In Gen Ed courses, students examine urgent problems we face today and enduring questions that humanity has grappled with for millennia. The problems and questions explored in Gen Ed courses since 2019 are listed below.
Aesthetics & Culture
- How does culture—from images of racial violence to Confederate monuments—determine who counts and who belongs in the United States?
- Why do poems and poets today boldly cross the borders of language, geography, form, and how are those border-crossings charged politically, ethically, and aesthetically?
- Why do Buddhists build monuments despite the core teaching of ephemerality, and what can we learn from this paradox about our own conception of time and space?
- Why do some stories get told over and over for thousands of years, and how do those ancient tales still shape (and get shaped by) us today?
- How do the performances we see every day--on screens, on stages, and in everyday life--make race, gender, and sexuality real?
- What role do artistic practices play in the formation of modern culture and society, and how does art foster critical reflection and debate?
- How can ancient Greek tragedy help us to address some of today’s most pressing sociopolitical problems?
- How can the novel enable us to think in ways that other forms of knowledge production cannot and what does that allow us to understand about the world?
- How have authors throughout history channeled anxiety into meaningful and imaginative works of art?
- Is satire a dying art, and do we need it?
- How and why do we humans “play” with the food we eat, and on which we depend for our lives, in so many different ways—creatively, profoundly, and consequentially?
- What is the nature of the object that has been the focus of your education since you began to read--and at the core of Western culture since its inception-- and why is it important to understand and appreciate its presence before your eyes even if it's all but transparent?
- From gifs and memes to confessions and controversies, what can the riotous festival of contemporary expression in video teach us about living together?
- How is verbal art -- from story-telling to poetry and from hip hop to church song -- created from linguistic and musical form, and how does its performance mediate social relations as well as construct cultural meanings that are central to our lives?
- How can we critically analyze and creatively respond to films, meanwhile letting cinema open up a window to other cultures and histories while serving as a mirror for ourselves and our own times?
- How did our world come to be suffused with medieval images and motifs, and what do we learn about the past and ourselves as we begin to explore the fascinating time on the other side of the stereotypes?
- How do the possibilities of faith and the demands of living authentically square with the developments of the modern west and its threats of nihilism?
- How do we know ourselves through things and what does it mean to think with our hands, to innovate and to productively fail as a tool of self knowledge?
- How have mental illness and mental health been understood across time and space, and how have literature and the arts both perpetuated and undermined stigmas against individuals with mental illness?
- What is the “people," and how “popular” can popular culture be in contemporary People’s Republic of China and beyond?
- What is the relationship between LGBT literary representation and politics, activism, and culture?
- What role do our senses play in shaping our understandings of “religion” and “religious experience”?
- Where does creativity come from, how does it work, and how can we deepen its role in our own lives?
- Why did Nazi sights, sounds, and propaganda prove to be so captivating and compelling for German audiences of a modern nation and how do we explain the continuing impact of Nazi images and fantasies to this very day, which is to ask, what do “they” have to do with “us”?
- How does understanding political activists and movements in the past help us radically change the world today?
- As healthcare costs soar and considerable suffering from disease and illness continues despite regular advances in medicine, what should we advocate for in our communities, our societies, our nations, and beyond to ease the burden of disease and illness on health professionals, family caregivers, and care recipients alike?
- How are we to cope with the inevitability that some of what we most love in life we will lose?
- How can and should we live at the end of the world as we know it?
- How can music help us in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence?
- How can one small, remote country change the way we think about the culture of the world?
- How did ancient Greek heroes, both male and female, learn about life by facing what all us have to face, our human condition?
- How do we draw the line between being yourself and performing yourself, between acting and authenticity?
- How does a hands-on practice of image making (painting) lead us to perceive, represent and inhabit our world differently?
- If we talk about American dreams and the many different ways they take shape in the mass-produced film fantasies made in Hollywood and beyond, what language are we to use and how are we to speak as we confront the diversity of experience portrayed in these designs for living; for whom is the American dream, one wonders, is it for everyone?
- What can anime’s development in Japan and its global dissemination teach us about the messy world of contemporary media culture where art and commerce, aesthetic and technology, and producers and consumers are inextricably entangled with each other?
- What can film from Japan tell us about the strange pair of intensifying global interconnections and rising nationalism in the world today?
- What makes some texts long-lived while others are ephemeral, today and in the past?
- What makes superheroes popular, and how can their stories answer enduring questions about identity, power, disability, symbolism, law, and the state?
- Why do stories have the power to bring China to the world and the world to China?
- How do groups express themselves creatively in everyday life, and how do these group expressions reflect our individual experiences of the world?
