Courses

Quantitative research uses measurable data to formulate facts and uncover patterns in research, and is the standard in most scientific disciplines. Content courses help students generate research ideas, but do not teach them how to convert ideas into actual experiments. This course offers students the unique opportunity to gain hands-on experience on how to design, conduct, and analyze quantitative experiments. How do I create stimuli? How do… Continue Reading – Quantitative Research: A Hands-On Preparation

Index # 10966

Will Count Towards Anthropology MAJOR
Will Count Towards Anthropology MINOR

Global health is one of the fastest growing interdisciplinary fields of academic scholarship, and it has been instrumental in informing transnational interventions across the globe. Proponents of global health have highlighted the active ties between individuals and communities across geographies, as well… Continue Reading – Critical Outlooks on Global Health

Index # 19029

There have always been women in science, engineering, medicine, and mathematics, just not very many of them. The course introduces individual women who were exceptions in their time. We will also cover the contexts and unique cultures of the different sciences, including a discussion of the practical challenges women face in these disciplines. Students will be exposed to feminist epistemology and will learn to… Continue Reading – Women and Science

Index # 21276

Watersheds include more acreage of land than water. The geology, geography, history and uses of land directly influence the streams and rivers in a watershed. We will trace the many factors that give form and character to the Raritan River by exploring its history and the factors that influence its future. At the core of our studies will be the question: “Is it possible to make the Raritan fishable and swimmable?”… Continue Reading – Tracing the Raritan

Index # 10022

Will Count Towards SAS - Italian MAJOR
Will Count Towards SAS - Italian MINOR

The seminar addresses the representation of walking in Western culture. 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… Continue Reading – Walking in the Metropolis

Index # 10047

Will Count Towards SAS – Philosophy MAJOR
Will Count Towards SAS – Philosophy MINOR

The “problem of evil,” commonly phrased as the question, “why do bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad?,” began its life as a theological problem, as far back as the Old Testament’s Book of Job, but it’s also a modern secular problem, which began its life at least since Rousseau… Continue Reading – The Problem of Evil in Philosophy and Popular Culture

Index# 13690

Will NOT Count Towards Honors College MAJOR
Will NOT Count Towards Honors College MINOR

This course will introduce you to the current state of each component in the food, energy, and water (FEW) nexus before diving into the complexity of their relationships with each other and with underlying social-ecological systems (SES). Throughout the semester we will discuss the demands that… Continue Reading – The Food-Energy-Water Nexus in the Anthropocene

Index # 20149

Wellness is an optimal state of health of individuals and groups. There are two focal concerns: the realization of the fullest potential of an individual physically, psychologically, socially, spiritually and economically, and the fulfillment of one’s role expectations in the family, community, place of worship, workplace and other settings.

-The World Health Organization.

This course explores the… Continue Reading – The Big Think on Wellness

Index # 10021

Scapegoating and terrorism have been the bane of human history and are a serious problem for society today. As analyzed by René Girard in his classic study The Scapegoat, scapegoating involves the accusation and punishment of innocent victims for crimes they have not committed.  For Girard, scapegoats are always innocent of the specific charges laid against them; the accusations are always false; scapegoating… Continue Reading – Scapegoating, Terrorism and the Innocent Victim

Index # 20148

Will Count Towards SAS- English MAJOR
Will Count Towards SAS- English MINOR

In this course, we will read one volume of nonfiction prose, Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby. Solnit is an essayist, an independent scholar, a memoirist, a theorist, and an activist who has mastered the arts of curiosity: her interests range over natural disasters, crime, gender relations, the… Continue Reading – Reading in Slow Motion

Index # 10964

Will NOT Count Towards SAS – Computer Science MAJOR
Will NOT Count Towards SAS – Computer Science MINOR

This seminar will study polynomials and polynomiography. Polynomials are the most fundamental entities in all of STEM. Polynomiography unravels a new but beautiful facet of these mathematical abstractions through their algorithmic visualization in the search for their roots. Could… Continue Reading – Polynomials and Polynomiography

Index# 10963

Will Count Towards SAS – Political Science MAJOR
Will Count Towards SAS – Political Science MINOR

Issues of human reproduction are some of the most controversial of our age. Should abortion be banned or restricted? Does the fetus have rights separate from the pregnant woman? Should we permit the marketing of reproductive ‘parts’ and ‘services’—eggs, sperm and wombs? What is the… Continue Reading – Politics of Reproduction

Index# 10025

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-19th century. In 1839, Daguerre’s invention was presented as “a free gift to the world.” This course will look at how that gift has been put… Continue Reading – Photography: Theories and Practices of an International Medium

Index# 13774

Will Count Towards SAS – Spanish MAJOR
Will Count Towards SAS – Spanish MINOR

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… Continue Reading – One Mind. Two Languages.

