In this course, we will explore an anthropological—which is to say, a cross-cultural, political, economic and social approach--to the study of sports. A starting premise for this course is this: rather than being outside politics (articulated in the plea that athletes ‘just shut up and play ball'), sport has been a means for bolstering nationalism and national belonging; a staging ground for a range of social, political and economic ideologies; and a vehicle for social protest and change. We examine this premise through a close and careful reading of ethnographic and popular texts; together, we will analyze and discuss anthropological theories of value, power, kinship, violence, difference and social hierarchy through the lens of sports.
Asian Amer St 376-0-1 Memory and Identity in Asian American Literature
How can writers represent inaccessible stories, ones lost to the passage of history? This class explores how literature functions as repositories of minority histories and memories, as meditations on the process of assembling and collecting stories, and as imaginings of alternative histories and futures. Given the difficulty of assembling a coherent Asian American identity, our examinations will be defined as much by the absences, gaps, and contradictions of Asian America's collective memory as by what is found within it
This course will explore the history of European and Near Eastern astronomy from the 7th century BCE to the 6th century CE. Students will learn the fundamentals of the geocentric model, ancient methods of observation, and traditions of cosmology. We will study the history of time-reckoning and calendar-making, as well as portrayals of astronomy and celestial phenomena in myth and literature. In addition to reading ancient texts, students will also make their own observations using models of ancient instruments and the methods of ancient astronomers.
Comp Lit 201-0-20 Is Surgery the New Sex? And Other Body Horror Questions
Visceral, disgusting, and perverted - there are many ways to describe body horror as a loose genre. This course looks at different body horror texts across the world as world literature. Students will explore how body horror asks questions about body politics when the capacity to alter one's body and the political limits on one's body collide. We will discuss fictions, graphic novels, and films in the genre as well as scholarship on gender, sexuality, race, violence, ethics, colonialism, and capitalism. This course comes with a major content warning, as many of the materials will have graphic depictions of violence and may be triggering.
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 Economic History of the U.S. 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.
Econ 355-0-20 Transportation Economics and Public Policy
The objective of this course is to provide the student with an understanding of the transportation industries in the United States and the major policy issues confronting government and the public. All modes of transportation are considered: highways, trucking, mass transit, airlines, maritime, railroads, and pipelines. The course acquaints the student with the underlying economics of transportation provision including demand, costs, the economics of regulation and regulatory reform, the pricing and quality of service, managing congestion, subsidies, competition between the various modes, and the social appraisal of projects.
English 375-0-20 Memory and Identity in Asian American Literature
How can writers represent inaccessible stories, ones lost to the passage of history? This class explores how literature functions as repositories of minority histories and memories, as meditations on the process of assembling and collecting stories, and as imaginings of alternative histories and futures. Given the difficulty of assembling a coherent Asian American identity, our examinations will be defined as much by the absences, gaps, and contradictions of Asian America's collective memory as by what is found within it.
Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring, and Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farmworkers Union, both campaigned against toxic exposures in the mid-20th-century United States and yet are rarely considered in tandem. This course puts the writings and activism of these two women in conversation, ranging through feminist, queer, and Latinx environmental writing to build connections between environmentalism and labor rights. Our study focuses on the craft of environmental nonfiction writing, examining contemporary practitioners working in the vein of Carson and Huerta. Students will also compose environmental nonfiction, employing the literary techniques analyzed in this course to craft a narrative addressing exposure, toxins, or the state of public health.
This interdisciplinary seminar explores several kinds of scientific ingenuity and technical know-how that have developed in the African continent across the centuries. You'll learn a little about metallurgy and sculpture, music and therapeutics, landscapes and foodways, architecture and urban aesthetics, mapping and cosmologies, human origins and genesis stories, algorithms and games, and economic systems and trans-Saharan trade. We'll do a range of exercises that help you place case studies in their widest context, geographical, linguistic, sociocultural, and temporal. We'll discuss what it means to make and create useful arts, to know and manage environments, and to cultivate well-being. We'll also examine different yardsticks that have been used to measure - and often denigrate - African accomplishments. Finally, we'll look at classic texts in the history of science to see how, if at all, African places and peoples were included and what was omitted.
