Curriculum

Our three-year and four-year undergraduate curriculum equips students with intensive disciplinary training while preparing them to think and communicate effectively with diverse audiences. The table below offers an overview of our credit structure.

First and second-year students take interdisciplinary foundations and collegiate communication courses in addition to discipline-specific classes. All students are required to complete the following classes within their first three semesters at BMU:

Collegiate Communication:
Freshman Writing Seminar
Writing Collective
Reading Critically: Introduction to the Disciplines 1
Reading Critically: Introduction to the Disciplines 2
Interdisciplinary Foundations:
South Asia in Global History
Self and Identity
Reason and Logic: Anatomies of Thought
India and Its Environs
Data Literacy
Paradigms in the History of Science
Health
Art, Aesthetics, and Expression
Year 1 Workshop (Exploring Majors)
Year 2 Workshop (Choosing Major)

Collegiate Communication: The “core” of SoLS first-year curriculum is the four-course writing and reading sequence.

• Writing Seminar: The most important of the foundation courses, this semester-long, first-year seminar introduces students to different modes of critical inquiry and academic writing. Students will develop an appreciation for diverse academic approaches to real world problems while developing core skills in reading and writing that will support them throughout their undergraduate career and beyond. Students will write short pieces in various genres, from autobiographical accounts to historical analysis to policy, that will allow them to practice different styles of written communication.
• Writing Collective: Learning happens best in community. In the second semester of their first year, students will meet weekly with a small cohort of their peers, overseen by a faculty advisor. The collective is mandatory, but graded pass/fail. In it, students will work on writing assignments for other classes and provide feedback and support to their peers. The faculty advisor will facilitate peer-to-peer networking, mentor individual students, and encourage student community-building through weekly meetings. Students will be expected to document their progress in a formal portfolio.
• Reading Critically: An Introduction to the Disciplines 1 and 2: The primary aim of this two-semester course sequence is to train students in critical reading and note-taking strategies that they will need to succeed in any undergraduate programme. The secondary aim is to give students a glimpse of the disciplines they might choose as their major or minor. Each semester will be divided into two-week units, with each unit covering one of our major offerings: Economics, History, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, and Psychology.

Interdisciplinary Foundations: In addition to our Collegiate Communication courses, all students will complete six foundational courses, These courses are interdisciplinary, but grounded in the epistemology of a primary field. The first three courses listed below fall into the humanities and social sciences, opening windows into the fields of History (South Asia in Global History), Philosophy (Reason and Logic: Anatomies of Thought), and Psychology and Literature (Self and Identity). In developing an appreciation for the kinds of questions each discipline asks, students will be better positioned to explore meaningful interdisciplinary conversations.

• South Asia in Global History: History has a way of unsettling our assumptions about the social and political order and our place in it. This course will introduce students to historical thinking through an examination of the subcontinent and its many global connections. The course will provide all students with important questions and critical frameworks for thinking about India in the twenty-first century.
• Reason and Logic: Anatomies of Thought: John Locke famously declared that “Logic is the anatomy of thought,” but can we frame formal logic as a universal science? Students will investigate formal reasoning–its complex genealogy, current methodologies, and diverse applications–as well as debates among philosophers about its possibilities and limits.
• Self and Identity: A liberal education begins with the pursuit of self-knowledge: Who am I? And how do I relate to others and to my environment? This class will explore this question through the lens of Psychology or Literature. In addition to disciplinary exposure, this course will also give students the opportunity to explore themselves and to develop their empathy for others.

The next three courses fall into the natural and applied sciences as well as economics and political science. Like the curriculum for the social sciences and humanities, the foundational courses in mathematics and science will emphasize perspective-building: The STEM fields offer unique perspectives for viewing the world and one’s place in it. We aim to undo false binaries of “objective science vs subjective humanities” without undermining the powerful observational tools and investigative methods that the natural sciences offer us. Students will also develop their numeric literacy and capacity for critically interpreting quantitative data according to the course’s primary field.

• Paradigms in the History of Science : This course is designed to help students develop a critical appreciation for science as an academic field. Students will be encouraged to think about how ideas, inventions, and paradigmatic shifts in science and technology are always grounded in–and interpreted through–specific social, cultural, political, and material contexts.
• India and Its Environs: This class continues a core theme present across all foundational courses: Who am I, who are “we,” and how are we connected? This course would focus on the pure or applied science of environmental studies and/or its social science dimensions.
• Data Literacy: In the age of Big Data, students need to develop their quantitative literacy. This course will provide an introduction to statistics and data science, but it will do so through a specific epistemological framework. Students will learn to assess quantitative data using the questions, assumptions, and norms of either economics or political science.

Finally, a Liberal Arts education challenges students to better understand themselves as they seek to learn more about the world. Art, physical education, and health classes help students connect with themselves as thinking, feeling, and embodied individuals.

• Art, Aesthetics, and Expression 1 and 2: Creativity, experiment, and the embodied nature of learning are core values of our programme. This course makes these values explicit, encouraging students to recognize themselves as creative beings, regardless of whether they think they can draw, sculpt, dance, sing, or write. In addition to receiving an introduction to art practice, this class will also help students think critically about the way humans use art to communicate, interpret, experience, and challenge the world around them.
• Health: Most of our students will be living away from home for the first time. This can be an overwhelming challenge for many, as they are confronted with newfound autonomy and the numerous opportunities they have to make decisions about identity, relationships, sex, money, diet, spirituality, personal organization, and professional goals. Health will meet once a week and provide a space for students to access reliable sources of information and dialogue with peers and a trained faculty mentor about these important issues.

Majors & Minors

• Majors offered: Economics, Psychology, Political Science, History, Literature and Philosophy.
• Minors offered: Economics, Psychology, Political Science, History, Literature and Philosophy
• Electives: Students of SoLS can opt for elective courses offered by all other Schools at BMU

Faculty

• Faculty at the School of Liberal Studies bring diverse national, international, and interdisciplinary backgrounds to the school. They share an equal commitment to holistic education and the prospects for liberal studies students in a South Asian context. As with the curriculum at the school, our faculty brings valuable disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and professional learning to the programme to weave together a liberal studies programme that is simultaneously deep-rooted, reflective, and pragmatic.
  • Anirban Chakraborty
  • Anusree Paul
  • Ashley Rockenbach
  • Manu Mathew
  • Pritam Baruah
  • Sangita Duttagupta
  • Shyam Menon