48 courses. Harvest read no subject for these courses. That is a gap in our reading of the catalog, not in the college's catalog; each course is shown as we hold it until the reading is fixed.
This course fulfills Group 1. 1 Credit. Fall 2026. Staff. Spring 2027. Staff. Fall 2027 Staff. Spring 2028 Staff. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
This course will fulfill Group 3. 1 Credit. Fall 2026. Staff. Spring 2027. Staff. Fall 2027 Staff. Spring 2028 Staff. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
This course will fulfill Group 2. 1 Credit. Fall 2026. Staff. Spring 2027. Staff. Fall 2027 Staff. Spring 2028 Staff. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
Access the class schedule to search for sections.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 055 ) In the Chinese-speaking world, the film screen has been an important media device for social, political, and cultural transformation. This course invites students to examine Chinese and Sinophone film cultures from the silent era to the digital age. Traveling across mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong through the screen, students will learn essential tools for analyzing film images and sound. Students will also discuss how cinema took roots in China, how the critics took advantage of the attraction of the film screen to instigate political movements, and, most recently, how the digital screen introduced a set of new techniques in crafting and exploiting the self-image in the digital economy. This course will give students opportunities to engage with media production, such as making music videos and video essays, as a new mode of critical thinking and practice. Students are encouraged to use both old and new media technologies and experiment with unorthodox ways of looking at the world through their own lenses. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for CPLT, FMST Fall 2027 Staff.
An opportunity for interested students to expand their understanding of the theories that analyze the body and to comparatively explore how different societies manage, beautify, and regulate the human body. The first part of the semester, determined by the professor, focuses on reading theories that inform social analysis of the body while the second part, determined by both the faculty and the students, explores different topics that interest the students taking the course. This attachment is usually combined with the regular class to create a double-credit honors preparation. Social sciences. 1 credit.
Non-distribution. 1 credit.
The Biology Department welcomes students from different backgrounds, experiences, and levels of preparedness. BIOL-SP helps us achieve this goal by providing students the opportunity to take part in an encouraging, challenging, and inclusive learning community. We encourage students to apply from a range of backgrounds and experiences in biology, including people who feel insecure about their preparation for the rigors of college-level biology and/or students who identify as first generation, low income (FLI). Students enroll in BIOL-SP during the same semester they are enrolled in BIOL 001 or BIOL 002. Students must apply to get into BIOL-SP. Admission to the course is based on a commitment to both hard work and growth as well as an interest in STEM, rather than GPA or previous coursework. During BIOL‑SP workshops, students work in small and collaborative groups with a faculty member to extend, deepen, and synthesize their understanding of the introductory biology course material. Students will also hone study and quantitative skills. We strive to provide an enriched experience for students by helping them foster a supportive cohort of peers to promote their academic success. Graded CR/NC.
