Why does art matter? Because images, sculptures and buildings shape our ways of understanding our world and ourselves. Learning how to look closely and analyze what you see, therefore, is fundamental to a liberal arts education. Within a global frame, this course provides an introduction to art and its histories through a series of case studies, from Egypt's Queen Nefertiti to Jean-Michel Basquiat's raw street art. Meeting three times weekly, each section will draw on the case studies to explore concepts of gender and race, nature and landscape, culture and power, repatriation, and other issues. Assignments focus on developing analytical and expressive writing skills and will engage with the rich resources of Wellesley College and of Boston's art museums. The course fulfills both the Writing requirement and the ARTH 100 requirement for art history, architecture, and studio majors.

We are living in an age of unprecedented access to information and have the means for immediate communication, thanks to advances in technology. Connecting to this virtual, ceaselessly changing world, however, often means turning away from the physical realm and prioritizing immediate reaction over thoughtful reflection. In this interdisciplinary course, we will investigate the boundless opportunities, and the real challenges, of living and writing in the age of distraction. How do we understand one another and ourselves as we toggle between the virtual and physical worlds? How do we create meaningful ideas and united communities? How does the reading and writing we do in the classroom inform what we read and write on social media, and vice versa? Students will consider these questions as they study literature, art, psychology, and technology, and as they explore both virtual spaces and physical ones, including the Wellesley campus and other area locales.

Wellesley's mission is to educate those "who will make a difference in the world." In this course, we will study some of Wellesley's change-makers and learn about the College's role in shaping American higher education, promoting student wellness, advancing gender equality, influencing global politics, and improving public health. We will also examine the world that is Wellesley, with special emphasis on its historic buildings and unique landscape. Students will gain a deep understanding of Wellesley's story and their place in it, and they will practice making a difference in the world through their own writing.

How have writers and artists in the U.S. used the power of words, images, and sound to promote social change? We will explore this question by examining an array of texts within their specific cultural contexts,  including abolitionist narratives, intersectional feminist theory, and contemporary art from the Davis Museum. Students will analyze the rhetorical strategies of these works of protest literature, assessing their influence on laws, social practices, and cultural values. Students will also practice protest as they write for the change they want to see in the world today.

As college in the US becomes increasingly expensive and competitive, it’s worth asking what role institutions of higher education play in our society. Do they promote equity and equality? Do they transform or preserve the status quo? Do we prioritize their value as a private or as a public good, that is, as something that benefits the individual, or as something that the public invests in for some broader social goal? Students will read and write about the work of political theorists and educators in order to consider what the political and social mission of the university should be. We will also investigate the business of higher education, examining what happens when a college’s financial considerations might conflict with its educational mission. Other topics we’ll explore include the public financing of college, student debt, practices of for-profit universities, and the size of college endowments.

"Boy meets girl" has long been a classic starting point, in both literature and the movies. This course will focus on romantic comedy in American cinema, with significant looks backward to its literary sources. We will view films from the classic era of Hollywood (It Happened One Night, The Lady Eve), the revisionist comedies of the 1970s and beyond (Annie Hall, My Best Friend's Wedding), and perhaps some of the decidedly unromantic comedies of recent years (Knocked Up). We will also read one or two Shakespeare plays, and a Jane Austen novel, to get a sense of the literary precedents that established the paradigms within which cinematic comedy operates.

Have you ever wondered why some places evoke strong emotions, or why particular locations are charged with powerful meaning? Through the lenses of cultural geography and anthropology, this course explores the complex relationship between human beings, their emotions, and their environment. Key questions include: How can feelings for the places from our past and present be written into words? What are the qualities of a place that evoke certain emotions and memories? How do our memories of places change over time? What effect do collective memories have on individual remembrances? By reading memoirs, cultural histories, and critical essays, students learn how space and place can be translated into texts. Students will create their own written geographies of memory and analyze popular conceptions of space and place.

