Anthro 101-6 First Year Seminar - Biological Thought & Action
Science is a process by which people make sense of the world. Scientists examine evidence from the past, work to understand the present, and make predictions about the future. Integral to this process are the methods they use to collect and analyze data, as well as the ways in which scientists work together as a community to interpret evidence and draw conclusions. In this class, we will take a multidisciplinary approach to examining biological thought and action and their social remifications.
Anthro 101-6-21 First Year Seminar - Modern Plagues
At the height of the 2013-2016 West African Ebola epidemic, it was often said that the fears of the disease globalized more quickly than the disease itself. These kinds of statements - and the proliferation of official efforts to control Ebola outbreak in West Africa and elsewhere - show the significance of cultural, social, political and economic dimensions of epidemics. This first-year seminar privileges a critical medical anthropology perspective on the dynamics of epidemics: from disease transmission to prevention and control. Together, we will investigate how complex interactions among social, cultural, political, economic, and environmental factors influence the natural history of infectious disease and public health efforts to understand and address them. The seminar focuses on contemporary problems and issues with the explicit purpose of addressing questions of equity and justice.
This course introduces life history theory as an integrated framework for understanding the biological processes underlying the human life cycle and its evolution. After constructing a solid foundation in life history theory and the comparative method, the class will address questions such as: Why do humans grow and develop much more slowly than other primate species? Why do we have so few offspring? What is the significance of puberty? What is the function of menopause? In-depth analysis of several case studies will allow the class to examine in detail the utility of life history theory for explaining aspects of human development and behavior from an evolutionary perspective.
Cultural and ethnographic approaches to peace, peace building and peace activism. Topics of investigation include the concept of “peaceful societies,” cultural mechanisms for conflict resolution, truth and reconciliation, the relationship between peace and commerce, and the role of literature, art and material culture in peace activism.
This course includes one guest lecture on global peace activism to be scheduled outside of the normal class meeting times. Students are required to attend the event and prepare two or three questions for the guest speaker.
How do Anthropologists understand and investigate the social and cultural contexts of health and illness? This course will examine the diverse ways in which humans use cultural resources to cope with pain, illness, suffering and healing in diverse cultural contexts. In addition, we will analyze various kinds of medical practices as cultural systems, examining how disease, health, body, and mind are socially constructed, how these constructions articulate with human biology, and vice versa. The course will provide an introduction to the major theoretical frameworks that guide anthropological approaches to studying human health-related behavior. Theory will be combined with case studies from a number of societies, from India, Japan, Brazil, and Haiti to the U.S. and Canada, enabling students to identify similarities across seemingly disparate cultural systems, while at the same time demonstrating the ways in which American health behaviors and practices are socially embedded and culturally specific. The course will emphasize the overall social, political, and economic contexts in which health behavior and health systems are shaped, and within which they must be understood.
Historical Archaeology is a field archaeology that focuses on the past 500 years and addresses a myriad of questions including, identity, European colonialism, resistance, capitalism, and power. This course will explore the history of different peoples in the Americas through the study of the material remains they left behind: architecture, burials, food remains, clothing and jewelry, etc. Attention will be focused on the presentation and/or exclusion of groups in depictions of history and in the creation new identities (ethnogenesis) in different parts of the Americas. It will also consider the ways in which power and economy intersect with other forms of identity, such as class, gender, and sexuality. The course will survey a variety of communities, concentrating on Indigenous Peoples, as well as people of European, African and Asian descent in American contexts. While there will be course material which touch on French and Iberian colonial contexts, class projects will primarily draw on study of artifacts and communities in the Eastern United States and the Anglophone Caribbean.
Anthropology has had a long, storied relationship with questions of nature and culture, society and environment, during which time a variety of theoretical approaches have been developed. This class will review these intellectual developments and recent trends with the aim of giving students toolkits for analyzing present-day environmental concerns.
What is money? How do people use money in the real world? How are technological innovations changing people's perceptions of money? This course introduces anthropological perspectives on economy and society through a variety of ethnographic studies of money and finance. Topics of discussion include "primitive money," the uses of money in religious and ritual practices, social and cultural meanings of numbers, mobile money, crypto-currency and other alternative currency systems, and the politics of central banking.
Food is a universal requirement for humans to survive, yet different cultures have developed radically divergent cuisines. In this course, we will use archaeology to explore the diversity of human foodways, and the various roles food has played throughout time. You will learn about topics like the 'real' Paleo diet, how the Incas used beer at parties to build social alliances, and how Columbus's discovery of the Americas spurred global scale shifts in food and agriculture. The course begins with an overview of how anthropologists and archaeologists study food, and then moves through time, beginning with our hunting and gathering ancestors and ending with colonialism.
Anthro 390-0-24 Fire and Blood: Resources, Energy, and Society
Climate crisis, directly linked to CO2 emissions from centuries of burning fossil fuels, has brought energy resources to the center of public attention. This course will survey works of anthropology, history, and geography as well as films and novels to understand how various resources and energy systems relate to sociocultural practices and politics throughout the world. Focusing on one energy resource each week, Fire and Blood will examine how uranium, wind, coal, light, oil, water, and other materials are made into sources of power?both physical and political. It will trace the movement of resources from the subsoil, atmosphere, or riverbeds to pipelines, power plants, dams, turbines, or other kinds of energy infrastructures; and finally, to the electrified streets of urban Mumbai, the wastelands of Navajo County, or the melting ice sheets of the Arctic. After discussing the toxic legacies of fossil fuels and nuclear things, we will end the course by reading texts on "energy transition" and post-carbon futures. By the end of the course, each student will have produced a research paper on an existing, past, or planned energy resource project of their choice from anywhere in the world.
Anthro 390-0-24 Biocultural Perspectives on Water Insecurity
The first objective of this course is to introduce students to the many ways that water impacts our world. We will discuss what the international recommendations for safely managed water are and the health and social consequences of water insecurity. The second objective is explore why there is such variety in water insecurity worldwide. These discussions will be guided by the socio-ecological framework, in which dimensions ranging from the individual to the geopolitical are considered. Influences on access to water will be broadly considered; we will draw on literature in global health, ethnography, the life sciences, and public policy. The third objective is to develop critical thinking and writing abilities to reflect on the multi-dimensional causes and consequences of water insecurity and the appropriateness of potential solutions.
