Courses in this cluster examine ethical, aesthetic, political, social, and historical questions related to rise and fall of Modernity -- a radical shift in thought that emerged in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries against the backdrop of democratic politics, industrial capitalism and imperial expansion.

Associated Course Pairings:

Course Descriptions

CC100: World War II in East Asia

Instructor: John Williams
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Historical Perspectives
CRN# 13933
Block: 1

This course analyzes the lived experiences, collective memories, and popular representations of World War II from the perspective of the peoples and nations of East Asia, with an emphasis on China and Japan. Consideration of memoirs, film, literature, official documents and historiography will enable students to apply the basics of historical method to the analysis of primary and secondary sources in order to make their own claims about the significance of these events for those who experienced them and those who came after.

CC120: Writing the News

Instructor: Corey Hutchins
CRN# 13934
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.

CC100: Chinese Culture: Traditional and Modern

Instructor: Hong Jiang
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Analysis & Interpretation of Meaning
CRN# 13935
Block: 1

This course starts with introducing students to Chinese concept of family, nature and self and how Chinese philosophical thinking (Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism) transformed way of life for the East, but will focus on critical inquiry of social and political changes of modern China and help students to understand how these changes perceived and conjured up Chinese society as well as self/individual identity and cultural landscape. This is an introductory course, which will lead students to study Chinese culture in a broader historical, political, social and global context.

Note: There will be a field trip to the Denver Art Museum.

CC120: Fairy Tales

Instructor: Chet Lisiecki
CRN# 13936
Block: 2

This class will focus primarily on the fairy tale (“Märchen” in German), a category of folklore containing elements of the supernatural, miraculous, and wondrous. In Germany, the fairy tale is most closely associated with the Brothers Grimm, who collected and transcribed these tales in the early nineteenth century. In 1812, they published the first edition of Children’s and Household Tales (Kinder- und Hausmärchen), which they continued to edit and update throughout their lives. This collection contains many fairy tales that are familiar to us today, including “Hansel and Gretel,” “Cinderella,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Snow White,” and “Sleeping Beauty.” Our class will engage with fairy tales and fairy tale scholarship in a variety of ways. We will study the social and political history of fairy tales and analyze their formal structure. We will critically examine how fairy tales represent different aspects of human identity—including gender, race, class, ability, sexuality, and age—as well as how they represent animals, plants, and the natural world. We will also compare different versions of the same tale, including queer, Black, and feminist adaptations and retellings. Our class will also fulfill the “CC120 Writing Seminars” general education requirement...This course functions as the second foundational block for an entry to a given discipline, and makes visible the processes of scholarly production and the structures and expectations of disciplinary writing. Students will gain skills, habits, and processes that will transfer to courses beyond the foundational.

CC100: The Ruins of Modernity

Instructor: Jake Smith
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Historical Perspectives
CRN# 13937
Block: 1

As the German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote almost 100 years ago, the march of progress is like a storm that leaves ruins in its wake. Whereas some have sought refuge from these storms of progress in nostalgic attempt to retrieve – and, in some cases, return to – lost times, others have eschewed such romantic pursuits, seeking instead to forge alternative ways of being in the world, some modicum of a right life in the wrong one. After examining the destructive dynamics associated with capitalist modernity, this course will turn its attention to the oppositional milieus and defiant voices that have flourished amidst modernity’s ruins. Although the course makes occasional forays into global history, the primary focus will be on 19th- and 20th-century Europe.

CC120: Instruction, Culture, and Identity: Studying Education as a Social Science

Instructor: Nickie Coomer
CRN# 13938
Block: 2

This course focuses on the study of Education through the lenses of the social sciences. By deciphering the ways in which Education is written about according to discipline-specific paradigms and theoretical commitments, students will then organize and write manuscripts about a topic in education through the lenses of the social sciences: focusing, specifically, on the topics of instruction, school culture, and teacher and student identity.

CC100: The Rise of Fascism: History, Theory, Representation

Instructor: Amanda Minervini
Learning Across the Liberal Arts Designation: Analysis & Interpretation of Meaning
CRN# 13939
Block: 1

What does the term “fascism” mean, and which are its historical origin and conceptual antecedents? Which are some of the main theories of fascism? How has fascism been represented, which symbols did it create, appropriate, instrumentalize? What is its relationship to media? Why and how is fascism “fascinating”? Is fascism a recurrent “disease of power”? And, if we are seeing a resurgence of fascism in the contemporary world, why does it keep happening, and which are the similarities and differences from other instantiations of fascism? Through the reading of academic texts, newspaper articles, the analysis of films and documentaries, and a podcast, this course is designed as an introduction to the concept fascism through its first historical instantiation: Italian Fascism. This course is also an invitation to acquire the tools to explore meaningfully other forms of fascism, populism, and totalitarianism in the world. As a CC100, this course will also provide an initial orientation through college life, with a special attention to attentive textual analyses, writing (which will be developed further in your CC120), and to available resources for research, writing, and —very important during these challenging times— wellness.

Note: One field trip, not overnight.

CC120: Political Parties, Social Movements, and Change

Instructor: Jill Jaeger
CRN#
Block: 3

This course examines when and how political parties respond to social movements.  Using two distinct movements, environmental justice and anti-immigrant, our class will consider the following questions: How do social movements influence the platforms and unity of party organizations? How politically important are social movements to policy change? Through this lens, students will learn how to identify the kinds of research questions that push knowledge forward, the importance of creating a dialogue between themselves and other scholars in their written work, and why the quantitative and qualitative tools we choose might provide us with different insights to the same research question.