Professor: Lisa Munger
4 credits
In the opening chapter of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll, Alice’s riverbank reverie is interrupted by a white rabbit, anxiously muttering and checking its pocket watch as it hurries past. “Burning with curiosity,” she pursues it down the rabbit hole and finds herself in an unfamiliar, fantastical world where she must develop new knowledge in order to get around and meet her goals—much like a new student in a liberal arts college. Alice learns to navigate this new world through a variety of processes including observation, experimentation, reflection, and dialogue. This course is about encouraging you, like Alice, to follow your curiosity while developing essential scholarly and analytical skills. You will go “down the rabbit hole(s)” of your choice by investigating and communicating ideas that are interesting to you, in a series of assignments—some conventional (e.g. essays, presentations) and some that are a little more adventurous. In the process, you will build community, learn about the resources available to you at UO, and get to know some of the characters that will be a part of your story.
Lisa Munger is a marine biologist who specializes in marine ecology and underwater sound. She taught in the CHC from 2019-2024 and will be rejoining the CHC core faculty in Fall 2026 after spending two years at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.