First-year Seminar Courses, Fall 2025
Work in Literature and Culture
Armendinger, Brent
In this course, we will focus on works of literature, film, and visual art that attempt to reflect the lives and struggles of working people. How does work give meaning to our lives? Who decides the value of work and how does that impact workers’ lived experiences, relationships, and access to power? What role does work play in the imagination and the creation of culture? How have working-class people used creative expression to create community, visibility, and solidarity? Students will practice various forms of writing in order to engage with these ideas.
Brent Armendinger (he/him) is a poet and a professor in the English and World Literature field group. He’s been teaching at Pitzer for 17 years and sincerely loves it. As a poet, much of his writing is place-based and both ecologically and politically informed. Brent is the first person in his family to graduate from college. He loves cycling, hiking, swimming in freshwater, outsider art, and most foods that function as their own containers (dumplings, samosas, tacos, etc).
All My Relations
Banerjee, Mita
This course will take an interdisciplinary look at the construction of family. We will look at these constructions through texts/materials across fields such as psychology, sociology, literature, culture studies, and gender studies. We will examine the concept of “Family” from cross-cultural, psychological, socio-political, historical, and structural perspectives, as well as through individual and collective reflections.
Mita Banerjee (she/they) is a Professor of Psychology, who has been at Pitzer for almost 33 years. She is a Developmental Psychologist whose work spans emotion regulation, emotion interventions for vulnerable children, and the impact of mindfulness on children and adults. Mita is an animal lover and rescue dog/cat parent, enjoys music and food wine, and finds cooking to be highly therapeutic.
Tales of the First Amendment
Bhattacharya, Sumangala
What stories do we tell ourselves about First Amendment constitutional rights? Do you believe in the freedom to express yourself and your faith? What about the right to demonstrate? What forms of protest are acceptable? Should noncitizens have First Amendment rights? Where should we draw the line for these rights? How did these rights come to exist? We will explore how First Amendment rights are represented in literature, film, nonfiction, and some cases. We will also explore the intersections of First Amendment rights and immigration. This class is not intended as a pre-law or political studies course. Instead, we will prioritize cultural and moral questions underlying the law.
Sumangala Bhattacharya is a Professor of British literature. Her teaching interests range from Jane Austen and Charles Dickens to empire, vampires and the supernatural. She occasionally makes forays outside of the 19th-C into the really old stuff: Beowulf, Chaucer, Aphra Behn, Shakespeare. She is also a practicing attorney specializing in humanitarian immigration law and has an abiding interest in First Amendment issues.
The Secret Life of your Local Economy
Bezares Calderon, Alma
The Secret Life of your Local Economy takes a deep dive into the hidden forces that shape the economic life of the Claremont and LA region. This, highly experiential and applied course, will help you understand how different actors have shaped the socioeconomic context of the region across time, and how policies and the interactions of these different actors drive the community in which you live.
Alma Bezares Calderón is an Assistant Professor of Economics. She joined Pitzer in 2024. Born and raised in Mexico City, she has also lived in Montreal, Canada and has lived in the LA region for over 10 years. Her research interests lie in the intersection between development economics and political economy, mostly in francophone African countries and Central America. Her current research focuses on two strands. The first one explores how identity shapes and is shaped by different types of shocks. The second one focuses on the political economy of environmental degradation.
The Caribbean Beyond Reggae Music and White Sand Beaches
Catan, Fély
This seminar aims to provide students with a comprehensive and nuanced understanding of the Caribbean region, moving beyond the commonly portrayed image of sun-kissed beaches, vibrant reggae music, and tourism-driven stereotypes. Instead, the course will delve into the complex history, culture, politics, and social issues that have shaped the Caribbean's identity over time. By adopting an interdisciplinary and transnational approach, students will explore the Caribbean not just as a place, but as a dynamic and interconnected region with a rich heritage and a global influence. The seminar will draw from multiple academic disciplines, including history, sociology, literature, political science, and cultural studies, to highlight the diversity and complexity of the Caribbean. Students will examine the legacies of colonialism, slavery, and migration, as well as the contemporary challenges facing the region, such as climate change, economic inequality, and identity politics. The course will also emphasize the Caribbean's connections to the broader global context, exploring its interactions with the United States, Europe, Latin America, South Asia, and other parts of the world. This transnational perspective will help students understand the Caribbean as a region in constant dialogue with global trends and movements, rather than a place isolated from the world.