The Biology Department welcomes students from different backgrounds, experiences, and levels of preparedness. BIOL-SP helps us achieve this goal by providing students the opportunity to take part in an encouraging, challenging, and inclusive learning community. We encourage students to apply from a range of backgrounds and experiences in biology, including people who feel insecure about their preparation for the rigors of college-level biology and/or students who identify as first generation, low income (FLI). Students enroll in BIOL-SP during the same semester they are enrolled in BIOL 001 or BIOL 002. Students must apply to get into BIOL-SP. Admission to the course is based on a commitment to both hard work and growth as well as an interest in STEM, rather than GPA or previous coursework. During BIOL‑SP workshops, students work in small and collaborative groups with a faculty member to extend, deepen, and synthesize their understanding of the introductory biology course material. Students will also hone study and quantitative skills. We strive to provide an enriched experience for students by helping them foster a supportive cohort of peers to promote their academic success. Graded CR/NC.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 009 ) This introductory course explores the most influential currents of thought and culture in traditional China, through directed readings and discussions of original sources in translation. No prerequisites and no knowledge of Chinese or of China are required. Humanities. 1 credit.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 023 ) Modern and contemporary Chinese literature is not a national enterprise; it is a global network across diverging societies. From the neon-soaked alleyways of semi-colonial Shanghai to the tropical dreams of the Malaysian rainforest, and from Taipei’s queer undergrounds to Beijing’s high-tech dystopian vistas, Chinese literary culture has always been a sprawling, polyphonic, and dangerously fluid machine. This course invites students to analyze how writers from the early 20th century to the present participated in the making of a global Chinese modernity. We move beyond the “Great Wall” of national history to examine the Chinese script as a trans-border medium used to forge, dispute, and dismantle identities, norms of gender and sexuality, and Sinophobia. All readings are in English. No prerequisite. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA Fall 2026. Gao.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 016 ) This course will explore the literary and intellectual world of traditional Chinese culture, through original writings in English translation, including both poetry and prose. Topics to be discussed include Taoism, Confucianism, and the contouring of Chinese culture; immortality, wine, and allaying the mundane; and the religious dimension, disengagement, and the appreciation of the natural world. The course also will address cultural and literary formulations of conduct and persona and the expression of individualism in an authoritarian society. Humanities. 1 credit.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 017 ) Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA
(Cross-listed as CHIN 024 ) This course surveys major narrative and genres, forms and works from the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) through the early twentieth century with an emphasis on fiction and drama. Readings consist of both primary texts in English translation and secondary critical works. Issues to be emphasized include print history and format (including illustration), performance context, the relationship between oral and written, vernacular and classical storytelling, the invention of Chinese literary history as a discipline in the Republican period. Humanities. 1 credit.
(Cross-listed CHIN 025 ) This course examines critical social changes through literary narratives from China and Sinophone communities (such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Malaysia), with a primary focus on works published after the mid-1980s. The selected narratives articulate the historical specificity of ideological dilemmas and cultural dynamics through their imaginative engagements with desire, morality, politics, and environmental issues. Through textual analysis and class discussion, students will better understand contemporary Chinese and other Sinophone societies as well as become familiar with various means of interpreting literature. All lectures and discussions will be conducted in English, and all readings are in English translation. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA
(Cross-listed as CHIN 027 ) Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA, CPLT
(Cross-listed as CHIN 036 ) Contrary to our stereotypes about the silent, invisible woman of premodern China, women actually wrote and published their work in unprecedented numbers from the late 16th century to the early 20th century. This course will explore the literary and historical significance of this output, which mainly took the form of poetry and prefaces to poetry collections, letters, some drama, and novels in verse, and which was produced primarily by gentry women (e.g. women from elite families), courtesans, and nuns. A central theme will be the place and problem of women’s poetry in a male-dominated literary tradition and society. Topics to be addressed include the social function of poetry and women’s literary networks, women’s relationship to the publishing market as writers, editors, and readers, the forces driving male interest in women’s writing at certain historical moments, and the changing ideas about what kinds of styles of past poets should be offered to boudoir poets as a repertoire of available choices to read and imitate. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA
(Cross-listed as CHIN 052 ) Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA
Cross-listed as CHIN 056 This course introduces students to different perspectives and approaches that record and reflect upon experiences involving travel and relocation. A journey between leaving and returning is not merely a pause or an escape, but rather it often launches a sequential inquiry that will reshape one’s ways of perceiving the world. Relocation, regardless of the reason for doing so, impacts both the migrant and the local residents in the host country. Actions taken to move might stem from a desire to satiate the spirit of adventure, escaping from the banality of one’s daily existence, or seeking financial success. On the one hand, the new life and work test individual migrants’ will to survive; on the other hand, it also tests if a host society is able to respond to the challenges ensuing from the encounter, reach agreements, and find ways to ensure just treatment of newcomers. Through analysis of and discussion on selected literary works, reportage, documentary films, YouTube clips, as well as following updates on NGO websites, this course leads students to explore how the seemingly personal pursuit of intellectual growth, psychological contentment, and/or material fulfillment intertwines with interrelated global, social, and economic conditions Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 065 ) By using cultural globalization as an explanatory framework built on the foundation of historical studies, this course enables students to conduct critical and interdisciplinary analysis of Peking opera, a living theatrical tradition commonly considered to be the “national theater” of China. The central question we ask is: How have the cultural dimensions of globalization-transnational flows of technology, media, and popular culture-intensified Peking opera’s connection to urban culture, archival digitalization, visual arts, politics of style, Chinese nationalist ideology and intercultural influences in America? Students not only engage with scholarly literature that cuts across different disciplines and genres (including theater anthropology, cultural history, cinema, music, literature, and art history), but also are introduced to a rich body of sources, ranging from photographs to opera films and documentaries. They have the opportunity to learn some basics of singing and movement and conduct field trips to study with Peking opera troupes in the Chinese community in Philadelphia. Humanities. 1 credit.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 081 ) Chinese civilization has been imbued with Taoism for some two and one-half millennia, from popular belief and custom to intellectual and literary culture. In addition to consideration of the texts and contexts of both philosophical and religious Taoism, the class will examine the articulation and role of Taoism in Chinese literature and culture and the enduring implications of the Taoist ethos. All readings will be in English. Humanities. 1 credit.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 069 ) This course will explore various dimensions of taste and aesthetics in traditional Chinese culture, from the earliest times into the recent past. Broader aspects of the course will include concept, form, and substance in classical literary, and philosophical formulations; ritual practice and ceremonial performance; and continuities and disjunctures in private vs. public and individual vs. societal taste. More focused readings and discussions will concern food, alcohol, tea, and the culinary arts; appreciation, aesthetics, and poetics in music, painting, calligraphy, literature, sculpture, and theater; the harmony of the human body and the evaluation of beauty and suitability in men and women; landscape appreciation and visions of the natural world; leisure and the passa tempo pursuits of Go, flower and tree arrangement and elegant gatherings. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA
(Cross-listed as CHIN 086 , ENVS 052 )
(Cross-listed as CHIN 091 )
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When we take away the technical, coding aspects of Computer Science, what’s left? This course aims to explore this question through a holistic pedagogical approach to the questions that aspiring computer scientists as well as users of technology must confront. What are the detrimental effects of the ways in which exponential production and use of technical products come to reinforce inequalities around the globe? What are the beauties and blooming potentials of the digital age? How can we come to oscillate within that dyadic tension of criticism and hope? How can conversations about tech colonialism, disability theory, critical race theory, etc. come to enhance our understanding about who is propelling the trajectory and direction of where technology is headed? This course will also heavily integrate trauma-based pedagogy as well as the space to reflect on one’s own educational experiences at Swarthmore College. Clearly this is a unique course style. How can we take agency in the type and modes of learning that serve our best interests? What is information worth paying attention to and how can we form spaces of community to have these conversations? https://www.cs.swarthmore.edu/courses/CS16/F21/ Role of Student Facilitators The student facilitators have created the syllabus as well as the general curriculum for each week. Our main goal is for the classroom to collectively engage with the readings that spark fruitful dialogue and highlight myriad perspectives. While we completely endorse the spirit of an autonomous, free-spirited discussion, having some relative structure will guide in streamlining the collective engagement regarding the topic at hand. The student facilitators will be in charge of starting off activities and discussions, assigning written assignments, and hosting guest speakers. Role of Professor(s) The professor(s) may sit in on any class discussion but are not required to. They can guide and provide input on assignments. They will facilitate grading papers and other assignments. Natural science and engineering. 1 Credit. Access the class schedule to search for sections.
Course majors in Economics must pass the Comprehensive Examination, which is given in January or February each year and covers the theory and statistics requirements. Students should plan to complete ECON 011, ECON 021, and ECON 031 before taking the comprehensive exam. All students are required to take the examination on campus their senior year; the only exception is for December finishers, who may take the comprehensive exam on campus in the winter prior to their final semester at Swarthmore. 0 credit.
