Originating in Slavic words for forced labor, the term "robot" evokes for many an image of blocky metallic humanoids beeping their way through a set of tasks. Yet robots also carry the specter of revolt. We tend to fear the automated tools we design to mechanize labor, even as we continue creating more of them. In this class, we will investigate U.S. popular culture's treatment of robots from early cinema's "mechanical men" to the modern controversy over generative AI. Along the way, we will survey U.S. law's responses to the spread of technology, with particular attention to the problems raised by cutting-edge innovations like self-driving cars and AI-generated artwork. We will read fiction by Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and Naomi Kritzer; analyze films like The Iron Giant and The Stepford Wives; and engage with the work of scholars like Donna Haraway, Dennis Yi Tenen, Scott Selisker, and others. By the end of the course, students will develop a more nuanced understanding of what it means to fear robots and what that fear obscures about them (and us).
This course is an introduction to the anthropological subfield of archaeology, its theories and methods, and the political and social issues that arise when we study human pasts. The course has three main components. First, we look at the history of the discipline, its theoretical underpinnings, and its practical applications. Next, we learn about archaeological methods, including how archaeologists create research designs, discover and excavate sites, and analyze artifacts and features. Last, we explore how archaeology confronts and deals with contemporary issues critical to the archaeological project and the communities that archaeologists engage with: e.g. heritage preservation and Indigenous/community rights, Black lives and Black histories, feminist archaeology and gender equality. Throughout the course, students will learn about archaeological case studies from around the globe and from a variety of historical periods.
This class is an introduction to political ecology, a multidisciplinary body of theory and research that analyzes the environmental articulations of political, economic, and social difference and inequality. The key concepts, debates, and approaches in this field address two main questions: (1) How do humans' interactions with the environment shape power and politics? (2) How do power and politics shape humans' interactions with the environment? These questions are critical to understanding and addressing the current issues of climate change, neoliberal capitalism, and environmental justice. Topics discussed in this class will include environmental scarcity and degradation, sustainability, resilience and conservation. Readings will come from a variety of disciplines within the social sciences and humanities. Case studies will range from the historical to the present-day. No prior background in the environmental sciences is needed to appreciate and engage in this course.
Chem 105-7-01 Science and the Scientist: The Essence and Impact
In this seminar, we will delve into the world of chemistry research, exploring not only the processes that unfold within the laboratory but also the key decision-makers driving innovation. Through engaging readings, discussions, and presentations, you will have the opportunity to meet some of the chemists at Northwestern who illuminate their methodologies in tackling significant questions about our world. This course also emphasizes the importance of effective scientific communication. Whether articulating the nuanced technicalities of an experiment to peers or elucidating the broader implications of a study to the public, adept communication is indispensable for scientists. You will sharpen your communication skills, tailoring scientific narratives to suit diverse audiences and to achieve various objectives.
Comp Lit 302-0-1 Intersections between Literature and Mathematics
Literature and mathematic, though often seen as at opposite ends of the "liberal arts"— have over the course of millennia each enriched the other in a variety of ways. This class is designed for students to explore the connection between these two forms of writing, thinking, and analyzing the world—whether the world be the "real" one or one discovered through the exercise of imagination and logical reasoning. The principal requirement for the class is a final project that students propose and develop in consultation with the professor. The course is broken into three modules. The frist considers certain poetic genres and individual poems whose mathematical dimensions are an essential element of their meaning. The second revolved around the (short) "fictions" of Jorge Luis Borges. The third involves three portraits of the mathematician: those by Robert Musil, Leonard Michaels, and Alice Munro. The course is taught in English; those who know German and/or Spanish are encouraged to read the stories in the original.
In this seminar, we will look into the many different facets of the economics of gender. We will learn about economic decisions that individuals and households face from a unique gender perspective and ask ourselves: do women and men behave differently in economic circumstances? The topics we will cover include, among others: the status of women around the world, education, marriage, fertility, labor supply, bargaining power, and discrimination. For each topic, we will study concrete examples emanating from all over the world. Students will learn to use a wide variety of academic resources (including empirical research articles, ethnographic descriptions, and popular press books) and write different papers, including policy recommendations, multimodal essays, argument essays, and research papers.
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.
Econ 323-2-20 Enconomic History of the United States 1865-Present
The course examines the economic development of the United States since the Civil War to the present. It focuses on both long-term economic trends (like technological advance and industrialization) and the economic causes and consequences of particular events (like the Great Depression).
