Catalogue 2024-2025
College Courses
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The college course program was established to ensure that students can have direct exposure in their years at Vassar to some important expressions of the human spirit in a context that is both multidisciplinary and integrative. The aim of a college course is to study important cultures, themes, or human activities in a manner that gives the student experience in interpreting evidence from the standpoint of different fields. The courses relate this material and these interpretations to other material and interpretations from other fields in order to unite the results of this study into a coherent overall framework. The interpretations are expected to be both appreciative and critical and the artifacts will come from different times, places, and cultures.
College Course: I. Introductory
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CLCS 101 - Civilization in Question
1 unit(s)
(Same as GRST 101 ) In the past, college curricula in this country were often organized around the idea of the “Great Books” of “Western Civilization.” Today though, the very idea of a Western literary canon has been challenged as a vehicle for reinforcing questionable norms and hierarchies and silencing other important perspectives. In this class we read well-known ancient, medieval and Renaissance texts with a view to how they themselves question the civilizations from which they emerge. We challenge the idea that there is a monolithic “Western” tradition while opening up new possibilities for engaging with pre-modern texts and ideas. Readings may include Homer, Aeschylus, Plato, the Hebrew Bible, Augustine, Maimonides and Thomas More. Rachel Friedman, Christopher Raymond.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
CLCS 107 - The Liberal Arts in Question Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
We plan to curate conversations of different kinds and in various locations (e.g., Baccios, The Retreat, Waryas Park, Rose Parlor, Adriance Library). In these conversations, we place the idea and experience of the liberal arts ‘in question’ from many substantive perspectives, including our disciplinary locations, which we will also place ‘in question’. The movement into and from different material or built spaces on the residential campus parallels the movement into and from different disciplinary contexts – the shape of a student’s education at the college. Their exposures are, at the end of every day, not housed in one place or in one department, but in a multifaceted, residential educational environment that calls upon them as full persons. This is a college course ‘intensive’ therefore in its constitutive sense and one that allows us to ask and explore questions with students about the college and why and how we shape the spaces and contexts of their intellectual engagements every day the ways that we do. Our interface and extension with the summer immersion students, who have already expressed an interest in community involvement, is a way of going deeper, with more time, and with their whole experience (intellectual and embodied) as they begin their broader educational exposure and journeys at the college.
Our culminating exercise involves boldly placing ‘assessment in question’ through reflective and performative engagement with both conventional and less conventional modes of evaluation (e.g., portfolios, exams, etc.). Andrew Bush, Sophia Harvey, Candice Lowe Swift, Himadeep Muppidi.
Course Format: INT -
CLCS 110 - Interactions among Public Health, Political Instability and Environmental Degradation Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
(Same as STS 110 ) For the first six weeks, we meet once per week to discuss readings and to hear from faculty providing different perspectives on these issues, using Haiti as a model. During this period, students plan for independent projects to be undertaken during the second six weeks of this intensive experience. Projects may be literature-based or may be project-based and focus on a region of the world or even more locally. Towards the end of the semester, possibly to coincide with the Vassar Haiti Project’s annual Art and Soul Fundraiser, students present their projects. Kathleen Susman.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: INT -
CLCS 120 - The Vassar Campus
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as ART 120 ) A multidisciplinary exploration of the Vassar College campus. This intensive course is conducted as a succession of local field trips to sites across the college, and walks around campus. With this direct experience of landscape, buildings, and collections, from works of art to natural history specimens, we consider the history of Vassar’s campus, as well as our lived experience of campus spaces. We also approach our own campus in broader contexts, exploring the notion of campus in American culture, the campus as physical space and as idea, and the role of place in higher education. Individual projects allow participants to explore a campus space of their choice in various modes. Students from all majors are encouraged to apply. Yvonne Elet.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
First six-week course.
Not offered in 2024/25.
