Original artwork by Carol Qin, Trinity Communications student assistant.
Cupid Goes to Class: Courses to Get You in the Mood for Valentine’s Day
Whether you’re blissfully coupled, proudly single, or in a long-term relationship with your syllabus, Valentine’s Day has a way of drawing everyone into its orbit.
At the Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, love isn’t just written in a greeting card or wrapped in a box of chocolates — it’s studied, debated and (occasionally) quantified.
This spring, a lineup of Trinity undergraduate courses explores love in many forms. Some consider desire and pleasure, others explore how we express emotion and forge connection through language and art. Classes on moral disagreement and dialogue ask what it means to listen carefully, navigate conflict and find common ground — skills as essential to healthy relationships as they are to civic life. Still others look beneath the surface of attraction itself, from the evolutionary forces that shape courtship and desire to the algorithms and AI systems that increasingly influence how people connect, communicate and build trust.
Taken together, these courses remind us that love in the modern world is more than romance. Because in a world of quick connections and fleeting moments, learning how to love well is a topic worth studying.
Sexual Pleasure in the Modern World | HISTORY 112
Like Cupid’s arrow, desire can feel sudden, powerful, and deeply personal — but where it lands is shaped by history, culture and power. This interdisciplinary course explores how societies around the world have understood and pursued sexual pleasure, asking what pleasure means and who has been allowed to experience it. Students examine the ethics of sexual pleasure and how ideas about desire, fantasy and fulfillment have helped shape the modern self.
Introduction to the Writing of Poetry | ENGLISH 220S
Roses are red, violets are Duke blue — when your words catch feelings, you can earn course credit too! This poetry workshop invites students to explore how language comes alive on the page, turning feelings, observation and imagination into something that can stir and connect souls. While the heart of the course is writing original poems, students also read widely across the poetic tradition, learning techniques from poets past and present. A final creative portfolio traces each student’s growth over the semester — a reminder that that poetry isn’t just about grand declarations of love, it’s about transforming feeling into form.
Moral Disagreement and Dialogue | PHILOSOPHY 225S
Love isn’t just about romance — it’s also about learning how to navigate deep differences with care, empathy and respect. This philosophy course invites students to explore moral and political disagreement through the very skills that sustain healthy relationships: listening, understanding and finding common ground. Drawing on moral psychology, metaethics, epistemology and feminist and non-Western perspectives, the class examines why people disagree so passionately about what matters most, and how those disagreements can be approached constructively rather than combatively
Sexual Selection | BIOLOGY 428S
If Valentine’s Day has you thinking about attraction and courtship, this biology seminar offers a reminder these aren’t just personal or poetic — they’re also shaped by millions of years of evolution. With a strong emphasis on primary scientific literature, data literacy and in-class discussion, the course challenges students to examine how traits associated with attraction and reproduction evolve, and how scientific theories about sexual selection intersect with cultural assumptions about sex, gender and society.
Moral Artificial Intelligence and Algorithmic Justice* | COMPUTER SCIENCE 172CN
Valentine’s Day may celebrate connection, but, in an age increasingly shaped by algorithms, fairness and trust matter more than ever. This course explores the ethical questions surrounding algorithmic systems and artificial intelligence, asking how power, justice and equity are built into the technologies that influence our daily lives, from social media feeds to hiring tools and recommendation systems. With no programming required, the course invites students from across disciplines to think critically about the values embedded in technology. The coursework offers a reminder that meaningful connection — even between people and technology — depends not just on innovation, but on fairness, care and accountability.
*This course is part of the Constellation: How Does Artificial Intelligence Impact Human Experiences?, part of the Arts & Sciences Curriculum which explores the complex relationship between Artificial Intelligence and human society.
Romanticism Across the Arts | ENGLISH 490S
Romance isn’t always soft and sweet — sometimes it’s passionate, dramatic and shaped by revolution. This course explores European Romantic culture at its most intense, tracing how love and imagination took form across literature, music and painting from the French Revolution through the post-Napoleonic era. Organized around moments of revolution and restoration, students examine how artists responded to war, political upheaval and emotional extremes, and why Romanticism so often oscillated between confronting chaos head-on and retreating into dreamlike visions of beauty and escape. This class invites students to see why Romantic passion — both political and personal — still resonates today.
