Connections 200-400 Level

This course explores the relationship between African Americans and American law, especially but not exclusively American constitutional law. The first part of the course examines important antebellum cases such as Scott v. Sanford (Dred Scott).The second part of the course traces two conflicting trajectories of legal decisions that emerged as the federal courts sought to determine whether and how the fourteenth amendment altered race relations in America. The final part of the course begins with the landmark Brown decision and then examines two important domains of American law: race, law, and American educational practices (e.g. desegregation, busing, affirmative action, school assignment policies) and race, law, and the workplace (e.g. employment discrimination, affirmative action).

This course examines the distinct historical experience of African American women and explores the importance of race and of gender in the American past. Some of the topics considered include African American women and slavery, free black women in antebellum America, African American women and reform, issues of the family in slavery and freedom, sexuality and reproductive issues, African American women and the world of work, African American women in the struggle for education, and African American women and organized politics. The exploration of values is an important component of the course. Readings emphasize the use of primary sources ranging from slave narratives to contemporary fiction.

This course employs an interdisciplinary approach to explore the history and expressive culture of the civil rights era. Emphasizing what historians call the "long civil rights movement," the course explores earlier strategies of resistance, the civil rights and black power movements, and legacies of these movements. An interdisciplinary approach is particularly applicable for a course focused on the civil rights movement because the literature of racial protest and of the "black arts" was not simply parallel to the political upheavals. As Amiri Baraka put it in 1971, "Art is Politics." Readings and assignments engage the complex, sometimes contradictory, legal, political, literary, artistic, and musical responses of this charged historical period, and the intersecting struggles over knowledge, power, and identity.

This course examines the renaissance of African American literature, music, and visual art that, for the most part, emerges from Harlem, a cultural hub in the 1920s and 1930s. The course also approaches the literature, music, and visual art, as well as the social changes in Harlem, from different disciplinary perspectives, including literary criticism, cultural history, music criticism, art criticism, and aesthetic theory. Students explore social and aesthetic debates that arose during the Harlem Renaissance and connect these to parallel debates today. Students also make connections between and among different artists and thinkers of the period, including Langston Hughes, W.E.B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Jean Toomer, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Wallace Thurman, Claude McKay, Sargent Johnson, Romare Bearden, Cab Calloway, Bessie Smith, and Walter White. The course invites students to make connections between literature, visual art, and music from the period and between the Harlem Renaissance and their own ideas about art and society.

This course takes as its central object the idea of race. Race is understood as a social construct that designates relations of structural difference and disparity. How race is treated is a crucial issue in this course. It is in this question of 'the how' that the term narrative becomes salient. The term narrative intentionally focuses attention on the material practices through which we have come to define race as a social construct. This terminology, 'narratives of race' spotlights an interest in investigating the historical events and visual and verbal images employed in the linking, patterning, sequencing, and relaying our ways of knowing race and its social relations. Implicated in the construction of race is its production and deployment of the moral and intellectual values that our academic disciplines bear. In considering such values as part of the investigation, this course includes careful comparative analyses of the ways in which the disciplinary systems of ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, and politics are used in the making and remaking of the academic and social grammars of race. Thus the analysis necessarily includes an intertextualization of the several academic disciplines engaging the question of race.

This course investigates women as creators, patrons, and subjects of art from the sixteenth through the twentieth centuries. We will study individual histories of female artists alongside some critical theories around gender, sexuality and representation, in order to explore the gendering of artistic practice and the practices of representing gendered subjects. The course explores questions like: How does gender change our understanding of art and the meanings associated with art? Did women's artwork or commissions differ from those of men, and if so, in what ways? What were the range of meanings for woman as subject matter? What do these images tell us about women's changing positions and roles in family and society? What different positions have women adopted in relation to representing, looking and being represented? The course approaches this history chronologically and thematically, covering themes like patronage, markets, portraiture, the craft-art separation, and modernism; and in order to widen our perspective and achieve broader conclusions, we will consider case studies of women as artists, patrons, and subjects in India, China, Japan and the Ottoman Empire. Class sessions will combine short lectures with in-depth discussions of readings and images, student presentations, and film viewings/discussions.

Martial arts culture, an invented tradition still in the making, is a site where the cultural, political, and social intersect. At once national, diasporic, and transnational, it challenges and redefines established boundaries and collapses dualisms such as East vs. West and traditional vs. modern. It is therefore a promising entry point into discussions of cultural exchanges in the global context. From a transhistorical and cross-media perspective, this course engages multiple disciplinary approaches -- including literary studies, film and media studies, history, religion, gender studies, and cultural studies -- to examine the representations of martial arts culture in Chinese literature as well as in films from China and other East Asian countries. Through a close examination of 1) historical records and traditional short stories, 2) twentieth-century martial arts novels, and 3) martial arts and Kung Fu cinema, students will gain a historically informed understanding of the martial arts tradition and its cultural and political significance at different historical moments and in various locations. Students will also read selected scholarly works to enter the academic conversation on this topic.

The arrival of the first Portuguese trade ship in Japan in 1542 brought to Japan and some European countries a new and different Other that forced both sides to reevaluate their understanding of their own cultures. A wide range of texts produced during the first 100 years of that encounter document how both sides struggled to define the new cultures they found and place them in the context of their known worlds, even as those worlds were often changed by that process. Using a multidisciplinary approach, students will examine letters, maps, reports, religious treatises, legal documents, and literary accounts produced by European traders and missionaries on the one hand, and by Japanese officials, religious scholars and chroniclers on the other, to identify the discourses that these documents constructed of the Other during this period. They will analyze which voices dominated those discourses and which were silenced, what political, economic and religious factors influenced them, and what power those discourses exerted over relations between Japan and Europe. Finally, they will read two 20th-century Japanese fictional accounts of the period and watch an American film, and examine how those earlier discourses were employed in the analysis of contemporary issues and themes.

This course explores the interactions of Asian peoples ' the commodities, social practices, and ideas which they produce ' across borders, both political and imagined. The course crosses disciplinary borders, as well, drawing upon divergent materials from the humanities and social sciences in an attempt to do justice to a contemporary context that could be called 'Asia in motion.' An underlying thesis holds that, since nineteenth-century colonialism, nations in the 'West' and 'Asia' participate in a global, dialectical movement in which notions of identity (national, cultural, ethnic, religious, territorial, linguistic) share moments of fluidity and fixity.

