Sophomore Signature Courses
All courses meet the level 200 flexible core general education requirement. These flexible core level 200 classes are designed and reserved especially for sophomores to promote academic and career exploration with their professional goals in mind.
How will Sophomore Signature courses benefit you beyond the classroom?
- Easy access to an individual success mentor and advisor to plan your post graduate goals
- Direct connections and referrals to resources and a support network
- Early notification for events relevant to your goals and interests
Sex & Culture
ANT / PSY 210-06 with Professor Robert Freeman
- Tuesday/Thursday 3:05-4:20pm, In Person
- Registration Codes: 34805 (ANT) / 35107 (PSY)
- Flexible Core Level 200 – Individual & Society
Sex and Culture explores the cultural construction of human sexuality from the framework of the individual in society. Students will examine the social learning of sexual behaviors, beliefs, and practices. Analytic focus will include how culturally prescribed gender roles for men and women inform notions of right and wrong. Specific topics may include institutionalized gender inequality, marriage and the family, homophobia and other issues involved in the relationship between sex and culture. All topics will be considered from a historical and cross-cultural perspective.
Love, Sex, and Intimate Relationships
CSL 250-02 with Professor Nancy Yang
- Monday/Wednesday 3:05-4:20pm, In Person
- Registration Code: 35383
- Flexible Core Level 200 – Individual & Society
What does relationship science tell us about love and attraction in couples like Zendaya and Tom Holland or shows like “Love is Blind”? How about your own intimate relationships and those you have observed growing up? How do relationships start, operate, thrive, and (potentially) end in a haze of anger and pain? In this course, you will be introduced to the concepts, principles, and trends in relationship science and learn to apply these to relationships you have observed, read about, and experienced. By examining scholarly articles, non-fiction texts, film clips, and constructing case studies, you will become more critical, analytical, and thoughtful when it comes to intriguing topics like attraction, love, and effective communication.
Interpreting Objects, Text and Culture
ENG 225-01: Interpreting Objects, Text and Culture with Professor Mark Mcbeth
- Mondays 10:50am-12:05pm, Hybrid with In-Person meetings
- Registration Code: 35361
- Flexible Core Level 200 – Individual & Society
Everything we view with our eyes is a text to be read; authors deliver messages and meanings in poems, movies, advertisements, furniture, buildings, clothes.... We take in these messages and meanings, often uncritically, and they impact what we believe, what we think, and how we act. In the texts we consume, race, ethnicity, gender, and class are all constructed for us and wired into our brains. Given this mind control, we might want to pay more attention. In this course we will identify, analyze, and deconstruct the messages and meanings behind what we see, hear, read, and experience. As consumers and creators of texts, it is imperative that we understand, interpret, and critically engage our lifetime of texts, so we are not bamboozled into believing, thinking, and acting on messages of division, otherness and hate. You will not see the world the same way again. We meet synchronously, so we can “read” together. This course also counts towards the Writing and Rhetoric Minor and/or the English Major.
Technology and Culture
ISP 255-01 with Professor Silvina Calderaro and Professor Paul Bartlett
- Thursdays 8:00-10:40am, In Person
- Registration Code: 35810
- Flexible Core Level 200 – Scientific World
It is impossible to separate technology from being human. For over 100,000 years we have used technology to shape our world, and in turn we have been shaped by the technologies we have chosen, developed, and come to rely upon, from the flint and the ax, to the jet plane and the cell-phone, and beyond. Drawing on texts from the sciences, the humanities and the social sciences, this interdisciplinary course will explore and examine the various ways technology and technological progress has molded our culture and our imagination.