College Bulletin 2022-2023 
    
    Apr 27, 2024  
College Bulletin 2022-2023 [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

Course Search


 

Engineering

  
  • ENGR 028. Mobile Robotics


    (Cross-listed as CPSC 082 )
    This course addresses the problems of controlling and motivating robots to act intelligently in dynamic, unpredictable environments. Major topics will include mechanical design, robot perception, kinematics and inverse kinematics, navigation and control, optimization and learning, and robot simulation techniques. To demonstrate these concepts, we will be looking at mobile robots, robot arms and positioning devices, and virtual agents. Labs will focus on programming robots to execute tasks and to explore and interact with their environment.
    Prerequisite: Either ENGR 019  or ENGR 056 , or permission of the instructor. MATH 027  or MATH 028  is recommended.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab required.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for COGS
    Fall 2022. Phillips.
    Fall 2023. Zucker.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 029. Embedded Systems


    Connected systems that used embedded microcontrollers are becoming more and more pervasive, with applications in the car, home, and body. This course will explore how to design embedded systems using a reconfigurable microcontroller system. Topics will include biomedical signal acquisition and processing, numerical computation, and audio/video signal processing. This course includes a laboratory.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 015  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural Science and engineering practicum.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Delano.
    Spring 2024. Delano.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 035. Solar Energy Systems


    Fundamental physical concepts and system design techniques of solar energy systems are covered. Topics include solar geometry, components of solar radiation, analysis of thermal and photovoltaic solar collectors, energy storage, computer simulation of system performance, computer-aided design optimization, and economic feasibility assessment. This course includes a laboratory. Offered in the fall semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: PHYS 004 , MATH 025 , some coding experience in a procedural computer language such as Matlab, Python, or C, or the permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 041. Thermofluid Mechanics


    This course introduces macroscopic thermodynamics: first and second laws, properties of pure substances, and applications using system and control volume formulation. Also introduced is fluid mechanics: development of conservation theorems, hydrostatics, and the dynamics of one-dimensional fluid motion with and without friction. 
    Prerequisite: ENGR 006 ENGR 012 , and MATH 033 , MATH 034 , or MATH 035 .
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab and Problem session required.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Macken, Everbach.
    Fall 2023. Staff.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 052. Computer-Aided Manufacturing and Procedural Design


    Topics include computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) and digital fabrication technologies such as computer numerical controlled (CNC) machining and laser cutting. The course will provide a grounding in basic computational geometry relevant to CAM and CNC, focusing on the connections between tool paths, cutting tool types, and the shapes of the parts to be fabricated. Other areas of study include the effects of tool shape (e.g. rake angle), number of cutting surfaces, and feeds & speeds on machining quality and surface finish. Students will write programs implementing generative design techniques to directly emit sculptures and models in industry-standard file formats such as SVG, STL, and G-code that can be fabricated on equipment at Swarthmore.
    Prerequisite: Either ENGR 015  or ENGR 019 , or permission of the instructor. MATH 027  or MATH 028  is recommended.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab required.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Zucker.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 053. Inclusive Engineering Design


    Technology created by humans reflects our biases and priorities. Engineering a better world requires an interrogation of how we design. This course will combine critical works in technology studies with hands-on, student directed design projects. The course will be divided into three modules that will investigate the relationship between design and bodies, identities, and society. Readings will draw from fields such as disability studies and science and technology studies. Students will apply design methods such as universal design, human centered design, and critical design. This course is open to both Engineering students and non-majors with some previous design experience, such as Computer Science or Art majors.
    Prerequisite: Any course involving design of physical objects or software, for example: ENGR 015 , ENGR 006 CPSC 071 , ARTT 050 , THEA 004A THEA 004B , THEA 004C , or permission of the instructor.
    Natural Sciences and engineering practicum.
    1.0 credit
    Fall 2022. Delano.
    Fall 2023. Delano.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 055. Statistical Signal Processing


    A first-course on the theory and applications of statistical signal processing. Topic will benefit students interested in the design and analysis of signal processing systems, i.e., to extract information from noisy signals - radar engineer, sonar engineer, geophysicist, oceanographer, biomedical engineer, communications engineer, economist, statistician, physicist, etc. The course provides numerous examples, which illustrate both theory and applications for problems such as high-resolution spectral analysis, system identification, digital filter design, adaptive beamforming and noise cancellation, and tracking and localization. 
    Prerequisite: ENGR 014  and MATH 027  
    Natural science and engineering.
    1 credit
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 056. Modeling and Optimization for Engineering


    What is the optimal way to direct light into the body to destroy a tumor? What is the lightest bridge we can construct without the beams breaking? To answer such questions, students will learn how to generate a computer-based model of the physics, and then use optimization to make design decisions. The majority of the course will focus on optimization, and topics may include: constrained least-squares, linear programming, convex optimization, data-driven optimization, non-convex optimization, and deep learning.
    Prerequisite: MATH 027  or MATH 028 , MATH 043  or MATH 044 , ENGR 012 , ENGR 014 , and ENGR 019  are required.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH
    Spring 2024. Ganapati.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 057. Operations Research


    (Cross-listed as ECON 032 )
    This course introduces students to mathematical modeling and optimization to solve complex, multivariable problems such as those relating to efficient business and government operations, environmental pollution control, urban planning, and water, energy, and food resources. Introduction to the AMPL computer modeling language is included. A case study project is required for students taking the course as a natural sciences and engineering practicum (ENGR 057). The project is optional for students taking the course as ECON 032 .
    Prerequisite: familiarity with matrix methods, especially solution of simultaneous linear equations, i.e., elementary linear algebra; but a full course in linear algebra is not required.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum only if taken as ENGR 057
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 058. Control Theory and Design


    This introduction to the control of engineering systems includes analysis and design of linear control systems using root locus, frequency response, and state space techniques. It also provides an introduction to digital control techniques, including analysis of A/D and D/A converters, digital controllers, and numerical control algorithms.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 012  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2024. Piovoso.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 059. Mechanics of Solids


    Internal stresses and changes of form that occur when forces act on solid bodies or when internal temperature varies are covered as well as state of stress and strain, strength theories, stability, deflections, photo elasticity, and elastic and plastic theories. 
    Students are required to attend at the most four full labs the first half of the semester and the second half of the semester is self-scheduled.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 006  or the equivalent.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. O’Donnell.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 060. Structural Analysis


    This course covers fundamental principles of structural mechanics including statically determinate and intermediate analysis of frames and trusses, approximate analysis of indeterminate structures, virtual work principles, and elements of matrix methods of analysis and digital computer applications.
    Offered in the fall semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 006 , or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2023. O’Donnell.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 061. Geotechnical Engineering: Theory and Design


    Soil and rock mechanics are explored, including soil and rock formation, soil mineralogy, soil types, compaction, soil hydraulics, consolidation, stresses in soil masses, slope stability, and bearing capacity as well as their application to engineering design problems.
    Offered in the fall semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: Grade of B or better in ENGR 006  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2023. O’Donnell.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 062. Structural Design


    This course covers the behavior and design of steel and concrete structural members. Topics will include a discussion of the applicable design codes and their applications to structural design.
    Normally offered in the spring semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 006  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. O’Donnell.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 063. Water Quality and Pollution Control


    Students will study elements of water quality management and treatment of wastewaters through laboratory and field measurements of water quality indicators, analysis of wastewater treatment processes, sewage treatment plant design, computer modeling of the effects of waste discharge, storm water, and nonpoint pollution on natural waters, and environmental impact assessment.
    Offered in the fall semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: CHEM 010 , MATH 025 , or the equivalent or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH
    Fall 2023. Plata.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 065. Introduction to Biomechanics


    This course will provide an introduction to the mechanical behavior of biological tissues and systems. It is designed to enable you to analyze human movement by utilizing basic principles of engineering mechanics as tools for discovery and understanding. Principles of statics and dynamics, as applied to biomechanical systems, and concepts in mechanics of materials, as applied to biological tissues, will be reviewed and introduced. You will be provided an appreciation for the complex structures of biologic tissues that contribute to material properties and biomechanical function. Aspects of human anatomy and physiology will be introduced as appropriate for considering factors that enable human movement and for analyzing human movement. Topics will include equilibrium analysis in biomechanical systems; study of the neuromotor system; study of human posture maintenance, locomotion and vertical jumping; and study of the structure and function of biological tissues, and their mechanical properties.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 006  
    Natural science and engineering.
    Lab required.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Towles.
    Fall 2023. Towles.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 066. Environmental Systems


