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 (2023)

CC106: The Political Science of Critical Issues

Instructor: Elizabeth Coggins
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Societies & Human Behavior
CRN# 24047
Block: 5

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.

CC120: Food and the Nation

Instructor: Tyler Cornelius
CRN# 24048
Block: 6

One of the best windows into the values of a society is by looking at what they eat – where their food comes from, how it is prepared and consumed, and what it can tell us about the larger forces shaping its past and present. In this course students will use environmental history to ask and answer questions about social, political, and environmental change. In exploring these ideas the course will engage a broad range of historical materials, including dairies, menus, recipes, documentary film, photography, advertisement, government legislation/regulation, architecture, and… food itself. This class will be both interesting and delicious!

CC106: A Critical Inquiry of Mental Illness

Instructor: Kristi Erdal
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Societies & Human Behavior
CRN# 24049
Block: 5

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.

CC120: Sport, Media, and Society

Instructor: Taylor Nygaard
CRN# 
Block: 6

This course examines the ways in which discourse surrounding sports influences culture, politics, and identity. Using the tools of media and cultural studies students analyze the discourses surrounding topics such as the rhetorical construction of the athlete, sporting events, athletes as racialized and gendered bodies, the commodification of the athlete, athletes and activism, as well as fandom and identification. This isn’t a class about the rules or the appreciation of sport. It’s about how sport is commemorated, how its heroes and villains are constructed and represented, and most importantly what that tells us about how contemporary popular culture values different racial, gendered, and class identities. The aim of the course overall is to introduce students to the kinds of questions scholars ask in studying sport and to enable students to improve their writing by learning to assess and analyze sources more carefully, and to position their own perspective among others in a way that is informed, critical, and civil.

Note: This course will require out-of-class screenings. Most will be available via streaming platforms.