The exploration level of the University Core Curriculum is a new addition to the Core that started in Fall 2022. Classes for this level will be designated by an “X” in the course number, with the “X” suggesting the intersection of multiple Core Habits of Heart and Mind. The list of class offerings
will evolve each semester.
Only students who entered UP in or after the Fall 2021 and are enrolled in the ‘revitalized’ Core will need to take Exploration classes. These students will take two such classes at some point before graduation.
The exploration level is intended to build off the foundation level, so students should wait until making significant progress on foundation level classes before taking exploration courses. Students will be eligible to take exploration courses starting in their sophomore year, but many will wait until junior or senior year in order to have completed foundation level coursework.
The intention of the exploration level is for students to add breadth to their educational experiences, so students should try to take exploration classes outside their major areas. If, for example, students are majoring in a science, technology, engineering, or math (STEM) field, they should look to offerings in the humanities or social sciences. If students are majoring in arts or humanities, they should look to offerings in the sciences. All exploration courses are designed to be accessible for any student who has completed relevant foundation level course work.
Exploration level courses also intentionally address two Core Habits of Heart and Mind, offering multiple lenses from the liberal arts to understand timely and timeless issues of human concern. Approved exploration level courses will be designated by having an “X” in the course number and are listed below with the two Core Habits most relevant to the course.
Course Description: The study of chemistry in a variety of art forms. Students engage in creative processes through in-class activities, some of which result in the creation of a tangible piece of art (etched glass, fresco, cyanotype, diazo print, copper etching, and jewelry colored by thin film interference). Other topics include pigments and dyes, paintings, photography, and techniques used to analyze artworks and detect forgeries. Two papers and a student-designed final project are assigned.
Scientific and Quantitative Literacy and Problem Solving
Course Description: This course explores the chemistry involved in the creation and cultures of food. Students will learn through lab activities such as kitchen spherification about chemistry in the appearance, taste and shape of food. Students will also use scientific thinking to engage in sous vide cooking and the making of cheese, bread and kimchi. A survey of the anthropology of fermentation offers a sense of how global consciousness informs the science of food.
ENG 391X Literature and Cultures of FoodCourse Description: This course takes a delicious approach to studying who we are as human beings. The course will invite students to take a close look at the food on our plates and as it appears in literature to learn more about our individual selves and our identities, our ties to family, our past, our culture, and other cultures around the globe. Through our journey students will cultivate multiple ways of exploring essential questions and strengthen fundamental habits for engaging meaningfully with the world around them and living a reflective, purposeful life.
Course Description: This course will allow students to explore the environmental impacts and scientific challenges of raising the food for our growing population. Students will engage in using an ethical lens to evaluate the impact of our agricultural system on the world around us and ourselves.
FA 310X The Fine Arts Through the Film MediumCourse Description: A study of the fine arts as they have been perceived and explored through the lens of both narrative and documentary film makers. Students will study various means to crafting a personal response to various director's approaches to capturing the fine arts in film, as well as crafting their own film about the fine arts.
GWSS 301X Foundations of Gender, Women, and Sexuality StudiesCourse Description: This course introduces you to key issues in the field of GWSS with a special focus on voice: Who gets to speak? By what means? And for whom? this class considers the ways that categories of identity (e.g., gender, sexuality, race, class, religious affiliation, and citizenship status) intersect and shaped lived experience. Similar to an intro course, this class is open to anyone curious about GWSS.
Course Description: An investigation of military, political, social change around the world during the period between the World Wars, 1919-1939, with emphasis on the seven surviving Great Powers: British Empire, France, Germany, Italy, Soviet Union, United States, and Japan. Topics include the detachment of Ireland from the British Empire, the Japanese attempt to dominate China, the clash of Powers in the Spanish Civil War, the rise of Communism, and the fragmentation of Eastern Europe. The course will use the lens of historical consciousness as well as literary perspectives.
MTH 291X Being Human in MathCourse Description: In this course, we will examine how mathematical and statistical tools, often assumed to be objective and unbiased, are often wielded irresponsibly, leading to increased discrimination and threatening democratic systems. When applied with transparency and oversight, however, these tools can be great levers for equitable change. We will also consider the disciplinary practice of mathematics itself, examining how it has historically failed to welcome, support, and credit a diverse population of mathematicians and considering how we might each work to change this.
