Literary text-mining is a decades-old field that uses quantitative methods to answer enduring literary questions about texts' meaning, significance, politics, context, and more. Text-mining methods offer researchers the chance to answer new questions at larger scales. This course introduces students to a variety of computational methods, from foundational counting methods to machine-learning. Students will investigate several literary datasets using Jupyter notebooks or Pycharm and the Python programming language.

This freshman seminar is designed for students who are interested in cities and fascinated by urban life. Our semester is devoted to the field-based exploration of three emblematic features of northwest urbanism: dead malls, waterfront promenades, and ethnic enclaves. As we explore these urban themes, students will have ample opportunities to find their footing in the scholarship, and will explore ideas via active, field-based research pertinent to the urban planning and to life in the city.

This course introduces students to the values of a liberal arts education as it has been classically formulated. It contrasts the ideal of a mutually enriching relationship among its principal academic areas (humanities, creative arts, sciences, social sciences) with the current situation in higher education where these areas have become isolated and hierarchically ordered according to their perceived prestige and value to society.

Data & Reality is a multidisciplinary course that delves into the myriad ways data shapes, defines, and mediates our daily experiences. Drawing from fields such as art, computer science, sociology, and philosophy, students will critically examine how data collection, interpretation, and dissemination influence our perceptions, decision-making processes, and interpersonal interactions.

This course explores the art of collective negotiation, organizing, and civil rights advocacy through a semester-long study of the 1955 -1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott. The course is organized around a published documentary history of the bus strike titled Daybreak of Freedom by Stewart Burns, and the 2001 dramatic film "Boycott" directed by Clark Johnson and starring Jeffrey Wright and Terrence Howard. The course has three areas of focus. First, students learn the legal challenges and court opinions involved in the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

Work is an activity that consumes much of our existence. Whether we love it, hate it, avoid it, struggle through it, tell others how to do it, or worry when we don't have it, most of us will center some form of work in our lives. Work is a site for observing social power: Class, race, gender, ethnicity, disability, age, and other social dynamics intersect and condition people's life chances beyond the workplace. It is also the focus of a great deal of music, comedy, theater, film, and art.

"Dao" means way, or path, in Chinese. Our course will explore the "dao" as it relates to Chinese architecture. We will investigate the ways that nature, space, and power are conveyed, highlighted, and embodied in Chinese gardens, landscape architecture, temples, monuments, and imperial structures. We will construct some pre-designed model versions of a few sites, and then identify, model, create, and annotate a small-scale version of one other architectural site for display on campus.

From Harry Potter to Magic the Gathering to astrology -- magic, witchcraft, and the supernatural are involved in our social, economic, and political histories, and influence how we think about gender, race, religion and spirituality. In this course we will investigate supernatural beliefs in history, popular culture, sociology and psychology in the US and internationally. We will analyze what beliefs and practices about magic and the supernatural reflect about the cultures that produce them, and why they persist in the modern world.

To what extent is the United States achieving the ideal of "one person, one vote," and what role should mathematics play in democracy? In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in Allen v. Milligan that Alabama's congressional map violated the Voting Rights Act by discriminating against Black voters. The majority opinion contains numerous references to the work of a geometer.

This first year Connections class connects students to each other in an exploration of arts and activism and how to balance life as students and scholars interested in justice and social change. It connects students to campus programs about arts and justice, and it connects students to the community by introducing them to the work of the Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS) and its work with incarcerated women.