GC1Y Courses

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Ability/Disability  
Long Title: Representations of Ability and Disability
Sponsoring Department: Teacher Education
Approved Instructors: DeClouette

Ability and disability are cornerstone concepts in education. This course provides an opportunity to examine how ability and disability are represented in popular culture, literature, film, and autobiographies by people with and without disability, and in professional texts/narratives (e.g., research literature, practitioner materials) and the meaning of these representations for educational practice and social policy. In addition to considering different constructions and meanings of ability and disability, participants will examine markers of privilege as well as processes of marginalization.  The focus of the course is on developing skills to examine how ideas (including ideas about the body and the mind) are constructed and represented in cultural contexts and the meaning of this for work in education-related fields.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Analysis of Educ 
Long Title: Critical Analysis of Education in America
Sponsoring Department: Teacher Education
Approved Instructors: All Education faculty

This course provides a critical analysis of education in America including the exploration of factors that influence education such as the state of education, philosophical foundations, and political aspects of education.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Big Data Revol
Long Title: Big Data Revolution
Sponsoring Department: Management, Marketing & Logistics
Approved Instructors: Beadles, Lowery, Miller

This course explores the field of business analytics from the standpoint of a movement which has been sweeping through businesses globally for the last few years as firms address and attempt to gain competitive advantage as a result of the "Big Data" phenomenon.  The course will examine the historical roots of Big Data, comparing it to other movements in the past, its current state and projections into the future.  It will also look at firms in various industries in terms of their ability to use Big Data and business analytics to win market share against competition.  Among other more recent success stories, it will examine how business analytics led to the success of the Oakland As baseball team.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Capital Punishment 
Long Title: The Capital Punishment Debate
Sponsoring Department: Government & Sociology 
Approved Instructors: All Criminal Justice faculty

The study of the death penalty is a contentious issue in the United States. The United States is one of the last first world nations to employ the practice of capital punishment. Georgia has been at the center of this debate since the 1970s and continues to be a center of debate regarding racial and socioeconomic biases among those given the death sentence. This course will explore the history of the death penalty, the death penalty as it is currently practiced, words of those who have experienced a death sentence from a personal perspective, and the possibility of error in the justice system, specifically regarding death sentences. 

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Coming of Age
Long Title: Coming of Age in an Era of Disenchantment
Sponsoring Department: Department of World Languages & Cultures
Approved Instructors: Nicholson

This course will explore modernity’s evolution from the Genoese banking system in the 15^th century into the global phenomenon that peaked in 1989 and has waned and fragmented into romanticisms and populisms since. This meandering trajectory will focus on the contrasting paradigms of secularism and spirituality, ego and post-structural psychology, and modernity versus anti-modernity, all set against the backdrop of coming-of-age (Bildungsroman) literature and mythology.

Exploring the pivot points of the above paradigms through coming-of-age literature will allow students to work through a weighty subject matter, one that contrasts the individual and the collective, the subject and their surroundings, metaphorically; this approach will enrich the theoretical and sociopolitical subject matter.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Comp & Info Tech
Long Title: Computer and Information Technology
Sponsoring Department:  Information Systems & Computer Science
Approved Instructors: All Computer Science and Information Systems faculty

This course is a thematic exploration of the role of computer and information technology in today’s global society. Students will learn about the ever expanding impact of technology across various industries, medicine, government and education. The course content will be learned through the study of current topics, experimentation with graphics design, game development tools, and robotics.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Contmp Hlth Issues 
Long Title: Contemporary Health Issues
Sponsoring Department: Health and Human Performance, Nursing
Approved Instructors: All Health Sciences faculty

Contemporary Health Issues is a speaking intensive course designed to increase the student’s knowledge about international issues, policies and events that affect the health of populations. This course includes an examination of the significance of bioethical, social, cultural, epidemiological, and economic factors that impact health. Class sessions will be used to engage in dialogue and debate about student-derived health issues. Practical application activities and a service-learning project will complement the class. Students will gain valuable skills in public speaking, research and writing, negotiation, and powers of persuasion, leadership, organization, and interpersonal communication.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Creative Arts Ther
Long Title: Creative Arts Therapies
Sponsoring Department: Music 
Approved Instructors: All Music Therapy faculty

U.S. society issues, including religion, race, economics, disabilities, education are examined. The creative arts, including visual arts, music, dance and movement, and creative writing, are also examined. The class members develop rubrics in order to develop a critical thinking model on looking at the arts and seeing if and how they serve a purpose while addressing society needs. The class involves five hours of community involvement, as well as classroom speaking and presenting.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Critical Info Literacy
Long Title: Critical Information Literacy
Sponsoring Department: Library
Approved Instructors: All Library faculty

