The professors teaching Sewanee Encounter courses represent an interdisciplinary collection of leading Sewanee faculty. They bring their own unique perspectives to big questions of vital importance in today’s world.

Truth & Memory

POLS 156: Memory of Peace and Conflict

Taught by Mila Dragojević, Professor of Politics

How do states and societies remember political violence? How, and whether, are peace initiatives or nonviolent resistance efforts commemorated across different historical and cultural contexts? Building on the vast and growing interdisciplinary comparative research, political activism, and art on memory studies, truth and reconciliation, and transitional justice, the course will introduce students to various ways in which certain events, individuals, and initiatives connected to conflict and peace are remembered in memorials, museums, monuments, and other commemorative spaces and practices.

CHEM 115: Crime Scene Chemistry (Lab)

Taught by Bethel Seballos, Associate Professor of Chemistry

A studio course designed for students who would like to learn about forensic chemistry and the basic science needed to understand it. Chemical concepts, on the level of an introductory chemistry course and their applications to forensic science are explored. Topics include the collection and analysis of physical evidence such as drugs, fibers, glass, fingerprints, and documents. Other topics may include arson investigation, DNA analysis, and how forensic science is portrayed in literature and media. This course may not be used to satisfy requirements for the major or minor in chemistry.

HIST 129: Jerusalem: Histories of the Real and Imagined Holy City

Taught by Nicholas Roberts, Professor of History

Sacred to three religions, the contested future capital of two nations, a place of longing for millions, Jerusalem is one of the world's great cities. This course looks at the history, geography, and religious significance of the Holy City, while also considering its place as a city of the imagination. In investigating the city's place in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, its historic importance for Muslim and European imperialists, its long status as a tourist and pilgrimage destination, and its significance in Israeli and Palestinian nationalism, the course asks whether the myriad understandings of the city can co-exist or is Jerusalem destined to always be "a golden bowl filled with scorpions."

Voices & Values in Civic Life

ECON 105: Markets and the Mountain: Economics in Our Community

Taught by Patten Priestley Mahler, Visiting Associate Professor of Economics

An introduction of foundational economic concepts through the study of local issues in and around Sewanee. Students apply economic models in community contexts to examine how social and economic forces shape opportunities and outcomes. Topics may include population change, housing, labor markets, and education.

CIVIC 135: Communities in Conversation: Civil Discourse in Public Life

Taught by Lydia Reinig, Director of Dialogue Across Difference Programs

This course examines what it means to participate in public life, grounded in the understanding that civil discourse is essential to community engagement and social transformation. Through an interdisciplinary lens, students will critically consider the conditions necessary to foster meaningful, constructive engagement around contentious issues. Experiential components invite students into the promises and pitfalls of civil discourse in their own communities, encouraging reflective and courageous engagement while strengthening their capacity to communicate with empathy and humility and to act responsively and collaboratively. By blending theory with practice, students will gain experience understanding community-based issues, learning from diverse perspectives, and cultivating the communication practices necessary to address shared challenges with curiosity, creativity, and care to strengthen collective life.

HIST 137: Taking (from) Place(s): Collections and Local Knowledge in the History of Science

Taught by Kelly Whitmer, Professor of History

Collecting, naming, and organizing local knowledge(s) were important activities to practitioners of the sciences in the past. This course takes a close look at natural history collecting and its entanglements with colonizing projects, the history of capitalism and the displacement of indigenous peoples since c. 1500. Using special collections materials and engagement with regional natural history collections, it considers the legacies of historical links between collecting and appropriation, while also introducing students to ongoing efforts to respond to these legacies by contemporary curators and scholars.

Flavorful Journeys: Meaning, Memory, and Molecules in Food

SPAN 299: Gateways to Latin American, Spanish, and Latinx Studies

Taught by Lisa Burner, Associate Professor of Spanish

An introduction to the study of literature and culture of the Spanish-speaking world, taught at the advanced-intermediate language level. Students improve reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills through textual and audiovisual analysis. The course prepares students for advanced courses in the Spanish major and minor. The emphasis in this section of Spanish 299 will be food and food cultures in the Spanish-speaking world. Prerequisite: This course requires completion of the Spanish placement test—available via your Applicant Status Page—and is most appropriate for students with three or more years of high school Spanish who are interested in potentially continuing their study of the language at Sewanee.

ASIA 213: Chinese Foodways: Culture, History, and Global Connections

Taught by Yanbing Tan, Associate Professor of Chinese

This course investigates the cultural, historical, and social meanings of food in China and Chinese diaspora communities around the world. We examine how culinary practices reflect understandings of body and health, define social class, express regional differences, and link China to broader global networks. Using food as a critical lens, this course explores how Chinese identity and tradition have been constructed, contested, and reimagined across time and space. All readings are in English and all films include English subtitles. Course taught in English.

