Deep Dive Courses

This deep dive focuses on the concept and applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI). You will gain an understanding of AI's history and development, as well as its current and potential impact on various fields such as healthcare, finance, and transportation. The course will cover the fundamental concepts of AI, including machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. You will also be introduced to the ethical and social considerations surrounding AI, such as privacy, bias, and transparency. Through lectures, discussions, and real-world examples, you will gain a comprehensive understanding of AI and its implications for our future. This course is designed for non-technical students and does not require any prior programming experience.

Hoping to manage the stress of transitioning to college? Explore various techniques of sitting and walking meditation. Meditation has been associated with health benefits such as reducing stress, depression, and anxiety and improving cardiovascular and digestive health. It's an effective tool for navigating the uncertainty in our lives. Join us as we cultivate an enhanced sense of balance, inner peace, and well-being. You'll learn transformative techniques for deep relaxation to help you throughout your college career and your entire life.

Hollywood has its own translations of comic characters—as do publishing, licensing, and other industries—and comic conventions have now become worldwide gateways to this phenomenon. See behind the curtain to discover how it all works, including a historical look at female and black creators who often did not enjoy the spotlight. In this eye-opening course, we'll start with fan passion then explore the inner workings of an entire industry.

Prepare yourself for success in every aspect of your college experience, from achieving academically to improving personal relationships to choosing a career path. Discover how your personality type can affect your learning style, study habits, test-taking, roommate and personal relationships, time management, and stress. You'll learn your MBTI® type and focus on practical strategies for overcoming potential challenges and achieving success. (MBTI is Myers Briggs Type Indicator, a tool informed by decades of research to help individuals understand their communication preferences and interactions with others.)  

This course will introduce you to timeless philosophical questions and issues through film. By pairing classic philosophical writings with movies, this course will guide your discovery of the joy of philosophical conversations. Potential topics: the existence of God, the nature of mind, personal identity, free will and moral responsibility. By discussing and writing about philosophical questions in classical texts and recent movies, you will develop your critical and analytic thinking and writing skills. *You will be expected to watch assigned films prior to class discussions.

Queer Representation on Television focuses on images of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) people on American television from the 1950s through the present day. Through lectures, readings, and screenings we will examine the role fiction and non-fiction television programming has played in the “cultural construction” of homosexuality and the formation of the public and private identities of LGBT people.  We will investigate television’s dual role in promoting and challenging dominant beliefs, attitudes, and social myths about homosexuality and LGBT people and examine how television programming has reflected the social, legal, and political changes of the LGBT rights movement over the past seven decades.

Using the fairy tale genre and its storytelling patterns, you'll use the process of reflective writing as a prompt for creative writing and self-discovery. In this deep dive course, we will read and analyze various fairy tales and talk about how we react to them and how they connect to the world around us. You will have the opportunity to present a final project that is either scholarly or creative in its approach.

Decolonize your mind as you enter the learning community of Ithaca College. Together we'll draw on decolonial thought to consider the meaning and uses of knowledge and how this idea is linked to power dynamics. We'll think outside the box and question the idea that some knowledge is valuable while other knowledge is not. We will examine work produced by Indigenous thinkers, African philosophers, Global South intellectuals, among others. You'll learn new ways of thinking and strategies for academic success as you build community.