Archaeology and nationalism have been closely intertwined at least since the idea of the nation-state emerged following the French Revolution. Archaeology offers nationalist agendas the possibility of filling in national historical records and extending the past far into prehistory. Its results can be displayed in museums, occupy entire sites, and be readily accessible online ?thus potentially reaching many new audiences beyond traditional print media. In turn, nationalism has contributed significantly to the development of archaeology as a modern discipline.
Drawing on new critical approaches and examples selected from a wide geographical range, this course explores the role of archaeology in the creation and elaboration of national identities from the eighteenth century to the present day. Issues include the institutionalization of archaeology; the development of museums and practices of display and interpretation; the creation of archaeological sites as national monuments and tourist destinations; cultural property legislation and repatriation of artifacts; and archaeology and monuments under totalitarian regimes.
"Planet Earth" has a political and social history. The Copernican turn and geological notions of deep time, for example, radically shifted understandings of the Earth, time, and humans' relationship to them. Whole Earth images first generated by the Apollo Space missions in the late 1960s and 1970s have been the characteristic form of planetary imagination during the late twentieth century. Earthrise and The Blue Marble images enabled humans to imagine the planet as an interconnected whole against the backdrop of the Cold War and environmental disasters. They have been crucial to the emergence of a "global consciousness" and became famous icons of the global environmental movement, depicting the planet as the common home of humans as one species. The power of these images has not decreased, yet other forms of representation and imagination have emerged as well. The development of Google Earth or advanced climate modeling systems, for example, mark a different notion of Earth, characterized by dynamic, heterogeneous, and open systems. This course examines such shifting notions of the Earth by tracing how practices and discourses of geopolitics, political theory, cartography, population studies, climate modeling, deep ocean sensing, outer space exploration and mining, and science fiction literature, have come to sense, know, represent, and imagine the planet since the 18th century. In doing so, this course also surveys shifting socio-political currents, from the intersection of the military-industrial complex and techno science to how climate crisis, Anthropocene debates, and Earth Systems analysis reflect further shifts in the ways the planet is understood today. Tracing these shifts in planetary representation and imagination is also crucial to understanding how core concepts such as "humanity" and "species" are made and unmade. Understanding the deeply mediated processes behind planetary depictions is not only central to making sense of contemporary politics and policies that propose to shape the future, but also to imagining alternative worlds and futures beyond our grim ecological predicament.
Art Hist 390-0 Early Modern Art: Materiality and Experience
The materiality of art is evident and central to how art looks, how it means, and how it endures. This new course is intended as an introduction to the materiality of objects and works of art made during the early modern era (c. 1400-1700) and to concepts for understanding and interpreting them. Works in a variety of materials, ivory, wax, woods, feathers, shells and mother-of-pearl, oil paint, lacquer, metal, fresco, stone, porcelain and earthenware populate a series of case studies drawn from European, Mesoamerican, and East Asian workshops. In addition to learning about what goes into making an early modern work of art, students will trace the geographies of materials, and the ways in which materials, format, and durability all affect the viewer's experience. Students will read, analyze, and discuss current research on the makings of art, on theories of the materiality of art, and problems in art conservation and will participate in close examination of works in museum and special collections. Our specific focus is on the materiality of early modern art works, and on what sorts of experiences that materiality represents. How were the materials sourced? acquired? prepared? valued? appreciated? This course will introduce students to some of the central topics in early modern art history as it is practiced by scholars/historians *and* by archaeologists, museum curators, archivists, and conservators. Students will be introduced to a wide data set of objects and art works, and will learn how to analyze, articulate, discuss, and research aspects of their materiality. Rather than focusing on memorization, this course encourages using concepts from a set of assigned readings to reflect on the objects we discuss together. Students will work in small groups and as a class to advance their own vocabulary for and understanding of early modern materiality.
Art History 101-6 First Year Seminar - Everest: Altitude & Attitude
Mountains of trash, littered empty oxygen bottles, corpses covered in snow and ice for decades, deep within crevasses or left in the open to serve as path markers, blackened frostbitten fingers, toes and noses, later amputated, $45-130K per attempt paid to commercial climbing companies, including an $11K fee to the Nepalese government. At least 296 deaths on the mountain are known to have occurred, a third of them Nepalese Sherpas engaged as guides and porters to carry supplies, set the ropes and metal bridges and assist the wealthy climbers. Every year, about 1000 people attempt to reach the 29,029 (and still growing) peak; more than a third turn back, despite the upfront, prepaid cost. Why do they come? Do they know why, themselves? What are the rewards and motivations for attempting it? In the past century and a half, there have been both national and personal pride invested in being the first, or one of the only. But for most of human history, climbing into the "death zone" was considered suicidal and avoided at all costs. Even today, most of the people who live in the Himalayas consider it an unnecessary sacrilege to trample on the goddess, Chomulungma, and do it only regretfully to support their families via adventure tourism. This course will examine the geology of Everest, explore different perspectives on the history of attitudes toward it, as well as the motivations, costs and rewards for those who attempt to climb it today.
Techno-Orientalism names a variant of Orientalism that associates Asians with a technological future. This seminar will explore how Techno-Orientalist tropes are used by, played with, and rewritten by Asian American authors. We will study how twentieth-century and contemporary issues of technology, globalization, and financial speculation collide with a history of yellow peril and Asian Invasion discourse, as well as how these tensions manifest in figures and tropes such as robots, aliens, and cybernetics. Texts include poetry, novels, short stories, comics, and film.
Bio Sci 101-6 First Year Seminar - Values of Biodiversity
One of the major challenges of our changing world is the loss of biological diversity. An overwhelming majority of people agree that we should work to save biodiversity, but their views are largely based on vague, positive feelings about nature rather than concrete justifications. This course investigates those concrete justifications.
In this course, we will read and discuss works on technical subjects written for a general audience with no special scientific training; the authors we will be reading include Sam Kean, John McPhee, Don Norman, Richard Rhodes, and Lewis Thomas. Although the course is not targeted exclusively to science majors, students enrolling in it should have enough of a background in the fundamental sciences to feel comfortable writing about technical topics.
Felse MW 6:00-7:50pm Disc: Required: Department Consent
Chem Eng 382-0-20 Regulatory Sciences in Biotechnology
Course topics cover the intersection of science, engineering, and biotech regulatory compliance. Includes: federal regulations for drug product development, regulatory compliance processes and organizational structure, interface between biotechnology processes and regulatory sciences, global harmonization of regulations, and regulatory documentation.
