This course addresses the role of language in shaping and maintaining unequal relationships of power in societies, with an emphasis on the ongoing impacts of colonialism and white supremacy. Drawing from multiple disciplines including linguistics, anthropology, Indigenous studies, race and ethnic studies, and cognitive studies, the course introduces students to various epistemological and methodological approaches to the study of power in society. While introducing students to disciplinary-specific ways of producing knowledge, the course will also critically explore the relationship between Western scientific paradigms and colonialism. Comparing Indigenous and decolonizing approaches to knowledge production with Western scientific and philosophical traditions, the course allows students to critically think across and toward the expansion of disciplinary paradigms.

Colorado is one of the United States’ most popular outdoor playgrounds. With towering mountains and crystal-clear rivers, opportunities for recreation and play abound. But do those opportunities exist equally for everyone? Are outdoor spaces welcoming for all people? What do you think of when you think of Wilderness? Who do you imagine when you think of an “outdoorsy” person? And why would anyone want to spend the night in a tent or paddle down a whitewater river anyways? Can outdoor recreation be a mode of resistance to dominant narratives and a place of restoration? We will dive deep into these questions and the historical, social, and racial issues around outdoor recreation activities, and look at why they can provide positive experiences. We will also unpack the history of outdoor tourism and recreation and critically analyze how white, European notions of nature and systemic racism have shaped the ways that we conceive of and recreate in natural places. Along with field experiences in the “Great Outdoors”, this experiential education course will develop your college level qualitative analysis, reading, writing, and discussion skills.

In today’s “surveillance society,” we have become accustomed to trading personal information—wittingly or not—for goods, services, and simply to participate in everyday life. With the rise of big data, state and market institutions routinely collect and analyze data to monitor our purchasing patterns, social networks, and physical movements. However, some people are more insulated from scrutiny than others, and exposure to surveillance of various kinds depends on social status and the matrix of identities each of us hold. In this course, we will examine surveillance through a sociological lens, focusing on how surveillance can generate and reproduce social inequalities. We will cover various formal institutions that surveil particular populations, including the criminal justice, welfare, and child protective systems, and explore contexts where everyday surveillance occurs, including school and workplaces, on social media, and in public spaces. We will also discuss the possibilities for resisting surveillance through formal and informal means. Throughout the course we will consider how being surveilled—and surveilling others—shapes our understanding of ourselves and reflects on the power relations that structure society.

This course will investigate how social conditions come to be defined as social problems, specifically examining the roles of advocates, policy makers, experts, the media, and the public. Why do some social problems receive so much attention, while others are ignored? What are the impacts of defining social problems in a particular way? Drawing on case studies of contemporary issues, including racism, wealth inequality, health care access, the criminal justice system, and climate change, the uneven consequences of social problems will be exposed; some groups are disproportionately disadvantaged while others disproportionately benefit. This course fulfills two General Education requirements: CC 100 Critical Inquiry Seminar and Learning Across the Liberal Arts: Societies and Human Behavior. It also counts as a 100-level Sociology course toward the major.

Films have often been described as “windows to the world,” windows that expand our views, our perspectives, and our understanding of the world. This course endeavors to examine films as cultural artifacts and industrial products that reflect but also refract issues of ideology and power and thus shape cultural understandings and norms about people and identity. As an introduction to social and cultural theory in the humanities, this class will encounter diverse perspectives across several academic disciplines that approach film critically. Our inquiry will be both historical and contemporary with a focus on present-day issues relating to equity, inclusion, and social justice—and the role film plays in representing or speaking to those issues.

Humans are just one of approximately 250 species of primates on earth. This course will examine various aspects of human life including culture, stress, racism, aggression and altruism through the lens of primatology. Students will become familiar with how researchers in the biological sciences approach study questions about animal behavior by using those same approaches to examine the behavior of humans themselves. The class will explore the features of human behavior that set us apart from other primates, but maybe more importantly we will examine the behavioral characteristics that humans share with other species. Students will develop an understanding of our own behavior beyond the perspective of human “uniqueness” and will learn to think critically about the evolutionary origins of human behavior, which will inevitably include confronting who we are both at our best and our worst.

This course will cover the sociological, psychological, religious, and biological contributions to what is called mental illness inside and outside of the United States. Care will be taken to place our current diagnostic system in historical context and to note the Western frame that currently permeates much of the world's attention to mental illness. Select disorders will be chosen to focus on rather than surveying a broad swath of diagnoses, and stigma emanating from medicalization in the West will be addressed.

