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In his “Conclusion” to Walden, Thoreau shares with us a primary lesson learned from his “experiment” in living at Walden: “if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” Sound hopeful? Listen to this: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.” How well he knows us. How well he knows, too, that the world is a fluid and supple place, sometimes alarmingly so. In the face of such extravagance, what constitutes a firm foundation?  As Thoreau would have it, any conclusion worth building a house on is best earned through a strict economy of borrowing, simplification, and deliberation. And because the results are presented to us in writing, the supreme achievement that is Walden reflects, in turn, a complementary commitment to the process of revision. Walden, along with two of Thoreau’s most important essays, “Resistance to Civil Government” (“Civil Disobedience”) and “Walking,” will provide the ground on which we explore—by way of reading, talking, writing and revising—whether, and how, a liberal arts education can be adequate foundation for our “castles” within the rapidly changing climate in which we find ourselves.

Everyone has a food story—what’s yours? This tutorial will explore food and its meaning in human culture through analysis, practice, and action. Our analysis will concern food and narrative. Drawing from literature, cookbooks, cultural histories, art, film, folklore, and memoirs, we will use the methodologies of textual analysis and food history to research, write, and speak about how food and food culture reflect the human experience around the world. We will also explore and write our own food stories, utilizing scholarly personal narrative. In our practice, we will cook to learn in the Global Kitchen, developing a range of skills involving food and its preparation and consumption. Since hunger and starvation profoundly affect the human experience, we will also consider the ethical responsibility this implies, and as an active response to hunger, our class will engage with a range of local efforts to consider and address food insecurity, as well as sponsor food events for the 51��ɫ College community.

This Tutorial will explore how attitudes toward different language practices condition social relationships, grant or deny access to economic and legal resources, and promote the idea of a Standard White English as a primary feature of American education. We will discuss the development of the English language, the establishment of its grammatical rules, and the linguistic principles that explain language change over time. Much of the course will focus on the linguistics of Black American English and the consequences of anti-Black linguistic racism in our legal, economic, and educational institutions.  Ultimately, this tutorial will celebrate linguistic diversity as a core feature of American language and culture.

Western music has long been a cultural forum for producing, reproducing, reinforcing, circulating, and negotiating ideologies of gender and sexuality. This tutorial explores how music in Western Europe and the United States has interacted and interconnected with values and issues related to gender and sexual identities. Students will read critical texts investigating interfaces between music, gender, and sexuality from various disciplinary perspectives, listen to a range of musical works spanning classical and popular traditions, engage in lively class discussions, and write a series of short essays and a critical book review. Topics addressed include—but are not necessarily limited to—music and body, castrati and vocal politics, feminine and masculine music, lesbian and gay music, constructions of gender and sexuality in instrumental music, and portrayals of women in opera.

Of the more than 7,000 spoken and sign languages in use around the world today, at least half are at risk of having no speakers or signers left by the end of this century. At the same time, communities across the globe have worked and are working to preserve, promote, and revitalize their local languages. In this tutorial, we will first consider the causes of language endangerment and what is lost when a language ceases to be used. We will also grapple with terminology and its implications: for example, is a language “dead” or “sleeping,” and who gets to decide? We will then study specific language revitalization projects, looking at cases from different parts of the world but focusing especially on Indigenous languages of North America such as Navajo, Anishinaabemowin, and Meskwaki. In doing so, we will ask what it means to revitalize a language and even problematize the notion of revitalization, comparing it to an alternative framework of language reclamation.

This tutorial examines the affinities between Russian and African-American literature in the development of cultural nationalism. It addresses the question of how national identities are constructed, and it draws attention to the similar manner in which 19th and 20th century Russian and African-American intellectuals such as Feodor Dostoevsky and W.E.B. DuBois defined their respective national identities. We will examine how social institutions, namely Russian serfdom and American slavery, impacted on the formation of these identities. We will also examine how and why the Soviet Union, as a communist state, increased its political and social appeal to many African-American intellectuals during the 20th century.

