Students must satisfy the Knowledge, Identity, and Power (KNOW) Core Requirement by completing two courses that have been approved to meet that requirement, one of which must be taken at the 300 level or above. Courses taken credit/no credit will not fulfill KNOW core requirements. This requirement was updated for Bulletin year 2024-25, and the new requirements are described here.

Learning Objectives

Courses in Knowledge, Identity, and Power (KNOW) provide a distinct site for students to understand the dynamics and consequences of power differentials, inequalities, and divisions among social groups and the relationship of these issues to the representation and production of knowledge. In these courses, students also develop their capacity to communicate meaningfully about power, disparity, and diversity of experiences and identities.

Guidelines

  1. These courses provide regular opportunities for students to engage in dialogue about issues of knowledge, identity, and power, and promote critical understanding of the causes, nature, and consequences of individual, institutional, cultural, and/or structural dynamics of disparity, power, and privilege. 
  2. These courses require students to examine their own social positions and lived experiences, and make connections between themselves and course concepts related to disparity, power and privilege—whether local, international, global, historical, or contemporary in scope—in at least two substantive assignments that are part of the overall evaluation for the course. 
  3. These courses require students to engage at multiple points during the semester with materials focused on issues of disparity, power, and privilege that were authored or created by historically marginalized individuals, and/or materials that directly engage with experiences or creative works of marginalized individuals or communities. 
  4. KNOW courses may also fulfill other program or graduation requirements.

Resources for Students

Approved Courses

The following courses have been approved as satisfying the Knowledge, Identity, and Power requirement.

  • AFAM 101   Introduction to African American Studies

  • AFAM/ENVP 301   Environmental Racism

  • AFAM 304   Capital and Captivity: African Americans and the U.S. Economy

  • AFAM 310   African Diaspora Experience

  • AFAM 355   African American Women in American History

  • AFAM 360   The Art and Politics of the Civil Rights Era

  • AFAM/COMM 370   Communication and Diversity

  • AFAM 375   The Harlem Renaissance

  • AFAM 398   Methods in African American Studies

  • AFAM 400   The 1619 Project

  • ARTH 394   Interrogating Methods of Art History: From Artist Biographies to Global & Decolonizing Perspectives

  • ASIA 325   Chinese Cinema: Ideology and the Box Office

  • ASIA 344   Asia in Motion

  • BUS 365   Cultural Diversity and Law

  • COMM 361   Organizing Difference

  • COMM 372   Contemporary Media Culture: Deconstructing Disney

  • EDUC 419   American Schools Inside and Out

  • EDUC 420   Multiple Perspectives on Classroom Teaching and Learning

  • ENGL 238   Afrofuturism

  • ENGL 242   Introduction to Native American Literature

  • ENGL 247   Introduction to Popular Genres

  • ENGL 250   Introduction to Literary and Critical Theory

  • ENGL 371   History of the English Language

  • ENGL 372   History of Rhetorical Theory

  • ENVP 326   People, Politics, and Parks

  • ENVP 343   Buddhist Environmentalisms

  • FREN 260   Cultures of the Francophone World

  • FREN 381   African Women Writers

  • GDS/IPE 211   Introduction to Global Development

  • GERM 355   Culture in the Third Reich

  • GLAM 322   Race and Ethnicity in the Ancient World

  • GLAM 323   Sex and Gender in Ancient Greece and Rome

  • GLAM 330   Theories of Myth

  • GQS 201   Introduction to Gender, Queer, and Feminist Studies

  • GQS 220   What is Queer? The Politics and Practices of Fashioning the Self

  • GQS 320   Queerly Scientific: Exploring the Influence of Identity on Scientific Knowledge Production

  • HIST 200   Doing History: An Introduction

  • HIST 252   Monuments and Memory in US History

  • HIST 305   Women and Gender in Pre-Modern Europe

  • HIST 307   The Crusades

  • HIST 375   History of Sport in US Society

  • HIST 383   Borderlands: La Frontera: The U.S.-Mexico Border

  • HON 214   Interrogating Inequality

  • HON 401   What is America?

  • HUM 368   A Precious Barbarism: Enlightenment, Ideology, and Colonialism

  • IPE 101   Power and Wealth in Global Affairs: Introduction to International Political Economy

  • LAS 100   Introduction to Latin American Studies

  • LTS 200   Latina/o America: A Critical Introduction to Latina/o Studies

  • LTS 300   Latina/o Literatures

  • MUS 221   Jazz History

  • MUS 223   Women in Music

  • MUS 227   Musical History of Tacoma

  • MUS 234   Introduction to Ethnomusicology

  • MUS 330   Opera: Based on a True Story

  • MUS 393   Introduction to Secondary Music Education

  • PG 104   Introduction to Political Theory

  • PG 315   Law and Society

  • PG 345   Intersectionality as Theory and Method

  • PG 346   Race in the American Political Imagination

  • PHIL 106   Language, Knowledge, and Power

  • PHIL 107   Philosophy of Disability

  • PHIL 389   Race and Philosophy

  • PHIL 390   Gender and Philosophy

  • PSYC 265   Cross-Cultural Psychology

  • PSYC 373   Perceiving Self and Other

  • REL 202   Introduction to the Study of World Religions

  • REL 222   Antisemitism and Islamophobia

  • REL 265   What is Justice?

  • REL 270   Religion, Activism and Social Justice

  • REL 302   Ethics and the Other

  • REL 307   Prisons, Gender and Education

  • REL 323   Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Societies

  • REL 340   Imagining Religion: Scholars, Theories, and Cases in the Study of Religion

  • SOAN 101   Introduction to Sociology

  • SOAN 102   Introduction to Anthropology

  • SOAN 215   Race and Ethnic Relations

  • SOAN 222   Culture and Society of Southeast Asia

  • SOAN 370   Disability, Identity, and Power

  • SPAN 216   (Wo)men of Maize: Food Cultures of the Americas

  • SPAN 221   Introduction to Iberian Cultures

  • SPAN 329   Literaturx Latinx

  • SPAN 414   The Returning Resistance: Memory, Gender, and Nationalisms in Spain

  • SPAN 415   Bitter Flavors of the Americas: Sugar, Coffee & Bananas

  • STHS 330   Evolution and Society Since Darwin

  • THTR 252   World Theatre II: Asian Theatres