Ethics Courses

(3 credits)  

This course examines efforts by African Americans to carve out a space with regards to international affairs from World War II to the present building on efforts by this non-state actor from slavery, colonial, and Empire-building stages of the development of the world system. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores the various causes and impacts of ethnic conflicts in the African context. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines prominent ethical and legal issues in archaeology integral to modern applied research and practice. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces students to ethnographic field methods, includes student projects and simple analyses that don’t require statistical sophistication. 

(3 credits)  

This course features a general survey of the basic doctrine, practice, and historical development of Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism. 

(3 credits)  

This course features a survey of the history, philosophy, and cultural impact of the major Far Eastern religions: Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Shinto. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores the ethical, policy, and legal implications of science, and the implications of science for ethics, policy, and law. 

(3 credits)  

This course is a capstone course for the Bioethics and Medical Humanities minor. Students will integrate knowledge from their Bioethics and Medical Humanities minor through discussion and writing a paper on an aspect of medical humanities. 

(3 credits)  

This course is an introductory examination of how symbols have been used to create belief and action in revolutionary, totalitarian, and democratic settings. 

(1 credit)  

This course introduces students to deliberative democratic theory and offers them the chance to reflect on and practice effective dialogic strategies for changing governance and society. The class is a prerequisite for participating in Penn State’s Nevins Fellows summer internship program

(3 credits)  

This course focuses on skill development in the areas of group discussion, leadership, and teamwork. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores how war and peace are advocated. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores ethical issues in public and private communication, along with the role of communication in expressing and realizing individual and social values. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores identity and race, gender and heritage, centrality and marginality, self and other, as expressed in literary works from around the world.  

(3 credits)  

This course involves a thematic, formal, and historical analysis of filmic and literary representation of the Holocaust. 

(3 credits)  

This course highlights issues of ethics, truth, justice, and social order as embodied in crime and detective literature, presented in comparative contexts. 

(3 credits)  

This course focuses on human rights violations discussed in tandem with their literary representation, presented in a global and comparative context. 

(3 credits)  

This course involves concepts of ethics, justice, and rights, appearing in world literature and/or film. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores what sports can tell us about the cultures that promote them. 

(3 credits)  

This course will mostly focus on economic inequality, but as you will discover, discussions of economic inequality quickly involve discussions of other forms of inequality (principally race and gender) besides economic inequality, which will also be considered. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines relationships between literature and culture, through the study of major texts in English by writers of various cultures. 

(3 credits)  

This advanced Honors Seminar in literature, rhetoric, and cultural studies allows students to explore and research a topic related to recent literary culture. Topics will vary depending on the course instructor but may include the study novels, poetry, drama, theory, film, nonfiction, or rhetoric.

(3 credits)  

This course, an in-depth examination of important themes, writers, and/or historical developments in Jewish Literature of the United States, will focus on depth rather than breadth in its analysis of the defining aspects of the literature and on what the literature reveals about Jewish American culture and identity.

(3 credits)  

This course examines selected topics in the fields of rhetoric and composition.

(3 credits)  

This course examines selected topics in the fields of rhetoric and composition.

(3 credits)  

This course examines selected topics in the fields of rhetoric and composition.

(3 credits)  

This course examines selected topics in the fields of rhetoric and composition.

(3 credits)  

This course examines selected topics in the fields of rhetoric and composition.

(3 credits)

This course presents a survey of selected works of French and Francophone literature from 1789 to the present. It aims to familiarize students with major literary works of this time period through close textual reading and analysis. Taught in French, it also aims to help students develop an appreciation for a wide variety of styles, genres, themes, literary movements, and historical contexts.

(3 credits)  

This course focuses on exploring the culture of Stalinist Russia and Nazi Germany from a comparative perspective. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines the uniquely German experience of the twentieth century by situating a variety of novels and films into their socio-political context. We will show their relevance and use them to discuss social injustice as a global and timeless phenomenon by tying them to political debates of the twenty-first century. 

(3 credits)  

This course focuses on the history and historiography of the Holocaust from 1933–1945. In addition to cultivating intellectual skills, such as critical analysis and concise presentation, the primary purpose of this course is to provide an in-depth overview of the Holocaust.

(3 credits)  

This course focuses on closely examining the roots of the Israel-Palestine conflict and relations between Arabs and Jews in the Middle East from the nineteenth century to present. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores the history of Marxism, Leninism, and the evolution of the Soviet Union; the formation and development of the Communist Bloc; and the impact of Chinese Communism. 

(3 credits)  

This course studies right-wing totalitarianism in the twentieth century, with special emphasis on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. 

(3 credits)  

This course involves In-depth study of the origins and conduct of World War II, including the political, economic, and military aspects. 

(3 credits)  

This course includes readings in The Divine Comedy (La divina commedia) and the related lesser works of Dante Alighieri. 

