Search for Summer 2024 and 2025 Term Courses

This course examines Native American, Spanish, and Anglo arts and cultures of the American Southwest between 100 CE and the 21st century. It considers the effects of ethnicity, gender, and community identity on regional art traditions and places artworks within their material, religious, political, and economic contexts. Astronomical alignments, water, earth and sky, spirits and saints, the living and their ancestors—these are among the themes in the art of the region. Emphasis is placed on careful seeing, individual analysis and reflection, and collaborative learning. The course is designed for SMU-in-Taos. Many class days include field trips or interactive projects. Films, readings, and PowerPoint slide talks set the stage for visits to artists’ studios, archaeological sites, pueblos, churches, and museums. Hands-on art projects are simple and require no previous art experience to succeed. They will help you understand the technical and aesthetic qualities of artworks we study in this class. Watch Course Video

Counts as an Honors course. Focuses on contemporary issues facing the American Southwest, including social problems that exist within the contexts of particular groups, communities, cultures, and societies. Explores sociological issues relating to the environment, the media, poverty, immigration, food insecurity, education, crime, economic development, and health, among others. Community engagement will allow us expiore the major problems facing these Taos area communities as well as some possible solutions to the problems facing them.

Counts as an Honors course. This interdisciplinary course explores the history of New Mexico, from the pre-contact era to the present. In the first half of the class, we will consider New Mexico’s successive and overlapping waves of human settlement, from Pueblo Indians, to the Spanish Empire, the Mexican Republic, and the United States, with particular attention to the complex relationships between Native peoples, Hispanos, and Anglo-Americans. Then we will turn to a handful of key topics that continue to define the so-called Land of Enchantment even today: religion and spirituality; the natural world (particularly New Mexico’s scarce water resources); and its enduring cultural symbolism as reflected in literature and film.

Counts as an Honors course and a Business Elective. This course will show students how to leverage fundamental marketing frameworks and apply them to the nuances related to social impact marketing. In this course, the term “sustainability” will cover both Planet and People related issues (i.e. environmental as well as social issues), as it is known that these are many times inter-related. In the beautiful natural environment of Taos, New Mexico, students will have the chance to engage with 4 organizations that have either or both an environmental and social mission. After our site visits, students will be able to choose which of the 4 organizations they want to focus on for the duration of the course. Watch Course Video

This course explores the contributions of anthropology to understanding the experience of psychological phenomenon and mind across cultures. It will examine anthropological theories about the interplay of culture, mind and self in various Western and non-Western societies. Child development, cognition, emotion, morality, altered states, “brain sciences” and mental health and illness are analyzed from a cross-cultural perspective. Working through a full range of classic and modern works in medical and psychological anthropology, we debate the ways that social context—and local notions of what is “good” that are upheld in these contexts—impact one’s everyday life and one’s experience of one’s own mind, and with what consequences. It is important to have a comparative perspective in psychological anthropology, and we will have readings and films from Africa, South America, Oceania, East Asia, South Asia, Europe, and the U.S. As this course is taking place in Taos, we will spend some time focusing on traditional ways of promoting mental health in the Southwest, including the vision quests of the Pueblo people and the adolescent initiation rites of the Apache. The course will also draw students’ attention to some of the mental health challenges facing this region, including high rates of opioid abuse, with an eye toward the ways that substance abuse is rooted in historical trauma, such as land loss, for Hispanos and Native Americans in the region.

Counts as an Honors course. First, the course seeks to provide you with an introduction to a wide variety of religious traditions, communities and practices within the context of globalization. Topics we will cover include the rise of religion as an academic subject in the age of modernity, religion as it relates to colonialism and national identities, religious expression in the media and in popular culture, and changing religious practices and expressions in the light of globalization and immigration. Second, this course aims to introduce you to several approaches to the academic study of religion. Throughout the course we will explore the ways that people have and do investigate religious histories, practices and people. Finally, this course is designed to build your skills in the analysis of complex argumentation and your abilities to discuss matters critically, curiously, and civically.