This course examines a variety of topics related to health law, public health policy, and bioethics. No prerequisites are required. This interdisciplinary course delves into the tension between the public health needs of the community and individual rights in law-based public health interventions by analyzing legal texts and case studies. Topics covered may include public health emergencies, mental health treatments, criminalization of HIV transmission and exposure, criminalization of drug use during pregnancy, embryo transfer laws, youth sports concussion regulations, confinement conditions of the incarcerated, HIPAA, GINA, organ donation guidelines, vaccine exemptions, forced sterilization cases, and drug patents. Students are expected to actively participate in discussions, debates, and role-playing exercises based on assigned readings. The course materials include legal texts, health law cases, public health literature, bioethics articles, feminist literature, and film.

This course delves into the ethical and social implications of emerging biotechnologies and the integration of AI in healthcare. The course examines the transformative role of cutting-edge biotechnological innovations and AI not only in healthcare but also in shaping human interactions and our understanding of human identity such as race. Key ethical topics explored may include AI applications in healthcare and biomedical research, AI caregivers, AI doctors, AI dolls, digital health, genomics and the implications of big data, deep brain stimulation therapy, neurorights and mental privacy concerns, pursuits of life extension and immortality, induced pluripotent stem cells, animal ethics in biotechnological contexts, and green bioethics. Students are encouraged to actively engage in discussions, debates, and role-playing exercises based on assigned readings and materials. These materials include a range of sources, including bioethics literature, legal documents, biomedical and science literature, films, podcasts, and videos.

Literary text-mining is a decades-old field that uses quantitative methods to answer enduring literary questions about texts' meaning, significance, politics, context, and more. Text-mining methods offer researchers the chance to answer new questions at larger scales. This course introduces students to a variety of computational methods, from foundational counting methods to machine-learning. Students will investigate several literary datasets using Jupyter notebooks or Pycharm and the Python programming language. No prior experience in literary theory or Python is required; different paths through the course are available for students with significant coding experience.

This class explores how new trends and technologies in the fields of biological sciences and biotechnology influence emerging art and artists. The course looks at the world around us from differing perspectives, with the aid of technology, biological phenomena, and artistic eye. The class is designed for students of all disciplines, including the non-declared, with the goal to inspire students to think outside of the box, explore divergent and convergent thought, and seek out knowledge and inspiration from many different disciplines. Students are encouraged to collaborate with peers. Satisfies the Connections core requirement.

This course addresses the question what it means to be British through historical and literary texts. Beginning with the premise that Britishness is not innate, static or in any way permanent, but 'invented' and constantly constructed and deconstructed, this course traces the development of British national identity from its origins in the eighteenth century to the present. Students read both historical and literary works that elucidate the changing meaning of 'Britishness' as the state expanded and collided with its counterparts on the British Isles and its imperial holdings in other countries. The course examines the formation of 'racial' identities as they intersect with class and gender identities.

The art and science of distilling alcohol dates back to the fourth century BC. Today, making hooch is something that nearly every society has in common. Moonshine from Tennessee, mescal from Oaxaca, palinka from Hungary, airag from Mongolia, feni from India, cachaça from Brazil, sopi from Indonesia, the list goes on and on. While fermentation and distillation are nearly universal in human society, every flavor of hooch has its own botanical, chemical, cultural, economic, and political story to tell. This class takes a cross-disciplinary approach to the study of hooch, from yeast and plant to bottle to society. Students read scientific, historical, anthropological, and political economic texts, watch films, listen to music, and participate in experiential learning modules designed to teach the art and science of liquor production. Students leave the class with a clearer understanding the biology and chemistry behind their libations and how these drinks are both shaped and have helped shape the world we live in.

This course engages scientific and social scientific disciplinary approaches to environmental issues. While environmental issues reflect certain empirical realities about our physical world, they come to our attention through human contests over values. This course uses environmental science to understand the factors behind and consequences of a wide range of issues like pollution, climate change and declining biodiversity. It also employs social science to understand the relationship of human behaviors to environmental conditions¿and the important role governments play. The class analyzes the values, incentives, and strategies of political actors affecting environmental policy and the institutional contexts in which they operate. After building a foundation in scientific and social scientific approaches and understandings, the course carefully considers alternative scenarios for environmental solutions.

How do societies shape their collective identities based on their pasts? Who gets to decide how the past is remembered and what are the roles of governments, museums, memorials and monuments in narrating it? How do societies choose to debate and reinterpret formative historical events? This course explores these questions by focusing on collective memory in contemporary Europe. The main themes of this course are memories of the Holocaust, European empires and communism that continue to shape identity, culture and politics in countries across Europe. The course draws on different disciplinary perspectives and a wide range of source materials to explore these themes. Affiliated with History.

Technological innovations over the past several decades have greatly increased our ability to tell stories in which the reader's choices affect the narrative. These can range from text-based novels in electronic form that contain a couple of branching plot points, to episodes of television shows that require the viewer to select an option to advance the narrative, to sophisticated computer and video games featuring multiple alternative storylines. Historically, the term "interactive fiction" has tended to refer to computer-enabled stories that are text-based. This course focuses primarily on parser-based interactive fiction, in which the reader types commands indicating the action she wishes to perform. However, it also considers some choice-based works, in which the reader selects his action from a list of options. Students will learn some of the history of interactive fiction; read and analyze several works of interactive fiction; learn Inform 7, a programming language designed to create interactive fiction; and write their own works of interactive fiction using Inform 7.

Designers, engineers, and artists are beginning to use biologically inspired or biologically derived materials for solving a variety of world issues--from self-cooling buildings inspired by beehives to sticky tape inspired by geckos to DNA origami. This has influenced a variety of fields such as architecture, technology, visual art and fashion design. This course provides a broad framework of such design principles in use and allows students to create their own biologically inspired designs.

The U.S. has 2.3 million people in prison with glaring racial and class disparities. Why is this? Is there something distinctive about American culture and/or politics that produces these outcomes? Are we simply a more crime-prone people or a more punitive people who impose exceptionally harsh sanctions? This class will explore changing ideas of crime and punishment in the U.S. through philosophical, historical, religious and social scientific perspectives. Students will also look at the U.S in a comparative context, seeking to understand how different democratic political systems confront problems of crime and punishment. The class looks specifically at issues such as mental health in prison, the death penalty and restorative justice.