Drug product development is a process with an inherent low probability of success that takes about 13 years and 2.6 billion dollars from lead discovery to product launch. Regulatory science is a discipline that helps drug companies and regulatory agencies to make science-based risk/benefit decisions on a new molecular entity (NME) that eventually leads to a decision on its approval. The rapidly growing science-based approach will to increase probability of success and decease drug development costs. The regulatory sciences in biotechnology course will provide a unique educational experience at the intersection of science, engineering, and regulatory compliance. Topics such as federal regulations for drug product development, regulatory compliance processes and organizational structure, interface between biotechnology processes and regulatory sciences, global harmonization of regulations, and regulatory documentation will be covered in this course. One part of this course will be delivered as lectures, case-studies, and workshops and the other will be delivered as a hands-on, practicum team project in biotech regulatory science. The class will feature several guest lectures from professionals in the biotech and pharma industry.
An introduction to important aspects of environmental law and policy. A wide range of environmental topics are covered, with a focus on national environmental policy as implemented through major federal environmental statutes.
People who understand communication are uniquely positioned to solve health related problems, and their services are increasingly in demand. As such, this course is designed to familiarize you with the theory and research on communication in health and illness contexts, focusing on how messages from interpersonal, organizational, cultural, and media sources affect health beliefs and behaviors. We will explore communication in health care delivery, health care organizations, as well as health promotion and disease prevention. By taking this course, you will become a more mindful, educated, and effective health communicator.
This course explores the evolution of digital media and its effects on self and society, with a focus on the historical shift away from one-way mass media toward more customized, participatory digital media. Through readings, blogging, class discussion and a final project, students are encouraged to think broadly about how digital communication technologies are impacting politics, media, business and culture and what this means for us at the individual and societal level.
Comm St 394-0-22 Science Communication: A Compassionate Scientist's
With the increasing threats to the future of our planet and humanity, including global warming, preventable diseases, and limited resources, effective science communication is the ethical responsibility of all scientists. However, effective and ethical science communication is only possible with compassion, willingness to engage with the public, and making meaningful connections. Throughout the quarter students will learn more about tools they need to be better communicators. They will also work on their topic of interest as it relates to science communication and craft a fifteen-page final paper, while also learning more about skills related to developing a research paper.
What can a dystopian film like 2015's Mad Max: Fury Road tell us about how to change our actions, today? How can we recognize urgent questions from our own world in such a surreal cinematic assault on the senses? How do such imaginary prophecies of near-future worlds "memorialize" the present? As interlocking narratives of globalization, resource competition, and ecological crisis collide in the news, the natural resources on which human lives and social relationships depend have increasingly preoccupied recent fiction, film, and criticism. Whether it's a question of "too much" or "not enough", of deluge or scarcity, the tales we will read and watch together in this course depict resource wars and dystopian imaginaries through everyday, intimate events and encounters. They zoom in, in other words, from geopolitical power struggles caused by oil and water, to their effects on a human scale, helping us see how our actions count in both distantly mediated and effectively immediate ways. Featuring stories composed of fast-paced action, futuristic sci-fi, film noir mystery, devastating satire, and the aesthetics of the surreal, these works cannot be captured by a single mood. Instead, they collectively intensify our awareness of the ecological path we are on, as if to say: remember this tomorrow. Our discussions of essays, novels, stories and films will be guided by how each represents pressing problems of compromise and control, agency and activism, competition and coexistence, in a "now" viewed as the future's past.
Earth 102-6 Climate Change: The Scientific Evidence
Anthropogenic climate change represents a massive global experiment. In this course we will discuss the scientific evidence for anthropogenic climate change, including atmospheric composition changes, sea level rise, melting ice sheets, temperature records, and extreme weather events such as hurricanes.
Earth 102-6 First Year Seminar: Sustainability & Social Justice
Sustainability and Social Justice: The challenge of sustainability to "meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" has evolved over the past few decades. This course will introduce fundamental concepts of sustainability, consider the application of these concepts in diverse societal, economic, and cultural settings, and explore the potential of climate science and sustainable development to act as forces for environmental and social justice.
Defending society against natural hazards is a high-stakes game of chance against nature, involving tough decisions. How should a developing nation allocate its budget between building schools for towns without ones and making existing schools earthquake-resistant? Does it make more sense to build levees to protect against floods, or to prevent development in the areas at risk? Would more lives be saved by making hospitals earthquake-resistant, or by using the funds for patient care? What should scientists tell the public when, as occurred in L'Aquila, Italy, and Mammoth Lakes, California, there is a real but small risk of an upcoming earthquake or volcanic eruption? This course uses general principles and case studies to explore how we can do better by taking an integrated view of natural hazards issues, rather than treating the relevant geoscience, engineering, economics, and policy formulation separately. We will consider thought-provoking questions that confront the complex issues involved.
Mineral Resources: This course provides an introduction to the field of economic geology. Broad topics include resource evaluation, the global distribution and formation of economic deposits, and mine waste in the environment. Topics in resource evaluation will include an introduction to the economic principles behind metals production and consumption, ore body description, the statistical approach to sampling deposits and the determination of cut-off grades. A large portion of this course is dedicated to understanding the physical and geochemical processes that concentrate earth materials into metallic deposits, industrial mineral and salt deposits, and fossil energy materials. The course will conclude with an examination of mining-related environmental issues such as acid mine drainage, heavy metal contamination and the deep disposal of dangerous waste.
This class will help students understand the key economic forces that have shaped the US health care and health insurance industry. What role do the particularities of health care and health insurance as economic goods play in explaining the size and growth rate of the health care sector? What's the effect of private incentives, adverse selection, moral hazard, and regulation? What's the effect of different organizational structures of health care provision? What can we learn from comparing the US health care / health insurance system to other countries' systems? Students will learn that these issues are important in the current public policy discussion.
In this course, we explore to what extent differences in institutions can explain differences in economic development and economic growth. We take a broad approach to institutions and examine both formal institutions such as constitutions, law, and property rights and informal institutions as such customs, traditions, and codes of conducts. A key feature of these institutions is that they rarely change and crucially affect economic behavior. For instance, lack of clearly defined property rights reduces the ability to obtain credit, and a lack of trust reduces the willingness to engage in economic exchanges. We first focus on understanding better why a specific set of institutions emerged and which sets of institutions have fostered economic development historically. We then discuss the importance of the persistence of institutions for current differences in economic development and economic growth. Last, we will study which institutional changes preceded the rapid economic growth in China and South Korea.
