360° Stories

How can we use science to respond to the criticisms of those in power that might disagree with our fundamental assumptions about the reliability of scientific facts?

How can we use science to respond to the criticisms of those in power that might disagree with our fundamental assumptions about the reliability of scientific facts?

This 360 will examine that question in the context of Bryn Mawr College’s mineral collection: more than 40,000 specimens, most of which were sampled in the mid- to late-19th century.

What are the stories behind the flavors that we taste? How much of taste is individual, and how much is social? Why do some flavors taste good to us, while others don't? Why do different people sometimes have very different reactions to the same foods? How do taste preferences change across space and over time?

Incorporating a visit to the Titagya school in rural Ghana, this 360° explores how children grow and develop in different contexts (e.g. schools, communities, households) and cultures (e.g., the United States, West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa) and how this growth and development is conceptualized and represented–in texts and theories–mainly by adults, across cultures and fields of study.

This Eco-Literacy 360° cluster considers our participation in the environment from the perspectives of economics, education, and various forms of literary and visual expression. Our goal is to develop a vocabulary for thinking, feeling and talking about the ways in which the places we live affect each of us, and how each of us affects the places we live.

This cluster focuses on the core issue of borderland encounters, and addresses a variety of common themes such as the concept and nature of borderlands, cultural exchange, power relations, ethnic experience, human- environmental interactions, and (trans)nationalism.

Coastlines, by definition transitional environments, are naturally dynamic and resilient. But climate change, sea level rise and shifting species distributions are now causing rapid physical and ecological changes to the world’s coasts. Anticipating and addressing these changes requires understanding the physical, chemical and biological processes that interact at the land-sea boundary. (Taught 2014-15; 2017; 2020; 2024)

What does Europe look like from the perspectives of those whose voices are usually missing from mainstream narratives – the disempowered, queers, migrant laborers, artists, refugees, and people from Europe’s eastern and southern peripheries?

How might human beings live according to nature? Is property natural? Is freedom or unfreedom? How can studying human societies in the past inform collective organization in the present?

What comes in the wake of energy extraction? This cluster will examine the afterlives of coal, oil, and nuclear energy through the lenses of the arts, political science, and earth science.

This cluster focuses on the rich geologic and linguistic history and present of Nicaragua to explore the ongoing interconnectedness between landscape and language.