Summer Term at Washington College

AMS/ENG 209 Introduction to American Literature and Culture I

Monday-Friday 9:00am-11:45am
Instructor: DeProspo

AMS/ENG 209 is gateway courses to the American Studies major at Washington College, counting both for Humanities General Education credit and prerequisite credit for American Studies.  The course is also writing intensive, its course work being exclusively a series of short papers.
 
The American Studies major, the oldest cross-disciplinary major at Washington College, allows unusually independent students virtually to design their own majors, including both Social Science and Humanities courses that prepare students for careers in education, government, law, and social service, among others. It is exceptionally keyed to the College's historical heritage and provides students with all of the opportunities afforded by the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, in particular the Center's many paid internships. 

ANT 105: Intro to Anthropology

Monday-Friday 12:00-2:45
Instructor: Lampman

The study of human diversity with emphasis on cultural anthropology. Topics include the anthropological perspective, resources of culture, organization of material life, systems of relationships and global forms of inequality. The course examins how anthropologists apply their skills to solve contemporary human social problems. Basic ethnographic interviewing skills. Introduction to ethnography.

ANT 296: Archaeology Field School

Participants will engage in all phases of field archaeology and laboratory analysis, including site discovery techniques, surveying, stratigraphic excavation, and recording. Working at Barwick’s Ordinary provides students the opportunity to gain experience at a prehistoric and an historic site, all in one field school.

When: May 30 - June 23, 2023 (Full Day)

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 Email Dr. Julie Markin [[email protected]] with questions or to register.

ART 261: Introductory Drawing Studio

Monday-Friday
Instructor: Patterson

This course explores the theories and concepts of drawing from a contemporary perspective. The curriculum, while focusing on basic skills and concepts of drawing, is interdisciplinary in nature. In addition to drawing fundamentals, the course will place emphasis on connecting conceptual thinking to one's broader creative practice. Contemporary and historical examples of artists working within such a creative practice are covered through lectures and screenings. 

 BUS 194 Special Topics: Personal Finance

Monday-Friday 9-11:45am
Instructor: Tsai

This course is designed to help students develop personal financial planning skills to achieve their financial goals. Topics will include budgeting, taxes, consumer credit, house and motor vehicle purchase and financing decisions, life insurance, fundamental investments, and retirement planning. After taking this course, students should be able to apply learned skills to manage their financial resources and make financial decisions with confidence. 

CMS/CRS 294: Special Topic: Headwaters to Bay

Much of Headwaters to Bay will take place in the field, aways from campus. Students will have the opportunity to travel throughout the region, learning from experts and seeing how a sense of place can impact their own creative voice.

Instructor: Kate Livie & Benjamin Ford

This experiential program brings students to the intersection of arts and the environment, exploring five key topics—flow, tradition, transformation, subsidence, and resilience—through field and creative work as a pathway to understanding the modern Chesapeake Bay. Through a series of themed explorations of the Bay from its largest tributary all the way to its confluence with the ocean, students will discover how the environment and a sense of place impacts the people of the contemporary Bay region—and use their experiences to develop a unique body of creative work in response. Students will prepare for their experiences in the field with work in the classroom, dividing their time between readings, discussion, and lectures on background history, environment, and culture with arts instruction and workshops in environmental creative writing, photography and videography, sketching, journaling and watercolor. They will then embark on several two-to-three day field experiences, beginning on the Susquehanna and concluding on the Coastal Bays of the Lower Eastern Shore. Throughout, they will document their travels through journals, sketches, and/or photography/ videography. Upon returning for their final wrap-up in the classroom, students will use their work to create a final, comprehensive project. This may be an illustrated essay, photo essay or video essay that explores the meaning of place in the Chesapeake—its environmental fragility, its productivity, its beauty, its threatened culture, and its possible future.

CSI 111: Computer Science 1

Monday-Friday 12:00-2:45pm
Instructor: Lobo

Introduction to programming in Python

CRS 294: Black Life in Bellevue: Documenting African AmericanCultural Landscape Along the Chesapekae Bay

Monday-Friday Special Times
Dates: July 3-July 29, 2023
Instructor: Chiarappa

From July 3 to July 29, 2023, the Center for Environment and Society and its Past is Present Initiative will partner with the Village of Bellevue, Maryland and the Bellevue Passage Museum to conduct a field school aimed at using the venue’s cultural landscape to advance historical understanding and cultural conservation of an African American community whose aspirations and development were shaped by the Chesapeake estuarine environment. Led by field school co-directors Michael Chiarappa, Ph.D. and Janet Sheridan, M.A. and community coordinators Drs. Dennis and Mary DeShields, students will be immersed in Bellevue’s historical/cultural resources and its contemporary cultural life. Residing and working in Bellevue for four weeks, students will learn the skills required to document cultural landscapes—measuring, drawing, and photographing buildings, using historic documents and visual materials, and conducting oral histories with longtime residents. Bay. The materials generated through these exercises will be used to create history exhibits and public programming for the Bellevue Passage Museum, as well as serving as resources for African American heritage tourism in the area.

