Underwood International College

The purpose of the Freshman Writing Intensive Seminar (FWIS) is to help students develop and hone college-level composition skills through intensive training on all stages of non-fiction expository writing. A small class size, substantial writing load, and sustained instructor’s feedback will teach both the fundamental skills and tools of expository writing. The course will emphasize both interpretive skills/techniques of reading as well as skills in writing and argumentation. Through the intense study of a selected academic topic, students will develop fundamental skills of academic writing.

Course samples

• The Spectrum of Academic Writing, Arts in Korea, Gothic Fiction and Film, 1764 - 1990
• Classical Latin Grammar
• The Generosity of Place
• Victorian Biography
• The Poetics and Politics of Walking
• The Holocaust
• Contested Memories
• Writing the History of Atrocities in the 20th Century
• Introduction to Critical Theory

Critical Reasoning aims to educate students the basic skills necessary for logical analysis, normative judgments, and moral reasoning. The course is designed to cultivate a rigorous analytical mind. Courses are drawn from logic, epistemology, methodology, and the philosophy of science. All of these courses will be conducted in an intimate classroom environment that facilitates close interactions with the instructor and fellow UIC students.

The purpose of the Research Design and Quantitative Methods (RDQM) is to introduce the students the fundamental principles of academic research. Intended for students in the social sciences and the humanities field, this course will serve as an introductory overview of important principles of quantitative analysis. Students will learn how to formulate and appreciate quantitative research, and to design their own research projects. Students who successfully complete the course will understand how to handle everyday tasks such as interpreting statistics and understanding political opinion polls, and they will learn how to take a critical approach to using quantitative data. Students will not only learn about the core methodological concepts and procedures used in empirical research, but also contemplate on the ethical implications and consequences involved in research.

In order to be leaders in society and in the broader global community, students at UIC must acquire a level of scientific literacy commensurate to the importance of science in the modern world. UIC will ensure that students achieve a level of scientific literacy compatible with global leadership by imparting substantial familiarity with the fundamental character of science, its value, its methodologies, and its implications for crucial issues that society faces-regarding healthcare, energy, the environment, and many other areas besides.

Course offerings that serve the science literacy requirement include:

• UIC1541 HISTORY OF SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY (3 credits)
• UIC1918 INTRODUCTION TO THE SCIENCE OF THE MIND (3 credits)
• UIC1502 SOCIAL COGNITION (3 credits)
• UIC1920 SCIENCE IN CONTEXT (3 credits)
• UIC1751 SCIENCE IN SOCIETY (3 credits)
• MAT1001 CALCULUS AND VECTOR ANALYSIS(1) (3 credits)
• PHY1001 GENERAL PHYSICS AND LABORATORY(1) (3 credits)
• CHE1001 GENERAL CHEMISTRY AND EXPERIMENTS(1) (3 credits)
• BIO1001 GENERAL BIOLOGY AND LABORATORY(1) (3 credits)
• MAT1002 CALCULUS AND VECTOR ANALYSIS(2) (3 credits)
• PHY1002 GENERAL PHYSICS AND LABORATORY(2) (3 credits)
• CHE1002 GENERAL CHEMISTRY AND EXPERIMENTS(2) (3 credits)
• BIO1002 GENERAL BIOLOGY AND LABORATORY(2) (3 credits) 

The World Literature-World History-World Philosophy (L-H-P) series is the very heart of UIC's Common Curriculum, introducing students to the principal humanistic disciplines. The courses engage deeply with literary, philosophical, and historical texts with the focus on stimulating thought-provoking questions over the rote accumulation of knowledge. Each L-H-P course focuses on different themes, reflecting the research interest and the academic specialty of the Common Curriculum faculty.

Courses under L-H-P series include:

World Literature

• Classical Literature
  Greek Tragedy: Trojan Homecomings, Homeric Epic, Roman Beach Reading: The Ancient Novel and Menippean Satire, Heroes & Anti-Heroes
• East Asian Literature
  The Colonial Period Korean Novel, Modern and Contemporary Korean Short Fiction, What Were They Reading? Beginnings of Modern Literature in East Asia, Postwar Japan, East Asia’s Memory Problems, Hong Kong Anglophone Literature and Film
• European and American Literature
  British and American Romanticism, The Postwar American Immigrant Novel, The Social Novel
• Comparative Literature
  Theories of Colonialism, Possible Better Worlds, Postcolonial Theory and Literature, Modernism and Modernity: Shock Aesthetics, Critical Approaches to Popular Culture

World History

World History courses offer an intimate introduction to different historical periods in transnational contexts. World History categories of "Group I" and "Group II" provides students with varying degrees of depth in the coverage of the particular professor’s areas of expertise. Whereas World History I introduces students to the longue durée history of a region, World History II examines more focused themes within a narrower chronological period. These courses collectively feature our departmental strengths in European, British, American, Mongolian, South Asian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Oceanic world history.

World Philosophy

• Descartes’ Meditations and its Contemporary Relevance
• Philosophy of Religion
• Classical Asian Philosophy
• Paradoxes
• Social Epistemology
• Irony in Philosophy and Literature
• Philosophy of Love
• Anxiety, Despair, and Death
• Spinoza - The Ethics of Human Finitude
• Sameness and Difference - An Introduction to Metaphysics
• Introduction to Early Modern Philosophy
• Philosophy and Film
• Time, Change, and Freedom
• Mind and World
• Skeptical Arguments from Antiquity to the Present
• Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophers on Beauty

This course provides an introductory survey of major events and developments in the history of western civilization from classical antiquity through the age of revolution.

Major themes covered include the rise and fall of governments and empires, the evolution of cultures and society, philosophy, economics, literary traditions, and, in the end, the globalization of the West. While surveying over 3,000 years of human develop is quite challenging, we shall center our study on the ways in which different periods of western civilization addressed timeless questions on the “progress” of the human condition in society. In doing so, this course disentangles transitional moments in the “progress” of western intellectual culture through survey lectures, focused in-class case studies, and excerpts from seminal primary source manuscripts and accessible secondary literature. Upon completing this course students will be familiar with prominent figures, events, and developments in western civilization and have demonstrated the above knowledge by way of in-class quizzes, a midterm, and final examination.

This course will examine the civilizations of East Asia from premodern times to the present, focusing on how the culture, thoughts, societies, and economies in the region have changed over time. Although the course is organized into the different categories of "China," "Japan," and "Korea," the course aims to move beyond national histories, and explore the regional and global interactions, as well as the fluidity of boundaries and identities, that compose this part of the world.

UIC seminars allow students to explore a wide range of subjects outside of their major, benefiting from the cutting-edge research of their professors.

Students may take courses in:

• Advanced topics in history, literature and philosophy.
• Creative arts studies in writing, filmmaking, and music.
• Career-oriented subjects in business and law.