    Students will explore mathematical modeling and systems analysis of problems in the fields of water resources, water quality, air pollution, urban planning, and public health. Techniques of optimization including linear and integer programming are used as frameworks for modeling such problems. Dynamic systems simulation methods and a laboratory are included.
    Offered in the spring semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: Recommended: ENGR 057  or the equivalent, or the permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 071. Digital Signal Processing


    Students will be introduced to difference equations and discrete-time transform theory, the Z-transform and Fourier representation of sequences, and fast Fourier transform algorithms. Discrete time transfer functions and filter design techniques are also introduced. This course introduces the architecture and programming of digital signal processors.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 012  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab required.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 072. Electronic Circuit Applications


    The student will design electronic circuits that sense the surroundings (light, temperature, sound…), process the signal, and respond via an actuator (motor, light…) or communication to a computer.  Students will design and debug circuits, lay out printed circuit boards using CAD software, and solder the components onto the board.   Electronic designs include those with diodes, op-amps for amplification and filtering of electronic signals, and power MOSFET transistors used as switching devices for actuators. Students will program microcontrollers, including on-chip peripherals, and write code to process interrupts.  Mixed signal devices (A/D and D/A converters) are introduced and used throughout the course.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 012  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab required.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 073. Physical Electronics


    Topics include the physical properties of semiconductor materials and semiconductor devices; the physics of electron/hole dynamics; band and transport theory; and electrical, mechanical, and optical properties of semiconductor crystals. Devices examined include diodes, transistors, FETs, LEDs, lasers, and pin photo-detectors. Modeling and fabrication processes are covered.
    Offered in the spring semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 011  or PHYS 008  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2023. Molter.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 074. Semiconductor Devices and Circuits


    This course explores the operation and application of semiconductor devices, including diodes, transistors (bipolar and field effect) and other devices. This includes terminal characteristics of semiconductor devices and circuits, including small signal models of single and multi-transistor amplifiers, and transistor-level modeling of operational amplifiers. The course also examines the speed and input-output characteristics of logic devices, the design of power circuits and problems of stability and oscillation in electronic circuits.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 011  or permission of the instructor.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 075. Electromagnetic Theory I


    The static and dynamic treatment of engineering applications of Maxwell’s equations will be explored. Topics include macroscopic field treatment of interactions with dielectric, conducting, and magnetic materials; analysis of forces and energy storage as the basis of circuit theory; electromagnetic waves in free space and guidance within media; plane waves and modal propagation; and polarization, reflection, refraction, diffraction, and interference. The lab will include optical applications using lasers, fiber and integrated optical devices, modulators, nonlinear materials, and solid-state detectors.
    Offered in the fall semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 012 , or PHYS 008 , or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Molter.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 076. Electromagnetic Theory II


    Advanced topics in optics and microwaves, such as laser operation, resonators, Gaussian beams, interferometry, anisotropy, nonlinear optics, modulation and detection. Laboratories for both courses will be oriented toward optical applications using lasers, fiber and integrated optical devices, modulators, nonlinear materials, and solid-state detectors. The lab will include optical applications using lasers, fiber and integrated optical devices, modulators, nonlinear materials, and solid-state detectors.
    Offered as demand and staffing permits.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 075  or a physics equivalent.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 078. Communication Systems


    Theory and design principles of analog and digital communication systems are explored. Topics include frequency domain analysis of signals; signal transmission and filtering; random signals and noise; AM, PM, and FM signals; sampling and pulse modulation; digital signal transmission; PCM; coding; and information theory. Applications to practical systems such as television and data communications are covered.
    Offered in the spring semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 012  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2024. Moser.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 081. Thermal Energy Conversion


    This course covers the development and application of the principles of thermal energy analysis to energy conversion systems. The concepts of availability, ideal and real mixtures, and chemical and nuclear reactions are explored.
    Offered in the spring semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 041  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 083. Fluid Mechanics


    Fluid mechanics is treated as a special case of continuum mechanics in the analysis of fluid flow systems. Conservation of mass, momentum, and energy are covered along with applications to the study of inviscid and viscous, incompressible, and compressible fluids.
    Offered in the spring semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 041  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2024. Masroor.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENGR 084. Heat Transfer


    Students are introduced to the physical phenomena involved in heat transfer. Analytical techniques are presented together with empirical results to develop tools for solving problems in heat transfer by conduction, forced and free convection, and radiation. Numerical techniques are discussed for the solution of conduction problems.
    Offered in the fall semester of alternate years.
    Prerequisite: ENGR 041  or permission of the instructor.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Lab included.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2022. Macken.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • ENGR 090. Engineering Design


    Students work on a design project that is the culminating exercise for all senior engineering majors. Students investigate a problem of their choice in an area of interest to them under the guidance of a faculty member. A comprehensive written report and an oral presentation are required.
    This class is available only to engineering majors.
    Natural sciences and engineering practicum.
    Writing course Spring only.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Staff.
    Spring 2024. Staff.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • ENGR 093. Directed Reading or Project


    Qualified students may do special work with theoretical, experimental, or design emphasis in an area not covered by regular courses with the permission of a willing faculty supervisor in the department.

    The student and faculty member will agree on a plan and scope of work at the beginning of the term. The student will typically meet weekly with the advisor and will produce written documentation of their work. Directed readings that count for the major are normally expected to include a lab, substantial project, or the equivalent.
    .5 or 1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Engineering  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/engineering


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  

Environmental Studies

  
  • ENVS 001. Introduction to Environmental Studies


    Built around four case studies, this course provides a broad introduction to the inherently interdisciplinary work of environmental studies by providing historical background and examining options for action using tools from a variety of perspectives, chiefly from the sciences and social sciences. Course themes include tragedy of the commons issues, and rights and environmental justice; sustainable development, including increasing urbanization of humanity, population growth, and Kuznets curve; global climate change science and debate; feedback loops and tipping points; and community adaptation and resilience.
    Non-division.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH
    Spring 2023. Graves, Padilioni.
    Spring 2024. Staff.
    Spring 2025. Padilioni.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 002. Human Nature, Technology and the Environment


    This course examines the relationships among the environment, human cultures, and the technologies they produce.  The continually accelerating pace of technological change has had effects on both the local and global environment. Although technology may be responsible for environmental degradation, it may also serve as an important societal mechanism that can help us evolve toward a sustainable society.  This course investigates how humans evolved, what tools they employed, and what the consequences of new technologies were for human kind and the surrounding environment.  Special attention is given to how the problems of the 21st century relate to circumstances of the past.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 005. FYS: Environmental Impacts of Nobel Prize Winning Science


    (Cross-listed as CHEM 003D )
    This course will discuss the environmental impacts and legacy of big science, as discussed through the lens of Nobel Prize winning discoveries. The course will introduce themes centered around plastics, GMOs, pesticides, climate change, etc and will discuss how key scientific discoveries have impacted human lives in both positive and negative ways. Along with reading and discussing the scientific literature, this course will also introduce popular scientific writing and reporting. Throughout the course we will also include discussions relating to diversity and inclusion in STEM, ethics, and politicalization of science.

     
    Natural science and engineering.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, GLBL-Core
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 006. First-Year Seminar: Apocalypse: Hope and Despair in the Last Days


    (Cross-listed as RELG 006C )
    For millennia, speculation about the end of the world has fired the political and religious imagination of Western cultures. Today, arguably, the most potent threat to planetary well-being is the unchecked advance of the fossil fuels extraction industry. This course will study the range of reactions to this threat inside and outside of the academy, including sustainability politics, on the one hand, and the religious-environmental movement, on the other.
    Many environmentalists argue we are living at “the end of nature” or the time of the “6th great extinction,” while many religious believers, doomsday “preppers” and others, some sympathetic to fossil fuels-apocalypticism, and some not, also assert we are living into the end of the world as we know it.
    Questions will be asked about the history and role of the extractive industries in climate change; how the emerging field of environmental studies can shape productive moral and political responses to this change; and the hope, and the anxieties, of new environmental spiritualities (with special reference to Christian, Amerindian, and Pagan worldviews) to challenge neoliberal economics and engender a living passion for the health of human societies in harmony with the wider natural world.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH
    Fall 2022. Wallace
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 008. Plants and Human Culture.


