By Sarthak Shah
Though our students may be spread across the country—and the world—our regular online undergraduate registration for the fall semester still begins today (depending on the school, graduate program registration may already have started or may begin in coming weeks).
While much of your schedule may be filled with prerequisites and required classes for your degree, The Daily wanted to highlight just a few of the interesting—and sometimes unexpected—classes available to Case Western Reserve University students next fall. From cooking to medicine, physics to dance, students can choose courses across a wide spectrum of subjects.
Areas highlighted include courses—suggested by departments—in the following subject areas:
Most classes highlighted are open to students across campus, but any pre-requisites or limitations are listed.
Looking for more ideas? Check out the Registrar’s website for additional course listings.
Business, Law & Politics
Leadership in Diversity and Inclusion: Towards a Globally Inclusive Workplace
ORBH (Organizational Behavior) 391
Instructor: Pooja Khatija
Open to undergraduates
The workplace is going global, and we’re seeing that in this time now more than ever before. This course addresses workforce diversity issues from individual, group, and organizational perspectives. The focus is on innovative ways of utilizing today’s culturally expanding workforce. The emphasis is on the “what and how” for managers in developing a corporate culture that embraces diversity, helping them in learning to work with, supervise and tap the talent of diverse employees within their organizations. Included are methods for modifying systems to attract, retain, develop, and capitalize on benefits of the new workforce demographics.
Healthcare Economics and Policy
ECON (Economics) 378
Instructor: Mark Votruba
Pre-requisites: ECON 102 or instructor permission
This course provides a framework for understanding how the U.S. health care sector operates, how it has evolved, and the roles played by public policy and “market forces” in determining that evolution. It is particularly relevant because of the current pandemic. These issues are addressed through the lens of microeconomic theory.
Economics of Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship
ECON (Economics) 369
Instructor: Scott Shane
Pre-requisites: ECON 102, or instructor permission
This course is designed to help students identify, evaluate, and obtain control over technological opportunities so they may successfully understand the challenges of starting new companies. The course focuses on four themes:
- the source, discovery and evaluation of technological opportunities;
- the process of organizing a new firm to produce new technology that satisfies the needs of customers;
- the acquisition of financial and human resources necessary to exploit technological opportunities; and
- the development of mechanism to appreciate the returns from exploitation of technological opportunities.
Inside Financial Crises
ECON (Economics) 376
Instructor: Mark Sniderman
Pre-requisites: ECON 102 and ECON 103, or instructor permission.
This course is particularly relevant because of the current pandemic. The economic policy response to COVID-19 will be analyzed as a real-time case study. ECON 376 looks into what happens when the global economy experiences a financial system meltdown and the substantial recession that results.
Environment Economics
ECON (Economics) 368
Instructor: Susan Helper
Pre-requisites: ECON 102, or instructor permission
We will apply economics tools to real-world problems, such as: how can we address climate change without massive job loss? Why do markets fail to prevent pollution, and how can government policy do better? Under what circumstances can companies profit by polluting less? What kinds of policies can spur the invention of green technologies? Class sessions will include guest presentations from professionals who are actively working on environmental challenges.
Health & Wellness
Perspectives on Dying and Death: Normalizing the Inevitable
USSO (Think About The Social World) 290N
Instructor: Maryjo Prince-Paul
Open to undergraduate students
The inevitability of death encompasses us all. We are all born with the disease of mortality. We all die. And yet, to many of us the details of dying and death are a mystery. It is an abstraction we would rather not think about. This course aims to create thoughtful and reflective dialogue about dying and death, confronting death as something more than an abstract possibility. We will review the physical, psychological, social, spiritual, cultural, ethical, and economic perspectives of dying in America. Reflective thinking will be carefully guided by an array of faculty and guest speakers, both those who are directly involved in the care of the dying and those who provide services to families of the deceased.
Topics in health and medicine: Anthropology of Infectious Disease
ANTH (Anthropology) 376/476
Instructor: Katharina Rynkiewich
Open to undergraduates
Now more than ever, we need to understand the complex and evolving relationships between humans and our pathogens. The biocultural approach of medical anthropology provides a valuable lens through which to study epidemics and threats to global health. This course explores the evolving relationship between humans and non-human microbiota. Beginning with the modern era, we will study infectious diseases and the critical contexts in which they occur (e.g. ecological, political, social, and cultural). Case studies will include antibiotic resistant “superbugs,” H1N1 influenza, SARS and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), HIV/AIDS, and global cholera epidemics. Through the study of global infectious disease outbreaks and threats, we will address larger anthropological questions about knowledge, the power of metaphor, the role of institutions, and the health and security of populations.
Women’s Wellness: From Food & Nutrition to Reproductive Health & Aging
NTRN (Nutrition) 320
Instructor: Cathrine Rogers McManus
Open to undergraduates
When you think of women’s health, what comes to mind? Often breast cancer, pregnancy, menopause and osteoporosis. And yes, while these are all certainly women’s health issues, women’s health and wellness expands far beyond physical health conditions, as social, emotional and cognitive factors play a significant role in the health and well-being of women across the lifespan. Through this course, you will have the opportunity to be immersed in an array of women’s wellness topics, from food and nutrition (i.e., dietary supplements; fad diets; weight management; disordered eating) to reproductive health (i.e., menstruation; fertility; pregnancy; birth control), aging (i.e., menopause; living independently) and health and wellness (i.e., mental health, stress and anxiety; beauty—hair, skin and nails; female athletes). This course is intended for undergraduate students of all majors, class rank and gender.