This course examines economic development over the long-run, with a focus on the transition to modern economic growth in the Western world. Topics include Malthusian stagnation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the demographic transition, and globalization and the great divergence. Along the way, we will discuss long-run changes in inequality, technology, and labor force participation, as well as the role of institutions in economic development, and the interaction between economic conditions and political power. Much of the class will be focused around analyzing recent research on these topics. The class will also involve a writing component aimed at improving students' ability to write critically and concisely about economic topics.
English 101-7-23 Bioinsecurities: Race and Colonialism in Global South
This reading-intensive first year seminar will consider how colonialism and contagion together produce racialization in science fiction. In the year of the pandemic, European nations voted for strict vaccine export control measures, effectively slowing down access to medications for the Global South. Phrases like "vaccine nationalism" as well as "vaccine passports" have become commonplace. This twilight zone of deepening crises, and the imperial paranoid imaginary of what Neel Ahuja calls "bioinsecurities," have long been represented by science fiction authors. Keeping a firm eye on epidemiology, race, and imperialism, this course charts a path along genre-bending, speculative fictions that imagine contagion and infection not just as disease but as racialized others from the late-nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. Contagion emerges not just as a moral panic or embodied paranoia about infection, but as a method of relationality that draws tightly controlled, governmentalized worlds around raced and differentiated bodies. We will think about how these fictional netherworlds produce new subjectivities of life, death, and living death. Alongside science fictional as well as speculative novels, spanning postcolonial, British as well as multiethnic US writing, we will also watch films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Night of the Living Dead, District 9, Arrival.
Embark on a journey through time and space as we trace the genesis of science fiction—from the literary landscapes of the Age of Exploration (where colonial ambitions collide with speculative imagination), to the early science fiction television and film productions of the Space Age, to our own contemporary moment with Liu Cixin's groundbreaking novel "Three Body Problem" and its recent Netflix adaptation. Through close examination of these diverse texts and visual media, we will unravel the threads that connect past and present, exploring how science fiction grapples with the enduring anxieties of exploration, discovery, and power. What can the speculative visions of yesteryear teach us about our contemporary world? How do they inform our understanding of the political landscapes of the past, present, and future?
More than once, early modern England had to learn how that their world was bigger than they had known—adding after 1492 the Americas, and after Galileo, new worlds in the heavens. Often these realms were understood to be new worlds beside the more familiar one, part of it and yet somehow apart from it as well. As their worlds widened and multiplied, early modern English writers and thinkers learned to invent new worlds of their own, fairy realms, enchanted forests, kingdoms of darkness, dreamlike polities, imagined worlds through which they could offer critique of their own, or propose and explore what seemed impossible in it. Despite usually being avowed as fictions, these speculative worlds claimed value, seriousness, and even kinds of truth through the extravagance of their fantasies, while also asserting their pleasurableness and recreativity. In this class we will explore some of these worlds of imagination and how and why early modern writers crafted them.
The United States is set to become a majority minority country by 2045. What are the many promises—and what are the many pitfalls, of interracial encounters, and what do they reveal about the country writ large? How do minority writers understand and narrate each other? This class brings contemporary African American, Native American, Latinx, and Asian American literature into relation with a focus on interracial dynamics. By examining complex topics from Black/Asian conflict during the 1992 LA Riots to the shared border migrations of indigenous and Latinx subjects, we will develop an analytical framework attuned to how American racial identity has been differentially and unevenly constructed through history, culture, and politics. A central goal of the course is decentering whiteness as the primary locus of literary analysis, to allow for more nuanced interpretations of topics such as U.S. imperialism, mixed race identity, activism, labor history, and immigration. In the process, we will familiarize ourselves with the richness and diversity of multiethnic American literature by considering a variety of genres, including poetry, novels, short stories, and film.
English 381-0-20 Underlying Conditions: Race, Health, Medicine
Race is socially constructed, but how is it medically constructed? This seminar surveys Black, Latinx, Asian, and Indigenous American literary and cultural production to question how "healthy" bodies in the United States are constituted, and in turn, what these racialized processes reveal about the essential role of race in producing a body politic. Concomitantly, we will also read scholarship from ethnic studies that charts racialized comorbidities, pre-existing conditions, and environmental racism, as well as work that expands our understanding of race's imbrications with medical paradigms such as eugenics, genetics, informed consent, reproductive rights, disability, mental illness, and, of course, pandemics.
