Integrative Studies

In this course, students examine both ancient and pre-industrial stories and learn to recognize the unifying motifs that they share with the myths of contemporary societies. Within a comparative framework, the course uses diverse artifacts from anthropology, psychology, literature, and religion to discover questions of origin as the story of the hero unfolds. Through this process, students examine ways to organize and evaluate human experience as they cultivate diverse perspectives about themselves, others, and the world.

This course takes an interdisciplinary approach to analyze the impact and influence that surfing has had on history, culture, literature, art, design, and ecology. By examining the sport from its early days of crafting crude wooden boards to it becoming a billion-dollar industry, students learn to identify how human innovation interacts with and alters the physical and historical realms of time and place.

This course will chronicle the invention of the bicycle and the evolution of its design, and students will analyze its multitude of uses for recreation, competition, and transportation. By examining the evolution of both the bicycle’s materiality and utility, students are challenged to make interdisciplinary connections between art, design, physics, human anatomy, ecology, and urban planning.

This course outlines several relationships that evolve from the study of oceanography. Topics to be investigated include the origin and history of the ocean basin, atmospheric and weather circulation, the dynamics of waves and tides, and an introduction to marine life. Through this lens, students identify the direct impact that humans have on the local and regional coastline of the Pacific Ocean.