General Education Proposal Instructions

Instructions and Overview

The General Education course proposal form is to be used for proposing a course for a General Education designation. The General Education program will be subject to rigorous ongoing assessment and review. Course proposals must show how the course is designed to enable a student to achieve the specific learning outcomes of the General Education designation sought. Course proposals must include: A brief rationale (200-300 words) describing how the goals and content of the course align with the description of the General Education category. Proposers should not assume that this alignment is self-evident from a general description of the course.

For each learning outcome, instructors should describe at least one means of evaluation (assignment) that will be used to determine how well students have achieved the outcome. Instructors may use the same assignment to assess more than one learning outcome, but the connection between the assignment and each outcome must be clear. The assignments should be designed in a way that allows for evaluation of student learning outcomes during designated assessment cycles. Please provide as much detail as possible at this stage of course development. For example, if a learning outcome will be assessed in an exam question, describe the general form of the question if the exact wording is not yet known. For a paper, describe the scope and aim of the paper, and how it will measure student performance on the learning outcome. The more specific each described assignment or prompt, the easier it will be for reviewers to see how the learning outcomes will be addressed. Please note that reviewers will find it more useful to have one or two assignments related to each learning outcome described in some detail, rather than limited information about many different assignments.

Process and Criteria for Evaluation

Course proposals will be reviewed by teams of faculty, students, and academic staff with relevant interest and expertise. Proposals are reviewed on a rolling basis, and feedback will be provided as soon as possible. In making their decisions, reviewers will consider only the information provided in the proposal. Specifically, reviewers will focus on whether the rationale clearly explains how the course content aligns with the General Education category goals. Reviewers will also evaluate whether the proposal describes assignments that will address each of the category’s learning outcomes. Reviewers will not consider any factors not made explicitly clear in the proposal, nor will they consider the rank, status, or any other aspect of the faculty proposing the course. Reviewers will only evaluate the ability of the course to meet the learning objectives of the relevant General Education category and will not make any judgment about other aspects of course content or teaching methodology.

Decision Meanings

All courses submitted will be evaluated by the review committee and classified as one of the following: 1. Accepted: The proposal clearly demonstrates an alignment between the course and the General

Education category. The proposal includes a rationale that adequately justifies how the aims of the course support the description of the category. The proposal describes in detail specific assignments

that will provide assessment data on how well students meet each of the specific learning outcomes of the category.

2. Revise and resubmit: The proposal is in the spirit of the General Education category but does not

adequately demonstrate how the course aligns with the General Education category. The proposal may include an incomplete rationale or may be missing a rationale entirely. The proposal may describe student assignments that are not clearly aligned with the learning outcomes or may be missing assignments for one or more learning outcomes. The reviewers need further information to determine whether the proposed course will meet the goals of the General Education category.

3. Not accepted: The proposal does not demonstrate an alignment between the course and the General

Education category. The course may address important content and have strong intellectual merit, but it does not appear to meet the specific goals of the General Education category under consideration.

Appendix: Sample Proposals The following are examples of proposals for courses that were approved for General Education designations during the 2019-20 approval process. The process and criteria were largely the same as described here. These sample proposals are intended to provide examples of the kind of information and level of detail that the reviewers find useful. Example 1: Approved for Formal Reasoning and Logic

MA256: Mathematical Models in Biology Rationale:

In this class, we encode assumptions about biological processes in the "language" of mathematical models. We then use mathematical analysis and computer simulations to study the behavior of these models, generating new insights about the biological systems (Learning Outcome 3). We pay careful attention to the models' assumptions, which serve as our first principles. The analysis of the dynamics follows strict mathematical rules, a form of deductive reasoning. Along the way, we develop new mathematical tools (theories) that allow us to carry out the analysis (Learning Outcome 3). Biological systems are complex, and mathematical models of them are by necessity abstractions and simplifications. Thus, in this course we frequently discuss how our models' behaviors are a result of the simplifying assumptions that we made, and how different assumptions might have led to similar or different conclusions (Learning Outcomes 1 and 2). We also discuss the importance of general theories in bringing a sense of order to what can otherwise seem to be a pile of isolated facts (Learning Outcomes 1 and 2). Assignments for Learning Outcomes:

Learning Outcome 1: Students will read several research articles in which mathematical models are used to explain biological phenomena. There will be one or more test questions asking students to explain how the modeling process played a role in driving the research.

