San Diego State introduced 21 new general education classes this fall. A variety of classes will be offered during this semester, including Anthropology 103: “Introduction to Archaeology;” World Prehistory to Religious Studies 356: “Hip Hop and Religion;” Journalism and Media Studies 210: “Social Media in the Digital Age” and Political Science 334: “Politics of the Environment.”
In addition to these new classes, European Studies 440: “Human Trafficking in Europe” and Italian 426: “Italian American Culture” will be offered along with select new and improved humanities courses.
Department of Classics and Humanities professor Darren Iammarino said he was excited to teach one of the new humanities general education courses this fall, Humanities 409: “The Future.”
According to the class description, “The Future” will explore predictions of the future in terms of trends and events, including utopian and dystopian visions, “being human in a time of accelerated artificial intelligence” and the possibilities of tomorrow.
“If Humanities 409 is still around in 10 years—and if I am still alive—it will be fascinating to see which predictions came true and what ideas were completely wrong. I think the students in the future will really enjoy seeing our early successes and failures,” Iammarino said.
Read about more interesting classes you can take this year
Iammarino said the structure of his class is geared toward presenting students with a variety of unusual and engaging material each week.
Iammarino said he considers “the possibility that we will become immortal in our lifetimes; the societal impact of a wild card event like the discovery of intelligent alien life; and lastly, how the concept of love may change in the future” to be some of the most interesting topics covered in the class.
Besides Humanities 409: “The Future”, several general education humanities courses have been altered to provide students with the most up-to-date material.
Humanities 405: “Faith and Hope” (formerly Humanities 401) will focus on “humanities as expressed in religion,” while Humanities 406: “Renaissance and Self” (formerly Humanities 402) will concentrate on rebirth up to the present and the idea of progress. Humanities 407: “Rationalists vs. Romantics” (formerly Humanities 403) will join these new courses, centering on Eighteenth Century Enlightenment and reason versus passion.
The remaining 10 general education courses will premiere beginning next semester, including Linguistics 243: “Invented Languages-Klingon and Beyond,” which will focus on the invented languages in popular and diverse culture such as film and video games.
“It’s an investigation of the art and philosophy of creating artificial languages from a linguistic perspective,” Linguistics assistant professor Douglas Bigham said.
Students can look forward to Chicana and Chicano studies courses on Nahuatl, the ancient language of the Aztecs, echoing the university’s historical ties to the Mesoamerican civilization.