Drawing from the biological, behavioral, and social sciences, as well as ethics and public policy, this course provides the opportunity to explore intrinsic and extrinsic factors that contribute to and detract from health and human performance. By applying concepts and critical thinking processes developed in this course to personal lifestyle and political decisions, students are prepared to make more informed choices on emerging personal and policy issues related to health. The course emphasizes holistic approaches to understanding and preventing disease. Both allopathic and alternative interventions are explored. Major topics include defining health; therapeutic options including allopathic, complementary (e.g., homeopathy, Chinese medicine, etc.), and more experimental approaches (e.g., gene therapy); the central, somatic, and autonomic nervous systems; psychobiology; stress and stress management methods; approaches to prevention and treatment of conditions such as cancer and AIDS; issues in public policy and financing of mainstream and alternative healing approaches; ethical dilemmas such as informed consent, confidentiality, compliance, health care directives, allocation of resources, euthanasia, dying, grieving, and hospice.

The emergence of Islamic fundamentalism and Islamist political thought in the twentieth century has garnered much media attention in the last few decades. This course examines how Islamic fundamentalism developed in the first half of the twentieth century in the wake of Western colonization and why it gained so much support during the second half of the century. The course develops in three stages: (1) historical background of Muslim confrontations with the West and the emergence of fundamentalism, (2) case studies of selected Muslim countries and regions, and finally (3) discussion of challenges and problems of fundamentalism in a pluralistic world. Similarly, the course examines the major intellectual figures of Islamist thought and its malcontents in the Middle East, the Indian Subcontinent, and the Muslim communities of Europe and the Americas. Examples include: Hassan al-Banna, Abu Ala Mawdudi, Sayyid Qutb, Ayatollah Khomeini, Usama bin Ladin, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Khaled Abou El Fadl, Sherman Jackson, among others. Islamist ideas of modernity and the revival of a traditionalist approach towards the life and sayings of the Prophet Muhammad is also discussed. Finally, students take a close look at the idea of jihad and discuss the implications of Sharia law for the twenty-first century.

This course uses the disciplinary lenses of psychology and literary studies to examine how the world looks and feels from the perspective of someone who is a member of an oppressed or negatively stereotyped group. The course provides an introduction to the assumptions, scientific methods, and forms of writing used by experimental social psychologists and to theories and research findings bearing on the experience of prejudice. Analysis of literary texts including poetry, fiction, and autobiography provide additional insights into the experience of prejudice. Integration and synthesis occurs by comparing and contrasting the two approaches, using psychology as a lens for analyzing literature, using literature as a source of ideas to inform psychology, and considering how insights gained from both approaches might be used together to create positive personal or social change.

Germans are still asking themselves the question: "What does it mean to be German?" Throughout its recent history, Germany has repeatedly turned to Berlin, its re-designated (and re-designed) capital, in an attempt to find its own identity. In this way, Berlin could be seen as a mirror of German affairs. Emphasizing the textual and visual histories of the city, this interdisciplinary course explores the effects of transition and upheaval on Berlin, highlighting the interconnectivity of history and memory discourses, topography, popular culture, the arts, politics, urban renewal, and multiculturalism. Discussions focus on Berlin's ever-changing façade and constant self-reinvention and re-evaluation. Definitions of "metropolis" and close readings of the city as "textual space" will be covered within the framework of questions of modernity and post-modernity. The class meets on-campus during ten weeks of the spring semester, with individual consultations and preparation for Germany thereafter, and has a required study-abroad component that will take the class to Berlin for five weeks during summer to engage the course themes first-hand. No previous German-language experience or coursework is required. Course taught in English.

This course examines the effects of water use, dams, and habitat on salmon in the Columbia basin through multi-disciplinary perspectives including art, history, policy, and ecology. Water and Wild Nature in the Columbia Basin begins in the summer. A series of readings will prepare students for a two week summer study away component and optional one week rafting trip on the Middle Fork Salmon river. Pacific Northwest history, identity, Lower and Upper Columbia tribes' cultural practices, climate change, and ecology will inform this course's content.

This course examines the rise of nationalism in continental Europe from 1789 to 1918, a period beginning with the French Revolution and ending with World War One. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship, the course explores a period when modern nationalism emerged as a coherent way of seeing the world and then emerged as the principle ideology for organizing states and societies in Europe. Primary focus is on highly interrelated nation-building projects in five parts of Europe: France, Germany, Hapsburg Austria, Poland, and Russia. Seminar discussions draw on major theoretical works on nationalism as well as primary source texts like speeches, literary works, memoirs and diaries written by Europeans who embraced or struggled with national identity.

The objective of this course is to cultivate an appreciation of the intersection of a sociological and historical approach to understanding the complexity and dynamics of race relations and multiculturalism in the American context. Using scholarly resources from these two distinct disciplinary traditions, the course provides students with a comparative and critical appreciation of the development of race relations in the United States. In examining the concrete historical developments and sociological patterns in race/ethnic relations, the course enables student to develop a more nuanced and comprehensive appreciation of a multidisciplinary approach to the study of race relations and multiculturalism. Through such an integrated approach, students better recognize and understand the unfolding of relations among different racial/ethnic groups; better appreciate current conflicts; and explore the significance of ethnic membership in shaping our social world.

While Americans have assorted perspectives on capitalism, many students arrive on campus with critical assessments of this socio-economic system. In this course, students will develop a significant scholarly foundation in the history of capitalism, its expansion to global dominance, and in theorists' assessment of its impact. We'll commence this gargantuan task with an anthropological lens attentive to how others in this world have experienced capitalism. But our journey over the semester will immerse students in philosophy, in political economy, in geography, in history, in sociology, in communications, and journalism, in activism, and in a panoply of other fields. In the final accounting, we'll return to anthropology's interdisciplinary lens, concerned as it is with the entire mosaic of human societies, both past and present, their many differences, and the diverse social and cultural forms still extant in the world today. Amidst that diversity, it is certainly the case that capitalism has been the most expansive and most successful socioeconomic model in human history. But amongst other outcomes, it also seems starkly detrimental to the very diversity from which it first arose. An exploration and discussion of those tensions is the crux of this course.

Using gender as the primary focus, this course engages students in critical analysis of the ways in which symbol systems in their cultural contexts function to create subjective spaces (e.g. assign specific roles) for particular groups of people. Students learn how communication practices shape the ways gender is viewed, how these practices constrain or promote resistance, and how individuals and groups negotiate their subjective spaces and 'genderized' practices. Students study the role of imagery and language in constructing gendered identities, the social construction of culturally defined categories such as masculinity and femininity, the gendered body, and contemporary trends of theories on gender to examine gender across race, class, nation, and empire. Additionally, students make connections between their everyday lives, their specific disciplinary backgrounds, and the course materials.