This course introduces students to pressing disease and health care problems worldwide (including in the USA) and examines efforts currently underway to address them. Taking an interdisciplinary approach drawing on the social sciences and global/public health, the course identifies the main actors, institutions, practices and forms of knowledge production characteristic of what we call "global health" today, exploring the environmental, social, political and economic factors shaping 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 practice, and place present-day developments in historical perspective. As an introductory course on global health, the class delves into comparative health systems, including in high- and low-income countries. Key topics will include: policies and approaches to global health, key actors in global health, comparative health systems, structural violence, gender and reproductive health, chronic and communicable diseases (including pandemics), politics of global health research and evidence, and the ethics of global health equity.
This lecture-based survey in public health and medical anthropology explores how political, economic, historical, and sociocultural forces impact health inequalities at home and around the world. We will explore contemporary illness experiences and therapeutic interventions in 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. he course draws from historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, public health literature, media reports, and films.
This lecture-based survey in public health and medical anthropology explores how political, economic, historical, and sociocultural forces impact health inequalities at home and around the world. We will explore contemporary illness experiences and therapeutic interventions in 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. he course draws from historical accounts, contemporary ethnographies, public health literature, media reports, and films.
In this upper-level course exploring approaches to meld traditional data collection methods with alternative techniques, students will review decolonizing ways that Black/African American individuals have used to reveal their truths and construct and reconstruct images of themselves. Students will explore how these same processes can be applied in public health data collection to be inclusive and validate the methods and ways of knowing that have assisted underserved, underheard, and underrepresented communities in advocating for justice to survive. Course readings will consist of text that provides a critical lens to view qualitative data collection methods through and will include studies in historical and traumatic violence that underscore how people living in Black bodies work to survive by Joy DeGruy and the negotiating processes that Black individuals use to exercise agency and evaluate systemic oppressions that impede how they navigate life as articulated by authors such as Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Richard Delgado, and Jean Stefancic.
This lecture course uses the Covid-19 pandemic as a point of departure to study the history of global health and biomedicine. We will break the quarter into four segments during which we will consider: 1) the "unification of the globe" by infectious diseases; 2) the role of empires, industries, war, and revolutions in spreading biomedical cultures around the world; 3) the functions played by transnational and global health institutions in different continents; and 4) the growth of the pharmaceutical industry and the narcotics trade. Students will have a chance to apply insights from the readings - about histories of racial segregation, reproductive politics, militarization, and police powers - to the more recent past. Lectures and readings cover all world regions: Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, Asia, Europe, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Gbl Hlth 310-1-1 Maternal Health in the 20th Century
Maternal health, in particular, maternal mortality, is a significant concern in global health, and in this class we will consider the historical roots of two areas of focus on improving maternal health and reducing maternal mortality: women having access to skilled birth attendants and birth control options. We will look at this broad international concern by focusing on the work of one organization in the 1960s-1970s, the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM), by examining their papers, held at the Wellcome Library and Archives in London. We will visit the library the week before classes start and this research will form the basis of the seminar course during the quarter. This class will culminate in a major paper using the primary sources from the ICM research done in London.
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]control 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.
This course examines how socioeconomic and environmental factors work together to cause hazards and disasters in human society. In this course we learn the main concepts about disaster such as preparedness, vulnerability, resilience, response, mitigation, etc. We learn that a disaster does not have the same effect on everyone (all groups of people), and factors of social inequality such as race, ethnicity, class, and gender, make people more vulnerable to impacts of disasters. Also, this course, with an interdisciplinary perspective, analyzes disasters in the global North and South. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are the student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lecture, discussion, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
This course examines how environmental problems reflect and exacerbate social inequality. In this course, we learn the definition of environmental (in)justice; the history of environmental justice; and also examples of environmental justice will be discussed. We will learn about environmental movements. This course has a critical perspective on health disparities in national and international levels. How environmental injustice impacts certain groups more than others and the social and political economic reasons for these injustices will be discussed in this course. This is a discussion-intensive course for advanced undergrad students. The classes are student-centered with an emphasis on collaborative learning. The class meetings will consist of lectures, discussions, presentations, teamwork, activities, video/audio materials and projects.
Gbl Hlth 339-0-1 Silent but Loud: Negotiating Health
To be "healthy" is a complex obstacle course that many individuals living in certain bodies have to navigate. Black bodies, for example, are often the tied to (un)health because they are stereotyped as in need to be controlled, managed, and "guided" into healthfulness. In the U.S., these narrow stereotypes are just a few of the ways Black bodies get defined. In this course, we will move beyond those restrictive stereotypes, guided by questions such as, "How does culture define health?", "How does the food pipeline affect the health of certain bodies?" and "What does it mean to live in an obesogenic environment?" In this course, we examine the connection between health, culture, food, and environment with a focus on what is silenced and what is loud when generating "fixes" for "diseased" bodies. Silence refers to the disregard and dismissiveness of the narratives and experiences around the oppressions attached to the health of certain bodies. Yet, this silence echoes as Loud when connected to their culture, food, and environment when discussing diseases highlighted in Black bodies such as obesity, hypertension, and diabetes.
