2020-21 Pomona College Catalog 
    
    Mar 28, 2024  
2020-21 Pomona College Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG] Use the dropdown above to select the current 2023-24 catalog.

New and Revised Courses


New Courses for fall 2020


New Courses for spring 2021


Revised Courses for spring 2021


BIOL104  PO. Conservation Science. C. Chang. Biological approaches to the conservation of species and ecosystems. Topics include current problems in conservation at global through local scales, the origin and maintenance of biodiversity, population dynamics of rare or exploited species and the influence of human values on wildlife conservation. Prerequisites: BIOL 041E PO .

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each spring.

CHEM147  PO. Inorganic Chemistry. N. Ball. The structure, bonding, and reactivity of inorganic molecules and solids are discussed using a symmetry and molecular orbital based approach. Additional topics including ligand field, hard/soft acid-base theories, as well as physical organometallic chemistry will be discussed with applications in spectroscopy, organometallic catalysis, and bioinorganic chemistry. Prerequisites: CHEM 110A PO . Co-requisites: CHEM 110B PO .

Credit: 1

When  Offered: Each spring.

CLAS114  PO. Gender and Sexuality in Ancient Greece. J. Valentine. Using evidence from literature, oratory, law, medical writings and the visual arts, this course will explore the legal and social position of women in ancient Greece; male attitudes toward women and the idea of the Female; sexuality; and the contrast between the myths of powerful women and the apparent reality.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each spring.

EA  030E PO. Environmental Science- East Asia. M. Los Huertos. This Environmental Analysis Program project-based core course introduces the basic principles of environmental science with applications in chemistry, ecology and geology. It is part of the core course requirements for the Environmental Analysis major and designed to prepare students to work in East Asia. The course provides a natural science foundation for Environmental Science. Topics covered include a discussion of ecosystems, climate change, energy and food production, land resources, pollution and sustainable development. A full laboratory accompanies the course and includes field and laboratory work and introduces Geographical Information System (GIS) mapping and statistics. Letter grade only. Prerequisites: EA 010 PO  or by permission of the instructor. Previously offered as EA 031 PO.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Spring 2021.

EA  191  PO. Thesis in Environmental Analysis. C. Miller. Senior Thesis in Environmental Analysis. Production of a senior research paper or project which culminates in a professional-quality public presentation. Open to senior EA majors only. May be repeated once for credit.

Credit: 1

When offered: Spring 2021.

ENGL074  PO. The Rise of the Novel. S. Raff. The British novel from its beginnings in the prose narratives of the late 17th century to its form in the early 19th century. Readings from Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, Goldsmith, Sterne, Burney, Cleland, Radcliffe, Austen and others. (H3, GS)

Credit: 1

When Offered: Spring 2021.

ENGL093  PO. Writing about Rock & Pop. K. Dettmar. Combining study and practice, we’ll read some of rock’s most popular and vital writers (Bangs, Marcus, Powers, Willis, Klosterman) and produce writing in a number of common genres of rock writing. Five graded assignments of varying lengths. Writing workshop format. Letter grade only. (E)

Credit: 1

When Offered: Offered alternate years; next offered spring 2021.

ENGL170G PO. Shakespeare Seminar. C. Rosenfeld. We will spend the semester studying Shakespeare’s Sonnets. This study will include: the Sonnets; the many imitations, appropriations, and responses they have solicited from a range of poets and artists; and an introduction to the full variety of critical angles and concerns available to us. Assignments will include close reading exercises, critical history with annotated bibliography, and a 20-25 page essay. Prerequisites: ENGL 067 PO . Letter grade only. (H2, 170)

Credit: 1

When Offered: Spring 2021.

GEOL189D PO. Meteorites and Solar System Evolution. N. Moore. A seminar style course that examines the origin and formation of meteorites and the clues they provide regarding the birth and evolution of our solar system and terrestrial planetary bodies. Learning will be achieved by a combination of lectures, hands-on lab activities looking at the textures and composition of meteorites, and student-led in class discussions based on readings of relevant peer-reviewed papers. Topics will include meteorite classification, the asteroid-meteorite connection, early solar system formation, the differentiation of meteorites and planetary bodies, and impacts to planetary bodies including Earth, Mars and the Moon. Prerequisites: GEOL 015 PO , or any version of a GEOL020 course, or permission of instructor. Letter grade only.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Spring 2021.

