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Online Bachelor of Arts in Integrated Social Sciences

Courses & Degree Requirements

The courses offered in the UW Online Bachelor of Arts in Integrated Social Sciences encompass a wide variety of disciplines and thematic areas, along with a core set of courses unique to the ISS program.

All courses in the program have been developed specifically for ISS. They combine outstanding instruction and cutting-edge curricula with the latest online learning tools and technologies.

ISS Core Courses

The five ISS core courses help guide you in integrating the full range of coursework that you’ll complete during your time in the program. These courses, accounting for 20 credits, are:

ISS 301: Social Science Theory in Context

Instructor: ISS Teaching Team
Credits:

Learn how to integrate social science theories and disciplinary traditions to make sense of the complexity of social life. Survey the key concepts and research interests that ISS faculty bring to their teaching and develop the skills needed to study, communicate and collaborate as a socially engaged online student. 

ISS 302: Survey of Social Science Methods

Instructor: ISS Teaching Team
Credits:

Get an inclusive survey of methods used across the social sciences. Learn about statistics, survey research and data visualization techniques. Explore qualitative research methods ranging from participant observation to archival textual analysis. Develop skills in both quantitative and qualitative reasoning using real-world evidence. 

ISS 350: Introduction to Portfolios in the Social Sciences

Instructor: ISS Teaching Team
Credits:

Discover how to develop your ISS E-portfolio, the integrated suite of Web content that will document your learning and forge connections between different disciplines. Explore how to plan your pathway to degree completion, articulate connections between what you learn in your courses and outside of your studies, and prepare to describe that learning to diverse audiences through your portfolio. 

ISS 355: Portfolio Seminar in Integrated Social Sciences

Instructor: ISS Teaching Team
Credits:

Continue the reflection, integration and representational work begun in ISS 350, developing your E-portfolio into a personalized tool for conceptualizing and communicating your learning in the program. Collaborate with fellow students to draw connections between courses, create presentations and make aesthetic and content-based website platform decisions. 

Prerequisite: ISS 350 

ISS 401: Integrated Social Sciences Capstone

Instructor: ISS Teaching Team
Credits:

Synthesize your ISS coursework and fine-tune your ability to showcase your learning to audiences beyond the university, including employers and graduate schools. Reflect on the artifacts from your coursework, review the social science practices you have learned and examine your personalized glossary of social science keywords as you complete, present and publish your e-portfolio. 

Social Sciences Courses

All ISS students will take at least eight social science courses (40 credits). See below for the full list of courses offered.

Thematic Areas of Inquiry

ISS courses are divided into seven thematic areas of inquiry, ensuring a diverse and comprehensive educational experience.

  • Information and Technology (IT): Engage with new technologies and analyze economic and ethical developments related to them
  • Populations and Movement (PM): Learn how population patterns are changing and the complex political, economic and cultural factors shaping these patterns
  • Conflict and Cooperation (CC): Explore the diverse social factors that shape human conflict and peace
  • Diversity and Global Justice (DGJ): Investigate how social hierarchies — including race, class, sexuality and gender — are reproduced, reworked and resisted globally
  • Health and Risk (HR): Understand how health risks, practices and outcomes relate to broader social, cultural and global relations
  • Inequalities and Power Relations (IP): Examine the intersecting power dynamics that contribute to social inequalities both locally and nationally
  • Societies and Environments (SE): Probe the social dimensions of the environmental challenges facing humanity and the collective global interest in sustainability

You must complete at least one course in five of the seven thematic areas to fulfill your degree requirements.

AES/COM/GWSS 389: Race, Gender & Sexuality in the Media

Instructor: Janine Slaker
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: IT, CC, DGJ, IP 

This course offers an introduction to media representations of gender, race and sexuality. 

AES/COM/GWSS 489: Black Cultural Studies

Instructor: Timeka Tounsel
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: DGJ, IP 

Examine how images of blackness have been (re)constructed through identity formation and entrenched inequality. Topics include black women's bodies, black men's bodies, blackface minstrelsy, black queer studies, black power and black hybridities.

ANTH 308: Anthropology of Gender, Women’s Health & Reproduction

Instructor: Rachel Chapman
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: DGJ, HR 

This course explores anthropological approaches to improving women's health by surveying women's health history, status and participation in health care. Analyze a range of health issues — including reproductive health care problems, women's body images and sexuality, and current health policies — as they relate to daily structures and relationships of gender, race/ethnicity and class. 

