This seminar is designed to investigate how the concept of race has been represented in cinema historically, with a particular focus on representations of race when blackness is masqueraded. Its intent is to launch an investigative inquiry into how African Americans are represented on screen in various time periods, how we as spectators are manipulated by these cinematic constructions of race, and how race is marked or coded other than through visual representation. Students will view films that deal with “passing” from the various historical periods and will utilize theoretical concepts introduced in class to read these visual representations. Films selected for viewing include the pre-World War II Era, the Civil Rights Era, and the “Post-Racial” era. Students will be required to write three papers that reflect their ability to apply theoretical concepts to reading racialized representations on screen in these three historical periods to demonstrate their understanding of how racial masquerades have evolved over time and continue to persist in contemporary culture.

This course centers on artists who are known for their radically experimental approach to music-making and performance, pushing at established boundaries of genre, form, and affect, while taking inspiration from black identity, history, and culture. Geographically, this course is not limited to the United States, but also examines avant-garde artistry in Africa, Europe, South America, and the Caribbean. The focus is mainly on music, with excursions into avant-garde jazz, Brazilian tropicália, Jamaican dub, and electronic music. But we do additionally discuss experimental dance and theatre. The special challenges faced by black artists in establishing themselves in artistic fields marked as modernist, given the historical domination of discourses and institutions of modernism/modernity by whites, are explored. Students have the option to either write a traditional research paper on a topic of their choice, or create their own experimental artistic project.

The goal of this First-Year Seminar is to help students develop their own sense of Black feminist thought and practice through exploring the lives and works of several key Black feminist figures with ties to North Carolina. The figures are Harriet Jacobs, Anna Julia Cooper, Pauli Murray, Ella Baker, Nina Simone, Jaki Shelton Green, and Alexis Pauline Gumbs. Students will engage materials that put these figures in context of Black feminist thought and will do hands on activities that reflect Black feminist practices.

Undocumented immigration receives considerable attention in the U.S., but what does it mean to be undocumented? How does illegality shape the lived realities of migrants themselves? Using the lens of legal anthropology, which seeks to understand the relationship between law/policy, social relations, and inequality, and through in-depth engagement with ethnographic research on the topic, this course examines the social, political, and legal challenges faced by undocumented Latinx migrants and their families. All authors are invited to join the class for a virtual Q&A with students.

How did we get here? What were the major transformations in human history that created our world? What impacts have these changes made on the natural world and on us? What can we learn from this long history? This class is about objects and social change: meaning that we will use human-made objects – artifacts – as a way to understand the long and complex history of our species. We use the concept of ‘object biography’ to do this – you will each get a chance to produce an object biography of your own and to think critically about how we understand and represent material culture in museum displays.

Our early human ancestors were great travelers moving across great distances over many generations and thousands of years. Our more recent human history is dominated by human colonization as new waves of people traversing the globe using technological innovations and paving a path of incomparable destruction and exploitation that continue to overshadow the lives of millions of people and our very planetary health to this day. In early 2020 Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX released their campaign to “Occupy Mars” by 2050, joining a long linage of human ventures that have considered places and peoples unknown to them up for grabs and consequently, ownership and exploitation. Fantastic research, technology, international cooperation, and human advancements have come out of space research. However, the idea that life and resources outside our planet or beyond our galaxy is tenacious and remains an influential factor. In this course, we will explore our human future beyond Earth through the lens of our past asking the question is colonization inevitable? Is it possible as described in Star Trek to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no [hu]man has gone before?” without contaminating, dominating, and destroying that which exists out there? Can we as a species learn from our human past and avoid colonial mistakes? Can we handle discovering new resources without depleting them? How might discoveries made beyond Earth influence the meaning, use, and ideas about our resources here at home? Applying an anthropological lens to understand the human experience of curiosity, travel, expansion, and colonization, this class, dares to dream big and ask hard questions. This discussion-based seminar will read research and popular publications of nonfiction and fiction including a SciFi novel and ethnographic book, view films and documentaries, and look for signs of space in everyday life on Earth. Through assessment activities such as “Taking up Space” students will learn to critically break down and research the role of cultural ideas and how they influence scientific research and discovery.

Disability is a part of life: we all get sick, age, and require care. This course examines debates on disability from a perspective of cultural and medical anthropology. We focus on the diversity and richness of disability worlds, learning how different societies make sense of disability and how living with disability leads to a proliferation of identities and cultures. This course covers a wide range of topics, from the history of disability to cross-cultural approaches to mental health to the intersections of disability with gender and sexuality to caregiving. Course material illustrates that disability is a collective project that encourages individuals and communities to engage in creative modes of thinking and being in a world that moves beyond the binary of “normal” and “abnormal.” This course shows that studying disability unveils new ways to see the world and helps us to better understand what it means to be human.

Students work in flexible, interdisciplinary teams to assess opportunities, brainstorm, and prototype solutions. Design thinking and physical prototyping skills are developed through fast-paced, iterative exercises in a variety of contexts and environments.