This course will help students to understand the social construction and political aspects of libraries and information.  By problematizing the information ecosystem, students will have an opportunity to critically evaluate the forces that shape information production and dissemination and become empowered to make informed decisions about their own information habits.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Cultur/Youth Mid E
Long Title: Culture and Youth in the Middle East
Sponsoring Department: Professional Learning & Innovation
Approved Instructors: Mehranian

This course critically analyze cultures, youth, and politics of the middle east, as well as existing cultural interpretations of the middle east in the West, by using relevant examples of literature, art, film, music, and dance from and about this important region of the world.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Documentary Stds
Long Title: Documentary Studies
Sponsoring Department: Communication
Approved Instructors: Dillard 

Documentary Studies is an approach to representing “reality” through writing, film, radio, television, dram, and multimedia.  This introduction to the field will include an overview of documentary forms, documentary theory, and will allow students to produce documentary works. 

Schedule Title: Domestic Policy
Long Title: Domestic Policy Debates
Sponsoring Department: Government & Sociology
Approved Instructors: Harleman

The overarching objective of this course is to equip you with the skills to become a more informed member of our democracy and improve your ability to participate in a democratic public policy process. We will adopt the practices of group study, independent research, and formal debate to develop these skills by studying four distinct public policy issues, which may include issues such as climate change, immigration, gun control, minimum wage, school choice, and universal health care. 

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Don Quixote
Long Title: Quixotic Worlds: Don Quixote in Popular Culture
Sponsoring Department: Department of World Languages & Cultures
Approved Instructors: Holcombe

This course is dedicated to the study of Miguel de Cervantes’s novel, Don Quixote de la Mancha (Part I 1605; Part II 1615), its most iconic narratives, and reinterpretations or re-accentuations of those narratives in popular culture (book illustrations, children’s books, and film).

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Explore Friendship 
Long Title: Exploring Friendship
Sponsoring Department: Philosophy, Religion & Liberal Studies
Approved Instructors: Winchester

What does it mean to be a friend? How is the love of a friend different from the love of a partner, a parent or a child?  How do race, class, gender, and sexual orientation shape our friendships?  What are the challenges that college students today face when trying to make friends?  How does our experience of friendship change as we age? We will examine contemporary and ancient accounts of friendship in an effort to develop our own understanding of friendship.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Freakonomics 
Long Title: Freakonomics
Sponsoring Department: Economics & Finance
Approved Instructors: Clark

This course will discuss, debate, and analyze the topics presented in the books "Freakonomics" and "SuperFreakonomics" by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner. These books present interesting and nontraditional perspectives, from multiple disciplines, focusing on behaviors that are not traditionally associated with economics. Students will be expected to describe and critically evaluate the diverse perspectives relevant to each topic. Upon successfully completing the course, students will be able to apply economic reasoning, explain the behavior of rational individuals when confronted with the everyday problem of making constrained choices, apply critical thinking analysis to current economic issues, evaluate how incentives influence decision making, and illustrate the unintended consequences associated with everyday decision making.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Gender Amer Cinema 
Long Title: Gender and Popular American Cinema
Sponsoring Department: English
Approved Instructors: Pilcher

This course introduces students to images of gender in popular American cinema and challenges them to consider the meanings of these representations.  Moving chronologically from the early twentieth century to the present, we will watch a range of narrative films produced and exhibited in Holly wood and mainstream contexts.  Beginning with classical Hollywood genres and iconic depictions of masculinity and femineity, we will consider how images of gender have changed over time due ot social and economics shifts and reconfigured intersections with notions of race, class, sexuality, and place.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Glob Challenges
Long Title: Global Challenges I (formerly Seven Revolutions I)
Sponsoring Department: Government & Sociology
Approved Instructors: Elliott-Gower, Fahrer, Oetter

Students in this course will be introduced to global challenges that are changing the world in which we live, learn the fundamentals of information literacy and research, conduct team-based research on one of global challenges, and then pull this research together in an e-book or other e-format. The global challenges include population demographics, natural resource management, economic integration, conflict and the challenges of governance.  

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Glob Youth Culture 
Long Title: Global Youth Culture
Sponsoring Department: Philosophy, Religion & Liberal Studies
Approved Instructors: Manian

Reading works of fiction and non-fiction in this course will give you an introduction to the hopes and dreams of youth around the world.  We will look at how the access to media and entertainment in ways that were unimaginable in previous generations, has led to changes in attitudes regarding sex, sexuality, gender-identity that often runs afoul of tradition setting the stage for intergenerational conflict.  We will also study how youth across the world deal with various challenges, including in education, employment, and the environment.  