This course in intellectual history draws upon history, religion, anthropology, and sociology in order to understand how the cagtegories of `religion' and `magic' have been shaped by the Western, and largely Christian-influenced, tradition. `Magic' and `religion' arose out of the history of the West's engagement with internal groups decried as `deviant,' such as medieval `heretics,' or Catholics in the Protestant imagination, and then, during colonialism, in response to other societies and cultures. The course draws upon a range of disciplines to examine how intellectual categories are dynamic, how they shaped over time, and how particular assumptions and viewpoints inform the creation of these categories.

This course explores the intersection of economics and happiness. It critiques several of the key assumptions in mainstream economic theory, in particular those involving how the production and acquisition of greater material goods affect well-being. The course taps the research in the burgeoning field of the economics of happiness, much of which counters traditional economic ideas. The course also draws on recent related findings in positive psychology and to a lesser degree in neuroscience, specifically the findings in neuroscience that relate to mindfulness and meditation. In addition, the course utilizes several metrics (such as the Genuine Progress Indicator and the Happy Planet Index) to assess the happiness and well-being of different countries; these measures are juxtaposed with the standard measure of economic well-being: Gross Domestic Product (GDP). One of the alternative measures to GDP, Bhutan's Gross National Happiness, serves as a vehicle to further consider the implications of Buddhist wisdom for economics. While examining these alternative measures, students consider the implications for social policy regarding issues such as consumerism, inequality, ecological sustainability and work-family balance.

In this course, students take on the challenge of quantitative modeling of Earth's climate. This is done by employing high-level computer programming languages (such as Python) to build original computer codes, and by learning to manipulate existing codes (such as Global Climate Models). Modeling focuses on energy, winds, and carbon flows through the atmosphere, on a global scale. Students also acquire systems thinking skills that frame the nonlinear processes inherent to climate dynamics, especially feedbacks, time delays, and the notion of stocks and flows. These skills and insights are designed to provide students quantitative grounding for addressing climate change: its drivers, predictions, consequences, and mitigation. While computer programming skills are taught from the ground up, it is expected that students possess a baseline familiarity with scientific methods and algorithmic thinking as taught in foundational (100-level) college-level courses, as well as an enthusiasm for developing quantitative computational modeling.

Ways of identifying vary and are informed by both lived experience and aspects of biology. Our language around identity, gender identity in particular, has grown and evolved over time. Yet there remains a critical gap in understanding the contribution of biology and the biological sexes to this deeply personal psychosocial construct. There is, however, a growing body of literature that demonstrates that the sex of the brain itself (i.e. sex-typical patterns of neural organization), genetic sex (i.e. chromosomal sex), and phenotypic sex (i.e. how ones body develops and presents) can be disassociated from one another. That disassociation speaks to a biological reality that is not adequately (or often accurately) codified by the dominant social construct of gender. This course examines the intricacies and nuances of sexual differentiation with the goal of understanding this process from a multi-level view from which solid inferences can be made as to the biological underpinnings of certain aspects of gender and sexual identity formation variability.

In 2012, seven neuroscientists collaborated to write the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness--effectively stating that many other species, including octopuses, have the same neurobiological mechanisms that are associated with conscious awareness in humans. This multidisciplinary course integrates perspectives and concepts from biology, psychology, and philosophy as well as ethics and law to further explore the nonhuman animal mind. Topics include what consciousness is and whether it has a physical home in the brain, why being conscious might be evolutionarily adaptive to species other than humans, specific tasks scientists have developed to assess consciousness in other species, as well as ethical, legal, and societal repercussions of deeming other species conscious. Students who have some background or interest in biology, neuroscience, and/or psychology may find this course particularly relevant.

This course explores the history of the United States during the "long 1960s." Focusing especially on topics and themes in political, social, and cultural history, the course emphasizes the movements for change that challenged existing norms in arenas as varied as race relations, sexuality, gender, and foreign affairs, and engages the intersection of politics and art in these contests. Employing methods and sources from a range of disciplines, key themes in the course include the construction of cultural concepts of liberalism and conservatism, of gradualism and radicalism; the complications of alliance across racial, class and gender lines; Americans' often conflicting views of themselves, of the responsibilities of citizenship, and of their role in the world; the complex role of the media in shaping those understandings; the complicated relationship between activism and the counterculture on the one hand, and between events at home and abroad on the other; the exposure of secrecy and abuse of power in the government and a corresponding growth of distrust among the citizenry; and generational conflict. This course counts as an upper-division elective in the History Major

The goal of this course is to provide an in-depth, accurate understanding of mindfulness, from both an academic and experiential perspective. The history of mindfulness is examined, including its roots in Buddhism, along with the more recent integration of mindfulness practice in Western psychology. The course explores what mindfulness is, common misconceptions about mindfulness and mindfulness meditation, how mindfulness works, and also the qualities and virtues cultivated in mindfulness practice. Both through readings as well as applied practice, the course explores different forms of mindfulness meditation, from present-moment awareness in everyday life and activities, to formal sitting meditation, body awareness, walking meditation, loving-kindness meditation, and movement-based meditations including qi gong. Throughout, the course is grounded in an exploration into the science and neuroscience of mindfulness, including research evidence on the effects of mindfulness practice and mindfulness-based interventions on the brain, immune system, physiological stress reactivity, and overall physical and psychological health. Along the way, the course addresses important questions about the self and the mind, through the lenses of philosophy, psychology, and contemporary neuroscience. These questions include: Is there such a thing as a self? Is there such a thing as a mind, which is separate from the brain? And if so, how are the mind and brain related?

Rome Sketchbooks and Space Studies synthesizes studio art practices and art historical methodologies to explore representations of landscape and the social and aesthetic implications of select public spaces, culminating in a three-week study abroad experience centered in Rome, Italy. Experiential sketchbook exercises complement weekly reading assignments and more sustained independent research assignments. Additionally, this course explores connections between American landscape painting and public sites and historically significant sites in Italy. Connections 370 meets once a week during spring semester followed by a three-week intensive trip to Italy.

This course considers the connections between literature and history in (and beyond) the American era known as the Gilded Age, 1873-1889. Reading three popular novels of the time, William Dean Howell's The Rise of Silas Lapham, Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, students gain an understanding of the American Realist tradition and will discuss how these literary texts both represent and reinvent what was 'real' about the Gilded Age. To gain an understanding of social developments and concerns beyond the literary, students read speeches, essays, and excerpts from longer works, rounding out this historical contextualization with contemporary essays and film relevant to our study. Ultimately, student in the course study the interplay between literary and historical subject matter and methodology in shaping a lasting and influential myth about the emergence of American might.