Whether it’s cute animal cams or frightening visualizations of climate change, pictures of nature are both ubiquitous and powerful. This seminar explores the ways in which nature has been collected, displayed, and represented in art, science, and popular culture from the Renaissance to the present. We will explore nature’s many meanings: as curiosity and resource, as playground and lab, and as preserve and wasteland. How have portrayals of nature shaped ideas in the arts and sciences? What is the place of nature imagery now in a time of environmental crisis? Students can expect to experience nature in addition to reading and writing about it. For final projects, students will research and write an op-ed article about picturing nature during uncertain times.

This class will closely examine and explore visual expression as they investigate the often-forgotten design element of time. Students examine the philosophical and scientific descriptions of time, as well as the physical, psychological and emotional properties of time. Students immerse themselves in the subject and create original works of art motivated and inspired by their personal but enhanced understanding of time.

Examines how the East is constructed as the Orient in different historical periods: 19th-century European colonialism, 1950s to 1960s Hollywood films, contemporary Japanese animation, and the current global war on terrorism.

This seminar explores different types of broadcast and digital media, examining various cultural examples (e.g., music videos, television soap operas and reality shows, radio, and the Internet) and covering a variety of topics, including gender, sexuality, globalization, religion (personal and public), and activism. We will also discuss the ways traditional art forms (e.g., qawwali, ghazal, epic, classical dance) are transformed and given relevance in the modern South Asian media. An important theme of this course is how India and Pakistan, despite historical tensions, are linked by a common media culture that interprets and sometimes transcends geopolitical differences. This seminar will be particularly useful and fun for students who like to consider a variety of multimedia and textual sources in thinking about a provocative issue or question. Each student will design a short research project and make a presentation, and with a small group, produce a music video, giving the class an experiential perspective on the media in modern India and Pakistan.

Taking the recent Korean Wave phenomenon as its point of departure, this course introduces students to the history of transnational imaginations in modern and contemporary Korean culture. Drawing upon literature, film, television, and secondary scholarship, we will explore how a diverse array of Korean cultural producers have used narratives of cross-border travel, migration, and exchange to rethink Korea’s place in the world and refashion Korean identity. In each section of the course, we will consider a different domain or dimension of border-crossing activity: education; labor; migration and diaspora; North-South interactions; war and military; cosmopolitan imaginings and the making of “global Korea.” In so doing, we will learn to think critically about the relationship between works from colonial Korea, postcolonial North Korea, postcolonial South Korea, and the Korean diaspora, and we will also gain a more nuanced understanding of popular culture’s place within its broader social and historical contexts.

From the medieval Silk Road to the contemporary Belt and Road initiative, the country we now call China has been a dynamic place with changing borders and the traveling of many people, things, and ideas across them. This course examines cross-cultural and transregional interactions premodern Chinese had with the broader world through the lens of traveling. Examining records written by various travelers – merchants, missionaries, pilgrims, nomads, and diplomats –, the course invites students to the following questions: what kinds of questions did travelers have about the others? What were the major routes of overland and oceanic travels in the premodern world? How did cross-border travels foster religious, ethnic, and cultural diversities as well as early modern globalization? How was an idea of “China” formed in and outside China through the interaction facilitated by travels? Students will read and discuss translated primary sources arranged in a thematic and chronological order. During the second half of the course, students will form groups to create digital itinerary maps using the information extracted from the readings.

This course will examine various performances (live performance, media performance, dance, singing and other forms of art making) produced by women (broadly defined) in transnational Asia. The Asia imagined in this class is global and diasporic, thus, trans-national. These women’s performances speak of their feminist, post-colonial, and anti-hegemonic agenda; reveal various nations’ struggle to globalize; and reflect how the category of “Asian,” intersected with gender, continues to evolve. This course will engage with these performance deeply and creatively and respond to these strong voices of the artists with our critical analysis.

A good life depends on access to adequate food and medical care. Advances in biotechnology have made possible both agriculture and medicine, and further advances may allow us to feed and keep healthy a burgeoning population in both developed and undeveloped countries. This seminar will examine the science behind a number of striking recent advances in biology, including animal cloning, genetic engineering of crop plants, development of new therapeutic drugs, development of embryonic stem cells, and deciphering of the complete human genome sequence. Students will debate how specific technological advances force us to confront new social and ethical choices, such as whether you want your own genome to be sequenced. We will also consider how new technologies are actually implemented, especially in regard to recent public health challenges such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The seminar should bring together the humanistic and technical impulses in students, and is open to students planning careers in scientific or humanities fields.

In this course you will learn about the biodiversity around us, and the discipline of citizen science as a means to understanding more about that biodiversity. Citizen science is the public generation of scientific knowledge, and in this era of mobile technology and artificial intelligence, non-expert members of the public are providing millions of biodiversity observations each year. We will learn about the promise of citizen science for answering important questions in biodiversity science, we will contribute our own observations to citizen science databases, and we will learn how to make and interpret graphs and figures using citizen science data.

