Macalester Moodle

Ancient Egyptians invested immense resources in beautifully designed and crafted artworks and architectural spaces, many of which have survived today presenting spectacular views to contemporary beholders. Why this society assigned such a high value to art? What was its purpose and meaning? Who were the patrons and the intended audience? This course will explore the making, function, and reception of Egyptian art and architecture in its socio-economic and political contexts from pre-dynastic times (ca. 5300–3000 BCE) to the advent of Alexander the Great (332 BCE). The lectures and class discussions will focus on concepts of design, representation and aesthetics in Egypt, and explore the uses of art objects and monuments in politics, religion (both state and private cults), and burial practices. Addressing various topics such as pharaonic ideology, imperialism, gender, and afterlife, this course will help you comprehend the fundamental place of art and visual culture for the creation and sustenance of one of the oldest civilizations in the world.

In 1947, India embarked upon one of the world’s most ambitious experiments in postcolonial democracy. This course surveys the history of the Indian state and society in the decades following the formal end of colonial rule, as the country sought to rebuild its economy, institute a new political system, and usher in large-scale social change. Given India’s immense cultural and social diversity, this was no easy task. It required answering a range of questions: How would the state ensure the rights of the country’s minorities? How would the country’s model of economic growth address wide-ranging demands for social equality? Which of India’s many languages would be designated its official language? Underlying all these questions were debates concerning the history, present, and future of Indian society.

In this course, we will consider postcolonial India from its “margins”, that is, by centering the perspectives of migrant workers, Dalits, women, and/or revolutionaries. We will use the ideas and practices crafted by these groups as our guides in assessing the political record of the Indian state.
While surveying this history, we will also study recent shifts and challenges confronting Indian democracy. Today, India is one of the fastest growing economies; it is also a country with some of the most extreme forms of social inequality. According to a recent report by Oxfam, 10% of the Indian population holds 77% of the country’s national wealth. However, reports of social inequality in India, such as the one cited above, exist alongside celebrations of its status as the “world’s largest democracy” in the national press and in global media. Considering this, what does it mean to call India a “democracy”? How do we assess the successes and failures of Indian democracy?

The challenges we will discuss are not unique to Indian democracy. Democracies everywhere struggle to balance the claims of freedom for individuals with the promise of social equality for all. India’s paradoxical, complex, and contradictory encounter with democracy has produced a rich archive of debate and contestation on this issue. This course will not only introduce you to key events, ideas, and issues shaping postcolonial Indian history, but also provide you with conceptual resources to investigate political ideas like democracy in a global, historical perspective.

Through a combination of secondary texts and a range of primary sources from postcolonial Indian history, we will develop a complex picture of the relationship, often contradictory, between the promises of democracy, development, and decolonization in postcolonial societies. You do not require any prior knowledge of Indian history or languages for this course.

Let's get started *Applying Developmental Psychology to 21st Century Challenges!*

Developmental psychology has generated theories, research evidence, and scientific tools for fostering resilient societies where children and families from diverse backgrounds can thrive. This course will apply insights from developmental psychology to understand major societal trends impacting the developing child, including pandemics, migration, racial justice movements, mental health, and climate change. Students will survey the latest research on these topics and critically analyze every step of the scientific process, from grant funding, to choosing ethical and effective research methods, to the communication of scientific findings to the public and policymakers.

This course introduces students to the fundamental concepts, techniques and practices of drawing. Through a variety of exercises and projects, students will explore line, shape, form, perspective, composition and value using various drawing materials with the goal of developing freehand drawing skills.

Over the past several decades, Indigenous healing and well-being has become an emerging area of psychology and related disciplines (e.g., anthropology, public health, etc.). In this course, we will examine a range of topics pertinent to the health, healing, and well-being of Indigenous Peoples in the U.S. This includes answering questions like: What historical and contemporary factors influence the health of Indigenous Peoples in the U.S.? What are the health and mental health experiences of Indigenous Peoples in the U.S.? What are traditional modalities of healing among Indigenous Peoples in the U.S.? Though we will focus on the perspectives of Indigenous Peoples in the U.S., we will also include global perspectives occasionally. We will draw on local examples of Indigenous healing through a course partnership with the Native American Community Clinic in Minneapolis, which we will take field trips to.