Fély Catan (she/elle/ella) is an Assistant Professor of French and Spanish in the MLLC field group. She joined Pitzer in 2020. Born and raised in Paris, France, into a French-Caribbean family she majored in Spanish as an undergraduate student in France before arriving in Texas in 2009 as an exchange student. She has lived in different states like Wisconsin and Georgia. She graduated with her PhD in Romance Languages from the University of Miami in 2019 with a concentration in Caribbean Studies. Her research focuses on decolonial theory in Caribbean literary and artistic production from a transnational and translingual approach.
Food for Thought
Chao, Emily
Food is a source of our shared passion. In this course we will analyze the meanings associated with food and eating. We discuss the aestheticization and symbolization of food, as well as the moral economy of what constitutes healthy food. Food defines who we are as well as who we are not. It is bound up with our identities and gendered subjectivities. Why do we construct ourselves corporeally through eating, or the refusal of food, and what does this tell us about the values, political economy and the particular historical moment in which we live? This course is an interdisciplinary reading and writing seminar that will draw on literature from Anthropology, Environmental Analysis, History, Sociology, and Gender and Feminist Studies. Students with a hearty appetite for all disciplines are welcome to join.
Emily Chao is a professor of anthropology who has taught at Pitzer College since 1996. Her research has focused on diverse topics such as shamanism, bride abduction, state discourse in China and the politics of memory. She teaches courses on gender, cultural constructions of the body, ethnicity, China, food, and anthropological theory.
Nutrition in the Modern World
Feree, Elise
The study of nutrition and food has arguably never been more interesting, due to developments in science and the globalization of food markets. In this seminar, we will trace the history of the human diet to present time. With a cross-cultural lens, we will then explore nutritional issues in the modern world, with a goal of better empowering us to make choices that improve our health and that of our communities and the environment. Books, film, articles, and guest speakers will be our sources of information, which we will discuss and write about in various formats.
Elise Ferree is a biologist in the Department of Natural Sciences. Her research focuses on the behavioral ecology of birds and other animals, but she is also interested in nutrition and has been teaching about it for the past ten years. Elise is a proponent of study abroad and also advises students interested in graduate school.
How to Talk to Animals
Fought, Carmen
The animal kingdom contains a wide variety of ways to communicate. But do any animals other than humans have a language? Can animals be taught to use human language? What does “language” even mean?
In this course, we will look at animal communication systems in the wild, as well as attempts by humans to teach animals our language, from chimps using sign language to those button-pressing dogs on TikTok. We will practice thinking critically about different sources of information, e.g. academic articles, documentaries, YouTube videos. Finally, we will explore the role of pet animals in our lives, and how two completely different species can adapt to understand and communicate with each other. We will answer the burning question: is your cat not coming over because she doesn’t know her name, or because she doesn’t care what you want?
Carmen Fought (she/her) is a Professor of Linguistics who specializes in how language is used to construct identity. She has done research on bilingualism, language and gender, and Chicano English in Los Angeles. Her most recent book looks at how the language used by different characters in the Disney and Pixar films promotes gender ideologies, from polite princesses to queer villains. Her qualifications for this class include owning two Chihuahuas, and she communicates with them even though they really aren’t very smart.
Speculative Feminisms and Sustainable Futures
Gilbert, Sarah
The future is female!, proclaims a well-worn feminist adage. Emerging from a circle of radical lesbian intellectuals in 1970s New York City, the statement operates simultaneously as incantation and prediction, synthesizing the voices of all who utter it into something generative, rather than simply descriptive. Yet, it can reverberate somewhat dissonantly in our contemporary moment; even the term “female” can evoke the same essentializing tendencies that queer and intersectional feminisms today actively seek to unsettle. Pairing recent short stories and critical essays, this seminar explores feminist world-building as a praxis for collectively navigating this moment of deep ecological crisis and its unevenly distributed consequences.
Sarah Gilbert (she/they) is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar, teaching in both the Art and Gender & Feminist Studies field groups at Pitzer. Her current research focuses on craft and collectivity, using disability studies frameworks to explore sculptural practice as a site for multi-species attunement and alliance building.
Ocean Worldbuilding
Yin Han, Lisa
As our global oceans today face unprecedented stressors related to climate change, sea-level rise, plastic waste, and resource extraction, recent years have seen the rise of what’s known as the “blue humanities,” an oceanic turn to the study of the sea and its relationships to humanity. Flowing through disciplinary insights in media studies, anthropology, literary studies and more, we will ask: How do our past relationships to our oceans inform how we imagine its futures? In what ways do maritime activities complicate or reflect our social, political, economic, and cultural systems? We will ponder these questions by examining the ways in which we visualize, sense, sound, sample, and most importantly—imagine our underwater environments across geographies and time periods. From writings by indigenous surfers, to underwater video games, to Hollywood films, we will dive deep into the ways in which ocean storytelling and worldbuilding reflect the opportunities and challenges of our collective offshore futures.
