Courses

The seminar addresses the representation of walking in different media. Rooted in the everyday, in ordinary gestures, the experience of walking is pivotal to the shaping of our experience of place. Strolling relates to our most immediate way of staying in the world, examining and describing it. In the wake of modernity, the new urban subjects have fashioned walking as a style of apprehension and appropriation of their… Continue Reading – Walking in the City

 “A landmark report from the United Nations’ [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, its Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 oC, dated October 8, 2018,] paints a far more dire picture of the immediate consequences of climate change than previously thought,” Coral Davenport writes, in the December 7, 2018 edition of The New York Times, according to which “avoiding the damage requires transforming… Continue Reading – The Climate Crisis in Philosophy and Popular Culture

This seminar will focus on a variety of creative Irish texts—fictional and non-fiction, essays and documentaries, poetry, songs, plays, and films. Key questions addressed will include: how does a text re-cast or re-present a historical period or event? What does a knowledge of Irish history, politics, or culture add to our appreciation of a text? 
 
Principal texts we investigate will include: Making History & Translations… Continue Reading – Irish History through the Lens of Literary Culture

In this course, we will explore how inequalities and spatial conflicts based on racial and ethnic identities have played a significant role in shaping the society and cities of the United States. We will also examine how communities of color have built neighborhoods, mutual aid, and institutions based on racial justice principles as forms of resistance to displacement, impoverishment, and state-led violence.

We will raise… Continue Reading – Geography of Race and Ethnicity in The United States

This course draws upon a variety of perspectives to examine the social processes that shape how food is produced, prepared and consumed in the Global North. The topics and readings cover the sociology of gender, sociology of science, cultural studies, anthropology, public health and labor relations. Within each of these perspectives, we will use food as a lens to examine the complex social and economic relations that determine what we eat and… Continue Reading – Food, Culture, and Society

Ian hacking has written that the concept of the modern idea of probability emerged in 1654 - the year of a famous correspondence between Pascal and Fermat that concerned how to settle the winnings in a game of dice interrupted by the king’s gendarmerie. Solving this problem involved a developing a concept that, as Hacking puts it, is “Janus faced.” One face looks to the world and the other to the mind. Chance says something about the world -… Continue Reading – Probability: What it is and why it's so important and useful

Americans were obsessed with true crime even before My Favorite Murder became a popular podcast or Forensic Files and Dateline specials dominated our television screens. The premise of this course is that the genre we now call true crime had its origins in early American writings that sought to understand the relationship between juridical and divine law, providential design and free will, and the sinner and the criminal. We will begin this… Continue Reading – The Invention of True Crime in Early America

How has art articulated resistance to work – that is, to the imperative to labor for a living? Is there an alternative to working for a wage? Are artists workers? In this class we will explore the history of art’s resistance to the regime of work through fiction, poetry, film, and photography. The course focuses on four periods in four modules: “A Utopia of Leisure” looks at nineteenth-century opposition to capitalist industrialisation in art… Continue Reading – Art Against Work

The act of artistic creation is one of the profound mysteries of human existence. While thousands of artists and composers have endeavored over the centuries to make works of lasting value, only a select few have had the “divine spark”—the flash of brilliance, often viewed as coming from an omnipotent force, that resulted in a masterpiece that transcended its time and place. Precisely how these artists and composers have attained this goal is… Continue Reading – The Divine Spark: The Study of Genius in Music and Art

The practice of slavery goes back deep into Antiquity and is still found in some regions today. Its most extensive practice took place from 1450-1850 in the Age of Mercantile Capitalism and its legacy continues down to the present day.  Colonial era slavery involved the translocation of millions of people and its enormity has been compared with the European invasion of the Americas and the European Holocaust. Its vast literature covers… Continue Reading – Historical Archaeology of Slavery

Be it solar panels or biofuels, we all have favorite climate solutions. These proposals are often for technologies that are “just around the corner.” But greenhouse emissions need to be reduced now! How do we figure out which of these proposals would give us the biggest bang for a buck in terms of reducing emissions?  Should we keep chasing the “supply-side” ideas for more and more energy production, or should we look at the “demand-side… Continue Reading – Climate crisis: Shiny toys to the rescue?

This course will consist of an interdisciplinary inquiry into modes of disappearance, vanishing, becoming invisible, and getting lost in modern literature, music, and film.
 
Beginning with an appraisal of Lana del Rey (“How to Disappear”) and Radiohead (“How to Disappear Completely”), the course’s canon will span a wide spectrum of artworks, including literary classics such as H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man and more contemporary… Continue Reading – How to Disappear Completely

This course will examine the history of Eastern Europe, focusing on the experience of several groups in the region, including Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, to understand the lasting legacies of Nazi and Communist rule in the modern period. These populations were part of a historically rich multicultural, multifaith, and multilinguistic region that was homogenized in the 20th century due to war, genocide, political nationalism, and population… Continue Reading – Between Nazism and Communism

What do proteins, DNA, and RNA look like? Where do these molecules fit in your body and how do they work? This seminar will introduce you to the basics of biology in three dimensions (3D) using human anatomy, physiology, and disease as themes.
 
The focus of the Spring Semester 2024 Molecular View of Human Anatomy course will be to understand the 3D structures and functions of proteins that play key roles in Cancer Biology. Student… Continue Reading – Molecular View of Human Anatomy: Understanding and Treating Human Cancers