    This course is a survey of interrelationships between plants and human cultures. Different cultural lenses, such as socio-economic status, cultural heritage, and residential environment (urban vs. rural) will be used to explore landscapes. Issues, such as invasive species, water management and societal benefits of gardens provide opportunities for exploration, discussion and problem solving. Students will complete a semester-long observation project and work in groups to discover more about gardens of different cultures.
    1.0 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH
    Fall 2022. Barton.
    Fall 2023. Barton.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 009. Our Food


    (Cross-listed as BIOL 009 )
    The scale and efficiency of our food system is one of the marvels of the modern world. Yet in many ways this system is broken. This course will address the current state of our agricultural food system from scientific, humanitarian and sustainability perspectives, focusing on the U.S. Each student will grow crop plants and maintain a micro-garden plot on campus, as well as develop educational signage for the public that conveys information about agriculture, food systems and/or their crop. Three full hours of lecture/discussion/lab and one floating hour of fieldwork per week.
    Natural sciences and engineering.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH
    Fall 2022. Pfluger.
    Fall 2023. Pfluger.
    Fall 2024. Pfluger.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 010. Climate Change: Science & Responses


    (Cross-listed as PHYS 001C )
    A study of the complex interplay of factors influencing conditions on the surface of the Earth. Basic concepts from geology, oceanography, and atmospheric science lead to an examination of how the Earth’s climate has varied in the past, what changes are occurring now, and what the future may hold. Besides environmental effects, the economic, political, and ethical implications of global warming are explored, including possible ways to reduce climate change.
    Natural sciences and engineering.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH, GLBL-Core
    Fall 2022. Jensen.
    Fall 2023. Jensen.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 013. Our Trash


    Our trash systems are designed so that throwing things away can be a thoughtless act. However, thought is required to effectively and ethically deal with the colossal amount of trash produced in the U.S. Waste disposal can have significant and often deleterious effects on vulnerable communities, local environments and the global climate. This course focuses on understanding the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of U.S. waste management processes and the science of decomposition. As part of this course, students will participate in a practicum “zero waste” waste prevention project in conjunction with community partners. Multiple field trips. 
    This course counts as an Environmental nataural science course for the ENVS major/minor.
    Natural Sciences and engineering.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH.
    Spring 2023. Pfluger.
    Spring 2024. Pfluger.
    Spring 2025. Pfluger.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 014. Environmental Issues in Native American Communities


    Native American communities face environmental issues and are experiencing direct impacts of climate change on their contemporary lives and cultural lifeways that are deeply connected to the land and surrounding ecosystems. Using illustrative case studies, this class will examine environmental issues and climate change impacts on Native American communities, current conflicts over tribal lands and natural resources, environmental racism, place-based Native activism, and tribal responses to ecological issues and problems. Specific topics will include Indigenous knowledge systems, Indigenous land stewardship, land tenure, treaty rights, politics and policy, energy development on tribal lands, conflicting land-use interests and values, tribal sovereignty and self-determination, and Indigenous environmental justice.
    This course counts as an Environmental humanities for the ENVS major/minor.
    1.0 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH, PEAC.
    Fall 2022. Benally.
    Fall 2023. Benally.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 015. Nature Rx: Wellbeing and the natural world


    A growing body of research demonstrates the positive effects of nature on mood, cognition, and social behavior. In this course, we will explore current research on these topics and develop nature practices that support individual and community wellbeing. As students attending college at an arboretum, incorporating such practices in your everyday life is both much needed and readily accessible. This course will include weekly discussions, outdoor activities, and reflections that empower you to care for yourself and your community throughout college and beyond.   
    1.0 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Fall 2022. Ellow.
    Spring 2023. Ellow.
    Fall 2023. Ellow.
    Spring 2024. Ellow.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 017. Walking as a Way of Knowing


    Poets and artists, scientists and activists all attest to the power of walking. In this course we will explore what moving through the world on foot can teach us-about the natural and urban worlds we live in and about ourselves as products and producers of those worlds. The course is arranged around four broad themes: Walking and the Body, Learning from the Land, Urban Walking, and Walking for Change. From cognitive science to poetry, from wild-plant identification to urban exploration, each class meeting will include a period of walking. We will begin the semester exploring our campus, including the Crum Woods, and eventually move through spaces in Philadelphia and nearby natural lands.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS.
    Fall 2023. Newmann Holmes.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: Environmental Studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 020. Environmental Economics


    (Cross-listed as ECON 076  )
    Introduction to the microeconomics of environmental issues with applications to the design of environmental policy. The course will cover the concepts and methods used in the valuation of environmental goods as well as the design of policy instruments and regulations to improve environmental quality. Specific topics include pollution and environmental degradation, the use of renewable and non-renewable resources, and climate change.
     
    Prerequisite: ECON 001 .  Recommended: ECON 011  
    Social Sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Fall 2023. Peck.
    Fall 2024. Peck.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 021. Disaster Politics and Policies


    (Cross-listed as POLS 045 )
    How does the trauma of disaster influence political processes, institutions, and leaders? How do political processes, institutions, and leaders affect disaster events and their aftermath? Do disasters lead to meaningful policy change, or is their impact fleeting? This course examines the political and policy dynamics associated with disasters– those that are predominantly “natural” (e.g., hurricanes and tornadoes), and those that result mainly from human action or inaction (e.g., airplane crashes, mass shootings, building collapses). Using a variety of cases from different historical periods, different regions of the world, and different levels of political analysis (national, regional, and local), this course will examine the causes and consequences of disaster, policy-making and disaster, and the new professional field of disaster management. We will look critically at the role of NGOs and international aid in disaster relief, as well as international institutions.    
    Not open to students who have taken POLS 010F: The Politics of Disasters.
    Social Sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, GLBL-Core
    Spring 2024. White.
    Spring 2025. White.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 028. Global Environmental Governance


    (Cross-listed as POLS 081 )
    Global climate change, in particular, and environmental issues, in general, have moved to the forefront of public debates. This course examines the governance of these issues from an International Relations perspective. Topics include: multilateral trade agreements and the environment; United Nations processes, agreements, and institutions; climate change finance and environmental foreign aid; multilateral development banks (including the World Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank) and environmental governance; non-state actors; social movements; and global environmental governance and great powers. The course will begin with a political-economic conceptualization of global environmental governance and also introduce students to some fundamental concepts in public policy and environmental regulation. Given this is taught primarily from global governance and International Relations perspectives, it is not suited to students looking to engage in particular countries’ environmental regulation, though student presentations will examine differences across some countries. It is ideal for students to have taken POLS4 prior to taking this course, and students should be ready to apply basic economic concepts to environmental regulation (without which their understanding of the governance of climate change cannot be advanced).
    Prerequisite: One political science course.
    Social Science.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GLBL-Core
    Fall 2022. Kaya.
    Fall 2024. Kaya.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 031. Climate Disruption, Conflict, and Peacemaking


    (Cross-listed as PEAC 055 )
    The course will examine several ways in which climate change is a driving force of violent and nonviolent conflict and creates opportunities for peacemaking and social justice. Already, climate change has been identified by the U.S. military as a threat to national security, offering a new rationale for expanding the military industrial complex. Demands on scarce resources generate and exacerbate regional conflicts and drive mass movements of refugees. Behind these dramatic manifestations of climate stress lie extensive corporate and national interests and hegemonic silences that emerging conflicts often reveal. Conflict also brings new opportunities for peacebuilding, cooperation, and conflict resolution. Climate crises have renewed and expanded local and global movements for environmental justice and protection, many of which have historical connections with the peace movement. In support of the college’s carbon charge initiative, we will dedicate part of the course to understanding what constitutes the social cost of carbon and how it is represented in carbon pricing, particularly with respect to increasing frequencies of armed conflict and extension of the military industrial complex.
    Social Science.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH, PEAC
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 032. Environmental Justice in Latin America