Lisa Yin Han is an ecomedia media scholar who specializes in thinking about how environments mediate culture and how media technologies represent and transform environments. Her research and teaching is situated at the intersections of film and media studies, critical infrastructure studies, and science and technology studies. She is particularly interested in examining media operations in extractive frontiers like the deep ocean. Read more about Han’s work at lisayinhan.com
Diversity, Equality & Inequities
Herman, Leah
The United States is recognized for its diversity and as international students in the U.S. it is useful to consider how ethnicity, class, and gender have been challenged or accepted here. We will examine contemporary and historical events and explore questions of social justice as we read a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts. In discussions and compositions, students will reflect on the ways that culture and social structures shape the Pitzer experience, as well as imagining their own roles in creating the society they desire.
Leah Herman specializes in working with international students. Her undergraduate degree is in comparative literature because it combined her interests in reading, intercultural learning and history. In addition to teaching, Leah is also the Academic Director of the International Scholars Program. In her free time she enjoys embroidery and being in or near the ocean.
NOTE: This course is reserved for International Students only
The Control Revolution: Advertising, Media, Politics
Herrera, Geoffrey
This course is about many things. It is, for sure, about the three things in the subtitle. It is about the evolution, over the last 150 years or so, of a set of tools designed to shape, direct and manage human behavior (mostly, though not exclusively, in the United States). Human behavior in the marketplace, in the workplace, and in political life. We will explore the development of these tools through a study of three books that deal, in (mostly) chronological order, with the industrial, mass media, and social media ages. The goal is to construct a powerful vantage point from which to analyze our evolving political order.
Geoffrey Herrera is a professor of Political Studies at Pitzer. He mostly teaches classes in international politics, but he is also deeply interested in how technology and politics interrelate.
College Campus Culture in Literature
Johnson, Amanda Louise
Historically, college is a funny place where modern ideas of progress collide with medieval philosophies of higher learning. American college campuses, especially, have also been a petri dish for radical activism and social change, even as the institutions themselves operate according to generations-old traditions. It is an intense 4 years, but most college graduates still remember this time as transformative and continue to identify with their alma mater decades after graduation. Together, we will read texts that explore the wonderfully weird experience of college life, and use our writing to take stock of how college has transformed us on and off the page.
Professor Johnson (she/her/hers) specializes in American and Atlantic literature before WWI, and loves to talk about Edgar Allan Poe and Sci-Fi. Firmly believing that everyone can acquire new writing skills, she enjoys helping unsure writers trust themselves and more confident writers challenge themselves.
Healthy Cities: Creating America’s Future by Demystifying Urban Myths
Perdue-Johnson, Shawnika
Are you passionate about creating places and geographies that exemplify health and environmental sustainability? If so, I enthusiastically invite you to take “Healthy Cities” with me, Dr. Perdue-Johnson. I am a scholar-practitioner passionate about city/regional planning and creating healthy cities. In this course, we will study and explore the following: 1) What is a healthy city? 2) What myths shape societal beliefs and values about urban spaces and the people who live there?, and 3) What prevents segments of American populations from enjoying healthy cities? This fun and dynamic course will help you answer these questions by developing qualitative place-based research skills.
This course includes creative place-based learning methods, including music, art, photography, and ethnography. This unforgettable learning experience will be infused with pop culture, contemporary artists, and their lived experiences in cities locally and globally. Get ready to visit cities, engage in cultural experiences, and design your ideal healthy city. Join me and others as we embark upon this thought-provoking and experiential journey!! I can’t wait to meet you.
Dr. Shawnika Perdue-Johnson is an interdisciplinary scholar of city planning, environmental justice, and comparative politics who studies its impact at the intersection of race, class, and gender. Dr. Perdue-Johnson’s research underscores the collective roles of scholars, government, legislators, practitioners, community leaders, and advocates in balancing the scales of equity and justice. Her research on American cities emphasizes the lived experiences of people who inhabit America’s most notorious localities.
Dr. Perdue-Johnson, a native Californian with familial roots in the Global South, equips Social Justice Creatives and Change Agents from diverse socioeconomic, ethnic/racial, and gender backgrounds with interdisciplinary learning and experiential knowledge to effectuate change. She welcomes student creativity through the arts, photography, ethnography, podcasts, and traditional academic learning.
