Center for Interdisciplinary Studies

The Business Fundamentals Lab aims to help students develop a clear, basic understanding of the central unit of the institution of business: a company. Led by a practitioner, students will learn the components and functions common to companies, and explore the internal workings by which companies assess their ability to achieve multiple goals while generating profit. Acting as the managerial and executive staff of a hypothetical company named "Helios," students will experiment with making complex decisions while addressing competing demands, not only concerns about immediate, short-term profit but also broader concerns about shareholders, stakeholders, ethical impact, and company culture. The Lab is designed to fulfill the Fundamentals requirement for the minor in Business, Ethics, and Society, but is open to any student interested in understanding how businesses function and the decision making processes they follow. Students should have Microsoft Office on their computers.

GPA units: 0.5

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

It is recognized that poverty plays a central role in many preventable diseases. With the development of nations have come improvements in health. The linkages between health and development can only be understood within the broader context of socio-political and economic factors. In the landscape of globalization and international development there has emerged a vast international health regime. This course focuses on these linkages in the context of this international political economy of health. Key aspects are critically examined including the concepts and architecture of global health, the global burden and epidemiology of disease, health and development of nations, and political-economic determinants of health and development. This foundational course in global health will use a variety of analytical perspectives including political, legal, economic and epidemiological. The course focuses on developing countries. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

The course focuses on the final glory days of Austria. After dominating Europe as imperial city and court of the Holy Roman Empire for centuries until 1806, Austria steadily diminished in geographical size and as a political powerhouse. However, at the turn-of-the-century, intellectual and aesthetic achievements secure Vienna's fame apart form the house of Habsburg. The course strives to convey the awe-inspiring diversity of innovations in art, architecture, design, music, journalism, criticism, literature, philosophy, and science through texts, slides and recordings. At the same time, the course addresses the cultural phenomena in the historical, political, and social context of events leading up to and following WWI.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

The course focuses on the final glory days of Austria. After dominating Europe as imperial city and court of the Holy Roman Empire for centuries until 1806, Austria steadily diminished in geographical size and as a political powerhouse. However, at the turn-of-the-century, intellectual and aesthetic achievements secure Vienna's fame apart form the house of Habsburg. The course strives to convey the awe-inspiring diversity of innovations in art, architecture, design, music, journalism, criticism, literature, philosophy, and science through texts, slides and recordings. At the same time, the course addresses the cultural phenomena in the historical, political, and social context of events leading up to and following WWI.

GPA units: 0

This course seeks to explore the norms of institutionalized service and volunteerism today, a phenomenon that includes service programs, service trips, end postgraduate years of service. We will dive into the past and follow where these programs came from, what ideas shaped them, what values this normalized idea of service draws from, who serves, who they serve, the limits of this kind of service, and ask how we may do this better. Along the way, this class will range over an array of influences that includes pacifist Quakers, progressive educational practitioners, the Civil Rights Movement, and the War on Poverty, and larger evolving American conceptions of service to the state and to each other.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

How do we imagine and reconstruct change through time? Evolutionary biologists and classicists studying the transmission of cultural material have influenced each others' responses to this question for two centuries. Darwins On the Origin of Species was a landmark in biological scholarship when it appeared in 1859; it followed by nine years Karl Lachmanns 1850 edition of Lucretius, a work often identified as the acme of nineteenth-century textual stemmatic criticism. Both scholars rigorously compared observable features (whether the morphology of finches' beaks, or readings in the manuscripts of Lucretius) to infer historical relations that could be modeled as a family tree-like stemma.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Literature

Worcester and Its People is a study of the history of Worcester and the people who have lived here from the time of European settlement in the late 17th Century to the present. The course's principal focus is on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a period in which Worcester became one of America's leading industrial centers and the magnet for thousands of immigrants. Worcester's history reflects most of the major concerns and issues in the history of the nation, providing a microcosm for their study. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall

A course in reading, writing, and presentation of case law material. Students apply American Trial Association rules of argument and evidence in preparing for mock trial competitions. Working in small groups and working alone on detailed arguments are both required. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Annually

Consistent with the mission of Holy Cross and the vision of Jesuit higher education outlined by Fr. General Kolvenbach, this course offers CBL scholars and SPUD interns the opportunity to engage in the "gritty reality of the world" in order to reflect meaningfully upon the question of what responsibility each of us has towards creating a more just society and how each of us can use our individual gifts and talents to contribute toward this aim. In order to address these questions effectively, the course will utilize texts, articles, websites, movie excerpts, and community engagement experiences to enable a deeper understanding of social problems; to analyze how social problems directly impact individuals within our society; to consider questions of equity and social justice; and to reflect upon what influence our personal choices have on social problems. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Annually

