Learning & Inquiry 2: Discoveries
Course Description
Discoveries builds on the foundation of analysis and writing introduced in L&I 1: Explorations. Each course investigates a subject of faculty choosing from beyond a single disciplinary approach. Each section will emphasize learning how to develop a research question; conduct research; use library resources; and make, develop, and support a claim in writing.
Student Learning Outcomes
Upon successfully completing the course, students will be able to:
Section Descriptions
Arms Almengor, Rochelle:
First and foremost, this course will build on your learning in L&I 100 – its main goal is to support your research and writing skills. I will spend significant time helping you to formulate a solid research paper about a topic that moves you. Secondly, as we work to hone your research and writing skills, we will learn about conflict and various approaches to analyze its causes and dynamics. To guide our understanding, we will draw on personal experience as well as works from multiple disciplines such as peace and conflict studies (an interdisciplinary field), sociology, psychology, and biology.
Brown, Jarrod:
The Hero's Journey: Values, Ontology, and Excellence
This class is designed for students seeking to understand the deep structural and philosophical consistency underlying human storytelling. The course utilizes Joseph Campbell's monomyth (The Hero with a Thousand Faces) as a foundational structural narrative as a framework for rigorous comparative analysis across ancient mythology, global folklore, and contemporary media.
We will engage with core questions of human experience by examining how these narratives encode distinct worldviews (ontologies), ethical systems (values), and ideals of human excellence, and serve as sources of moral knowledge for their respective cultures. Students will analyze the moral logic that dictates a hero's success or failure, focusing on concepts like sacrifice, destiny, and virtue.
The curriculum necessitates a critical comparison of classical definitions of excellence (e.g., Arete) with the defining traits of modern archetypes found in cinema, literature, and digital culture. The course culminates in a sophisticated, research-based analysis of a text, defining the ethics and ontology of a heroic narrative that matters to the author.
Drewek, Douglas:
My Music, My Identity: Sound, Story, and the Self
This course examines how personal and cultural identities are shaped through music, often in ways we don’t fully recognize. Students explore how sounds, styles, and technologies convey histories, values, and meanings that shape our listening habits and preferences. Drawing on music studies and cultural history, the course invites critical reflection on how music moves through the world—who creates it, who profits from it, and how it comes to represent notions of belonging or resistance. Through listening, discussion, and writing, students learn to question assumptions about genre, authenticity, and ownership while developing analytical and research-based writing skills. No prior musical training is required.
Buchanan, Terry:
Section Title: The Game of Life
Section Description: Should I buy a house in the best school district, even if it strains my budget? Choose a high-paying job over one that helps people? Try a nontraditional relationship? Question the way I was raised to parent? In The Game of Life, every spin and turn carries chance, risk, and trade-offs. In this course, we view life as a series of choices that can be better informed by research. We examine how evidence can help us navigate life’s milestones and everyday decisions. You’ll critically evaluate popular media and misinformation, select a topic, and write an evidence-based essay that applies research findings to real-world questions. Through writing, discussion, media critique, and reflection, you’ll sharpen skills in interpreting studies, questioning assumptions, and deciding your next moves in your own “game of life.”
Burnside, Jackie
All Work Has Dignity
Butler, Jim:
Ethics and Democracy
The topic of this course will be the relationship between the individual and the state. The two key questions we will examine are:
a) In what ways can the state legitimately limit an individual's actions?
b) What responsibilities does the individual have to his/her society (and vice verse)?
The materials for the class will be a mixture of traditional readings in political philosophy (Mill's On Liberty, Plato's "Apology" and "Crito"), popular essays ("Civil Disobedience" and “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”), and some contemporary fiction that explore the relationship of the state and individuals. Since the class is limited to a small size, classes will primarily involve discussion rather than a traditional lecture.