This course will examine the ways Restorative and Transformative Justice approaches are, or could be, applied within under-resourced American public schools. Students will engage with both philosophical and practical considerations around justice and punishment within the context of public education. Through a combination of theoretical readings, case studies, and field placement within a public school, students will deepen their understanding of how practices underlying Restorative and Transformative Justice could work within the context of public education. Social sciences. 1 credit. Department website: www.swarthmore.edu/educational-studies Access the class schedule to search for sections.
Much of the history of colonization, and white supremacist racism has manifested an American landscape where geographic location is often the premier determinant of the material status of ones life. Namely, the life expectancy of Swarthmore Borough residents is over 12 years the life expectancy of Chester, PA residents– two spaces separated by a mere 3 miles. This course recognizes this life expectancy to be one particular measure of how space defines one’s proximity, accessibility, experience, and legitimacy to the resources they need to thrive. In recognizing this difference and the injustices it perpetuates, it becomes our onus and accountability, as privileged Swarthmore students, to leverage our capacities to move our resources, money, and power to help augment ongoing initiatives and to learn from the ways that Chester residents are shaping the kind of reality they wish to see. . The course will originate from a macro-level consideration of the history of space and its intersections with politics, to provide a crucial understanding of the underlying themes of the built environment. Secondarily, the reading of how these theories penetrate the citizen, the self, and the consciousness will offer an important transition to confronting and examining how these theories manifest in issues at the regional, local, interpersonal, and individual levels. Case studies of Tri-State Area (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania) will allow the course to activate themselves alongside the stakeholders within these phenomena, namely Black, and Indigenous community members engaging in organized resistance. Ultimately, the course will center with a focus on Swarthmore and Chester, and course students will become designers, artists, scholars, activists, and more, to leverage their course experience to contribute their collaborative visions for a more spatially just Swarthmore-Chester continuum. Student work will understand, process, synthesize, and contribute a direct impact, as all student work will be rooted in meeting the demonstrated needs of Chester Residents for Quality Living (CRCQL), Campus Coalition Concerning Chester (C-4), and other community based groups. As this course is led by students in the Project Pericles, C-4 Chester Road Collaborative, course students will be active members, and expected to direct their individual creative and academic growth in a shared community of students and residents. 1 credit. Eligible for ESCH
In this poetry workshop, we’ll engage not only individual poems but whole titles, studying book-length poems, thematically- and formally- linked collections, hybrid texts, and other examples, to investigate the entire project of a poetry book. This course culminates in the creation of an original poetry chapbook. Limited to 12 students. CR/NC Humanities. 1 credit. Fall 2027 Parker.
(Cross-listed as MUSI 063SR ) This student-led course by Anastasia Lewis aims to offer students access to a multi-media, interdepartmental, and interdisciplinary experience that integrates various media, digital, analog, visual, and audio technologies into live performance. The course will engage a wide range of students with backgrounds (either academically and/or extracurricularly) to collaborate and create a newly conceptualized hybrid Music, Theater, and Film/Media process of storytelling. For the 2023-24 academic year, the course will involve the conceptualization, preparation, and execution of a series of individual/team designs that will culminate into a larger final performance of the all-original musical ASHES of Fate (written and produced by Anastasia Lewis, ‘24) in the Pearson-Hall Theater (LPAC Mainstage). This course is designed to entertain all students with an interest and/or background in multimedia, music, and/or theatrical production. Students, depending on role or commitment level, can sign up to get 0-0.5 credits per semester for both the Fall 2023 and/or Spring 2024 semesters. (Note: The performances will take place in Spring 2024. If you are interested in participating, please contact either Anastasia Lewis (alewis1) or Sunka Simon (ssimon1) for more details.) Access the class schedule to search for sections.