This course will deal with the economic history of Europe in the Twentieth Century, such as growth, economic crises, unification, and the economics of war. The readings will consist of a number of books and essays.
The goal of this course is to understand the functioning and regulation of energy markets. The energy sector is a vital input to the economy. It is often highly concentrated, generating concerns about competition, and a big emitter of greenhouse gases and other pollutants, generating concerns about the environment. As a consequence, the energy sector is subject to substantial economic and environmental regulation. We will use economic theory and empirical evidence to analyze the real-world operation of electricity, oil, and natural gas markets. These tools will allow us to critically understand how these markets are regulated. We will examine policies in a range of current topics. For example: Why has the performance of electricity markets been debated? Who pays the bill of carbon regulation? What are the pros and cons of renewable energy policies? What are the prospects for energy efficiency improvements? The course will draw upon material taught in Economics 310-1, 310-2, and 281, with the tools from Econ 310-1 and 281 being absolutely essential.
The environment and our natural resources are scarce yet their values are quite hard to determine. Furthermore, there are a variety of problems with the incentives to use them well. Using the tools of microeconomic analysis and some econometrics, this course will define and examine "environmental problems" in terms of economic efficiency. We will also discuss the methods (and shortcomings of these methods) used by economists and policymakers to place dollar values on environmental amenities (since such valuations will determine what policy options are deemed "efficient"), such as benefit-cost analysis. Then we will apply these tools to look at a particular set of environmental problems caused by negative externalities transmitted through naturally occurring amenities, and the effects of the policies we construct in response to these problems. NOTE: This class is not open to students who have taken Economics 370: Environmental & Natural Resource Economics.
From hurricanes to polar vortexes and wildfires, in recent years, weather has frequently appeared in headlines throughout digital and print media. Accompanied by accelerations in global heating, unpredictable seasonal cycles, and political inaction, it has become increasingly clear that not only how weather is spoken about but also the weather events themselves are deeply political. In this freshman seminar, we will consider a variety of contemporary representations of weather from art to fiction to poetry and film to explore the relationship between weather as material event and weather as political context. Where does weather begin and end? What happens when weather becomes not just a mysterious force but an actively produced by-product of industrial expansion? What is "totalizing" about both weather and politics?
This course provides a literary introduction to science fiction. Beginning with its 19th century origins in gothic fiction and adventure narratives, we will trace the development of science fiction through its early 20th century boom as a pulp form, its mid-century emergence as a recognizable literary genre, and its late 20th century adoption as a venue for exploring identity politics. How have longstanding genre themes like technological innovation and futuristic social progress endured or changed over time? How have explorations of race, gender, and sexuality been important to the genre's development? How has sci-fi shaped the wider social world in realms like scientific research, political rhetoric, fan cultures, and popular media? We will consider these questions as we survey a selection of novels and short stories by major science fiction authors.
Envr Pol 340-0-1 Global Environments and World History
Environmental problems have become part and parcel of popular consciousness: resources are being depleted at a record pace, human population levels just crossed the seven billion threshold, extreme poverty defines the majority of people's daily lives, toxic contaminants affect all ecosystems, increasing numbers of species face extinction, consumerism and the commodification of nature show no signs of abating, climate changes are wreaking havoc in different places every year, and weapons and energy systems continue to proliferate that risk the planet's viability. This introductory lecture course is designed to help students understand the relatively recent origins of many of these problems, focusing especially on the last one hundred and fifty years. Students will have an opportunity to learn about the environmental effects of urbanization, industrialization, population growth, market economies, empire-building, intercontinental warfare, energy extraction, and new technologies. They will also explore different environmental philosophies and analytic frameworks that help us make sense of historical change, including political ecology, environmental history, science studies, and world history. Finally, the course will examine a range of transnational organizations, social movements, and state policies that have attempted to address and resolve environmental problems. This year, we will also explore questions of environmental health, disease ecologies, spillover events, and Covid-19.
Envr Pol 390-0-21 International Environmental Law and Policy
Global environmental problems, including the looming threat of climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and increasing pressures on ocean ecosystems due to human activities, have become pressing concerns in recent decades. In response, a sophisticated architecture of global governance has emerged, including through the establishment of hundreds of multi-lateral treaties to confront these threats. As a consequence, nation-States have begun to cooperate with each other to an unprecedented extent, although not without facing significant obstacles, and not without domestic political agendas sometimes delaying or thwarting progress at the international level. This class examines the array of legal regimes, politics, governance processes and policy tools that have emerged in the arena of global environmental law and politics. We will focus on a number of different discrete international environmental problems, as well as how international environmental law is formulated and enforced at the international level.
This course focuses on international treaty regimes for responding to climate change as well as the role of domestic law, with a focus on the United States. It includes a review of the history of international responses to climate change, highlights the negotiations, what is agreed, what is outstanding, and where the fault lines exist, and then examines efforts at integrating climate change into various international institutions. The course also examines the role of a range of international organizations such as the World Trade Organization, the World Intellectual Property Organization, regional bodies, international river and lake basin organizations, the UN Security Council, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. On the domestic side of the equation, it focuses on national, regional, and state-based legislation and regulations to address climate change, including the policies of the Trump administration.
Co-listed as ANTHRO 390-0-29 "Planet Earth" has a political and social history. The Copernican turn and geological notions of deep time, for example, radically shifted understandings of the Earth, time, and humans' relationship to them. Whole Earth images first generated by the Apollo Space missions in the late 1960s and 1970s have been the characteristic form of planetary imagination during the late twentieth century. Earthrise and The Blue Marble images enabled humans to imagine the planet as an interconnected whole against the backdrop of the Cold War and environmental disasters. They have been crucial to the emergence of a "global consciousness" and became famous icons of the global environmental movement, depicting the planet as the common home of humans as one species. The power of these images has not decreased, yet other forms of representation and imagination have emerged as well. The development of Google Earth or advanced climate modeling systems, for example, mark a different notion of Earth, characterized by dynamic, heterogeneous, and open systems. This course examines such shifting notions of the Earth by tracing how practices and discourses of geopolitics, political theory, cartography, population studies, climate modeling, deep ocean sensing, outer space exploration and mining, and science fiction literature, have come to sense, know, represent, and imagine the planet since the 18th century. In doing so, this course also surveys shifting socio-political currents, from the intersection of the military-industrial complex and technoscience to how climate crisis, Anthropocene debates, and Earth Systems analysis reflect further shifts in the ways the planet is understood today. Tracing these shifts in planetary representation and imagination is also crucial to understanding how core concepts such as "humanity" and "species" are made and unmade. Understanding the deeply mediated processes behind planetary depictions is not only central to making sense of contemporary politics and policies that propose to shape the future, but also to imagining alternative worlds and futures beyond our grim ecological predicament.