Creel, Eba:
The Search for Belonging: Immigration, Identity, and the Shifting American Landscape
The demographics of the U.S. continue to evolve, making the notion of a single, homogenized cultural identity increasingly indefinite. This course section surveys the historical and contemporary experiences of first and second-generation individuals as they navigate the complexities of ethnic heritage, acculturation, and belonging. We will examine the different waves of immigration and what happens when individuals find themselves between two worlds, exploring outcomes that range from assimilation to the active reclamation of cultural roots. Furthermore, we will consider how social factors, such as gender, age, and class, intersect with the immigrant experience, placing these broader trends into dialogue with the history and context of Berea College.
Furthermore, this section emphasizes the process of discovery and rigorous inquiry. You will develop a strong, argument-driven research question and learn to utilize Hutchins Library resources to engage with a variety of sources, including scholarly articles, primary documents, and documentaries. The course is designed to teach you how to synthesize material from multiple sources and construct a clear, evidence-based thesis. By the end of the term, you'll have the necessary skills to conduct and write an extensive research paper that contributes to the ongoing conversation about identity in a diverse American landscape.
Dickerson, Jacob:
Horror and Culture
Horror fiction has existed as a genre since at least the 18th century and has long served as a tool for authors and artists to comment on societal anxieties in metaphorical ways. In this course, students will explore the ways in which horror has both reflected and exploited our cultural fears, offering audiences a guide for understanding and working through them. The course will discuss various horror subgenres, including psychological horror, haunted houses, ghost stories, slashers, and more through engagement with various artworks, films, short stories, and novels. The course will use both rhetorical and critical/cultural approaches to examine horror texts, cultural contexts, and the relationship between them. Students will use theoretical and popular sources to support the claims they will make in their research paper.
Feagan, Beth:
In Our Own Words
How do you write a long research paper? At the last minute? Under great stress? With much anxiety? This class will give you the tools you need to break up big, overwhelming research projects into bite-sized chunks. In this class, we’ll read, discuss, and write about people’s accounts of their lives. Personal essays and memoirs are more popular than ever in America because we are hungry for true stories. In a culture that alienates and marginalizes entire groups of people, preserving these voices is an act of resistance. By the end of the semester, you will have written short contemplative pieces on your life and on the memoirs. Most importantly, you will have learned how to write a longer, more sustained research paper in a systematic, thoughtful way.
Gift, Wes
Representation in Visual Storytelling
Section Description: Thousands of years ago, visual storytelling and sequential art served as a form of communication and a method of preserving history. In the late 19th century, it evolved to become a popular form of literature, holding a mirror to society, reflecting its values and conflicts. The historical events occurring in the last 200 years have increasingly influenced the medium, giving rise to characters and narratives that embody issues such as race, gender, identity, and social justice. In this course, students will explore the history of this narrative art form, national and global events that impacted the medium, and the creation of representation in this art form to engage diverse audiences. The course will culminate in a research paper where students will choose a character, characters or graphic narrative birthed in this medium as a response to historical events, and their impact on readers.
Greer-Effs, Keesha:
Different Minds, Different Ways of Knowing
This course invites students to explore how distinct ways of thinking, learning, and experiencing the world challenge narrow definitions of intelligence, ability, and normalcy. Drawing from neurodiversity and disability studies, cognitive science, education, cultural theory, and the lived experiences and scholarship of Daniel Tammet, Maureen Dunne and Tony Snell students will examine how societies construct ideas of “normal” minds and bodies and how these constructions shape access, learning, and belonging. Through interdisciplinary readings, discussions, and independent inquiry, students will develop and refine their own research questions about difference and learning. Emphasis will be placed on conducting ethical, library-based research; engaging with scholarly and lived perspectives; and crafting written arguments that expand our understanding of human variation and belonging.
Heyrman, John:
Global Population Decline
The total population of the Earth will peak and begin to decline during the lifetimes of most current college students, and many countries are already well into population decline. In this section, we will read about, analyze, research, and discuss some of the many issues related to this topic. These include many possible effects of population decline (on the environment, attitudes towards work and education, etc.), why this change is happening, and whether humans can (or should) do anything to change it.