Bananas are so common in the US that most of us who purchase or eat them do it without a second thought. But if you think a little about them, it’s easy to notice some odd things. In most stores there’s only one variety of banana available. There are usually 7 or 10 or 15 varieties of apples right next to them. Why only one banana? And why are they so inexpensive? The ones eaten in the US are grown in Latin America, yet they cost less than half the price of apples which are grown all over the US. This course will explore the rise of bananas as a global commodity with a focus on the surprisingly significant role they have played in the economic and political relationships between Latin American countries and the US. Did you know the US staged a coup of Guatemala’s democratically elected government in 1954 because of bananas? In addition to historical, economic, and political perspectives, we will explore the banana as a cultural symbol. For example, the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan created a work called Comedian, which consists of a fresh banana duct taped to a wall—and which, in 2024, sold for $6.2 million.  What does that say about bananas?  Or maybe the question is: What do bananas say about culture?  And we won’t lose sight of the fact people like to eat bananas.  How they are prepared and eaten in different parts of the world provides another aspect of culture to consider. Clearly, bananas offer us a lot to make sense of. So, this class should be, you know, totally bananas.

This tutorial uses the concept of zoopolis as a frame for examining the following kinds of questions: What does it mean for humans to appreciate non-human animal subjectivity on its own terms? What are the benefits and drawbacks of doing so? What are the relations among animal rights, environmental justice, and social and economic (in)equality? How can increased attention to human-animals relations help us to see and imagine the world differently? Zoöpolis, as critical geographer Jennifer Wolch (1998) defined it, is a “re-enchanted city” where “an interspecific ethic of caring replaces dominionism to create urban regions where animals are not incarcerated, killed, or sent off to live in wildlife prisons, but instead are valued neighbors and partners in survival” (p. 125, emphasis added). More recently, political theorists have used the term zoopolis to refer to a theory of relational dependency between human and non-human animals (Donaldson & Kymlicka, 2013). Situated within a historical moment in which non-human animals are seen in various roles that include, but are not limited to, family members, entertainers, medical research subjects, workers, and resources for human consumption, this tutorial explores the possibilities—and limits—of dwelling within the zoopolis.

When the news broke that bell hooks, aka Gloria Jean Watkins, had died at the age of 69, a global community of feminists lauded her many contributions as a scholar, teacher, activist, and public intellectual. Since the publication of her first book, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1981), she has been a foundational force in the development of Black feminist thought and action both within and outside the academy. Her writing serves as a model for "talking back", resisting oppression, and demanding a world where all people can thrive. In this tutorial, we will consider her writing, legacy as a foundational Black feminist thinker, and the application of her work to the pressing issues that we face in our world today.

This tutorial will use film cameras as primary sources for research. We will use the film camera as artifact to become more familiar with the ontologies of disciplines studied at the college through faculty interviews into the question: In your discipline, how might you engage in research with the film camera? This information will help shape our understanding of available college disciplines and how different disciplines frame research. We will then use this disciplinary knowledge as models for our own investigations to create research presentations, videos, and papers.

In this tutorial, we will explore how and why to turn technical science into a compelling story for non-experts. When should you sacrifice precision for understandability? When should you challenge preconceptions, and when should you focus on relationship building? When does telling the narratives of great scientists from the past bring out the humanity in STEM, and when does it alienate the audience? The answers to these questions will depend on whether you are communicating to the general public, to policy makers, to children, or to the press. Students in this tutorial will identify common narratives in science communication, compare strategies for discussing STEM with different audiences, and will critically analyze existing pieces of popular science writing, while creating their own works of STEM communication.

In Aging, Health, and Medical Ethics, we will explore and develop an understanding of concepts of health and disease states. We will explore the ethical dimensions of biomedical research, clinical therapies, public policies, and end of life care from the perspectives of patients, physicians, researchers, and writers. Our discussions will revolve around a series of texts including Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of all Maladies, Susan Sontag’s Illness as a Metaphor, Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, among others.

