EN 201-Topics in Literature: The River in Literature
EV 128/GY 140-Introduction to Global Climate Change/Physical Geology
GS 101- Freedom and Authority
Blocks V and VI: Kyle Torke, EN 201: Topics in Literature:
The River in Literature
The course as a whole meets Critical Perspectives: The West in Time (2 Units)
English 201 is a class for questions. Our thematic focus will center on the experience of rivers (and other bodies of water) in literature as they manifest in great literature throughout the Western tradition. We will explore broadly in multiple genres from poems to short stories, novels, plays, essays, and film and cover writers from the Greeks to modern writers—From the Iliad to Deliverance. We will learn to be active readers and precise writers while concentrating on the questions, large and small, most pertinent to the enjoyment of great texts. How do I read a poem? Is my reading different, better, dumber than someone else's? Is reading a short story the same as reading a poem or novel? Does the title "mean" something? How does a story begin to have meaning, what are those meanings, how can I be sure I've figured out the right meaning? When someone says a protagonist is a projection of the author’s hope for the new way of understanding human morality, what does she mean? What makes some works more valuable, or better, than others? How can we improve our ability to access, appreciate, and, more importantly, enjoy texts?
As a community of interested and involved readers, we will approach these questions, and many others, when we begin to explore texts and the strategies that can help us shape the way we understand what we read. Though we will consider critical theories, our primary focus will always be to ask questions of the text that will help us to answer presiding questions: How is the text working? Reading asks us to assess complex material, come to some conclusion, and support a position—a life skill you’ll use in every aspect of your experience from planning a world-tour vacation to deciding which movie you’ll watch. The literature is unique; the skills we’ll develop our universal.
A two-block course with one instructor for both blocks;
one grade will be assigned for the course as a whole.
Block V: Eric Leonard, EV 128, Introduction to Global Climate Change
Meets one unit of Natural Science divisional credit
Block VI: Christine Siddoway, GY 140, Physical Geology
Meets one unit of Natural Science divisional credit and one unit of Critical Perspectives: Scientific Inquiry (SI) laboratory/field credit.
The first block will focus primarily on the science of climate change. However, climate change is clearly also an economic and political, even an ethical, issue, so we will spend some time studying it from those perspectives as well. Our focus will be on present and future anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change, but an understanding of how the climate system works and changes naturally is an essential foundation for understanding human impact.
The class will begin with an introduction to the Earth’s climate system -- examining the roles of the atmosphere, oceans, cryosphere, land surface, and biosphere, and studying the hydrologic and carbon cycles. We will then move on to a discussion of changes in the climate system – both natural changes over geologic timescales, and contemporary and future anthropogenic changes. We will examine evidence and causes of past and contemporary change in the climate system and methods of modeling future climate. The class will conclude by looking at potential biological and human impacts of climate change, again using the past to help us anticipate the future, and by discussing political and economic policy and ethical questions related to climate change.
Analysis of climate data sets and work on complex-systems modeling will enhance student analytical skills. The class will also involve close reading and discussion of scientific literature. Students will work on research projects that will be presented verbally to the class and as written scientific papers.
The second block will introduce the fundamentals of geology, making use of the local Rocky Mountain setting as a natural laboratory in which to investigate the record of the Earth's history preserved in the rocks, the dynamic earth processes in effect in the mountain environment, and how human activities relate to these processes.
GY140 will continue the first-block focus on development of scientific observational and analytical skills and on written and verbal presentation of scientific material. We will devote time to learning the language of geology and to developing skills for identification of the origins and uses of earth materials, in the classroom and the field. A substantial portion of the class will be devoted to field projects and to lab/computer analysis of samples and data collected in the field. Field/lab projects may range from geological mapping of faults and folds to aid in understanding mountain building processes, to study of sedimentary rocks and fossil assemblages for paleoenvironmental interpretation, to measurement of stream flow and stream chemistry for environmental hazard assessment.
Fieldwork will include both local day trips and multi-day trips in the Colorado mountains. The latter will involve camping out in occasionally less-than-optimal weather conditions!
A set of linked one-block courses that must be taken together, with one instructor in each block; separate grades will be given for each block.
Blocks V & VI: Bill Davis (Comparative Literature) GS101,
Freedom & Authority
The course as a whole meets Critical Perspectives: The West in Time (2 units).
“Freedom and Authority" was the first interdisciplinary course at Colorado College and has been taught here for over 40 years. It is a two-block course focusing on the conflict between individual freedom and the limits imposed on this freedom by the state and its laws, by religious institutions and scriptures, and by attitudes of the society in which we live. As an interdisciplinary course, it studies literary, philosophical, religious, historical, and scientific texts in a thematic context. It focuses on four main themes: personal authority, social authority, political authority, and religious authority. Behind all of these themes are questions such as: What constitutes personal identity? What are the sources of our individual values and commitments? How much of what we are can be traced to ethnic and cultural background? What should one do when conscience and laws conflict? How does the individual relate to the group? How do authority and power work to constrain and mold individuals? How do sources of authority legitimate themselves? Through reading, writing, discussion, and critical thinking we will grapple with these and other questions surrounding the human condition.
A two-block course taught by a single instructor; one grade
will be given for the course as a whole.