CAT 1

CAT 1 courses (four units, fall quarter) teach critical reading and drafting by examining how culture, art, and technology have intersected in the past. Students must have completed the Entry Level Writing Requirement in order to enroll in CAT 1.

Fall 2026

CAT 1: What It Was, Was Television: Television History at the Nexus of Race, Class, and Gender in the Network Era

Phoebe Bronstein

Associate Teaching Professor, CAT

Monday/Wednesday/Friday 11:00-11:50 a.m.

This CAT 1 course explores the early history of American television from the late 1940s-1980, as television rose to the status of a national medium in the post-World War II era. In this era, television became a central fixture in the American home—marketed initially like an appliance and built into the first suburban homes, television quickly became where American families got their news, their entertainment, and their advertisements, which propelled the invention of things like TV dinners. From broadcasting the Civil Rights movement to capturing the space race and the assassination of JFK, the new medium came to play a central and often pedagogical role during the major social and political changes of the era. At the same time, anxieties around television, from what it would do to children's brains to a concern that it exposed families to radiation, circulated around the new medium. This course will explore how television programming from this era articulated, shaped, and at times contested postwar American values. Paying particular attention to how the medium produced and disseminated ideas about race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation, this course will use this history to hone our critical thinking and reading and writing skills across the term. Assignments will focus on building active reading habits (of both written and visual texts), reflection, and developing a regular writing practice.

CAT 1: From Hillbilly Music to Hip-Hop: US Culture and Popular Music

Joe Bigham

Lecturer, CAT

Monday/Wednesday/Friday 9:00-9:50 a.m.

This course examines United States musical history as a lens into how we understand, interpret, and engage with our collective pasts. What have musicians, music critics, and fans said about the music they listen to, and by extension themselves and others? As the introduction to the CAT writing sequence, we will focus on the interpretation and understanding of past music and musical writing. Musical examples include (but aren't limited to) Appalachian folk music, 1970s soul music, 1980s heavy metal, and 1990s hip-hop. Our readings will range from fan-based writing to scholarly articles from musicology and ethnomusicology. We will hear and see how music shaped a sense of both individual and collective identity within United States cultural movements. Writing in short blog posts and longer essay forms, we will develop the ability to summarize, write about, and engage with musical culture and history

CAT 1: Origins

Guillermo Algaze

Professor, Anthropology

Monday/Wednesday/Friday 10:00-10:50 a.m.

This CAT 1 course focuses on a key question: "How did human beings come to have culture, art, and technology in the first place?" The course is centered on the human capacity for technological innovation and symbolic representation. It presents a global historical overview of the general principles and patterns of past human development, and focuses particular attention on the interrelationships between demographic, cultural, and technological changes in the last 50,000 or so years of the human career.

CAT 1: We Are What Eats Us: Vampires and the Representation of Fear, Power, and Desire

Jennifer Marchisotto

Lecturer, CAT

Monday/Wednesday/Friday 12:00-12:50 p.m.

From John William Polidori to Stephanie Meyer to Ryan Coogler, creators have long used vampires to engage with real cultural fears, desires, and anxieties through fantastic creatures. Moreover, across the world, people have told stories about vampire-like creatures that eat flesh and/or drink blood to feed, reflecting a human preoccupation with mortality, consumption, and power. As the first course in the CAT writing sequence, we will focus on analyzing the different ways these representations speak to a creator's values and participate in larger cultural discourses. By honing your critical thinking and the expression of that thinking through writing and conversation, you will become more adept at participating in academic discourse. Assignments will focus on building the skills central to strong analytical writing and textual analysis. Authors and texts may include Isabel Cañas, Cadwell Turnbull, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Carmilla, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Sinners, What We Do in the Shadows, and Interview with a Vampire, as well as a selection of academic scholarship in the field.