ANTH 377: Anthropology & International Health

Instructor: James Pfeiffer
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: DGJ, HR 

Learn about international health from medical anthropological perspective, focusing on serious health problems facing resource-poor societies around the globe and in the United States. Develop an awareness on political, socio-economic, ecological and cultural complexity of most health problems, and anthropology's consequent role in the field of international health. 

ANTH 378: Sustainability, Resilience & Society

Instructor: UW Faculty
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: HR, SE 

This course offers an introduction to concepts of sustainability and resilience and their relevance to environment and society in the current Anthropocene era. Understand sustainability and resilience through ecological footprints, lessons from small-scale societies, case studies of resource management, theory of common property regimes, philosophies of environmental stewardship and implications of climate change. 

ANTH 460: History of Anthropology (and the Future of Social Science)

Instructor: Celia Lowe
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: PM, SE 

This course covers sources and development of leading concepts, issues and approaches in anthropology. It includes findings of anthropology in relation to scientific and humanistic implications and to practical application. It looks at the main contributors to the field, both their work and their influence. Past, present and future perspectives, including anthropology of modern life, are investigated. 

COM 220: Introduction to Public Speaking

Instructor: Leah Ceccarelli
Credits: 5
Thematic Area: IT 

This course is designed to increase competence in public speaking and the critique of public speaking. It emphasizes choice and organization of material, sound reasoning, audience analysis and delivery. 

COM 304/POL S 304: The Press & Politics in the United States

Instructor: Meg Spratt
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: IT, CC 

This course explores journalists' role in elections and public policy. We'll also investigate the relationship between news coverage and political campaigns. You'll study and analyze local political newswriting, reporting and responses by local and state political figures. This course includes extensive off-campus experience. 

COM 437: Rhetoric of Science & Medicine

Instructor: Amanda Friz
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: IT, IP, HR 

This course examines how language and argument shape definitions and understanding of health, wellness, illness and disability; how the meaning of health has become a site of argument and controversy amid varying intersections of power and privilege; and how socioeconomic status, immigration status, the environment, race and gender (among other markers of diversity and difference) impact access to and practices of health and wellness.

COM 468: Media Ethics

Instructor: Janine Slaker
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: IT, CC 

Study ethical issues and ethical decision making as they pertain to journalistic and media practices. 

ECON 200: Introduction to Microeconomics

Instructor: UW Faculty
Credits: 5
Thematic Area: IT 

This course includes an analysis of markets: consumer demand, production, exchange, the price system, resource allocation and government intervention. 

ECON 201: Introduction to Macroeconomics

Instructor: Dennis O'Dea
Credits: 5
Thematic Area: IT 

Undertake an analysis of the aggregate economy: national income, inflation, business fluctuations, unemployment, monetary system, federal budget, international trade and finance. 

Prerequisite: ECON 200 

ENVIR/POL S 385: Political Ecology of the World Food System

Instructor: Rebakah Daro Minarchek
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: HR, SE 

Investigates the intersection of globalization and food politics, the pivotal role of petroleum in the world food system, and the commodity chains for some foods. Includes an optional service learning component. 

GEOG/JSIS D 323: Globalization & You

Instructor: Rebakah Daro Minarchek 
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: DGJ, HR 

This course offers an evidence-based analysis of globalization that addresses how individuals are affected personally as well as economically a midst the market-led processes of global integration. 

GEOG 337: Migration & Development in China

Instructor: Kam Wing Chan
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: PM, DGJ 

Examine patterns of China's internal migration in different periods in relation to economic development. Explore how the state-created dual structure and the household registration system enables China to have a huge class of super-exploitable migrant labor and become the world's premier low-end manufacturing center. 

GEOG 478: Social Justice & the City

Instructor: UW Faculty
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: PM, CC, DGJ, IP 

Study the link between general theories of urban inequality and their specific manifestation in the United States. Explore a series of themes related to contemporary urbanization processes including the recent mortgage crisis, segregation, gentrification, enclaves, fortification, redevelopment, homelessness and the loss of public space. 

HSTCMP/JSIS A 205: Filipino Histories

Instructor: Vicente Rafael
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: PM, CC, DGJ, IP 

Get an introduction to the histories, cultures and politics of Filipinos and the Philippines. This course examines pre-colonial societies, Spanish colonial rule, nationalism and Revolution, the Filipino-American war, U.S. colonial rule, Japanese occupation, postcolonial period to Martial Law, continuing rebellions and the Filipino diaspora. 

HSTCMP/CHID 485: Comparative Colonialism

Instructor: Vicente Rafael
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: PM, CC, DGJ, IP 

Explore the historic roots and practices of colonialism throughout the world, focusing on the roles of nationalism, cosmopolitanism and imperial domination. The course treats colonialism as a world event whose effects continue to be felt and whose power needs to be addressed.