Why do people see? What is color? How do people see? How do people think of and label color? These questions involve a highly interdisciplinary understanding of chemistry, physics, biology, studio art and art history. This class exposes students to the history of color and the understanding of color theory, i.e., the principles that define color contrast and interaction. Many interesting stories and cultural practices are associated with different colors. Students explore select, compelling narratives and cultural associations integral to the use and development of distinct pigments and colors. Students discover the relational nature of color and its role in evoking expressive content, communicating symbolically, and creating illusions of space and sensations of light. They discuss influential visual artists who have changed the way color is organized, opened up new perceptual possibilities, and experimented with new pigments and dyes. Students are initially exposed to the complex and beautiful steps (both chemically and physically) in the process of human vision, from initial light source to the signal in the brain. This fundamental background concerning the interactions of light and matter are continuously reflected upon as the history of color unfolds. The course explores subtractive and additive color systems through the history of pigments, dyes, and technologies that project light, such as modern day computer screens.

This class takes a penetrating look at the burgeoning scholarly interest in Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and its possible relevance to ancient combat in Greece and Rome. Extensive readings include selections from Homer's Iliad, Odyssey, the tragedies Aias and Herakles Mainomenos, and Roman battle accounts. Students then look at how various of these works have been interpreted as proof of PTSD in the ancient world, most notably by psychologist Jonathan Shay, but also by an increasing number of classical scholars. Modern studies of the causes of PTSD, its definition, and how it is diagnosed provide theories of how combat causes traumatic injury. Along the way students engage with first hand accounts of combatants from multiple periods and battle zones. Each student then writes a research paper that explores a pre-industiral account of combat using the theoretical models from modern psychological and social scientific writing as well as modern comparanda. Students reach their own conclusions, but must argue with sophistication and demonstrate an awareness of the different types of evidence and the particular challenges posed by each source and approach. Is human reaction to trauma situational or inherent or a bit of both?

This course examines the literature produced by and about Britain's colonial spaces during the process of decolonization, from the late nineteenth-century to the present. It explores texts from Ireland, India, the Sudan, and Trinidad, as well as other former colonies and territories. Authors studied include Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, Tayeb Salih, Sam Selvon, Buchi Emecheta, Salman Rushdie, and Zadie Smith; theorists considered include Gayatri Spivak, Aijiz Ahmad, Homi Bhabha, John Boli, Benjamin Barber, and Lourdes Beneria. This course understands the term postcolonial in its broadest sense, with its focus spanning texts written under colonialism that argue for decolonization to texts that address such properly postcolonial issues as neocolonialism and globalization. The study of fiction and postcolonial theory is complemented by readings drawing from political theory, sociology, gender studies, and economics. Course requirements include active participation, discussion leadership, a conference-style presentation, two short essays, and a final project.

Children are unique in American law as they are caught somewhere between adult and non-existent status. At least in theory the law is separate from individual moral beliefs or institutional ethical standards, but children blur such distinction. This course attempts to examine the evolution and future of children in the American legal system under legal, ethical, and moral perspectives, while likely recognizing that any pure compartmentalization is impossible. The course addresses issues such as when a 'child' exists, what rights may exist before birth, the allocation of power between the state and parents, children's rights within educational frameworks, child abuse and neglect, medical treatment decisions for children, child custody, juvenile delinquency, and limitation on minors' liberties. While students focus on children, they find that these topics lead to broader issues such as social media and human trafficking. Case law is the primary analytic tool; students also use select readings from narrative, professional, and other sources as necessary to supplement content or structure.

Students in this cross-disciplinary course develop an understanding of both the historical and contemporary experiences of African-American business leaders in the United States. Black business leaders herein are defined as either entrepreneurs or as managers and executives working within for-profit enterprises. Students draw connections and contrasts between critical issues and decisions facing black business leaders past and present by analyzing the influence of racism and prejudice on the evolution of American black capitalism. Among the broader topics are black business intellectualism, business-government relations, gender and black enterprise, and celebrity-athlete entrepreneurship.

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of the mind that exists at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, and anthropology among other fields. There are now burgeoning research programs devoted to developing accounts of the cognitive foundations of morality and religion. This is an upper level survey of some of the leading views from these fields. Topics to be covered may include: the role of emotions and reason in moral deliberation; the nature of our moral intuitions; whether the scientific study of the mind can help us decide between competing moral theories; whether cognitive scientific accounts of moral psychology show morality to be a sham; the elements of mind involved in the formation of religious belief; whether religion is a kind of evolutionary byproduct; whether religion is a part of human nature; and whether scientific accounts of the cognitive foundations of religion show religious beliefs to be irrational.

As a Connections course, this class examines the changing relations between China and Latin America using a full range of social-scientific and humanistic methods to understand the nature and stakes of this newest wave of transpacific relations. The course examines historical encounters between the regions, including the colonial, cold war, and contemporary, in order to interrogate both the changing meaning of China and Latin America and also the implications of these changes on the social, economic, and political relations between the two regions. By focusing on diverse spaces of encounter, including international organizations, state negotiations, popular cultural production, activism, social media, and business relations, the course materials highlight the diverse actors, institutions, and arenas shaping transregional politics. The course also explores a range of contemporary issues, such as extractivism and energy, illicit economies, new forms of entrepreneurism, food security, shifting diasporic identity, and state politics, to highlight the dynamics that form the ground for debate, controversy, and collaboration between the two regions. Some background in Asian or Latin American Studies is recommended, but not required.

This course explores the political, cultural, historical, and social footprint of urban life in the contemporary era of unprecedented mobility. Students explore scholarly frameworks used to understand contemporary migration and mobility, and the foundational scholarship that shapes our conceptualization of urban space and the urban landscape. Putting theories regarding state formation of immigration regimes into conversation with the lived experience of migrants in the urban landscape provides a multidimensional vantage point on the patterns and consequences of migration. After students develop these theoretical foundations, they deploy these new perspectives in field excursions in the Puget Sound region, framed by a series of series of lecture/discussions and encounters with a number of experts, specialists, and practitioners concerned with Tacoma. Lectures, guest speakers, and field excursions focus on the city's history of migration, the legal framework governing contemporary admittance, the lived experience of foreigners' place-making in the city, the interactions between migration flows and the built landscape of the city, and the cultural web through which the foreign presence is framed. These themes are then carried abroad: At the conclusion of the semester, students depart on a faculty-led trip to cities in Europe and the Middle East, and work closely with faculty to conduct independent research projects that conclude the course.

This interdisciplinary Connections course brings together atmospheric science and economics to explore the climate change problem. Students address this overarching question: How do science and economics inform and direct climate change policy? To answer this question, students begin the course by working with climate data to see firsthand evidence of climate change. As students gain competence with data manipulation, they apply those skills to economic models and concepts. No prerequisites are required but ECON 170 is recommended. This course satisfies the policy elective requirement for the Environmental Policy and Decision Making program.