Learning Outcome 2: One or more test questions will ask students how a biological phenomenon (such as herd immunity from epidemics, or the firing of a neuron) is predicted by a mathematical model, and how the predictions depend on the model's assumptions.

Learning Outcome 3: Students will carry out a mini-research project in which they develop a mathematical model of a biological system, implement it on the computer, and analyze the resulting dynamics. Example 2: Approved for Scientific Analysis

MB201: Laboratory in Molecular and Cellular Biology

Rationale: This course teaches students a broad suite of field-specific techniques in the context of several

small research projects throughout the block. In any given research project, the assignments focus on not just learning the techniques, but also on generating a hypothesis or research question, experimental design, data collection, and interpreting results. Many of the assignments in MB201 map to the Scientific Analysis learning outcomes, however, we focus on one-block long project that exemplifies the Scientific Analysis learning outcomes (see below). Assignments for Learning Outcomes:

The learning outcomes (4 different outcomes) for Scientific Analysis will all be covered by assignments related to small research projects in the course. Below, we have described how one of our block-long research projects “Determining the inheritance patterns and genetic linkage of two traits in Drosophila (fruit fly)“ fit the learning outcomes for Scientific Analysis.

Learning outcome 1: Formulate a testable evidence-based and/or theory-driven hypothesis. Students will first demonstrate how single-gene traits are inherited in Drosophila and plan their first matings through an in-class discussion and a take-home worksheet. In a two-week long lab, students will then (1) identify two true-breeding mutant Drosophila strains, (2) perform matings of their design, and (3) observe the resulting phenotypes of the offspring (F1 generation). From this data, students will determine whether the trait of each mutant Drosophila strain has a dominant or recessive mode of inheritance. Students will also use this data to determine whether the gene for each trait is found on an autosome or sex chromosome. Finally, through a worksheet that builds upon the results from this first experiment, students will formulate a hypothesis about whether the two traits are genetically linked.

Learning outcome 2: Design an appropriate method of testing an evidence-based and/or theory-driven hypothesis. In a take- home worksheet and in-class discussion, students will design two new matings to test the hypothesis they formulate as described in learning outcome 1. Using evidence from their first experiment, students will also determine the expected results for each mating they design.

Learning outcome 3: Carry out experiments, observational studies, and/or data collection using the methods of a given discipline. Using a free educational software that mimics fly mating in silico (StarGenetics), students will perform the matings they designed in learning outcome 2 and collect data of the resulting phenotypes. Given the timing of the Block Plan and the life cycle of Drosophila, we do not have enough time to assess the offspring of a second mating of living flies in a single Block.

Learning outcome 4: Use data to evaluate the validity of a hypothesis. Students will learn how to statistically evaluate the validity of their hypothesis by first learning about the Chi-squared goodness of fit test through class discussion and an online module. Through a worksheet, students will work collaboratively to organize their observed results, as collected from StarGenetics, and expected results, as determined from their formulated hypotheses, in Excel. Students will then perform the Chi-squared goodness of fit test and interpret the resulting Chi-squared value. If their observed results do not fit their expected results, professors will encourage students to consider other hypotheses to test using the Chi-squared goodness of fit test. Finally, students will develop and deliver a formal presentation of their hypotheses, experimental design, and findings, including conclusions about the validity of their hypotheses and any alternative models students have tested.

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Equity & Power / United States Contexts Manya Whitaker / EPUS ED 320 Diversity and Equity in Education Please provide a brief, tentative course description (200 words maximum): This course is devoted to the critical examination of educational theory, practice, and policy within and across socioeconomic, cultural, and linguistic groups. We will analyze and discuss issues related to educational access and opportunity, curricula, pedagogical methods, and learning outcomes through sociological and educational lenses. In discovering the difference between “equal education” and “equitable education”, we will identify the unique needs of students, structural challenges facing educators, and possible solutions to the inequities of early education, school resources, tracking, and teacher quality among other variables. Please provide a brief rationale addressing how the proposed course aligns with the description of this Gen Ed category: The course is about inequities in education as shaped by social structures and social processes. For each topic we discuss the influence of different identity markers on access and opportunity. We spend a lot of time unpacking cumulative layers of inequity at the macro, meso and micro levels. Students are expected to engage with their own and others' (classmates' and via documentaries, autobiographies, docuseries, and podcasts) real-life experiences in the education system. Courses in each General Education category need to include at least one assignment aligned to each learning outcome. What ideas do you have for possible assignments that would enable students to reach these learning outcomes? If you do not currently have assignment ideas, do you commit to developing course materials that address each of the learning outcomes? Objective 4 is explicit in their “book clubs" where they meet in small groups to discuss differences between their life experiences in the context of a novel or docuseries. Outcomes 2 and 3 are explicit in their documentary review and their final presentations on updated Coleman Reports. Outcome 1 is the foundation for all assignments except the data interpretation test. _______ Amy Kohout / EPUS HY 231 The Civil War and Reconstruction Please provide a brief, tentative course description (200 words maximum): This course is not intended to be a play-by-play military history; rather, taking our lead from current scholarship, we will holistically explore the cultural, social, economic, political, and, yes, military history of the Civil War era. Instead of centering our study on what is sometimes called the “high politics” of this period, we will attempt to focus our examination on the experiences of everyday people, beginning with the experiences of people who began this period enslaved,