What makes a world? And what makes a world beautiful, sustainable, inclusive, or just? At a time when humanity faces myriad global challenges, we can seek insight in writing that reimagines the world and helps us change it for the better. Reading the work of activists, philosophers, fiction writers, and political theorists, we will examine how past worlds shape those of the present and future. In particular, we will investigate the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion in these different visions of the world, asking questions such as: Who enjoys freedom, and when? What is a “human right,” and should those rights be the basis of social organization? In what ways has the nation-state been a force for emancipation, and in what ways a vehicle of empire? What would it look like to live in a world that was fully feminist in its design, or that was built on reparations for past injustices, or that prioritizes the health of the planet above all? What are the conditions necessary for individuals and societies to undergo transformation, improve, and thrive?

Documentary film makes an implicit promise to its viewers to present reality. In this course, we explore the complexities of this promise by examining the interplay between objective fact and the documentarian’s subjective presentation of fact. Such an exploration will take us into questions concerning how we think about the ‘real’ and the ‘fake’ on film and beyond. We will also consider what documentarians owe to those who appear in their films and what ethical standards should apply to documentarians. Films (documentary and otherwise) may include Errol Morris’ The Thin Blue Line, Albert and David Maysles’ Grey Gardens and its fictional feature film offspring (starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange), Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man, Jian Fan’s Still Tomorrow, Nicole Lucas Haimes’ Chicken People, Jennie Livingston’s Paris is Burning and Sara Jordenö and Twiggy Pucci Garçon’s Kiki.

This class requires active and sustained participation from each student and will be speaking intensive; students will be supported in developing participation skills and guided to additional resources as needed.

 This course supports senior McNair Program Scholars as they prepare to apply to graduate schools and post-baccalaureate programs. Students will become more confident, effective writers as they produce drafts of personal statements, fellowship applications, and other scholarly materials. Students in this course will engage in professional development activities, practice communicating their scientific knowledge and research results to different audiences, and gain the benefits of being part of a community of scholars. Open only to seniors participating in the McNair Scholars Program. 

Why does art matter? Because images, sculptures and buildings shape our ways of understanding our world and ourselves. Learning how to look closely and analyze what you see, therefore, is fundamental to a liberal arts education. Within a global frame, this course provides an introduction to art and its histories through a series of case studies, from Egypt's Queen Nefertiti to Jean-Michel Basquiat's raw street art. Meeting three times weekly, each section will draw on the case studies to explore concepts of gender and race, nature and landscape, culture and power, repatriation, and other issues. Assignments focus on developing analytical and expressive writing skills and will engage with the rich resources of Wellesley College and of Boston's art museums. The course fulfills both the Writing requirement and the ARTH 100 requirement for art history, architecture, and studio majors.

This studio art course centers on the interplay of word and image. While pursuing a range of studio projects in graphic media (drawing, book arts, and print), we will examine the role of text and visible language in the work of various contemporary artists. Our studio activities and discussions will explore fundamental visual concepts while cultivating an increased awareness of visual rhetoric and typographic design. Throughout the semester, considerable attention will be placed on developing more effective written commentary, critical thinking, and oral presentation skills relevant to visual investigation.

What do we rightfully own as individuals, and what do we owe to the common good? Who should pay for education, healthcare, childcare, and stewardship of the environment? As current debate about the accumulation and concentration of private wealth heats up, it seems more important than ever to try to answer these questions. In this course, we’ll start by studying the political implications of taxing private capital. Does raising income taxes punish ambitious people, or does it correct for systemic inequalities in capitalism? We’ll then study some foundational political and philosophical theories about how to distribute resources fairly within a capitalist system. We will also use these ideas to evaluate pressing questions in US policy regarding which goods and resources should be considered private and which should be publicly owned, funded, or managed.

The United States has defined itself as an exceptional “nation of immigrants” whose easy access to citizenship and democratic pluralism sets it apart from the rest of the world. But is this really true? How do the history of slavery, colonization, nativism, and the militarization of the border complicate this narrative of inclusion? How do migrants who are not European, white, and Christian tell different kinds of stories about their encounters with America? Students will analyze fiction, memoir, museum exhibits, policy briefs, and scholarly histories to understand how American immigration narratives have influenced public policy, social attitudes, and the meaning of “America” today.