Sesipâskw'pêskân is the Nehiywa (Cree) word for a maple sugar camp. It's the time in between late winter and early spring when families gather to collect maple sap, and to harvest fish, beavers, and early spring plants, or at least it used to be. As the earth's climate changes, maple trees and the subsequent maple syrup industry in the U.S. and Canada are being affected, in both good and bad ways. To compound this, the demand for maple syrup is rising in Asia. The class will cover these effects, their impact on Native American and non-Native communities, the maple syrup industry, and maple species themselves. Students will work in groups, to collect data from three maple species on campus and examine sugar ratios, sap flow rates, species differentiation in sap quality, the presence of heavy metals, soil quality, bud development, and bloom times in relation to campus micro-climates, ambient temperature and precipitation. Students would also learn about how to utilize outdoor space as an informal science classroom and develop community based citizen science methods and curriculum. The final product for the class would be a group data report. A copy of the report will go to facilities management to be added to their campus tree inventory.
Co-listed as PHIL 268 This course is an introduction to central concepts and problems in environmental ethics. We will devote particular attention to the question of moral standing, or in other words, the question of who or what is deserving of ultimate moral consideration. Topics to be discussed include the ethical treatment of animals, the value of non-sentient life, individualism versus holism in ethics, climate change and the ethics of geoengineering, and whether and why anthropocentrism might be a problem in environmental ethics.
Envr Pol 390-0-24 Ocean and Coastal Law and Policy
This course focuses on laws, policies and the decision-making process related to coastal and ocean resources in the United States, and internationally. Through examination of treaties, statutes, cases, administrative materials, and academic articles, we will explore issues such as coastal land use, offshore energy, ocean pollution, the impacts of climate on ocean/coastal ecosystems, marine mammal conservation, and fisheries management.
Co-Listed as ANTHRO 383-0-20 Anthropology has had a long, storied relationship with questions of nature and culture, society and environment, during which time a variety of theoretical approaches have been developed. This class will review these intellectual developments and recent trends with the aim of giving students toolkits for analyzing present-day environmental concerns.
Environmental science is the interdisciplinary study of how humans interact with the living and nonliving parts of their environment. In this course, we will examine current environmental challenges, such as the conservation of biodiversity, the sustainable production of energy, and the implications of human population growth. A case study approach will be used to emphasize the processes of scientific inquiry and discovery.
This upper-level seminar in medical anthropology examines the role of social markers of difference including race, class, nationality, gender, sexuality, age and religion in current debates and challenges in the theory and practice of global health. We will explore contemporary illness experiences and therapeutic interventions in sociocultural and historical context through case studies from the US, Brazil, and South Africa. Students will be introduced to key concepts such as embodiment, medicalization, structural violence, the social determinants of health, and biopolitics. Central questions of the seminar include: How do social categories of difference determine disease and health in individuals and collectivities? How is medical science influenced by economic and political institutions and by patient mobilization? How does social and economic inclusion/exclusion govern access to treatment as well as care of the self and others? The course will provide advanced instruction in anthropological and related social scientific research methods as they apply to questions of social inequality and public health policy in both the United States and in emerging economic powers. The course draws from historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, public health literature, media reports, and films.
Gbl Health 390-21 Native Nations, Healthcare Systems and US Policies
Healthcare for Native populations, in the what is currently the U.S., are an entanglement of settler colonial domination and the active determination of Native nations to uphold their Indigenous sovereignty. This reading-intensive, discussion-based seminar will provide students with a complex and in-depth understanding of the historical and contemporary policies and systems created for and by Native nations. We will focus on the legal foundations of the trust responsibility and fiduciary obligation of the federal government outlined in the U.S. Constitution and Supreme Court decisions. To gain a nuanced perspective, students will study notable federal policies including the Snyder Act, the Special Diabetes Programs for Indians, Violence Against Women Act, and Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Additionally, state policy topics will include Medicaid expansion and tobacco cessation and prevention.
Gbl Hlth 301-0-20 Introduction to International Public Health
This course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide and examines efforts currently underway to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call "global health" today, and explores the environmental, social, political and economic factors that shape patterns and experiences of illness and healthcare across societies. We will scrutinize the value systems that underpin specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health and place present-day developments in historical perspective. Key topics will include: policies and approaches to global health governance and interventions, global economies and their impacts on public health, medical humanitarianism, global mental health, maternal and child health, pandemics (HIV/AIDS, Ebola, H1N1, Swine Flu), malaria, food insecurity, health and human rights, and global health ethics.
Gbl Hlth 301-0-21 Introduction to International Public Health
This course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide and examines past and current efforts to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call "global health" today, and explores the environmental, social, political and economic factors that shape patterns and experiences of illness and healthcare across societies. We will scrutinize the value systems that underpin specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health and place present-day developments in historical perspective.
This course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide and examines past and current efforts to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call “global health” today, and explores the environmental, social, political and economic factors that shape patterns and experiences of illness and healthcare across societies. We will scrutinize the value systems that underpin specific paradigms in the policy and science of global health and place present-day developments in historical perspective.
Global health is a popular field of work and study for Americans, with an increasing number of medical trainees and practitioners, as well as people without medical training, going abroad to volunteer in areas where there are few health care practitioners or resources. In addition, college undergraduates, as well as medical trainees and practitioners, are going abroad in increasing numbers to conduct research in areas with few health care resources. But all of these endeavors, though often entered into with the best of intentions, are beset with ethical questions, concerns, and dilemmas, and can have unintended consequences. In this course, students will assess these ethical challenges. In so doing, students will examine core ethical codes, guidelines, and principals - such as solidarity, social justice, and humility - so they will be able to ethically assess global health practices in a way that places an emphasis on the core goal of global health: reducing health inequities and disparities.
