Humanities & Arts Department

This course offers a deep exploration of the vibrancy of Black American life and thought through the lens of African American literature. Students will actively and critically read selected African American texts considering the historical contexts in which they were produced as well as analyzing their formal elements. While the course will focus on Black American experience in the United States, it will do so in dialogue with the larger diasporic Black experience. The topics will rotate regularly, alternating between close examination of different authors, genres, themes, or movements while preparing students for the HUA capstone experience. Examples of authors are Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Lorraine Hansberry and August Wilson. Examples of genres are slave narratives, sermons, autobiographies, dramas, spirituals, blues, and drama. Examples of themes are race and the law, freedom struggles, and intersections between race and class, gender, and sexuality. Examples of movements are the Black Arts Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Lives Matter Movement. This course may be repeated for different topics.

Why do people organize and protest to change the world around them? This course takes a topical approach to introduce the historical questions, intersectional methods, and contemporary sources that shape the study of social movements on the political left and right. Balancing the exploration of the ideological, political, and economic roots of protest movements and the identities, strategies, and technologies that inspire individual and collective action, this course examines the varied responses that protest movements elicit from society and the structures of power from suppression to realization to cooptation. Although protests movements, such as abolitionist, populist, white supremist, Civil Rights, Black Power, feminist, gay liberation, anti-war, environmental, socialist, labor, and/or alt-Right movements, under consideration in this course will change, students can only receive credit for it once.

How do medicine, disease, health, and healing shape our experience of what it is to be human? What do literature, poetry, popular culture, or religious and spiritual traditions have to do with modern medical practices and institutions? This course provides an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of medical humanities, and its core set of concepts, questions, methodologies, and theoretical frameworks. The course will bring together and familiarize students with work from diverse fields of study, including comparative literature, the visual and performing arts, history of medicine, cultural studies, science and technology studies, anthropology, ethics, and philosophy. Potential course topics include the production and circulation of medical knowledge, embodied experiences of illness and affliction, cross-cultural perspectives on sickness and healing, the social and interpersonal dimensions of illness, illness and medicine in popular culture, and the ways in which humanistic inquiry can enhance and improve contemporary medical practices. 

This course will be offered in academic years ending in odd numbers.

This survey course introduces students to the content and contours of Africana Studies as a discipline and highlights its genealogy, development, and future challenges. The course focuses on the black experience in its historical and current unfolding in the Americas, particularly the United States, the Caribbean, Canada, and Latin America. It also gives attention to how members of the Diaspora have engaged with Africa, and to how Africans have responded to the history of enslavement, colonialism, racism, and globalization. In this course, scholarly literature, film, music, photography, and artwork will be used to develop a critical understanding of the experience of Afro-descended peoples around the world.

This interdisciplinary course introduces students to a number of basic American Studies methodologies. Emphasis will vary according to the instructor, but usually the course will cover the following: the textual and contextual analysis (at the community, national, and transnational levels) of literary works; the relationships between the literary, performing, and visual arts in a specific time period; the analysis of radio, film, television, and digital media forms at the level of production and reception; the mediation and remediation of cultural, social, and political history. 

This course will be offered in academic years ending in even numbers.

This foundational course offers an introduction to the interdisciplinary field of gender, sexuality and women’s studies. The course fosters critical examination of gender, sexuality and women and asks how the interlocking systems of oppression, including colonialism, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ethnocentrism, shape people’s lives, and how individuals and groups have worked to resist these oppressions. Potential course topics include histories of gender activism, gender, sexuality and their relationships to the law, religion, reproduction, education, technology, and mental health, globalization and transnational experiences, and the role of popular culture. No prior background is required. 

This course will be offered in academic years ending in odd numbers.

Topics in Medical Humanities provides students with opportunities to investigate the human (cultural, religious, historical, philosophical) dimensions of medicine, illness, and healing, from various perspectives in the humanities. Specific themes and topics will vary by section and instructor, and may include both historical and contemporary concerns, consideration of local, national, and/or global scales, and interdisciplinary methods and pedagogies drawn from a range of fields, such as comparative literature, the visual and performing arts, history of medicine, cultural studies, science and technology studies, anthropology, ethics, and philosophy. Students will analyze interactions between human beings and their environments, the production and circulation of medical and psychiatric knowledge, and historical, sociological, artistic, and literary considerations of medicine, health, and healing. 

This course will be offered in academic years ending in odd numbers.

This course provides an introductory window into the history and theory of film, and may cover genres from short films, silent films, animated films, documentary films, and experimental films to historical and literary adaptations, science fiction films, screwball comedies, thrillers, and westerns. In addition, attention may be given to representative directors, significant theories of film, national traditions of filmmaking, and recent convergences between film forms and digital media. Directors covered may include Charlie Chaplin, John Ford, and Alfred Hitchcock. Film theorists covered may include Stanley Cavell, Sergei Eisenstein, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. This course will be offered in 2022-23 and in alternating years thereafter.

This course will examine works of film from multiple continents, drawing on film criticism and theory and attending to the development of film industries in several different cultural contexts and national traditions. Some iterations may turn on a broader survey, others on more particular engagements with wider inflections. For example, an offering emphasizing African film might attend not only to films made on the African continent but also to films emerging from the African diaspora in the Americas, and an offering emphasizing Italian film would also attend not only to the films made on the Italian peninsula but also to films emerging from the Italian diaspora in Australia and the United States. This course will be offered in 2021-2022, and in alternating years thereafter.

