IDIS 10605
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies
Experience a 21st-century liberal arts curriculum.
Through the College of Liberal Arts core requirements, you will achieve the breadth of knowledge and range of skills that employers value. Our college-wide curriculum includes a team-taught interdisciplinary course required of all majors in our college. Housed in the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, IDIS 10605 Introduction to the Liberal Arts is a variable topics-based course designed to bridge the disciplinary specialties of the faculty who team-teach the course and enable you to integrate knowledge across fields of study in exciting and powerful ways.
IDIS 10605 Introduction to Liberal Arts
Our Fall 2025 topics.
IDIS 10605 Section 03 and Section 04
Taught by Debrah Huffman and Karla Zepeda-Wenger
Course description
This course brings together two disciplines, English and German, to explore propaganda as a powerful rhetorical device in history and today. Beginning with notable examples of wartime propaganda from around the First World War and their development in relation to the Second World War, students will see how propaganda has been used historically in various countries and how it is still used for conflicts such as in Ukraine and the Middle East and by extremist organizations in the United States. Students will also learn how misinformation and conspiracy theories work with propaganda to promote social and political agendas in social media and news outlets.
Students will learn how propaganda can take a subtler approach in various organizations' websites and news agencies that can train the unwary mind to think in specific ways. Rhetorical analysis becomes the lever to open up what makes propaganda work and, ultimately, how to resist it. By learning how to identify propaganda and misinformation, students will develop critical reading skills applicable to various disciplines that focus on reading and writing, including non-propagandistic texts.
IDIS 10605 Section 07 and Section 08
Taught by David Schuster and Michael Wolf
Course description
What are the origins of the idea of American exceptionalism? What are the consequences for our belief system, our political system, our policies, and our way of life? The course borrows from a scholar on America's founding and foreign policy as well as a scholar of how American political beliefs differ from other democracies as a result of our founding and beliefs. It provides a historical, cultural, political, and social view of the American belief system and will have students evaluate the benefits and costs of this belief system for our history, our culture, and our political system.