UNST 300-0001: The Monument in the U.S.: Histories and Controversies

TUES/THURS 12:45-2:00 | Duke Hall 1041 | Professor: Dr. John W Ott

This seminar centers on the historical development of and recent debates concerning monuments and public art in the United States. The course will examine these objects as fundamental and contested sites both of public memory, and of civic, regional, and national identities. Later meetings will address contemporary challenges to monuments’ underlying ideological frameworks, with special attention to so-called “counter-monuments” that question or overturn the very possibility either of defining community and nation, or of commemorating the past. Students will individually research regional monuments and, as a culmination of the course, propose and justify changes to their chosen artworks in teams.

UNST 300-0002: Conceptualizing The Artificial in Fact and Fiction

TUES/THURS 9:35-10:50am | Roop Hall 0202 | Professor: Dr. Michael J. Klein and Dr. Philip Frana

This course will examine the artificial in literature, media, and science & technology. In conceptualizing artificial things as the “other,” we can see how they are something we can have dominion over. Or they can become a deus ex machina for overcoming human problems. Topics will include the examination of the artificial in popular culture (fiction, films, and other media), adoption into industry and the workplace, and integration in everyday life. Class activities and assignments will include a mix of in-class discussions that incorporate critical thinking, especially assessments of media coverage, and written projects. We are adopting a very interdisciplinary approach drawing upon concepts found in history, STS, technical communication, ethics, and the sciences of the artificial (computing, robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, complex systems).

UNST 300-0003: Science & Pseudoscience

MON/WED 1:50-3:05pm | Darcus Johnson Hall 1006 | Professors: Dr. Jennifer Mangan and Dr. Philip Frana

The world is changing at a rapid pace, driven by science and technology. Countless expressions of cutting-edge science and high technology pervade our world, profoundly affecting the social, economic, and cultural outlooks of societies and individuals. In this course, we will examine the politics of science, public perceptions of science, scientific literacy, and the co-evolution of scientific expertise and democracy.

What does it mean to be objective? Who can we rely on as trusted authorities? How will science address—and potentially alleviate—the wicked problems plaguing our world? What is the impact of society on science?

Topics will include past and present controversies in the history of modern science and technology (e.g., the geocentric universe, evolution, climate change, artificial superintelligence) as well as studies of what are generally considered pseudosciences (e.g., astrology, paranormal activity, cryptozoology, UFOs).

UNST 300-0004: Human-Subject Experimentation

MON/WED 1:50-3:05pm |Physics/Chemistry 2116 | Professor: Mark E Mattson

Although amazing knowledge can be gained from human-subject experimentation, why is it so highly regulated? The history behind it is complex. For instance, following World War II the United States offered amnesty to enemy medical personnel who gained unique data through brutal human-subject experiments in exchange for their help to interpret the information. Was it right to reconcile the otherwise unobtainable information gained with the horrifying suffering of the victims? How is science used nowadays to justify “destructive research on human embryos?”1 Through the use of historical role-playing, debate, and project development, students will gain greater understanding of the intersection between ethics and human experimentation and how it may affect them in their career.

1 Douglas, T., & Savulescu, J. (2009). Destroying unwanted embryos in research. Talking Point on morality and human embryo research. EMBO Reports, 10(4), 307–312. http://doi.org/10.1038/embor.2009.54 

This is a 300-level interdisciplinary course that meets the needs of non-freshman students who still have to satisfy the General Education Critical Thinking requirement. The anticipated enrollment of the course is approximately 20 students and class will meet face-to-face twice a week for 75-minute sessions. This course will introduce students of all majors and interests to the protocols and regulations of experiments that involve humans as subjects; it will also address the often horrifying history of human-subject experimentation that led to the development of these protocols. Students will engage with the subject by developing their own proposals for human-subject research and following a process that mimics the necessary steps to secure legal permission to engage in this research.

UNST 300-0005: Interactive Patterns

Mon 3:00-5:30pm | Lakeview Hall 1102 | Professor: Laura Anne Taalman

This interdisciplinary project-based course will explore the ideas of user interaction, structure, and randomness in a range of mathematical design contexts. Students will use generative design and UI/UX tools to create interactive applications to explore surface patterns, visualizations, animations, digital 3D models, and /or physical artifacts. Students will work on long-term projects in teams using basic programming in p5.js and OpenSCAD. Throughout the course, students will use critical reasoning to examine how constrained randomness can arise in nature, data science, probability, chaotic behavior, and design.  

No prior experience with programming, mathematics, or design is needed for this course, although the ability and academic maturity to research and learn new things from online resources is a requirement. Students should be prepared to learn independently about software, hardware, design, and mathematical topics related to their projects, and to work productively in teams. At the end of the semester, each team will give presentations of their work.