BIOL 133: Introductory Molecular Biology and Genetics

Taught by Kevin Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of Biology

This course is an introductory study of the molecular and cellular basis of life, of the structure and function of cells, and of molecular genetics. BIOL 130 is not a prerequisite. Non-laboratory course. This section of BIO 133 will be focused on the molecular biology of food. This section of BIOL 133 introduces students to the molecular and cellular basis of food. Through topics such as DNA, gene regulation, metabolism, and cellular organization, students will learn how genetic variation shapes the traits of our food. The course invites students to connect biological mechanisms to broader conversations about culture, history, and global food systems.

Designing Worlds: Story, Sound, and Code

CSCI 157: Intro to Modeling and Programming

Taught by Ross Sowell, Associate Professor of Computer Science

An introduction to creative modeling of both natural and virtual worlds, in which students gain understanding of human interaction with computing devices as well as the expertise needed for further course work in computer science. Lab experiences using the explicit notation of a programming language reinforce the application of abstractions while affording practice in algorithmic problem solving and relevant theory.

WRIT 206: Beginning Fiction Workshop

Taught by Kevin Wilson, Associate Professor of English

Discussions will center on students' fiction. Selected readings are assigned to focus on technical problems of craftsmanship and style. In this class, you will work to develop your skills, study unique and diverse stories from contemporary literature, and share and discuss creative work amongst a group of students in a welcoming space. Special attention will be paid to the narrative possibilities of video games, with the hopes of studying how storytelling works across forms of media.

MUSC 114: Soundtrack Scoring for Video Games

Taught by Charlie Kirchen, Visiting Assistant Professor of Popular Music

This course focuses on creating an original musical score for a video game developed
collaboratively with courses in computer programming and creative writing. Students develop
skills in generative and modular synthesis, an approach to music-making in which interconnected modules control parameters such as rhythm, pitch, timbre, and tempo in real time. Using these techniques, students design musical environments that accompany narrative episodes and gameplay scenarios. The course also examines the history and aesthetics of video game music to inform creative decisions. The result is a collaborative, adaptive score integrated into an original game.

Place & Place-making

ENST 101: Introduction to Environmental Studies

Taught by Daniel Carter, Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

An interdisciplinary introduction to Environmental Studies through the examination of the scientific and social aspects of environmental issues. Field components of the course focus on the University Domain and the surrounding area. This course is required for all students who major or minor in environmental studies.

Be Here Now: Poetry and Place

Taught by Jennifer Michael, Professor of English

This course explores our place in the world and on the Domain through three complementary activities: reading, writing, and meditation. We will read together a wide selection of poems offering diverse views of “nature” and our relationship to the earth. Mindfulness meditation (a secular form adapted from Buddhist practice), both in and out of class, will foster deep awareness not only of these texts but also of our surroundings. We will also engage in other contemplative exercises, both indoors and outdoors, across the Domain. While some of these exercises invite us to turn inward, they lead us back to community, as poetry does. Through journal-keeping and poetic experiments as well as formal essays and presentations, students will articulate their discoveries and hone their skills as readers and observers, both of poetry and of the natural world.

Power and Its (Mis)Uses

POLS 153: Power, Politics, and Policy: A Local View

Taught by Amy Patterson, Carl Gustav Biehl Jr. Professor of International Affairs in the Department of Politics

Power has been defined as the ability of one individual to get another to do something they wouldn’t otherwise do. But power is more nuanced than this definition: it is multifaceted, relational, dynamic, and manifest in many forms. This course investigates how politicians, advocates, experts, and local organizations harness different forms of power to achieve their goals of policy change and resource allocation. Students explore who wields power and how they utilize it in the context of local policy issues, such as affordable housing, access to healthcare, child poverty and food insecurity. Community engagement and collaborative research on the South Cumberland Plateau inform students’ final projects that analyze power's role in local action (or inaction).

ECON 120: Principles of Economics

Taught by Kartik Misra, Associate Professor of Economics

The course introduces students to the field of economics, and explores a variety of topics spanning both microeconomics and macroeconomics. Using basic algebraic and graphical techniques, it lays the foundation for how economists model the world using mathematics to study how individuals, firms and governments make choices and how they affect the world around us. Microeconomic topics include consumer theory, producer theory, behavior of firms, externalities, and the role of the government in the economy. Macroeconomic topics include determination of output, unemployment, interest rates, inflation, monetary and fiscal policies, and economic growth.