Ethics & Civics
- What are individuals, scientists, businesses, and governments morally required to do to prevent catastrophic climate change?
- Fake news, echo chambers, conspiracies, propaganda, information pollution--what are these and other features of the post truth era and how can we successfully navigate them?
- How can we understand the evolution of morality—from primordial soup to superintelligent machines—and how might the science of morality equip us to meet our most pressing moral challenges?
- In an era of fake news, conspiracy theories, quack cures, science denial, and paranormal woo-woo, the well-being of the world depends on an understanding of rationality, why it is so easily eclipsed by irrationality, and how the rational angels of our nature can prevail.
- Why do slavery, human trafficking and other forms of servitude thrive today globally, including the USA, and what can we do about it?
- Can we have confidence that our moral claims are true?
- Argument and persuasion are features of all of our lives that can be as challenging and fraught as they are unavoidable and essential; what is the best way for us to handle them?
- What if schools were for learning instead of education?
- How can we most effectively harness the power of philanthropic giving and nonprofit work to create positive social change and address society's most pressing challenges?
- Is technology good, bad, or neutral – and if good, should we make it central to solving all our problems; if bad, should we radically change our ways; and if neutral, then what else should be the focus as we look for solutions to global problems?
- Almost everyone must work, so how will you choose what work to do, avoid ethical pitfalls at work, and shape the world of work for others?
- At a time when democracies are collapsing all over the world and when American democracy lies in a state of crisis, what, of its future, can be learned from its past?
- Can we reconcile the scientific 'brain as a machine' view with our strong experience of moral agency?
- From the interpersonal to the international, are we destined to live in a world of destructive conflict—or can we negotiate our way out?
- How can we recognize the link between ethical acts of consent in personal life (marriage, sexual experience, contracts) and the essential role that citizenship plays in democratic states during both war and peace?
- How can we understand and make progress on disagreements about matters of economic and racial justice that are divisive to the point of making societies fall apart?
- How does the U.S. K12 education system reflect, reinforce, and reshape American society?
- How have borders been formed historically, and what are the ethics of border construction, defense, expansion or transgression?
- If we are what we eat, well, here at the end of 2021, who the hell are we?
- In a time of rising authoritarianism and polarized debate, what role can the love of wisdom have in tempering the pursuit of power?
- Saving the planet is necessary and will actually make us happy, right?
- What do universities owe society?
- What does it mean for us -- both as a society and as individuals -- to live in a world radically remade by the human hand?
- What if many of our assumptions about the self and about how to live fully are limiting and even dangerous, and what other possibilities might we be able to find in classical Chinese philosophy?
- What is a democratic republic, and can such a regime — one that trusts citizens to capably choose and monitor those in power, and one that trusts those in power to restrain themselves and each other while attending to the public good — survive and protect us from tyranny?
- What is a just society, and how should we contend with the ethical choices posed by this moment of pandemic and racial reckoning?
- What is racial justice, and through what justifiable means might it be achieved in the United States?
- How can a globalizing world of differing countries – rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian – best promote inclusive growth and human security by meeting the challenges of inequality, climate change, rising populism, and global disease?
- How can the novels of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky help us think differently about everyday moral dilemmas that are often seen as the prerogative of religion, politics, or philosophy?
- How does social change happen?
- If a society achieved truly equal opportunity, so that everyone could rise as far as their effort and talent would take them, would it be a just society?
- Should we pursue happiness, and if so, how should we do it?
- Why have debates about medicine and public health (e.g., vaccination, abortion, etc.) become so polarized and contentious in the United States?
- How do the moral implications of security, a term with a long and provocatively ambivalent history, continue to be relevant in today’s understanding of community and social responsibility?
Histories, Societies, Individuals
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How do material interests and identities shape the foundations of political order?
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What is capitalism and how has it unfolded in American history?
- How did our planet become so urban, and how can our cities be more vital, livable, and sustainable? How did we come to think of the world as split into East and West?
- How do we combat global forms of gendered oppression, from patriarchy, racism, to sexual violence?
- How does ancient Egypt enlighten our times about what defines a civilization, and were those ancient humans, with their pyramids, hieroglyphs, and pharaohs, exactly like or nothing like us?
- How does one understand a major global religion in a highly polarized and fragmented world?
- How does the English language shape our world, and how does the world shape English?
- How does the U.S. K12 education system reflect, reinforce, and reshape American society?
- How has our understanding of evolution evolved since Darwin?
- How have borders been formed historically, and what are the ethics of border construction, defense, expansion or transgression?