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall

Entrepreneurship begins with a vision. This course focuses on the foundations of entrepreneurship and is appropriate for students from any major. It is designed to introduce students to the entrepreneurial process so that they may begin to shape their own entrepreneurial vision. Course objectives include an introduction to the challenges of entrepreneurship, an understanding of the ethical environment in which entrepreneurs operate, the skills to think critically and work toward the ability to evaluate opportunities in the business. This is a course that includes project-based entrepreneurial activities where students work to test and validate ideas.Due to the project-based nature of the class, the beginning of the week we will focus on learning the concepts, whereas the lab will be time to do fieldwork, peer-to-peer feedback, and building of venture. In addition to classes, faculty will hold periodic mentor meetings with teams. One unit.

Prerequisite: Enrollment is limited to 2nd,3rd,4th Year Students.

GPA units: 1

This course will investigate the scientific and political factors that have shaped responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. We begin by establishing the biological, historical, and national institutional context for pandemic response, tracing the development of epidemiology and public health mechanisms through cases including the Great Plague, cholera, and the 1918 influenza pandemic. We then move to address the evolution, and sources of authority, of international cooperative mechanisms like the World Health Organization, nongovernmental organizations, and epistemic communities by analyzing the response to recent public health crises, including the outbreaks of H1N1 influenza and Ebola. Thus prepared, we turn to COVID-19. We will first discuss the biology of the virus, the research that underpins our understanding of its transmission, epidemiological models of disease spread, and the biological bases of the treatments currently under development. This scientific understanding will allow us to make recommendations about ideal public health guidelines. We will then compare these ideal responses to those actually taken by national and international actors, while analyzing the reasons - social, political, and scientific - for the diverse policies pursued and the implications for future pandemic response.

Prerequisite: POLS 102 or POLS 103 or BIOL 161 or by permission of the Instructors.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Social Science

Capitalism in Context will introduce students to the intellectual foundations and principles of capitalism, detailing how these intersect with ideas about individual liberty, social responsibility and human flourishing. Capitalism itself is a contested term, and we will explore some of the many 'capitalisms' that have arisen, always with an eye to normative questions about which accord best with the demands of morality and justice. Additional topics to be addressed may include, but are not limited to: debates about regulation and the proper relationship between the state and the market; theories of corporate social responsibility and the evolution of corporate governance; the challenges posed by the increasing focus on finance rather than industrial production as the main source of profit making; and the social, political and technological changes that have accompanied this shift.

Prerequisite: 2nd, 3rd or 4th year students only

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Eloquentia Perfecta: Writing and Speaking for the Common Good invites students to build effective and ethical communication skills both within and beyond the classroom. Students will draw upon the theory and practice of rhetoric as a means to share their ideas and make change in the world. As students compose written, spoken, and multimodal texts, they will consider questions of intercultural communication, social justice, and the dignity of both the rhetor and the communities with which they engage.

GPA units: 1

Students will become confident in their own abilities to coherently and concisely relay data driven information. Drawing from their own disciplinary interests, students will conduct research and create policy statements and researched proposals in multiple formats and modes, including digital media. Emphasis is placed on the development and control of the writing process so that students can adapt their writing for a variety of audiences and writing circumstances.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

This course helps students define digital literacy and provides practical instruction in some key skills associated with digital literacy. Topics include digital reading and writing practices, multimodal composition, managing an online identity, content ranking algorithms, generative artificial intelligence, and the politics and ethics of using digital technologies.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

This course will critically evaluate global health theory and practice. Through the use of detailed case studies, students will discuss actual global health interventions and examine how and why some interventions work and others fail. We will interrogate the notion of global health: what it is exactly, who the main players are and who benefits from global health interventions and how. We will also examine health systems in the Global South and how they can be strengthened. Through exploration of these issues, students will become familiar with the doing of global health and with the notions of social determinants of health and health systems strengthening. An interdisciplinary perspective that draws on anthropological, feminist and public health concepts will be used throughout the course.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