(3 credits)  

This course includes readings of The Divine Comedy and other selected minor works by Dante Alighieri. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines Jewish ethical thought from biblical foundations to the modern period, with attention to contemporary issues in moral philosophy. 

(3 credits)  

This course focuses on the conceptualization and socio-political determinants of genocide and tyrannical regimes, with an emphasis on the Holocaust. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores the philosophical effects of the Holocaust for thinking about the primary question: “Is ethics possible?” 

(3 credits)  

This course highlights selected works by Plautus, Lucretius, Catullus, and Cicero, but the content varies.

(3 credits)  

This course highlights the ethics of human resources management. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces central philosophical themes, including the mind/body problem, the existence of God, ethical problems, and the nature of reality. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores major ethical positions and assumptions regarding questions of freedom, choice, obligation, and conflicts in contemporary moral conduct, values, and reasoning. 

(3 credits)  

This course critically examines the significance of race and cultural diversity for, and in, understandings of reality, knowledge, truth, morality, and justice. 

(3 credits)  

This course studies competing historical and contemporary conceptions of nature, their philosophical foundations, and their implications for environmental problems and public policy. 

(3 credits)  

This course explores Western theories and attitudes concerning intimacy and examines various ethical issues involving love and sex. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces ethical theory about virtue, duty, autonomy, and life quality applied to moral problems, including character, violence, oppression, abortion, and suicide. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces historical and contemporary philosophies of law; concepts of responsibility, property, rights, and justice; and ethical issues in legal practice. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces ethical foundations of business and ethical problems in business practices such as advertising, international trade, labor relations, and marketing. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces political authority, rights, justice, community, inequality, power, pluralism, and other contemporary social and political issues. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces the moral status of the environment and applies ethical theory to issues such as preservation, hunger, pollution, and sustainability. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces philosophical theories of ethics and leadership and uses literary and biographical texts in developing skills of application. 

(3 credits)  

This course provides a comprehensive understanding of the nature of moral ideas, beliefs, and behaviors in contemporary contexts. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces ethical problems, human values, and politics in differing media forms and the ways media shape such problems and values. 

(3 credits)  

This course introduces the meaning of religious belief and experience, the existence of God, ideas of spirituality, and the question of immortality. 

(3 credits)  

This course considers the ways statements are used for aims other than to convey accurate information.  

(3 credits)  

This course studies questions of ethics in relation to biotechnology research and implementation, genetic engineering, medicine, and animal and human rights. 

(3 credits)  

This course covers the science, policy, and ethics of climate change. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines ethics and individual and group decision-making in the design of technology, including design projects and specific attention to institutional ethics. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines ethical theories, justice, rights, community, and human values revolving around such issues as preservation, conservation, pollution, sustainability, and population. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines philosophical views of the nature of law, legal ethics, law, and society through questions regarding definition, interpretation, and institutions. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines the moral justification of business practices and economic systems through critical analyses of case studies and applied ethical theories. 

(3 credits)  

This course focuses on the interrelationships of twentieth-century technological change and human values, with an emphasis on the social and ethical aspects of technological progress. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines ethical theories, justice, rights, community, and human values revolving around such issues as preservation, conservation, pollution, sustainability, and population. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines ethical, political, and social issues in the research, implementation, and practice of medicine, medical technologies, and healthcare. 

(3 credits)  

This course features ethical issues arising in the practice of science and engineering and their philosophical analysis. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines gender in politics in the United States and around the world, as well as major areas of women and politics research. 

(3 credits)  

This course involves a detailed examination and analysis of a selected major work, thinker, or tradition in the history of political theory. 

(3 credits)  

This course focuses on the conceptualization and socio-political determinants of genocide and tyrannical regimes, with an emphasis on the Holocaust. 

(3 credits)  

This course highlights fundamental problems relating to civil liberties and due process. 

(3 credits)  

This course provides an overview of history and methods of psychology as a science and profession, as well as applications and ethical issues in psychology. 

(3 credits)  

This course features a historical and comparative survey of the principal beliefs and practices of the world’s major religions. 

(3 credits)  

This course highlights the history of theological-social ethics of the Judeo-Christian tradition. 

(3 credits)  

This course examines historical patterns and the current status of racial and ethnic groups; inequality, competition, and conflict; social movements; and government policy. 

(3 credits)  

This course features a survey of social science research on homelessness in the contemporary United States. 

(3 credits)  

This course uses literature, film, and scholarly texts to inspire students to explore how conceptions of social difference—such as those linked to categories of gender, race, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and disability—shape society and everyday interactions historically and today.

(3 credits)  

This course involves a critical examination and analysis of the new reproductive technologies from the standpoint of medical ethics, feminism, and sociocultural influences.