- How have changes in the way that things are manufactured and made transformed the world beyond the factory and other sites of production?
- Is the United States a beacon of liberal, democratic, diverse values and practices, that also has a pattern of racial injustice – or is the US at its core a white supremacist society, in which some people aspire to creating a genuinely tolerant liberal democracy?
- What can histories of tension and cooperation at the U.S.-Mexico border tell us about our own nation's public health programs and national racism?
- Why do wars start, how can they be stopped, and what can be done to prevent them?
- Why do we seek higher education, how do we experience and conduct higher education and what do we do with higher education?
- What is a democratic republic, and can such a regime — one that trusts citizens to capably choose and monitor those in power, and one that trusts those in power to restrain themselves and each other while attending to the public good — survive and protect us from tyranny?
- What is capitalism, and how has its relationship to state and society evolved throughout American history?
- What is the role that religion plays in the political life of Middle Eastern Muslim-majority societies today, and how does our understanding of that compare with conventional wisdom, including what we are often exposed to in the news media?
- Where do we come from and why do we care?
- Who are we, how did we get here... and how far back in time do we have to go to start asking the question?
- Why does America love guns?
- How and why does the U.S. Civil War continue to shape national politics, laws, literature, and culture---especially in relation to our understanding of race, freedom, and equality?
- How can a globalizing world of differing countries – rich and poor, democratic and authoritarian – best promote inclusive growth and human security by meeting the challenges of inequality, climate change, rising populism, and global disease?
- How do patterns of American economic, political, and social inequality shape our policy responses to working families, immigration, and poverty?
- How do you successfully design and implement solutions to intractable social and economic problems in the developing world?
- How does Mexico's rich cultural past shape contemporary Mexico and the US in the face of today's pandemics, protests and other challenges of the borderlands?
- How does the growing inequality between and within nations—which is the major global issue of our times—impact the Caribbean region and, in turn, its U.S. neighbor?
- How have US military occupations abroad, such as in the Philippines, Japan, and most recently Afghanistan and Iraq, shaped both the United States and the world?
- In a time when histories are being contested, monuments removed, and alternative facts compete with established orthodoxy, how do we evaluate competing narratives about what really happened in the past?
- What can African spiritual traditions contribute to human flourishing In the contemporary age?
- What does China’s past mean for its and your future as China once again becomes the most powerful nation on earth?
- What makes some texts long-lived while others are ephemeral, today and in the past?
- Why have debates about medicine and public health (e.g., vaccination, abortion, etc.) become so polarized and contentious in the United States?
Science & Technology in Society
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How does sleep affect your health, your safety, and our society?
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How does the water cycle change us, and how do we change it?
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Are we — wonderful, human us — really nothing more than complex constellations of interacting atoms?
- Can vaccines solve the problem of infectious global pandemics?
- Can we reconcile the scientific 'brain as a machine' view with our strong experience of moral agency?
- Does science have a gender?
- How and why are space missions conducted, and what should the future of human activity in space look like?
- How can AI and Computing be integrated in our thinking for solving societal and scientific challenges?
- How can we (as individuals and as whole societies) better incorporate into our thinking and decision making the problem-solving techniques characteristic of science at its best?
- How can we critically assess the data, models, and numbers used in making policy and hold to account those with the power to produce them?
- How did/do humans find their way across the planet, and how can we replicate their wayfinding?
- How do pandemics end?
- How has our understanding of evolution evolved since Darwin?
- Should we have been better prepared to mitigate the inequities that we are witnessing with COVID-19?
- Where do we come from and why do we care?
- Given all our technological advances, why are we still not able to prevent preventable diseases, provide affordable healthcare for millions of people, and deliver cures for curable diseases?
- How can health care systems be restructured to provide high quality care even to the poorest and most vulnerable people on our planet?
- How can we use scientific principles to make better food, for ourselves and for the world?
- How can we address the issue of climate change, reducing the damages by preparing for impacts already underway and fixing the problem by transforming our energy system?
- In a time when histories are being contested, monuments removed, and alternative facts compete with established orthodoxy, how do we evaluate competing narratives about what really happened in the past?
- Irreversible climate change poses an unprecedented challenge to the stability of all societies: what are the scientifically viable pathways to a future that is sustainable and just?
- Music and technology are two dimensions of humanity that have been interdependent for tens of thousands of years; what can this intersection teach us about our past and our future?
- The relationship between human beings and Earth is the central problem of our time; can an understanding of Earth’s history reveal a place for us in a process of planetary evolution that might influence our behavior?
- What are you willing to do for the health of others?
- What makes us human and why does it matter?
- What is a human individual deserving of rights?