Ways of Being, Ways of Knowing
Courses in this cluster will examine the diverse and context-dependent ways of knowing and understanding the world, while exploring how these perspectives shape individual and collective experiences, beliefs, and values.
Associated Course Pairings:
Course Descriptions
Instructor: John Horner
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Formal Reasoning & Logic
CRN# 15414
Block: 1
This course examines the philosophical and psychological dimensions of the various epistemological platforms upon which we believe our capacity to think is based. Logic, science and mathematics are just a few of the paradigmatic examples of reasoning we will explore, along with failures of reasoning, such as conspiracy theories, logical fallacies and mythology.
Instructor: Pamela Reaves
CRN# 15415
Block: 2
In this course, you will learn disciplinary modes of research, analysis, and writing in religious studies through a consideration of particularly “American” expressions of Jesus. We will consider not only how Christian traditions contribute to critical moments in U.S. history, but also how the figure of Jesus functions foundationally in certain constructions of national history and identity. Encountering significant representations of Jesus in popular culture, visual art, and political discourse, we will examine how Jesus is deployed in diverse, and often divergent, ways. We will especially focus on portraits of Jesus that illuminate notions of race and gender. As a CC120, the course attends to the critical study and analysis of primary texts (of varied media) and scholarly discourse. In addition, it highlights the interdisciplinary nature of religious studies, orients students to how scholars understand the crafting of religious identity, and demonstrates how religion operates in wider social, political, and cultural contexts.
CC102: The Creative Life: Exploration & Examination (I)
Instructor: Jane Hilberry
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Creative Practice
CRN# 15416
Block: 1
In this course, we will engage in creative practices that contribute to a richly lived life and study creativity as a field of inquiry. The creativity we cultivate is designed to support students in their future academic and professional endeavors and to enrich their personal lives. No artistic ability is required.
Some short in-town field trips and afternoon class gatherings.
CC120: The Creative Life: Exploration & Examination (II)
Instructor: Jane Hilberry
CRN# 15417
Block: 2
In this course, we will engage in creative practices that contribute to a richly lived life and study creativity as a field of inquiry. The creativity we cultivate is designed to support students in their future academic and professional endeavors and to enrich their personal lives. No artistic ability is required.
Field trip to Baca.
CC101: Philosophy as a Way of Life
Instructor: Jonathan Lee
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Analysis & Interpretation of Meaning
CRN# 15418
Block: 1
What is it to lead a meaningful and good life? How can we embrace a way of living that is respectful of others and authentic to ourselves? This course explores a diverse array of thinkers and texts that seek to answer such questions and to help people understand how to live well. The course draws upon and puts into creative and critical conversation the diversity of ways in which philosophers across time and around the globe have grappled with the challenges of living a human life.
CC120: How to Live a More Deliberate Life? Contemplative Practices in Writing
Instructor: Dot Devota
CRN# 15419
Block: 2
In this writing course, we will identify pressing questions regarding how we live our daily lives. Our questions will form a compass, helping us navigate course materials, writing, and activities by allowing us to reflect on our own experiences and contemplate how we can exist more purposefully. Contemplative Pedagogy is an approach to teaching and learning with the goal of encouraging deep learning through focused attention, reflection, and heightened awareness. Through contemplative practices, we will cultivate our attention spans, nurturing habits that allow us to build our strongest relationship to our own writing and build writing stamina. We will use the “Tree of Contemplative Practices” and authors whose work corresponds to various twigs on each branch, such as writing that falls under: journaling, a meditation on, beholding, bearing witness, storytelling, etc. (And brainstorming our own roots, naming them, what feeds a certain desire for contemplation.) We will write our way around the tree—from description, to journaling, to improvising in present moments and thinking, to relational/political, to finding patterns/ritual and establishing philosophies—cultivating a wisdom to live by! We will go for walks or “forest bathe” to increase meditative and sensory function; watch poetic films that slow us down and reflect more nuanced realities; listen to self-mesmerist music to increase “flow” and page length; center playfulness, joy, and humor as overlooked intelligences; study intelligences of plant and animal life; and learn from scientific, sociological, and philosophical articles on human consciousness and living through extreme times. Course projects include a student-designed silent retreat and group pilgrimage. Ultimately, we will write exploratorily, learn to do our thinking on the page, and write towards discovery and meaning-making—in hopes of approaching ourselves and communities with more depth and empathy. These immersive studies allow us to contemplate what “living more deliberately” might mean for each of us, how it can increase learning, and encourage us to think interdependently and towards a greater collective well-being.
CC101: What is Liberal Education?
Instructor: Timothy Fuller
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Analysis & Interpretation of Meaning
CRN# 15420
Block: 1
The course examines a variety of responses, both classical and contemporary, to the "What is" question, comparing thoughtful responses of those with extensive academic experience to our own experience. This includes daily reading and discussion, and writing essays in response.
CC120: Kings, Tyrants, Subjects, and Citizens in Ancient Greece
Instructor: Paul Salay
CRN# 15421
Block: 4
In this course, students will learn to identify and use an interdisciplinary set of academic writing conventions through examining various scholarly approaches to the diverse evidence for both power dynamics in ancient Greek society and the evolution of Greek political thought. The close reading of ancient Greek authors will let us consider various claims to political authority and legitimacy, and how some of these claims were challenged. We will also dig deeper to uncover the ways in which ancient Greeks organized, resolved disputes, and engaged in collective action. At the same time, we will look at the archaeological evidence for ancient social structures and reflect upon the ways in which the material record can complicate, complement, and contextualize literary sources. Finally, we will scrutinize the work of many prominent scholars of the ancient world, asking how historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, and classicists approach the same topic from different disciplinary perspectives, each with its own conventions for research and writing. Throughout, our focus will be on understanding how scholars engage with the evidence and with various audiences inside and outside academia, thereby helping students think through these issues in their own writing for this course and beyond.
CC101: Liberal Education: What and Why?
Instructor: Eve Grace
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Analysis & Interpretation of Meaning
CRN# 15422
Block: 1
Many colleges across the country, including CC, claim to be engaged in the enterprise of “liberal” or “liberal arts” education. Yet, when pressed, we often find it difficult to articulate precisely what a “liberal education” is, or ought to be. In this course we will seek to clarify the following questions: what, if anything, is distinctive about a liberal education? How does it differ from, and why might it be preferable to, specialized training, no matter how sophisticated and informed? If it has never been primarily understood as such, what is its aim, and how might different disciplines help us to reach that aim? Is it to seek “truth”? To “liberate” us? If so, from what and to what? To teach us how to live? To make us more morally serious? To prepare us to engage in public service? And if these aims are in tension with one another, how would we prioritize these concerns? We will read various contemporary and historical readings on liberal education, as well as portions of texts often considered to exemplify one.
Instructor: Corey Hutchins
CRN# 15423
Block: 2
Whether writing a news report for publication or drafting a news release on behalf of a nonprofit or public relations client, clear concise, accurate, and error-free copy is expected. Students in Writing the News will learn how to gather information and assemble it to create compelling and engaging narratives for a broad readership in various ways. In this class, students will understand the difference and relationship between journalism, advertising, public relations, and other forms of communication. They will learn how to write news stories, editorials and opinion columns, memos, emails, analysis, and narrative nonfiction. They will also learn how to craft press releases and to tell stories in different ways from different perspectives — and on different platforms including social media. The goal of this class is to help students understand that each kind of writing operates within its own guidelines, ethics, structure, style, and form.