Counts as an Honors course. This interdisciplinary and experiential course examines the intersections of food and identity in the Southwest. Through literary and scholarly texts, film, fine arts, pop culture, and experiences, students explore topics such as heritage and tradition, cultural contact and exchange, conquest, resistance and revolution, issues of gender, and responses to modernity and change in the so-called “American Southwest.” Examines how technology (including agriculture, cooking technology, commercial farming, global trade networks, and social media) impacts the production, consumption, distribution, dynamics of power, and systems of meaning of food and eating in this region. Watch Course Video

Counts as an Honors course. This course examines the chronology of American history through an interdisciplinary lens with the question of “who is an American” as a thematic focus. Students learn about important moments in American history, specifically in New Mexico and the Southwest. They begin to understand the basic chronology of the country, as well as how key events were understood and experienced by some of the country’s most creative and probing minds. The organizing theme of who is an American is an important examination of when and where the human rights of the country’s inhabitants have been respected–or not respected–over the decades. Open to all students.

Taos provides a rich context for students to learn about Latin American cultural, political, and economic influences and expressions through exploration of anthropological scholarship on Latin America in conjunction with field trips in the Taos area. The course examines shared histories and influences between Latin America and the U.S. Southwest. Students will read anthropological scholarship from within the region typically conceptualized as Latin America—including Mexico, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean. Course readings will provide students with the conceptual and ethnographic lenses to observe and experience Latin American forms in Taos. This experiential approach encourages students to think critically about what constitutes Latin America and whether some areas of the United States may be onceptualized as Latin American. By tacking back and forth between anthropological literature on Latin America and fieldtrips in the Taos area, students will explore how shared histories and interactions move beyond the boundaries set by maps and national borders and to appreciate the arbitrary and fluid nature of regional and national boundaries. Field trips around the SMU-inTaos campus will provide students with hands-on observations which they will be invited to think through in relation to conceptual frameworks and ethnographic material in their readings. Particular attention will be paid to exploring artistic expressions, spiritual forms, naturalenvironments, gastronomy, and health and healing.

The overall goal of this course is to introduce undergraduate students to current societal issues around public health nutrition. This course examines the nature of poverty, food security and hunger at the community, regional, or national level. The Taos campus allows for APSM 3360 students to become embedded in the community and assist local farmers with harvesting and planting. Nutrition and Population Health students will also work with the local schools in the Farm-to-School lunch program and after school program. Lastly, the Taos campus allows for my students will also serve at the local food pantry alongside community members to hand out bags of food to individuals in need. Emphasis is placed on personal experience via community engagement, the applicability of cutting-edge research on creating effective national policies, and advocacy campaigns for low-income Americans. Finally, this course reviews existing local and national programs and policies, including strengths, weaknesses, and areas for modification or new interventions. Watch Course Video

This course examines Native American, Spanish, and Anglo arts and cultures of the American Southwest between 100 CE and the 21st century. It considers the effects of ethnicity, gender, and community identity on regional art traditions and places artworks within their material, religious, political, and economic contexts. Astronomical alignments, water, earth and sky, spirits and saints, the living and their ancestors—these are among the themes in the art of the region. Emphasis is placed on careful seeing, individual analysis and reflection, and collaborative learning. Arts of the American Southwest is designed for SMU-in-Taos. Many class days include field trips or interactive projects. Films, readings, and PowerPoint slide talks set the stage for visits to artists’ studios, archaeological sites, pueblos, churches, and museums. Hands-on art projects are simple and require no previous art experience to succeed. They will help you understand the technical and aesthetic qualities of artworks we study in this class. Watch Course Video

This non-major introductory biology course with a special focus on aquatic biology considers the ecological intricacies of aquatic systems in the American Southwest, emphasizing the unique challenges and adaptations of life in arid environments. The SMU campus in Taos serves as an ideal hub for this course by providing direct access to study these specific environments. Students benefit from hands-on field experiences, allowing them to conduct fieldwork, collect data, and directly observe the region's aquatic biodiversity, thus deepening their understanding of the ecological principles discussed in the course. Taos' geographical location and the richness of its surrounding aquatic environments serve as a living laboratory, enabling students to apply theoretical knowledge to real-world settings.