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and whose resistance was central to their later emancipation. This block, we will pay particular attention to embodied experience—work, war, injury, death, love, intimacy, grief—as we grapple with what the Civil War meant for people in the past, and what it still means today. Scholars are focusing increasingly on Reconstruction—on both the opportunities for participation in public life that Radical Reconstruction offered African American communities after the war, and the growth of organized violence and domestic terrorism targeting Black people and their allies. What did these changes mean for individuals? For the nation? And how does public memory of the Civil War and of Reconstruction shape conversations about justice and equity in contemporary America? We'll conclude with a novel that grapples with the meaning of freedom and the legacies of slavery. Together we'll consider the ways in which we still live these histories—in our politics, in our popular culture, and in our personal lives. Please provide a brief rationale addressing how the proposed course aligns with the description of this Gen Ed category: The first full week of this course examines slavery by centering the experiences of enslaved people. This involves a lot of learning and unlearning, and so we begin—guided by recent reports about the teaching of slavery in K-12 educational contexts—with a reflection on the wide range of arguments and narratives students encounter, and the harm many of these assignments/arguments do. While working to understand the structures of slavery and its many intersections with the history of capitalism, we focus on scholarship that centers enslaved people and their experiences. As we move chronologically forward in the course, through the War, Reconstruction, and into discussions of historical memory, the course directly tracks how slavery, racism, white supremacy, and domestic terrorism structure persistent inequality, and examines the many forms that resistance to these forces took—and takes. Our examination of popular historical memory, which includes some combination of the construction of Lost Cause narratives, Confederate monuments, the National Museum of Peace and Justice, reenacting/reenactors, and discussions surrounding reparations, requires that we reflect on the stakes of historical narratives, who constructs them, and what they are intended to accomplish—or erase. Courses in each General Education category need to include at least one assignment aligned to each learning outcome. What ideas do you have for possible assignments that would enable students to reach these learning outcomes? If you do not currently have assignment ideas, do you commit to developing course materials that address each of the learning outcomes? The course begins with a reflection on the Southern Poverty Law Center's report on how the history of slavery is taught in K-12 education. From there, we center cutting-edge scholarship on the history of slavery and on presence/absence in the archive, using work by historians Daina Berry and Marisa Fuentes; short written assignments engaging these texts help us prepare to talk through the experiences of enslaved people, and how historians grapple with the fraught archive of slavery. We think about and write about the politics of the archive, and whose perspectives shape the materials historians work with—and then we examine new methods, like a digital public history project called Freedom on the Move that is centering on tracing the pathways of self-emancipated people by looking at the ads enslavers placed in