The first course in a two-semester sequence. See also CHEM 102. Atomic and molecular structure, intermolecular forces, stoichiometry and conservation of mass, and properties of gases.

The course is the second in a two-semester sequence. See also CHEM 101. Solutions, thermochemical changes including conservation of energy, thermodynamics, reaction rates, chemical equilibria including acid-base chemistry, and electrochemistry.

The intersection of history-writing, cinema and fiction will be our focus as we engage with the greatest Greek historians—Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius—against the backdrop of modern renditions of the past and of war in cinema (including Peter Weir’s Gallipoli, Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy and Zack Snyder’s 300), documentaries (including Tolga Ornek’s Gallipoli), news footage and short stories. We will examine the strategies of each ancient writer in confronting challenges that remain pressing for directors, journalists, and historians today. These include difficulties of conflicting perspectives, biased evidence, and the limitations of memory, as well as broader questions about the nature of historical representation. The aim is for students to engage in critical and informed analysis of the strategies of our three ancient historians in ‘writing the past’, and to draw appropriate comparisons with the challenges that confront modern counterparts. The course will center on in-class group discussion and debate focused on questions arising from the week’s reading or viewing assignments. Students will write two short essays and a longer paper arising from their course project.

All roads lead to Rome! But what was Rome really like? This class is an introduction to the history, art, and archaeology of Rome from antiquity to today. You will learn to recognize and interpret different aspects of the ancient city – temples, theaters, sculptures, mosaics, and more – to see how the Romans sent messages through them, and how those messages were received, manipulated, and reinterpreted by different audiences. We will consider not only the perspectives and (many) monuments of wealthy men but also the contributions of women, workers, freedpersons, and slaves. Just as modern American cities grapple with how to deal with old monuments, we will explore how different generations of Romans re-imagined their past and used archaeology to tell a story about themselves and their world, from the aristocracy of the Renaissance (15-16th centuries) to Mussolini and the Fascists (1922-45) to the debates still happening today.

What does large-scale culture change look like? What does it feel like? What do individuals and communities experience as world-views change from generation to generation? In this course we’ll examine these questions by looking at one example of a period of substantial culture-change in the past: the first three centuries of the Common Era in the Mediterranean world, when Christianity was emerging with new ideas about social organization, community and personal identity, and the structure of the cosmos. In this seminar course, we will explore a range of texts from this period – ancient novels, early Christian gospels and acts, religious satires, pagan hymns, oracular texts, religious inscriptions, philosophical and theological texts – that offer a glimpse of some of the conversations and debates between new and old ideas about human beings, the natural world, and the gods.

An introduction to the critical analysis of film, television, advertising, video, and new media texts, contexts, and audiences.

Students in this seminar will attend and study the production process of multimedia, music, dance and theater performances on campus and on-line. The Process Series of the Performance Studies program in the Department of Communication Studies, Playmakers, Carolina Performing Arts, and others across campus and additional on-line performance. We will discuss how performance as it was experienced (pre-Covid) and as it currently experienced. We will examine performance through multiple lenses, from Aristotle’s Poetics, Peter Brooks’s Empty Space, up to current writing from Performance Studies scholars. We will explore the ways that performances engage us, communicating powerful ideas and emotions through their various media of expression. Students will research performance pieces, interview the performers, attend rehearsals and performances, and write essays that combine their own experiences of the performances with class readings. Students will also create their own performance pieces as they observe the relationship of preparation and practice to the spontaneity and surprise of performance.

This course is a critical and creative inquiry in contemporary culture, art and politics through Star Wars films and television series. Students will learn methods of creating of original video-based and/or performance-based to use the imagery, sounds and film/video sequences of Star Wars to engage the many cultural, political and individualized contexts in which Star Wars is already situated, as well as by wrenching them from their contexts through radically recontextualization. Our work will be informed by course readings that locate Star Wars in film and television history, as well as the many ways they speak to, from and with the political and cultural issues they (intentionally and unintentionally) engage. The course is organized around the creation and exhibition of original student works based in the art of remix and mash-up, utilizing found video and audio to engage themes developed by students.

Development of the skill to analyze plays for academic and production purposes through the intensive study of representative plays. DRAM 120 is the first course in the major and the minor in dramatic art.

The course seeks to help students find ways to articulate their own motivations for dress and then apply the ideas they have discovered to the ways in which individuality as well as group attitudes are expressed through clothing.

This seminar will explore the artists, art and technology involved in creating the world of the play. It is intended as an overview for students who want to learn about theatrical design. Students will create their own designs in the areas of scenery, costumes, and lighting for three plays throughout the semester. The plays will be placed outside of their traditional setting while still maintaining the story and themes. Students have placed Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a trailer park and a daycare center for example. Careful historical research, close reading and analysis, text and source material, and collaboration will be the focus of the student projects.