Intermediate Spanish 1 extends the use and awareness of linguistic functions in Spanish, and it broadens the understanding of the history and culture of Spanish-speaking countries.
The class meets three times a week with the professor and one extra hour with the Lab Assistant. The labs begin on Tuesday, September 19th. Since the course is interactive, attendance is required for all four sessions, including the Labs.

This course surveys the visual and material culture of Europe and Western Asia from the beginning of the Neolithic (ca. 10000 BCE) through the late Medieval period (ca. 1400 CE). We consider the material remains from ancient Western Asia, Egypt, the Aegean, Greece, Etruria, and Rome; early Christianity, Judaism and Islam; and Early Medieval, Romanesque and Gothic Europe from a contextual perspective. Our main goal will be to recover the meanings of works of art and architecture within the cultures that produced them. How did images and architecture work in the pre-modern world? Who were the patrons of art and architecture in different cultures and what were their motivations in commissioning those works? Who were the intended audience? In addition to these main questions, we will discuss the ethics of appropriating and displaying art objects and images in modern museums and private collections.

Encompassing a vast and diverse region that includes the present-day states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives, and Bhutan, South Asia is home to a fourth of the world’s population. What was political, social, and cultural life in this region like before modernity? How did the plural religious, linguistic, and social identities that shape everyday life emerge? How did the encounter with colonialism reshape the contemporary trajectories of South Asian cultures? Proceeding chronologically, we will explore important themes that continue to inspire a rich historical scholarship, namely: processes underlying the integration of diverse cultural traditions across the Indian Ocean; the emergence, and consolidation of Indo-Persian kingship and attendant forms of socio-cultural life; changes wrought upon this landscape by the arrival of European colonial rule; and the postcolonial trajectories of South Asian societies.

We will explore these changes by engaging with sources and scholarship on different genres and mediums of communication ranging from art, architectural practices, music, film, fiction, and ethnography. This course will not only introduce you to critical issues for understanding contemporary South Asia but also to cultural practices and modes of representation unique to the region. By examining the past with an eye to its contemporary relevance, we will investigate why premodern identities and histories remain at the center of debates about politics and culture in contemporary South Asia.

Formal logic is the formal study of reasoning, inference, and proof. This course will focus on deductive logic, including the formal analysis of statements and arguments, sentential and quantified logics, formal semantics, and logical proofs. We will also explore some philosophical questions about logic (e.g., is there only one correct system of logic?) as well as philosophical issues arising within our study of logic.

During this course, you will:

1. master concepts and technical vocabulary that will enable you to think clearly about arguments;
2. become proficient at translating sentences from English into formal languages;
3. master basic techniques for testing arguments for validity;
4. develop your pattern recognition skills, which will permit you to tell good arguments and reasoning patterns from bad ones; and
5. explore philosophical questions about logic as well as other philosophical issues arising within our study of logic.

Medieval mysteries and magic abound in historical British literature. What creature really kidnapped the infant son of Queen Rhiannon? What was Margery Kempe’s greatest, shameful secret? Did Shakespeare really write his plays? Social questions arise too: how did magical legends affect the development of the “normative” Anglo-American society we see today?

We will investigate these questions and more as we read poetry, stories, and plays from British history. One of our main tools will be etymology—the study of words and how they developed over time. By investigating the history of words like “man” and “wife”, we will trace meaning and change in both literature and society.

Along the way, we will pay special attention to tracing the footsteps of individuals who were prohibited from participating in mainstream literary society: low-income workers, women, LGBTQ* folk, and BIPOC groups. Literary investigation and etymology will help us learn from our cultural ancestors who lived on the margins of their societies.

