Courses

The term 'gendercide' highlights a range of distinct forms of violence reserved for human beings based on their own gender self-identification as well as patriarchal assumptions about their gender. In the patriarchal contexts that dominate cultures globally, this violence overwhelmingly compromises the security of human beings who identify and are identified as women, girl-children, and not gender non-conforming… Continue Reading – Gender-Based Violence And Gendercide

This course will introduce students to the major issues in the field of material culture studies by tying material culture theory to urgent contemporary debates, such as: What should replace the many Confederate monuments that have been removed from public spaces? How should museums reckon with legacies of racism? Why do things matter in an era that is increasingly online? As material culture is an interdisciplinary field, the… Continue Reading – Material Things In The Digital Age

Women have been fighting for gender equality in many religious traditions for decades. What strategies and discourses have been used to preclude women from religious leadership and to marginalize women within public religious spaces? How have women gained access and claimed religious authority within religious institutions? How do these strategies differ across religious communities? What kinds of resistance have women… Continue Reading – Women And Religious Authority

Music is far more than entertainment. Since the beginning of time it has been used to express deeply held emotions and beliefs. It is inextricably intertwined with human existence, used globally in dance, religious rites, public celebrations, private moments of contemplation and rejoicing, concerts, films, advertisements, and countless other activities. Life without music is unthinkable. Can one celebrate one’s… Continue Reading – Music And The Brain

“Secrets of Quantum Matter” will be an interdisciplinary honors seminar, open to science and non-science students, without any requirement of prior science or math achievement, that will introduce students to the history and the current frontiers of research into quantum matter. The  course will introduce quantum mechanics in every-day materials: everything from the atom up. This topic, known as “quantum condensed… Continue Reading – Secrets Of The Quantum Universe

Despite global attempts to establish “green” initiatives by governmental forces, these “solutions” offer little hope for averting the emergency, while often obstructing on-the-ground activist movements pushing for systemic transformation and radical sustainability. As the crisis in capitalist globalization spirals out of control, spawning neofascist movements in its wake, the impediments to solving this… Continue Reading – Narrating Planet: Crisis & Sustainability

How do bilinguals handle having multiple languages in a single mind? Why do adults have difficulty achieving native-like competence in a foreign language? Why do some people learn foreign languages more easily than others? In this course, students will learn about a myriad of topics related to the bilingual mind. These include neural underpinnings of bilingual processing, biological, linguistic and cognitive effects on… Continue Reading – One mind. Two languages.

Will Count Towards SAS - English Major and Minor

Application required click here to apply.

In this course, we will focus… Continue Reading – Reading In Slow Motion

In the dead of night, it is not uncommon for the most ordinary individuals to fly, revisit childhood haunts, or explore underwater cities. In antiquity, dreams were typically understood as forms of divination or prophetic visions giving the dreamer access to an ordinarily invisible realm of spirits and deities.  In modernity, dreams have been seen as psychological phenomena, internal to the mind of… Continue Reading – Dreaming By The Book

Will NOT Count Towards African, Middle Eastern & South Asian Languages & Literatures MAJOR or MINOR

Animals populate the Arabic canonical tradition. The word hayawan, ‘animal’, invokes a number of classical Arabic texts and treaties. One may argue that Arabic letters encompass an encyclopaedic genre that is devoted to… Continue Reading – Humanimals In Middle Eastern Literature

Will Count Towards SAS – Anthropology MAJOR
Will NOT Count Towards SAS – Anthropology MINOR

This course examines histories, theories and practices of photography, a medium that has transformed significantly since the daguerreotypes of the mid-… Continue Reading – Photography: International Medium

For the last several years, following on a number of significant “machine learning” breakthroughs, talk of “artificial intelligence” (AI) has made a comeback. Especially strong in business and technology circles, discussion of an AI-powered fourth industrial revolution now ripples through the popular imagination. Fictions of Artificial Intelligence, which blends narrative fiction in several media—literature, film,… Continue Reading – Fictions Of Artificial Intelligence

Although nominally aiming to introduce students to the idea of the Anthropocene, this course has a deeper objective which will become clear as the semester progresses. I wish for students to leave this seminar understanding that humans have always been actively shaping the global environment and climate. The idea of a ‘start date’ obscures a deeper, more complex reality of humanity’s relationship with nature, and our… Continue Reading – Searching For The Anthropocene

Earthquakes occupy a special place among natural calamities that impact the human civilization. Sudden, short in duration, extremely but selectively destructive, and (as of this writing) not predictable, earthquakes have the capacity to change the course of human history, While most human cultures have traditional beliefs associated with earthquakes, the rigorous science of earthquakes is just over a century old.… Continue Reading – When Foundations Are Shaken

Einstein was the first celebrity scientist and as an icon, his views on religion, his Jewish heritage, freedom, race relations, politics, war, and humanity are well documented and offer valuable insights for us today. Through the seminar, we will read and discuss … Continue Reading – Science And Life Of Albert Einstein

In physical terms, energy circulates everywhere. In economic and political terms, energy repeatedly runs scarce.  This course will adjudicate that thorny contradiction between nature and culture – between the abundance of the sun and the scarcity of fuel.  The disjuncture persists because of the way in which certain societies – including our own – construct energy as a cultural meaning.  At other times… Continue Reading – Energy And Culture

This seminar will examine the strategic ways in which leaders have sought to institutionalize their activism and public dissent.  The class will utilize an interactive discussion format. On a macro-level, the focus will include founders of civil and human rights organizations and other social change pressure groups.  On a micro-level, we will contrast leadership roles of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his co… Continue Reading – Anti-Apartheid & Civil Rights Movements

From its ancient origins in the Book of Job, or farther back even in the Babylonian Poem of the Righteous Sufferer, through the early decades of the Enlightenment, the problem of evil — the perniciously difficult to satisfy “need to find order within those appearances … Continue Reading – Problem Of Evil: Philosophy & Pop cult

 “Unruly Bodies in Literature and Media” _offers a close examination of the discourses surrounding those bodies that are considered abnormal, monstrous, unfitting and weird in the Western modern material and visual culture. We will move broadly in time and space within philosophical, literary, and cinematic traditions to concentrate on those moments where the body becomes a site of tangible… Continue Reading – Unruly Bodies In Literature And Media

“Most of the world lives in cities,” scholars say, explaining why urban studies are important across anthropology, sociology, history, critical geography, political science, and literature. But what about the lives not yet lived in cities? What can we learn by approaching the city through its futures? How can the future help us to understand the pasts, presents, and possibilities of urban life? In this course, these questions will guide us as… Continue Reading – Urban Futures

Application Required – click here

The years 1968-1971 changed the world, and so have the years 2018-2021. In honor of these two generations, the Class of 1970 is supporting an oral… Continue Reading – Generations of Change Four Years on the Banks, Fifty Years Apart: 1968-71 and 2018-2021