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newspapers across place and time. We participate in this project, and write written reflections on its goals and questions, which we then share with the project team. These assignments all engage the first three learning outcomes—both in the context of the nineteenth century, but also in terms of the way the historiography has changed over the last several decades. In addition to short reflections on the experience of working with different kinds of sources, and also on what kinds of narratives they have encountered about slavery and the Civil War previously, students also engage the outcome focused on positionality in the final portion of the class, focused on historical memory. We look at the construction of (and power behind) Lost Cause narratives, contemporary debates over Confederate monuments, the National Museum of Peace and Justice and the Whitney Plantation museum, and reports related to reparations in higher education, and students respond to this more contemporary memory work in their final essays. Yes, I am committed to addressing each of the learning outcomes for Equity and Power in this course. _______ Jane Murphy / EPUS HY 200 Digital History/Public History Practicum: Space, Place, and Belonging at Colorado College Please provide a brief, tentative course description (200 words maximum): Colorado College touts its "sense of place," but how has this sense of place been constructed throughout the history of the College? How has it interacted with the settler-colonialist city of Colorado Springs, from surrounding neighborhoods to the region more broadly? And how have all of these transformations of space and place affected the identities and lives of those connected to the College? From campus design visions to the evolving physical space of student housing, students in this course will select an issue of space and place in the College’s history to research, analyze, and present. We’ll draw on campus Special Collections, engaging the scholarship of archives, and also visit local historical museums and archives. As our research questions refine through our findings, we’ll test digital analytic and visualization tools and continue to follow the threads of our inquiry. Ultimately, we’ll collectively decide how to archive, present, and share our findings with a range of audiences, as well as lay the foundation for future student research. Please provide a brief rationale addressing how the proposed course aligns with the description of this Gen Ed category: This course critically engages how a "sense of place" has been constructed throughout the history of Colorado College. How has it interacted with the settler-colonialist city of Colorado Springs, from surrounding neighborhoods to the region more broadly? And how have all of these transformations of space and place affected the identities and lives of those connected to the College? Through shared theoretical readings, including Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, students will be prepared to do original research into questions of power, identity formation, and representation of marginalized and majoritarian identities in the history of this place and institution.

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Courses in each General Education category need to include at least one assignment aligned to each learning outcome. What ideas do you have for possible assignments that would enable students to reach these learning outcomes? If you do not currently have assignment ideas, do you commit to developing course materials that address each of the learning outcomes? The questions that undergird the learning outcomes are the central lens through which students engage the scholarly readings that constitute the shared readings and then also their archival work and interpretation of primary sources. I have taught this course once before and integrated these into reading reflections, class discussion, written work, and final oral presentations and discussion. In light of the new Gen Ed requirements, I would enjoy further revising these assignments and be especially interested to discuss with other faculty strategies for making these learning outcomes even more explicit in the course. _______ Douglas Edlin / EPUS PS 326 Race and the Judicial Process Please provide a brief, tentative course description (200 words maximum): This course explores the role of the courts in the experience of racial minorities in the United States. Primarily, but not exclusively, the course examines the courts' impact on African Americans. Where race is concerned, the courts have figured prominently in some of the USA's proudest and most shameful moments. Slavery, segregation, affirmative action, political representation, and the criminal justice system are some of the topics addressed. The course considers some of the ways in which certain legal, political and policy debates are defined, informed and constrained by the historical arc of racial inequities in US law and politics. Please provide a brief rationale addressing how the proposed course aligns with the description of this Gen Ed category: Through sustained study of the historical, political, cultural, constitutional, and legal forces that produced the current meanings of race, citizenship, and belonging in the United States, students will gain an understanding of the inequalities and inequities that define the legal and lived experiences of (primarily) African Americans and white people in the US. Through substantive examination of slavery, segregation, political representation, affirmative action, and criminal justice, students will examine and evaluate the ways in which race is constructed, privileged, and performed throughout US political history. By considering these historical and political through-lines, students will develop their own understanding of the disparate educational, professional, social, economic, and political experiences, opportunities, positions, and outcomes available to people in the US on the basis of their race. And through our (occasionally charged or challenging) discussions of these issues and our readings, students will consider their own and others' positionality inside and outside of our classroom. Courses in each General Education category need to include at least one assignment aligned to each learning outcome. What ideas do you have for possible assignments that would enable students to reach these learning outcomes? If you do not currently have assignment