This course examines the relationship between the evolving nature of work in the US over the last 50 years and concurrent developments in educational policies. The relationship between work and public education is complex. It is one thing to argue for an education agenda that emphasizes 'higher cognitive outcomes' for everyone based on current and future trends in the nature of work in the US. Yet it may be too much to expect that even a highly successful education system alone can shape and sustain an economy. This course addresses how technology and globalization place new demands on work in advanced economies as well as how these new demands translate into dramatic proposals for changing the nature of public school education in the US and selected Asian countries. A final theme in the course considers the issues of poverty and diversity by examining the children of highly mobile, generally low wage workers and the way they affect public education.

In 1872, Prussian-born and longtime Brooklyn resident John Gast painted "American Progress," an artistic rendering of Americans' dominant-cultural belief that they were destined to expand throughout the continent. In the painting, Columbia, an angelic female figure betokening Anglo-American "civilization," drives benighted forces of "savagery" into oblivion and ushers in their replacements, those 19th-century emblems of progress, the telegraph wire, the locomotive, the farmer, the schoolbook. The technologies and the agrarian ideal may strike us today as quaint, but we may not question the nature or inevitability of American progress. Through the pairing of English Studies and Political Theory this Connections course identifies and interrogates an American narrative of progress beholden to the biological, political, economic, and sociological philosophies of mid-19th- to early 20th-century Europe. Within a capitalistic and "socially Darwinistic" system, what is progress? Who progresses and how? What does it mean to be "progressive"? The critical and creative engagement with such questions about the mid-19th to early 20th-century U.S. equips students to examine inherited notions of American progress that are regularly invoked in American politics and culture today. From these various perspectives (primarily literary and philosophical, but also biological, historical, and sociological), students will develop an understanding of the development of an idea--progress--as an American political value. "Connections days" are discussion-oriented classes specifically devoted to cross-disciplinary dialogue so that students and faculty alike can interrogate these myriad perspectives. Finally, student writing assignments are devised to help students learn to work with textual materials and to situate and problematize this narrative in contemporary American discourse.

Animals or their parts are ubiquitous - they are traded for food, companionship, clothing, research, entertainment, and sport. Animals are living beings that have the legal status of personal property. This dual status of both living being and personal property creates a paradox of thought about how animals fit within western societies and cultures. Contemporary debates concerning the question of the animal tend to become entrenched around this bifurcation, with one side emphasizing the animal state of being, and the other, emphasizing their status as property. In this course students examine cultural and societal influences that affect the way that animals are understood within western society. Students explore the laws affecting and relating to animals, public policies that support the status quo versus social movements that challenge it, theoretical and philosophical perspectives relating to our conceptualization of animals (e.g. Foucalt's theory of power, Regan's subject-of-a-life, speciesism, Francione's abolition, feminist writings, etc.), creative non-fiction and fiction that addresses the question of the animal, and the ethics of the use of animals. Students examine trends toward future change.

Seeing (in contrast to mere "looking") involves a learned propensity to notice (or ignore) particular aspects of what is perceived through the lenses of one's culturally filtered perspectives. Whether these perspectives are "scientific" (involving deliberate doubt and systematic inquiry), "aesthetic" (involving the enjoyment of artfully crafted illusion), or "commonsensical" (involving enormously complicated but unquestioned assumptions about the nature of "reality"), the process of "seeing" (in this more-than-visual sense) can be constantly refined, yielding even more depth of experience. In relation to these ideas, this course explores some of the similarities and differences in the way the world is seen through the perspectives of artists and art educators, cultural anthropologists, photographers, environmentalists, science fiction writers, and filmmakers. These ways of "informed seeing" are applied to selected problems and philosophical questions involving "beauty," "disruption of meaning", and "choice." While there are no prerequisites, students with some previous background in art, literature, anthropology, sociology, and /or environmental studies would be especially well prepared for this course.

This course challenges students to recognize the ubiquity of probability and risk in their daily lives. The theme of stochasicity is explored through the perspectives of economists, psychologists, investors, entrepreneurs, political scientists, biologists, and of course mathematicians. Students are asked to explore critically the institutions, both formal and informal, which have developed to deal with risk and uncertainty in society. The concept of evidence in law and science is examined. Students also investigate the ways in which we perceive and respond to probability in the world around us.

The preservation of biodiversity--of the variety of living organisms here on Earth--has recently become a major focus of scientific and environmental concern and policy. This course draws on perspectives from history, ethics, environmental studies, and conservation biology to explore the ways in which ideas and values have shaped scientific approaches to biodiversity and to the current biodiversity crisis.

This course is a survey of natural and human-influenced geological "catastrophes," and focuses primarily on four hazards that are relevant to the Puget Sound region: (1) volcanic eruptions, (2) earthquakes, (3) floods, (4) landslides. It examines the relationship of science and other fields, including economics and politics, in the development of policy to help us cope with potential catastrophes. The course reviews some of the scientific literature bearing on each disaster, discusses points of controversy with the scientific community, and considers ways in which our society - primarily government - uses this information to develop hazard mitigation strategies and regulations. Each unit concludes with analysis and discussion of one or more case studies.

This course examines classical, world, and contemporary myths, with a particular emphasis on the history of theories used to study myth. The course starts with Greco-Roman theories for analyzing classical myths, then analyzes in detail theories that have arisen since the end of the eighteenth century: comparative approaches, linguistics, psychology, structuralism, religion and ritual, class-, race-, and gender-based approaches. It is recommended that students have previously taken a course in myth or literary/gender theory (e.g., GLAM 210, ENGL 344, GNDR 201, etc.).

This course is organized around a set of interlocking questions: Who tells the story of scientific knowledge? Through what lens? Who does the work of producing scientific knowledge? To what end? While "the sciences" are often figured as disciplines and practices that both value and produce objectivity and facts -- categories imagined to exist independent of the identities of the people making scientific inquiry or serving as the object of that inquiry -- this course seeks to situate scientific knowledge within the matrix of gender, race, and sexuality that is inextricable from the human experience. We ask: How would a more diverse scientific community change the lives of those working in the sciences? And how would it change science?

What is America? This course provides a comparative, interdisciplinary, and critical examination of "America" (the U.S.) and its endurance as both idea and ideal. Students consider what "America" means--as a place and as a concept, historically and in contemporary times, and to different constituents. Readings and discussion topics address broad issues that have shaped U.S. history and contemporary life, especially those areas around which national identity coheres and those about which the nation has been most conflicted: politics and governance; slavery and freedom; the natural world; capitalism and consumption; industry and technology; immigration and exclusion; civil rights and social justice; culture and the arts.

