overview

Taken during a student's first semester, the first-year foundations course sequence (CC100: Critical Inquiry Seminar & CC120: First-Year Writing Seminar) serve as the foundation to CC's General Education plan.

As a sequence, these courses provide an introduction to disciplinary scholarship, the nature of the liberal arts, and learning on the block. In the first block (CC100), students begin to understand the liberal arts as a specific kind of community comprised of various epistemological and methodological cultures. The goal of this class is to help students understand that different fields of study construct and organize knowledge differently, each with its own paradigms and assumptions. The second block (CC120) builds on the outcomes of CC100 to engage students in understanding the relationship between disciplinary practices and writing. The goal of this class is to help students understand that each discipline operates within specific discourse communities each with their own structures, styles, and forms.

All CC100 & CC120 courses are linked, meaning that students in the same CC100 course will move into the linked CC120 course as a cohort. These links serve to reinforce the social connections developed in the first block and allow students more time to learn together on the block.

Fall CC100 courses are also grouped into "thematic clusters." These clusters are designed to help facilitate students' thinking about disciplinary knowledge production in a comparative framework. Courses are clustered around a shared topic, question, or theme (i.e. "Operations of Power"). Although students are enrolled in a single CC100/CC120 course sequence, all courses in a cluster will offer periodic "convergence experiences" that offer students the opportunity to engage across courses to compare the different approaches to knowledge creation taking place in their respective courses in relationship to the shared topic.

Winter CC100 courses are not grouped into a thematic cluster, will still offer convergence experiences.

thematic clusters (fall start)

Winter Start Course Descriptions (2024)

CC104: Global Exchange in Art: Antiquity to the 20th Century (I)

Instructor: Gale Murray and Tamara Bentley
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Historical Perspectives
CRN# TBD
Block: 5

This art history course has a two-fold purpose. We will examine in depth particular case studies of art from diverse traditions from antiquity to the 20th century. In addition, we will consider exchanges between these traditions in still life, landscape, and figurative art. A number of the case studies will pertain to Europe, but we will also cover selected artists and art movements from China, Japan, and the Islamic world. To provide a point of reference for later material, we begin with a week comparing the Greco-Roman tradition in sculpture, religion, and philosophy with early Chinese pictorial art in tombs, considering the very different visual and intellectual emphases. Following weeks turn to Renaissance art in relation to humanism, Jesuit art in the Far East, women artists in the Netherlands, the global circulation of Chinese bird and flower motifs and visions of the East in the Enlightenment, and Dutch trade in blue and white ceramics.

CC120:Global Exchange in Art: Antiquity to the 20th Century (II)

Instructor: Gale Murray and Tamara Bentley
CRN# TBD
Block: 6

This block will center upon a tiered writing project, including tutorial meetings with the professors aimed at finessing each student’s writing and fine-tuning their analysis. Building on scholarly approaches introduced in the first block, additional methodologies will be considered, as well as scholars who combine multiple approaches. Thematically we will consider exchanges in garden design between China and the West in the 18th century, Romanticism and Orientalism, Impressionism and the Japanese print, and artistic responses to war in 20th century China and the West. Approaches will include close visual reading; literary tools as used in art; critical insights based on race, class, and gender; institutional forms of power in relation to normative imagery; colonialism and race; and art used in political contexts—at times supporting, at times critiquing, the nation-state.

CC106: The Political Science of Critical Issues

Instructor: Elizabeth Coggins
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Societies & Human Behavior
CRN# TBD
Block: 5

CC100 courses are designed to help students begin to understand the liberal arts as a specific kind of community comprised of various epistemological and methodological cultures. Different fields of study construct and organize knowledge differently—and political science, like other fields, has its own paradigms and assumptions. In this particular course, we will use three “critical issues” of our time as vehicles for developing a deeper understanding of how political scientists observe, question, and theorize about political phenomena. In other words, we will use these issues to uncover some of the paradigms and assumptions of political science. In particular we will focus on polarization, climate change, and race relations. These urgent sociopolitical issues will guide us in our journey to “think like a political scientist.” We will critically engage original research—both seminal and cutting edge—to address these issues. Perhaps most importantly, we will develop the tools to evaluate issues beyond the scope of the course and issues yet to emerge on the agenda of U.S. politics. 

CC120: Introduction to Political Philosophy

Instructor: John Grace
CRN# TBD
Block: 6

Investigates the foundation and aims of politic rule as well as fundamental debates over the meaning of justice, liberty, power, authority, law and rights through an examination of basic but competing perspectives drawn from ancient, medieval, and modern texts. Thinkers include, but are not limited to, Aristotle, Aquinas, Machiavelli, and Locke.