HIST021  PO. The United States from the Civil War to the End of History. Staff. This introductory-level course will survey the history of the United States, from the Civil War to the present. The course will explore transformations in politics, culture, technology, and foreign policy, and trace the changing ways that race, class, and gender intersect with one another. Students will develop skills analyzing a wide range of primary sources, including written documents as well as film, music, and images. This course will examine in detail the Black freedom struggle, the rise and fall of the New Deal order, and the domestic consequences of American foreign policy. (Core Course: United States)

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each spring.

HIST071  PO. Modern Europe Since 1789. P. Chu. This course offers an introduction to the political and social history of Europe since the French Revolution, focusing on the themes of revolution, modernity, totalitarianism, and globalization. We examine liberal and nationalist challenges to absolutism; industrialization and imperialism; great power competition and World War I; fascism and communism; World War II and the Cold War; and decolonization and European integration. While tracing pan-European developments, we pay attention to the diversity of experiences within Europe as well as Europe’s relationship with the wider world.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each spring.

HIST101S CH. Latinx Oral Histories (CP). T. Summers Sandoval. Introduces students to community history in the field Chicanx/Latinx Studies through the theory, ethics, and practice of oral history. Together we read and discuss foundational texts in the field as we learn how to conduct, preserve, and make use of oral historical research. In collaboration with each other and community partners, students will record and archive oral histories based in surrounding Latinx communities and build a public archive for future generations to access knowledge of the past. The class culminates in a research project making use of the generated sources. Letter grade only. May be repeated once for credit.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each spring.

HIST127  CH. American Inequality. T. Summers Sandoval. This advanced reading seminar explores race, labor, and immigration in the United States through histories of coercion, containment, detention, and imprisonment. Through scholarly readings and films students will collaboratively analyze the intersections of African American, Native American, Asian American, and Latinx experiences and their convergence in the rise of the carceral state. Letter grade only.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Offered alternate years; next offered spring 2021.

HIST140  AF. Women in the Trans-Saharan and Transatlantic Worlds of Slavery: Power, Majesty, and Social Suffering. M. Traore. The course explores the power, the majesty, and the social suffering of women within the context of the pre-colonial, cross-cultural encounters between Africa, the Mediterranean world, and Europe. The course centers on the trans-Saharan and trans-Atlantic slave trades. It analyzes women’s political, social, and economic trajectories: as queens, merchants, diplomats, influential power brokers, and slaves.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each semester.

JAPN012B PO. Intermediate Kanji. A. Nakagoshi. Focuses on systematic learning of kanji characters. Covers approximately 350 characters and helps students build up kanji vocabulary. Can be taken separately or concurrently with JAPN 051A PO . P/NC grading only.

Credit: 0.25

When Offered: Each spring.

MUS 147  PO. Linguisitcs in Musical Analysis. A. Cramer. The question of music’s relationship with the language faculty has not yet been well answered and continues to be vigorously studied. In exploring relationships between music and language, this course proceeds by comparing the various analytical areas of music theory and linguistics. Students will evaluate a number of claims of relationships between music and language, understand some of the musical, linguistic, psychological and cultural phenomena that have prompted those claims, consider some proposed alternative explanations and develop some promising comparisons further. Students will build their sense about how both music and language work and they will consider the kinds of phenomena that may or may not be classifiable as linguistic, paralinguistic and/or musical. They will get to know more music and develop their abilities as discerning listeners and/or performers of music and language. Prerequisites: MUS 080 PO  or LGCS 010 PO , and the ability to read music.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Spring 2021.

PE  087  PO. Fitness and Wellness. V. Townsend. Designed to provide the student with a better understanding of fitness and wellness, their development and lifetime maintenance. Focuses on the development of the whole person, including physical, mental, emotional and social well-being practices. P/NC grading only.

Credit: 0.5

POLI134  PO. Politics of Race and Ethnicity. S. Sadhwani. This course will examine critical questions and debates in race, ethnicity, and politics. It utilizes a multi-disciplinary approach to investigate the history of racial and ethnic minorities in the U.S. and examines the interaction of minority politics within broader American politics. The course begins with theoretical conceptions of race and ethnicity and how they inform notions of citizenship, group membership, structural racism, and racial hierarchies. Subsequent topics include voting and redistricting, electoral politics, segregation and discrimination, social movements, and cooperation and competition within and among minority groups. Finally, selected contemporary policy issues and practices will be discussed in light of their impact on minority communities such as criminal justice, education, health care, and environmental policy. Prerequisites: POLI 003 PO  or PPA 001 PO . Previously offered as POLI045  PO.

Credit: 1

When offered: Offered alternate years; next offered spring 2021.