ISS 381: Advanced Research Writing in the Social Sciences

Instructor: ISS Teaching Team
Credits: 5
Thematic Area: IT 

This course concentrates on the development of advanced research-based writing skills in the social sciences. 

JSIS A 207: Asian Civilization: Traditions

Instructor: Deborah Porter
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: CC, SE

This course is an interdisciplinary introduction to the civilizations of Asia, particularly those of India, China, Japan and Korea. You'll explore the religion, philosophy, literature, art, and social and political thought of these civilizations from ancient times to the 17th century.

JSIS A/POL S 435: Japanese Government & Politics

Instructor: Robert Pekkanen
Credits: 5
Thematic Area: CC 

Explore the government and politics of Japan with emphasis on the period since 1945. 

JSIS B 320: Yoga: History, Practice & Health

Instructor: Christian Novetzke
Credits: 5
Thematic Area: HR 

Delve into the history, practice, literature and health effects of yoga from ancient to modern times. Explore essential texts and ideas, issues of health and wellness, and contemporary legal debates about yoga. 

JSIS B 331: Political Economy of Development

Instructor: Sunila Kale
Credits:
Thematic Areas: CC, DGJ 

This course covers growth, income distribution and economic development in less-developed countries today. Includes examination of policies concerning trade, industrialization, the agricultural sector, human resources and financing of development. 

JSIS B 351: The Global Environment

Instructor: Celia Lowe
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: HR, SE 

Explore the environment through an international perspective emphasizing the social implications of living in an economically globalized and environmentally interconnected world. Examine these implications through examples of toxics and the human body, biodiversity conservation, climate change, disease and environmental problems. 

JSIS B 406/POL S 432: Political Islam & Islamic Fundamentalism

Instructor: UW Faculty
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: CC, DGJ, IP 

Study the resurgence, since the mid-1970s, of political Islam and what has come to be called Islamic fundamentalism, especially in the Middle East. Topics include the nature and variety of political Islam today, causes and implications of the current resurgence, and comparison with previous resurgences. 

JSIS B 416: Putting the World on a Couch: Psychoanalysis & International Studies

Instructor: Deborah Porter
Credits: 5
Thematic Area: DGJ 

Examine the relation of trauma to memory and cultural production, focusing on historical, literary and filmic treatments of hysteria and repression, shell shock and the effects of war, terrorism and psychic trauma. Use psychoanalytical theory to analyze the commentary on international issues that lies in texts, films and other cultural phenomena. 

PHIL 102: Contemporary Moral Problems

Instructor: Justin Lawson
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: CC, DGJ 

This course offers a philosophical consideration of some of the main moral problems of modern society and civilization, such as abortion, euthanasia, war and capital punishment. Topics vary. 

PHIL 343: Ethics & the Environment

Instructor: Justin Lawson
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: CC, SE 

Undertake an advanced introduction to environmental ethics, with an emphasis on non-anthropocentric value theory. 

PHIL 362: Topics in the Philosophy of Science

Instructor: Lynn Hankinson Nelson
Credits:
Thematic Areas: IT, HR, SE 

This course offers a critical study of nature of scientific knowledge, emphasizing the role of evidence in several different sciences. Topics include accounts of scientific methods; the relation of theory to observation; how theories change; and the nature of the confirmation and falsification of hypotheses and theories. 

POL S 312: Survey of American Political Thought

Instructor: Jack Turner
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: CC, IP 

This course is a survey of American political thought from colonial times to the 1980s. Topics include the idea of the self-made man; the intellectual contexts of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; slavery, abolition and the Civil War; progressivism; Cold War liberalism; the Civil Rights Movement and its critics; and modern conservatism. 

Prerequisite: cannot be taken for credit if POL S 318 or POL S 319 has already been taken. 

RELIG 380: Theories in the Study of Religion

Instructor: James Wellman
Credits: 5
Thematic Area: CC 

Look at a variety of approaches to the study of religion, centered on examining the relationship between religion and modernity in the tradition of post-enlightenment, Euro-American scholarship. Examine theories of religion across disciplines: history, anthropology, sociology, Marxism, feminism, postmodernism, political theology and Freudian psycho-analytical theory. 

SOC 362: Race Relations

Instructor: Jelani Ince
Credits: 5
Thematic Areas: DGJ, IP 

Review social science perspectives on race and ethnicity. Explore sociological definitions and understandings associated with race and ethnicity and the construction of identities. Examine different issues that impact the life chances of individuals and groups.