Interdisciplinary Studies Course Descriptions

INTD - 300. The Critical Thinking Seminar (1)

Students revisit and advance the course challenges of IS 308. Students are confronted with substantive interpretive issues, which they address in their written work. This course builds on their knowledge of essay construction, rhetorical strategy, and grammatical and research issues.

INTD - 304. Social Ethics (3)

Students apply ethical principles to contemporary issues as they arise in organizations and personal lives. They draw on major ethical schools of thought and on strategies of logical argument to address moral dilemmas.

INTD - 307 . Experience and Critical Writing (3)

Students focus on written communication, critical interpretation, and investigate a substantive body of diverse writings. Students explore connections between critical analyses, personal experience, and historically situated textual material. They are offered an opportunity to master university level grammatical elements, research conventions, and rhetorical strategies. In the process they are presented with a significant body of diverse ideologies and ethnic perspectives and the critical tools with which to interpret and confront them. Students also begin the process of writing essays for the Experiential Learning Portfolio.

INTD - 308. Advanced Expository Writing (3)

Students encounter an in-depth reading list which offers the challenges necessary to experience the practical and theoretical issues embedded in the interpretive reading, writing, and research. In their readings, students examine relationships between history, social and economic environment, cultural and ethnic background, and rhetorical strategies. They encounter and examine argument modes, and they continue to work to improve their command of grammar and other technical composition elements. They also experience the course's particular accent on research as preparation for challenges they will encounter in their major coursework while completing their Experiential Learning Portfolio.

INTD - 330. South Africa Today (2)

Prerequisite: HIST - 340. This course offers students the opportunity to learn about the complexities of race relations in South Africa, the struggle agains Apartheid, and the problems plaguing the "New South Africa." The four-week tour includes visits to townships, rural communities, and urban development centers. Students meet and learn from South African activists working on social justice issues such as the problems of streeet children, gender inequity, HIV/AIDS, and environmental conservation. Offered every summer.

INTD - 340. African Literature: Islamic Perspectives (4)

The course will explore the imaginative responses to Islam by sub-Saharan African writers. The full gamut of literary responses to Islam will be examined, ranging from those by outright Islamic promoters, such as Cheikh Hamidou Kane and Tahir Ibrahim, to those of Ayi Kwei Armah, who portrays Islam as violent and colonial in nature. Offered intermittently.

INTD - 381. DDTP Internship (2)

An internship for students in the Dual Degree Teacher Preparation program.

INTD - 385. DDTP Fieldwork (2)

This course helps students to integrate their fieldwork with the pedagogical approaches/methods which can address the needs of culturally diverse students in California classrooms.

INTD - 398. Directed Study (1-4)

Permission of Instructor, Program Director, and Dean required.