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ideas, do you commit to developing course materials that address each of the learning outcomes? Together with in-class presentations, students will write an independent research paper and a final examination that will allow and require them to consider the creation of imbalances of power and inequality where race is concerned. These assignments will require them to examine the creation and perpetuation of racial inequality in and through the law, the different meanings and experiences of race in the legal and political systems of the US, and their own experiences or responses in being confronted with these forms of racial identity, experience, and injustice. _______ Karen Roybal / EPUS SW 220 Environmental Justice in the Southwest Please provide a brief, tentative course description (200 words maximum): This course introduces students to key concepts of environmental justice (EJ), paying particular attention to socio-environmental issues in the Southwest. Students will develop skills from an interdisciplinary framework that invokes Cultural, Chicanx/Latinx, and Critical Indigenous Studies, along with feminist theory, to critically analyze examples of EJ cases and to develop an understanding of the complex relationships among actors involved in social, political, and economic processes that lead to environmental injustices. The field work component allows students to better understand how EJ is about the relationship between scholarship and theory, and about action, organizing, and raising awareness (in other words, non-scholarly activities). Some topics addressed in the course include: water contamination; mining; water justice/equity; land reclamation/justice; environmental racism; seed sovereignty and farming; community/coalition building in the EJ movement; and the concept of “environmental privilege” as the flip side of environmental injustice. Please provide a brief rationale addressing how the proposed course aligns with the description of this Gen Ed category: Based on the Curricular Goals and Learning Outcomes in this course (listed below), students will be exposed to, and gain a better understanding of how power and structures of inequality in matters of environmental justice most often impact low-income and communities of color. Students will engage with scholarship and in field work that demonstrates firsthand, how inequality is reproduced because of environmental racism. Their field work will also provide the opportunity for students to learn how EJ activists and communities most impacted by environmental injustices are resisting and enacting changes against environmental degradation and physical impacts of environmental pollution. Finally, students are asked to consider their own positionalities in matters of environmental (in)justice through class discussions and exercises in which they research EJ issues in their own communities. Curricular Goals: 1. Learn foundational principles and the history of the EJ movement; 2. Examine case studies and literary production that focuses on: EJ; environmental racism (including the categories of race, class, gender, and sexuality); and the significance of place (in matters of siting of environmental pollution); and 3. Embark on a field work project in New

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Mexico to see first-hand the ways activities related to EJ materialize in Southwest communities, including Colorado Springs. Learning Outcomes: As a result of taking this course, students will be able to: 1. Define environmental (in)justice. 2. Describe the causes of environmental (in)justice and how it is being addressed. 3. Describe why and through what social, economic, and political processes some groups are denied access to a clean environment because of their unequal treatment. 4. Describe what fairer, more equitable, and more just human-environment relations might look like. 5. Describe what methods are used to discuss, call attention to, and render visible environmental (in)justice issues. Courses in each General Education category need to include at least one assignment aligned to each learning outcome. What ideas do you have for possible assignments that would enable students to reach these learning outcomes? If you do not currently have assignment ideas, do you commit to developing course materials that address each of the learning outcomes? In the SW220 course (which is writing-intensive), students develop a 15-18-page research paper on an environmental (in)justice issue of their choosing. The EJ poster assignment described below is a component of their grade based on their research paper findings. EJ Awareness Poster (*the name of this assignment may change) Over the course of the block, we have discussed the imperative of making EJ issues known to the broader public in order to effectively enact change. This EJ Awareness Poster provides opportunity for you to share what you've learned about EJ principles, practices, and activism with your peers and with the broader CC community. In your poster, you will use theory, frameworks, and concepts from the course to present in a poster format, the environmental (in)justice topic that is the focus of your final paper. The poster must include: 1) a brief background of your topic in abstract format (200 words), or the five W's (who, what, when, where, why?); 2) your research question(s) or thesis; 3) your findings, or the "gist" of your analysis, and 4) images that visually depict the environmental issue at hand. You are expected to explain to your audience, many of whom may have no background knowledge in this area, why your topic would be considered an EJ issue, and how other concerns, such as environmental racism, must be addressed to fully understand EJ and EJ activism. You will present your research in and public poster showcase during our last Tuesday class meeting, first to classmates, and then to the broader CC community when these posters are displayed in the Worner Center. _______