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EDU 252: Educational Psychology

Monday-Friday 9:00am-11:45am
Instructor: Clarke-De Reza

This course reflects knowledge derived from theory, research, and professional practice as it covers human development and learning, inquiry and research, and experience-based principles of effective practice. Such practice encourages: 1) intellectual, social, and personal development; 2) creating instructional opportunities adapted to diversity in learners, e.g. individual and cross-cultural developmental variability, approaches to learning, and multiple intelligences including spatial/artistic intelligence; 3) strategies for developing critical thinking, problem solving, and performance skills; and 4) formal and informal strategies for assessing intellectual, social, and physical development.  

MAT 109: Statistical Inference and Data Analysis

Monday-Friday 9:00-11:45am
Instructor: Poulsen

Introduction to programming in Python

Introduction to the appropriate methods for analyzing data and designing experiments. After a study of various measures of central tendency and dispersion, the course develops the basic principles of testing hypotheses, estimating parameters, and reaching decisions. MAT 109 and BUS 109 may not both be taken for credit.

MAT 111: Differential Calculus

Monday-Friday 9:00-11:45am
Instructor: Ramsey

Analytic geometry, the derivative and differential, elementary functions, limits, continuity, and applications. Prerequisite: It is strongly recommended that a student should have strong algebra and trigonometric skills before taking this course.

MAT 112: Integral Calculus

Monday-Friday 3:00-5:45
Instructor: Poulsen

The indefinite integral, the definite integral, the fundamental theorem of the integral calculus, sequences, series, and applications. Prerequisite: MAT 111 or MAT 106-107 or permission of the instructor.

MUS/ANT 104: Intro to World Music and Ethnomusciology

Monday-Friday 12:00-2:45pm
Instructor: McCollum

An introduction to music of the world, including popular, folk, religious and classical traditions. Explores the way ethnomusicologists organize and analyze knowledge about the world, while investigating the ways music acquires meaning in performances that are socially, historically, and culturally situated.

MUS 106: Rock, Pop, and American Culture

Monday-Friday 12:00-2:45pm
Instructor: Schweitzer

An examination of popular music in America from the 1830s through the modern day. With a particular emphasis being placed on the 1950s and 1960s, students will develop an understanding of the cultural, political, and economic forces of these eras and will examine how popular music history intersects with all aspects of American history and culture. This course also examines several important threads in popular music history, including the ever-present, but ever changing, role of race relations, the impact of evolving technologies, and the history of the music industry. In addition to reading the assigned textbook, students are also asked to watch/listen to important archival performances, televised interviews with notable musicians, radio interviews with scholars of popular culture, and other relevant primary sources.

PHL/REL 394: Special Topic: Confucianism and Ru Meditation

Monday-Friday 3:00-5:45pm
Instructor: Song

This course introduces the philosophical concepts, sociological foundation, political implementation, and spiritual/religious practices of the Asian Ru (Confucian) tradition. While remaining sensitive to its varying characteristics through different historical periods, the course also presents Ruism’s development across Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, Vietnam and Indonesia, and studies its historical interaction with Western cultures. Students are encouraged to think over and practice Ruist insights in a broader context of philosophical and religious studies, while being able to compare it with other major Asian and Western philosophical and religious traditions. Special acquired skills: students will learn Meditation in Motion in its varying forms, such as breathing, sleeping, quiet-sitting and Taiji martial arts, to strengthen their mind-body general well-being and increase creativity and productivity.

POL 394 Special Topic: Freedom in American Political Life

Monday-Friday 9:00-11:45
Instructor: Prud'homme

This distinctive course explores the contested meanings of freedom in American political thought. We explore the historical origins of the American constitutional project; the defense of a system of self-government with freedom at its heart; and the various interpretations of freedom which have emerged in American legal and political theory. Throughout the course we place our focus on the great ideas of freedom and their concrete instantiations in political and legal practice. Representative topics include economic freedom, state regulation, religious freedom, personal autonomy and civil rights and liberties. Students connect with leading experts enhancing the learning experience.

Counts toward POLS major and minor distribution requirements