America is divided, as are most modern democracies.  Those on the right and the left are deeply entrenched in their viewpoints, where compromise is perceived as weakness and understanding as betrayal. Those on opposite sides of the right/left divide see each other as not only wrong, but evil.  How did it come to this? Are we doomed to “fall?” We will explore these questions from the vantage point of moral psychology and evolutionary theory.  Scholars in both disciplines have recently offered key insights into human nature that help explain why division is so natural to us.  More importantly, these insights suggest ways we may rise above these instincts and work toward unity.

This course will examine the elements of a liberal arts education through the medium of Taylor Swift’s status as a popular icon. What can the liberal arts teach us about Swiftmania? How did it come into being and where is it going? What can Taylor Swift’s cultural influence teach us about the liberal arts? Interweaving public focus on Swift, her music, her fandom, and critical reactions to these phenomena, this course will explore topics relating to law, economics, politics, physics, environmental sustainability, gender, sexuality, artificial intelligence and the intersecting elements of cultural production.

It has been said for many years that we live in a world saturated with photographs – they are everywhere, and every aspect of life is constantly photographed. And yet, it is truer now than ever – of the trillions and trillions of photographs that have ever been taken, about half have been taken in the past decade. This course will examine the impacts that photography has had on society since its invention almost exactly 200 years ago, with an emphasis on questions of oppression and liberation, and attention paid to the use of photography in both social media and state surveillance. How do photographs document, interpret, and even shape our reality? How do they shape the realities lived by others? Photography has been used by marginalized groups to make their communities and lived experiences more visible, but also by oppressive regimes to surveil and control and further marginalize. Students will be encouraged to think about the practice of photography, and to create photo essays of their own.

Human impact on the environment is one of the pressing issues on the policy agenda. This tutorial will explore how environmental writers and authors raise awareness of nature and the environment. By contrasting Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, widely credited with starting the modern environmental movement with current writing about sustainability and climate change, this tutorial will consider how words, images and stories influence both public opinion and public policy.  Students will have the opportunity to engage the following questions: How can environmental writing effectively motivate change? What is the role of ethics in environmental policy? What does a sustainable future look like?

This Tutorial is about stuff – about the physical objects and environments that surround us. At a superficial level, this is a course about habits of consumerism and accumulation in a twenty-first century world driven by interconnected global markets. We consider the vast inequities rooted in encounters and ideologies of the past and perpetuated by our contemporary habits and market participation. At a more intimate level, we ask what stuff means to us. How does our stuff help us shape deeply personal narratives, identities, and memories? How do our individual, physical bodies actually interact with things through our senses? What is the relationship between form and function in the objects we choose and use? What symbolic roles do things play in our communal lives, in our shared rituals? How has the collection and curation of objects over time contributed to hierarchies of value? How do we think about stuff in relation to environmental crises and sustainability, or to waste, deprivation, and greed? Through the lens of stuff, then, we encounter the material world in a purportedly digital age.

This tutorial explores the construction of the hero's—and heroine’s—identity in ancient Greek epic, what such construction can tell us about how ancients conceived of themselves, and what such conceptions, which can still resonate for many today, can tell us of contemporary ideals. We explore Achilles’ origins, life, and death as narrated in the Achilleid of Statius, the Iliad of Homer, and the Posthomerica of Quintus of Smyrna. Recent scholarship on various aspects of our primary sources from different perspectives and approaches enhance our comprehension and appreciation of our texts.

Although in everyday life the word “model” typically brings to mind the fashion industry or children’s plastic replicas of planes and automobiles, the concept of a “model” provides an underlying ideal that shapes our grasp of everyday reality.  Models have played and continue to play a critical role in the development of intellectual thought in the humanities and the social, biological, and physical sciences.  In this tutorial we will extend our preconceptions of models to incorporate a sophisticated understanding of the role of models in human thought.  Utilizing examples from the physical sciences (e.g. plastic molecular models, Lewis structures, resonance structures, and ab initio calculations from chemistry), we will examine the philosophical understanding of how models are used in science, allowing us to more sharply focus our thoughts.  We will then pull examples from an array of disciplines in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities to broaden our understanding of models, providing us a glimpse into their ubiquitous nature.  Throughout the term we will discuss models in the meta-context of how our own personal understanding of reality is shaped by underlying conceptual frameworks, using science fiction short stories, novels, and movies to spark our imagination.

