Best of WesMaps: Spring 2015 Edition

Spring 2015 PreRegistration is open, meaning it’s 2+ weeks of fretting—mostly for frosh, but it’s no treat for everyone else, either. WesMaps takes in your feelings, your worries, your hopes, your dreams, your prerequisites, and it spits them out into a nonsensical schedule as if to say, I am a roulette of chance and class hierarchy and you shall bow to my authority.

So to help everyone out in their quest, I’ve been going around looking for the weirdest/most liberal arts/funniest course names and descriptions on WesMaps. Just remember, just because it sounds stupid doesn’t mean it’s not the most awesome and fascinating class you might ever take—take that from a guy who was in “Exotic Latin Corporealities” (LAST 213, Spring 2013).

Disclaimer: As with everytime we do this sort of post, the classes are heavily weighted in the Humanties and Social Sciences categories, because, as hard as you try, you won’t get far on laughs with “Molecular Biophysics Journal Club II.” If you see anything that is noteworthy that I didn’t include here, put it in the comments!

• “Jewish History: From Spanish Expulsion to Jon Stewart” (HIST 248/ RELI 262 )
• “Thinking With Demons” (MDST 148/ RELI 210 / HIST 148) (Frosh seminar, but admire the description: “As the perennial bad boy of Judeo-Christian tradition, the devil…”)
• “The Grumbling Hive: Ethics and British Literature, 1660–1800” (ENGL 308 / COL 229)
• “Delicious Movement: Time is Not Even, Space is Not Empty” (DANC 244 / CEAS 244) (Taught by choreographer Eiko Otake, who just took up a 3-year residency in the Dance Department and College of East Asian Studies.)
• “Lab in Gambling, Drugs and Junk-Food” (PSYC 339/ NS&B 339)
• “Working with R” (QAC 156) (Yes, I’m sure this actually means something. No, I didn’t actually look at the description.)
• “Skinning the German Onion: Guenter Grass as Writer, Graphic Artist, Political Activist” (GRST 235)
• “Advanced Research Seminar: Culture Three Ways” (SOC 339C)
• “Revolution Girl Style Now: Queer and Feminist Performance Strategies” (THEA 267/ AMST 276/ FGSS 267)
• “The Modernist City—Texts” (COL 270/ ENGL 272/ Urban Studies) (While not a particularly thrilling name, the reading list is pretty amazing. And by “list,” I mean just Ulysses by James Joyce and the entirety of the HBO series The Wire.)

And even though there are no “temporality” classes this semester, the Center for Humanities theme this year is “Mobilities,” which means we have these great classes at our disposal:

• “Road Trip! Mobility and Encounter in the Americas” (CHUM 309)
• “French Crowds, Mobs, and Mobilities” (CHUM 310/ FRST 310/ FIST 310)
• “City, Mobility, and Technology: Toward the Modern City in Spain” (CHUM 316/ FIST 262/ Urban Studies)
• “Musical Mobility in America: Diasporas, Migrations, Borderlands” (CHUM 332/ MUSC 267)

Happy course-hunting, and may Adjustment be with you!