The Inquisition is one of the most infamous and misunderstood institutions in the early modern world. This seminar examines some of the myths and debates surrounding the working of its tribunals and their impact on society, with special emphasis on the practices, experiences, and worldviews of ordinary subjects. How have the records of the Inquisition been used to reconstruct the histories of the Jewish diaspora, African healers, bigamists, homosexuals, and "witches," among others? Participants will pursue their own answers and construct an alternate archive by which to tell the stories of prosecuted figures. Topics include religious tolerance and intolerance; healing and love magic in the Americas; the policing and politics of gender and sexuality; and the lives of Jewish conversos.
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.
We are currently living through a technological revolution that is radically transforming every aspect of our social, economic, and personal lives. But maybe this is nothing new. From the telegraph to social media, from the bicycle to electric vehicles, from typewriters to AI, Americans have long identified technological change as central to their personal and national destiny. This class deploys historical methods to answer core questions about the past, present, and future of technology. Do artifacts have politics? Is time accelerating? What counts as technological progress—and is it different this time around? To answer these questions, this course operates on a flipped-classroom model. In lectures, students learn how an entire social world can be illuminated by the study of an individual artifact. And in weekly workshop-sections, students are guided as they write an original research paper on the social history of an artifact of their choice. (Note, enrolled students get credit for a history distro/FD, Advanced Expression, and U.S. Perspectives).
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.
The arrival of European colonizing powers in the Americas in the wake of Columbus's voyages marked a new and often disastrous chapter in global environmental history. American nations and environments shaped the course of European colonial settlement at the same time as colonial expansion profoundly changed the flora, fauna, disease ecology, and patterns of labor and land use prevailing across the Americas. This seminar explores the entangled histories of imperial and environmental history in the colonial Atlantic world. Topics will include the so-called Columbian Exchange and the dispossession of indigenous lands; the transatlantic slave trade and the rise of the plantation system; the intersections of African, European, and Indigenous American agricultural practices; European theories of race and climate; colonial bioprospecting; and the role of disease in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. We will also consider the imperial origins of modern conservationism and of key environmental concepts such as ‘wilderness' and 'native' and 'invasive' species.
McCormick - Civil Eng 309 Climate and Energy - Law and Policy
This course is a survey of the major laws that regulate the acquisition of energy resources, the conversion of energy resources into usable energy, the energy transmission and transportation infrastructure and the climate change implications of these activities. The course explores the regulatory requirements that apply to several major energy-producing industries including oil and gas, coal, nuclear, wind and solar. The course also covers the regulatory systems for the electric grid, pipeline infrastructure and the transportation of energy commodities using rail and truck. The course concludes by reviewing regulatory incentives for the efficient use of energy by mobile sources and in the built environment. The course will enable non-legal professionals to understand the regulatory context in which business and management decisions about energy are made. The course will also give each student the opportunity to explore a self-selected, current energy topic through independent research.
McCormick - Civil Eng 361 Public and Environmental Health
This course explores current problems in public and environmental health, such as the worldwide burden of major infections diseases; the emergence and re-emergence of new pathogens, epidemiology, prevention, diagnostics and treatment of major diseases, environmental reservoirs of infectious organisms, transport of microorganisms in the environment, and evaluation of the combined effects of land use modification, water abstraction, and global climate change on ecosystems.
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 is a study of moral and political problems related to biomedicine and biotechnology. In the first part of the course, we will study the ethics of the physician-patient relationship. We will consider what values ought to govern that relationship, how those values may conflict, and how such conflicts are best resolved. In the second part of the course, we will turn to some specific ethical challenges related to biotechnology, including abortion, genetic manipulation, and physician-assisted suicide. We will close the course by surveying the field of public health ethics, with particular attention to ethical issues related to global pandemic preparedness and response.
Poli Sci 390-0-20 Health, Chronic Illness & Disability Politics
Health is simultaneously one of our most basic needs and one of our most commodified goods. We race for cures, rally for affordable and accessible healthcare, debate the ethics of various treatments, and pass laws meant to keep our public healthy. But what do we mean when we talk about "health" or what constitutes a "disease"? How do we define disability, and for what purpose? Who is served by "health politics"? This course examines chronic illnesses and disability (CID) among adults, focusing on the medical and psychosocial aspects of various mental and physical health conditions with implications for political domains of functioning. The primary aim of this course is to offer students an opportunity to explore the continuum of chronic illness and disability (CID) within adulthood through a political science lens. CID will be addressed by studying theoretical underpinnings drawing from medical, psychosocial, and political schemas and examining how these dimensions of understanding interact at the level of the individual, the family, the community, and the society-at-large.