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Equity & Power / Global Contexts Nadia Guessous / EPG FG 218 The Discourse of the Veil Please provide a brief, tentative course description (200 words maximum): Examines dominant discourses about the veil and about Muslim women in order to trace the making, trajectory and effects of the so-called “problem” of the veil. Analyzes how the veiling practices of Muslim women have been an object of scrutiny, commentary, disavowal and incitement to discourse ever since 19th century Western travelers began writing about the Muslim women they encountered and the veils that concealed them from their sight. Readings include works by/about late nineteenth and early twentieth century Western Orientalists and missionaries; early male reformers from the Middle East; contemporary Middle Eastern and Western feminists. We will also examine a number of contemporary debates and controversies about the veiling practices of Muslim minorities in the US and Europe (in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and France). Please provide a brief rationale addressing how the proposed course aligns with the description of this Gen Ed category: This course is guided by a series of interrelated questions including: How does a sartorial and embodied practice that is historically varied become singularly associated in dominant discourse with gender oppression, un-freedom and cultural backwardness? What modalities of power and normative assumptions (about the body, agency, freedom and religion) have gone into the making of this “problem”? What anxieties (about modernity, masculinity, women’s bodies, feminism, race, class, gender, sexuality, heteronormativity, etc.) underlie the proliferation of discourse about the veil and are projected onto it? What insights about the politics of colonialism, nationalism, modernity, feminism, multiculturalism, and secularism do we gain from a close (and symptomatic) analysis of various headscarf controversies? And finally, how does the discourse of the veil shed light onto other gendered controversies that invoke the “problem” of culture and/or religion in their encounters with difference? In doing so, my aim is to teach students about the epistemological value of shifting our gaze away from hyper-saturated symbols and putatively abhorrent cultural practices (such as the veil) and instead interrogating the dominant discourse about them. By re-orienting the course away from abjected cultural practices and focusing instead on the incitement to discourse about them, my aim is to teach students how to read dominant discourses about the Other in a “symptomatic” manner and to think about the work that they carry out in upholding notions of Western superiority. The course in other words, and not unlike many of my other courses, requires an epistemological shift and greater awareness of the normative assumptions and relations of power that mediate the questions we tend to ask and the “problems” we deem urgent. By focusing on the construction of one so-called problem (the veil of Muslim women) over time and in many different locations, students learn to recognize how power operates by turning complex practices into static and homogeneous symbols of cultural and civilizational backwardness; by saturating those symbols with negative

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affective associations; and narrowing the range of significations that they become associated with through othering, decontextualization, sensationalization, and repetition. In doing so, students get to think about the relationship between power, knowledge, subjectivity, and positionality; and to ponder the ways in which they have been constituted as particular kinds of subjects through these discourses. Courses in each General Education category need to include at least one assignment aligned to each learning outcome. What ideas do you have for possible assignments that would enable students to reach these learning outcomes? Assignments in the course are all oriented towards developing and honing these critical skills among students. The final paper for example asks them to use the tools of the class to analyze one headscarf controversy or discourse in which the veil features prominently. In addition, and with the aim of helping students understand how power operates through repetition and the incitement to discourse, every student is required to bring an example to the class that shows these processes at work. While this is a simple exercise, its cumulative effect is to give students an embodied and visceral sense of just how narrow, predictable and repetitive the discourse of the veil tends to be, and to see its hegemony on display. It is also to render the familiar discourse of the veil strange by asking of it a different set of questions and seeing it/hearing it/feeling it differently over time. _______ Paul Adler / EPG HY 200 History of International Development Please provide a brief, tentative course description (200 words maximum): “More than one billion people in the world live on less than a dollar a day.” For the past thirty years development policy has been dominated by the paradigm of export-led growth. Sentences such as these epitomize how, especially in the Global North, global economic inequality is often discussed as either as a deluge of incomprehensibly large numbers or as a set of abstracted theories. Certainly, one cannot understand questions of development without examining numbers and theories. But, to only concentrate on the abstract is to avoid the humanity at the heart of development’s dilemmas. This class complements the standard approaches to studying worldwide inequalities by humanizing and historically contextualizing international development. Starting in the 1920s, we will look at how different ideologies and practices of development rose and fell. The course is divided into three thematic sections: first, we will examine the idea of “development” and the creation of the idea of the “Third World.” We will then move to the Global South to examine the many challenges that confronted newly forming nation-states. Finally, we will turn to recent decades, exploring debates over how the mechanics of the current global economy generate inequality. Please provide a brief rationale addressing how the proposed course aligns with the description of this Gen Ed category: This course asks fundamental questions about the vast differences in wealth and power among nation-states in the world today. We will explore a variety of possible explanations and