Mack, Felicia:
Are you committed to Berea College’s Great Commitments—or nah?
Your decision to attend Berea should be more than its offer of free tuition. Being a Berean is a mindset of academic excellence, civic engagement, and cultivation of work ethic. We as a community hope you live out our moto—God hath created from one blood all peoples of the Earth. And, that you hold firm to our Great Commitments. L & I 200: Discoveries builds upon the foundation of analysis and writing explored in L & I 100: Explorations. We will examine the revolutionary origins of Berea College in 1855 and explore current issues. This class will emphasize learning how to develop a research question; conduct research; use library resources; and make, develop, and support a claim in writing. Through a multidisciplinary approach students will examine how their liberal arts education and embodiment of The Great Commitments lead the way towards global citizenry in what the late Representative John Lewis once said is good and necessary trouble. Are you committed to Berea's Great Commitments which will help you change the world for the good--or nah?
McDonald, Verlaine:
Berea: Is it a Bubble, Microcosm, or Something Else Entirely?
The phrase “Berea Bubble” has been used to signify that there is something uniquely insulating–or perhaps insular–about our community. It implies that our bubble is different than the rest of the world. This section of L&I 200 will examine whether Berea is a bubble, a microcosm, or something else. We’ll do this by reading, researching, writing, speaking, and debating about some of the issues that animate the Great Commitments: Appalachia, class, gender, labor, race, religion, service, and sustainability. You’ll be led through a step-by-step process to produce the final research essay that will be required in all sections of L&I 200.
Pardon, Mireille
Eating Others: Cannibalism in History and Literature
In this course, students will examine the cultural perception of cannibalism in different times and places through literature, film, art, and historical documents. From Herodotus’s Histories to contemporary dystopian novels such as Agustina Bazterrica’s Tender is the Flesh, anxieties over eating others have provided fertile ground for human communities to negotiate fears of the Other, overconsumption, bodily desire, and the animal/human divide. Students will analyze narratives of cannibalism, both real and imagined, and metaphors of bodily consumption more generally in texts from a wide range of historical and cultural contexts. Topics of inquiry in this course will include, but not be limited to, the child-hungry witches of fairy tales, eucharistic devotion in medieval Europe, justifications for colonialism, survival cannibalism after disasters, and the consumption of mummified remains for medical purposes. This course culminates in a research paper on any subject related to the themes of the course, broadly construed. Content warning: readings for this course will include graphic depictions of violence.
Rogers, Madeline:
Finding a Voice through Classical Music
Description: While Classical music holds strong ties to the European tradition, America stood as a place of new opportunity to create a unique musical voice throughout the 19th and 20th Centuries. Many underrepresented composers from this time are still being discovered as their compositions are found, analyzed, and championed by music scholars and performers alike. This course will take several American women composers as examples of individuals finding their voice and place in musical society, including composers from the past two centuries and some who are still actively writing today. Through analyzing music, place of composition, and relevant socioeconomic and cultural factors, we will create a template of research that can be applied to many fields of study. Through research and writing, we will expand the depth of our understanding of early American and current American classical music, while discovering new composers and learning from each other.
Strange, Jason:
This course is about two things: how to write a research essay and understanding inequality in the United States. Luckily, these two tasks are related. Inequality in the US is extreme and damaging, but it is also subtle—it cannot be understood without reading some of the best research-based writing available. For example, many people think that class is not important in the US. Careful research shows that this common idea is wrong. Many people think that humans come in distinct biological races. Again, research shows that this is untrue. Another common myth is that struggles for justice have been led by famous heroes, like Martin Luther King Jr. or Mohandas Gandhi. Researchers have found that these struggles have been created mostly by ordinary people—and that these people arm themselves for that struggle by learning how to write well, speak in public, and do research. Writing a research paper might be boring, it might keep you up all night, it might make you sweat—but it will also change your life.