This course draws on perspectives from anthropology, related social scientific fields, and the humanities to explore the role of the arts and media narratives in shaping politics and experiences of mental health and illness around the world. We will consider forms of storytelling—including literature, film, and theater—across eras and cultures, tracking shifts in perspectives on normality and pathology and their consequences for the most vulnerable. How does the power of Western psychiatry intersect with that of global media to reinforce reigning paradigms and imperatives for how suffering is to be understood, classified, and experienced? Conversely, what counter-narratives are being produced by artists and their communities? What role can the arts play in individual and collective forms of healing—or in exacerbating pain and grievance? What kinds of voices seem to have power, and which are neglected? Where is the line between cathartic and exploitative representation of trauma and mental illness? How, in short, do the stories we tell about mental illness "get under the skin" and shape forms of suffering and care?
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 390-0-28 Global Circulations and Human Health
Human beings and human parts/products are on the move across the globe, shaped by inequities that drive poor health outcomes for many involved in these circulations. More human beings are being forced from their homes than ever before in history; more and more are being turned away as they seek resettlement. Global economic migration is poorly regulated and rife with exploitation. The flow of human organs for transplantation increasingly moves from the poor in the Global South to the rich in the Global North. Even the production of human babies through international surrogacy is driven by economic inequities. This course examines the role of advocacy, law, politics and ethics to preserve dignity and health as human beings and human parts increasingly circulate across global boundaries.
Gbl Hlth 390-0-29 Infectious Disease Eradication and Outbreak Control
Despite many efforts across several diseases spanning decades and billions of dollars, global health actors have only been able to eradicate one infectious human disease: smallpox. Why? This course will attempt to answer this question by examining several failed and continuing disease eradication efforts through a multidisciplinary lens. Case studies will include smallpox, malaria, polio, measles, and hypothetical emerging infectious diseases. We will examine the grandiose global health goal of total disease eradication in relation to sociopolitical realities that limit the applications of idealized technological interventions.
This course is an opportunity for students to critically examine what is often a taken-for-granted aspect of social life: gender. This course will involve learning about gender as well as applying gender theory. We will study a variety of theoretical approaches to the study of gender, with particular focus on how problems are identified and theories are developed. We will examine several emergent cases of gender theorization -- childhood gender and sexuality panics, bathroom surveillance, and the intersex experience, among others. By the end of the term, students will be able to 1) describe and compare theoretical anchors for the sociological study of gender and 2) in writing, apply gender theory to original ethnographic data. This is a reading-heavy upper division course and prior course experience in gender/sexuality studies (by way of taking Gender & Society or other course work) is strongly advised.
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. We will look examine films predicting the internet, cyberpunk fiction predating the www, and early websites from many sources. In addition, this quarter we will consider various generative AI programs, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. 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? 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.
This first-year seminar will consider the history of the internet from the mid-twentieth century to the present. This will not be a technical history of the computer science or actual infrastructure that constitute the internet, but rather a history of the social and political ideas contributing to a worldwide system of networked computers and protocols. In particular, the course will discuss the culture surrounding the internet - the ways that the Cold War, the counterculture, libertarianism, and environmentalism all fostered a set of beliefs that helped define Silicon Valley and continue to shape companies that call for revolution one day and place their trust in the market the next.
This course is about the relationships between climate and human society from historical perspectives. It is a discussion-oriented class on the role of climate in human experience, covering three themes: how the shifting atmospheric (weather) patterns impacted the dawn of humanity and Early Holocene cultural evolution about 10,000 years ago; the effects of the Little Ice Age on global history; and the implications of the human-induced climate change of the recent centuries for our unfolding future. We will develop skills to read, listen, and observe critically, effectively draw inferences, and summarize compelling ideas about how climate has shaped the human experience, including our notions of time, culture, and progress and how human ambitions and innovations are changing the planet. The class will explore various sources for studying climate history, from documents, visual arts, geosciences, oral literature, and artifacts to documentaries. Students will also discuss the different debates and ideas about the human-induced climate change epoch (Anthropocene), using the historical approach to understand the problems and solutions. In addition, students will be guided in setting and evaluating their academic goals and adjusting to the rhythm of college life.