Gbl Hlth 307-0-1 International Perspectives on Mental Health
This course will explore issues of mental health in cross-cultural, international perspective and examine the impact of psychological illness on the global burden of disease. Students explore the following questions: how do cultural systems of meaning and behavior affect the vulnerability of individuals within the population to mental illness and the mental illnesses to which they are vulnerable? How does culture influence the way that mental illness is expressed and experienced and how does this affect our ability to measure psychological illness cross-culturally? How do cultural factors affect the way that mental illnesses are diagnosed and labeled, and the degree to which they are stigmatized? And how do such factors affect our ability to create effective public health interventions? Finally, how do healing practices and the efficacy of particular treatments vary across cultures? By examining these and related questions, in the context of specific mental illnesses including schizophrenia, depression, and PTSD students are exposed to a unique set of ideas otherwise unrepresented in the current global health curriculum. Mental health is crucially linked to physical health, and represents an enormous global health burden in its own right. It is crucial, therefore, that global health students be introduced to central issues related to epidemiology and intervention in this area.
The history of reproduction is a large subject, and during this course we will touch on many, but by no means all, of what can be considered as part of this history. Our focus will be on human reproduction, considering the vantage points of both healthcare practitioners and lay women and men. We will look at ideas concerning fertility, conception, pregnancy, miscarriage, childbirth, birth control, abortion, and assisted reproduction. Because, at a fundamental level, reproduction is about power - as historian Amy Kaler (but by no means only Kaler), pointed out, "[c]ontrol over human reproduction is eternally contested, in zones ranging from the comparative privacy of the conjugal bedroom to the political platform and programs of national polities" - we will pay attention to power in reproductive health. And, since the distribution of power in matters of reproduction has often been uneven and unequal - between men and women, between colonizing and Indigenous populations, between clinicians and lay people, between those in upper socioeconomic classes and those in lower socioeconomic classes - we will pay particular attention during this class to struggles over matters of reproduction as we explore historical changes and continuities in reproduction globally since 1900.
Gbl Hlth 390-0-20 Native American Health Research and Prevention
Native nations in what is currently the United States are continuously seeking to understanding and undertake the best approaches to research and prevention with their communities. This course introduces students to the benefits and barriers to various approaches to addressing negative health outcomes and harnessing positive social determinants of health influencing broader health status. Important concepts to guide our understanding of these issues will include settler colonialism, colonialism, sovereignty, social determinants of health, asset-based perspectives, and decolonizing research. Students will engage in a reading-intensive, discussion-based seminar, drawing upon research and scholarship from a variety of disciplines including public health, Native American and Indigenous Studies, anthropology, sociology, history, nursing, and medicine.
Gbl Hlth 390-0-23 Health Care Under Socialism and Postsocialism
This course introduces students to ideas and concepts of health care and social protection during socialism and post-socialism in Eastern and Southeastern Europe. The course will explore systems based on the principle of "health for all" and their transformation during the so-called post-socialist transition from state-planned to market-oriented economies. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we will examine the complex relationship between socialist heritage and the influence of neoliberal policies on health care systems in former socialist states, with a special emphasis on the former Yugoslavia. Key course topics include: socialist governance and health care policy; the politics of post-socialist "transition;" the neoliberalization of health care and social protection policies; patients and their rights in the new order; informal economies and clientelism; and challenges in access to healthcare for marginalized social groups. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to think critically about the political-economic, ethical, and cultural complexities of health care under socialism and the neoliberal transition.
Germany is often regarded as being at the forefront of European developments concerning issues such as climate change and recycling, transport and renewable energy sources. This class will trace the scientific, political, philosophical, and aesthetic history of Germany as a green nation from the 18th century until today. What are the roots of the ideology of environmentalism as it is represented in concepts like environment, ecology, or sustainability, which were all invented or popularized by German scientists (von Uexküll, Haeckel, von Carlowitz)?
Gndr St 101-6 Our Bodies Ourselves: The Women's Movement
The U.S. 1970s Women's Health Movement demanded everything from safe birth control on demand to an end to for-profit healthcare. Some participants formed research collectives and published D-I-Y guides to medical knowledge such as the Boston Women's Health Collective's Women and Their Bodies or Carol Downer's A New View of a Woman's Body. Some movement members established battered women's shelters, underground abortion referral services, and feminist health clinics. Others formed local committees and national networks, such as the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA) and the National Women's Health Network (NWHN), with the goal of transforming contemporary medical protocols and scientific research agendas. Because many of these local and national groups are still in existence, original movement goals continue to define the parameters of a "women's health" agenda in the present moment. On the other hand, the Women's Health Movement was (and is) a heterogeneous movement. Then, as now, groups with competing ideas about the healthcare needs of women as a group identified as part of same movement. Thus, an examination of historical and current debates over "women's health" is also a means of assessing several distinct, often competing, paradigms of health and disease. Moreover, how we articulate a "women's health agenda" depends on our (often taken-for-granted) ideas about gender, sexuality, and embodiment itself.
Gndr St 332-0-20 Reproductive Health/Politics/Justice
As feminist scholar Michelle Murphy points out, "reproduction is not self-evidently a capacity located in sexed bodies"; it is instead a site (or formation) that joins, "cells, protocols, bodies, nations, capital, economics, freedom, and affect as much as sex and women into its sprawl." Thus, she reminds us, "how we constitute reproduction shapes how it can be imagined, altered and politicized." In this research seminar we will explore the changing contours of "reproductive politics" from the 1960s to the present through an in-depth investigation of a range of projects and organizations that conceptually reimagine what we mean by "reproduction," the scope and content of "reproductive politics," and the kinds of demands that can be made in the name of reproductive health, rights, freedom and justice. In addition to course materials, our collective research into this topic will be informed by (guided) archival research in Special Collections, on-campus lecture by Prof. Premilla Nadasen (1/30), and class visitors working on related projects in the Chicago area.
This class offers an introduction to the relationship between gender, sexuality, and law in the United States, both historically and currently. We will examine how the law has reflected and created distinctions on the basis of gender and sexuality and how such distinctions contribute to social inequalities. We will also explore how feminist and queer activists have resisted legally produced inequalities and whether (or how) their efforts have created enduring social change. Some of the topics we will consider include marriage, sex work, reproduction, employment and the workplace, anti-violence movements, consent, and everyday forms of discrimination.
