Top 10 Odd College Courses
College courses aren't all Economics and The History of Europe. A trend among many colleges and universities is to offer coursesthat are slightly off the beaten track. Many of these courses draw their themes from pop culture or sports, or they may be the brainchildren of professors who want to share their passion with students.
They may be no less serious than traditional courses, but they certainly cover new academic ground. Students take these offbeat courses for a variety of reasons—hoping for an easy A, to try something fun, or to explore a new interest. Underwater Basket Weaving may be an urban legend, but these ten unusual courses are for real:
1) You can boldly go where no other philosophy student has gone before in Georgetown University's “Philosophy and Star Trek” course, where students discuss the nature of time travel, the ability of computers to think and feel, and other philosophical dilemmas facing the crew of the Starship Enterprise.
2) Discover how Brick really felt when Opal left him for his neighbor's best friend's sister in the University of Wisconsin's course entitled “Daytime Serials: Family and Social Roles”. Students analyze the plots, themes, and characters of daytime soaps and discuss their impact on modern life. 3) If you've been longing to research how hot dogs, theme parks, and the five-day workweek have impacted American leisure
culture, check out the University of Iowa course “The American Vacation”. This course pays particular attention to how American families' varying backgrounds shape their vacation experiences.
4) Bowdoin College students can delve into “The Horror Film in Context” in the school's English Department. Students read Freud and Poe and watch Hitchcock and Craven, all while discussing the horror genre's treatment of gender, class, and family.
5) At Williams College, students can learn more about those in the cement shoe industry by enrolling in “Comparative History of Organized Crime”, which compares the work of goodfellas from the United States, Italy, Japan, and Russia.