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Growing up with Lit
Long Title: Growing Up with Literature
Sponsoring Department: Professional Learning & Innovation
Approved Instructors: Gregg

This course explores how stages of development from childhood through young adulthood are reflected through literature, book and stories.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Hlthcare Consumers
Long Title: Educating Bobcats to Become Confident Healthcare Consumers
Sponsoring Department: Nursing
Approved Instructors: Parrish

This GC1Y course is aimed to support students to become informed consumers and civically active within the unique and challenging business of healthcare.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: History of GCSU
Long Title:  From Brown and Gold to Green and Blue: The History of Georgia College
Sponsoring Department: Library
Approved Instructors: All Library faculty

Through an extensive review of primary and secondary resources, students will gain an overview of the history of Georgia College from its founding as the Georgia Normal & Industrial College in 1889 to the present day.  This class will frequently require you to visit Special Collections in the Ina Dillard Russell Library.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Hist Rock and Roll 
Long Title:  History of Rock and Roll
Sponsoring Department: Music
Approved Instructors: Woodruff

What is the roll of "rock" music in Western society?  This exciting survey will take a chronological look at the roots of rock music from the blues, country, rock and roll, surf music, soul, funk, rap, folk, southern rock, British rock, psychedelic, singer/songwriter, hard rock, heavy metal, punk, and new wave.  Students will develop cultural perspective by learning about the pioneers and sociocultural influences that became the creative drive for these most important genres of music that greatly affect our lives and music of the present. 

Schedule Title: Inclusive Workplace
Long Title: Inclusive Workplace
Sponsoring Department: Management, Marketing, and Logistics
Approved Instructors: Wilhau

A primary objective of the course is to develop an appreciation for diversity in the modern organization. A core theme includes the study of how managers can best unleash the full potential of a diverse workforce while being mindful of equity and inclusion best practices. The course discusses aspects of diversity and diversity-related laws, policies and initiatives as they apply to the workplace from both a domestic and international perspective.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Into Wilderness 
Long Title: Into the Wilderness
Sponsoring Department: Health and Human Performance
Approved Instructors: Turner

This course will be a thematic exploration of protected places through which multiple perspectives on wilderness are applied to the politics of legally designated Wilderness areas and wilderness management. The course will include a thorough review of wilderness philosophy, a guided case study of a selected problem or conflict within a wilderness area in the state, and a student-selected case study of a different problem/conflict within a wilderness area. The part of the course will require field trip(s) to local wilderness areas and meetings/interviews with various stakeholders (local citizens, advocacy groups, politicians, government employers, etc.).

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Music and Conflict 
Long Title: Music and Conflict
Sponsoring Department: Music
Approved Instructors: Gorzelany-Mostak 

Music has played a role in traumatic events and in national and international conflicts throughout history.  States deploy music in rituals intended to promote national healing in the wake of terror attacks, yet they also sanction the use of music in the interrogation of suspected terrorists.  Soldiers use music to prepare themselves for battle, while composers at home pen music to boost the morale of the citizenry and support the war effort.  Musicians write songs to commemorate and memorialize major events.  Prisoners of war, refugees, and oppressed communities find the courage to make music in even the most dire and bleak of circumstances.  Music participates in the maintenance of old identities and in the proclamation of new ones.  Using theories on trauma, as well as scholarship from musicology, ethnomusicology, sociology, and other disciplines as a critical and contextual frame, students will investigate music’s role in various conflicts in recent history.  Case studies that span the globe and encompass popular, folk, classical, and world music genres will give students a more nuanced understanding of how people from different cultural and social backgrounds experience trauma and art’s role therein during the 20th and 21st centuries. 

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Latinx Exp in the US
Long Title: Latinx Experience in the US
Sponsoring Department: Department of World Languages & Cultures
Approved Instructors: Stoyanova

In this course we will explore the historical processes and demographic trends that have shaped Latino society and culture(s) in the United States. We will explore attitudes about the Spanish language and about Spanish speakers in the US. In addition, we will analyze linguistic attitudes towards monolinguism and toward the speaking of Spanish in the US, and we will explore the ways in which language identity among Hispanics is socially constructed. Along the way we will examine a wide range of sources, including newspaper articles, social media posts, and film.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: LGBTQ Pride Mvmt
Long Title: The Pride Movement: LGBTQIA2S Perspectives
Sponsoring Department: Management, Marketing, and Logistics
Approved Instructors: Miller, Schwartz, Ginder

We will study the Pride Movement in terms of history, political activism, popular culture, legislative issues, and business and buying power with a specific focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual, and two spirit  perspectives. Consideration will be given not only to understanding each perspective, but also to examining similarities and differences and the long term implications of those.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Phil & Soc Justice 
Long Title: Philosophy and the Search for Social Justice
Sponsoring Department: Philosophy, Religion & Liberal Studies
Approved Instructors: All Philosophy faculty 

We will read several books that allow us to examine inequality, racial injustice, and other issues of social justice in both the United States and the world. 