UNST 300-0006: Communication & Social Media 

Tues 3:55-6:25pm | Online | Professor: Dr. Kathryn Hobson 

Communication is an ever-changing process in which we construct and respond to messages that are consistent with a communication purpose, audience, and context. With media having such a large presence in our lives, how could different mediums and platforms affect your verbal and nonverbal communication skills? How does the media platform alter the way you both portray yourself and others online? Are there consequences for different portrayals? If so, what are they? How do different types of media affect how you negotiate relationships with others?  What communication barriers might arise as you negotiate those relationships? Come study how messages are shaped and altered by media platforms and messaging. 

UNST 300-0007: Islamic Art & Cultural Heritage

TUES/THURS 12:45-2:00pm | Duke Hall 2039 | Professor: Dr. Sarah Brooks

Why does preserving cultural heritage matter? Can art create dialogue and understanding?  

Our course highlights the many artistic traditions of Islam around the world, including in the Middle East, Africa, and throughout the Mediterranean World. We will consider major monuments and issues, from the founding of the new faith in the early seventh century CE, up until today. Readings, discussion, collaborative teamwork, individual research and writing make up the core of our work together. We will focus on the traditions of the faith, and the artistic, social, political, financial, and ethical challenges to preserving Islam’s most significant monuments around the world.  

The major case study we will critically examine together is the Kaaba, the most important cultural heritage monument in Islam. The Kaaba, “cube” in Arabic, is located in the city of Mecca in the modern nation-state of Saudi Arabia. Revered as the “House of God,” it is thought to have existed since the lifetime of the Prophet Abraham, in the second millennium BCE. Nearly 1.5 million pilgrims visit the Kaaba every year, including members our own campus and local communities. The next major pilgrimage to Mecca and the Kaaba, the hajj, will take place June 4-9, 2025.  

This section is cross-listed with ARTH 332. Islamic Art & Architecture. 

UNST 300-0001: Conceptualizing The Artificial in Fact and Fiction

TUES/THURS 9:35-10:50am | Darcus Johnson Hall G004 | Professor: Dr. Michael J. Klein and Dr. Philip Frana

This course will examine the artificial in literature, media, and science & technology. In conceptualizing artificial things as the “other,” we can see how they are something we can have dominion over. Or they can become a deus ex machina for overcoming human problems. Topics will include the examination of the artificial in popular culture (fiction, films, and other media), adoption into industry and the workplace, and integration in everyday life. Class activities and assignments will include a mix of in-class discussions that incorporate critical thinking, especially assessments of media coverage, and written projects. We are adopting a very interdisciplinary approach drawing upon concepts found in history, STS, technical communication, ethics, and the sciences of the artificial (computing, robotics, automation, artificial intelligence, complex systems).

This section is cross-listed with HON 300-0011.

UNST 300-0002: Navigating the Attention Economy

TUES/THURS 12:45-2:00pm | Darcus Johnson Hall G004 | Professors: Jared Featherstone and Dr. Philip Frana

The term “attention economy” depicts human attention as a limited resource in a world of ever-increasing connectivity and information overload. The class will take a critical look at the modern cultural situation of individual consumer attention being seen as a commodity that corporations and influencers are competing for. The course will examine both ends of this phenomenon, the efforts of marketing and programmers attempting to control the attention of consumers, as well as the struggle of consumers to maintain agency and even clarity of thought under these conditions.

This section is cross-listed with HON 300-0005.

UNST 300-0003: Science, Culture, and Science Fiction

MON/WED 9:35-10:50am | Darcus Johnson Hall 1006 | Professors: Dr. Jennifer Mangan and Matthew Chamberlain

This course will use an interdisciplinary, module-based approach to examine imagined worlds of science fiction and the cultures that evolved on them, introducing students to scientific and social-scientific theoretical frameworks and methods of analysis.  We will investigate a number of planets and their physical parameters, including but not limited to the type of stars they orbit, the climates of the planet, their locations in space, and how they are similar to or different from Earth, and draw on a range of perspectives in the humanities and social sciences to make sense of the various human and alien species that populate these imagined worlds, including their relationship to and adaptation within particular environments. Using the fictional constructions of sentient beings and their behavior and interaction as metaphors for crucial issues in our own present-day human society, we will address questions of cultural evolution, personhood, knowledge, race and gender, power, conflict, and the nature of civilization.

This section is cross-listed with HON 300-0008.