Climate change has been described by UN Secretary Antonio Guterres “as a crisis multiplier” that has pronounced implications for international peace and security. This tutorial, at one level, considers whether scientific and technological advances and economic resources will be adequate for addressing the climate change problem.   At another level, we will evaluate the likelihood of an effective climate policy response. We will begin the semester discussing how the climate change problem has evolved since becoming a policy issue in the 1980s.  We will consider how the debate has been influenced by rapid technological advances in renewable energy, and by the changing economic and political environment. We will show how and why the policy response to climate change has lagged technological advances, using examples such as the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the 2010 Copenhagen Climate conference the 2015 Paris Agreement, and the U.S. 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. We will also discuss shifting U.S. policy during the administrations of George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Joe Biden and now Donald Trump. How has civil society influenced the climate change debate? What role is played by concerns for equity, justice and human rights?  How might citizen action reduce the gap between the technological possibilities and policy action?

In this course, we will use the concept of general semantics to explore how our relations to the physical world are mediated through a hierarchy of abstractions, often framed in the context of a map-territory relationship: the word is not the thing, and the map is not the territory. Recognizing this distinction helps us construct better "maps," giving us greater control over our own cognitive, emotional, and behavioral responses. First articulated in 1933 with Alfred Korzybski's Science and Sanity, the principles of general semantics have since shaped the work of influential writers, artists, and academics across a variety of domains. Texts for the course will be pulled from the fields of comparative mythology, anthropology, cybernetics, embodied cognition, and philosophy of science. We will actively reflect on these texts with a series of written essay prompts and cooperative in-class discussions.

Our expectations and our aspirations regarding college life vary greatly, and they are informed by a variety of pop culture representations. This tutorial will use the genre of college movies, films that represent aspects of academic and social life on college campuses, to critically trace stereotypes, myths, tropes, and clichés that have informed ideas about college life in US pop culture. We will analyze identities, communities, and narratives in mainstream representations, as well as discuss what is absent in these representations. Through this process, we will explore the origins of our own notions of what college life is meant to look like and how we envision it in the future. We will study a wide variety of films, ranging from Animal House (1978) to Wicked (2024).

Let’s go birding! Found almost anywhere, anytime, birds grace us with flashes of color and bursts of song. Once you start to take note of them, you might find yourself more perceptive of what’s all around you. Birdwatching can help us slow down, notice small details, and stay curious. Sources of everyday joy and artistic inspiration, birds are also important as indicator species who help us understand how and why the environment is changing. This tutorial seeks to connect us to our immediate environment—where we live, work, study, and play—through the enlivening presence of birds, and to foster greater ecological and social well-being. Using an interdisciplinary and environmental justice framework, we will learn about the lives and ways of birds from ornithologists as well as from poets, from environmental philosophers as well as environmental activists. We will not only study and discuss birds in literature, culture, and science, we will also go birding around campus, in parks, and at nature preserves around 51��ɫ. This course is designed to be inclusive of all abilities and experience levels with our feathered friends, regardless of whether you can tell a Blue Jay from an Eastern Bluebird. While learning to identify and appreciate Iowa’s birds, as a flock we will cultivate curiosity, build belonging, and sharpen skills for thriving at 51��ɫ.

