UNIQUE, QUIRKY & FOCUSED:


CLASSES THAT GO BEYOND THE TRADITIONAL


with each other.


Winthrop faculty look for ways to bring their subjects to life in ways that students may not have conceived. They juxtapose subjects from different disciplines or take a deep dive into an interesting topic as they seek to teach beyond lectures.


These teaching styles sometimes develop into specific courses that hit on pop culture, embrace the latest gadgets that immerse students in the course content, and even take the learning outside of the classroom.


Take a look at a few of these unique classes that can spark students’ interest or give new perspective or insight:


ENG 200: Mystery and Detective Fiction


English Professor Casey Cothran’s course focuses on the mystery/detective fiction genre, exploring how past


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and present authors have struggled to write stories that address the chaotic and frightening conditions of death and loss.


The class is asked to ponder questions such as: Does solving a murder mystery make a death seem more acceptable and understandable? How has the detective novel changed over the past 160 years? Do we still believe in the existence of a Sherlock Holmes – a brilliant detective who can solve any problem and discover any wickedness? How have advances in modern science affected the content and structure of the detective novel? How does a novel about crime address the strengths and weaknesses of society? Can all crimes be solved?


Students study the body’s complicated connections among the muscular, skeletal, circulatory, respiratory, integumentary, nervous, endocrine, urinary, digestive and reproductive systems.


The star of the course is a piece of equipment purchased in the past decade, called the Anatomage Table (pictured top left), which helps complement lectures and shows students how the different systems are overlaid. It has a life-size interactive touchscreen that allows students to virtually dissect, manipulate, and explore highly accurate real human and animal cadavers.


In lab, the students have full access to the table for completing directed assignments and for studying on their own. Students find the table helps them visualize what’s inside the body. And it gives them a view of what doctors may see when conducting procedures.


Faculty members also use the table in BIOL 213 and 214, which are anatomy and physiology classes for non-biology majors, such as exercise science and nutrition.


Cothran introduces novels, novellas or films that arise from different cultures and from different historical periods. In the course evaluations, her students said they enjoyed writing a research paper for the class where they picked a mystery story, novel, comic book, film or video game of their choice and wrote about how it fit into the mystery and detective genre.


BIO 307: Human Anatomy


Assistant Biology Professor Jena Chojnowski leads students through a tour of the human body by giving an overview of its organ systems and how they integrate


Special Topics PLSC 390: Ethics and the Good Society in The Lord of the Rings


Author J.R.R. Tolkien created an epic fantasy world called Middle- Earth and captured its inhabitants’


adventures in a trilogy known as “The Lord of the Rings.” Released in the mid-1950s, the books were influenced by Catholicism.


Political Science Professor Scott Huffmon analyzes the books through the lens of St. Thomas Aquinas’ “Cardinal Vices and Virtues,” where the Italian Dominican friar adapted the traditional list of vices and their opposite virtues to show how to build moral and intellectual habits. The class examines philosophical arguments about how a good society is created and governed, considering the ideas of the Greek philosopher Plato, especially from “Republic,” with those of St. Augustine, especially “City of God.”


One student wrote that the course didn’t feel like a class. “It felt like a group of people discussing something we were all passionately reading about.” Another said: “It led us to discussions I never thought we would talk about. We went into stuff that was insightful, such as Tolkien’s view of environmentalism and race.”


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