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 01 and Section 02
Taught by Sarah LeBlanc and Kate White
Course description
This course will examine the rhetoric surrounding book bans. Students will read banned books from four categories. You will explore how literature has shaped their identity and understanding of the world. Students will examine how values, beliefs, and attitudes communicated within their families and cultural systems influence how they perceive the books and speak about topics not discussed within the family, mirror, or divert from the issues found in the banned books.
IDIS 10605 Section 05 and Section 06
Taught by Kathryn Angelica and Stevie Scheurich
Course description
Popular stories telling the birth of the United States have celebrated the country’s rebellious roots as a key part of its identity. But not all social movements protesting power have been treated the same throughout U.S. history. Through readings and course discussion, students will be introduced to an array of protest movements spanning the founding of the country to the present day. They will examine the ways protest has been celebrated, criticized, and/or criminalized both in their contemporary moment and historical memory.
Over the course of the semester, students will explore how those excluded from formal power — the enslaved, the Indigenous, the disabled, the imprisoned, and more — have shaped the formation of the U.S. through protest. We will consider the writings of key movement thinkers, activists, theorists, community leaders, and everyday people to consider how power impacts the way these movements are shaped, treated, and remembered. Students will reflect on how protest movements have shaped the past and present of the United States.