    (Cross-listed as PEAC 021 )
    This course examines interactions between the environment, human politics, and conflict using a variety of concepts, theoretical frameworks, historical and geographical contexts, and methodological approaches. Moving chronologically and thematically, this course will draw on, and build up, your own expertise to study how nature has been historically framed, constructed, and contested, as well as how it intersects with other concepts such as power, violence, resistance, justice, and peace. Latin America, a region that is richly diverse in every sense, is an ideal setting from which to draw applicable insights about these open questions.
    Social Sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for LALS, PEAC, GLBL-paried.
    Spring 2023. Wilson.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 033. Indigenous Peoples and Globalization


    (Cross-listed as SOCI 041C )
    This course provides a sociological look at Indigenous Peoples from the local to the global, including Native Nations (and Tribes) of the U.S., Latin America, the Maori (New Zealand), Adevasi (India), and the many Peoples from East Asia, Africa and Europe. We discuss models for understanding Indigenous struggles in the 21st century, especially in line with the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN DRIP), and levels of Sovereignty, Autonomy, and Minority status (world-systems analysis). We pay special attention to Indigenous peoples (tribes) who continue to survive and thrive in a modern world of global climate change, neoliberal capitalist hegemony and extreme cultural domination. The class provides students opportunities to view interdisciplinary global issues - environmental world threats, social change and refugees, hegemonic decline, regional warfare of nation-states, spirituality, food sovereignty - from Indigenous perspectives.
    Social Sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, PEAC, GLBL-core
    Fall 2022. Fenelon.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: Environmental Studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 035. Environmental Justice: Ethnography, Politics, Action/Philadelphia


    (Cross-listed as SOAN 035 )
    An introduction to the history and theory of environmental justice, an interdisciplinary field that examines how inequalities based on race, class, ethnicity, and gender shape how different groups of people are impacted by environmental problems and how they advocate for social and environmental change. This semester the course will be taught at the Philadelphia Friends Center and will concentrate on urban environmental justice issues and creative strategies for change in Philadelphia. Drawing on the work of scholars and activists from a wide variety of disciplines in the social sciences, natural sciences, and the arts & humanities, we critically examine the conceptual divisions between “nature and society,” “urban and rural,” and the”community and the planet.” We will analyze the history of the widely used concept of “sustainability” focusing on the diverse ways it has been embraced, transformed, and implemented in different cultural and urban contexts. We will investigate some of the challenges facing cities like Philadelphia as they implement sustainability initiatives and try to avoid “green gentrification” (sustainability improvements such as green buildings, eco-parks, and upscale farmers’ markets that increase property values, pricing out and displacing local, low-income residents). We will likewise explore the promise of urban areas as important centers for supporting the flourishing of diverse, equitable, and ecologically sustainable communities. Course incorporates a community-based learning component.
    This class will be taught in Philadelphia as part of the Tri-Co Philly Program.
    Social Sciences.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH, PEAC
    Fall 2022. Di Chiro.
    Fall 2023. Di Chiro.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 037. Water Policies, Water Issues: China/Taiwan and the U.S.


    (Cross-listed as CHIN 087  and POLS 087 )
    Access to fresh water is an acute issue for the 21st century, and yet civilizations have designed a wide range of inventive projects for accessing and controlling water supplies over the centuries. Fresh water resource allocation generates issues between upstream and downstream users, between a country and its neighbors, between urban and rural residents, and between states and regions. This course examines a range of fresh water issues, comparing China and the U.S. Topics include dams and large-scale water projects (e.g., rerouting rivers); water pollution; groundwater depletion; industrial water use (e.g., for hydrofracking); impact of agricultural practices; urban storm water management; wetlands conservation; desertification; desalination. What role do governments, transnational organizations, corporations, NGOs and grassroots citizens’ movements play in these water decisions? Guest lectures will emphasize science and engineering perspectives on water management. Chinese language ability desirable but not required.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ASIA, ENVS.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • ENVS 040. Religion and Ecology


    (Cross-listed as RELG 022 )
    This course focuses on how different religious traditions have shaped human beings’ fundamental outlook on the environment in ancient and modern times. In turn, it examines how various religious worldviews can aid the development of an earth-centered philosophy of life. The thesis of this course is that the environment crisis, at its core, is a spiritual crisis because it is human beings’ deep ecocidal dispositions toward nature that are the cause of the earth’s continued degradation. Course topics include ecological thought in Western philosophy, theology, and biblical studies; the role of Asian religious thought in forging an ecological worldview; the value of American nature writings for environmental awareness, including both Euro-American and Amerindian literatures; the public policy debates concerning vegetarianism and the antitoxics movement; and the contemporary relevance of ecofeminism, deep ecology, Neopaganism, and wilderness activism. In addition to writing assignments, there will be occasional contemplative practicums, journaling exercises, and a community-based learning component.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH, GLBL-Core, PEAC
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 041SR. StuRn: Critical Environmental Geographies of Race and Class


    Much of the history of colonization, and white supremacist racism has manifested an American landscape where geographic location is often the premier determinant of the material status of ones life. Namely, the life expectancy of Swarthmore Borough residents is over 12 years the life expectancy of Chester, PA residents– two spaces separated by a mere 3 miles. This course recognizes this life expectancy to be one particular measure of how space defines one’s proximity, accessibility, experience, and legitimacy to the resources they need to thrive. In recognizing this difference and the injustices it perpetuates, it becomes our onus and accountability, as privileged Swarthmore students, to leverage our capacities to move our resources, money, and power to help augment ongoing initiatives and to learn from the ways that Chester residents are shaping the kind of reality they wish to see. . The course will originate from a macro-level consideration of the history of space and its intersections with politics, to provide a crucial understanding of the underlying themes of the built environment. Secondarily, the reading of how these theories penetrate the citizen, the self, and the consciousness will offer an important transition to confronting and examining how these theories manifest in issues at the regional, local, interpersonal, and individual levels. Case studies of Tri-State Area (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) will allow the course to activate themselves alongside the stakeholders within these phenomena, namely Black, and Indigenous community members engaging in organized resistance. Ultimately, the course will center with a focus on Swarthmore and Chester, and course students will become designers, artists, scholars, activists, and more, to leverage their course experience to contribute their collaborative visions for a more spatially just Swarthmore-Chester continuum. Student work will understand, process, synthesize,  and contribute a direct impact, as all student work will be rooted in meeting the demonstrated needs of Chester Residents for Quality Living (CRCQL), Campus Coalition Concerning Chester (C-4),  and other community based groups. As this course is led by students in the Project Pericles, C-4 Chester Road Collaborative, course students will be active members, and expected to direct their individual creative and academic growth in a shared community of students and residents.

     
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: Environmental Studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 042. Ecofeminism(s)


    (Cross-listed as ENGL 089E )
    An introduction to the central themes and histories of ecofeminist theories and praxis. We will study ecological feminisms/feminist environmentalisms from global perspectives, and examine how these transdisciplinary discourses and movements develop social and cultural critiques of systems of domination, and construct alternative visions for more just and sustainable human-earth relationships. Topics include ecofeminist approaches to: human rights, environmental and climate justice, food and agriculture, animal politics, health and bodies, queer ecologies, economies of “care,” militarism and imperialism, and sustainable development. Readings and course materials draw on the works of Vandana Shiva, Donna Haraway, Laura Pulido, Octavia Butler, Joni Seager, Rachel Carson, Winona LaDuke, Julie Sze, Rosi Braidotti, Jael Silliman, Starhawk, Eli Clare, Audre Lorde, Silvia Federici, Wendy Harcourt, Betsy Hartmann, Wangari Maathai.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for CBL, ENVS, ESCH, GLBL - Core, GSST, INTP
    Spring 2023. Di Chiro.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 043. Race, Gender, Class, and the Environment


    (Cross-listed as ENGL 089 SOAN 020M 
    This course explores how ideologies and structures of race, gender, sexuality, and class are embedded in and help shape our perceptions of and actions in the “environment.” Drawing on key social and cultural theories of environmental studies from anthropology, sociology, feminist analysis, and science and technology studies, we will examine some of the ways that differences in culture, power, and knowledge construct the conceptual frameworks and social policies undertaken in relation to the environment. The course draws on contemporary scholarship and social movement activism (including memoir and autobiography) from diverse national and international contexts. Topics addressed include, for example, ideas/theories of “nature,” toxic exposure and public health, environmental perception and social difference, poverty and natural resource depletion, justice and sustainability, Indigenous environmentalisms, eco-imperialism, and disparate impacts of global climate change. The course offers students opportunities for community-based learning working in partnership with local organizations.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for BLST, ENVS, ESCH, GLBL - Core, GSST
    Spring 2024. Di Chiro.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 044. Environmentally Engaged Literature: Pollutants, Fossil Fuels, and Atomic Bombs


