Other Opportunities

Learn about other educational opportunities available to Dietrich College students.

Fall 2025 School of Music Course: The Beatles!

57-209 The Beatles

This 6-unit course will focus on the phenomenon of the Beatles. Their songs will be studied, with analysis of the musical and lyrical content and structural elements. What musical styles do the songs address? What were their musical influences? In what ways did their music change over the years? Also, the music's social context will be studied. Why were the Beatles so popular and influential? What exactly caused Beatlemania? How did the group form, grow, and end? The Beatles are the most famous rock group in history; the reasons for this are as much cultural as musical, and we'll study the two elements simultaneously. Open to all undergraduate students.

Fall 2025 CMIST Course: Introduction to Political Science

84-101 Introduction to Political Science

MW: 12:30-1:50 
Instructor: John Chin 

This course teaches the foundational concepts necessary to understand and participate in politics. It is important to those who want to study political science and international relations as a discipline, but also to those who just want frameworks for understanding governance, power and advancing the common good. Beginning with an examination of the modern state, it addresses fundamental questions such as: What is sovereignty? How do we distinguish democratic rule, authoritarianism and totalitarianism? When did socialism, communism, fascism and liberalism emerge, and what do they mean? How does secular government differ from theocracy? Why are the concepts of national self-determination and spheres of influence clashing today? What are the causes of wars and revolutions? What are global norms and international law? And how can we use our understanding of power and governance to build a better world?

Fall 2025 English Courses with Open Seats

• 76-207 A Special Topics in Literature & Culture - Queenship: Narratives of Power & Identity
  MWF 12:00-12:50
  Instructor: Laura DeLuca
  Queens have long been at the center of political power, social change and cultural narratives. This course explores queenship in literature from ancient mythology to contemporary fiction, examining how queens, real and imagined, defy or conform to societal expectations while navigating complex relationships between power, autonomy and identity. We’ll study figures like Cleopatra in Antony and Cleopatra, as well as the queens from The Queen's Necklace and The Queen’s Gambit, analyzing how their portrayals challenge cultural values and shape political discourse. We will examine how queens have both wielded power and been constrained by it, exploring the tensions surrounding their identity, autonomy and resistance. By combining literary analysis with historical context and interdisciplinary perspectives, students will gain a deeper understanding of how portrayals of queenship have evolved and continue to resonate in contemporary conversations about gender and authority.
  This course is a one-time only experience. It will not be offered again in the future.
• 76-207 B Special Topics in Literature & Culture - Inventing America: Early Modern Constructions of the New World, 1500-1800
  TR 2:00-3:20
  Instructor: Ed Simon
  America wasn’t discovered – it was invented. Cultural discourses, from the utopian to the apocalyptic, were crucial to European powers as they colonized the two massive continents of the Western Hemisphere, and in the process the idea of a “New World” would be constructed. In this course we’ll look at a variety of different works that imagine this New World, both first-person accounts from European and indigenous sources concerning colonization and conquest, as well as canonical literary works involved in the invention of America, including Thomas More’s Utopia, Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Aphra Behn’s Oroonoko, Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.