(Cross-listed as FREN 017A ) Portrayals of doctors provide a great opportunity to discover some classic works of French Literature, including Molière’s The Imaginary Invalid, Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, Proust’s Swann’s Way, and Albert Camus’ The Plague. Other authors studied are Montaigne and Diderot. Students focus their discussions on the relationship with patients when these are seen as both humans beings and objects of science. Another topic of interest is how literature can be viewed as therapeutic. Throughout the seminar, we try to understand what had made these works original in their times and a source of admiration up to our days. Texts and discussions in English. Humanities 1 credit. Eligible for INTP
(Cross-listed as FREN 017B ) Exile can be a multi faceted transnational, cultural, political, social journey, which often affect the vision of the here and there of individuals and populations seeking a better life, some type of asylum, a change of landscape, etc. Through readings of (poems, prose, plays, songs, etc.) French writers and artists from the Hexagon and beyond, we will examine issues such as freedom, resistance, social identity, dreams, hopes, differences, transfer of roles, displacement, abandonment, borders, memory, creation, etc., as expressed by Apollinaire, Baudelaire, DuBellay, Césaire, Hugo, Kacimi, Lahens, Levi-Strauss, Ollivier, Saint-John-Perse, Schwarz-Bart, Tadjo, Verlaine, among others. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for INTP, BLST
(Cross-listed as FREN 017C ) Drawing Conflicts is a new course that examines the use of modern fictional and nonfiction graphic novels to represent and bear witness to critical conflicts in recent history, including the Holocaust, the Iranian Revolution, the Palestinian Conflict, the 1982 and 2006 Lebanon Wars, the Rwandan genocide, and the ongoing “refugee crisis.” This course introduces students to the theory and methodology of comics analysis, while exploring current debates on the depiction and memorialization of traumatic history through this highly commercial medium-traditionally associated with lighter content-, and the extent to which these comics promotes human rights in on-going crises. Highlights include Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Jean-Philippe Stassen’s Deogratias and graphic works by NGO’s to teach about the plight of refugees. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for FREN
(Cross-listed as FREN 017D ) From the eighteenth century to the present day, French literature has a rich tradition of authors who are at once novelists and philosophers. From the Enlightenment tales of Voltaire and Diderot, to the materialist metaphysics underlying Balzac’s Realism, to the existentialist works of Sartre and Beauvoir, to the relational ontology of Glissant’s postcolonial literary universe, several of the central figures of French letters have turned to the novel both as a platform for showcasing their philosophical systems and as a vessel to give shape and meaning to these very systems. The following course proposes to study the interdependence between the novelistic and philosophical enterprises of these authors in order to explore fundamental questions tied to knowledge, identity, and justice. Authors include: Voltaire, Diderot, Balzac, Gide, Camus, Sartre, Beauvoir, Glissant. (Conducted in English. Texts in Translation.) Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for FREN
(Cross-listed as ASIA 015 , CHIN 015 ) This course is an introduction to the humanistic traditions of China, Japan, and Korea from antiquity to around 1600. We explore some of the foundational ideas, texts, and issues that reflect the East Asian experiences with the self and the world. Through close engagement with a wide variety of source materials selected from all three cultures, we will investigate both the deep connections shared among them and the unique trajectories of each as they approached modernity. To that end, this course focuses on the written artifacts broadly conceivable as literature, historiography, and philosophy, although we will also read some of the canonical works of East Asian religions. Our goal is not to survey everything there is, but to develop a critical ability in both understanding the East Asian traditions and in reflecting upon their relevance to the present day. No prior knowledge or experience with East Asia is required. Open to freshmen and seniors alike. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for GLBL-paired.