This course engages philosophical and literary works from the late Seventeenth to the Mid-Twentieth Century that document the emergence of the modern concept of the self. The authors considered explore such questions as, "Is the self static, determinate, and unified, or is it dynamic, ephemeral, and fragmented? Is it autonomous or culturally conditioned? Does it will its own actions, or are these determined by external circumstances? Is it innately good, or evil, or neither?" Working from literary, philosophical, historical, and psychological perspectives, the course traces how early modern thought in the West has variously represented the self, how these representations have reflected and influenced its cultural evolution, and how they remain imbedded in contemporary formulations of selfhood. Authors include Pascal, Hobbes, Bunyan, Locke, La Rochefoucauld, De Lafayette, Franklin, Rousseau, Diderot, Hume, Blake, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Dostoevsky, Freud, Kojeve, and Girard.

This course offers students an introduction to high medieval culture through verbal and visual experience of the quest. Medieval romances and spiritual quest literature are informed by the neoplatonic idea of a transcendent reality, a divinely ordered world beyond us that yields an ultimate truth. At the same time, all such journeys begin in the post-Edenic world where the fallen senses can deceive the knight, the pilgrim, and the visionary navigating the dark forest, the garden of erotic pleasure, or the castle, where seemingly noble conduct masks sin. When the knight or pilgrim sets forth, he or she experiences not only the soul's journey to God but also the construction of identity. The course asks students to draw informed connections between the disciplines of history, art history, literary history, the history of gender, and the history of religion.

Why does monstrosity assume such a visible place in medieval culture? Gothic babwyns (grotesques) gambol in the margins of liturgical manuscripts, function as downspouts on cathedrals, and appear in epics and chivalric romances as forces of both good and evil. This course explores medieval ontology, the nature of creation, and our human ability to know it fully, through the monstrous. The course begins with an art historical introduction to Classical theories of monstrosity reflected in visual traditions that medieval artists and writers inherited. The role of the monstrous in pagan, classical culture serves as a contrast to the place monsters assume in the evolving Christian contexts the course sets forth as interdisciplinary case studies in medieval monstrosity. Each case study sets up a historical context for the study of monstrosity, informed by a specific material and literary culture. Recent research in art history, geography, anthropology, literary history, and cultural studies inform the course's interdisciplinary format.

Taoism is one of the most influential beliefs in East Asia, and is perfectly embodied in landscape art. As a significant visual tradition in the world, this landscape art reveals the complicated relationships between man and self, man and man, man and society, and, above all, man and nature. From an interdisciplinary perspective the course examines the richness of this cultural heritage. The achievements of Taoist landscape art in China, Korea, and Japan are approached through slide lectures, museum visits, creative work sessions, writing assignments, group discussion, and class presentation of research project. The emphasis is placed on students' comprehension of Taoism and appreciation of landscape art and their capacity to explore the intricate relationships between art and religion.

This course presents a constellation of influential critiques of Western intellectual history, especially examining Enlightenment liberalism and its ideological afterlives. Themes include: critique, Euro-American centrism, orientalism, de-colonial struggles, postcolonial theory, pathologies of freedom, power, hegemony, racialization, identity, liberalism, the democratic illusion, mass deception, the Holocaust, camps, mass migration, terrorism, comprador intellectuals, and culture war. Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment provides the starting point for our humanist and aesthetic critique via readings of Homer, mythology, philosophy, and religion. Important "non-western" authors might include Aime Cesiare, Frantz Fanon, Edward Said, Sylvia Wynter, Gayatri Spivak, and Hamid Dabashi.

This course examines a wide range of contemporary struggles over global intellectual property, especially patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Drawing upon and contrasting the disciplines of political science, economics, law, and cultural studies, the course examines how rules governing intellectual property have been established, who benefits from them, and how some people are using political power - and law-breaking - to try to achieve alternative intellectual property systems. Some specific cases that will be analyzed are struggles over generic medicines in developing countries, counterfeiting, music and software piracy, and "bio-piracy."

Wine is a simple thing. The idea of wine, however, is very complicated, since it reflects both wine itself and wine's complex and dynamic social and economic terroir of values, attitudes, and interests. Because wine intersects social processes in so many ways, the question of which idea of wine will prevail, or how the contractions between and among the different ideas will be resolved or not, has important implications. This course looks closely at the battle for the idea of wine with special attention to its interdisciplinary aspects and conflicts and consideration of how the globalization of wine has intensified the inherent conflicts.

Many sociologists have joined economists in the study of that entity we call the economy. Apart from this interest, however, the two groups share very little in common. The disagreements include the importance of rationality and selfishness, the proper methodologies, the nature of explanation, and even the definition of the field of study. This course surveys the different ways in which economists and sociologists approach the material world and the key debates between them.

This course explores the concept of Modernity as it applies to the creation and development of the modern nation with particular attention to the Latin American region. The role of the local and autochthonous cultures versus global and external trends and forces, and the impact of modern inventions and technical developments in an ever-evolving society are examined using literary, historical, and political texts, combined with readings on post-colonialism and post-modernism, globalization and neo-liberalism. These texts inform the reading of the English translation of "One Hundred Years of Solitude," by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, a novel often read as an allegory of the forces at play in the shaping of modern Latin America.

This course combines the disciplines of history and art to consider the ways in which artists participated in and created a visual analogue to the political and social transformations wrought by successful revolutions in Latin America. The interaction of art and revolution in Mexico (from the late nineteenth-century to the 1940s) forms the foundation of the course. Its revolution (1910-1920) produced the most successful, vibrant, and internationally recognized artistic formation of national identity of the last century. The final third of the course analyzes and compares the similarity explosive changes that occur in revolutionary Cuba from 1959 and in Nicaragua from 1979-1990. These three revolutions demonstrate a connection between art and politics to a rare degree, as artistic expression (painting, prints, photography, and architecture) become fundamental to both creating, reflecting, and challenging the new order.

The Latin America Travel Seminar combines an on-campus semester-long class with group travel to Latin America after the completion of the semester. The instructors, themes, and travel destinations vary each time the course is offered.