Index# 10027

In honor of the fifth centenary of his death, this seminar examines the art and life of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), one of the most fascinating and influential figures in European cultural history. Perhaps best known as a painter, Leonardo was also an architect, sculptor, inventor, civil engineer, anatomist, and student of humankind and nature.  We will look at his multifaceted production within the context… Continue Reading – Leonardo, Universal Genius

Index# 10024

Will NOT Count Towards SAS – Jewish Studies MAJOR
Will NOT Count Towards SAS – Jewish Studies MINOR

The course has two goals: to introduce the concept of language evolution in the sense used by Salikoko Mufwene in his critique of traditional (historical linguistic) view of language contact, and to explore ways in which this concept can be adapted to describe cultural contact more… Continue Reading – Language Contact and Cultural Contact

Index# 18230

Will Count Towards SAS – English MAJOR
Will Count Towards SAS – English MINOR

In the 21st century, disease seems to belong to the clean, well-lighted place of fact and biology. And yet, illness and medical treatment take place in culture and are complicated by language, history, economics, and politics. We’ll read a range of 20th-and 21st-century fiction and nonfiction: stories… Continue Reading – Introduction to Health, Medicine, and Literature

Index# 12289

Will Count Towards SAS- Sociology MAJOR
Will Count Towards SAS- Sociology MINOR

This interdisciplinary honors seminar introduces students to the field of international migration and immigration studies in the United States. We will examine economic, demographic, political, and sociological theories used to inform research and policies pertaining to why people immigrate to the… Continue Reading – Immigration, Opportunity, and Belonging

Index# 12291

 A high-handed executive branch tries to operate alone. Ardent Protestants protest a mainstream culture they find ungodly. Women assume an increasingly central but controversial role across society. Resistance to scientific advances that unsettle old ways of thinking grows. Man-made environmental damage becomes an ethical flashpoint. Credit and resulting debt enable an explosion of growth but also threaten… Continue Reading – How Does Revolution Happen? Looking Through a Seventeenth-Century Cultural Lens

Index# 20147

Will Count Towards SAS –Asian Language & Cultures Major
Will Count Towards SAS –Asian Language & Cultures Minor

There are 24 chapters in the Odyssey, and we will be reading and discussing several of them each week in the translation by Robert Fitzgerald. The bulk of our seminar work together will simply be letting our minds and imaginations work on the text through close… Continue Reading – Homer's Odyssey: Mythology, Psychology and Politics

Index# 13691

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

The goal of this class is to address pressing ethical questions related to the development of sentient and non-sentient artificial intelligence. We will begin by examining competing accounts of personhood and how they have evolved along with emerging technologies. We will then explore the… Continue Reading – Ghost in the Machine: AI, Ethics, and Personhood

Index# 10023

Will NOT Count Towards SAS – Physics & Astronomy MAJOR
Will NOT Count Towards SAS – Physics & Astronomy MINOR

For centuries, humans have looked at the night sky and wondered whether we are alone, or whether we share the universe with advanced extraterrestrial civilizations. In recent years, this question has begun to move from the realm of speculation to the arena of scientific… Continue Reading – Extraterrestrial Life

Index# 10026

Will NOT Count Towards SC&I MAJOR
Will Count Towards SC&I MINOR

This course explores whether and how emerging digital technologies - such as social, mobile, wearable media; virtual worlds and games; sensor-laden devices and environments; robotics; drones; implantable chips; artificial intelligence - contribute to disruptive changes in relationships, organizations,… Continue Reading – Digital Technology and Disruptive Change

Index# 12290

Check with department for MAJOR/MINOR credit

The course explores key tropes that have informed the formation of a particularly Brazilian identity through the lenses of nature and culture. Though these might seem to be contradictory categories, they nevertheless constitute ways for thinking about Brazil’s unique character. Beginning with texts and images related to the conquest, the course takes… Continue Reading – Brazilian Culture: Conquest to Contemporary

Index# 19509

Will Count Towards SAS – Anthropology MAJOR
Will Count Towards SAS – Anthropology MINOR

How do humans and plants communicate? What kinds of social lives do plants lead in relation to humans, and humans in relation to plants? This course brings anthropological perspectives to these questions, and considers how language mediates plants-people relationality. Throughout the course, we… Continue Reading – Botanic Sociality: Plants, People, and the Senses that Bind Them

Index# 15134

Will NOT Count Towards SAS – Spanish & Portuguese MAJOR
Will Count Towards SAS - Spanish & Portuguese MINOR – only if written work is completed in Spanish

One theme of the seminar will be how bilinguals access words and generate sentences in their minds with a special focus on bilinguals’ ability to inhibit words from one language when speaking the other language and the… Continue Reading – Bilingualism: How It Shapes Our Minds

Index# 14343

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-founding… Continue Reading – Anti-Apartheid and Civil Rights Movements: King and Mandela, Lessons in Leadership