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Prom Peril Tech 
Long Title: Tech Support: The Promise and Peril of Technology
Sponsoring Department: Philosophy, Religion & Liberal Studies
Approved Instructors: Rudow-Ahouharb

This course is a critical exploration of the nature of human technology and its role in human life as it has developed over time and continues to develop in the present day.  This course will incorporate theory from anthropology, sociology, design studies, continental and contemporary philosophy.  Technology, for the purposes of this course, goes beyond the restricted sense of technology as grounded in modern science and engineering and will include both artifact and technique.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Psych Ethics 
Long Title: Psychological Ethics
Sponsoring Department: Psychological Sciences
Approved Instructors: All Psychology faculty

This course will use case examples and readings from related disciplines to explore many ethical issues related to the clinical practice of psychology, counseling, research, teaching and other professionally-related activities. Class discussion and brief written assignments will enhance student understanding of ethics in general and specifically how ethics influences the helping professions.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Public Deliberation
Long Title: Public Deliberation
Sponsoring Department: Communication
Approved Instructors: Clark

"Public Deliberation" explores how ordinary citizens become engaged in public discourse and self-governance around critical local, regional, and national issues.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Reli Non Violenc
Long Title: Religion and Non-violence
Sponsoring Department: Philosophy, Religion, and Liberal Studies
Approved Instructors: Henry

This course surveys perspectives towards non-violence on the part of the major religions of the world, incorporating primary readings from scripture, academic readings in the sociology and anthropology of religion, and discussions of relevant current events. The course engages with methodologies and theories in the history and sociology of religion, and invites students to explore complex problems in theology and philosophical ethics. We will also interrogate the very definition of "violence" itself from a cross-cultural point of view, considering more capacious definitions of the term which take into account harm to animals, the environment, and other non-human entities.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Religion & Tech
Long Title: Religion and Technology
Sponsoring Department: Philosophy, Religion & Liberal Studies
Approved Instructors: Gittinger

Religion has been studied in relation to new media (i.e. the Internet) since the late 1990s, raising questions about ethics, efficacy, and authenticity of the digital religious experience. Although these early debates have now been well traversed, digital media continues to expand and extend in ways that invites further inquiry. Additionally, technologies in areas of medicine, robotics, and communication have introduced new questions that religious communities and authorities have to explore: can Buddha be a robot? Does the Muslim Hajj count if it is digital? Can we look to sacred texts to find guidelines to social media? Is science and innovation inherently anti-religion? This course will look at technology as it intersects with a variety of cultures and religions.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Rsrch Age Google 
Long Title: Research in the Age of Google, the Cloud, and Open Space
Sponsoring Department: Library
Approved Instructors: All Library faculty

In today's information rich society, it is important for students to not only access and evaluate information, but learn to manage it using all the technological tools available. In this course, students will describe and critically evaluate the current state of information retrieval in today's ever-changing information landscape. Tools and issues include, but are not limited to, research using Google, cloud computing, open source resources, media bias, information overload, online privacy, and scholarly databases.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Sci Fi & Philosophy
Long Title: SciFi and Philosophy
Sponsoring Department: English 
Approved Instructors: Blazer

This course will interpret science fiction and fantasy literature, film, television, gaming culture (role playing, live-action role playing, and video games), and fan culture (fanzines and fan fiction) through the lens of philosophy.  Students will not only analyze sci-fi and fantasy works from a literary perspective but also learn about the philosophical concepts that these works explore, such as the nature of reality, the concept of the self, and the philosophy of morality.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Sex, Drugs, & Econ
Long Title: Sex, Drugs, and Economics
Sponsoring Department:  Economics & Finance
Approved Instructors: Conaway

This course explores how economic theory can be used to analyze controversial issues, as well as, the often hidden costs and unintended consequences of government policies governing sex, drugs, usury, child labor, health care, abortion, capital punishment and immigration, among others.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Social Problems 
Long Title: Social Problems
Sponsoring Department: Government & Sociology
Approved Instructors: All Sociology faculty

Sociology is a scientific study of human behavior. Sociologists take seriously the fact that all human behavior occurs within a social context and that context influences human behavior. This course will explore a series of social problems (including racism and poverty among other topics) from the sociological perspective and will propose and evaluate contextual solutions to the problems.

