Williams College is proud of its strong undergraduate program in physics. The Department of Physics offers a wide variety of courses ranging from introductory surveys through advanced tutorial courses. In the tutorials students meet two at a time with the professor and work on challenging problems. Graduating students tell us that our tutorials are among the best courses they have taken at Williams.

The Williams French Program offers a diverse range of courses in French language and Francophone literature, film, and culture. Whether you want to improve your French language skills, prepare for study abroad in France or Morocco, or learn more about the Francophone literary and cinematic tradition, we encourage you to explore our courses and activities.

Classics at Williams includes a broad range of courses in the Greek and Latin languages and the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean. Courses in Greek and Latin enable students to increase their linguistic facility as they study important authors, subjects, and periods and develop a variety of methodological skills. Courses in Classical Studies, in which texts are read in English translation, introduce students to and make them familiar with the literature, history, mythology, art, archaeology, religion and philosophy of ancient Greece, Rome, and their broader Mediterranean contexts, as well as opportunities for more advanced or specialized study. All of our offerings challenge students both to confront the foreignness of these ancient cultures and to explore the profound connections between them and our own.

Arabic is the language of a rich and complex cultural heritage, the main language of Islam and the official language of 21 countries. In order to promote cultural literacy, the Arabic Studies Department at Williams stresses complementing classroom instruction with extra-curricular activities such as film screenings, performances, music concerts, a weekly language table, and guest lectures. Likewise, thematic parties with plenty of food introduce students to another important dimension of North African and Middle Eastern cultures.

The Asian American Studies Program at Williams is intellectually connected to the larger field of Asian American Studies (AAS), a vibrant interdisciplinary area of study fought for by student activists in the 1960s. AAS research and teaching are grounded in the histories, social relations, and cultural expressions related to Asian American, Asian immigrant, and/or Asian diasporic people. Yet Asian American Studies is not simply about people of Asian descent in America. Our field yields critical insights regarding race and racism, colonialism and empire, immigration and diaspora, war and militarism, labor and embodiment, citizenship and identity, and much more – all while understanding that the presumed Asian American subject at the imagined center of this field is a socially constructed term with ever-shifting meaning and boundaries.

Welcome to the Williams College Computer Science Department. We have a faculty of thirteen professors, all of whom are active researchers in a range of areas including artificial intelligence, parallel processing, human-computer interaction, algorithms, complexity theory, game theory, networking and distributed systems, storage, and programming languages. We offer a wide variety of introductory classes to students. These include not only courses designed to provide an introduction to computer programming, but also a number of courses focusing on topics like e-textiles, data science, video game appreciation, and an introduction to the Internet. Our major provides both a solid foundation in the core concepts of our discipline and the opportunity to explore topics in-depth in our many electives.

The Dance Department offers students ways to investigate embodied knowledge and to develop multiple perspectives by studying individuals and communities. Our courses support close study of physical practices, histories, cultural context and musical understanding and interpretation. Through techniques, research, and creative inquiry, students deepen capacity for interdisciplinary discovery.

The Department of Asian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (DALLC) regularly offers four levels of instruction in Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin), designed to enable the student to become proficient in aural comprehension, speaking, reading, and writing, as well as introductory courses in Classical Chinese, and occasionally, Cantonese and Taiwanese. The department also offers disciplinary courses taught either in English or in Chinese on Chinese literature, linguistics, or cultural studies. Students majoring in Chinese are strongly encouraged to study in mainland China or Taiwan during one or both semesters of their junior/senior year, or during the summer. All students, whether you are a language learner or a native speaker, are cordially invited to join us for the weekly Chinese language table.

The Coastal & Ocean Studies (CAOS) concentration provides students with an opportunity to explore how humans interact with the environment, including the maritime environment. Understanding the oceans and our interactions with them is of increasing importance in this era of climate change, sea-level rise, fisheries crises, and the internationalization of the high seas. We encourage students to investigate our WaterWorld from the perspectives of the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences. Coastal & Ocean Studies (CAOS) is an interdisciplinary, cross-divisional program that includes the literature, history, policy issues, and science of the ocean. Candidates for the concentration in Coastal & Ocean Studies (CAOS) must complete a minimum of seven courses: the interdisciplinary introductory course (GEOS 104 Oceanography), four intermediate core courses (at Williams-Mystic), an elective, and a 400-level Environmental Studies seminar.

The Department of Asian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures offers three distinct major tracks: East Asian Languages & Cultures, Chinese, and Japanese. Each major requires a minimum of ten courses. Up to four study-away credits can be counted toward a major. Below are the learning objectives and minimum requirements of the East Asian Languages and Cultures Major.

The Music Department offers students an exceptionally wide variety of opportunities to study music both inside and outside the classroom through performance, composition, ethnomusicology, theory, and history. The faculty is made up of devoted teachers, prominent scholars, prolific composers, and active performers. We offer numerous courses for both the major and the general student and high-level performance opportunities that are open to all students at Williams.

The study of Italian in the target language encourages students to gain a deep appreciation of the language, culture, and literature through active participation and meaningful experience with the culture on its own terms. Italian courses at Williams are therefore conducted exclusively in Italian in order to enhance and reinforce the emotive and cognitive involvement of the students as they are introduced to the Italian worldview in a lively and natural manner.

The program was designed to give its students an understanding of the many ways that politics and economics interact in the formation of public policy. Majors acquire a substantial mastery of economics, broad knowledge of the American and international political context, an understanding of the economic and moral stakes in key current public policy issues, and the opportunity to analyze policy for themselves. The major is notable for its high degree of structure, with requirements in Economics and Political Science, along with three distinctive core courses.

At Williams College, Africana Studies is a thriving interdisciplinary academic major that critically and systematically examines the cultures, histories, and experiences of people of African descent globally, and that grounds students in their multiple ways of knowing. Through a wide variety of courses and programming in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, we take up the broader concerns of Africana Studies as a field, merge them with our dynamic faculty expertise and interests, and combine them with the educational needs of our diverse student population to encourage multi and interdisciplinary research, writing, and analysis. Even as intellectual rigor is a significant programmatic focus, we also recognize the importance of grounding intellectual engagement with activism and life experience, and we assist students in finding unique and compelling perspectives from which to pursue and to make their own contributions to the field of Africana Studies.

Environmental issues call upon citizens, organizations, and governments to grasp complex scientific concepts, address conflicting human values, and make difficult economic, political, and ethical choices. The two curricular options in Environmental Studies — the major in Environmental Studies, and the concentration in Environmental Studies — are designed to prepare students to effectively address these issues by integrating perspectives and methodologies from the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the arts and humanities.