This tutorial will explore the many ways humans understand and relate to the natural world, focusing on the historical roots of wilderness and evolving concepts of conservation and preservation. We’ll investigate how ideas of wilderness have shifted over time—from Indigenous land stewardship practices to Western ideals of untouched land—and how these evolving perspectives have shaped modern conservation movements. Additionally, we’ll examine how legislation impacts our interactions with the natural world, including the influence of key laws and policies on land use. Throughout the course, you’ll have the opportunity to reflect on your own role in preserving the natural world for future generations. To deepen your learning, some class sessions will take place in natural settings, providing hands-on experiences to engage with the material in real-world contexts.

Books rely on more than a single author or solitary reader to bring them to life. This tutorial will approach literary fans as active participants in the collective work of imagining characters and building worlds, to explore how fictional stories help us find our true selves and live our best lives in community with other (real) people. From Austen to Tolkien, Sherlockians to Wakandans, a variety of historical and contemporary case studies will help us consider: a) diverse forms, functions, and faces of fan clubs, conventions, book groups, and literary circles, b) fans’ contributions to literary subcultures and genres, including poetry, mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, horror, and comics, c) fan views (admiring, critical, or both) of authors and literary celebrities, and c) fanfiction, adaptations, spinoffs, and extension series as mediums for individual expression, collaborative engagement, and inclusive representation. Treating fandoms—local and global—as venues for cultivating dialogue and encountering difference will also model our approach to the liberal-arts classroom; accordingly, readings, writing assignments, and class discussions will focus on the art of conversation and the craft of formulating and exchanging ideas.

How does culture influence power and how does power shape culture?  We will study various cultural forms including books, movies, television, comics, mixtapes, and more to analyze social and political power in different times and places. We will also consider various interdisciplinary theoretical perspectives on culture. What is the difference between “high” and “popular” culture? How have individuals, institutions, and states used culture to contest for power across time from Medieval Europe to the Twentieth Century United States to the increasingly connected world today? Consider how concepts like pleasure, entertainment, and dissent can challenge and change power relations.  We will learn how to analyze the connections between culture and power in our readings, discussions, and scholarship, and students will have the opportunity to explore diverse cultural topics and creators that interest them.

The controversial founder of Psychoanalysis left an indelible mark on the 20th century, and his legacy continues to shape common conceptions of what it means to be a human being. While many of Freud’s ideas about individual psychotherapy have fallen out of favor, we continue to encounter Freud’s impact on our understanding of the human mind in how we interpret cultural phenomena, creative works, religion, one another, and yes, ourselves. In this tutorial, we explore one of Freud’s lasting contributions in his role as a critic of Western culture by reading and reflecting on some of his most influential essays (Freud was a brilliant writer!): The Interpretation of Dreams, “The Ego and the Id,” “The Uncanny,” “The Future of an Illusion,” and “Civilization and its Discontents.” We will also address Freud’s blind spots, especially his sexism, alongside with his own efforts to expose and combat the antisemitism he experienced and the sexual hypocrisy he observed. Through informed discussion, focused writing exercises, guided research, and class presentations, we will work together to understand Freud in the context of his time and place, while also turning an analytical gaze onto this exemplary critic.

An arc, in broad terms, is something that connects two points. In this tutorial, we will trace the arc of memory; the points that it will connect are the individual experience of remembering and the struggles to define the meaning of our collective past, that is, history. We will read, discuss, and write about texts from multiple academic disciplines including literature, philosophy, psychology and neuroscience, sociology, history, and cultural studies to explore questions such as: What is the role and significance of memory in our daily lives? How does memory work both as a biological process in our bodies and as an experience in our dreams and waking life? What is the relation between these? How does the contest over the meaning of memory and the past shape what we call history and, with it, our societies? Our focus in exploring all these questions, however, will be the ways in which the arc of memory connects us as individuals to the collective worlds that we build and inhabit together.

