Winter 2023 Course Descriptions

HC221H - Eco Literature and the Green Imagination

Professor: Barbara Mossberg

4.00 credits

CRN 22248: Monday & Wednesday, 10:00am-11:20am @ CHA 201

Is the green imagination intrinsic to being human? Since Gilgamesh scratched it on clay in cuneiform in 2700 BCE, eco literature has been a dynamic portrait of human engagement and concern with our world. read more

HC221H - Climate Change and the Problem of Representation

Professor: Casey Shoop

4.00 credits

What are the representational demands of climate change and environmental catastrophe on literature and artistic production? read more

HC221H - Comedy and Disability

Professor: Brian Trapp

4.00 credits

In this class, we’ll explore comedy as a productive and exciting aesthetic lens to examine ideas about disability. read more

HC221H - Latine/x Autoethnographies

Professor: Catalina de Onis

4.00 credits

Autoethnographies can function as theory, method, and narrative form to communicate one’s lived experiences in self-reflexive ways that connect to larger societal concerns and struggles. read more

HC221H - The Velocity of Gesture, or Intro to Air Guitar

Professor: Brian McWhorter

4.00 credits

CRN 22254: Tuesday & Thursday, 10:00am-11:20am @ VIL 101

As a phenomenological exploration of nuance and gesture, this class will look at body language in casual and performative modalities. read more

HC221 - 19th-Century Black Women's Writing

Professor: Faith Barter

4.00 credits

In this course, we will trace the beginnings of the Black feminist literary tradition by studying Black women’s writing from the long 19th century. read more

HC221H - In Search of Belonging: The Consolations of Community in Contemporary Literature and Cinema

Professor: Dawn Marlan

4.00 credits

This is a course focused on the paradox of community, namely that the very safety and protection it offers (by virtue of strength in numbers, for example) poses a danger to the individual, whose freedom it curtails and whose interests are never perfectly aligned with those of the group. read more

HC221H - I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: Narratives of Retribution and Revenge

Professor: Ulrick Casimir

4.00 credits

Focused on both narrative readings (mostly poetry, drama, and short fiction) and films, this course concerns how different cultures, over time, have examined through narrative the mechanics, potentialities, limitations, and consequences of retribution and revenge. read more

HC231H - Inquiries Into Development Economics: Policies and Evaluation in Poverty Alleviation

Professor: Alfredo Burlando

4.00 credits

CRN 22256: Monday & Wednesday, 4:00pm-5:20pm @ TYKE 233

Across many parts of Africa, South Asia and Latin America, thousands of development workers are hard at work trying to address one of the great global challenges of our modern era: the worldwide elimination of poverty. read more

HC231H - Music and Politics

Professor: Anita Chari

4.00 credits

How does music relate to politics and power in social movements, subcultures, and the marketplace? This course will explore the relationship of music to politics, primarily in the US context. read more

HC231H: The Protein Wars

Professor: Hannah Cutting-Jones

4.00 credits

Regardless of our individual dietary preferences, most of us have been asked at one point or another, “Where do you get your protein?” Unlike its vilified counterparts, fats and carbohydrates, protein has remained a baseline of nutritional advice whether one orders a steak or a plant-based burger. read more

HC231H - Oral Advocacy and Argumentation

Professor: Trond Jacobsen

4.00 credits

Rhetoric and argument have been the foundation of a liberal education for more than 2000 years. Students in this class will enhance their abilities in oral advocacy and critical thinking by participating in academic debates. read more

HC231H - In and Out of the Museum

Professor: Eleonora Redaelli

4.00 credits

This course explores the multifaceted aspects of an art museum, focusing on a case study: the Portland Art Museum (PAM). read more

HC241H - Atoms: Mother Nature's Legos

Professor: Rebecca Altman

4.00 credits

By engaging with the three-dimensional nature of molecules, we will learn why their shapes are crucial to some of the most important parts of our lives, such as food, technology, and our DNA. read more

HC241H - Pick Your Poison

Professor: Lindsay Hinkle

4.00 credits

When you imagine a person preparing a poison, does an image of the Evil Queen from the film Snow White, disguised as an old witch, dunking an apple in a cauldron filled with green liquid come to mind?  Or do you picture a well-meaning pharmacist, wearing a lab coat, adding raspberry flavoring to a medicinal elixir to make it more appetizing to ingest?  Both of these events occurred in the 1930s. read more