POLI172  PO. Cities, Rights, and Sustainable Development. H. Haddad. Experiential learning course on city implementation of the UN-sponsored Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Class will conduct a research project in partnership with the Mayor’s Office of the City of Los Angeles to develop gender equality measures for an emerging network of global cities. Qualitative research experience and/or language skills in Spanish or Japanese are recommended. Previously offered as POLI189F PO.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Spring 2021.

POLI190B PO. Senior Seminar in Comparative and International Politics. H. Williams. Explores the international political economy of drugs, posing the question of how national and global trading in licit and illicit substances including tea, coffee, cocaine, quinine, tobacco, cannibis, psylocibin and opium reified ideas of racial difference, fueled wars, and shaped global environment, state formation, the historical course of democracy and civil rights, international balance of power and development of contemporary forms of international finance. Prerequisites: POLI 005 PO  or POLI 008 PO  or equivalent. Letter grade only.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each spring.

SPAN120B PO. Modern Spanish Literature: Modern Spain as Contact Zone. P. Cahill. An exploration of the ways in which Modern Spanish Peninsular literature and Spanish Identity rely on ‘contact zones,’ defined by Mary Louise Pratt as ‘social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination.’ Focus on the major movements and writers in Spain from the 18th through 21st centuries and how these writers conceptualized identities within Spain in relation to Spanish Colonies (in Latin America, Africa, and Asia), Europe, and the U.S. Readings and discussions will address how prose, poetry, drama, and essay explore, reinforce, and contest internal and external social divisions and contradictions related to race, class, gender, sexuality, and power. Prerequisites: SPAN 101 PO .

Credit: 1

When Offered: Offered alternate years; next offered spring 2021.

THEA001D PO. Beginning Acting: Black Theatre. C. Ratteray. African American Theatre is an introductory course which explores the fundamentals of acting technique and text analysis. Students will explore exercises based in Stanislavski’s psychological realism alongside examinations of theatre-making techniques from the African American theatrical tradition. We will begin with articles from world renowned intellectual, W.E.B. Dubois, and examine the framework within which he discusses the need for and definition of black art. Course requirements include detailed analysis, preparation and performance of monologues and scenes pulled primarily from Black playwrights. This course is cross-listed with the Intercollegiate Dept of Africana Studies (IDAS) and fulfills the analyzing difference requirement by Pomona. Letter grade only.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Offered alternate years; next offered spring 2021.

THEA022  PO. Lighting Technology. M. Ross. A dynamic, hands-on introduction to the materials and equipment of lighting and projections for the theatre and related forms. The course focuses on light and electricity, lenses and reflectors, instruments, lighting systems and intensity control and projections. The course also features an exploration of cutting-edge lighting and projection technology, including the newer generation of computer control consoles, LED instruments and intelligent fixtures and projection systems. Production lab work is required.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each spring.

Revised Courses for fall 2021


EA  101  PO. Just! GIS: Introduction to An Ecological and Social Oriented Geographic Information Systems. G. Douglass-Jaimes. Maps have the power to reveal the hidden and uneven impacts of COVID-19, global climate change, environmental pollution, and more. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) act as the unseen infrastructures for gathering, managing, and analyzing data that is or can be mapped; guiding policymakers, businesses, communities, and individuals to make important decisions. These sophisticated tools for modeling complex socio-spatial relationships are continually simplified with easy-to-follow drop-down menus and of-the-shelf plug-ins for mobile and desktop applications, expanding the user-base of map-makers. Yet, how do we ensure that these tools are (re)oriented toward the ends of creating a more ecologically and socially just world? In this course, you will develop a solid foundation on the commonly used processes for creating static and interactive maps to reveal hidden inequalities and disparities; as well as highlight hopeful imaginations of a more just world. We will critically engage with ESRI WebGIS and ArcGIS mapping software – to demonstrate the basic analysis of spatial data for those interested in answering questions about the spatial significance of environmental justice, racial inequality, hazard exposure, and health equity.

This course takes a student-centered approach, grounded in critical pedagogies and anti-racist frameworks where students will work with the instructor and their peers to develop a collective model of engagement valuing the contributions of all classroom participants and allowing for an individualized assessment of growth in developing fluency of the complex mix of technological tools and theoretical understandings that undergird GIS. Prerequisites: EA 010 PO  and EA 030 PO .

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each fall.

ENGL042  PO. Food in Film and Literature. K. Tompkins. This class will consider food, eating, labor and ecology through the frame of film and literature, largely from the twentieth and twenty-first century. Environmental humanities, science fiction, feminist, critical race, food justice and other approaches will be foregrounded. Letter grade only. Previously offered as ENGL105  PO. 

