Syllabi and Curricular Materials

Syllabi, handouts, and related materials created by Grinnell College faculty for courses at Grinnell.

grinnell:3482
Stephen R. Carl (Class of 1971) working on a dissection in the biology lab.
grinnell:10002
Course materials for Research methods for empirical computer science which is designed to teach basic methods for conducting a personal research program for graduate students.
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Tutorials offered during the Fall 2010 semester at Grinnell College.
grinnell:11656
Article arguing that undergraduate curricula should incorporate new approaches to economics including game-theory and other advances in economic analysis
grinnell:10001
To promote reproducibility, since 2009 all my empirical research has been cached in a data repository that captures all source code and data dependencies automatically or semi-automatically.
grinnell:27969
Embodied Experiences in the Environment Curriculum guide.
grinnell:10426
grinnell:316
Andelson, Jonathan Gary, 1949-
The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. The arrival of European Americans in the Upper Midwest in the middle of the nineteenth century led to dramatic changes in the region's ecology. In what was perhaps the most rapid and extensive degradation of a natural ecosystem in human history, in the space of 50 years settlers plowed under millions of acres of the native tallgrass prairie and replaced it with a diversified agricultural ecosystem on what proved to be some of the best farmland in the world. As agriculture expanded, the prairie diminished.
grinnell:317
Andelson, Jonathan Gary, 1949-
The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. The arrival of European Americans in the Upper Midwest in the middle of the nineteenth century led to dramatic changes in the region's ecology. In what was perhaps the most rapid and extensive degradation of a natural ecosystem in human history, in the space of 50 years settlers plowed under millions of acres of the native tallgrass prairie and replaced it with a diversified agricultural ecosystem on what proved to be some of the best farmland in the world.
grinnell:3452
Aparicio, Yvette, 1972-
The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. Explores the role and significance of place in conceptualizations of self and others.
grinnell:3459
Armstrong, Todd Patrick.
The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. This tutorial focuses on the literature and art of the Russian Revolutionary period.
grinnell:3432
Azoulay, Katya Gibel.
Race thinking dominates ways in which people in the United States differentiate groups of people from each other. This tutorial focuses on associations between color and culture in order to examine how racial meanings are constructed and made comprehensible as well as how they are routed through representations of class. Using a combination of texts -- academic articles, films, newspapers and advertisements -- we will explore representations of
grinnell:3438
Borovsky, Brian P.
It has been said that we live in a dog-eat-dog world. Some have likened human life to a continual struggle for the survival of the fittest individuals, mirroring certain evolutionary processes observed in non-human life. Still others cherish a view in which we are all brothers or sisters in one human family, a view that urges awareness of how human relationships bring inspiration and meaning to our lives. This tutorial will examine the ways in which we are isolated from each other and in which we are connected to each other as human beings.
grinnell:3439
Brown, Victoria (Victoria Bissell)
The purpose of this tutorial is to sharpen your sense of the ways in which history is constructed, educate you about the standards governing that construction, and develop your own skills for engaging in such construction. We will use the story of the Pullman strike to develop reading, research, and writing strategies and to ponder the multiple choices every historian must make in writing a narrative that both recounts and analyzes a historical event. So this is a course in skill-building, story-telling, and scholarly ethics.
grinnell:3449
Burkle, Howard R.
Socrates taught that the unexamined life is not worth living. This tutorial will put this bit of classical wisdom to the test. Focusing on Existentialist thinkers Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Martin Buber, we shall seek to identify the qualities that make a human life authentic. Although these writers are alike in their Existentialist approaches, they differ widely in their ethical, metaphysical, and spiritual conclusions.
grinnell:3453
Chenette, Jonathan L.
Students will read fiction about musicians and listen to the relevant musical works that are mentioned in the literature.
grinnell:3445
Cummins, W. Joseph.
The first year tutorial, taken in the fall semester, is Grinnell College's only general academic course requirement. The college intends the tutorial to assist students in further developing their critical thinking skills and in improving their written and oral communication skills. Each of the tutorials offered in a given fall semester is based around a particular subject matter, which provides the vehicle by which the above goals are accomplished. This tutorial uses classic texts as the structure.
grinnell:3461
Dobbs, Elizabeth A.
How is a story constructed? Using a model derived from linguistics and applied to narrative, we will explore both this question and the art of narrative. For most of the semester, we will be the audience of stories from Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Marguerite of Navarre's Heptameron, but, at the end of the semester, you will be a story-teller and a part of the audience for your fellow students' stories. This tutorial will especially develop your ability to take part in class discussions and to write arguments.
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Elfenbein, Caleb; Conner, Mike; Conner, Mike
A poster explaining how the faculty member used a dynamic map and timeline to illustrate events. The map and timeline are tied together so that an entry on one appears on the other.
grinnell:3463
Feng, Jin, 1971-
In this tutorial we will examine the cultural and political significance of food in literature and film. We will focus on the way national cultures and personal identities are described and defined through narratives of the preparation, consumption, and appreciation of food in twentieth-century Chinese and Chinese American literature and film. Additionally, the course will integrate samples from other cultures and periods as points of comparison. Extracurricular activities, such as a restaurant visit, will also be included to facilitate our understanding and analysis of the culture of food.