Can a life story change the world? This tutorial will examine autobiographical narrative through the lens of social movement building and activism. Working across genres to consider multiple moments and occasions for the construction and publication of activist life stories, we will engage with specific writers, texts, places, and historical contexts. By closely examining how these writers imagine new realities and theorize social change through the telling of a life story, we will develop practices of attention, analysis, and argumentation. We will seek to contextualize these narratives historically, to consider multiple disciplinary approaches to the life story as a form, and to pose critical questions: how do we define activist autobiography, and why/in what contexts would these definitions matter? What are the recurring narrative tropes of activist life stories? How do writers adapt and critique these tropes? In what ways do race, gender, and other social categories inflect these adaptations and critiques?

What if a Hollywood film could teach you about black holes, higher dimensions, and human sacrifice? Interstellar isn’t just entertainment—it’s a gateway to some of the most profound questions in science and society. In this tutorial, we’ll explore the real physics behind the film while examining the ethical and cultural stakes of humanity’s cosmic ambitions. Through writing-intensive assignments and interdisciplinary discussions, you’ll connect cutting-edge scientific ideas to broader questions about knowledge, survival, and the human condition. Along the way, you’ll sharpen your skills in critical thinking and clear communication as we investigate how scientific discovery reshapes our understanding of the cosmos and ourselves.

Michael Crichton’s novel Eaters of the Dead is an adaptation and retelling of two earlier stories, Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s Voyage to the Volga and Beowulf. The novel, in turn, was adapted into a movie, The 13th Warrior. This tutorial uses this novel to think about literary genre, imitation, why we engage with the past, and how we present ourselves to the future. We will think seriously about literary originality, adaptation, borrowing, and creativity. In addition, the class will also focus on how we read, write, and think about literature and ourselves.  

Where is 51��ɫ and who lives there? How does it represent, build and challenge our notion of the American Midwest? This Tutorial invites students to explore the many origins, developments, actors, organizations and governance of a Midwest town. The leading thematic motivation of this course is to explore the impact of successive cohorts of incomers to 51��ɫ. From natives, settlers, immigrants, passersby and continued generations of students, we will analyze the in/visible dynamics and legacies they left behind.

Digital platforms, such as Netflix, YouTube, and their emerging counterparts, have become primary gateways to contemporary Korean culture. In this Tutorial, we will especially explore Korean food culture through global media platforms. We will analyze how K-dramas, reality shows, and documentaries illuminate food culture as a focal point to understand important social issues of Korea, including the formation of cultural identity, gender dynamics, socio-economic divisions, and cultural hybridity in globalization. We will also discuss how Korean culture has been adapted transnationally for global circulation and reception.

Light illuminates what humans see, and it provides insight into the ways we experience the world and understand ourselves. It is wavelength. It defines color value. Light is a powerful spiritual and religious symbol. Light is a social construct, a transformational historic innovation, and a primary form of artistic expression. In this course we will investigate light and its many meanings through artistic, historical, social, and scientific perspectives. We will explore the ways that light impacts what we see, feel, and perceive, and we will interrogate ways in which humans manipulate light to excite, scare, discriminate, celebrate, and inspire.

Together, we will read, watch, and listen to Queer African stories to examine how the two controversial concepts of “queer” and “Africa” function for writers and artists, as well as the limits they represent in portraying the complex realities of what it means to be queer, African, and out to the world in the 21st century. We will engage a wide range of sources from across the continent, including a novel, several poems, short stories, films, memoirs, podcasts, photographs, etc. We will learn to analyze, write about, and present on queer works from the African continent, with the support of scholars in the humanities and social sciences. We will question whether and how Queer African stories resist heteronormative norms of the Global North and from within Africa. We will center experiences as told through various modes of storytelling, rather than numbers, outside representations or stereotypes to attend to the heterogeneity of the spaces, experiences, and media that we encounter.

From deepfakes to voter outreach and volunteer recruitment, artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to reshape how elections are run—and how we understand democracy itself. This course explores how AI is shaping political campaigns and elections, asking what’s truly new about this moment. Are these tools transforming political practices or simply speeding up trends already in motion? We’ll compare today’s AI-driven politics to past technological shifts, investigate both the promise and peril of automation in democracy, and reflect on AI’s consequences for civic life and democratic participation.