"Know thyself" is a maxim central to the religious quest, but individuals who are intensely and urgently driven to know themselves often occupy the outskirts of ordinary society. Although these "outsiders" are a part of their culture and contribute to their culture, they no longer share the common values of their society. The course seeks to explore the role of outsiders (those who desire inner freedom and transformation) in the context of bourgeois society. The first half of the course draws on ancient materials ("Epic of Gilgamesh," "The Oresteia," and Plato's "Republic") in discussing ideas of ontology, psychology, consciousness, and transformation. The second half of the course relies on novels and novellas by Ouspensky, Hesse, and Mann for a discussion of bourgeois attitudes toward the outsider and toward the outsider's struggle to become an individual who confronts the habitual, unconscious, and mechanical patterns of existence.

This course provides an opportunity for students to examine the contours of an ethical framework of responsibility by exploring contemporary moral and religious narratives about the "other" from a multicultural perspective. Students learn to apply various ethical theories to particular issues and dilemmas, such as race-class-gender, violence, sexuality, and issues of "difference."

Do religions originate in myths of violence, and then re-enact them, as in the Eucharist? How do sacred texts enshrine and commemorate violence? How do religions motivate, justify or reinforce violence? What role does ritual play in re-enacting violence? What roles do eschatological expectations play in violence? How has the postcolonial world grappled with the questions of religious violence? This class explores historical case studies in the relationship between religion and violence, such as the Christian doctrine of just war and the Crusades, the history and practice of Islamic ideas of jihad, or Hindu nationalistic violence. We also consider the question of self-inflicted violence and suffering, as performed in religious rituals. Students read theoretical works and examine case studies; students are encouraged to elaborate their own understanding of the nature of religion and violence.

This course explores the relationship between ideas about gender, science and society. Taking a comparative approach, students critically examine the history of ideas about the biological and social factors that influence gender roles and sexual preferences as well as sexual orientation and gender identity. Students consider ideas about how variation in sex and gender may have evolved through natural and sexual selection, and how human perceptions of gender feedback influence the scientific study of animals. Policy and ethical implications of scientific research on gender are also considered.

This course examines the historical relationship between the theory of evolution and society in the twentieth century, with an emphasis on Britain, Germany, and the United States since 1870. Students examine a range of efforts to apply evolution theory to human society (including social Darwinism, eugenics, scientific racism, and the biology of war and peace), and place these efforts in historical context. In doing so, students study the complex relationship between science and society, and the place of science in the intellectual, social, and cultural history of the twentieth century.

The study of evolution and ethics ' at the intersections between biology, the human sciences and philosophy ' has received a lot of attention in recent years. News stories abound that give, in sound byte form, the (often controversial) ethical implications of conclusions regarding evolutionary theory. Drawing upon historical and philosophical approaches, this course provides students with an interdisciplinary framework from which to understand and study such debates. The course examines the historical context of previous discussions regarding the implications of the theory of evolution for ethical theories, and examines modern debates regarding the normative implications that may or may not result from different interpretations of the conclusions of evolutionary biology.

What does it mean to live a scientific life? Historically, people have studied nature for many different reasons--to better understand humanity's place in the universe, to assist in the production of food and medicine, to satisfy curiosity, etc.--and this knowledge and understanding of the natural world has evolved over time. Science reflects not only nature's inner workings, but also social and cultural values and is shaped powerfully by what people want to see and know. This course examines how humanity found order and regularity in twentieth-century scientific studies and how and why people pursued that knowledge. Using a biographical approach, students develop a deeper appreciation for not only science, but also "the ambitions, passions, disappointments, and moral choices that characterize a scientist's life."

This course examines the connections between 20th century science (with particular emphasis on physics) and the effects of science on public policy, international relations, and the strategy and tactics of modern warfare. During the first half of the 20th century, physicists' concepts of the universe changed as new fields of thought emerged: relativity, quantum theory, and eventually nuclear physics. At the same time, the interactions between scientists and governments evolved significantly, as the scope of war expanded and, in response, new technologies were integrated into warfighting. The course focuses on the role that scientists played in the two world wars, culminating in the Manhattan Project, which produced the first atomic bombs. It also examines the consequences of scientific and technological advancements for the conduct of 20th century warfare, including the impact of trains and machine guns on the battlefields of the First World War and of tanks and airpower in World War II. After considering the development of the atomic bomb and the results of its use against Japan, the course moves to explore the role of nuclear weapons during the Cold War and in the 21st century, as well as the emergence of new science-based military technologies, such as cyberwar.

"Better things for better living...through chemistry" was a popular slogan used by DuPont in the mid-to-late twentieth century to market laboratory-developed products. Increasingly, concerns have been raised about the merits and consequences of chemicals in our food, goods, and environment. This class analyzes how we know what we know about chemistry, and how studies of the very small shape fundamental questions about the world, e.g. what is natural, what is artificial, does the difference matter, and if so in what contexts? By investigating a series of historical episodes that highlight some of the key intellectual, social, and political challenges of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this course examines how we learn about, modify, and relate to our environment chemically. From the development of the periodic table to the study of pollution, this course encourages students to gain an appreciation for the science of chemistry while engaging in cross-disciplinary dialogue about ways in which chemistry affects our daily lives.

In the early Twentieth Century, new experimental evidence encouraged physicists to abandon a consistent and nearly complete description of nature. They replaced common sense notions about the physical world with strange realities based on the new theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. As the physicists' new explanations of nature grew increasingly counter-intuitive, it became harder for non-physicists to understand precisely what physicists where doing. Without using higher mathematics, this course explores quantum mechanics and relativity as they describe the nature of matter and energy and the structure of space and time. It also addresses how physicists struggled to understand the philosophical implications of the new physical theories, how they worked to express their strange descriptions of nature to both public and professional audiences, and how they maintained public support for their increasingly expensive explorations of nature.

This class provides an intensive introduction to the scientific study of memory, and then examines the application of this science to four important social contexts. These include the social implications of age-related changes in memory, the role of memory in between-individual and between-group relations, the role of memory in the courtroom, and the role of memory in advertising and marketing.

Why do people commit crimes and what role does forensic science play in determining who is culpable? Using a historical approach, this course examines the development of forensic science and criminology. It focuses on the history of forensic medicine and psychology, fingerprinting, toxicology, blood typing, DNA evidence as well as the role of expert witnesses in homicide investigations. It also includes a discussion of the legal issues surrounding what constitutes admissible evidence and how that has changed over time.

A survey of the history, science, and technology of Mars exploration. Topics include the discovery of Mars by ancient civilizations, the first telescopic observations of Mars, the economics and politics of the U.S. and Russian Mars exploration programs, spacecraft design and the technologies needed for planetary exploration, and the future of Mars exploration including a possible manned mission to Mars. The scientific component of this course focuses on the planetary evolution of Mars and the question of whether life might have arisen on Mars. The class also takes a brief look at Mars in popular culture including literature, radio, and film.