Top ten

Cross listed courses

An exercise in interdisciplinarity.

Carrie Golus, AB’91, AM’93


Just how interdisciplinary is the University of Chicago? Cross listed courses—those offered by more than one department, center, etc.—provide one clue.

Tied for the most cross listings of all time, with 11, are Love, Capital, and Conjugality: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and India (primary listing: South Asian languages and civilizations) and Human Rights and Human Diversity (primary listing: Pozen Family Center for Human Rights).

To this former English major, both courses sound fascinating. “How did romantic love, the couple form, and the nuclear family come to be seen as the ‘correct’ ways to organize intimate life and constitute modern subjects?” asks the description for the Love course. The Human Rights one: “It is no secret that human beings frequently disagree on matters both large and small. ... This is the reality in which defenders and practitioners of human rights have to operate.”

The most mysterious offering in the top 10, Comparative Metrics, is a comparative literature course. “This class offers an overview of major European systems of versification, with particular attention to their historical development,” states the description. “We are particularly concerned with Graeco-Roman quantitative metrics, its afterlife, and the evolution of Germanic and Slavic verse.” Working knowledge of one European language besides English is strongly recommended.



Love, Capital, and Conjugality: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and India 11

Human Rights and Human Diversity 11

History of International Cinema I: Silent Era 10

History of International Cinema II: Sound Era to 1960 9

Human Rights I 9

Looking for History: Chronicles of Contemporary Latin America 9

Comparative Metrics 9

African Women in Chicago 9

US Legal History 9

Prosody and Poetic Form: An Introduction to Comparative Metrics 9


 

(Photography by Gordon Lew, AB’15, courtesy UChicago College)