Typically Offered: Spring

This course will use an interdisciplinary perspective that draws from anthropology, development studies, human rights, gender studies and public health to examine how economic and social "development policies and initiatives influence human health and wellbeing around the world. We will discuss how notions of development and progress have been imagined and implemented at four key moments in history: during colonization, industrialization, the age of science and mass production, and the current digital/technological age. We will explore how human health and wellbeing have both been positively and negatively affected by the economic and social policies of each era. This course will broaden students understanding of the factors that influence health and wellbeing beyond the narrow biological and behavioral categories that are commonly used in publichealth. This will be accomplished by focusing on the political-economy as a key structural determinant of health. Case studies will be drawn from around the world and will include, among others, working conditions in multinational factories in Asia, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine, privatization of water in Bolivia, racism and income inequality in the US and colonial policies in Africa. We will conclude the course with a discussion of the potential rise of the cyborg, which is typically imagined in science fiction movies as representing the culmination of human economic development and, ostensibly, the end of disease and perhaps even the end of death. By the end of the course, students will:a. Have developed a nuanced understanding of the complex relationship between notions and practices of development and health outcomes in different parts of the worldb. Be able to apply theories of development to explain both positive and negative health outcomes within and between countriesc. Be able to use a gender lens to examine the differential impact of economic and social policies on the health of men, women and non-gender conforming personsd. Develop and refine their critical reading, thinking and writing skills

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

CreateLab: CommunityLiberate yourself from traditional assumptions about course structure; in this non-hierarchical environment students will play an active role in identifying learning goals, choosing paths of inquiry, and determining the creative research methods we ultimately engage. This class will help you develop strengths transferable to any other kind of work, academic or professional. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts, Social Science

Typically Offered: Annually

Eloquentia Perfecta: Writing and Speaking for the Common Good invites students to build effective and ethical communication skills both within and beyond the classroom. Students will draw upon the theory and practice of rhetoric as a means to share their ideas and make change in the world. As students compose written, spoken, and multimodal texts, they will consider questions of intercultural communication, social justice, and the dignity of both the rhetor and the communities with which they engage.

GPA units: 1

Each of us searches to make meaning of experience and to pursue meaningful lives. But what exactly constitutes meaning? Does it imply having a story, or are there kinds of understanding that lie beyond narrative?In this course we will use movement and words as creative tools to explore these questions and how they shape us - both as individuals and in community.No previous dance or creative writing experience required. This will be a multidisciplinary, collaborative course that will include movement, writing, performance, and art making.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts

Modern colonialism organizes the world population into groups that are hierarchized by race and gender in order to better commodify non Europeans. In this sense, monitoring, controlling, and dominating the bodies of non-Europeans constitute the core of the colonial matrix of power. In this same light, modern colonialism imposes the white body, its aesthetics, its dances as universal models of what is a human body; in direct opposition to black, brown and yellow bodies, their aesthetics and their dances that are labeled primitive or closer to nature. This colonial dualism is only sustained with violence and the absolute objectification of the European Others body. However, colonial systems were never infallible. Throughout the history of the global south, people open cracks against their oppression in infinite creative ways. In this initiative, we are focusing on the intersectionality of history and dance in the global south, as well as best pedagogical practices. Decolonial Movements examines the interconnections between cultural, social and political movements that sought liberation from modern colonialism and their understanding and employment of dance. Asserting control over their own bodies, the enslaved, the indentured, the worker, broke the infrastructures of race that aim at extracting their labor.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts, Historical Studies

The Holy Cross mission statement concludes with the hope that all members of the Holy Cross community will seek justice within and beyond the Holy Cross community. What does it mean to seek justice? How does this ideal connect to the broader mission of Jesuit higher education? How can one discover a personal path to seeking justice that utilizes one's unique gifts and talents? How has Holy Cross provided a foundation for a lifelong pursuit of justice? This course will provide seniors the opportunity to integrate the wide variety of experiences they have had at Holy Cross and reflect upon how these experiences have informed their answers to these questions.

GPA units: 1

GPA units: 0

Building on reflections documented in memos written during the work experience and texts read and debated during the Capstone, students in the Capstone Seminar complete three tasks: 1) They will draw individual conclusions about the proper role of business in a just, flourishing, and sustainable society. Students will choose among corporate sustainability, corporate social responsibility, and corporate political responsibility, and learn how to explain their choice to others who disagree. 2) They will develop a sense of their own preferences, strengths, and weaknesses as ethical agents, and develop strategies for acting effectively on their beliefs in the workplace. 3) They will prepare a pitch. After thoroughly researching an existing organization likely to confront one of the issue researched during their work experience, they will make an ethical, financial, and legal argument in favor of some action that organization should take to properly address the issue.