HC241H - Science of Climate Change

Professor: Jeffrey Cina

4.00 credits

This reading and discussion-based course will delve into the science of human-caused climate change due to the widespread combustion of fossil fuels for energy, heating, and transportation. read more

HC241 - Neuroscience Perspectives on Drug Policy

Professor: Christina Karns

4.00 credits

Psychoactive drugs are a pervasive part of modern life. As the lines blur between recreational drugs and pharmacological treatments, a neuroscience perspective on these issues may clarify policy and public health implications of the changing times. read more

HC277 - Thesis Orientation

Professor: Lisa Munger

2.00 credits

Thesis Orientation is two-credit class (graded pass/no pass) that introduces CHC students to the thesis process. read more

HC277H - Thesis Orientation

Professor: Elizabeth Raisanan

2.00 credits

Thesis Orientation is two-credit class (graded pass/no pass) that introduces CHC students to the thesis process. read more

HC277H - Thesis Orientation

Professor: Lindsay Hinkle

2.00 credits

Thesis Orientation is two-credit class (graded pass/no pass) that introduces CHC students to the thesis process. read more

HC277H - Thesis Orientation

Professor: Daphne Gallagher

2.00 credits

Thesis Orientation is two-credit class (graded pass/no pass) that introduces CHC students to the thesis process. read more

HC301H - The Natural World

Professor: Gant Gurley

4.00 credits

CRN 22277: Monday & Wednesday, 10:00am-11:20am @ CHA 202

CRN 22278: Monday & Wednesday, 12:00pm-1:20pm @ MCK 123

This interdisciplinary course explores the history of scientific, philosophical, and literary thinking that attempts to explain, codify, and shape the world. read more

HC301H - Food Landscapes

Professor: Leslie McLees

4.00 credits

Food is the stuff that binds us to our planet, to nature, and to our communities. Recent years have seen a proliferation of interest in the study of food, both academically and in popular culture from writers such as Michael Pollan. read more

HC301H - Dead Media

Professor: Daniel Rosenberg

4.00 credits

This course is about technological dead ends and what we can learn from them. The dustbin of history is overflowing with dead media technologies. read more

HC301H - Reading Cities

Professor: Mai-Lin Cheng

4.00 credits

This course explores literature of the city since the early nineteenth century. read more

HC421 - Emerson and Einstein, Interdisciplinary Artist Activists: An Inquiry into Genius

Professor: Barbara Mossberg

4.00 credits

Poetry and science merge, converge, blur, and blend in this study of genius that rocked—and still rocks—our world. Bursting and bending disciplines, joyously defying definitions of field--Einstein the scientist playing the violin and encouraging humanities, Emerson the poet urging study of science and history. read more

HC421H - Commonplace Reading, or, Book Love

Professor: Mai-Lin Cheng

4.00 credits

In this course, we will analyze the connections between reading and writing as we explore what "book love" means in both literary works (i.e. novels, poems, short stories) and the world of commonplace books, books in which readers created their own personal anthologies, with passages, images, and other artifacts important to them. read more

HC421H - Frantz Fanon's Philosophy

Professor: Beata Stawarska

4.00 credits

This course is dedicated to a close reading of Fanon’s philosophical works, with a focus on Black Skin, White Masks (1952), selected essays from 1952-60, and selections from The Wretched of the Earth (1961). read more

HC421H - Poetry Is Not A Luxury: Lyric Poetry in Theory and Practice

Professor:  Leah Middlebrook

4.00 Credits

“Poetry is not a luxury,” Audre Lorde tells us. In this course, we take that claim seriously and examine ways in which poetry fosters the conditions of life, private and public. read more

HC431H - Coalitional Game Theory: An Investigation of Equity and Fairness Principles

Professor: Anne van den Nouweland

4.00 credits

The words “equity” and “fairness” are often used colloquially. But what exactly do we mean when we use those words? Across different cultures and societies, we find different notions of “fairness” and “equity.” read more