MUS 302X Music History II: The Influence of Revolution, War, Immigration, and Women's Suffrage, 1820-2022Course Description: In Music History II, we study the historical and cultural contexts of Western music from the 19th Century through today. Music is not composed in a vacuum, so it is imperative that we explore the influence of art, cultural, and sociopolitical conditions. How do war, protest, peace, and religion impact music? This course includes classical, jazz, theater, opera, movie music, and contemporary works. Required of music majors. Open to all students.
PHL 331X Metaphysics: Asian PhilosophyCourse Description:This course explains the nature and source of reality in classical and contemporary Asian philosophies. It focuses on such questions as the origin and nature of ultimate reality, the nature of the self in relation to reality, freedom and causality in human existence, idealism and realism, and methodological approaches to apprehending reality.
PHL 336X Metaphysics: Native American PhilosophyCourse Description: This course explores Native American Philosophy with particular emphasis on Mexico or the continental US. Topically, the course focuses on metaphysical aspects of Native American thought such as the nature or reality, time, space, truth, freedom, the self and the relationship between the self and the world.
PHL 341X Metaphysics: Breakdowns in KnowledgeCourse Description: This course covers central topics in social epistemology, a field that examines the social dimensions of knowledge. In this course, we will examine the nature of peer disagreement, and learn various perspectives on our rational obligations when we encounter intellectual peers who disagree with us. In the next section, we examine a deeper form of disagreement known as polarization and learn different explanations as to why such wide divisions emerge and our moral and epistemic duties when we confront them. Finally, we will study a form of injustice known as epistemic injustice in which the victim is harmed in their capacity as knower, and thereby prevented from contributing knowledge as a reliable and respected informant. The course aims to both familiarize students with the landscape of these debates and develop the skills of critical reasoning and writing.
Course Description: This course focuses on the range of strategies that countries use to solve problems and pursue goals. We address when, why, and how some strategies are more effective than others. Lessons are drawn from business, war, diplomacy, and politics.
THE 391XA Spirituality and the ArtsCourse Description: This course examines how artists who identify (in loosely defined ways) as people of faith communicate their experience of the sacred. Students learn how to interpret artistic work like poems, paintings, and music to better understand other people's experience of the sacred, while reflecting on and deepening their own understanding of what is sacred. Art is thus experienced in this course as a means of self-discovery and spiritual formation. Students are expected to experiment with their own creativity, encouraged to understand there are lots of ways they already are and can be creative.
THE 391XB Who do you say that I am: Stories of JesusCourse Description: Who is Jesus and why does his story matter? These are the questions that people of different genders, races, nationalities, classes, and religious backgrounds have explored for over 2000 years. This class introduces students to stories about Jesus from various intellectual and religious traditions and examines them within their historical and cultural contexts, expanding students' imaginations in articulating Jesus' identity and significance.
THE 391XE Christianity, Gender, and SexualityCourse Description: This course explores gender and sexuality vis-à-vis Christian tradition. Using ethics as our overarching framework, we’ll cover Biblical literature, development of doctrine, and contemporary theological reflections, and incorporate perspectives from feminist theory, critical race theory, and the sciences. We will discuss the tradition’s wisdom about gender and sexuality and its limitations and potential innovations in relation to topics including but not limited to marriage/singleness, the Catholic sex abuse crisis, rape culture, and queer identities.
THTR 307X A History of Theatre and CultureCourse Description: Introductory overview of global theatre history from the earliest oral storytelling traditions to the modern day, looking at how theatrical trends are birthed from their cultural moment. Students will not only consider the people, plays, and movements that have impacted theatrical history but also how that history has been told and consider how it can be told. Emphasis is that what we learn is always A theatre history, not THE theatre history.
Course Description: Students in this class will practice the art of playwriting: reading and writing short plays to discover the structure of dramatic literature and their individual voice within the artform. This course is dedicated to the first part of the process of playwriting: getting a play on to the page, with an emphasis on drafting and refining short pieces from scenes to ten-minute plays, to a one-act play as the final project.
University of Portland
5000 N. Willamette Blvd.,
Portland, Oregon 97203-5798
503.943.8000