In this course, we will consider philosophical questions arising from close scrutiny of the natural sciences. These questions include, what (if anything) is the scientific method? What can history tell us about the nature of science and the process of scientific change? What role/s should social and political values play in scientific inquiry, if any? And what should we make of the problem of “trust” in science?

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

1. deploy philosophical resources (concepts, arguments, ways of thinking) to interpret and critique scientific practices and products;
2. recognize the interplay of epistemic and non-epistemic values in scientific practice and especially in scientific controversies;
3. write precise and cogent descriptions of your views on a range of philosophical topics arising from a scrutiny of science and its broader context; and
4. describe the relevance of philosophy of science for important issues in contemporary society.

Climate change is no longer a distant, hypothetical threat. Yet, though more than half of Americans are “concerned” or “alarmed” about global warming, few are taking significant personal action in response, and only a small minority are involved in civic action to address the issue.
This course will take a broad psychological perspective on the questions, “Why are we not doing enough to address global climate change?” and "What will catalyze the social movement necessary to address the issue?" The class will explore psychological theories and studies that help explain why people respond to the climate crisis in the ways they do, and what psychological research tells us about how to shift that response.

Course Description
Like Latin and Greek in Europe, Sanskrit is a highly inflected language of scholarship, and revered in India as the perfect medium for discourse on everything from science and sex to philosophy and religion. (In modern Hindi, sanskriti means “culture.”) It flourished in its classical form after the age of the Buddha (5th century BC) and served as a scholarly lingua franca in India until the Islamic period and beyond. This course serves as an introduction to the grammar and script of Sanskrit, and we will advance to a point of reading simplified texts from the classical epic Ramayana. Students will be expected to attend class regularly and spend six hours a week outside class studying the grammar and vocabulary. Without this sort of effort, no progress is possible in such a complex language. In addition to the rigorous study of the language, we will consider both the role of the language in classical Indian culture and religion, and some texts from the Ramayana, looking at both English translations and Sanskrit originals.

POLI

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ENGL

THDA

MATH

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PHYS

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ART

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ART

PHIL

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POLI

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GEOG

THDA

ENVI

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SPAN

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PSYC

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All processors made today are ‘multicore’. Large amounts of data are routinely analyzed using clusters of machines ‘in the cloud’. Good software designers must know how to effectively use these architectures to solve almost all problems they will encounter and systems of software they will design and build. To prepare you for this reality, this course will enable you to understand different types of architectures, learn common patterns found in software developed by experts, and enable you to master some of these patterns by building parallel and distributed applications.

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Embark on a transformative journey at the intersection of tradition and innovation in this dynamic course. Applied Anthropology and Human-Centered Design unite to empower you with the knowledge and skills to address pressing social issues. From Anthropology, you will draw on essential and time-honored qualitative research methods such as surveys, interviews, and focus groups to unravel the intricacies of the human experience. But that’s just the beginning. As a change-maker, you will also embrace the practical world of Human-Centered Design (HCD). You will learn to generate insights, fostering creativity through brainstorming and crafting prototypes. These multidisciplinary skills will not only prepare you for making a meaningful impact with empathy and precision but will also position you for life after college with highly sought-after, job-market-relevant abilities to address real-world challenges. Throughout the course, you will refine your storytelling acumen, enabling you to effectively thread your research findings and design solutions into compelling narratives. It will all come together as you work in teams to research a local issue, design a solution for it, and present it in an innovative pitch at the end of the semester. Are you ready for this fusion of classic anthropology and HCD to set the stage for meaningful change and professional success?

HIST 294-06 (30433)

Age of Atlantic Revolution - From Stono to Haiti

Between 1729 and 1804, people in the interconnected Atlantic world sought to reconfigure social, economic, and political relations through collective resistance and revolution. The most momentous movements were led by subjugated peoples, including enslaved Africans and white workers. This course examines the practices that revolutionaries deployed; how political thought, spiritual beliefs, food diplomacy, and ecological transformation guided actions; and how exiles, refugees, and forcibly transported persons reshaped the wider Atlantic World from New Orleans and Cuba to Sierra Leone and London.


