Moodle at Eckerd College 2025-26 Academic Year

How should we respond to political and social apathy in today’s society? Reading Don Quixote, students examine how Cervantes’ work reflects on the struggle of idealism in a disillusioned world.

Hurricanes, volcanic eruptions, and earthquakes are often called “natural” disasters, but
are they? This class explores how our social identities, ideas, and inequities determine
the true scale of catastrophe.

Did you know that sales of homemade pies funded the 1960s Civil Rights Movement? Or that going vegan is a form of protest? In Food Fight! Feeding Resistance and Revolution students will discover how everyday people have come together to resist and protest by using food as a change agent. For the culminating project, empowered students will develop a Food Fight! blueprint to raise awareness and galvanize activists around a social justice issue.

Our society is saturated with misinformation that uses phony statistics, misleading graphics, and bad science to sound legitimate. Learn to detect and refute quantitative-sounding bullsh$t using basic tools of scientific and data literacy.

We live in scammy times. Calls from unknown numbers, memecoin rug-pulls, AI-generated ads for products that might or might not exist. How do we build social trust, or even be sure of ourselves, in such a world? This course investigates this question through a study of con men. We will study history, psychology, anthropology, film, and literature, culminating with Herman Melville's 1857 novel The Confidence-Man.

A Duke Ellington jazz standard from 1931 claims that it “don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” Swing: style, artistry, pizazz, swag. Maybe even rizz, as young folks say. But how do those things apply to activist art designed to advocate for equality and inclusion? Should that art also “swing”, or does that risk diluting its message? In this class we will explore those questions by looking at the art of the jazz age and, more specifically, the art of the Harlem Renaissance. We’ll look at the poetry, fiction, film, music, dance, paintings, and sculpture of the period to see how Black artists simultaneously attempted to “swing” and forcefully advocate for the elimination of “the color line” (in W.E.B. Du Bois’ words).

FYEs are designed to develop students’ ability to connect large questions of purpose and value to specific problems and areas of knowledge. FYEs help students develop as critical thinkers, problem solvers, and citizens of the local and global community.

If it doesn’t make you feel good, should you do it? Do you suffer from bouts of cruel optimism? The course examines ways happiness is defined and reflected as a concept for understanding the self, others, and the world.

How does having diversity help us build community? We will use St. Petersburg as a test case for thinking about diversity from lots of angles - race, gender, immigration status, sexual identity, age and more. Lots of hands-on activities, research, and discussion will help you learn about St. Pete and create ways to continue engaging with St. Petersburg more completely during your four years at Eckerd. This is an Honors Course but is open for all students to enroll.