(Cross-listed with CHIN 038 , ASIA 038 ) Dialogue often connotes inclusiveness, openness, conflict resolution, and truth-seeking. It is both a civic process and a literary form most famously associated with the philosophical writings of Plato. Nonetheless, even in the Platonic dialogues not every voice or perspective is always equally represented, thereby exposing the hidden dangers of a seemingly democratic form. This course looks into the promise and peril of the dialogic form through a diverse selection of premodern Chinese writings we now separate into different genres: poetry, history, philosophy, as well as more technically-oriented works like medicine, civil engineering, and military strategies. It highlights a vibrant tradition of dialogic compositions that are not always recognized as such but has tremendous implications for our understanding of the form. In addition, students also read foundational works from both other literary traditions and from modern theories for context and comparison. All readings in English, with Chinese originals available to the more advanced students. Humanities. 1 credit.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 071 ) Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for ASIA. Spring 2028 Staff.
(Cross-listed with CHIN 106 ) Can be taken for 1 or 2 credits. BOTH seminar sections required for 2 credits. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for ASIA. Spring 2028 Staff.
(Cross-listed as CHIN 107 ) This seminar analyzes Chinese popular media from the beginning of marketization in the 1980s to the present. Focusing on the broad screen culture- including but not limited to cinema, we will place various media works in the global and national contexts of technological innovation and social reforms. Considering Chinese media as a global model of cultural politics, we will cover a wide range of topics: the Chinese writing system and emoji in the age of the computer, romantic comedy and popular music industry, bullet-titles (danmu) and the challenge to the cinematic apparatus, touchscreen and the performance of gender and sexuality in dating apps, and interactive interfaces and the making of the neoliberal subject. Exposed to different media scholarship, students will acquire critical methodologies in doing research on media culture in and beyond the China proper. Students are also encouraged to integrate critical thinking of media in their creative projects. All readings will be in English. Can be taken for 1 or 2 credits. BOTH seminar sections required for 2 credits. Humanities 2 credits. Eligible for ASIA, FMST.
(Cross-listed with CHIN 110 ) Can be taken for 1 or 2 credits. BOTH seminar sections required for 2 credits. Humanities. 2 credits. Eligible for ASIA. Spring 2027. Staff.
MATH 015SP will provide an enriched experience designed for MATH 015 students who plan to take at least four other STEM courses during their time at Swarthmore. During class, students work in small groups on challenging problems designed to promote deep understanding and mastery of the material. Graded CR/NC.
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(Cross-listed as CHIN 037 ) Combining some of the greatest works of Chinese poetry with approaches and visual materials from the history of Chinese landscape painting, in this course we will examine the changing use of landscape as a medium to express different philosophical and social meanings by competing social groups across historical periods from early times to the 13th century. In the first half of this course, we will see how natural landscape in poetry became a medium for conveying a range different ideals and problems: official service and reclusion in the countryside, Daoist liberation and Buddhist enlightenment, the sorrows of war on the frontier or travel into exile. In the second half of this course, we then apply our knowledge of Chinese poetry to interpreting a series of paintings from the Song dynasty (960-1279). This period is the golden age of Chinese landscape painting. It saw the emergence of literati-painters who, much like the great painters of the Renaissance, argued that painting possessed the same expressive power as poetry. We will explore the ways they employed painting to comment on an unprecedented range of issues, including government affairs, the role of women in society, the relation of private to public life, as well as the experience of dynastic collapse and war. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for MDST, ASIA.
(Cross-listed as FMST 059 ) This course is co-taught in an interdisciplinary collaboration with international, digitally facilitated segments. It addresses the historical, cultural, representational, and theoretical specificities of diasporas through examining how visual and literary productions deal with questions of race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, nationality and globalization from a perpetual state of “elsewhere.” How does this experience mark the conceptualization, aesthetics, and politics of the artistic process and textuality? What role do language, body memories, and visualization/projection play in the works we will discuss? How do virtual and real-life diasporic communities interact with their imagination and reception? Students are encouraged to do work in their first and secondary languages. Commitment to cross-cultural dialogue and collaboration a must. Film Studies background helpful but not required. Seminar-style class taught in English. Humanities. 1 credit. Eligible for BLST, FMST, FREN, GSST
Access the class schedule to search for sections.
Access the class schedule to search for sections.
Source: Swarthmore College's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 59