'Technologies And Our Society” (TAOS) examines the development and lasting impact of technological change in the contexts of US society and culture. The course introduces students to 9 networks essential to contemporary life while encouraging them to think critically about the challenges involved in revisioning/reforming these systems to advance sustainable development, environmental preservation, and socio-economic equity, among other concerns. Reading (and viewing) assignments along with course discussions are augmented by visits to select local sites giving students opportunities to examine, evaluate, and debate technological “progress” in juxtaposition with the physical environments and lived realities in which these technological networks operate today. Topics include examining food, communication, production, energy, environment, war, planning, consumerism, medicine, and 4IR. Watch Course Video

An introduction to principles and concepts of operations management with an emphasis on problem solving for common business analytics models. Topics include forecasting, product and service design, reliability, strategic capacity planning for products and services, optimization (in particular linear programming, sensitivity analysis, and transportation problems), decision analysis, computer simulation, supply chain management, inventory, scheduling, and project management. Coursework exposes students to quantitative business applications and includes problem solving and case assignments from a wide range of functional areas in business. For the experiential learning part, we will have a field trip to Taos Bakes to observe the production process of bars, discuss how strategy affect production and planning.

Moral problems and ethical dilemmas surround us: in our schools and workplaces, in our homesand families, and in the news and politics. In this course, we’ll begin to reflect on ethical problemsin a systematic and thorough way. We’ll learn some tools for helping us do this (ethical theories)and use these to grapple with some important contemporary issues we’re faced with, focusing inparticular on environmental ethics and Native American approaches to ethics to take advantage ofthe opportunities to explore nature, sustainability, and Indigenous history in Taos. An introduction to philosophical ethics focusing on questions in applied ethics. Students begin by exploring ethical theories and philosophical methods. The majority of the course is devoted to applying those theories and methods to some of the most controversial and pressing issues confronting contemporary society. Topics vary, but the following are representative: abortion, animal rights, affirmative action, capital punishment, economic justice, euthanasia, sexuality, war and terrorism, and world hunger. Class discussion is an important component of the course, as is reading and (in some sections) writing argumentative essays about these issues. Watch Course Video

A survey of the ethical and philosophical issues surrounding resistance to state power and disobedience of civil law. Examines ancient, medieval, and modern perspectives on when such defiance is justifiable. This course explores the issues of revolution, regicide, civil disobedience, conscientious objection, and other attempts to defy the law and/or replace the government. What are the criteria for determining when such efforts are ethically justifiable and when they are not? How can a society respect the principle of individual conscience, while not inviting the anarchy of having people pick and choose which laws they will obey? The course considers answers to those questions that have been offered from the ancient world through the present day. This course really benefits from intensive, small-group discussion of the complex issues involved, and the Taos setting and course format will greatly facilitate that. In addition, several of the issues considered have clear relevance in the New Mexico context, including the issue of Native American use of peyote in religious rituals (9j defiance of state and federal anti-drug laws) and the Sanctuary Movement that has sought to defy U.S. immigration law and shield undocumented asylum-seekers from deportation.

Mountain Sports is a class where students will have the opportunity to participate in a wide range of activities such as hiking, rafting, rock climbing, and fly-fishing. Students will have the opportunity to apply the five components of health related fitness to all of the activities that they pursue.

This interdisciplinary and experiential course examines the intersections of food and identity in the Southwest. Through literary and scholarly texts, film, fine arts, pop culture, and experiences, students explore topics such as heritage and tradition, cultural contact and exchange, conquest, resistance and revolution, issues of gender, and responses to modernity and change in the so-called “American Southwest.” Examines how technology (including agriculture, cooking technology, commercial farming, global trade networks, and social media) impacts the production, consumption, distribution, dynamics of power, and systems of meaning of food and eating in this region. Watch Course Video