Gndr St 374-0 Imagining the Internet: Fiction, Film, Theory
Much recent fiction, film and theory are concerned with representing the internet and the World Wide Web. Sometimes cyberspace is depicted as a continuation of previous media such as television, cinema or telephone, but often it is envisioned as a new frontier. This course will examine the ways in which virtual media appears in cultural discourses. We consider how technological objects and tools participate in shaping elements of our culture that may appear natural, logical, or timeless. Our guiding questions will include the following: In what ways are these narratives shaping collective perceptions of the internet? How have virtual technologies challenged experiences of language, gender, community and identity? We will focus on social networking, gaming, artificial intelligence, and literary and filmic representations of these. Following a Cultural Studies model for inquiry, this course will be project-based and experiential. Your attendance and participation are mandatory. No experience needed, only a willingness to take risks and share work.
The Black Death refers to the first visitation of the bubonic plague in the fourteenth century. It was the greatest single demographic calamity in recorded history: between 1346 and 1353, the population in affected areas was depleted by as much as 60%. The plague was a true pandemic which reverberated throughout the world. This course will use the bubonic plague as a jumping off point for the study of other pandemics, analyzing the social and environmental factors that account for the spread of a given disease; efforts to understand and vanquish it; and the ultimate impact on society. The manner in which different diseases spread reflect important aspects of world history. For instance, the spread of the Black Death was dependent on the revival of long-distance trade; smallpox was spread throughout the "new world" by both territorial conquest and the human trafficking in slaves; cholera, which was transmitted infected water, was (and is) representative of poor hygiene and abject poverty - factors that were often class related. Other diseases, like tuberculosis, were (and are) often indicative of poor working conditions. As the recent outbreak of cholera in Haiti attests, many of these diseases have never been eradicated, even as new ones continue to wreak havoc. The course will conclude with an examination of the AIDS virus and ongoing outbreaks of Ebola.
We live in an information age, with computers of unprecedented power in our pockets. This course seeks to understand how information shapes our lives today, and how it has in the past. It does so via an interdisciplinary inquiry into four key information and communication technologies, print, telegraphy, broadcast radio/TV, and the internet, to understand the origins, development, and impacts of information in society. It will be jointly taught by faculty in Communication Studies and History.
Hist 275-1 History of Western Science and Medicine: Origins in Early Modern Europe
Origins of science and medicine in early modern Europe; science, religion, and cosmology; anatomy and sexual difference; the Enlightenment and social science.
Hist 275-2 History of Western Science and Medicine: In Modern Europe and America
Science has profoundly shaped the world we live in: it impacts the food we eat, our interactions with one another, the ways in which we relate to our bodies, the manner of our travel and communication, and our personal views of humanity's place in the universe. Over the course of the modern period, science has earned widespread authority as objective knowledge about the natural world. Yet as most scientists today will freely admit, decisions about which research questions earn attention (and funding) and how research is carried out are influenced by powerful institutions, political considerations, business interests, technological changes, imperialism, and societal expectations. Science is, after all, a human activity. With this lesson in mind, our course surveys the history of science from the Enlightenment until the Cold War, in a series of overlapping units examining medicine, physics, biology, and earth sciences. We will be guided by questions including: What counted as science in different times and places? How did scientific researchers earn a living, and which institutions supported them, or didn't? Above all, what changing values has science reflected over the course of the modern period?
This course will survey American history from the Colonial Era to the present with two premises in mind: that the natural world is not simply a passive background to human history but rather an active participant in historical change, and that human attitudes toward nature are both shaped by and in turn shape social, political, and economic behavior. The course will cover formal schools of thought about the natural world, from Transcendentalism to the conservation and environmental movements, but also discuss the many informal intersections of human activity and natural systems, from European colonialism to property regimes, migration and transportation, industry, consumer practices, war, technological innovation, political ideology, and food production.
Hist 322-2-20 Development of the Modern American City: 1880-Present
This is the second half of a two-quarter course dealing with urbanization and urban communities in America. The second quarter deals with the period from 1870 onward. Topics include the role of cities in the formation of an industrial society, the influence of immigration and rural-urban migration, racial discrimination, political machines, professional planning, the automobile, electronic media, and the expansion of the federal role in city government. History 322-1 is NOT a prerequisite for 322-2.
The changing relations between justice and science-including the forensic sciences of identification and intellectual property in the United Steates and Europe over the past 300 years
The past and present are shaped in large part by our beliefs about what the future holds. In this seminar, we will investigate human attempts to anticipate events yet to come, from antiquity until the present (but with an emphasis on the period since 1800). How have people in different times and places gone about anticipating the future? What phenomena have gripped their attention: weather, economy, human society, or individual fate? Have their imaginations been utopian, dystopian, or even apocalyptic, and what does that tell us about the historical moment in which they lived? And crucially, what happened when predictions failed?as so often happened? Using a global range of primary and secondary sources, from revealed prophecies and science fiction to genetic codes and financial speculations, we will examine why and how our historical subjects believed the future might be foreseeable. This course fits today's concerns about the future of the environment (notably climate change) and humanity into a long history of decision-making in the face of uncertainty.
ISEN 230-0-20 Climate Change and Sustainability: Ethnical Dimensions
This course is about our ethical responsibilities in the face of anthropogenic climate change. The course begins with an introduction to philosophical ethics, the scientific evidence in support of an anthropogenic role in climate change, and some advanced technological approaches to mitigating the effects of climate change. After these introductory sessions the class is split into two parts. We will begin with an exploration of how far reaching our ethical responsibilities are by questioning which things matter morally: are future-human beings, non-human animals, and ecosystems morally important? How do they compare morally to humans alive today? In the second part of the course we will focus on how individually specific our ethical responsibilities are. We will focus on a range of common behaviors relevant to climate change and ask whether and how we can ethically justify our individual participation or lack of participation in these behaviors. We will conclude the course by asking how our moral responsibilities with respect to climate change fit with our other moral responsibilities.
Health and Science Reporting teaches students both how to think about science writing and how to write about science and medicine. In this combination writing workshop and seminar we will read some of the best of the best science and health journalism; meet with expert scientists on campus; and meet the editors and writers from leading scientific journals and publications. Students will learn what makes good science writing, how to find sources, how to evaluate information and how to sort out science from pseudo-science. Assignments will include critiques of science coverage in newspapers, magazines, television, radio and the Web, science/health/medicine journal rewrites, news briefs, an in-depth narrative story on a science topic of students' own choosing, and an opportunity to write live copy for a science magazine or website.