Case Cooks: Ethnic Eats
NTRN (Nutrition) 200
Open to undergraduate students, non-nutrition majors
In a world as connected as ours, it is important to learn about others’ cultures; and what better way to learn than through the medium of food! Something as simple as food can be interpreted thousands of ways and can serve as a link from our culture to ethnicities around the world. This half-semester class focuses on exploring cultural diversity in a way that everyone can relate to while also incorporating healthy, simple, budget friendly cooking skills. Course is geared towards the beginner skill level. Each week we will explore a different region of the world including Africa, South America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.
Humanities, Art and Social Sciences
History of Medicine
HSTY (History) 395/HSTY 495
Instructor: Jonathan Sadowsky
Open to undergraduate students
Given the present global pandemic, this course is especially relevant, helping to put COVID-19 into the larger history of understanding disease and public health. This course treats selected topics in the history of medicine, with an emphasis on social and cultural history–how health and illness have been experienced and understood by society. Focusing on the modern period, it examines illnesses, patients, and healers, with attention to the ways sickness and medicine touch larger questions of politics, social relations and identity. Offered as HSTY 395 and HSTY 495.
Introduction to Medieval History, 500-1500
HSTY (History) 103
Instructor: Elizabeth Todd
Open to undergraduate students
Take the long view. Consider the broad sweep of a pivotal millenium in world history. This course covers Medieval history and civilization from the fall of the Roman Empire to the age of the Renaissance. Students will discuss interactions between medieval Europe and other Mediterranean and Eurasian cultures. The course counts for the College of Arts and Sciences Global & Cultural Diversity Requirement.
Soul Murder: Religion and Sexual Abuse
RLGN (Religious Studies) 252/WGST (Women’s & Gender Studies) 252
Instructor: Brian Clites
Open to undergraduate students
This course addresses questions about religious trauma, memory and suffering. How is religious abuse different than sexual assault in non-religious contexts? What can survivors teach us about the resilience of the human spirit? What are the racial dynamics of the recent Roman Catholic crisis? What flaws has it exposed in our criminal justice system?
To answer questions like these, students will begin the semester with anthropological studies of religion and trauma; examine grand jury investigations in the United States; evaluate case studies from the Roman Catholic context, including sexual abuse by nuns. Students will use these examples to evaluate representations of the crisis in film and news media and compare the Catholic crisis to recent sexual abuse scandals in American, Jewish, Muslim, and Protestant communities.
Dance in Culture, Ethnic forms
DANC (Dance) 121
Instructor: Karen Potter
Open to undergraduate students
This course involves a mix of studio days, lectures and videos examining dance from around the world. Studio classes may include sessions in West African Dance, Chinese Classical Dance, and Flamenco. Open to all students, this course has no pre-requisites and meets the SAGES Global and Diversity Breadth requirements and also meets dance major requirements.
Indian Philosophy
RLGN (Religious Studies) 221/PHIL (Philosophy) 221
Instructor: Deepak Sarma
Open to undergraduate students
Do objects exist outside of the mind? Do I have a self/soul? Are there any unquestionable/ fundamental truths/presuppositions? These are some of the questions for students to consider. Students will survey the origins of Indian philosophical thought, with an emphasis on early Buddhist, Hindu and Jain literature. They will look at the methods, presuppositions, arguments, and goals of these schools and trajectories of thought. What were their theories on the nature of the person, the nature of reality, and the nature and process of knowing? What were the debates between the schools and the major points of controversy? And, most importantly, are the positions/arguments internally (in)coherent?
Paradise, Hell, and Purgatory in the Global Middle Ages
ARTH (Art History) 545
Instructors: Elina Gertsman (CWRU) and Sooa McCormick (Cleveland Museum of Art)
Open to graduate students
This course will explore the visual cultures of afterlife, which arose in response to several religions that flourished in medieval Europe and East Asia. The focus will be on Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. How were heaven, purgatory and hell conceptualized across these religions? How were these concepts manifested in material culture? How were immortality, rebirth, judgment, and resurrection interpreted in religious teachings and subsequently visualized? What was the role of images in the structuring of medieval piety, globally conceived? What are some of the common approaches shared by these religious cultures, and how were they impacted by their socio-economic and political contexts?
Victimology
SASS 365
Instructor: Fredrick Butcher
Open to undergraduates
This course introduces victimology, which is the study of the causes and consequences of victimization, and how victims and the criminal justice system interact. The focus will be on understanding the extent of crime victimization, theories of victimization, and the criminal justice system as it relates to the study of victimology. We will cover topics such as homicide, intimate partner violence, violence exposure, victims’ rights, and sexual violence. This course will help students to understand crime victimization from a variety of perspectives with a particular emphasis on the intersection of social work and criminal justice and the role of social workers in the criminal justice system.
Science & Tech
Experimental Methods in Biophysics
PHYS (Physics) 330
Instructor: Lydia Kisley
Open to undergraduate students who have taken PHYS 122 or 124
This lecture course covers instrumentation used in biophysics with visits to the core facilities. Learn what is behind the “black box” of commercial equipment.
Blockchains and AI: Applications in Finance and Business
BTEC (Business Technology) 493
Instructor: RL Shankar
Open to Weatherhead School of Management graduate students
Business and life as we know it is migrating toward technologies like blockchain and artificial intelligence. The course objective is to provide a practical introduction to key technologies like these and their business implications. We focus on business perspectives, rather than on the technical dimensions.
Set your schedule
For both undergraduates and graduates, check the timeline for course registration.
Once you’re ready with your schedule, complete registration through SIS.