Our world is awash in predictions: climate models and pandemic models, political polls and betting pools, economic forecasts and military scenarios, plus the ever-approaching AI utopia and/or hellscape. This is hardly new. For millennia, people have been debating what the future holds. They haven't always been right, of course, but even their mistakes tell us a great deal about the times they were made. Ironically, studying the future is an excellent way to study the past—and reconsider our present. In this course we will study 5,000 years of prognosticators, from Mesopotamian astrologers to today's climate scientists. Along the way we will read sci-fi authors and religious millenarians, socialists and Afro-futurists, eugenicists and high-tech visionaries. We will also play in-class scenario games and read Covid predictions to get a feel for how the future unfolds in lived time. This course may not teach you to predict the future more accurately, but it will help you to better understand visions of things to come. Come explore the alternative worlds of futures past.
This lecture course uses the Covid-19 pandemic as a point of departure to study the history of global health and biomedicine. We will break the quarter into four segments during which we will consider: 1) the "unification of the globe" by infectious diseases; 2) the role of empires, industries, war, and revolutions in spreading biomedical cultures around the world; 3) the functions played by transnational and global health institutions in different continents; and 4) the growth of the pharmaceutical industry and the narcotics trade. Students will have a chance to apply insights from the readings - about histories of racial segregation, reproductive politics, militarization, and police powers - to the more recent past. Lectures and readings cover all world regions: Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, North America, Asia, Europe, and the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
How did computers become globally ubiquitous? Should we thank—or perhaps blame—isolated geniuses who toiled away in Silicon Valley? Or were our digital devices forged through geopolitics, international organizations, and world wars? This course will seek to answer these questions by analyzing the global development of modern computing from the nineteenth century to the present. In addition to looking at the technological and cultural contributions of the United States, we will spotlight the interconnected global nature of computing's history. By illuminating connections others have missed, we will see that the internet didn't connect the globe; rather, an interconnected world formed modern computing. To this end, participants will investigate how the Information Age was shaped through state planning in the Global South, Cold War competition, Japan's postwar growth, and the worldwide extraction of silica sand and quartz. Students will emerge from the seminar with both an appreciation of computing's historical highlights and an analytical framework for understanding how digital developments transcended borders and reconfigured the global community.
History 393-0-28 Illness and Disability in History
This course explores the changing meanings of disability and illness in history and around the world. How can we understand a historical figure as "disabled" before the invention of this category? What is the relationship between race, gender, class, illness and disability? By reading the historical writings of physicians, religious scholars, officials, activists, and others, some of whom were sick & disabled, we will investigate the social construction of categories relevant to disability and (chronic) illness in the history of Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas.
This course strives to respect contemporary disability justice principles, and as such, to be accessible to a range of bodyminds. Course materials will center academic and popular writings, podcasts, and memoirs, but will also include some film and visual art. Your final project will be a proposal for an archival and/or oral historical project on the history of illness and disability, which we will work towards throughout the semester. We will not carry out that proposal in this class, but you may in the future.
Humanities 220-0-20 Health, Biomedicine, Culture and Society
We are told constantly, "take care of yourself!" and we do our best to eat well, sleep well, and stay healthy. Our bodies are important to us.They are also important to the institutions we are a part of, including our families, our schools, our jobs, and our country. They are all invested in keeping our bodies healthy and productive. However, the array of institutions interested in the value of our bodies often have additional incentives- our health is surrounded by a hoard of controversies: - Why do some people get better medical care than others? - How should the healthcare system be organized? - How do we balance the risks of new medical treatments with the benefits? -What makes the stigma associated with disease and disability so enduring? - What happens when no diagnosis can be made? This course offers conceptual tools and perspectives for answering these controversies. To do so it surveys a variety of topics related to the intersections of health, biomedicine, culture, and society. We will analyze the cultural meanings associated with health and illness; the political debates surrounding health care, medical knowledge production, and medical decision-making; and the structure of thesocial institutions that comprise the health care industry. We will examine many problems with the current state of health and healthcare in the United States and also consider potential solutions.
Humanities 260-0-23 Minds+Machines: Philosophical Issues in Generative AI
This course will take up a number of philosophical questions about generative artificial intelligence. Are generative AI models agents? Do they pose unique existential risks to humans? What does the surge in AI-generated content mean for art, social media, and politics? We will explore these questions through readings from philosophers, computer scientists, and others in the cognitive and social sciences.
