The U.S. has 2.3 million people in prison with glaring racial and class disparities. Why is this? Is there something distinctive about American culture and/or politics that produces these outcomes? Are we simply a more crime-prone people or a more punitive people who impose exceptionally harsh sanctions? This class will explore changing ideas of crime and punishment in the U.S. through philosophical, historical, religious and social scientific perspectives.

This course examines the relationship between the evolving nature of work in the US over the last 50 years and concurrent developments in educational policies. The relationship between work and public education is complex. It is one thing to argue for an education agenda that emphasizes 'higher cognitive outcomes' for everyone based on current and future trends in the nature of work in the US. Yet it may be too much to expect that even a highly successful education system alone can shape and sustain an economy.

While Americans have assorted perspectives on capitalism, many students arrive on campus with critical assessments of this socio-economic system. In this course, students will develop a significant scholarly foundation in the history of capitalism, its expansion to global dominance, and in theorists' assessment of its impact. We'll commence this gargantuan task with an anthropological lens attentive to how others in this world have experienced capitalism.

This course examines the effects of water use, dams, and habitat on salmon in the Columbia basin through multi-disciplinary perspectives including art, history, policy, and ecology. Water and Wild Nature in the Columbia Basin begins in the summer. A series of readings will prepare students for a two week summer study away component and optional one week rafting trip on the Middle Fork Salmon river. Pacific Northwest history, identity, Lower and Upper Columbia tribes' cultural practices, climate change, and ecology will inform this course's content.

Literary text-mining is a decades-old field that uses quantitative methods to answer enduring literary questions about texts' meaning, significance, politics, context, and more. Text-mining methods offer researchers the chance to answer new questions at larger scales. This course introduces students to a variety of computational methods, from foundational counting methods to machine-learning. Students will investigate several literary datasets using Jupyter notebooks or Pycharm and the Python programming language.

This freshman seminar is designed for students who are interested in cities and fascinated by urban life. Our semester is devoted to the field-based exploration of three emblematic features of northwest urbanism: dead malls, waterfront promenades, and ethnic enclaves. As we explore these urban themes, students will have ample opportunities to find their footing in the scholarship, and will explore ideas via active, field-based research pertinent to the urban planning and to life in the city.

CONN 195 introduces students to the values of a liberal arts education as it has been classically formulated. It contrasts the ideal of a mutually enriching relationship among its principal academic areas (humanities, creative arts, sciences, social sciences) with the current situation in higher education where these areas have become isolated and hierarchically ordered according to their perceived prestige and value to society.

Data & Reality is a multidisciplinary course that delves into the myriad ways data shapes, defines, and mediates our daily experiences. Drawing from fields such as art, computer science, sociology, and philosophy, students will critically examine how data collection, interpretation, and dissemination influence our perceptions, decision-making processes, and interpersonal interactions.

This course explores the art of collective negotiation, organizing, and civil rights advocacy through a semester-long study of the 1955 -1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott. The course is organized around a published documentary history of the bus strike titled Daybreak of Freedom by Stewart Burns, and the 2001 dramatic film "Boycott" directed by Clark Johnson and starring Jeffrey Wright and Terrence Howard. The course has three areas of focus. First, students learn the legal challenges and court opinions involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Work is an activity that consumes much of our existence. Whether we love it, hate it, avoid it, struggle through it, tell others how to do it, or worry when we don¿t have it, most of us will center some form of work in our lives. Work is a site for observing social power: Class, race, gender, ethnicity, disability, age, and other social dynamics intersect and condition people¿s life chances beyond the workplace. It is also the focus of a great deal of music, comedy, theater, film, and art.