    (Cross-listed as ENGL 089B )
    Pollutants. Fossil Fuels. Atomic Bombs. In many ways, pesticides, oil, and plutonium structure our lives; they impact our health, our politics, and may even threaten the existence of life itself. Ironically, because these materials permeate nearly every aspect of our existence, the human mind can struggle to comprehend them. In this course, we will read literature that engages with our environment to help us bring humans’ relationship to these materials into focus. Scientific, historical, and economic studies of these materials tend to focus on their scale and widespread impact. Reading poetry, plays, short stories, and novels will allow us to imagine these materials more intimately-through individual, cultural, and aesthetic perspectives.  In this course, students will ask: How can literature help us to understand-and perhaps change-our material, economic, and social environments? How has our relationship to materials changed over time? How do environmental and material realities impact cultural production and imagination? Texts under discussion will likely include: Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962); Terry Tempest Williams’ Refuge (1991); Mark Nowak’s Coal Mountain Elementary (2009); Lesley Battler’s Endangered Hydrocarbons (2015); Andrew Bovell’s When the Rain Stops Falling (2012); Adam Dickinson’s The Polymers (2013); and two films: Hiroshima mon Amour (dir. Alain Resnais, 1959) and There Will Be Blood (dir. Paul Anderson, 2007).  Course requirements include active participation; a close-reading paper; an engaged assignment; and a final research paper. All students are welcome.

     
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 045. ‘Tis the Season: Festivals of Solstice, Yule, and Christmas


    (Cross-listed as RELG 058 )
    What is time and temporality? What makes festival and holiday time different from other seasons of the year? This course investigates the complex of ritual traditions known today as the Winter Solstice, Yuletide, and Christmas.

    Through a combination of primary and secondary textual and multimedia sources, students will consider what these holiday traditions reveal about the ways in which humans make the experience of time meaningful. Students will encounter the long history of Christianization in Europe and its global spread via economies of colonialism during the Modern Period, and will analyze the ways in which Christian religious authorities and institutions negotiate(d) with indigenous, land/nature-based spiritualities.

    From conifer trees to flying reindeer and the cryptozoological legends of Krampus, students will consider December holiday rituals and lore as a special form of ecological knowledge that holds potential to relate humans to the earth, animals, plants, and the seasonal passage of time in more intimate and expansive ways.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Fall 2023. Padilioni.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 045A. Writing Nature: Digital Storytelling


    (Cross-listed as ENGL 070G )
    This course uses the Crum woods as a laboratory setting for the production of multimedia poems and brief memoirs. Digital stories combine spoken words with images, sound, and sometimes video to create powerful short movies. We’ll spend time grappling with some of the stories inherent in the Crum woods ecosystem as well as the multifaceted story of our relationship to the woods. The class will conclude with a public screening of work produced. 
    Humanities.
    1.0 credit
    Eligible for ENVS.
    Spring 2023. Bolton.
    Catalog chapter: English Literature  
    Department website: Environmental Studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 045B. River Stories


    Cross-listed as ENGL 070R  
    The Delaware River is the longest free-flowing river east of the Mississippi: it is also a repository of American history, from Washington’s midnight crossing during the Revolutionary War through Indian massacres through the era of pollution and the effects of the Clean Water Act. Twelve upper-class students will have the opportunity to spend time on the river before the start of the semester: we’ll take 7-10 days to canoe and/or kayak, camp, explore ecosystems and natural history, visit water treatment centers, write, and gather media (photos, video, sound files). In addition to a traditional English paper and a research essay on environmental issues affecting the Delaware River, students will keep field journals and write poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction prose.  One or more of these creative pieces will be turned into a digital story; several will be added to a communal memory map of the Delaware.

     
    Graded CR/NC.
    Limited to 12.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies   
    Department website: Environmental Studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 045C. FYS: Imagining Natural History


    (Cross-listed as ENGL 009L )
    “Natural history” is full of complicated stories of human beings in a larger-than-human world. This course invites students to build a creative community with one another and with the Crum Woods as they explore some of the various ways human beings have thought about and responded to “Nature.” Some class periods and much homework will take place in the Crum. Readings include contemporary poetry and natural history; student writing ranges from academic prose through creative nonfiction to poetry and digital storytelling. (Poets include Oliver, Mullen, Hillman, Heaney, Rich and others; essayists include Dillard, Pollan, Quammen, Sheldrake, Young.)
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS.
    Fall 2023. Bolton.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: Environmental Studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 046. Warming Up: Performing Ecology


    (Cross-listed as DANC 014 , THEA 005D )
    This introductory course focuses on creative opportunities for students wishing to explore ecology, environmental studies, and the performing arts, specifically focusing on eco-performance and design. Class goals will aim to support a better understanding of environmental studies via an artistic lens, allowing students to combine creative processes with environmental sciences. Emphasis will be placed on interdisciplinary skills and experiences that raise awareness around environmental studies and simultaneously engage culture and community.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Spring 2023. Bender, Stevens.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 048. Philosophy of Nature


    Cross-listed as PHIL 029  
    The question of how we conceive of nature and our relationship to it is one that has become increasingly pressing as we deal with environmental issues that are rapidly reaching a critical point. There has been a resurgence of interest in views like process philosophy-a view that suggests that unless we take interconnected becoming into account we cannot explain the novelty of life; panpsychism-a view that suggests that consciousness may be a fundamental component of the universe rather than an emergent effect of brains; biosemiotics-a view that suggests that even at the level of cells and unicellular organisms life operates through meaning-making rather than merely as mechanisms; and “new” materialism-a view that suggests that even matter instead of being viewed as inert could be conceived as having a kind of agency of its own. These views, among others, in updated forms that take up again questions silenced at earlier points in time in new contexts-along with cross-cultural views that have never succumbed to the Western binaries of nature/culture, human/animal, and self/other-in light of the radical challenges facing us, are rich resources for rethinking our relationship to nature in ways that could foster the kind of shifts in self-understanding and investment in our relations to others and our surroundings that we need to survive.
    Prerequisite: First- and second-year students must complete one introductory level PHIL course before enrolling in this course.
    Humanities
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 050. Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change Impacts


    Indigenous Peoples around the world are among the first to experience the direct impacts of climate change that pose serious threats to their contemporary livelihoods and cultural lifeways. Using illustrative case studies, this course will examine the impacts of climate change on Indigenous peoples and their communities globally and will examine Indigenous responses to climate change. Major themes and topics will include Indigenous relationships to land, cultural sustainability, food security, Indigenous climate adaptation and mitigation planning, and international forums concerning climate change policy and the rights of Indigenous Peoples. This course centers the lived experience and cultural perspectives of Indigenous Peoples. 
    This course counts as an Environmental humanities for the ENVS major/minor.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GLBL-core, PEAC.
    Spring 2023. Benally.
    Fall 2023. Benally.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • ENVS 052. Chinese Food Culture and Farming: Traditions and Transitions


    (Cross-listed as CHIN 086 , LITR 086CG )
    While the challenging problem of feeding one fifth of the world’s population with only seven percent of the world’s arable land remains a priority in Chinese agricultural policy, extensive environmental degradation and innumerable food scandals have shifted the primary concern of food supply to issues of food safety, from quantity to quality.  The class will focus on the challenges and successes of such a turn to a more ecologically friendly agricultural production and food processing industry. In addition, rapid changes in food preferences displace more traditional diets and redirect agricultural production, especially towards production of meat, bringing in foreign private equity firms like KKR and US food conglomerates like Tyson Foods.  These changes also affect traditional regional food cultures. This interdisciplinary class (Environmental Studies, Economics, Sociology, Biology, humanities and Chinese Studies) will explore the following key topics:

    • From food security to food safety - the ecological turn in China’s agriculture
    • Organic farming in China - challenges and successes of state and private organic farm initiatives
    • Ministry plans and China’s new farmers
    • Regional food traditions
    • The role of restaurants in Chinese culture

    Prerequisite: Some knowledge of Chinese culture or language is preferred but not required.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ASIA
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 055. Sacred Plants, Holy Fungi, and Religious Experience.