Credit: 1

When Offered: Offered alternate years; next offered fall 2021.

ENGL153  PO. The Beyond of Language. J. Kirk. It goes without saying that there is nothing outside of language. But the question is what sort of thing that nothing might be? And whether it can be known or experienced. In this seminar we will investigate some or all of the following: birdsong and other animal utterances; the grammar of colonialism; mystical languages of unsaying; the task of the translator; the transmission of the incomprehensible; the writing of the disaster; speaking in tongues. Although we will be reading ancient and modern texts, our particular emphasis will be on materials from the Middle Ages, that is, the last era before the capitalist schism that has led to the technocratic dream in which we now toil. Readings may include works by Plato, Aristotle, Augustine, Boethius, Pseudo-Dionysius, Anselm, Milarepa, Ibn Arabi, Chretien de Troyes, Marie de France, Dante, Chaucer, Margery Kempe, Nebrija, the Inca Garcilaso, Mirabai, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Benjamin, Agamben, and the anonymous authors of the Cloud of Unknowing and the Vimalakirti Sutra.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Offered alternate years; next offered fall 2021.

ENGL170  PO. Legal Guardianship and the Novel. S. Raff. This course examines the guardian as an evolving legal category, as a character populating that ‘form for orphans,’ the novel, and as a model for the literary persona of the novelist. Through readings in legal texts as well as novels by Richardson, Austen, Dickens, and James, we will ask how guardianship intersects with such concepts as ownership, representation, and especially authorship. We will explore the reader’s role as ward, and we will glance at guardianship’s bearing on histories of slavery, voting rights, and aesthetics, on contemporary problems such as mass incarceration and our failing stewardship of the earth, and on the novel genre’s many debts to drama.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Fall 2021.

HIST101E PO. Science and Empire. P. Chu. This seminar explores connections between the history of science and European colonial expansion during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. How did European colonial expansion aid the development of scientific knowledge and vice versa? What roles did colonial places and peoples play in the development of European science? We examine the history of natural history, medicine, and geography and the evolution of such concepts as nature, race, and climate. We also gain practice in conceptualizing, researching, writing, and revising a substantial research essay based on primary historical sources.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Offered alternate years; next offered fall 2021.

HIST178  PO. World War II in Eastern Europe. P. Chu. During World War II, Europe became the battlefield for a cataclysmic struggle between two totalitarian regimes. This seminar explores the Second World War with a particular focus on the “Eastern Front,” from the Hitler-Stalin pact and invasion of Poland to the Soviet victory and creation of an empire in eastern Europe, exploring such phenomena as occupation, resistance, genocide, collaboration, and memory. (Europe Since the Renaissance)

Credit: 1

When Offered: Offered alternate years; next offered fall 2021.

HIST191  PO. Senior Thesis. A. Mayes. An independent research and writing project culminating in a substantial, original historical work. Directed by one faculty member, chosen by the student (in all but exceptional cases) from the History Department faculty. The thesis may incorporate the Senior Paper from HIST190 PO - Senior Seminar. Each thesis read by one additional reader. Students present their theses orally. Letter grade only. Prerequisites: HIST 190 PO  and completion of at least three courses in the field in which students intend to write their theses.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each spring.

HIST192  PO. Senior Essay. Staff. An independent writing project culminating in a substantial essay that is based on an analysis of primary evidence; is a historiography; or is driven by an analysis and presentation of secondary literature. The essay may draw upon work completed in the History 190 Senior Seminar. Directed by one faculty member, chosen by the student (in all but exceptional cases) from the History Department; and read by one additional faculty reader of the student?s choosing. Students present their essays orally. Letter grade only. Prerequisites: HIST 190 PO .

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each spring.

MUS 070  PO. Ethnomusicology in Theory, Method, and Practice. G. Schreffler. Examines ethnomusicology (the cultural study of music) as a changing and vital discipline. Focus on the development of ethnomusicological discourse, highlighting its major trends, core ideas, and dilemmas. Topics include attitudes towards cross-cultural musical comparison, the search for universals, insider-outsider epistemologies, definitions of the field and fieldwork, and postcolonial criticism.

Credit: 1

When Offered: Each fall.

PSYC154  PO. Social Psychology. A. Pearson. Introduction to the psychology of social behavior: how people think about, influence and relate to one another. Topics include social perception, social influence, close relationships, prejudice, altruism, morality, and judgment and decision making,