Course Format: INT -
CLCS 121 - Anti-Racist Equity and Justice: Learning and Activism Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This Intensive course offers a space for concentrated reflection on racism, white supremacy and the demands of contemporary antiracist movements, such as defunding the police and reparations. This is a small and unique forum in which we can engage with guest speakers from campus and our broader communities who have expertise in anti-racist facilitation. By centering and learning from those already doing abolitionist work, we can learn best practices for dialoguing with others about racism, reflecting honestly on privilege and intersectionality, and becoming accomplices rather than mere allies, all the while recognizing the long history of antiracist work that precedes us. Through check-ins and guided experiential activities, we build inclusive community with our peers; and through consultations with practitioners of radical, liberatory social justice technologies, we explore vulnerability and self-love as foundations for anti-racist work. The explorations of our social, assigned identities and the networks of power and privilege in which they operate are enhanced by book discussions, journaling, and facilitated circle sharing. The final project provides an opportunity for both storytelling and community engaged collaborations. Eva Woods.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: INT -
CLCS 151 - Introduction to Contemplative Studies Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
This course provides an introduction to how people deepen and broaden their attention and awareness, and why it matters for individuals and societies. Cultures and disciplines have long traditions for promoting concentration and reflection, and students will explore and appraise such practices and perspectives. In addition to working with scholarly “third person perspective” sources on contemplative process, students engage in a variety of contemplative practices (which provide “first person perspective”, and occasionally “second person perspective”). Topics may include critical contemplative pedagogy; embodied experience; non-violent communication; deep listening; cultivating attention and intention; storytelling; emotion and motivation; language and thought; contemplative movement; contemplative arts; social activism; constructing contemplative places; visualizations; imagination; improvisation; interdependence; contemplative leadership; personal and institutional transformation; and taking a critical decolonizing approach to contemplative studies itself. Readings include extensive scholarly and practice-based sources. Assignments include journaling, observing, interviewing, and critiquing sources and experiences. Carolyn Palmer.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
CLCS 175 - Creating Communities that Care Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
This intensive focuses on aspects of community health and well-being that are challenged by recent events, including the Covid-19 pandemic, the responses to police violence and racial injustices, and the political and economic strife in our nation, and how we can build, shape, and motivate communities to develop practices that infuse a commitment to caring about each other. Students interested in this intensive may find a faculty sponsor and may engage in readings, videos, and webinars to develop knowledge, skills and practices to foster supportive and nurturing ways of engaging each other both on and off campus. This highly flexible intensive opportunity enables students to interpret community caring from multiple perspectives. This intensive could be conducted in-person or remotely.
Both first and second six-week course.
Course Format: INT -
CLCS 180 - Navigating College: Essential Skills for First-Year Students Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
This course provides first-year students with the tools, resources, and strategies to navigate the transition to college successfully. Students explore various topics through discussions, activities, and guest speakers, including academic skill development, time management, stress management, campus resource utilization, goal setting, and personal growth. Additionally, students reflect on their experiences, set goals, and create action plans to achieve academic and personal success during their first year of college. This course provides first-year students with the tools, resources, and strategies to navigate the transition to college successfully. Students explore various topics through discussions, activities, and guest speakers, including academic skill development, time management, stress management, campus resource utilization, goal setting, and personal growth. Additionally, students reflect on their experiences, set goals, and create action plans to achieve academic and personal success during their first year of college. Lioba Gerhardi, Luis Inoa.
First six-week course.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: CLS -
CLCS 181 - Love, Genre, and Gender: Plays and Poetry in the Renaissance Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
How are gender and genre blurred across literary, theatrical, and visual representation in the early modern period? This first-year writing seminar explores the intertwining themes of love, comedy, and imitation through Italian and English Renaissance poetry, prose, and plays, with a focus on the relationship between truth, ambiguity, and performance. Texts include sonnets written by Petrarch and those who later imitated him, including female poets; Italian comedies that served as precursors to Shakespeare’s plays; and dialogues written by women on the topic of love. All texts are in English. Students are given a range of options regarding their individual assignments, including presentations, creative writing projects, and short critical essays. Alexia Ferracuti.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
CLCS 183 - Vassar For Veterans Semester Offered: Fall
0.5 unit(s)
This course is designed to help Posse veterans acclimate to Vassar and introduce them to the array of campus resources available to them. It gives Vassar veterans the opportunity to explore the issues and challenges they face as non-traditional students at a residential liberal arts college, and it identifies strategies for making the transition to college and succeeding within Vassar’s rigorous academic environment. Taught by the Posse Faculty Mentor.
Open to first-year Posse veterans.
One 2-hour group meeting and one 1-hour individual meeting per week.
Course Format: CLS -
CLCS 184 - Questions of Character Semester Offered: Fall
1 unit(s)
(Same as FFS 184 ) In the mid-twentieth century, many French and American writers and critics began insisting that we treat fictional characters as strictly textual entities. Characters, they declared, are words on a page, not to be confused with psychological beings capable of moral agency. But why do we still care what fictional characters do? What incites us to talk about characters as if they were real people? What can a renewed interrogation of character teach us about storytelling, other cultures, and our own individual or group biases? We pursue these questions by examining short stories, two films and a play. The course emphasis is on close reading discussion, writing for revision, peer review, and the exploration of secondary texts representing a variety of disciplinary approaches. Kathleen Hart.