Section Title: Crit Think: Swansonomics
Long Title: Swansonomics
Sponsoring Department: Economics & Finance
Approved Instructors: Conaway

In this course we will examine the libertarian beliefs espoused by the character Ron Swanson from the television series “Parks and Recreation”. You may love the government or you may hate it, either way, this class will make you rethink your position. The topics will include, but are not limited to: The expected economic consequences of a specific piece of legislation or political position/philosophy, unintended consequences, various systems of taxation (progressive income taxes, the “fair” tax, value added taxes, etc), Public vs. Private pay, Public Unions, the tragedy of the commons, government bailouts, the size of the government, Fiat money, the role of government, transfer programs, the 1%, the 47%, and incentives, in general.

Section Title: Crit Think: Think Through Relig 
Long Title: Thinking Through Religion
Sponsoring Department: Philosophy, Religion & Liberal Studies
Approved Instructors: Gittinger

The academic study of religion is a field that overlaps many disciplines which mark out its boundaries and features in diverse ways.  This course offers an overview and surveys the main approaches used today: historical, phenomenological, social scientific (including anthropology, sociology, and psychology), philosophy, feminist. Global, and comparative or universal theology.  In their various ways, these approaches help us learn about and understand the many roles of religion in individual experience, public life, social and political affairs, and all the spheres of art, music, and literature, past and present.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Utop/Dystop Worlds 
Long Title: Through the Looking Glass: Utopian/Dystopian Worlds
Sponsoring Department: English 
Approved Instructors: Beasley

Human beings have a natural tendency to desire a better future and to daydream about living in a more perfect society.  But what would a more perfect society look like?  This is a question writers have tried to answer for hundreds of years, and this body of imaginative writing is named utopian literature, after Sir Thomas More's hugely popular Utopia (1516).  In this course, we will explore the nature and evolution of utopian literature, as well as the emergency of dystopian literature (such as George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four), which imagines societies far worse than our own. We will discuss many of the important artistic and political questions that utopian and dystopian texts raise.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: War Literature
Long Title: War Literature
Sponsoring Department: English & Rhetoric
Approved Instructors: MacLachlan

For much of its history, the United States has been at war, both domestically and abroad.  After potential for victory becomes complicated, popular culture often loses interest in the war's outcomes, as well as the individuals involved.  While the amount of money powering the military is high (roughly twenty percent of the federal budget), the average civilian is increasingly disconnected from military life.  How can this be?  Public debates of war often only begin when a fictional representation of war is created.  What do fictional representations of war reveal about our national identities, biases, and philosophies?  This course aims to investigate and critically analyze the costs of two recent major wards in American history: The Iraq War and The Vietnam War.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: We The People 
Long Title: We The People
Sponsoring Department: English & Rhetoric
Approved Instructors: Dillard, Clark, Downing, Dreher

This course explores how we create ourselves and influence our worlds through our worlds through the use of rhetorical communication in interpersonal, group, and public settings.

Schedule Title: Crit Think: Writing Lifestories 
Long Title: Writing Lifestories: Discovering Cultural Heritage
Sponsoring Department: Professional Learning and Innovation
Approved Instructors: Cross

This course will focus on heightening an awareness of your cultural heritage(s) through personal writings.  You will be recovering personal memories and collecting and retelling family stories.  You will begin by collecting fragments of images, memories, dreams, and stories -- a mixture of American cultures that you have collected in your mind throughout your lifetime.  Through interviews you will collect stories from your parents, grandparents, other members of the family and people who share your common background. In addition to personal writings, you will collect materials that are connected to personal or family past, photographs, meaningful documents, stories told to you, favorite recipes, etc.  Some research will be involved.  Your personal stories will be put into context through researching the historical and cultural backgrounds of your ancestors.  You will be collecting visual images of periods long past as well as myths and tales.  You will explore the signs of the times by researching popular media and historical writings.  

Schedule Title: Crit Think: World War II
Long Title: World War II
Sponsoring Department: History
Approved Instructors: Newsome

This course examines the history of World War II from its origins in the 1930s to its conclusion in 1945. Emphasis will be placed on the nexus of domestic and foreign policies, the causes and consequences of battlefield victories and defeats, collaboration, resistance, the Holocaust, and the home front. The course will cover both the European and the Pacific theaters.