How can the lens of political science help us understand the critical issues we face in the United States today? Racial equity. Climate change. Immigration. Covid19. These and other urgent political issues dominate public debate and demand our attention. Yet, the pathways of policy solutions are complicated by the structure of the policy system, and often limited by the polarized nature of the political arena. This course aims to help students 'think like a political scientist' and use analytical tools of the field to intelligently observe, question, and theorize about political phenomena. We will analyze original research--both seminal and cutting edge--to address the important issues of our time, using the issues as vehicles for applying the scientific analysis of political science.

Music, Food, and the Senses is an introduction to social and cultural theory in the humanities with a strong emphasis on embodied and practice theory. Building on the idea of musical and culinary practice as a form of 'living history,' this course will focus on critical approaches to ethnomusicology, anthropology, ethnography, and social theory from a musical lens. Our investigation will aim to bridge the realms of theory and practice through a multi-disciplinary, liberal arts-based approach that includes intensive textual study in combination with performance-based embodied learning modules, hands-on ethnographic inquiry, and multi-media forms of creative reflection and writing.

Films have often been described as “windows to the world,” windows that expand our views, our perspectives, and our understanding of the world. This course endeavors to examine films as cultural artifacts and industrial products that reflect but also refract issues of ideology and power and thus shape cultural understandings and norms about people and identity. As an introduction to social and cultural theory in the humanities, this class will encounter diverse perspectives across several academic disciplines that approach film critically. Our inquiry will be both historical and contemporary with a focus on present-day issues relating to equity, inclusion, and social justice—and the role film plays in representing or speaking to those issues.

As the social science devoted to decision-making, economics is a mathematical analysis of how to optimize outcomes. But how do we make choices when the yardstick isn’t obvious? How do we assess outcomes that are more moral than financial, more holistic than quantitative? Even more challenging, how do humans interact effectively when we don’t agree on how to assess the outcomes, or don’t even agree on the value systems we might use to evaluate the outcomes? This course is about how we make economic decisions, but more importantly it is about how we think about our own morality and the morality of those around us as we make decisions together. So each day we will advance your knowledge of the core principles of economic theory while reflecting on them critically to ascertain their implicit cultural assumptions (and therefore, also our own positionality as scholars and citizens). Our conversations will range from the historical to the contemporary, from the micro to the macro, from the theoretical to the intensely practical (including Excel skills, policy proposals, and innovation/creative thinking).

What does it mean to give a voice to narratives where fixed borders are the constructs of parochialism? Maps are never innocent and only represent the ideological topographies of those in power. Yet, the ecology of landscapes possesses legitimacy. Voices for the voiceless must transcend anthropocentrism. There is a need for a new paradigm for a nature-centered ontology that incorporates social, political, economic, and personal values. The contemporary socio-political issues facing all societies, particularly educating youth, and in the context of Colorado rural communities. The goal of this course is to raise students’ critical consciousness of “being rural” through epistemology, ontology, and praxis; to give a voice to the forces, signs, wounds, and messages dispersed upon the political ecology, always keeping in mind the link between ecologies is grounded in cultural, political, and physical systems that give rise to conflict and resolution.

What does it mean to become a feminist subject, live a feminist life, raise feminist questions, or write a feminist text? How have different writers articulated their feminist selves, visions, dreams, politics, and critiques through their texts? Are feminist writers always preoccupied with questions of gender and sexuality above all else? Do their writings always take the form of a challenge, resistance, rebellion, and opposition to existing forms of knowledge and structures of power? Or do feminist writers also endeavor to celebrate, honor, remember, dream, connect, rejoice, recognize, heal, repair, build, and recover? Through these and other questions, this course seeks to introduce students to the complexity, heterogeneity, and capaciousness of feminist thought and feminist texts. In the process, we will reflect on questions of power, agency, and subjectivity; memory and temporality; the politics of knowledge production, translation, recognition, and location. Throughout, we will strive to enact an intentional learning community that is attentive to nuance, difference, and complexity; inclusive, collaborative, and welcoming of the rich and varied life experiences, embodied, lived, and affective forms of knowledge that students bring to their encounters with texts and with each other.

In today’s “surveillance society,” we have become accustomed to trading personal information— wittingly or not—for goods, services, and simply to participate in everyday life. With the rise of big data, state and market institutions routinely collect and analyze data to monitor our purchasing patterns, social networks, and physical movements. However, some people are more insulated from scrutiny than others, and exposure to surveillance of various kinds depends on social status and the matrix of identities each of us hold. In this course, we will examine surveillance through a sociological lens, focusing on how surveillance can generate and reproduce social inequalities. We will cover various formal institutions that surveil particular populations, including the criminal justice, welfare, and child protective systems, and explore contexts where everyday surveillance occurs, including school and workplaces, on social media, and in public spaces. We will also discuss the possibilities for resisting surveillance through formal and informal means. Throughout the course we will consider how being surveilled—and surveilling others—shapes our understanding of ourselves and reflects on the power relations that structure society.