Introduction to Economics (Economics 101H) is the Honors section of the introductory course in Economics for undergraduates. The Honors section covers the same material as the large enrollment version but does so in more depth. This is an introductory course in both microeconomics and macroeconomics. In this one-semester course students are introduced to fundamental issues in economics including competition, scarcity, opportunity cost, resource allocation, unemployment, ination, and the determination of prices. This course is the gateway course for the major of Economics; if you wish to major in Economics, you must have at least a C in this course.

Asian Socialist Systems elaborates the workings of the North Korean, Chinese and Japanese socialist economies in neoclassical perspective. The course goal is acquainting students with the special characteristics and comparative merit of Asian socialist systems.

Students will examine evidence that human activity has caused global warming, investigate scientists’ ability to predict climate change, and discuss the political and social dimensions of global climate change.

Fulfills a major core requirement. Launch focusing on later British literature covering the Romantic, Victorian, and Modern periods–great foundation for studying later periods.

When medical anthropologist Arthur Kleinman writes that “illness has meaning,” he reminds us that the human experience of being sick involves more than bodily symptoms. Moreover, the effects of illness and disability are rarely confined to one person. In this course, we will analyze a diverse collection of writers who work to make sense of illness and disability through a range of genres including fiction, non-fiction, poetry, graphic memoir, podcasts, and oral histories.

Divided into five units, the course will allow us to explore not just the medical, but also the personal, ethical, cultural, and political facets of illness from the perspectives of patients, healthcare providers, and families. Central texts will include /Ask Me About My Uterus/ by Abby Norman, /Black Man in a White Coat/ by Damon Tweedy, /Mom’s Cancer/ by Brian Fies and /The Farewell/ directed by Lulu Wang. Additionally, students will explore a set of oral histories to learn more about the experiences of patients, healthcare providers, and families from across North Carolina.

Pride and Prejudice, often cited as the best-loved novel in English, is the focus of this semester’s course in Austen and present-day responses to her oeuvre. We will begin with in-depth reading of Austen’s 1813 novel, with attention to its form (genre and narrative style) and to its historical and biographical contexts; we will examine recent re-workings, in fiction and in film, in light of present-day concerns and the students’ interests. Several film adaptations will be considered as part of our research into Austen’s current influence. First-time readers of Austen are welcome in the course, as are those deeply familiar with Austen’s oeuvre. Interested students are welcome to contact the instructor in advance of registration with any questions or concerns.

Scan any bookstore shelf and you’d think the human psyche is hanging on by a thread. From fighting anxiety to seeking happiness to putting an end to procrastination, the titles compete for the opportunity to fix our problems with the promise of self-improvement. But are we really in worse psychological shape than those who have come before us? And how would we begin to study the status of our wellness? This first-year seminar will offer one approach to exploring these and related questions: studying the rhetoric of self-help. Rhetoric provides a lens for thinking about the ways people talk about self-help. This lens will drive the organization of the course. Studying the language in online self-help discourse, for instance, will enable extensive research activities. Students will learn to collect a corpus of Tweet data, and then use grounded theory and qualitative approaches to study the conversation. Using mixed methods, they will then quantify interpretations and develop visuals to recognize patterns. In addition to working with contemporary online discourse, students will explore texts with historical instantiations of self-help rhetoric—from classical instruction linked with civics and oration to medieval meditations to 1960s and 70s self-actualization to modern mindfulness. Rhetorical study will also facilitate the production of knowledge as students translate their understanding into communication to be shared publicly. The class activities will feature the creation of texts in a range of media. Students will produce print reports, visual memes, and PSA video projects. Students will also explore oral communication through the creation of podcasts. The combination of mixed methods research and public communication will drive the class. Teaching methods will tap into this dynamic by augmenting lecture and discussion with hands-on activities, collaboration, and the drafting and revision of projects.

Plenty of us feel like we’re living in the end times – but why do some of us feel like they happened long ago, or that they’re just around the corner? This course considers the representation of the apocalypse in Western literature and culture from two angles: first, as the product of a religious fascination with the end of time, and second, as a phenomenon whose significance depends upon whether it has occurred, will occur, or is occurring at this very moment. Students will read a selection of texts drawn both from the Bible and from parallel religious traditions (for instance, medieval visions of the apocalypse, or the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh) alongside novels and essays by writers attempting to think through the significance of the apocalypse as both a temporal and an historical event.

This course focuses on the creative processes involved in writing poetry. We will look at poets’ revisions of their work, their statements about poetry, their letters to and from other writers, and the publication and reception of their poems in their own time. We will concentrate on specific case studies: the manuscripts and letter-poems of the reclusive writer Emily Dickinson; the notebooks, letters, and poems of Walt Whitman that he wrote while tending the wounded in the Civil War hospitals; the poems, manuscripts, and letters of George Moses Horton, who taught himself to read and write and published two books of poetry while enslaved in North Carolina; and the drafts, revisions, and animal drawings of twentieth-century modernist Marianne Moore. The course seeks to develop close reading skills that are crucial for interpreting poetry; to explore how social and cultural conditions both limit and enable poetic expression, and how poets analyze and criticize those conditions; to strengthen writing and oral communication skills; and to develop research skills.