HC431H - Labor Radicalism in the Pacific Northwest

Professor: James Breen

4.00 credits

• CRN 22290: Tuesday & Thursday, 4:00-5:50pm @ TYKE 233

According to The American Prospect, the United States experienced just seven major strikes in the private sector in 2017—a far cry from the almost three hundred major strikes per year throughout the 1970s. But American labor militancy has since exploded in both the private and public sectors. Americans have seen highly publicized unionization drives at Starbucks and Amazon. read more

HC434H/421H - Race in Global Context: US, Russia, South Korea

Professor: Susanna Lim

4.00 credits

Amidst the global pandemic of COVID-19, the last few years have also been a time of racial soul-searching and reckoning in the U.S. and around the world. read more

HC434H/421H - Global Contemporary Art

Professor: Kate Mondloch

4.00 credits

This course will introduce students to the exciting world of global contemporary art, with a special focus on present-day art and cultural politics as showcased in the renowned Venice Biennale international art exhibition. read more

HC434H/421H - African American Artists and Writers in France

Professor: Corinne Bayerl

4.00 credits

This class will focus on the vibrant African-American communities that emerged in Paris and Marseilles between the end of WWI and the 1970s and included writers and artists such as Langston Hughes, Josephine Baker, Claude McKay, Jessie Fausset, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin. read more

HC441 - Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing: Public Science

Professor: Dare Baldwin

4.00 credits

Science is in the midst of radically reshaping itself in the direction of openness and transparency. This shift has widespread implications for scientists themselves, but also for all the many institutions and industries linked to science, including academia, publishing, health-care, technology innovation, educational practice, science-based policy-making, and science-oriented funding structures. read more

HC441H - The Art of Data Manipulation

Professor: Rebecca Altman

4.00 credits

CRN 22294: Monday & Wednesday, 2:00pm-3:50pm @ CHA 301

Do you ever wonder what the numbers reported in the news actually mean, or where they come from? How do you know you can trust the story the numbers are telling...read more

HC441H - Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing: Neuroscience Journalism

Professor: Nicole Dudukovic

4.00 credits

The human brain has been called the most complex object in the known universe.  It is also, arguably, one of the most fascinating.  Over the past several decades, neuroscience research has become increasingly sophisticated and interdisciplinary. read more

HC444H/421H - Black Cinema & Social Change

Professor:  Artel Great

4.00 credits

CRN 22301: Thursday, 5:00pm-7:50pm @ Remote Synchronous

This course actively explores the hidden histories of Black cinema in the United States. Since the very beginning of motion pictures, the film industry has generated a catalog of tropes, caricatures, and grotesque depictions that have relegated Black bodies to the margins of the film frame. read more

HC444H/431H - Calderwood Seminar in Public Writing: The United States in the 1860s

Professor: Tim Williams

4.00 credits

For more than 150 years, the U.S. Civil War has not only fascinated Americans but also generated more scholarship than perhaps any other event in American history. read more

HC444H/431H - (Re)searching for the Cayuse Five

Professor: Michael Moffitt

4.00 credits

In 1850, five Cayuse men were hanged and buried near Oregon City, then the capital of the Oregon Territory. read more

HC444H/431H - Transdisciplinary Problem-Solving in Public Health

Professor: Elizabeth Budd

4.00 credits

read more

HC444H/421H - Black Cinema & Social Change

Professor: Artel Great

4.00 credits

This course actively explores the hidden histories of Black cinema in the United States. Since the very beginning of motion pictures, the film industry has generated a catalog of tropes, caricatures, and grotesque depictions that have relegated Black bodies to the margins of the film frame. read more

HC444H/421H - The Ice Archives

Professor: Casey Shoop

4.00 credits

Glacial ice is at once a record of temporality at different scales and a central character in the human records (both written and oral) we keep about the passage of time. read more

HC477H - Thesis Prospectus - W23 - Bayerl

Professor: Corinne Bayerl

2.00 credits

HC 477H Thesis Prospectus requires preauthorization before each term. To obtain preauthorization, you must complete an online Thesis Prospectus Application Form, which will route to your Primary Thesis Advisor for signature. read more

HC477 - Thesis Prospectus - W23 - Gallagher

Professor: Daphne Gallagher

2.00 credits

HC 477H Thesis Prospectus requires preauthorization before each term. To obtain preauthorization, you must complete an online Thesis Prospectus Application Form, which will route to your Primary Thesis Advisor for signature. read more