GPA units: 1

Of the 1.8 million new HIV infections recorded worldwide in 2017, 1.2 million were in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) alone. Why has this region been hardest hit by the HIV epidemic and why are prevention efforts seemingly not making much of a difference? Furthermore, who is at risk of HIV infection and why are some individuals more at risk than others? Why, for instance, do women in SSA account for 59% of HIV infections in the sub-region, while men account for 63% of HIV infections in the rest of the world. We will use an interdisciplinary approach to examine these questions in depth. We will also explore how notions of risk and vulnerability have changed over time as the epidemic increasingly evolves from a death sentence to being a treatable condition. Throughout the course we will critically evaluate the dominant public health and biomedical approaches that have been used to tackle the epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. For comparative purposes, we will draw frequently on examples from other parts of the world, such as Cuba, Thailand, the US, Europe and China. Because HIV has not been all doom and gloom, we will also discuss some surprisingly positive effects of the epidemic (e.g., improved health care systems, employment creation etc).

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

Pop Culture, Race, and Sexuality is an interdisciplinary course that asks students to evaluate and create content that deals with pop culture and intersectional identities. Students will immerse themselves in several prominent genres including drama, the musical, and music videos, and engage a variety of critical lenses on different aspects of popular culture. They will also develop a familiarity with pertinent theoretical approaches including feminist studies, critical race studies, reception theory, queer theory, and camp studies. Students will engage with both traditional scholarly production as well as metacritical commentary distributed online.

Prerequisite: One English, Theatre or Writing Course.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Arts, Literature

The Writer's Workshop Practicum helps new writing consultants to apply composition and writing center theory to their praxis. The purpose of this course is to begin to prepare consultants to tutor various forms of writing and to work with students with differing abilities, identities, and literacies. This practicum gives consultants the opportunity to think through some of the critical issues in tutoring as they come up in a writing center setting. Students have multiple opportunities to learn through experience, engage with scholarship, and critically reflect on their developing tutoring practices.

Students in the practicum must enroll in ENGL 387 at the same time.

GPA units: 0.5

Typically Offered: Fall

This seminar deals with the historical, social, political and cultural forces, ideas and events leading up to the Holocaust, the attempted annihilation of all Jews and the almost complete destruction of the European Jewish communities. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the course offers a detailed study of this genocide across victims, perpetrators, bystanders and rescuers drawing upon historical documentation, first-person testimonies, photography, visual arts and music. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Historical Studies

Typically Offered: Annually

This course on Global Maternal and Child Health (MCH) Issues will provide students with a broad overview of select MCH-related issues, from an interdisciplinary perspective. It will explore the history of global maternal and child health efforts, the global burden of disease and premature MCH mortality and morbidity; the heterogeneity of resources and systems of care between countries; and current programmatic and policy attempts to address MCH health needs. It will focus on ways in which the social determinants of health framework affect the health of families, women, children, and adolescents. Students will have the opportunity to examine and discuss current issues integral to maternal and child health, review the latest literature on new directions in the field, and explore the ways in which the political context in a specific country affects MCH health and well-being. Students will learn to critically think about programs, research, and policy involving maternal and child health. Some of the discussions will be led by students in class. Student engagement and participation will be a vital part of class sessions. Stimulating and lively discussions are to be the hallmark of the class.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Social Science

For students who may not be associated with CISS programs, but who choose to do independent interdisciplinary study that might not be permitted under their major department's tutorial option. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Selected students take a seminar at the world-renowned American Antiquarian Society taught by visiting scholars. Seminar topics vary with the fields of the scholars. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall

For third and fourth year students who wish to do unique independent work that falls outside of disciplinary offerings. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Interdisciplinary introduction to the study, research, and interpretation of historical, cultural, social and political knowledge of African American, African, and Caribbean peoples examining contemporary black identities, politics, and culture, particularly focusing on the role and place of blacks in modern American cities through exploration of international migrations, race relations, and 20th-century cultural movements, including civil rights, social protest music, art and literature. Addresses the cultural, historical, political, economic, and psychological consequences of the dispersal of Africans from their ancestral continent to the United States and the Caribbean and the impact of the cultures of West and central Africa in the United States and the Caribbean, through oral narratives, music, art, festivals, foodways, clothing, hairstyles, dance, and religious belief systems. Introduces literary and political movements including Pan-Africanism, black feminism, Negritude, Harlem Renaissance, and other activities reflecting shared theories, ideologies and political movements of Africans, African Americans and Caribbean blacks.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Although often considered homogenously white, Europe's population is and always has been racially diverse. This diversity is the culmination of centuries of colonialist interventions around the globe, particularly in Africa and the West Indies. This course will explore the history and contemporary reality of this population diversity, with a particular focus on the African diaspora in Europe. Beginning with Europe's simultaneous expulsion of Jews and Muslims and "discovery" of Caribbean islands in 1492, the students will trace Europe's colonial history in Africa and the West Indies that ultimately resulted in return migration of current and former African colonial subjects to multiple metropoles in Europe. Students will then focus on the experiences of the African Diaspora in Europe, broadly, and in five countries (Britain, France, The Netherlands, Germany, and Italy) before addressing contemporary debates (the racialization of Muslims as the "new Blacks" in Europe, citizenship laws within and across the EU, and anti-racist movements) and concluding with discussion of the future of race and Africans in Europe.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies, Social Science