This course is an entry into an undergraduate learning community organized by the Gillings School of Global Public Health, Department of Environmental Science and Engineering. The ECUIPP Lab (Environmentally-Engaged Communities and Undergraduate students Investigating for Public health Protection) is a creative community of students, faculty members and practice partners. Students in ENVR 89-001 will become members of the Environment-ECUIPP Lab. Over the course of the semester they will design and conduct research that addresses a pressing environmental health issue in a local community. Students will work with the local community partner to develop a research question and use the resources of the ECUIPP Lab and the Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering to answer the question through the research process. The course is a hands-on undergraduate research experience

This course is targeted to students enrolled in Department of Exercise and Sport Science majors as well as other students with interest in medical professions. This course involves a systematic approach to human anatomy and physiology with an emphasis on the musculoskeletal, articular and nervous systems as well as anatomical terminology and homeostasis. No prerequisites are required.

“There ain’t nothing new about rapping.” That’s what elders from a host of African American communities declared when hip-hop first exploded onto the scene. This “new” form, they claimed, was just a skilled re-working of poetic forms that had been around for generations. Each elder seemed to point to a different form–some to the wordplay of rhyming radio deejays, others to the bawdy flow of street corner poets, still others to the rhymed storytelling of sanctified singers. And each was right; elegant rhyming has indeed marked African American talk for generations. Yet because most such rhyming was spoken, its history remains hidden. In this seminar, we’ll explore this lost history, talking to poets and hip-hop emcees while probing the archives to uncover the hidden heritage of African American eloquence. Our goal is nothing short of writing the prehistory of hip-hop, and in so doing demonstrating rhyme’s longstanding role as a key marker of African American identity.

Hallucinations, depression, hysteria, paranoia, anxiety, neurosis, body dysmorphic disorder, obsession, and pain are only some of the symptoms that will be reflected in the narratives of this course. The authors featured in this seminar are familiar with the medical knowledge of their time and are often patients themselves suffering from the medical conditions they describe. Throughout the semester, we will examine the practices of authors – such as Maupassant, Montaigne, Selzer, Sembène, or Meruane – who not only borrow heavily from medicine in composing their works but also conceive of writing itself as something medical, that is, as having a therapeutic function for both writer and reader. Accordingly, we will study a group of writers and artists across time and space who explore, adapt, and converse with contemporaneous medical learning in their creative works.

This course is an introduction to historical and contemporary ideas about practices and meanings of development through the perspective of geography. Students will explore the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of struggles over inequality. They will also consider how development and inequality become constructed and institutionalized throughout history, the radical and not-so-radical ways that individuals, governments, and organizations have sought to change inequality, and the ways that geographical concepts can improve our thinking about these puzzles. SPECIAL FOR SPRING 2025: We will be collaborating with a local arts organization, Culture Mill, and a local community group on a new performance titled ‘Bloc’, in order to understand local landscapes of inequality and also of community in Chapel Hill.

This course is designed to reflect on the complexities of an interconnected world and the dynamic relationship between globalization and localization by investigating how these forces shape our world and influence individuals and communities. A central component of this exploration involves examining the perspectives of Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. Students will critically examine how these diverse groups respond to, influence, and resist globalization, thus gaining nuanced insights into alternative development and environmental stewardship paradigms.

Freshwaters sustain myriad ecosystem services by providing drinking water, irrigation, inland fisheries, transportation, recreational opportunities, nutrient cycling, and biodiversity. At the same time, both water quality and quantity are impacted by land use, water abstraction, damming, contamination, and climate change. This seminar will focus (1) on understanding how these anthropogenic pressures affect freshwater ecosystems differently across ecoregions, and (2) how management, legislative, and social initiatives have adapted or developed solutions. We will focus mainly on the United States but consider case studies from around the world. Students should be prepared to read and discuss three materials per week. These reading materials will include a range of popular media including podcasts, newspaper articles, and book chapters, as well as scientific articles and overviews. We will also spend some time exploring and talking about streams accessible to the UNC campus. Class will culminate with research projects in which students get to explore a topic of their choice and presenting findings to their peers.

This course delves into the interplay between human communities and the vital forest ecosystems upon which they rely. Through our collective exploration, we will deepen our understanding of the far-reaching impacts of forests on virtually every facet of our daily lives. In addition to forests of the world, we will also explore art about trees and learn about the forests that make our campus unique. The course includes field visits to the Coker Arboretum and other natural areas on campus.

This course examines concepts and representations of underworlds in literature and the visual arts from the ancient world to modernity. Our journey will take us to the realms of the afterlife as well as into the abyss of the human psyche and the shady areas of criminal activities. We will explore how the desire to know the beyond has triggered people’s imagination, inspired literary and artistic traditions and influenced new forms of knowledge, moral values and social realities. Readings include short stories by E.A. Poe and Franz Kafka, and excerpts from works such as Plato’s Republic, the Bible, Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Inferno, Primo Levi’s Auschwitz memoirs, Don de Lillo’s Underworld, and Sigmund Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams. We will watch movies and TV shows such as Apocalypse Now and Breaking Bad. We will visit the museum and a theater performance. Through reading responses, papers, and an oral presentation students develop and practice skills of critical thinking, persuasive written and oral communication and they use creativity effectively.