    (Cross-listed as RELG 050 )
    This course investigates the sacred meaningfulness and practical utility humans have discovered in plants and fungi. From pharmacopeia and herbalism employed to cure ailments and relieve pain, to psychedelic and entheogenic rituals that modulate the sensorium of one’s consciousness to “reveal the God within,” the intimate relationships worked out between humans, plants, and fungi reveal the human in all of its evolutionary-biological, mythic, poetic, and religious dimensions. Through primary and secondary scholarly readings, multimedia sources, and case studies highlighting the cultural histories of the African Diasporic and Indigenous Mesoamerican communities, students will encounter various healing rituals, wisdom traditions, and emerging scientific paradigms that place plants and fungus at the center of human health and wellness. Topics include: mystical and visionary circuits of consciousness; Cannabis sativa and the Transatlantic Slave Trade; Inquisition witchcraft trials and “witches’ ointment;” Mexican-Oaxacan psilocybin shamans and the 1960s Hippie Movement; and a potential fieldsite visit to the Johns Hopkins University Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research.
    This course does not advocate the casual use of psychedelics or other substances.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Padilioni.
    Fall 2024. Padilioni.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 056. Arts and Culture of Indigenous Philadelphia: From Shackamaxon to the Present


    (Cross-listed as ARTH 061 )
    For millennia prior to the signing of the “Great Treaty” by William Penn and Chief Tamanend of the Lenape under the Treaty Elm at Shackamaxon, Indigenous peoples have played a central role in the history of Philadelphia and the art and material culture of theregion. This course will examine the visual and material histories of Indigenous communities, artists, and leaders of present-day Philadelphia and its surrounding ancestral territories, from pre-contact to the present. We will consider the history of the city and the land upon which it stands as an Indigenous place, one that has been occupied since time immemorial by Indigenous peoples and that has served as a gathering place and cross-roads for the travelers, diplomats, and storytellers of many Native nations. We will consider how the Indigenous history of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania more broadly reflects on and is interrogable through present-day sites and constructions of civicidentity, and how to this day a resurgent Indigenous community calls Philadelphia home. Among topics for close study are the archaeologyand material culture of the Eastern Woodlands and ancestral Lenape territory, including earthworks, mounds, and their environmentalrelations; Euro-American representations of Indigenous peoples and the landscape from early contact through the nineteenth century, including important scenes in the city’s history such as Benjamin West’s Penn’s Treaty with the Indians and portraits of Indigenous leadersand diplomats passing through the city as part of delegations to the nation’s capital in Washington, DC; Indigenous oral histories of andvisual representations of such histories, such as the Shackamaxon wampum belt; monuments and the memorialization of colonial history; and modern and contemporary Indigenous art and exhibitions that reflect Philadelphia as vibrant urban Indigenous center.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH
    Fall 2023. Green.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 057. Afro-Futurism: Astral Mythologies of Creation and the Afterlife


    (Cross-listed as RELG 047 )
    In his 1974 film Space is the Place, avant-garde jazz musician Sun Ra announced his mission to rescue Black earthlings and shuttle them in his spaceship to the safety of a newly-discovered planet: “I come to you as a myth. Because that’s what black people are, myths. I come to you from a dream that the black man dreamed long ago.” In many ways, Sun Ra’s prophecy parallels variants of the Dogon creation myth of Mali, West Africa (recorded in the 1940s) that details the fateful voyage of the Nommos demiurge deities, who traveled to Earth in a sky vessel from a planetary point of origin some observers speculate may orbit the Sirius star system.  

    Through primary and secondary readings, interactive classroom activities, and multimedia sources – including a bevy of music and film recordings – this course investigates Afrofuturism as a radical imaginary within the broader corpus of Black Astral Mythologies. By tracing a throughline between topics such as 16th-century astronomical observations at the University of Timbuktu, U.S. Underground Railroad fugitive navigations according to the ‘North Star,’ and recent cosmogonic speculation by quantum physicists into the elusive nature of Dark Matter, students will consider this premise: when the safe harbor of the earth no longer offers itself as habitation, Blackened celestial futures constellate the cosmic horizons. 

    Possible field trip to the House of Future Sciences, headquarters of the Philadelphia collective AfroFuturist Affair.
    Humanities
    1.0 credit.
    Eligible for BLST, ENVS
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 058. Climate Fiction


    (Cross-listed as ENGL 058 )
    Climate fiction responds to the immensity of climate change through a variety of modes including journalism, dystopia, speculation, black comedy. As we read climate fiction that grapples with crises from the Dust Bowl through imaginary (yet not implausible) apocalypses, we will hone skills of thinking, writing, and speaking critically about cultural forms and social structures entangled with our changing climate and environment. Authors include John Steinbeck, Octavia Butler, Margaret Atwood, Junot Diaz, Richard Powers, Kim Stanley Robinson.
    Humanities
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 059. Fugitive Landscapes: Swamps, Mountains, Cities, Plantations


    This course investigates various landscapes of the African Diaspora that formed a staging ground for spatial imaginaries & practices of liberation. Examples include the swamps and mountains of the Caribbean / subtropical Atlantic that offered zones of habitation for integrated Black-Indigenous maroon communities and the creek beds, woodlands, and urban corridors navigated by fugitive African Americans on their Underground Railroad passage to freedom. This course also attends to the site of the plantation, an originating locus of oppression within the geography of racial capitalism that enslaved folks remapped into a clandestine plot of hope and subterfuge through their ecological engagement with the land and other forms of terrestrial life.

    Through a foundation of Black ecological theoretical and methodological frameworks combined with three local case studies, this course conceives critical concepts such as sustainability, conservationism and habitat diversity holistically, and approaches Black Diasporic communities - including their oral histories, folklore, and sacred myths - as interdependent upon the topographies and built environments within which they make their abode, and equally vulnerable to amplifying pressures of catastrophic climate change.
    This course counts as an Environmental humanities for the ENVS major/minor.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for BLST.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 070. Introduction to Geographic Information Systems


    This course is designed to introduce the foundations of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) with emphasis on applications for environmental analysis in both proprietary and open-source software. It deals with basic principles of GIS and its use in spatial analysis and information management. Laboratory exercises provide practical experiences that complement the theory covered in lecture. By the end of this semester students should be capable of analyzing and managing environmental geospatial data.
    Non-distribution.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Ahner.
    Spring 2024. Ahner.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 079. Modeling


    (Cross-listed as MATH 056 )
    An introduction to the formulation and analysis of mathematical models. This course will present a general framework for the development of discrete, continuous, and graphical models of diverse phenomena. Principles of modeling will be drawn from kinetics, population dynamics, traffic flow, diffusion, continuum mechanics, cellular automata, and network science. Mathematical techniques for understanding models will be emphasized, including dimensional analysis, phase plane diagrams, stability analysis, bifurcation theory, conservation laws, steady-state solutions, and computer simulation. Specific applications from chemistry, biology, physics, engineering, and neuroscience will be discussed. A primary goal of this course is to give insights into the connections between mathematics and real-world problems, allowing students to apply the course concepts to applications that excite them.
    Prerequisite: A grade of C or better in MATH 027  or MATH 028 ;  in one of MATH 034  or MATH 035 ; and in MATH 043  or  MATH 044 ; or permission of the instructor.