Fields for History Major: Gender; Colonization and Empire; Law and Social Justice; Race and Indigeneity.

Gen Eds: Internationalism

What are the different types of political systems? How did the state evolve? What is the relationship between the structure of political systems and the processes of political action? Are societies lacking political authority vested in an individual or an institution necessarily anarchic? How do different types of political systems maintain social order and resolve disputes? What issues of law and justice arise in plural (multicultural) societies? These are some of the questions that confront the twinned sub-disciplines of political and legal anthropology that we will explore in this course.

While political anthropology is the study of how power is distributed and wielded in a society, the anthropology of law concerns itself with the way social order is maintained and how “law” — as distinct from custom — is formulated and applied. This course examines the meaning of law and politics in cross-cultural perspective. The first half of the course examines how anthropologists have approached the study of politics and the state, from the structural functionalism of the 1940s and 50s to more processual approaches that emphasize the role of agents. In the second half of the course, we examine how people in different places at different times have understood the concept of law, how their understanding has been concretely manifested in the formulation of rules governing social relations and how those rules have been enforced. Role playing in a mock court, where the class puts on trial a Comanche medicine woman for practicing medicine without a license, will be used to understand how law works in a culturally complex society.

The following is an outline of the course. The syllabus is a binding contract between students and the instructor. Students should familiarize themselves with course requirements, policies, and calendar of the class. Students are responsible for the understanding of the content presented in this syllabus.

Course Description and Objectives
SPAN 101 is the first elementary Spanish course in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese. The course objectives are:

a) To introduce students to the Spanish language and culture(s)
b) To help students develop the necessary skills to be able to communicate in Spanish at a novice-mid/novice-high level
c) To acquire proficiency in all four communicative skills: listening, reading, speaking and writing
d) To challenge students to think and react to questions and situations which require them to draw on their own background and experience
e) To begin to familiarize them with the Latinx communities in Minneapolis and Saint Paul

SPAN 101 meets MWF with the instructor. There is one extra hour with the Laboratory Instructor(s). Since the course is interactive, attendance is required and mandatory to all sessions, including the labs.

Note: Spanish and Portuguese Department policy requires that students achieve a grade of C (73%) or higher in order to be able to continue on to the next level (i.e. from SPAN 101 to SPAN 102).

In this course, we will examine the value and moral status of non-human entities: other animals, plants, “natural spaces,” etc. We will also explore the nature and extent of our obligations to these things. Our ultimate goal will be to answer the oldest question in philosophy: how should we live? But whereas traditional moral philosophy focuses on our dealings with other people, we will cast a wider net. Special topics include animal welfare, the idea of “nature,” conservation, environmental displacement, food sovereignty, technological optimism, and hope and loss.

Is caste a centuries old mode of organization or is it a modern construct produced by colonialism? Is it a structure, an object, or a practice? Does caste exist only among Hindus in South Asia or is it a practice that shapes the lives of billions of people across the globe?

In this course, we will unpack caste as a practice. We will study the ways in which caste works by producing and policing knowledge and by adapting to new historical contexts through its intersections with other hierarchies such as race, gender, and sexuality. We will also track how caste moves across conceptual and physical borders and boundaries. We will scrutinize how knowledge about caste is produced in sources such ethnographies, censuses, and legislation. We will juxtapose these readings with the scholarly and artistic production of anti-caste struggles that have challenged dominant paradigms. In doing so, this course will introduce you to a range of textual and visual archives for examining caste in a global historical context.