Dr. Perdue-Johnson holds a Ph.D. in Politics and Government with an emphasis in environmental justice, public policy, and gender studies from Claremont Graduate University (CGU). She also holds a Master of Arts in Applied Women and Gender Studies from CGU. Additionally, Dr. Perdue-Johnson has a Master of Urban and Regional Planning; and a Bachelor of Science in Health Science. Dr. Perdue-Johnson’s research and professional experience is in city planning, environmental policy, environmental justice, and land use policy.
Reasoning about the Unreasonable
Keeley, Brian
“Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.” So sayeth philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Death. Creativity. Dreams. Nothingness. Conspiracy Theories. The minds of non-human animals. One thing that unites this disparate collection of things is that all have been claimed to lie beyond the reach of human reason and the processes of logic. However, regardless of these concerns, philosophers, artists, as well as social and natural scientists have all engaged with topics such as these. In this seminar, we will see how one might think and write about things that seem to defy or outstrip ordinary reasoning. Is Wittgenstein correct, and if not, what can we say about such things?
Prof. Keeley (he/him) endeavors to embody the interdisciplinary emphasis of Pitzer College; being a member of 4 different field groups: Philosophy, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, & Science, Technology & Society. When not thinking about issues at the intersection of science and the humanities, he likes long-distance hiking, checking out SoCal art & history museums, and playing with his black lab, Dulcie.
(End) Days of Our Lives: Apocalyptic Fiction
Lagji, Amanda
This course will explore representations and projections of possible apocalyptic futures: from a novel set in a near-future United States wracked by strange reverse-evolutionary processes and a fascist Christian nationalist government; to another prescient 2018 novel that imagines an alternate history of the US through a pandemic fever’s ability to crumble contemporary life; to short stories that imagine Palestine in the year 2048. Questions we’ll discuss include: How do the texts address themselves to a still-unfolding future, one we might yet avert, as well as the various crises that assault our present? Despite the bleak subject matter, might we still identify moments of hope, opportunity, and solidarity? And what modes—speculative fiction, counter-history, satire, etc.—do this work best?
Professor Lagji (she/her) is Associate Professor of English and World Literature, and her book Postcolonial Fiction and Colonial Time: Waiting for Now was published by Edinburgh UP in 2022. She delights in puns, running before the sun rises, and copious outlining before starting to write a first draft of anything (except maybe this short bio.)
Labor and the Good Life
Lambert, Thomas
When you leave college, you’ll embark on a lifetime of work. In this course, at the start of your Pitzer journey, we will think about labor from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, asking about the definition(s) of “work” itself, the politics of employment, and questions like how work can contribute to (or detract from) a life well lived. Your work will be cut out for you: the seminar will be heavily discussion-based, with course materials ranging from scholarly articles, to popular essays, to works of theater and film.
I earned my PhD in the Department of Philosophy at Princeton University. Most generally, I’m interested in what it means to live well and how various forms of agency contribute to “the good life.” I like to approach these questions through the history of philosophy, and my publications have centered on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. I grew up in a little town on a big lake in Northern Wisconsin, and I am a diehard Green Bay Packers fan.
What is Apartheid?
O’Rourke, Harmony
This course introduces students to the history of apartheid in South Africa. We will examine the cultural, social, economic, and political factors that created and sustained this oppressive and unequal system, paying attention to land alienation, profound cultural changes, constructions of races, ethnicities, and sexualities, and myriad forms of racial and gendered oppression. We will explore the diverse ways people experienced and resisted this racist order, what factors led to its collapse, as well as experiments in transitional justice and the legacies of apartheid in South Africa today.
Harmony O'Rourke is Professor of History and Gender and Feminist Studies at Pitzer College, with expertise in modern African History. She is author of Hadija’s Story: Diaspora, Gender, and Belonging in the Cameroon Grassfields (Indiana University Press, 2017), and her scholarly articles have appeared in History in Africa: A Journal of Method, Journal of West African History, and Oxford University Press’s Encyclopedia of African Women's History. Her current research explores the cultural histories of natural disaster, global science, and postcolonial politics in Cameroon.
Writing Sound
Ma, Ming-Yuen
If writing is defined primarily in visual terms, then how does one write about sound? This seminar takes an exploratory approach to think through and write on noise, voice, the soundscape, sound in media and film, as well as other auditory frameworks to introduce students to ways of learning historically and culturally about sound and listening. This course will survey wide ranging topics including American and European industrialization, rainforest soundscapes of Papua New Guinea, cassette sermons by Islamic preachers in Egypt, avant-garde music, DJ culture - to name a few.