Poli Sci 390-0-21 Research in Global Climate Change: Science, Rights
How do international climate negotiations work? Who participates, and what motivates the parties involved? What are their points of agreement and disagreement? Under what conditions can global climate governance be effective? This course provides students with foundational knowledge of global climate governance and offers an immersive experience at COP30—the 30th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), taking place this year in Belém, Brazil (November 10-21). Students will gain firsthand insights into the negotiation processes and dynamics shaping global climate policy. Students will also complete an original research project, either individually or collaboratively.
Poli Sci 390-0-26 Digital Propoganda and Repression
Digital media and technologies, often considered 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.
School of Comm - Comm St 227 Communication and Technology
Examining factors informing and shaping the design of everyday objects and our virtual world; psychological aspects of computer-mediated communication and virtual collaboration, including impression relations, group dynamics, and social networks; social and institutional structures in which human communication is situated.
School of Comm - Comm St 375 The Sociology of Online News
The goal of this upper-level undergraduate seminar is to survey the state of online news from a sociological perspective. We will divide the class into two main parts. The first part will be devoted to an overview of the state-of-the-art knowledge about the behavior of online news audiences worldwide. The second part will be focused on understanding the internal transformations that news organizations have undertaken over the past couple of decades to address this changing audience landscape and its connections to a series of technological, political, and economic challenges that have marked the evolution of the twenty-first century so far. Cutting across both parts will be the adoption of a global and comparative perspective by examining news audiences and organizations from across the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa. The are two main learning objectives for this class: a) to understand the behavior of online news audiences worldwide; and, b) to understand the transformations of news organizations to address a changing news audience landscape.
School 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.
School of Comm - 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.
School of Comm - Comm St 395-0-26 Digital Propaganda and Repression
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.
School of Comm - RVTF 341-0-20 Cultural History of Artificial Intelligence: Robot
With the explosive growth of generative AI, there has been a flurry of debates over what the role artificial intelligence should be in our contemporary society. Silicon Valley and its tech entrepreneurs often frame AI as a utopic solution to the world's social ills. Hollywood and independent creatives, on the other hand, have often framed AI in a more critical light - imagining what the impact of AI might be in relation to labor, the environment, and our daily socio-cultural relations. As such, this course seeks to understand how film and media have attempted to create a critical consciousness around artificial intelligence. From Charlie Chaplin's commentary on automated labor in Modern Times (1936) to Stanley Kubrick's meditation on technological development and humanity in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) to Spike Jonze's ruminations on loneliness, love, and chatbots in Her (2013), film and media makers have long sought to understand AI and its societal implications. Through readings that address the historical development of AI and weekly film screenings, this course will help students unpack the meaning of what is "natural" and what is "artificial," as well as what is "intelligence." Yet, none of these considerations are just about machines, they are questions about humanity too - about our knowledges, hopes, fears and desires. By looking across twentieth and twenty-first century film, media and theory, students will better understand how we have both dreamed of and recoiled from the possibility of machines automating our very human ways of thinking and making.
Disasters are on the rise globally and in the US, incurring significant economic and social consequences. The aim of this course is to understand how disasters like pandemics, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, plane crashes, oil spills, and terrorism provide a "strategic research site" where we can examine social life and inequality. In this course, students will be introduced to the idea that disasters are fundamentally social events. We will focus on the social, political, and economic conditions that influence disaster experiences and recovery, paying special attention to the ways that social characteristics like race, class, gender, and age structure social vulnerability to risk before, during, and after disasters. In learning to think critically about prevailing media representations of disasters, students will master content analysis methodology by engaging in a term-long research project in which they study the social dimensions of a disaster event of their choosing through an analysis of media coverage. This is an introductory level course without any prerequisites.
Technology is ubiquitous. This course covers central tenets in the sociology of technology by pairing an empirical focus on a different technology each week with a theoretical paradigm. A total of eight technologies will serve as the exemplars through which the question(s) concerning technology will be explored: bicycles, cars, computers, facial recognition, genetic sequencing, soap, shipping containers and virtual reality. Each of these technologies is approached as a window into the social, political, racial, and economic determinants of technological innovation. The central goal of the course is to equip students with the tools for unpacking the technologies societies take for granted and critically engaging with new technologies that may reproduce social inequities. While much of the scholarship we will consider is broadly sociological, some of it is drawn from other fields, and part of the goal of the course is to show what is gained when we think about technology from an interdisciplinary perspective. Students from other disciplines are welcome.