We will read a diverse range of modern science fiction stories with an aim toward understanding how these texts represent, critique, and imagine alternatives to existing social, political, economic, and environmental conditions. Through stories by writers such as Ray Bradbury, Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Nnedi Okorafor, and Ted Chiang, we will explore how science fiction reimagines and challenges traditional ideas about ourselves, complicating easy distinctions between mind and body, human and machine, alien and native, self and other.

This course will examine how the rapid-fire pace of technology is changing the way we see ourselves, the way we present ourselves to the world, and our fundamental understanding of our relation to the world around us. Through the use of social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Vine, Pinterest, Yik Yak, Tinder, Hinge, Instagram, and Tumblr, to name just a few, we are all constantly forming and reforming our identities, thereby changing the nature of human experience. By altering the course of our lives, we are reformulating the age-old questions: How do we discover who we are? How do we show the world who we are? We will read a series of books, traditional and untraditional, by discovered and undiscovered authors, to analyze the way this seismic shift is being documented and portrayed in fiction and non-fiction.

In this course, we will examine the role that work plays in contemporary life and investigate how the value and experience of working get shaped by modern capitalism. We’ll start by reflecting on the character of the 21st century “gig” economy: Does working now mean something fundamentally different than it did for previous generations? Are we really working harder for less reward, as some argue? Is the recommendation to “pursue your passion” good advice? Next, we’ll examine theoretical perspectives on work, looking at how capitalism shapes the relationship between people and their work, how it structures our relationship to time and leisure, and how it codes certain forms of work as gendered labor. Last, we’ll take up questions about workers’ rights, worker power, and the extent to which we have a responsibility, as a society, to ensure stable and fulfilling work for all. This course asks students to think about the problem of work in both personal and structural terms, considering how it features in their own lives and how it reflects the larger social structures within which our lives play out.

We are supposed to offer gifts without expecting anything in return; we are urged to give our best effort for the good of ourselves and others; we are born with, develop, and use our gifts in a range of contexts. But what, exactly, is a gift? In this course, we will explore perspectives on gifts in literature, religious texts, economic theories, and cultural criticism. We will consider questions such as: Why do we give things away? Are we morally obligated to use our resources or natural talents for the greater good? How do we decide who is worthy of a gift with no strings attached, and who must earn a subsidy or repay a benefactor? How does America’s reliance on philanthropy reinforce structural inequities? How do norms of generosity and reciprocity persist in a culture defined by contracts and debts? Can we imagine a society without money and based instead on a principle of giving?

Perhaps it seems improbable that the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans would have much relevance to important social issues in our diverse society today. In recent years, however, many of these ancient materials have been adapted to help activists examine and advocate for modern causes. We will start by thinking about reception: How have ancient texts been received by later cultures and groups, and can a reception be “good” or “bad”? What is the difference between reception, adaptation, and appropriation? Then, focusing primarily on works by women and people of color, we will explore recent receptions of classical texts that address issues such as racial justice, feminism, and immigration. Among other works, we will consider Aristophanes’ Lysistrata alongside Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq, and Euripides’ Medea together with Luis Alfaro’s Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles. No knowledge of ancient Greece or Rome required.

In this course, we will examine Black feminist essays and speculative fiction as resources for thinking about the future of feminism and its impact on the broader culture. These texts are helping to shift paradigms of what is understood by the term “feminism”. They also contain critical information that students need not just to survive but thrive in the future. We will discuss how these works offer new ways to think about kinship, gender, reproductive rights, abolition, and representations of selfhood. In addition, they will provide a springboard for looking inward to our own lives and perspectives, as we explore how writing, reading, and action are influenced by the personal. Indeed, if the “personal is political,” as Audre Lorde aptly stated, then what we write from our own experience can shape and change our world.

This course will help students become more confident and proficient in the writing that they do at Wellesley and beyond. Students will design an individualized syllabus around a topic of interest to them and focused on the areas of writing in which they most want to improve. Building on what they learned in their 100-level WRIT course, students will become more adept at working with sources, developing their thinking, and communicating their ideas clearly and purposefully. There will be two class meetings per week. In one, all students will meet as a group with the professor, engaging in writing workshops and discussing some short common readings. In the second meeting, students will meet individually with a TA to discuss readings on their own topic and to work on their writing.