The study and practice of STEM-inism centers the equal participation and representation of all social groups in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). In particular, this course highlights the concepts, theories, and practices of feminism into its understanding of STEM-inism as a field of inquiry. This course provides an overview of the history of female and non-binary contributors and contributions to this field of study and practice, ranging from Hypatia to Ada Lovelace to NASA visionary Katherine Johnson to queer and trans STEM visionaries Martine Rothblatt, Joan Roughgarden, and Lynn Conway. This course may also consider the following topics: the gender gap in STEM fields, biases in medical research, sexual harassment, eugenics, reproductive justice, transgender rights, and contemporary social movements. The course will also incorporate a deliberate analysis of intersecting identity categories, including race, class, sexuality, religion, and ability. 

This course will be offered in academic years ending in odd numbers.

Bringing together transnational, postcolonial, and indigenous feminist and queer lines of thought, this course provides a global perspective on the interdisciplinary field of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies. Motivated by the idea that marginalized peoples - including women, those who identify as non-binary, and ethnic, religious, and economic minorities - share common experiences of exclusion and common stories of resistance, this course fosters critical examination of the relationship between gender, sexuality, feminism, colonialism, and racism. It may consider this intersection through case studies from Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East with particular attention to places that host WPI project centers. 

This course will be offered in academic years ending in even numbers.

This course is required of students accepted to off-campus Humanities and Arts centers and programs. The course introduces students to methods for site-specific research, project-design, and analysis related to humanities and arts study. It also develops HUA disciplinary skills appropriate both to the projects students have selected and to the culture of the project center where they will be working. Students learn to develop project objectives, milestones, and deliverables in their topic areas related to their forthcoming onsite work and expectations. Students make presentations, write an organized project proposal, and develop a deliverable design for reporting their project findings. This course is a pre-requisite for off-campus Humanities and Arts project center study only. This credit will not count toward the Humanities and Arts requirement.

This course uses interdisciplinary, thematic, and case study approaches to explore sexuality in the modern world. It takes as its starting point the understanding that sex and power are interrelated and that they manifest differently in different social and cultural contexts (including spaces and places to which WPI students may travel as part of their global projects experience). Further, this course recognizes that the categorization, experiences, and treatment of queer persons and bodies and non-normative sexuality have changed over time and space, as have sexual mores and conceptualizations of “purity” and “deviance,” which are linked to class, race, dis/ability, and power relations within and between states. This course may include the study of the history of sexuality in the United States and globally; national and international activism around sexual liberation and LGBTQ+ pride; religion and sexuality; the relationship of LGBTQ+ activism to other civil rights movements; sex work; sexual violence; cultural representations of queer and non-normative sexualities, and “anti-genderism” and authoritarian populism. The expected enrollment is 20, and the course type is Lecture/Discussion. This course may be repeated for different topics.

This course will provide students participating in a HUA Project Center with a framework for investigating a particular cultural site, and to define a unique set of humanities and arts learning goals through experiential learning. Experiential learning means learning from experience or learning by doing. Experiential education immerses learners in an experience and then encourages reflection about the experience to develop new skills, new attitudes, or new ways of thinking. This course is structured in a self-directed manner in which students select a humanities/arts topic or theme, explore and experience arts and cultural sites related to that theme, then engage in self-reflection and self-evaluation of their learning.

This seminar explores canonical and contemporary feminist and queer theory texts, contexts and debates that engage with ideas about sex, gender, sexuality, sexual desire, and queerness. By focusing on a specific lineage within feminist and queer theory, it will interrogate such concepts and ideas as the body and embodiment, marriage and family, reproduction, power and equality, border and boundary crossing, feminist activism, and other key topics in the field. Importantly, it will also center sources and discussions that address theoretical intersections with race, class, dis/ability, religion, and other identity categories. This course may be repeated for different topics. 

Investigations into film studies that address specific directors, genres, national/regional traditions, periods, theories, and/or theorists. Attention might center upon Hitchcock, Kurosawa, or Varda; on the documentary, the romantic comedy, the science fiction film, or the western; on Cuban, Italian, Korean, or West African film, on the silent-to-sound transition of a century ago, or the traditionally- to digitally-animated transition of this century; on apparatus, or auteur, or feminist, or psychoanalytic film theory; or via the work of Cavell, Deleuze, Mulvey, or Žižek, for example. This course may be repeated for different topics. 

This course will be offered in academic years ending in odd numbers.

This seminar serves as the culmination for a student’s Humanities and Arts Requirement. The seminar provides opportunities for sustained critical inquiry into a focused thematic area. The seminar seeks to help students learn to communicate effectively, to think critically, and to appreciate diverse perspectives in a spirit of openness and cooperation through research, creativity, and investigation. The specific theme of each seminar will vary and will be defined by the instructor. Prior to enrolling in the seminar, a student must have completed five courses in Humanities and Arts, at least two of which must be thematically related and at least one of which must be at the 2000-level or above.

The practicum serves as the culmination for a student’s Humanities and Arts Requirement. The practicum provides opportunities for sustained critical inquiry into a focused thematic area. The practicum seeks to help students learn to communicate effectively, to think critically, and to appreciate diverse perspectives in a spirit of openness and cooperation through research, creativity, and investigation. The specific theme of each practicum will vary and will be defined by the instructor. Prior to enrolling in the practicum, a student must have completed five courses in Humanities and Arts, at least two of which must be thematically related and at least one of which must be at the 2000-level or above. Consent of the instructor is required for enrollment.

Each fall the American Antiquarian Society and five Worcester colleges sponsor a research seminar at the Antiquarian Society library. The seminar is conducted by a scholar familiar with the Society’s holdings in early American history, and the seminar topic is related to his or her field of research. Selection is highly competitive. The ten participating students are chosen by a screening committee made up of representatives of the five participating colleges: Assumption College, Clark University, College of the Holy Cross, WPI, and Worcester State College. The seminar topic and research methods combine several disciplines, and students from a wide variety of majors have participated successfully in this unique undergraduate opportunity.