Explore exciting new and featured courses for Fall 2026.
(More courses will be added soon!)
Days of the week: M = Monday, T = Tuesday, W = Wednesday, R = Thursday, and F = Friday
Core Requirements: CPUD = U.S. Diversity; CPRF = Regional Focus; CPGC = Global Connections; CPFA = Arts; CFAP = Arts (Partial fulfillment); CPPE = Pre-1800; CPMS = Math/Science; CPLS = Lab Science
Note: Course times and details are subject to change. Please check for the latest information.
Prof. Tiffany Wheatland-Disu | TR 8:35-9:55am | 4 units
Prerequisites: None
Core Requirements: CPRF
Course Description: This course offers an introduction to the modern history of Africa from the 15th century to the end of the Cold War, engaging a particular focus on the vital role African societies have played in the making of the modern world. Rather than presenting Africa as peripheral to global history and conceptions of modernity, this course emphasizes the centrality of Africa and African societies in the major political, economic and social transformations which shape and define our modern world. Students will examine the evolving relationship between Africa and Europe within the broader context of the global rise of mercantile capitalism, the European imperial project of the 15th - 19th centuries and the geopolitical context of the Cold War struggle for influence and resources in Africa. The course is organized around four key historical periods: the rise of mercantile capitalism and the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade; the 19th century colonial encounter inaugurated at the Berlin Conference of 1884-85; African resistance movements and solidarity with global anti-colonial struggles; and African independence and global decolonization. Students will explore major themes in African history including: sovereignty and dependency, development and underdevelopment, nationalism and resistance, and pan-Africanism and black internationalism. These will be analyzed within relation to broader global forces including neocolonialism, monopoly capitalism and globalization. By interrogating hegemonic narratives that portray Africa as a passive recipient of external forces, students will assess the diverse ways in which Africans have exercised agency and contributed to the global processes that define modernity. The course concludes with an assessment of Africa?s role in the emerging global order. Same as HIST 180. History Department Survey Requirement Met: Middle East and Africa
Image: Nairobi, Kenya (photo by Kenny Murgor)
Prof. Yumi Pak | MW 4:20-5:40pm | 4 units
Prerequisites: None
Core Requirements: CPGC
Course Description: The terms "racial capitalism," "Black Marxism" and "Black Radicalism/Black Radical Tradition" have found their ways into college classrooms, organizing spaces, community gatherings, online think pieces and elsewhere. In this seminar, students will engage in a slow reading of Cedric Robinson's Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, to explore the development of Robinson's ideas over the course of his foundational text. We will practice a reading methodology that, as befitting Black Studies, allows room for us to ask questions, take detours and explore what are sure to be important overlaps and tensions. In doing so, students will develop a more nuanced understanding of these terms to grasp, complicate, struggle with and challenge how they are used in specific contexts over forty years after the initial publication of Robinson's manuscript. As part of this methodology, students will also be asked to follow Robinson's intellectual and political genealogies; in other words, we will also read who he read, thereby situating him alongside interlocutors in other fields and disciplines of study.
Image: Cedric Robinson
Prof. Claire Rostov | TR 4:20-5:40pm | 4 units
Prerequisites: None
Core Requirements: CPUD
Course Description: Religions is not just located in churches and temples, it can also be found online, in sport stadiums, at movie theaters, and in many other unexpected places. In this class, we will analyze the diverse sites in which religion animates popular culture by looking at fashion, music videos, sports, TikToks, advertisements, celebrities, video games, Disney, memes, children's toys, comics, and more. By exploring a variety of examples from different times, places, and religious traditions, we will study how religion intersects with popular culture and what makes it appealing, seductive, and controversial. We will also examine why religious symbols and imagery are so common in popular culture, how religious groups use popular culture, and why popular culture fandoms often resemble religion.
