Global Arc

How do musicals work? Focusing primarily on the American musical post-WWII, we will look at the phenomenon of musical theatre, analyzing musicals both as texts and as performances, and considering the musical's unique conventions of form and narrative. We will use a variety of critical methods to address several related questions, including: how and why are audiences and performers affected by music and singing? What kinds of cultural and political work do musicals do? What about the experience and form of musical theatre, the friction or fusion of song, dance, and script, makes it enduringly popular and perhaps particularly American?

This course explores Rome as an enduring part of the Western imagination. There are many different Romes that overlap in the same space, and we will uncover how these 'cities' interact. Students will study Rome's topography, monuments from antiquity to the modern day, their meaning over time and how they create an enduring idea of Rome. Sources include primary literature from antiquity to the early modern period, 20th and 21st century novels and poetry, maps, travel guides, and film. Assignments are two short papers, work through term on a final research paper with drafts, discussion posts and short presentations.

As the United States celebrates its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, the ideal of freedom still seems to resonate as much as ever. But what does freedom actually mean? Where does the idea come from? Is it the same thing as liberty? This introductory first-year seminar explores the heritage of this concept in the Western tradition, starting with the Greeks and Romans, proceeding through the English, French and American Revolutions, and ending with the liberation movements of the late twentieth century.

Science generates an abundance of strange, expressive, and inspiring visuals. Animation, as a medium, can sequence expansive sets of images. In this creative production course, students will interface with a range of scientific disciplines, crafting short animations that explore, explain, or experiment with their visual output. They will apply varied workflows of filmmaking, photography, and design and then visit labs and archives on campus to connect these practices to the people and processes behind the science. The semester will culminate in the production of a short film, directed by each student, expanding on a topic from the class.

This seminar explores medical storytelling in film and TV. We begin in the field of obstetrics, examining the educational documentary All My Babies (1953), commissioned by the Georgia Department of Public Health to be disseminated to Black midwives for the purposes of training. We then examine the field of emergency medicine as it is represented on the first season of The Pitt (2025). Finally, we turn our attention to chronic illness and the way it is pictured- or not pictured- on our social media feeds. Students will research a chronic illness of their choice and present their findings to the class in an end-of-semester symposium.

This course explores how genetic disruptions impact brain function. We will integrate fundamental knowledge of neuroscience with humanistic perspectives from fictional narratives and autobiographies. Diseases that may be covered include Alzheimer's disease, phenylketonuria (PKU), spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), Huntington's disease, and rare neurodevelopmental syndromes. In addition, broad societal consequences will be debated, such as how resources are allocated for scientific research, patient access to cutting-edge therapeutics, and newborn screening and genetic testing.

Do you love watching dance? Have you ever wondered how a moment of movement was made--or why it held your attention? Choreography is everywhere--from Broadway stages to concert halls, stadiums, screens, and social media feeds. This course explores choreography across historical and contemporary forms, including Golden Era musicals, the Super Bowl halftime show, drill teams, site-specific work, concert dance, and TikTok. Students will watch and discuss works, attend performances, research a dance topic of interest, and create an original project in a medium of their choice, examining how movement expresses culture, values, and social change.

Why are people so anxious about performance? In the age of social media, there is growing suspicion of "performative" people and the artifice of what we see online. This anxiety goes back millennia, leading to a mischaracterization of performance as what's not "real." Surveying the legacy of this antitheatrical bias, this course explores everyday performance not as artifice, but as something that has real effects in the world. We'll discuss social media trends, live theater, films, and identity; read critical theories of performance from anthropology, philosophy, and linguistics; and embody performance ourselves in the studio component.

In honor of America's 250th anniversary, this class explores a moral realist case for American constitutional democracy against some of its critics. In particular, it will explore the case from a standpoint of natural law theory. We will explore the argument that this view is mistaken and that a robust moral defense of American constitutional democracy is possible from a natural law perspective that builds on the ancient thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero, and evolves through the thought of people like Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suarez.

This course considers the impact of medical history, its advances and effects, in various historical periods and in dialogue with literary representations of human experience. Starting with definitions of medical humanities (in technology, philosophy, social sciences and religious studies), we will explore medical history in diverse literary texts chosen from the sixteenth- to the twenty-first centuries. The potential interface between ethics (external, professional or societal codes) and morals (internal, conscience driven values) will be considered.