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theoretical conceptualizations to start. In the course, students will also explore a variety of attempts made by activists and governments in the Global South to attempt and shrink these disparities. Students will also explore how different development paradigms have increased inequalities not only between nations, but also within them, exploring the roles of local elites, gender norms, and more. Courses in each General Education category need to include at least one assignment aligned to each learning outcome. What ideas do you have for possible assignments that would enable students to reach these learning outcomes? If you do not currently have assignment ideas, do you commit to developing course materials that address each of the learning outcomes? Describe the relationship between power and inequality: In their final essays, students will need to explain how a certain set of global and local inequalities came into existence and how different development plans were meant to address them. Also, the course will have an emphasis on institutions: governments, multinational corporations, local business associations, trade unions, multilateral bodies like the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund. Students might be asked to do a short paper reflecting on how one of those organizations is structured and how such structures help replicate or deepen forms of economic and social inequality. Describe one or more ways that a form of inequality, such as racism, is reproduced over time: In this course, students will examine how the legacies of colonialism and imperialism maintain severe inequities in terms of wealth accumulation and standard of living. Students will explore how, for example, colonial and neo-imperial actions which structured various nations’ economies to be geared towards exporting a single (or a few) agricultural or mineral commodities have led to an international division of labor that leaves many nations impoverished -- even since the end of formal colonialism in most of the world. Describe how the social identity, historical context, or cultural context of a writer, artist, scientist, or other worker influences the work they do: In examining primary sources generated by the World Bank, students will be asked to write short reflection papers considering how the educational and experiential backgrounds of World Bank staffers, along with the social structures built into that institution (such as standards for the use of language) affect how people at the Bank approach questions of development. Describe their own positionality with regard to one or more systems of inequality: One of the assignments, which will either be a research paper or an in-class exercise will ask students to choose a consumer product (such as coffee, an iPhone, etc.) that they use in their everyday life. The assignment will ask them to research how that product is made and the history of its production. The assignment will specifically ask for students to do some research about the conditions in which the workers making different components of the product operate. In doing this exercise, students will be forced to confront their own relationships and complicities in forms of global exploitation. _______

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Yogesh Chandrani / EPG RE 207 / AN 208 / PA 250 / PS 203 Politics, Religion and the Secular Please provide a brief, tentative course description (200 words maximum): Since the Enlightenment, philosophers and historians have argued that individual freedom and autonomy depend upon the confinement of religious beliefs and practices to the private sphere. On their view, the spread and entrenchment of institutions of modernity would result in the decline of religion as an active moral and political force. These modern ways of thinking assume that there are discrete entities called religion and the secular, where the latter is conceived as the arena of activities such as politics, economics and science in which religion has no place. In this seminar, we will examine the phenomena of religion and the secular and their place in the modern world through close readings of historical, sociological, philosophical and anthropological works that address the question of religion and its relationship to politics in diverse contexts such as the Middle East, South Asia, and Europe. Our aim will be to acquire an understanding of the variety of ways in which the relationship between religion and politics is configured and debated and to complicate our understanding of key concepts such as modernity, progress, freedom, religion, toleration, diversity, community, politics, ethics and anti-minority violence. Please provide a brief rationale addressing how the proposed course aligns with the description of this Gen Ed category: This course addresses the emergence of secularism as a modern political norm in Europe and then traces its career in comparative perspective by introducing students to readings on the intersection of religion and politics in South Asia, the Middle East and the United States. Readings and writing assignments are designed to help students think of the secular and secularism critically and not merely as the rational other of discourses such as religion, myth and taboo. Rather, they learn to think about secularism as a modality of power that seeks to discipline and bind individual subjects to the political, economic and cultural projects of the modern nation-state. In addition, readings will help students explore how the emergence of modern ideas of religious difference and the problem of religious minorities in diverse settings such as Egypt, India, Western Europe and the United States are products of secular modernity. Readings for the class cover themes such as modern anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, the politics of religious freedom, and the marginalization and stigmatization of the religious traditions and practices of minorities in Europe, South Asia and the Middle East. By approaching the secular and secularism as modalities of power, the course is designed to help students acquire a richer understanding of how the epistemological, social, political, and cultural forces characteristic of secular modernity have generated new political and cultural subjectivities and new forms of inequality and oppression. Courses in each General Education category need to include at least one assignment aligned to each learning outcome. What ideas do you have for possible assignments that would enable students to reach these learning outcomes? If you do not currently have assignment ideas, do you commit to developing course materials that address each of the learning outcomes?