In this section, every topic begins with a big, real-world question—why did capitalism dramatically raise living standards, and why does unemployment persist even when people want to work? You’ll learn the core tools of economics by using them to solve puzzles that shape everyday life. Along the way, we’ll build our own dataset on socio-economic trends in Franklin and neighboring counties, turning abstract models into insights about the communities around us. The goal is not just to learn economics, but to use it to understand the world you live in.

PSYCH 151: Drugs, Brain and Society

Taught by Katharine Cammack, Associate Professor of Psychology

This introductory-level course explores how drugs impact the human brain, behavior, and society. Students will learn and apply major principles of pharmacology to understand biological, psychological, and sociocultural factors that contribute to various patterns of drug use and misuse, including substance use disorders. Students will also learn about current and emerging approaches to addiction treatment and evaluate how drug-related research informs healthcare policy, legalization, mental health services, and approaches to human flourishing.

This course is intended for students who do NOT plan to pursue degrees in psychology and/or neuroscience and does not satisfy requirements for those majors or minors.

Ways of Knowing, Past & Present

HUMN 104: Experience, Expression, and Exchange in Western Culture: Texts and Contexts of the Medieval World

Taught by Stephanie Batkie, Teaching Professor of English

As an interdisciplinary study, this course investigates how the medieval world made sense of itself. It explores material from across the Middle Ages, including literature, art, architecture, and theology, and considers how different literacies (or modes of interpretation and understanding), developed during this time period. Focusing on several different areas of the medieval experience will help participants to gain insights into larger questions that stretch out from the medieval period to today.

CLST 121: Homer’s Odyssey: Text, Comparison, Reception

Taught by Christopher McDonough, Professor of Classical Studies

Some stories refuse to stay in one place, one culture, or one form. This course reads Homer’s Odyssey closely, sets it in conversation with the epic traditions of ancient India, and follows it forward through writers and filmmakers who have inherited, transformed, and argued back against it. Works considered include two versions of Homer’s text (including a graphic novel adaptation), a Sanskrit epic, a film from the Jazz Age, James Joyce’s “Cyclops” episode from Ulysses, Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad, and Uberto Pasolini’s film The Return, as well as Christopher Nolan’s new film.

RELG 132: Matthew's Gospel and the Moral Self

Taught by Eric Thurman, Associate Professor of Religious Studies

A critical exploration of the gospel of Matthew as a prompt to moral self-reflection and possible guide to a meaningful life. Primary focus on the Sermon on Mount throughout the course. Historical, literary, and philosophical methods facilitate close reading and engagement with key interpretive issues and debates. Practical experiments in moral thinking and acting based on the biblical text and biblical reception history facilitate reflection on the place of virtue in a meaningful life. No prior knowledge of the Bible or commitment to a religious tradition assumed.

Good Copies, Bad Copies: Imitation and Appropriation

HUMN 217: Good Copies, Bad Copies: Imitation and Appropriation in Literature, Art, and Film

Taught by Associate Professor of Art History Jeffrey Thompson, Director of the University Art Gallery and Curator of Academic Engagement Shelley MacLaren, and Professor of English Lauryl Tucker

Imitation, quotation and appropriation are fundamental creative strategies—in the visual arts, writing, music, and filmmaking. Imitation is how you learn your craft, quotation how you demonstrate expertise, and appropriation a strategy, often with political and legal implications. Forms of expression generated in one context and culture are translated and appropriated for new audiences and purposes. This course examines a diverse range of key monuments, texts, and practices, including the theorization of art in the Italian Renaissance, twentieth century feminist retellings of "classic" tales, and the international exchange of plots and the formal language of storytelling between the Hollywood Western and Japanese samurai films. The course considers the pleasures and parameters of genre, the conception of intellectual property, and the politics of appropriation.

Environmental Justice

ENST 101: Introduction to Environmental Studies

Taught by Keri Watson, Associate Professor of Earth & Environmental Systems

An interdisciplinary introduction to Environmental Studies through the examination of the scientific and social aspects of environmental issues. Field components of the course focus on the University Domain and the surrounding area. This course is required for all students who major or minor in environmental studies.

PSYCH 190A: Social Change and the Environment

Taught by Kathryn Morgan, Assistant Professor of Psychology

How do human thoughts, emotions, and social systems shape our responses to climate change—and how does a changing environment shape us in return? Drawing on intersectional environmentalism, environmental neuroscience, and embodied approaches to wellbeing, students will examine how climate change affects the brain, behavior, and mental health; how environmental harms are unevenly distributed across communities; and how people and institutions respond to these realities. Through field experiences and community-based research, students will learn how a psychological lens can be used to address environmental injustice and inform collective action toward a more sustainable and equitable future.