Starting in the 19th century, we will study how colonial rule remade existing hierarchies of caste and created possibilities for marginalized communities to resist Brahmanical authority. We will also look at the formation of new caste practices among diasporic communities in the Afro-Caribbean. Finally, we explore the new forms of caste based social mobility and marginalization engendered by contemporary global migrations and movements. In sum, this course will introduce students to new frameworks and primary sources for a global history of caste

The Middle East has often been portrayed as a stronghold of entrenched authoritarian leadership and a nexus for intense ethnic and religious conflict, including political violence. This course seeks to dissect the underlying reasons for the endurance of such perceptions and to investigate the motivations that have propelled citizens throughout the region to challenge and attempt to dismantle autocratic regimes. It probes the extent to which colonial legacies have contributed to and sustained these political quandaries. Furthermore, the course interrogates the ascendancy of Islamist movements in numerous Middle Eastern nations and examines the causes behind the surge in sectarian conflict. The course is crafted to provide a nuanced understanding of Middle Eastern politics, blending in-depth analysis of essential questions with a comprehensive examination of particular events and patterns across different countries within the region. The course addresses themes such as the endurance of authoritarianism, the dynamics of Political Islam, the patterns of sectarian conflict, the trajectory of economic growth and stagnation, as well as the catalysts and underpinnings of the Arab Spring(s) and Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Making Theatre is a messy business. In this studio course there are no scripts, no lines and no stage directions. We will invent everything ourselves by learning how to play with skill. We will explore improvisation, games, object manipulation, masks and the haphazard world of the clown. Training includes basic acrobatics, balancing and juggling. The goal of the course is to encourage curiosity, and to engage the student as creator, designer, and performer.

Music is a ubiquitous part of our daily lives. Your Uber driver wants to know if you’d like to listen to it. It’s playing while you bag up avocados, try on pants, eat a burger. It’s playing while you stretch in the seventh inning or wait in the waiting room. There’s a whole segment of it just for elevators. But sometimes a song cuts through this opaque din. Touches our hearts, soundtracks our lives, makes us want to scream wildly in a room with 20,000 strangers. So what makes a song stand apart? Well, a bit of magic, for sure. But Harlan Howard wasn’t wrong when he said the recipe for any great song is “three chords and the truth”. Strip a song down to its essential elements and you have lyrics, melody, and structure. In this class, we’ll be focusing on these pillars: how to tell a great story (from the personal to the universal), how to write a melody that sticks, and how form can shape the listener’s experience. We’ll examine the modus operandi of prolific songwriters, explore the tricks of the trade for getting started and finishing strong, and work collaboratively to write an album’s worth of hits! To take this class, basic knowledge of a musical instrument, such as guitar or piano, is preferred, but not required. You must simply be able to compose and sing melodies. You will be required to share your compositions with the class, either live or via basic audio recording.

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From slinky silks to latex and leather, textiles are key ways that humans design and display our identities. This hands-on course is a deep-dive into how writing, film, and identity-creation intersect with the history of fashion. We will focus on how clothing and textiles have been used to both express and subvert gender expectations, encountering figures like Anne Lister (“the first modern lesbian”), Eleanor Rykener (the earliest documented trans woman in England), and Susan Stryker (contemporary trans theorist and activist). Additionally, we will work with visual media, from RuPaul’s DragRace to Gentleman Jack. Come ready to play with fabric and historical fashion, no prior experience required! In this class, we will learn the basics of sewing, giving us tangible insight into the long history of clothing and “women’s work”. Students will develop a multimodal portfolio, including written work, design sketches, and wearable garments.

The class fulfills the college-wide requirements in Humanities and Writing as Argument.

ANTH

J.R.R. Tolkien had a “secret vice”: creating imaginary languages based on medieval languages.

Come learn how Tolkien drew on the Welsh language and medieval Welsh literature to craft the world of Middle-Earth and the language of the Elves. As we read our way through medieval Wales, we will encounter sorcerer-bards, goddesses, magical treasures, and mysterious creatures (who are rarely what they seem). Studying the basics of the Welsh language will allow us to be enchanted by the strange and poignant stories of the Mabinogion and the Book of Taliesin. By the end of the course, we will see why Tolkien believed Welsh to be one of the most beautiful languages in the world.