Medill - Journalism 390-0-27 Viruses and Viral Media
What are viruses? Are they living or dead? How does news media affect their influence on the world? And why do we say news "goes viral?" Designed for Medill and non-Medill students alike, Viruses and Viral Media will study how viruses intersect with race, sexuality, disability, economics and the news media. Historically and contemporarily, the course will look at how actual viruses and infectious diseases (such as HIV/AIDS, SARS-CoV-2, polio and monkeypox) have been covered in the global press. We will consider how certain groups of humans have been depicted as viruses themselves, such as how Jewish/disabled/queer/Roma people were described by the German and US press circa WW II; how African Americans were described in the US press circa Jim Crow; how viruses like HIV and MPX are queer(ed), and how Muslim, Mexican and migrant people are described in press and social media now. We will also consider why popular news "goes viral." Students will work in research groups to study viruses and virality in the news throughout the term.
Phil 101-7-20 Philosophy of Sex, Gender and Sexuality
To borrow a phrase from Aristotle: sex is said in many ways. The word "sex" can refer to the domain of the erotic, that is, to sexual desire and sexual activity. It can also refer to certain biological categories related to an animal's reproductive role, such as female, male, or intersex. Among humans, "sex," along with the nearby term "gender," can also refer to cultural or social categories like woman, man, or nonbinary. And there is also "sex" in the sense of sexual orientation, a set of categories describing an individual's typical pattern of sexual attraction, such as lesbian, gay, straight, or bisexual. Needless to say, things get complicated pretty quickly. In this seminar, we will read and discuss recent philosophical attempts to make sense of all this. The course will cover a wide range of topics, including: What is sexual desire? What (if anything) is sexual perversion? What is the best account of concepts like gender identity or sexual orientation? How (if at all) do those concepts relate to biological sex? What about the ethics and politics of sex? Is there anything wrong, morally speaking, with casual sex, or with the buying and selling of sex? Readings for this course will be drawn mostly from contemporary philosophical sources.
This course serves as an introduction to some of the most fundamental philosophical problems as well as to some classical attempts at dealing with those problems. There will be four main modules:1) The nature of Philosophy, 2) Knowledge & Reality, 3) Free Will and Determinism, and 4) Moral Philosophy. In this course, we will focus on four central philosophical questions:
1) What is the nature of philosophy? 2) What do I know? 3) Do we have free will, or is the future already determined? 4) What makes actions right and wrong?
The answers to these fundamental questions matter for answering practical problems we face in our lives as individuals and as members of society: Is abortion permissible? Can we wrong somebody merely by what we say? What do we owe to people who live in poverty? What exactly are the dangers posed by AI? Is genetic engineering morally permissible? Should prison be abolished?
How can we make our lives and our communities better? Why should we act justly, when being unjust can be profitable? What makes someone a true friend, how many kinds of friendships are there, and how many friends should we aim to have? These kinds of questions preoccupied ancient Greek philosophers, and their contributions to these topics continue to influence contemporary thought. We will investigate different proposed answers to these and other questions with a view to better understanding ancient Greek ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. This course strongly emphasizes the development of close reading and writing skills. No prior exposure to ancient philosophy is required.
This course will take up a number of philosophical questions about generative artificial intelligence. Are generative AI models agents? Do they pose unique existential risks to humans? What does the surge in AI-generated content mean for art, social media, and politics? We will explore these questions through readings from philosophers, computer scientists, and others in the cognitive and social sciences.
The course begins with a foundational competency in main concepts from the French philosopher Michel Foucault, including discipline and biopower, the productivity and plurality of power; normalization and its dependence on "abnormality;" the conditions under which freedom is also a form of subjection; disciplinary and punitive societies, the historical a priori. We review many of the aspects of Foucault's work that have strongly impacted inquiry in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Turning, in the course's second section, to the work of French Martinian philosopher and decolonial theorist Frantz Fanon, we will critically compare Foucault's and Fanon's approaches to power, psychiatric medicine, families, biopolitics, self-surveillance, knowledge, selfhood, alterity, and colonization. Challenging both thinkers we will ask how these approaches both reinforce each other and, at times, call each other into question. Students will have the opportunity to write on each of the two French philosophers jointly or separately.
The course is reading intensive. It will include weekly contributions to class debate including online postings. your critical responses to the readings, and to each other are encouraged. The course is open to both undergraduates and graduates and includes a lecture component and separate discussion sections at the undergraduate and graduate level.
What is the nature of short-term memory or implicit bias? Are our moral judgments impacted by emotional states? How do we know that tests like the n-back task, implicit association test, or fMRI studies produce evidence about memory, implicit attitudes, or emotional states? Psychologists appeal to tools of scientific reasoning, such as validation, construct development, and operational definitions, to evaluate when methods provide evidence about the objects of inquiry. We will analyze these tools as well as typical methods employed in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. These methods include: introspection, comparative animal research, controlled lab experiments, and functional neuroimaging. Using this analysis as background, we will evaluate particular cases of scientific reasoning about animal cognition, implicit bias, short-term and spatial memory, and moral judgment. At the end of this course, we will evaluate the role of replication and integration of results in producing knowledge about the mind/brain.