     
    Natural sciences and engineering.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS
    Spring 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 085. Urban Environmental Community Actions


    This course explores the theories and methods of social action and community engagement focusing on social and environmental change. Drawing on the work of scholars and activists from a wide variety of disciplines in the social sciences, natural sciences, and humanities, we critically examine the conceptual divisions between “nature and society,” “knowledge and action,” the “local and the global,” and the “community and the planet.” We will analyze the history and diffusion of the widely used concept of “sustainability” focusing on the diverse ways it has been embraced, transformed, and implemented in different social and cultural contexts. Exploring the relationship between theory and practice, the course includes a community-based learning component working in collaboration with a local organization or action research project.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ESCH
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 089A. Sustainability Research and Action


    This course helps students develop skills in a wide range of research-related skills, ranging from theories of change and content-specific research strategies, through self-management, project management, communication, engagement, and presentation skills. Guest presenters will help students understand the growing field of sustainability from a variety of different perspectives. This course supports the President’s Sustainability Research Fellowship.
    This course is only open to PSRF students, who have to apply for the program and be accepted in the preceding spring. Students enrolled in ENVS 089A will automatically be enrolled in ENVS 089B in the spring semester.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH, GLBL-paired.
    Fall 2022. Padilioni, Drake.
    Fall 2023. Padilioni.
    Fall 2024. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • ENVS 089B. President’s Sustainability Research Fellowship


    This course helps students develop skills in a wide range of research-related skills, ranging from theories of change and content-specific research strategies, through self-management, project management, communication, engagement, and presentation skills. Guest presenters will help students understand the growing field of sustainability from a variety of different perspectives. This course supports the President’s Sustainability Research Fellowship. 
    This course is only open to PSRF students, who have to apply for the program and be accepted in the preceding spring. Students enrolled in ENVS 089A in the fall semester will automatically be enrolled in ENVS 089B in the spring semester.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENVS, ESCH, GLBL-paired.
    Spring 2023. Everbach, Drake.
    Spring 2024. Staff.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  
  • ENVS 091. Capstone Seminar


    The culminating experience of the environmental studies major is the capstone seminar course. Under the direction of a faculty member, students with a variety of backgrounds concentrate on a single, environmental topic. Recent examples include: “Oceans in Peril,” “Environmental Justice,” and “The Green Campus: Swarthmore and Sustainability.” The class members collectively work on a major initiative as part of the course. These projects have led to a sustainability action plan for the College, a map illustrating environmental justice in Delaware County, Pa., and a conference about watershed restoration.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2023. Benally.
    Spring 2024. Benally.
    Spring 2025. Staff.
    Catalog chapter: Environmental Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/environmental-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  

Film and Media Studies

  
  • FMST 001. Critical Approaches to Media


    In this course students are presented with forms and histories of film and other moving-image media, as well as key concepts, theories, and methods in the discipline of film and media studies. We begin with analysis of the elements of film form; explore narrative, documentary, experimental and genre formats; and conclude with perspectives on authorship, national cinema, and other topics in film and media theory. Emphasis is on developing critical viewing, writing, research, and multimedia authoring skills. Required weekly evening screenings of works from diverse periods, countries, and traditions. FMST 001 is the prerequisite for most other FMST classes.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for DGHU
    Fall 2023. Simon.
    Fall 2024. Rehak.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 002. Digital Production Fundamentals


    This course introduces students to the expressive possibilities and rigors of the film medium while offering a sound technical foundation in digital production and post-production. We will explore documentary, experimental, and narrative approaches and also consider the opportunities and limitations-conceptual, practical and aesthetic- of exhibiting work through different venues and platforms. Emphasis will be on using the formal and conceptual palette introduced in the course to develop one’s own artistic vision. Coursework includes short assignments, discussions, screenings, and a final project.
    Prerequisite: FMST 001  or Instructor Permission.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for DGHU
    Spring 2023. Brook.
    Spring 2024. Evans.
    Spring 2025. FMST Faculty.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 005. First-Year Seminar: Special Effects and Film Spectacle


    Focusing on the history and theory of spectacular media culture with an emphasis on visual effects and other forms of behind-the-scenes industrial knowledge, this class introduces students to the basics of studying and writing about spectacle in film, television, and digital entertainment, exploring questions such as the relationship between style and technology; formal and narrative principles of “showstoppers” such as musical numbers and fight scenes; and issues of realism and illusion, visual pleasure, sensory immersion, capitalism, cultural worth, and ideology.
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Spring 2025. Rehak.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 009. First-Year Seminar: Women and Popular Culture


    This course looks at a range of genres associated with female audiences in the US since the late 19th century across print, film, television, and new media. These include sentimental novels, gothic romances, magazines, “women’s pictures,” soaps, chick flicks, fanfic and Tumblr. What is the relation between mass culture aimed at women, cultural production by women, and feminist politics and critique? How do race, class, gender identity, and sexuality intersect with gendered genre conventions, discourses of authorship and critical evaluation, and the paradoxes of popular cultural pleasures? 
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for DGHU, GSST
    Fall 2022. White.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 011. Advanced Digital Production


    This course is an advanced filmmaking workshop for students with prior production experience. Through practical workshops in pre-production, sound production, cinematography, and editing, students advance their technical, aesthetic, and storytelling skills beyond the fundamentals. Through reading, discussion, and exposure to a variety of creative practices within film and video, the course promotes a critical understanding of these media. Production coursework includes collaborative exercises and the completion of a short film-documentary, narrative, or experimental culminating in a final project screening. This course is designed to help students develop their voice as filmmakers through the creation of high-quality works and is strongly recommended for students interested in producing a senior film project. 
    Prerequisite: FMST 001 , and FMST 002  or equivalent production experience with instructor’s approval.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Fall 2023. Evans.
    Fall 2024. Evans.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 013. (Auto)biography and the Archive: Experimental Digital Production


    How have filmmakers used the camera to investigate their own life experiences, incorporating issues of race, gender, sexuality, class, geography, politics, and socioeconomic status? How do filmmakers turn to historical precursors, both known and unknown, to make deeply personal work? This class expands the boundaries of what we think of as “personal” filmmaking, looking at its history in fiction, documentary, experimental and hybrid works. We will explore the ways in which the archive intersects with (auto) biography–how empathy for stories filmmakers find in the ever expanding public archive of images affects the creative process. Course work includes readings by filmmakers and theorists, exercises, discussions with guest filmmakers, and a final 3-10 minute creative project. Prerequisite FMST 2 or instructor’s approval.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 015. Screenwriting


    (Cross-listed as ENGL 070S  )
    This course introduces students to the fundamentals of screenwriting while enabling them to explore their unique sensibility as writers. We consider how screenplays differ from other dramatic forms and understand what makes good cinematic storytelling. By looking at short and feature-length scripts and films, we examine issues of structure, character development, effective use of dramatic tension and dialogue, tone, and theme. Through in-class exercises and discussions, students flesh out their ideas and grapple with their writing in a supportive workshop atmosphere. Coursework includes screenings, short assignments, and the completion of several drafts of a short screenplay. No previous writing experience required.
    Prerequisite: Instructor’s approval.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENGL.
    Fall 2023. Evans.
    Fall 2024. Evans.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 016. The Director/Actor Collaboration


    This course focuses on the importance of the relationship between the director and the actor and the use of improvisation in rehearsal and production to create more powerful performances for film and television. Texts and films examined in the first half of the course will include THE IMPROVISED PLAY: THE WORK OF MIKE LEIGH by Paul Clements, DIRECTING ACTORS by Judith Weston, THE COOL WORLD by Shirley Clarke, VERA DRAKE by Mike Leigh and OLD CATS by Sebastian Silva. The second half of the semester will include in-class exercises, open rehearsals with professional actors and individual student films that put some of the examined techniques into practice. The course will also include special workshops and Q&A’s with guest filmmakers.