Prof. Claire Rostov | MWF 10:05-11:00am | 4 units
Prerequisites: None
Core Requirements: CPUD & CPPE
Course Description: To make sense of contemporary American culture and society, we need to understand the crucial role that religion has played in forming and shaping the nation. From the first Native American inhabitants to the early Protestant colonists, from enslaved Africans to Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, and Muslim immigrants, we will learn about the influence of religion on various communities throughout American history. By focusing on life in early America, we will consider how Americans have developed, negotiated, and interpreted their religious traditions in new settings and circumstances. Throughout the course, we will pay special attention to how religious debates dovetailed with the pressing social issues of the day, and how religion has alternately served as a vehicle for liberation and venue of oppression.
Prof. Claire Rostov | MWF 11:10am-12:05pm | 4 units
Prerequisites: None
Core Requirements: CPUD
Course Description: Praying, fasting, singing, kneeling, raising hands - all of these are bodily movements that are widely recognized to be "religious." But we often don't think of other bodily practices and experiences such as dressing and tattooing our bodies, or bodily sensations and feelings such as ecstasy and joy, as equally essential to religious life. In this course, we will consider how the human body has been a primary site of religious meaning and contestation in the United States in the past and present. We will investigate how religious traditions have shaped ideas about what bodies are for and which bodies matter by looking at how bodies intersect with state power, legal rulings, medical authority, and assumptions about race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and disability. In doing so, we will consider how and why some bodies have become symbols of purity, while other bodies are deemed dangerous. We will pay particular attention to moments in American history when bodies have become contested terrain in religious debates over issues such as enslavement, missionary projects, religious freedom, and reproductive rights.
Prof. Alberto Lopez Martin | MWF 11:10am-12:05pm | 4 units
Prerequisites: None
Core Requirements: CPRF
Course Description: This course examines the representation of nature and environmental concerns in Peninsular Spanish literature. It focuses primarily on contemporary genres such as climate fiction, neorural narratives, ecopoetry, ecosocial theater, and feminist rural essay, through the works of authors including Jorge Riechmann, Irene Sola, Ana Merino, and Maria Sanchez. The course also considers earlier examples of ecological awareness, from Miguel Delibes in the latter half of the twentieth century to Golden Age writers such as Sor Marcela de San Felix, while critically engaging with genres like pastoral poetry. Students will apply ecocriticism as the main theoretical framework to analyze these diverse literary contributions.
Image caption: Mountain Landscape by Carlos de Haes
Prof. Terryn Westbrook | TR 1:20pm - 2:40pm | 4 units
Prerequisites: THEA 210
Core Requirements: CPFA
Course Description: Working with selected scripts from the best of recent and contemporary screenplays our students develop techniques for working in front of a camera as a specific application of the work of both Acting 1 and Acting 2.
Image caption: Woman acting on camera
Prof. Laural Meade | TR 10:05am - 11:25am | 4 units
Prerequisites: At least sophomore standing or permission of instructor
Core Requirements: CPFA
Course Description: In this course, designed for the novice performer as well as the advanced actor or singer, we focus on introducing students to the art of acting a song. We examine the literary and musical elements of scripts to reveal character and narrative, only here we do this while singing. Performers prepare and present musical selections from the Broadway canon, exploring how the elements of healthy singing (including breath control, phrasing, and placement) help convey character and story. Through freeing our musical voices to best express persona and narrative, we we examine the intersection of singing, acting, and audience connection. All experience levels welcome. A ticket fee, not to exceed $50, is associated with this course.
Image: Singers from Legally Blonde The Musical
Prof. Meiqing Zhang | MW 4:20pm - 5:40pm | 4 units
Prerequisites: COMP 131 AND (MATH 150 or COMP 146 or BIO 268 or PSYC 201 or SOC 305 or POLS 300)
Core Requirements: CPMS
Course Description: This course explores the principles and applications of data science. It begins with mathematical and statistical foundations and progresses to methods of statistical reasoning and data mining, including an introduction to advanced topics such as causal inference. Students build skills in statistical computing using Python and R while working with diverse data types, including structured, text, network, and spatial. Throughout, students learn key components of the data science workflow, from data manipulation and analysis to modeling and visualization. Interdisciplinary use cases illustrate how these methods apply in practice.
