IST 394 Topics in Interdisciplinary Studies
IST 394 Topics in Interdisciplinary Studies courses are book discussions open to everyone but also offered as one credit hour seven-week classes. Any student or faculty member from any disciplinary background can participate in a weekly meeting to discuss book-length treatments of important interdisciplinary topics and issues. Those taking the course for credit will be asked to help lead discussions and submit regular reflections on the reading and discussion.
Our goals:
Demonstrate how different disciplinary and professional perspectives can provide insights to larger, complex topics and issues.
Bring faculty and students together in meaningful conversation.
Highlight the value of in-depth reading and discussion that is both critical and collaborative.
Information about specific courses will be available on Canvas. Group meetings will be on Monday at noon in FH 361. Students can sign up for credit through MyNKU.
Fall 2023 Second Seven Weeks
The Heat Will Kill You First is about the extreme ways in which our planet is already changing. It is about why spring is coming a few weeks earlier and fall is coming a few weeks later and the impact that will have on everything from our food supply to disease outbreaks. It is about what will happen to our lives and our communities when typical summer days in Chicago or Boston go from 90° F to 110°F. A heatwave, Goodell explains, is a predatory event— one that culls out the most vulnerable people. But that is changing. As heat waves become more intense and more common, they will become more democratic.
Spring 2021 Second Seven Weeks
Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything: Capitalism and the Climate. Klein exposes the myths that are clouding the climate debate. We have been told the market will save us, when in fact the addiction to profit and growth is digging us in deeper every day. We have been told it’s impossible to get off fossil fuels when in fact we know exactly how to do it—it just requires breaking every rule in the “free-market” playbook: reining in corporate power, rebuilding local economies, and reclaiming our democracies.
Spring 2021 First Seven Weeks
Isabel Wilkerson's Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents. In this brilliant book, Isabel Wilkerson gives us a masterful portrait of an unseen phenomenon in America as she explores, through an immersive, deeply researched narrative and stories about real people, how America today and throughout its history has been shaped by a hidden caste system, a rigid hierarchy of human rankings.
Fall 2020 Second Seven Weeks
Davis Epstein's Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World. Provocative, rigorous, and engrossing, Range makes a compelling case for actively cultivating inefficiency. Failing a test is the best way to learn. Frequent quitters end up with the most fulfilling careers. The most impactful inventors cross domains rather than deepening their knowledge in a single area. As experts silo themselves further while computers master more of the skills once reserved for highly focused humans, people who think broadly and embrace diverse experiences and perspectives will increasingly thrive.
Fall 2020 First Seven Weeks
Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men through the War on Drugs and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of colorblindness.The New Jim Crow challenges the civil rights community—and all of us—to place mass incarceration at the forefront of a new movement for racial justice in America.
Fall 2020 First Seven Weeks
Elizabeth Feldman Barrett's How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. Psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett proposes a theory of emotionthat is driving a deeper understanding of the mind and brain, and shedding new light on what it means to be human. Her research overturns the widely held belief that emotions live in distinct parts of the brain and are universally expressed and recognized. Instead, she has shown that emotion is constructed in the moment, by core systems that interact across the whole brain, aided by a lifetime of learning.
Spring 2020 Second Seven Weeks
Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Woodard takes readers on a journey through the history of our fractured continent, offering a revolutionary and revelatory take on American identity, and how the conflicts between them have shaped our past and continue to mold our future.
Spring 2020 First Seven Weeks
Helen Nissenbaum, Privacy in Context: Technology, Policy, and the Integrity of Social Life. Arguing that privacy concerns should not be limited solely to concern about control over personal information, Helen Nissenbaum counters that information ought to be distributed and protected according to norms governing distinct social contexts—whether it be workplace, health care, schools, or among family and friends.
Fall 2019. Second Seven Weeks
Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men. “Depicting the rise and fall of a dictatorial southern politician...the timeless story and memorable characters raise questions about the importance of history, moral conflicts in public policy, and idealism in government.” (Jonathan Cullick. Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men: A Reader's Companion)
Fall 2019. First Seven Weeks
Robert Sapolsky’s recent book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst, brings biology, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, and social science to the complex study of human behavior.