Latino 392-0 Latinx Resistance to Environmental Racism
Latinx communities are often recognized as major contributors to social movements aimed at reforming or transforming labor, immigration, housing, education, and mass incarceration systems. Often overlooked is the leadership of Latin/x grassroots organizations and leaders in environmental justice and climate justice movements. Encouraged to think beyond the logics of mainstream environmentalism and sustainability frameworks, students in this course will engage with grassroots concepts and become familiar with local and transnational histories of environmental racism in order to deepen their knowledge of Latinx resistance to racial expendability, gender violence, labor exploitation, hyper-consumerism, and displacement. Through selected course readings, films, guest speakers, lectures and class discussions, students will work collaboratively on projects that reveal the unique contributions of Latinx communities to longstanding efforts to protect oppressed communities and the planet from environmental hazards, extractive industries, and the climate crisis.
This class introduces students to a variety of philosophical problems concerning gender and politics. Together, we'll read classic and contemporary texts that examine questions such as: what is gender - and how, if it all, does it relate to or differ from sex? What does it really mean to be a woman or a man - and are these categories we're born into or categories that we become or inhabit through living in a particular way under specific conditions? Human history all the way up to the present seems to be rife with asymmetrical relations of power that relegate those marked out as women to a subordinate position - what explains this? What would it mean to over turn this state of affairs - and which strategies are most likely to accomplish this task? And to what extent is it possible to grapple with all of the above questions - questions of gender, sex and sexuality - without also, at the very same time, thinking about how they relate to questions of class and race? Readings will include selections from Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young, Sandra Bartky, bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins, Judith Butler, Talia Bettcher, and others.
This course is an introduction to central concepts and problems in environmental ethics. We will devote particular attention to the question of moral standing, or in other words, the question of who or what is deserving of ultimate moral consideration. Topics to be discussed include the ethical treatment of animals, the value of non-sentient life, individualism versus holism in ethics, climate change and the ethics of geoengineering, and whether and why anthropocentrism might be a problem in environmental ethics.
This course is an analysis of ethical and political issues that arise in medicine, with particular attention to questions posed by developments in biotechnology. Topics to be considered include human research, abortion, euthanasia, genetic engineering, and the allocation of medical resources.
This course is about our ethical responsibilities in the face of anthropogenic climate change. The course begins with an introduction to philosophical ethics, the scientific evidence in support of an anthropogenic role in climate change, and some advanced technological approaches to mitigating the effects of climate change. After these introductory sessions the class is split into two parts. We will begin with an exploration of how far reaching our ethical responsibilities are by questioning which things matter morally: are future-human beings, non-human animals, and ecosystems morally important? How do they compare morally to humans alive today? In the second part of the course we will focus on how individually specific our ethical responsibilities are. We will focus on a range of common behaviors relevant to climate change and ask whether and how we can ethically justify our individual participation or lack of participation in these behaviors. We will conclude the course by asking how our moral responsibilities with respect to climate change fit with our other moral responsibilities.
An exploration of philosophical problems related to health and health care. Topics to be considered include the definition and moral significance of medical concepts like health, disease, and death. We will also consider how such concepts relate to moral and political debates around access to health care and the provision of public health measures.
In this course we will explore the authority of science: what, if anything, makes science authoritative, and what role, if any, it ought to play in our public lives and in our politics. Special focus will be given to the epistemological basis for the credibility of scientific results, and the need for political legitimacy of any claim that is to have authority in the public domain. How do these things relate to one another? Should scientific results be given credibility in the public domain, and if so, on what basis?
Global Warming is one of the most difficult challenges facing humanity. This course examines global warming from a variety of perspectives, including many of the following: science, policy, economics, ethics, politics, journalism, engineering, history, astronomy.
The idea that science has a history and exists in a social context may seem curious to some: we are taught, and the scientific method is thought to ensure, that scientific knowledge is objective and universal. But like other social institutions, science has rules and norms that dictate training and professionalization, the representation of findings and ideas, and minute practices in that can shape the big picture of what we know about the world. This course introduces students to the sociology of science, a field based on understanding how the natural and laboratory sciences are influenced by political and historical epochs, social identities, and cultural norms. The course has three broad aims: to introduce students to core literature in the history and sociology of science; to use case studies to better understand the social life of various scientific fields and innovations; and to apply our sociological imaginations to conceive possibilities at the limits of humanistic and social aspirations.
How are experiences of health and illness influenced by the gendered social and political context in which our bodies are located? This course will introduce you to the major theoretical and substantive topics that comprise the social study of gender, its relationship to health and illness, and the influence of social movements, politics, and policymakers. We will explore a wide range of historical and theoretical understandings of gendered bodies, identities, processes, and institutional structures, with a focus on how they contribute to gendered patterns and inequalities in experiences of health and illness across the lifespan. The course will consider the origins and impacts of the women's health movement in the United States (US) and globally; investigate the social basis of health outcomes, engage critically with how other socially meaningful forms of difference, such as race and class interact with gender to shape experiences of health and illness; explore differences in how the reproductive health of men and women is constructed and controlled; consider questions of social justice in relation to the health experiences of queer, intersex, and transgender individuals; and, engage with recent policy debates related to biomedical and health research.
You have probably heard the saying, "you are what you eat." This class argues that you are also "where" you eat. Immigration profoundly shapes culinary practices and global food systems are often dependent upon migrant labor. This course explores what cuisine and movement can teach us about belonging within local and global communities by addressing questions such as: How do foodways and migratory trajectories influence individual and collective identities? What political, social, and economic activities shape food distribution and day-to-day eating customs? We will cover food-related topics such as labor, transnationalism, the environment, memory, authenticity, gender and much more. Class discussions will span historical and contemporary developments that gave rise to our modern industrial food system while focusing in particular on food culture and migration narratives.
Can technology end poverty? Is the internet racist? Technology is everywhere and humans have always used technology to shape society and vice versa. How do people relate to technology? How has our culture been affected by technology? In this course we will examine how technology itself been shaped by societal norms, and values. We begin with an examination of what technology is, and is not and continue by examining the role technology plays in shaping different aspects of society - from race, to gender, and surveillance.
Cryptology is the study of secret writing, or more generally secure communication. We will discuss classical methods of cryptography, followed by the use of the German Enigma machine during World War II, and end by discussing modern cryptosystems such as RSA and PGP, digital signatures, and their use in internet security.
