore how Ottoman authors and artists used Islamic idioms to produce distinction rather than universality. The course emphasizes close reading, comparative thinking, and material analysis. Students will engage with translated Ottoman texts while situating them within broader conversations about empire, world literature, and cultural hierarchy—without assuming that global circulation necessarily implies cultural equality. Offered jointly with Glits 314B.
Music
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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 160 – American Folk Music (5 credits)
Diversity credit
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 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
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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)
Writing credit
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/SPR2026/polish.html
POLSH 420 – Modern Polish Literature in English: Slavic Horror (5 credits)
Topics vary. Overview of Polish intellectual and cultural history as represented in literary works by modern Polish writers and/or filmmakers. Offered jointly with Slavic 200B/Glits 252E.
Russian
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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. Offered jointly with Glits 311C.
Scandinavian Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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 Comp. Lit 334.
Scand 345 – Baltic Cultures (5 credits)
Cultures and peoples of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Baltic literature, music, art, and film in social and historical context. Traditional contacts with Scandinavia and Central and East Europe. Offered jointly with JSIS A 345.
Slavic Languages and Literatures
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/slavic.html
Slavic 370 – What’s in a Language Name? The Case of Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, And Serbian (5 credits)
Examines diverse phenomena related to the language known as Serbo-Croatian, and to the Bosnian, Croatian, Montenegrin, and Serbian languages. Explores concepts such as language death, birth, politics, standardization, and codification. The relation between dialect and language is observed in an ecology exhibiting ethnic and religious diversity. Offered jointly with Engl 478A/Chid 498A.
South Asia
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/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.
Southeast Asia
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2026/seasia.html
SEAsia 377 – Science and Speculative Fiction of SE Asia (5 credits)
Diversity credit
Introduces works of science and speculative fiction from Southeast Asia. Explores how these two fantastical genres (too oftentimes linked to Euro-American cultures) act as thought experiments for Southeast Asians to deal with real world issues of climate change, racial supremacy, and technological utopianism, symptoms of the darker side of modernity.
Textual and Digital Studies
https://www.washington.edu/students/timeschd/SPR2025/txtds.html
TXTDS 404 – Texts, Publics, and Publication (5 credits
Texts as public documents and the outcome of editorial and publication processes. Historical perspectives on editing and on factors shaping access to and circulation of texts, including politics, religion, censorship, copyright, technology, and commerce. Digital editing and publishing. Digitization, transcription, text encoding, and web publication. Hosting, using a variety of platforms.