This course explores the problem of revolutionary upheaval in Latin American history, from the revolutionary wars of the independence era (1810-1825) to revolutionary episodes of the 20th century.

Despite its centrality for the lives and the livelihoods of people in the Middle East, water has seldom been examined in its own right as a contributing factor to its history. This new First Year Seminar will explore the many ways in which water has shaped the history of the region, and the effects it currently has on life in the Middle East.

Along the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts as well as the Red Sea and Arab/Persian Gulf, seafaring and fishing played important roles in the economy; in the Gulf, pearl-diving became an important local industry as well. Agricultural innovations allowed permanent settlement in areas with little rainfall. Rivers and seas were essential for transportation, connecting populations of far-flung parts of the Middle East with each other, facilitating commerce and pilgrimage. The availability of clean water has become an increasing problem as industrialization and consumerism soil beaches and sully the region’s drinking supplies. Water and conflict have been indivisible in the region, since water is one of the crucial and rare resources in the Middle East. Some have argued, for example, that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians can only be resolved by taking water resources into account; others have pointed to recent drought in Syria as a major factor contributing to the uprising that began in 2011. This course will focus in turn on the historical, cultural, and contemporary issues surrounding the presence and absence of water in the Middle East.

The course examines 20th-century European history through the lenses of women’s autobiographical writings. It explores women’s voices from different generational, social, and national backgrounds and asks what formed their memories.

This course introduces students to the long history of North Carolina’s many and diverse Indigenous peoples. We will learn about their millennia-long history in this place, from the Outer Banks to the Appalachian Mountains. We will study their sixteenth-century encounters with newcomers from Europe and Africa and how they brought those newcomers into their economic and social worlds. We will see how, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, non-Indigenous settlers moved west, taking the land of Native peoples starting on the coast and then moving to the piedmont and finally the mountains. We will see how Native peoples kept their communities alive while fleeing, hiding from, and fighting colonialism in various ways. And we will learn about the economic and cultural renaissance going on today among Native North Carolinians. The class will include on-campus field trips (usually during the class period) and up to two off-campus field trips.

How has the information age changed the ways that historians do and share research? This class is designed to help students chart shifts in the historical discipline alongside broader transformations in technology, media, and information-sharing since the post-World War II era. It will also allow students to practice using digital history tools and methods, culminating with a collaborative final project. Over the semester, our class will work with the NC Department of Natural and Cultural Resources as well as students in another first-year seminar (Native North Carolina) to create an interactive map of resources for K-12 educators relating to state-recognized tribes.

In this course, students will analyze the ways in which Americans have both shaped and been shaped by their natural environment. Together, we will trace a selected history of interactions between humans and nature in America, focusing on the often-fraught intersection between political, economic, social, and religious understandings of nature. As we do so, we will examine the various answers that Americans have given to a set of slippery core questions: What responsibilities do humans have to the broader natural world? Are humans a part of nature, or outside of it? What, ultimately, is the nature of nature?

This will be a dynamic course that requires students to connect the lessons of history to the world they inhabit today. In addition to learning from texts and primary historical sources, students will engage with podcasts, popular journalism, literature, and more. As a class, they will visit sites like the Coker Arboretum, the Old Chapel Hill Cemetery, and the Carolina Community Garden to explore how the environmental history they are studying has shaped even their most immediate on-campus surroundings. Students will also each have the opportunity to dive into a research projects on a contemporary environmental issue of their choosing.

This first-year seminar is a workshop in autobiographical and creative short story, focusing on the complex connections between story-telling, interpretive skill, the experience of illness, and the practice of medicine. The only prerequisite is some experience (and enjoyment in) reading stories. Students will write and distribute autobiographical and and creative short stories about illness and caregiving; the seminar will meet weekly to discuss these stories, as well as published works by doctors and other writers, seeking out the key issues each story expresses about what it means to be sick, and what it might mean to take care of others. This is a highly collaborative course. Each week, the entire class works as a group to build an understanding of:

how meaning arises in the stories composed and presented by members of the class;
the role form plays in our ability to shape and understand a narrative (and our lives);
the extent to which the creative process draws on both intellectual and emotional processes;
how often those processes are not immediately apparent to either the writer or the reader (in other words, in writing we often say more than we consciously intend, and our understanding of what we read takes work; in this class that understanding is an iterative process in which repeated readings and the collaboration of others is essential toward arriving at a full understanding of what each story is trying to tell us).