Typically Offered: Alternate Years

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Looking at the development of communities of people of color through the 1920s in Worcester, Boston, Providence & elsewhere in New England.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

How do societies remember their pasts? What stories are memorialized and celebrated and what events are evaded or forgotten? What are the politics of the process? How do Americans remember and represent the countrys racial past, a history that manifestly contradicts the self- evident propositions of liberty and equality enshrined in the founding documents? How do we now remember and represent the history of people of color in New England? Utilizing a combination of primary and secondary source materials, course content will aim to emphasize skills or competencies including: reading and analyzing primary and secondary source documents; acquisition of media literacy through study of photographs and other visual representations; understanding different historical approaches to the study of the people of color in New England; and, constructing historical arguments verbally and in written assignments.Through virtual site visits and reading, students explore community participation in the design and creation of African American heritage trails at Boston, New Bedford, Fall, River, Martha Vineyard, and Newport, Rhode Island and Portsmouth, New Hampshire as well as other locations.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Introduces students to the discipline of Women's and Gender Studies by analyzing women's roles and women's contributions to society and culture from the perspective of recent scholarship on women. Special attention focused on the complex interactions between gender and other social divisions such as race, class, and sexual orientation. The following issues are among those considered: the politics of women's work, the representation of women's bodies in the media, violence against women, healthcare and reproductive rights, global feminism, and the history of feminist movements in the U.S. Deliberately includes in its scope broader constructions of gender, such as concepts of masculinity.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Annually

Interdisciplinary course examines the intersecting regimes of gender, race, and class as they occur in different historical periods and varying cultures. Students learn to analyze international power relations at the level of everyday politics. Encourages students to find evidence for the ways in which varying local conditions interact with women's agency in order to promote their own (personal and collective) well-being and broader social changes.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies, Social Science

GPA units: 0

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

Independent Study (tutorial) completed under the guidance of a selected Women's and Gender Studies faculty member. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Annually

Serves as a general interdisciplinary introduction to Latin America. Students will possibly have the opportunity to travel to a Latin American country during spring vacation. Includes a Community-Based Learning component. One unit.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

A gateway course for the LALC program, this course provides an introduction to Latin America and Abya Yala through film, with a focus on Afro-descendant and indigenous communities, identities and histories. We will examine the cinematic representations of and by Afro-Latin Americans and explore the cultural legacies and resistance of the African diaspora through Latin American film. In addition, we will critically analyze the representation of indigenous peoples in Latin American cinema, and highlight the contributions of indigenous media to current discussions about indigeneity and decolonization. The course will explore social and political issues affecting historically marginalized peoples in Latin America, as well as how cinematography, as an artistic medium, intersects with questions of representation, identity, memory, and activism. Films and other media will be screened in Spanish, Portuguese and indigenous languages (with English subtitles).

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

This course examines Latinx migration and mobility across North, Central, and South America as well as the Caribbean. It explores why Latinx migrants move to new places, what happens to them along the way, and their experiences in new destinations, such as the U.S. We will consider how race, class, age, gender, and nationality, among other things, influence and shape the migration process. We will reflect on how the act of migration transforms migrants, those left behind, and those encountered along the way. We will discuss topics such as borders, citizenship, diaspora, globalization, and immigration enforcement. We will analyze migration as a social, cultural, political, and economic phenomenon and study the mobility of people, ideas, and capital. Above all, we will investigate the role of Latinx migration in producing and transforming our contemporary world.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Cross-Cultural Studies

Typically Offered: Every Third Year

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring

This course examines the history and political economy of Latin America through the lens of commodity production, guided by but not limited to the histories and economies of cacao, sugar and coffee. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will examine the impact these and other commodities have had on Latin American economies, global food culture and globalization. We will look critically at Latin America's long history of dependence on primary product exports as a strategy for economic growth and well-being. We begin with pre-Columbian Americas, continuing with an analysis of colonial Latin America, followed by post-independence / post-colonial Latin America. We end with a review of contemporary Latin America, touching on such themes as fair trade, direct trade, organic production.

GPA units: 1

Common Area: Social Science

GPA units: 1

Typically Offered: Fall, Spring