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In addition to readings from multiple disciplines (philosophy, social theory, history and anthropology), students are expected to write 1 short paper, develop and craft a research paper proposal, an annotated bibliography and a final research paper that addresses the politics and history of the secular/secularism in a particular context/site of their choice. The assignments will provide students with the opportunity to think critically about the secular as an epistemological location from which religion is constituted as the other of individual autonomy and of scientific rationality and explore how this understanding of religion produces new forms of difference and inequality. _______ Tracy Coleman / EPG RE 261 / PA 261 / FG 206 Women and Goddesses in Hinduism Please provide a brief, tentative course description (200 words maximum): A study of women and goddesses in Hinduism focused on the towering figure of Sītā, still considered a model of ideal femininity in India today. This course will first consider Sītā's character as depicted in various textual versions of the Rāmāyaṇa, including Vālmīki's ancient Sanskrit epic. After exploring normative constructions of gender as portrayed in epic literature and identifying how and why Sītā is idealized, we will consider contemporary critiques of such gender ideology, reflecting on women's internalization of and resistance to Sītā as a model for their own behavior. Taking feminist and postcolonial theories of identity and subjectivity into account, we will inquire into the possibilities of women's agency and freedom within the context of Hindu ethics and Indian social structures, wherein family and community remain the core. Students will also participate in the living tradition that is the Rāmāyaṇa by composing their own re-tellings of select episodes and reflecting on the creative process involved in such critiques. Please provide a brief rationale addressing how the proposed course aligns with the description of this Gen Ed category: This course addresses inequality with respect to gender and sexuality though an analysis of women and goddesses as constructed in a variety of religious texts and practices in Hindu traditions, primarily in India but also in the US and Europe when global gurus such as Ammachi are considered. The course will engage various discourses that naturalize and legitimize a normative gender order subordinating women to men, and that conceptualize the female body and sexuality within a masculinist economy of pleasure and power. Though the precise topics may change from year to year -- and for this reason the Catalog course description is intentionally broad and vague -- the course will always examine models of femininity and feminine power from classical texts such as the Sanskrit epics and purāṇas, in addition to other sources produced in diverse contexts, including contemporary analyses that center questions of power in relation to gender and sexuality. Insofar as female figures such as Sītā and Rādhā remain popular in India today, the course may also follow the development of a figure across time, thus exploring a historical trajectory and showing how models for women have been constructed, propagated, embodied, resisted and criticized throughout history. Whatever the precise topic, the course will critically engage the masculine- feminine binaries underlying

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(traditional) conceptions of gender and examine the ways men and women are socialized to embody and reproduce ideals that reflect a hetero-normative gender regime and support androcentric and patriarchal structures of power. Courses in each General Education category need to include at least one assignment aligned to each learning outcome. What ideas do you have for possible assignments that would enable students to reach these learning outcomes? I have taught this course (and its earlier Topics version) as a Writing Intensive seminar. In the first week we focus on understanding the ideal, reading a version of the epic Rāmāyaṇa alongside reviews by conservative scholars who glorify Sītā as the ideal woman and wife in a patriarchal society; in the second week, we focus on criticizing the ideal and its ideological context, considering films and essays that expand our knowledge of the epic and bring gender hierarchies to the fore, analyzing Sītā’s character within a masculinist context that ultimately destroys her, and exploring how this ideal continues to inform women’s behavior to their detriment today; and in the third week, we focus on re-assessing the ideal and ideology based on post-colonial critiques and on the writings of women in various social positions who derive strength, dignity, and different kinds of power from the figure of Sītā as a model for their own behavior. The third section of the course thus challenges students to consider their own western, liberal and imperialist biases about “other” traditions and women, whose values may be different from many contemporary CC women (and men), but whose ideals have a logic of their own that may not be grounded in liberal concepts of individuality and autonomy. Such a perspective also challenges students to re-think the meaning of agency and resistance in relation to deep traditions as models of ideal behavior and as “modes of subjectivation” (Mahmood, Foucault) that empower women to realize their aims in life and find fulfillment via behaviors and practices that might otherwise be hastily characterized as submission to external (and outdated) religious and social norms. Students write and revise papers each week, engaging the material from each of these analytical lenses, thus considering from multiple perspectives the gendered relationship between power and inequality, and the ways that gender inequalities are reproduced over time as the epic heroine reappears in new versions that reiterate or subvert androcentric traditions. The third and fourth weeks of the course directly address the third and fourth EP learning outcomes, requiring students to engage perspectives that may be distasteful and even repugnant to them, and to consider the ways in which women negotiate power relations for their practical benefit and survival, without necessarily revolting against patriarchal norms. Though the entire course invites students to consider their own positionality with regard to sex and gender inequities, the material in the third and fourth weeks, and the final paper, push further the expectation that students will learn to relativize their own positions and sex-gender biases in order to consider other “truths” and gendered ways of being in the world. Class discussion and formal debates enhance these curricular goals and enable students to attain the learning outcomes, especially “learning to participate respectfully and productively in potentially uncomfortable discussions about equity and power and their position in relationship to others.” _______