Fall 2026 CLA Courses That Make You Think Differently
CLA students, as you plan your fall schedule, consider courses that explore how we tell stories, express identity, and make sense of the world around us. From documentary film and protest literature to language, media, and performance, these classes examine the ways culture, communication, and community shape our everyday lives. Whether you’re interested in creative expression, social impact, human behavior, or the dynamics of power and place, these courses offer thoughtful, real-world perspectives grounded in the liberal arts.
This course examines the ethics and aesthetics of documentary cinema, one of film’s earliest genres. We trace its evolution from early instructional and experimental uses to a distinct modern form. Students will view early works, including ethnographic films, and progress through the term to contemporary documentary examples.
This course combines academic analysis and experiential learning to explore the power of protest in civic life. Students examine progressive protest literature—pamphlets, poetry, manifestos, and histories—from movements including American Indian, Black Power, economic justice, and immigrant rights, while engaging directly with local community-based education and social-justice organizations.
This course asks why genealogy has become popular in certain periods in the United States and what it reveals about American culture. Students examine how interest in family history has varied over time and across groups, exploring how Americans and others have used history to construct identity, meaning, and purpose.
This course explores musical theatre singing through vocal technique, acting, and audition skills. Students interpret songs through character analysis, workshops, and individual coaching, building confidence as performers. The class culminates in an end-of-semester cabaret performance showcasing students’ growth, artistry, and connection to storytelling through song.
Our planet has around 7,000 languages. This course explores what languages share, how they differ, and what these patterns reveal about the human mind. It also examines how language varies across speakers and dialects, shaped by social and environmental factors such as class, ethnicity, and identity.
Studying language as a social practice, students transcribe and analyze conversation they record themselves and consider issues of identity and social power in daily talk.
Most real-world decisions involve interacting with others, so outcomes depend on strategic behavior. This course introduces game theory as a framework for modeling and analyzing these interactions. Students learn tools to study situations involving cooperation and conflict, where results depend not only on individual choices but also on others’ actions.
This seminar explores the transition to college and how it affects health habits, stress, sleep, and nutrition. Using a biopsychosocial framework, students examine personal health influences and choices in a holistic way, moving beyond the “freshman 15” myth. The course supports building sustainable health behaviors for college and beyond.
This course explores the Twin Cities as a dynamic urban region surrounding the University of Minnesota. Students study its human geography, historical development, and ongoing change, including patterns of settlement, economic shifts, social practices, and political events. The course emphasizes multiple perspectives on how the city has been shaped over time.
This course examines how digital media innovations—social media, mobile phones, AI, drones, and games—shape and are shaped by global society. Students critically analyze media in daily life and explore its social, political, and economic impacts across creativity, journalism, business, law, globalization, and culture from a cross-disciplinary perspective.
This seminar explores gender as a performed and evolving concept rather than a fixed identity. Using Japanese literature and theater in translation as a case study, students examine how artistic representations of cross-gender performance can inform broader debates about gender in society, culture, and everyday life across multiple contexts.
WRIT 1401 introduces writing processes, skills, and strategies for academic, professional, personal, and civic contexts. Students work in partnership with a local social justice organization, producing projects that support its mission. The course emphasizes writing as advocacy and offers hands-on experiences.