Open only to first-year students; satisfies the college requirement for a First-Year Writing Seminar.
All readings and discussions are in English.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
CLCS 298 - Independent Study Across the Disciplines Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
0.5 to 1 unit(s)
This course, for either 0.5 or 1.0 unit, enables faculty to work with students on projects and independent study that cross disciplines and work that is not particular to a given department or program. This course is open to all faculty and students who wish to conduct this kind of academic, intellectual work for academic credit. Jonathon Kahn.
Individual conferences with the instructor.
Course Format: INT
College Course: II. Intermediate
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CLCS 203 - How We Got Here Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
(Same as HIST 203 ) This course is a dynamic introduction to the ways in which texts, traditions, concepts, and institutions throughout history have brought us to the moment in which we currently exist, and how they prepare us to meet the challenges of the future. No matter how “modern” an issue may seem—be it race, money, gender, violence—the roots or echoes of a deeper past are always there in ways that bear examining. By starting with the distant past and bringing our questions forward in time, we can find a space to explore and discuss tough issues that often polarize people today. Sources may include selections from the Bible, medieval epic, and the arts. This course has several Vassar faculty guest speakers who work on these issues in the modern period, and it also features practitioners in various fields beyond academia who discuss how their undergraduate studies in the humanities and social sciences shaped their lives. Students all have the chance to attend a dinner with one of the speakers outside of class. Nancy Bisaha, Marc Epstein.
Two 75-minute periods.
Course Format: CLS -
CLCS 256 - Building Inclusive Communities Semester Offered: Fall and Spring
0.5 unit(s)
(Same as EDUC 256 ) As Vassar College continues to work toward establishing a community characterized by a strong sense of inclusion and belonging, and one that can sustain challenging dialogues, we seek to support this college-wide goal. This course explores four critical themes related to developing and sustaining inclusive communities: personal growth and well-being; intimacy; social identity & power; and effective communication & conflict resolution. Skills and knowledge in these areas can be immediately applied to nurturing more supportive, resilient, and effective student living situations, clubs, teams, classes, and the college-wide community. They are also very important to success and well-being beyond college life – in family and personal relationships, work situations, civic engagement and volunteer situations, activist groups, etc.
Enrolled students should be prepared to step outside their “comfort zones.” They should have an interest in actively engaging in class discussions and experiential exercises, they should have an interest in learning techniques, gaining tools and increasing skills to effectively communicate across differences (differences in living styles and habits, differences in social identity, and differences in personal identity), they should be prepared to explore how vulnerability can benefit them and their relationships, and to explore the relationship between their own personal growth and well-being and the well-being of the communities they are a part of. Candice Lowe Swift.
First six-week course.
One 3-hour period.
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CLCS 260 - Fundamentals of Grantwriting Semester Offered: Spring
0.5 unit(s)
Writing effective grant applications is a valuable skill in many fields, including the scholarly world, the arts, the non-profit sector, community organizing, and government. In this course students gain familiarity with tools for grants research. They study model grant applications and track current trends in government and philanthropic funding, through readings and through discussions with local leaders. Each student partners with a local agency to define needs, research funding sources, and draft and revise a grant proposal on the agency’s behalf. Rebecca Edwards.
Prerequisite(s): Permission of the instructor.
Course Format: INT -
CLCS 270 - Global Problems, Local Policy Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)
This course pairs students with local elected officials who are researching policy initiatives related to affordable housing, health, climate action, criminal justice reform, and other goals. The course includes class meetings, collaboration with team partners, and individual research. Readings and discussions identify community needs in consultation with other policymakers and with local and national issue-oriented groups. Students share findings in an end-of-semester forum; final work may include public advocacy materials, legislative bills, or policy proposals in other formats. Students learn about the respective roles of different levels of politics (town, county, state, national). and about the possibilities and limits of local government action to transform communities. Note: students may have some choice of the policy areas in which they work but should prepare to be flexible. Rebecca Edwards.
One 2-hour period.
Course Format: INT -
CLCS 290 - Community-Engaged Learning
0.5 or 1 unit(s)
Course Format: INT
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