IDIS 10605
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies
Experience a 21st-century liberal arts curriculum.
Through the College of Liberal Arts core requirements, you will achieve the breadth of knowledge and range of skills that employers value. Our college-wide curriculum includes a team-taught interdisciplinary course required of all majors in our college. Housed in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, IDIS 10605 Introduction to the Liberal Arts is a variable topics-based course designed to bridge the disciplinary specialties of the faculty who team-teach the course and enable you to integrate knowledge across fields of study in exciting and powerful ways.
IDIS 10605 Introduction to Liberal Arts
Our Fall 2026 topics.
IDIS 10605 Section 05 and Section 06
Taught by Steve Carr and Noor O'Neill
Course description
Students will learn to recognize differences among various disciplinary approaches and perspectives concerning refugees, forced displacement, migration,immigration, and resettlement. Drawing from existing knowledge and expertise within COLA, the course will build on interdisciplinary connections between Cultural Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Holocaust Studies, and Human Rights Studies. The curriculum will engage a three-pronged approach, examining the history and development of policies following World War II, the current contending socio-political vectors that shape and drive refugee status and forced migration patterns, and the voices and perspectives of refugees and others who have personally experienced forced migration.
IDIS 10605 Section 03 and Section 04
Taught by Talia Bugel and Lee Roberts
Course description
Students will explore changing attitudes toward languages and the people who speak them from the perspectives of two disciplines, Spanish linguistics and German language and literature. From Spanish linguistics, students will learn both how to create surveys to gather data and also how to interpret data to make sense of changing attitudes. From German Studies, students will gain an understanding of how attitudes toward language, especially German, have been central to the development of the discipline, since during times of political division, speakers of German have so often claimed that their common homeland was in their shared language and literature.