In addition to writing for the workshop, participants will keep a journal over the course of the semester, charting not day-to-day events but vignettes of remembered experience, daydreams, sketches, which taken together address, one way or another, what it has been like for you to experience the Great Pandemic of 2020-2X. It is difficult to imagine writing, either autobiographical or imaginative, that does not, under our current conditions, somehow address the COVID-19 pandemic. This is not to say that everything we write should consciously, overtly, or explicitly be about COVID 19, but simply that the reality of the pandemic shapes much of what we think these days, especially concerning illness. Whether we choose to live in the world as if the pandemic were over, or if we are still aware of its ongoing ravages both at home and abroad, we still inhabit a world utterly changed by the fear of contagion, and all the different ways we choose to respond to both that contagion and that fear. As an omnipresent and yet unvoiced anxiety, as a deeply facilitated pathway in our limbic cortices, as an occult force in our individual and social lives, COVID continues to provide an ideal topic as we attempt to understand how our stories draw on memories and emotions of which we may not (wish to) be aware. This journal is to be the foundation for the capstone project. This project need not be “written.” It can take the form of a video or audio recording, an animation, or of images strung together as a slide show while you read a narrative composition. Or it can simply be a story, autobiographical or imaginative, about you and COVID 19.

The writing and (especially) interpretive skills acquired in this workshop are directly valuable to anyone contemplating a career in medicine, but are equally valuable in a wide range of humanities disciplines, as well as to anyone who might at some point encounter (in themselves or in someone they care for) the trauma of illness. In addition to the weekly workshop, participants will have one-on-one conferences with the instructor (himself an MD with an international reputation as a writer). Both in the writing of your stories, and in the discussion of your classmates’ stories, you will find in this course both the tools for a greater understanding of yourself and a greater appreciation of how much you share with those around you. This course offers a personal, meaningful approach to questions many of us share, but rarely have a chance to put into words.

Seminar will discuss and explore how health should be defined and various classical and contemporary views of medical practice. Ethical controversies in modern medicine will be discused and anlayzed.

Have you ever wanted to be able to hold infinity in the palm of your hand? This course engages students in an exploration of the interplay between mathematics, origami, and fractal symmetry. Learning objectives will include mastering basic origami folding techniques, identifying and applying fundamental symmetry operations, recognizing and analyzing fractal symmetry, and creating geometric tessellations. Students will use image editing software (Illustrator and Photoshop), mathematical imaging software (Geometer’s Sketchpad and Ultra Fractal), and the laser cutter in UNC’s BeAM space, to design and create modular origami and fractal tessellation artwork. Students will be expected to participate in class discussions and small group work, as well as submit short written assignments on course topics.

Offers tools and techniques for understanding multimedia, staged musical works like opera, musical theater, and film. The goal of the seminar is to develop students’ analytical skills in verbal and nonverbal media and to encourage their visualization of the potential and implications of artistic forms and structures.

Music is one of the most ubiquitous arts in our world. It surrounds us in the grocery store, it accompanies our favorite films and television shows, and it serves as a basis for our ringtones and social media content. And yet, it is also one of the hardest arts to define. What exactly IS music? Does music express emotion, or is it just sounds interacting in space and time? Is there a ‘right’ way to hear music, or does the same musical excerpt mean different things to different people? And how does THAT work? If I ‘cover’ a song, am I playing the song, or a new piece? Is birdsong music? Why or why not? These are just some of the many questions that this course seeks to explore. A special emphasis is given to developing active listening skills so that we can hear more parameters of music. No prior knowledge of music notation is required to take this course, just an openness to learning about musical traditions from various times and places and a desire to discuss as a class the big questions that underlie the musical arts.

This course explores the primary concepts, techniques, and artists/works falling under the category of “sound art,” an interdisciplinary field that centers sound and listening in contexts outside of traditional musical performance. Examples of sound art include sound installations, soundwalks, performance art, conceptual music, music technology, and more. Artistic work at the intersections of visual art, sculpture, science, architecture, theater, poetry, and music will be discussed in a seminar-style class format. In addition to learning about the history and aesthetics of sound art, students will participate in the creation and performance of original sound art works.

This First-Year Seminar is about the history and protest songs of the First and Second Waves of American feminism, from the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 – where women declared their equality with men and called for women’s right to vote – to the passage of Roe v. Wade and the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. Issues for discussion include the role of music-making in women’s activism, the practice of writing contrafacts (new words for old tunes), and the intersectionality of women’s rights and civil rights movements.

COURSE OBJECTIVES

This First-Year Seminar carries three learning objectives: 1) to introduce students to the roles that music and the writing of new words for old tunes play in women’s activism during the First and Second Waves of American feminism; 2) to foster students’ engagement in self-directed, multi-media research; and 3) to teach students how to present their research online using ArcGIS StoryMaps.

Provides an introduction to the structure and function of the nervous system. Fundamental principles will be introduced including nervous system anatomy; molecular and cellular properties of the nervous system; sensory and motor systems; current methods used in neuroscience; and how the nervous system produces behavior and cognition. This course provides greater breadth and depth of neuroscience topics, as compared to Biopsychology (PSYC 220).