UNST 300-0004: Urban America: Detroit As “Motor City”

TUES/THURS 12:45-2:00pm | Darcus Johnson Hall G009 | Professor: Dr. Jonathan Walker

The focus of this seminar will be to understand the city of Detroit, Michigan through spatial dynamism and cultural place-making in what became America’s “Motor City”. The goal of the course is to develop an inclusive perspective of the people and powers that shaped Detroit with emphasis on equity/inequity and the development and perpetuation of diverse and “un-diverse” landscapes. Students will develop a critical eye toward issues of gender, race, and power and understand its spatial manifestation.

UNST 300-0005: The Unfinished Journey of People of Color in the United States

Online | Professor: Dr. Howard Gelfand

This course is an interdisciplinary in-depth study of People of Color in Contemporary America, with a focus on the antecedents and factors that have led to our current circumstances, utilizing studies and works from a number academic disciplines.  We will examine the experiences of African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinx Americans, Native Alaskans, Native Hawaiians, and people of other identities through the lenses of art, cultural revival, culture, economics, ethnicity, historic preservation, memory, place, politics, and sexuality, particularly as pertains to social and cultural activism.  We will utilize a broad variety of sources and tools, and we will work together to figure out paths forward toward making life in this country more equitable, understanding, inquisitive, and celebratory.  This course has the format of a classical college seminar in which each member of the course will, together as a team, study, discuss, and contemplate the readings during course meetings.

This course is cross-listed with HON 300-0006.

UNST 300-0006: The Physics of Science Fiction

MON/WED 1:50-3:05pm | Holland Yates Hall 1053 | Professor: Dr. Harold Butner

What impact does changing the sky have on a society? What would happen to your world if energy was hard to produce, or if it was inexhaustible? What would life be like if space travel was inexpensive? These changes often are the underlying backdrop for stories in science fiction.

In this class, we will look for key “background” changes in the world of selected stories, and identify what constraints these physical changes placed on the story. Each section of the course will draw on multiple examples of how a specific topic in science was explored by various authors, such gravity, or the interaction of man and machine, or genetic engineering, or even changing the sky, in the context of particular stories. To facilitate covering a range of examples, readings will focus on short stories or excerpts from longer novels, rather than reading every example in full. While our focus will be on science fiction, stories from movies, anime, and manga will also be included. Along the way, we will research what current science says, and what would have to change to produce the new world view for that story. Ideally, you should have had an introduction to the scientific method via an earlier Natural World (formerly Cluster Three) course such as Physics.

You will have an opportunity to select some dramatic change in an area of science that interests you. After researching the science during the semester, at the end of the course, you will present to the class how you think your life would be impacted by the proposed change compared to the way things are now.

UNST 300-0007: Communication & Social Media

TUES 3:55-6:25pm | Online | Professor: Dr. Kathryn Hobson

Communication is an ever-changing process in which we construct and respond to messages that are consistent with a communication purpose, audience, and context. With media having such a large presence in our lives, how could different mediums and platforms affect your verbal and nonverbal communication skills? How does the media platform alter the way you both portray yourself and others online? Are there consequences for different portrayals? If so, what are they? How do different types of media affect how you negotiate relationships with others?  What communication barriers might arise as you negotiate those relationships? Come study how messages are shaped and altered by media platforms and messaging.

UNST 300-0008: Exploring Identities in the Americas

TUES/THURS 12:45-2:00pm | Wilson Hall 1001 | Professor: Dr. Kristen McCleary

How are identities in the Americas (the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean) changing? Do the Americas share more commonalities than differences? How has your own education positioned the United State's history in relationship to Latin America? This class explores these questions by focusing on cultural expressions, physical space, and change over time, from the era of European 'conquest' to the present day. In an election year with an outsized focus on immigration and the US-Mexican border, this class strives to historicize and contextualize the history of the Americas through an exploration of the history and culture of Latin America, the Caribbean and Latinx peoples in the US. Drawing from academic disciplines such as history, art history, sociology, anthropology, and Latin American Studies, we integrate the study and celebration of rituals of the Fall Semester (Columbus Day, Día de los Muertos [DDLM]/ Day of the Dead, Day of the Día de la Virgen / Our Lady of Guadalupe, and Hispanic Heritage Month) into our class in order to embrace alternative ways of understanding the past and present.

UNST 300 sect. 6: Gender Inclusive Leadership 

TUES/ THURS 12:45-2:00 PM | Miller Hall 2116 | Professor: Dr. Bethany Blackstone & Dr. Meg Mulrooney 

In this course, students will explore leadership theories and develop personal leadership skills. We will give particular attention to how gender shapes the experiences of leading and following. Students will apply leadership theories, concepts, and skills to different professional domains and participate in activities and exercises to build communication, collaboration, conflict management, and critical thinking skills. Students completing the course will understand major leadership theories, reflect on their own leadership style and values, and develop a plan for advancing their personal leadership practice beyond the course.  

This section is cross-scheduled with HON 300.