Poli Sci 390-0-21 Research in Global Climate Change
Each year, world leaders gather to negotiate pathways to addressing climate change. As the largest gathering of heads of state, the annual Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP) shines a light on our collective futures, bringing hope and skepticism around climate change to the fore. Despite nearly three decades of negotiations, the world is unlikely to avoid devastating impacts from climate change, where average global temperature increases will exceed the 2oC goal and is nearing well over 3oC. What, then, do COPs achieve? What role do they play in addressing global climate change? What role does science, business, technology, solidarity movements, and civil society play in shaping the global politics of climate change, and there with the potential to address climate change?
In this research seminar, students will design and conduct original empirical research on the Twenty-ninth Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC, which will be held in Baku, Azerbaijan from November 11 - 24, 2024 with some virtual components accessible online. The seminar is structured to establish a baseline understanding of global climate governance. Students enrolled in this course should consider themselves research apprentices and collaborators. There are three parts to this course: literature review, research design, and execution. Students are expected to conduct original research related to their dissertations or senior theses OR can participate as a researcher in an ongoing collaborative research project that examines the politics of sites of global environmental governance like COPs.
Psych 101-7-1 Mental Health Diagnosis and Treatment
While those going into the field of mental health typically think about it as a "helping profession", there is much more than meets the eye when it comes to the psychological, economic, and political forces that have defined the development of the field. The course will focus on the contemporary framework for defining mental illness - the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (now in its 5th edition) - with a particular focus on some of the problems that have emerged from the disease-based framework utilized in the manual, and the assumptions that it makes about disorders and typical development. We will explore the role of state mental hospitals in the U.S. in the early to mid-20th century, and we will examine the political forces that drove the de-institutionalization movement of the 1970s and 1980s, with additional consideration of the contemporary implications of the closing of state hospitals. Finally, the course will focus on the evolution of psychotherapy in the modern marketplace, and some of the challenges posed by the demands of the health insurance industry and academic research. The aggressive way in which the DSM has been marketed internationally and the implications of culture for diagnosis will also be discussed. Along the way, we will explore critiques of the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, and modern psychiatry. Some of these themes will also be explored through analysis of popular films and other media. Students will be evaluated on the basis of class attendance and participation, co-leading a class discussion with peers, and writing assignments including short reaction papers and a longer research paper.
Psych 101-7-2 Truth, Truthiness, and Trust in the Age of Deepfakes
In our current social and political environment, the nature of truth is often contested. Many institutions once widely regarded as objective purveyors of fact have fallen from grace in the eyes of a distrustful public. In what some refer to as a "post-truth era," public confidence in institutions is now at an all-time low, and many feel that personal beliefs, emotions, and opinions overshadow fact in popular discourse.
In this first-year seminar, "Truth, Truthiness, and Trust in Age of Deepfakes," we will consider the psychological mechanisms underlying judgments of truth, as well as socio-political factors that help shape our (dis)trust in information. Drawing from psychology and related fields (including sociology, philosophy, legal studies, and communication sciences), we will explore how emerging technologies, such as AI-generated "deepfakes," challenge traditional notions of evidence and reality. Through readings, discussions, and written assignments, students will develop a critical understanding of how humans perceive and engage with information in the social environment. We will engage in reflective thinking about our own judgments and explore potential avenues for addressing the erosion of trust and spread of misinformation in society.
Psych 101-7-3 Black Minds: Psychology's Construction and Constriction
Race is something that is constructed and something that constricts us. The field of psychology is responsible for both, but also has solutions for both. This class considers blackness and psychology from three perspectives: 1) How psychology has helped create the notion of race, 2) How psychology has treated black bodies historically, and 3) How these show up in the modern, everyday interactions we have. Through course readings, discussions, and written assignments, we will develop and apply an understanding of how psychology makes blackness, and the psychological implications of a race-aware society. We'll also learn how to read, critique, and write psychological research. Course readings will include journal articles and select chapters from popular press books. There is no required textbook.