Prof. Lydia Harmon | MW 8:35-9:55 am | 4 units
Prerequisites: GEO 105
Core Requirements: CPMS
Course Description: Volcanoes, earthquakes, landslides, and more! This course explores the physical and chemical processes underlying geologic hazards, including how they have shaped the Earth and impacted civilizations throughout history. Southern California offers many excellent examples of geologic hazards that will inform our study, in addition to case studies in the western US and around the world.
Prof. Darren Larsen | MWF 10:05-11:00 am | 4 units
Prerequisites: GEO 105
Core Requirements: CPLS
Course Description: The past is the key to the present - and future - of Earth's climate. This course provides an introduction to Earth's climate system and the geological record of its change. Topics covered include: Earth's radiative balance and the role of greenhouse gases, climate change on the plate tectonic timescale, astronomical control of Pleistocene glacial cycles, rapid millennial-scale climate change, and the future of Earth's climate.
Prof. Sabrina Stierwalt | MW 2:50-4:10pm | 4 units
Prerequisites: None
Core Requirements: CPMS
Course Description: A survey of the solar system, stars and stellar evolution, galaxies and cosmology. Are there other Earth-like planets? What happens when stars die? Can you escape a black hole? Will an asteroid impact happen (again)? What is our best defense against climate change?
Physics majors cannot take this course for credit toward the Physics major.
Prof. Alec Schramm | MWF 10:05am-11:00am | 4 units
Prerequisites: None
Core Requirements: CPMS
Course Description: Our view of the physical world changed radically with the advent and development of relativity and quantum mechanics. This course is an introduction to the scientific and epistemological revolutions of 20th century physics, together with some of the discoveries and technologies which resulted. Specific topics may include: the physical structure of space and time; time dilation and length contraction; the global positioning system; fundamentals of quantum mechanics; quantum entanglement and teleportation; nuclear physics; quarks and leptons; big bang cosmology and the early universe. Students are expected to have a strong understanding of algebra and trigonometry. Not open to students who have completed PHYS 110, PHYS 115, PHYS 125, or PHYS 230; or equivalent.
Prof. Alec Schramm | MWF 12:15pm-01:10pm | 4 units
Prerequisites: Physics 110 or 115; Physics 125 or 230; or permission of instructor
Core Requirements: CPMS
Course Description: In 1905, Einstein upended classical notions of space and time with the publication of the special theory of relativity. Ten years later, he published the general theory of relativity, which describes gravity in terms of the curvature of four-dimensional spacetime. This course introduces these paradigm-shifting theories with discussions space and time, mass and energy, cause and effect, and the physics of black holes.
Prof. Bevin Ashenmiller | W 4:20-5:45pm | 2 units
Prerequisites: None
Course Description: This class will introduce students to a variety of topics related to sustainability, business management, the circular economy, and secondhand retail using a hands-on approach. The students in this class will run Touchdown Thrift, our on campus thrift store. Opportunities will exist for students to work in all areas related to the store, including inventory, pricing, marketing, stocking, design, finances, and accounting. This class is graded on a Credit/No Credit basis only.
Prof. Edmond Johnson | Self-directed; no meeting times | 1 unit
Prerequisites: None
Course Description: This course is designed to expose students to some of the many cultures of Los Angeles, a vibrant microcosm of the "complex, interdependent, pluralistic world" of the 21st century described in Occidental College's mission statement. Students may acquire one semester unit of credit for participating in eight off-campus "field experiences." Students will select these from a list of destinations provided by the course instructor and are responsible for documenting each field experiences using Canvas. Students will be required to submit at least two short response papers related to their field experiences. This course is graded CR/NC only. Students may take this course twice, for a maximum of two units being applied toward the degree.
Prof. Edmond Johnson | Self-directed; no meeting times | 1 unit
Prerequisites: None
Course Description: This course is designed to expose students to the diverse array of artistic events that are held each semester on the Occidental campus?from musical and theatrical performances to art openings and film screenings and more. To receive credit, students must engage with at least eight arts events during the course of the semester and complete two short reflection papers. Students will select these events from a list available on the course's Canvas page. This course is graded CR/NC and does not fulfill any Core requirements. Students may take this course twice, for a maximum of two units being applied toward graduation.
First floor, Room 134