    Prerequisite: FMST 001 and FMST 002 or equivalent production experience from a film/video production course in the TriCo with a working knowledge of the Premiere Pro Editing software is required for this course with instructor’s approval.
    Prerequisite: FMST 001  or FMST 002
    Humanities
    1 credit.
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 020. Critical Theories of Film and Media


    Film critic André Bazin’s famous question, “What is cinema?,” gained new relevance with the advent of digital media. This course introduces classical film theory (theories of modernity and perception, montage, realism), contemporary film theory (theories of film language, ideology, the cinematic apparatus, and spectatorship), approaches that cut across media (authorship, genre, stardom, semiotics, narratology, feminism, production and reception studies, cognitivism), and theorizations of new media. Through readings and weekly screenings, we explore the significance of film and other media in shaping and expressing our identities and cultural experiences. Strongly recommended for FMST majors and minors. 
    Prerequisite: FMST 001 .
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for INTP, DGHU
    Spring 2024. White.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 021. American Narrative Cinema


    (Cross-listed as ENGL 087 )
    This course surveys U.S. narrative film history with an emphasis on the Hollywood studio era. We consider how genres such as the western, the melodrama, and film noir express aspirations and anxieties about race, gender, class and ethnicity in the United States. Film is understood as narrative form, audiovisual medium, industrial product, and social practice. Classical Hollywood is approached as a national cinema, illuminated by attention to independent narrative traditions (“race movies,” New Queer Cinema).
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for ENGL
    Spring 2025. White.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 022. Cinema and Modernity, 1894-1934


    This course explores the first decades of film history in the context of global modernity and artistic modernism. In form and content, silent-era cinema functioned as both a vector and a reflection of the transformative subjective and social experiences of modernity. Urbanization, immigration, consumerism, and women’s participation in the labor force were refracted in silent movie genres and stars. We will pay special attention to cinema’s internationalism before the introduction of synchronized sound, looking at film culture and national film stars in Asia as well as the U.S. and Europe. Field trips and guests will address key topics of film historiography including archives and preservation and film music.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for FMST
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 023. Documentary: The Art of the Real


    Contextualizing a range of documentary practices within the history of nonfiction film and television and in the landscape of contemporary media culture, this course explores the aesthetic and rhetorical strategies of documentary form. Topics include: activist media; the essay film; critical and sensory ethnographic film; reenactment; television documentary; and witnessing.
    Humanities.
    Eligible for FMST
    Fall 2024. White.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 025. Television Studies


    This course introduces students to major trends in critical thought regarding electronic media, including the rise of broadcast television, recent developments in narrowcast or niche programming and distribution, and the relationship among media industries, advertisers, and audiences. Special attention will be given to probing and historicizing the formal concepts of broadcast and digital TV, examining our ongoing cultural adaptation to emerging screen technologies and their attendant narrative and audiovisual forms. Coursework includes weekly blogging, one analytical paper, presentations, and the production of a creative TV-related project. 
    Required of majors for classes 2024 and after.
    Prerequisite: FMST 001  
    Humanities.
    Writing course.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for DGHU, GLBL-Core
    Spring 2023. Simon.
    Spring 2024. Simon.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 031. Documentary Filmmaking as Cultural Work


    This course is grounded in a conceptualization of non-fiction filmmaking as a type of “cultural work” - a creative activity with the political goal of making our society better, more humane, more equitable, more sustainable.  We will explore how non-fiction filmmaking (ethnography, the documentary, essay films) can provide an understanding of large-scale social structures that shape our present reality (including economic class, racial, ethnic, gender and sexuality hierarchies); as well as offer a vision of and pathway to a better future. A particular focus of our examination will be the use of the archive (of sound, image and document) to this mode of cultural work. We will look at the relationship of the craft of non-fiction filmmaking (image choices, motion, editing, venues for exhibition/sharing) to the intended message and intended audience. How these productions are created, the organization of production teams, decisions about audience, will be some of the processes we try to understand as we look at media works created by participatory community media makers in North America (including Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY, New Orleans Video Access Center, Visual Communications in Los Angeles, Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia), and by auteur image/audio essayist including John Akomfrah, Jill Godmilow, Renée Green, Isaac Julien, Chris Marker, Raoul Peck, Raúl Ruiz, Rea Tajiri, and Yvonne Welbon.
    This course will provide an opportunity to share research and analysis through the creation of short non-fiction works.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 034. Transmedia Worldbuilding and Storytelling


    The invention and exploration of elaborate fictional worlds span millennia of human cultural practice, from the islands of Homer’s Odyssey to the Middle Earth of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and the blockbuster universes of Star Wars, Marvel and DC. This class explores the mechanical and aesthetic principles of crafting detailed imaginary worlds and using them to tell stories that interconnect across diverse media, ranging from film, television, theater, and comics to digital and tabletop gaming, LARPs, virtual reality, and other emerging platforms. In a workshop environment devoted to developing our own world concepts, we will engage forms of paratextual production such as costume and set design; model building and prop fabrication; the drafting of maps, blueprints, encyclopedias, and other reference materials; and the coining of conlangs (constructed languages). Through our creative work we will explore the history of and critical theory surrounding subcreation, transmedia storytelling, and convergence culture, touching on key works in literary and adaptation theory, global/locative studies, fandom studies, production culture, genre theory, narratology, performance, gaming, animation, and spectacle/special effects.
    Prerequisite: Any FMST course. FMST 001 FMST 025 FMST 036 FMST 041 , or any production course strongly recommended.
    Humanities.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 035. Video Game Design and Creation


    Introduces students to the basic elements and steps involved in conceptualizing and making games for popular digital platforms. Integrating readings on the aesthetics and genres of video gaming, our collaborative workshop environment will use web-based game development tools to craft both simple and complex games that build and comment on the histories, pleasures, and politics of the video game medium. Course work includes short creative assignments, readings, discussions, weekly gameplay, and a final project.
    Prerequisite: FMST 36
    Humanities
    1 credit.
    Spring 2024. Rehak.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 036. Theory and History of Videogames


    This course investigates the video game medium from its earliest incarnation in hackers’ prankish exploits to the latest in AAA and indie publishing, drawing on a variety of texts and perspectives as well as on play, analysis, and creation of video games themselves to build a portrait not just of games, gamers, and gaming, but of a unique moment in the evolution of contemporary digital media. After establishing a basic conceptual vocabulary for thinking, speaking, and writing about video games, we will shift our attention to the broader contexts and cultural functions of video gaming - as commercial and transmedia entities; as spaces for the forging of identity and sociality; and as objects of fandom and instruments of ideology. As this is a hybrid course that emphasizes making as learning, our final project will involve creating games that make critical arguments. Required weekly out-of-class gaming and viewing assignments.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for DGHU
    Spring 2023. Rehak.
    Spring 2025. Rehak.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 037. Gender and Genre on Television


    This course will explore genre in American television from the 1950s to today through the lens of gender and sexuality.  Students will learn about genre theory and media specific historical, aesthetic, economic conventions of television genres.  We will discuss how macro and micro genres intersect with gender in target and niche audience composition and viewing habits and practices.  How ideas and social rituals of leisure and labor figure into generic representations of gender and sexuality and vice versa. How race, class and gender form intersectionalities explored, exploited and expanded differently by televisual flow than in our current convergence era of streamed content. Each week students are responsible for screening at least two assigned episodes and blogging on one episode of a classic TV show they commit to for the semester. One analytical paper. Every student has to give one presentation analyzing selected clips in the context of critical scholarly articles. Midterm and Final exams.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GSST
    Spring 2025. Simon.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: https://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 038. Reality TV


    This advanced Television Studies course explores the history and practices of the television medium in its connections to concepts and theories of realism. We will be considering reality modes in early anthropological films and documentary/fiction hybrids (People on Sunday, Nanook of the North), and the 1930s TV coverage of the German Olympics alongside the works of Andre Bazin, Siegfried Kracauer, Sergei Eisenstein and others.  We will discuss the impact of neo-realist schools of filmmaking (Italian, French and German) on the first “reality” series on U.S. television - An American Family (PBS, 1973) and vice versa.  We will investigate the live-studio audience aspect of talk and game shows, the rise of The Real World, the longevity of Survivor and Big Brother, think about global television formats and how reality shows interact with social media and socio-political practice (American Idol). How and why is realism semiotically and socio-politically connected to the televisual medium?  How does this relationship change over the years and through the different cycles of technological, digital and programmatic innovation?
    Prerequisite: FMST 001 FMST 025  or FMST 054
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


  
  • FMST 041. Fan Culture


    Explores the history, philosophy, and impact of fandom in film, television, and new media. Drawing on methodologies including reception and audience studies, feminism, performance, cultural studies, ethnography, and convergence theory, we will consider topics such as the evolution of celebrity and “cult” status; the creation and sharing of fan fiction and vids; gendered, queer, and cis identities in fan culture; relationships between fandom and industry; and fans’ use of digital social media. Screenings include serial and episodic TV, camp and “trash” cinema, narrative and documentary films, and fan-generated content. 
    Eligible for GSST credit if all papers and projects are focused on GSST topics.
    Humanities.
    1 credit.
    Eligible for GSST
    Fall 2023. Rehak.
    Catalog chapter: Film and Media Studies  
    Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/film-media-studies


    Access the class schedule to search for sections.


 

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