Index# 12334

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

Many of the most interesting questions about drug policy center on addiction.  Questions to be explored include: What is addiction?  Is there anything special about addictions to drugs, or are other activities (e.g., sex, gambling, etc.) also addictive?  Is addiction a disease or… Continue Reading – Addiction: Moral and Legal Issues

The goal of this class is to address the question “could a machine ever be a person, and what would the consequences be if the answer is yes?”. We will begin by examining competing accounts of personhood and how they have evolved with emerging technologies. We will then explore the rapidly advancing world of artificial intelligence, and try to determine if an artificial person is possible or likely, and whether we could know when a machine… Continue Reading – The Ghost in the Machine: AI, Ethics, and Personhood

This course will explore, describe, and attempt to define religion in American urban space during the twentieth century. By focusing on urbanization, diversity, and the cityscape, we will look at the ways that various groups worship, engage ritual, and organize in a religiously pluralistic environment. Both in class and through visits to different religious spaces, we will see how the city, the social concerns of urban environments,… Continue Reading – When God Came to the City: Urban Life and the Transformation of Religion

The seminar addresses the representation of walking in Western culture. 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 surroundings. Through… Continue Reading – Walking in the Metropolis

Our views of the universe have evolved in recent years by astronomical observations and experimental measurements performed in laboratories. We now have a better understanding of its initial conditions. In this course, we will be discussing what the universe is made of and what holds it together. Knowledge from various subfields of physics including nuclear, particle, quantum and astrophysics is required to describe the universe, especially… Continue Reading – Three Minutes after the Big Bang

What is the actual effect of “Freudianism” on life in this century?  How are Freud’s ideas widely misunderstood and misappropriated, and which ideas have been correctly assimilated in our culture?  Is Freud really anti-woman, anti-homosexuality, and obsessed with sex to the exclusion of all other cultural experience, as is often charged?  In this course, we will read some of the most fascinating of Freud’s essays on culture and… Continue Reading – Third Millennium Freud: Cutting Edge or Chopping Block?

The “problem of evil,” commonly phrased as the question, “why do bad things happen to good people, and good things to bad?,” began its life as a theological problem, as far back as the Old Testament’s Book of Job, but it’s also a modern secular problem, which began its life at least since Rousseau’s public dispute with Voltaire midway through the eighteenth century, as Susan Neiman has convincingly argued in her 2002 Evil in Modern Thought (… Continue Reading – The Problem of Evil in Philosophy and Popular Culture

“Call me Ishmael.”  Moby-Dick’s opening line is one of the most famous in all of world literature.  2019 will mark the 200th anniversary of Herman Melville’s birth and provides an apt time to explore the continued resonance of his best-known work.  A critical and popular failure when it was first published in 1851, Moby-Dick, as the novel’s narrator says of the eponymous whale, has become “not only ubiquitous, but immortal (for… Continue Reading – The Many Lives of Moby-Dick: "Not only ubiquitous, but immortal"

We live in the Anthropocene, an epoch whose predominant narrative is one of decline and fall—of transformation, deterioration, and loss. Transformative changes in production of secure and sustainable food, energy, and water (FEW) sources are among the most significant challenges of the Anthropocene. This course invites student to identify the most promising opportunities to increase sustainability at the FEW nexus, and to identify the most… Continue Reading – The Food-Energy-Water Nexus in the Anthropocene

The class will focus on the following problem. How can we explain the temporal asymmetries we experience in everyday life—that coffee cools and ice melts, not the reverse; that light appears in a room after we flip the switch, not before; that we have memories of the past and not the future; that we can causally affect the future but not the past—when the underlying laws of physics are symmetric in time, allowing for the time-reversed… Continue Reading – The Direction of Time

After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has been held up as a blank slate for the dreams of reformers and entrepreneurs of all stripes to reinvent schooling, housing, and cultural production, amongst other realms. The previous mayor, Mitch Landrieu, has stated that “New Orleans is the nation’s most immediate lab for innovation and change.” Others, like Naomi Klein, have cast the Post-Katrina transformation of the city in a more critical light,… Continue Reading – The American City as Racial Laboratory: Experiments from New Orleans to San Francisco

Science communication is an integral part of scientists’ everyday lives.  From writing papers and proposals, to giving talks, creating lectures, or composing tweets, it is imperative for scientists to learn how to effectively communicate to a wide range of audiences in order to be successful.  Science communication has become a field within the scientific community in recent years and it generally refers to the public presentation… Continue Reading – Talk Science to Me

The spectacles of violence against people of color, acts of xenophobia, and patterns of persistent racial inequalities (of housing, health care, and education) across the United States remind us that earlier celebrations of an American “post-racial” society were strikingly premature.  Political rhetoric and policies of the last few years, in fact, point to a rapid return to racial incivility.  But what does a “post-racial” or “… Continue Reading – Race, Culture, and Colorblindness