This class draws upon the disciplines of history, law, and religious studies to understand how religious liberty has developed in the Anglo-American tradition. It traces a thousand-year trajectory by starting with the medieval doctrine of ¿two swords,¿ temporal and spiritual, in order to provide historical context for the American separation of church and state. It ends with contemporary Supreme Court battles over the free exercise clause.

Religion plays an uncertain role in global politics. Scholars, journalists, and others point to it variously as a pathogen in the otherwise smoothly functioning international system or as a potential salve on a desperately broken global order. Yet, these perspectives¿along with nearly every other understanding of global politics¿acknowledge that religion is an undeniably important part of that system. Scholars have developed a wide range of theories and methods for understanding its role.

Starting with a play text, this interdisciplinary course guides students through the ways theatre artists and psychologists understand character and behavior. Drawing on theory and practices stemming from acting, scenography, dramaturgy, playwriting, and directing along with behavioral and developmental psychology, students explore the ways in which character is revealed and made visible to differing audiences.

This course asks two questions: what does it mean to look at literature from an Islamic perspective and what does it mean to look at Islam from the angle of its literatures? This will open doors onto Muslim modes of thought, being, and critique as a way to destabilize Eurocentric thinking. The course seeks to correct abiding scholarly and popular stereotypes of Islam as puritanical, conservative, or unimaginative. At its core, this course takes up the idea that our world is comprised of narratives.

This course explores crime fiction¿prose novels, graphic novels, and short stories¿from 20th and 21st century Asia and the Pacific Rim. Our focus will be on stories that intersect with social, cultural, and political themes related to matters of justice, allowing us to utilize multiple disciplinary lenses, including those of law, literature, history, sociology, anthropology, and gender studies. Topical sub-themes to be explored include political coercion, political malfeasance, gendered violence, colonialism, migration, and human trafficking.

This course is designed as a critical interdisciplinary introduction to the many histories and stories of photography, from its origins in the desire to work with light and shadows to craft an image, to the declarations of its so-called "death" in the digital age. We will begin with theoretical questions of what a photograph actually is, what it does, and how we look at and interpret them. As a starting point, we will examine the mediums disputed beginnings and the investigators and inventors who searched for methods to "write" with light and fix an image.

This Connections course will develop your understanding of the natural world through the lenses of art, history, and science. We will explore the natural history of local ecosystems in the Pacific Northwest including the history and ecology of the plants and animals in these systems. Through various activities that will include guest Professors from varying disciplines, such as nature walks, field journals, eco-art, and quiet time in nature, you will hone your observation skills and contrast how different disciplines study and understand nature.

When human beings watch a performance, do we "suspend" our disbelief? Do we "lose" ourselves in the illusion of the fictive world created on stage or on a screen? Even if that "feels" like what we are doing, is it what is happening in our brains, in our cells and synapses and neurons? And what is happening in the minds of artists who are performing? What does it mean, cognitively, to enact a story, to be in role as a character, or to be a spectator for theatrical events? And why does neuroscience need and use theatrical metaphors to explain cognition?

This interdisciplinary course investigates walking as a transformative practice for understanding and engaging with the environment, drawing on perspectives from environmental arts and humanities, social sciences, physical sciences, and cultural studies. Students explore the sensory, cognitive, aesthetic, and political dimensions of walking while considering how movement through landscapes¿whether urban or natural¿shapes both personal and collective knowledge.

Why do some pitches sound better together than others? How did we decide the frequency that would correspond to each note on a piano keyboard? Why is Western music based on 12 pitches? All of these musical questions have mathematical answers. In this course, we will explore the interplay between math and music. Musical topics will include rhythm notation, polyrhythms, pitch, tuning, 12-tone music, and music generation.