Ming-Yuen S. Ma is Professor of Media Studies at Pitzer College for more than twenty years. Trained as a video artist, Ma decided about ten years ago to focus on writing and research. His publications include There is No Soundtrack: Rethinking Art, Media, and the Audio-Visual Contract (2020) and Resolutions 3: Global Networks of Video (2012). Ma’s current research explores the soundscapes of media installation and performance art, focusing both on the praxis of contemporary artists as well as those of the institutions that present, exhibit, fund, and preserve their work. For more information on Ma’s artwork, including the ReCut Project (2006), Sniff (1997), and Toc Storee (1992), go to www.mingyuensma.org
Canine Companions
Monroy, Jenna
Dogs and humans have coexisted as each other’s companion for more than 20,000 years. However, anthropologists and biologists continue to debate over the evolution of dogs from wolves, the genetic basis of behaviors that we have selected for in many dog breeds, and the emotions that we share with our pets. In this course, we will explore the history of human-canine relationships and examine the roles dogs play across cultures. In addition, we will read and discuss popular articles on dog cognition, physiology, and behavior. Through our readings and discussions, we will practice writing the structures of an argument and ways to approach multiple audiences. We will use a multi-drafting approach to writing to develop good strategies for revision, peer review, and constructive criticism.
Jenna Monroy is an Associate Professor of Biology. As an integrative physiologist, Jenna is broadly interested in the sensory, mechanical, and neuromuscular factors that influence movement in a variety of animal species from frogs to humans. Specifically, her work investigates how muscles function, not only as motors but also as springs, brakes, and struts. Her recent work on the role of the elastic protein titin in active muscle has expanded traditional theories and fills in gaps in our understanding of muscle function.
The Criminalization of Immigration
Pantoja, Adrian
How did immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border transform from a low-priority policy issue into one of the most contentious issues in the 20th Century? One of the most important factors shaping the size and composition of authorized and unauthorized immigration is U.S. immigration policy. Indeed, to meet labor demands, U.S. immigration policy initially encouraged immigration from Mexico and other parts of the globe. Although labor demands continued, by the latter part of the 20th Century, some elites saw a political opportunity by constructing immigrants as a threat and the U.S.-Mexico border as dangerous. A major focus of this course examines the process that has led to the criminalization of immigrants and the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border.
Adrian Pantoja is professor of political studies and chicano studies. My courses and research are driven by a desire to challenge conventional stereotypes about immigrants and other minoritized groups in the United States.
La Familia
Torres, Maria
This seminar explores commonalities and differences across conceptions and constructions of “la familia” (the family) for Latinx people living in the U.S. We will examine la familia from a comparative perspective (contemporary, across different Latinx groups, within families, across immigration status, etc.), and we will consider the psychological, sociocultural, and political factors that contribute to the complexity and diversity of Latinx families. We will read research and narrative accounts of the journeys that Latinx families have undertaken (in some cases, crossing the U.S./Mexico border and being separated from family members) resulting in the development of transnational ties and evolving identities.
Maria Torres is emeritus dean of Chicanx/Latinx students at the Claremont Colleges. She was the founding dean of Chicanx/Latinx Student Affairs at the 5Cs. Her research focuses on sociolinguistics, bilingualism, and pathways for success among Latinx students.
Propaganda
Wakefield, Andre
This course examines propaganda, past and present. We will look at everything from police state rhetoric to mass market advertising, investigating the ways in which propaganda has been mobilized in different times and places. The course will be based around reading and discussion; we will do all kinds of writing, and maybe try our hand at some podcasting.
I was trained in German history and the history of science at the University of Chicago. My books and articles are still mostly about those topics, but I’ve branched out too, teaching (and writing some) about the history of soccer, prison autobiography, and propaganda systems. And I have a Corgi named Heidi who teaches my classes for me.
Hauntology: Ghosts, Specters, and Spirits
Wang, Jo Ann
This course explores the cultural politics of haunting and being haunted. Drawing on classic and contemporary works in anthropology, we examine culturally particular, historically situated experiences and interpretations of ghostly and other supernatural encounters and how they shape political subjectivities and agencies. Specifically, we interrogate how embodied episodes, such as spirit possession and trance, afford social actors unique opportunities for political articulation, expression, and imagination in various contexts of domination, oppression, and violence. This discussion-based and seminar-style course will provide you with anthropological concepts and historical sensibilities to think about and relate to ghosts, specters, and spirits differently.
Jo Ann Wang (she/they) is Assistant Professor of Environmental Analysis. She is an environmental and political anthropologist of rural Malaysia/Southeast Asia with training in history of science and science and technology studies. Her research interests include rural futures, oil and energy politics, and diaspora placemaking. She is a first-generation, multi-lingual (Mandarin Chinese, Hokkien, Malay, and English) scholar-teacher from rural Southern Taiwan and received her Ph.D. from Stanford University.