Sch of Comm - Comm St 387-0-1 Critical Internet Studies
This course focuses on current issues in the field of Critical Internet Studies, with special attention directed to power dynamics related to the use and of internet-related technologies. We will touch on the economic, political, social, and cultural significance of the internet, and work to identify, understand, and analyze, the relations between existing oppressive power dynamics relating to racism, gender-based violence, and other forms of discrimination are entwined in various media issues. Readings focus on the cultural, social, economic, and political aspects of internet use, including creative uses. This class offers an opportunity to discuss the internet in a fundamental way, to engage with complex ideas, and to develop and refine critical thinking, verbal, and writing skills. We will explore timely topics (e.g., memes, misinformation, surveillance, algorithmic bias, tech and social justice, and more) across media and from historical, transnational, and multiple methodological perspectives.
Sch of Comm - Comm St 395-0-23 Social History of Psychedelic Medicines
This course provides social history of psychedelic medicines (LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, MDMA, ketamine, ayahuasca, nitrous oxide, etc.). It focuses primarily on the United States in the 20th century, however, we will also discuss important developments outside the US and prior to the 20th century where relevant. We will discuss the subjective, mind manifesting, and spiritual effects, the chemical structure, origins, legality, and neurobiology of each of the substances, as well as their clinical, and non-clinical uses and their effects on science, technology, arts, and culture. We will discuss their risks, benefits, and alternatives in a way that will support informed decision making about their use.
Sch of Comm St - Comm St 395-0-22 Interactive Museum Exhibit Design
This course is for undergraduate students interested in the design of interactive museum exhibits. Students will engage with readings about the role museums play in public education/communication, how to design museum exhibits, the role technology can play in making museums interactive, and methods for evaluating learning and engagement at museum exhibits. Readings will primarily focus on interactive exhibits for science communication, with secondary opportunities to explore other types of museum exhibits. Individual assignments will include analyzing and presenting on an existing museum exhibit and creating a design concept/plan for a novel museum exhibit. Students will work in groups towards the end of the quarter to develop an in-depth design and evaluation plan for a novel museum exhibit and, as the final project, create a paper prototype of the exhibit. No previous design or technology experience is needed for students to enroll in this course.
Sch of Comm St - Comm St 395-0-25 Social Media, Technology and Mental Health
This course will examine the relationship between social media, technology, and mental health. Students will explore and critically analyze the advantages, challenges, and opportunities of using social networking sites and technology (e.g. apps, digital interventions, video games) to communicate about and seek support for mental health disorders. Conversely, students will scrutinize social media, technology, its impact on mental health and wellness, with special attention paid to topics such as social comparison and online self-presentation.
Sch of Comm St - Comm St 395-0-26 Digital Propaganda and Repression
Digital media and technologies, often considered as liberation technology, have increasingly been employed by governments and non-political entities for political propaganda and repression. This course will examine the practices and implications of propaganda and repression within the digital media landscape. We will explore the role of digital media and technologies in authoritarian regimes, the common strategies and applications of digital propaganda and repression, and consider how various actors implement these tactics, along with their consequences and global impacts. Through course readings, in-class discussions, and student-led projects, students will develop a critical understanding of the interplay between digital media, politics, and civil society.
Soc 220-0-20 Health, Biomedicine, Culture and Society
We are told constantly, "take care of yourself!" and we do our best to eat well, sleep well, and stay healthy. Our bodies are important to us. They are also important to the institutions we are a part of, including our families, our schools, our jobs, and our country. They are all invested in keeping our bodies healthy and productive. However, the array of institutions interested in the value of our bodies often have additional incentives- our health is surrounded by a hoard of controversies:
- Why do some people get better medical care than others? - How should the healthcare system be organized? - How do we balance the risks of new medical treatments with the benefits? - What makes the stigma associated with disease and disability so enduring? - What happens when no diagnosis can be made?
This course offers conceptual tools and perspectives for answering these controversies. To do so it surveys a variety of topics related to the intersections of health, biomedicine, culture, and society. We will analyze the cultural meanings associated with health and illness; the political debates surrounding health care, medical knowledge production, and medical decision-making; and the structure of the social institutions that comprise the health care industry. We will examine many problems with the current state of health and health care in the United States and also consider potential solutions.
This course is an opportunity for students to critically examine what is often a taken-for-granted aspect of social life: gender. This course will involve learning about gender as well as applying gender theory. We will study a variety of theoretical approaches to the study of gender, with particular focus on how problems are identified and theories are developed. We will examine several emergent cases of gender theorization -- childhood gender and sexuality panics, bathroom surveillance, and the intersex experience, among others. By the end of the term, students will be able to 1) describe and compare theoretical anchors for the sociological study of gender and 2) in writing, apply gender theory to original ethnographic data. This is a reading-heavy upper division course and prior course experience in gender/sexuality studies (by way of taking Gender & Society or other course work) is strongly advised.