Provides an introduction to the structure and function of the nervous system. Fundamental principles will be introduced including nervous system anatomy; molecular and cellular properties of the nervous system; sensory and motor systems; current methods used in neuroscience; and how the nervous system produces behavior and cognition. This course provides greater breadth and depth of neuroscience topics, as compared to Biopsychology (PSYC 220).

Illicit and legal drugs make the user feel good but also promote the development of dependence and long-lasting changes in brain physiology. In this biological psychology seminar, we will take a multi-disciplinary approach to learn about the neurobiology of drug addiction with a focus on the following questions: How do we define addiction? What are the beneficial and harmful psychological effects of abused drugs? What has scientific research revealed about the neurobiology of the “brain on drugs”? Do most users become addicts? How is drug addiction treated? We will tackle these and other questions through classroom discussions/debates, lectures, movies, reading and writing assignments, and an optional tour of a residential substance abuse recovery program. In this communication intensive seminar, critical analysis of information about the neurobiology of addiction will be used to separate fact from fiction.

The reasoning by which Galileo and his contemporaries defended the Copernican model of the solar system (the “heliocentric” model – that is, with the Earth orbiting the Sun rather than the Sun orbiting the Earth) can puzzle us even today. Here are a few of the questions that we could ask about the reasoning given by Copernicus, Galileo, and their contemporaries. Did Copernicus’s arguments support the heliocentric model strongly enough to justify believing it true? Or was it unjustified until Galileo amassed telescopic evidence for it? Or was it unjustified until even later – when Newtonian physics was developed? Or did it remain unjustified until even later – when various mechanical and optical discoveries were made in the nineteenth century? Was the Catholic Church justified at the time of Galileo in regarding Copernicus’s theory as just one among many fairly successful techniques for predicting the night sky’s appearance? Did Galileo bring his sentence (at his famous – and notorious – trial) on himself? Could Galileo argue persuasively for his telescope’s reliability? Could Galileo use mere “thought-experiments” (as opposed to actual experiments) to defend Copernicanism? In this course, we will grapple with these and related questions in order to arrive at a more nuanced understanding of the logic by which scientific theories in general are tested and, ultimately, justified. We will also try to use this historical episode to understand better how political, social, and cultural factors can influence the reception of a scientific theory – even today! We will learn some of the means by which the biases and presuppositions introduced by these factors were overcome (eventually) in the Copernican Revolution, and we will apply some of these lessons to current science. At various points during our discussions, each student will submit in written form his or her own best reconstructions of some of the arguments that were given for or against the Copernican model. In other words, each student will offer his or her best advice regarding how a given scientist might have argued for or against Copernicanism, anticipating possible objections and responses. Students will occasionally form groups to examine and to critique one another’s proposals, with each group finally presenting its best thoughts orally to the rest of the class for further discussion. Students will, in effect, be putting Galileo on trial once again – not for heresy or for disobeying authority, but for having convincing or for having insufficient evidence for his Copernicanism. In all of these ways, students will learn how to appreciate sympathetically the competing astronomical theories from the perspective of the 16th and 17th centuries, when the truth was in some doubt. Along the way, students will wrestle with some of the puzzles and apparent paradoxes arising even from today’s best philosophical accounts of the logic of theory testing in science. No previous background in science will be assumed. Students will not need to purchase any books.

In this discussion-focused First Year Seminar, we will closely read influential texts by African American philosophers that engage with issues concerning identity. We will ask questions like: What types of identity, if any, do all Black people have in common? What is the relationship between Black identity and Black culture? What types of Black identity are necessary for Black political solidarity? We will consider Black feminist insights about how some identities lie at the intersection of multiple social groups.

Mechanics of particles and rigid bodies. Newton’s laws; mechanical and potential energy; mechanical conservation laws; frame-dependence of physical laws; Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Students may not receive credit for PHYS 118 in addition to PHYS 104, 114, or 116.

This course will provide a qualitative treatment of some of the great mysteries related to our understanding of the universe and the fabric of space and time, as well as key modern physics theories and laws of nature that we use in exploring these mysteries. Topic include: the second law of thermodynamics and entropy; the pricniples of quantum mechanics; their application to a unified undertsanding of how our universe emerged to existence and how it will end; what lies beyond the horizon at the largest scales of space and time and in the heart of black holes.

Course objectives: Give you a deeper insight into the working of the universe and its mysteries, expose you to cutting edge research in modern physics, and demonstrate how different fields of knowledge merge and blend together into a unified description of Nature. Encourage critical and conceptual thinking.

This course delves into the multifaceted dynamics of gentrification, exploring its historical roots, and its far-reaching implications for cities and communities from the 1960s to today. This class conceives of gentrification as a complex process that is distinctly different from redevelopment. It changes the makeup of neighborhoods and fuels political and policy conflicts while exacerbating inequality and destabilizing the tenure of longstanding communities. Throughout the course, we will examine the interplay between urban development, social change, and political power, while exploring the challenges and strategies for combating the negative impacts of gentrification.

Explores linkages among nations, global environmental institutions, and the environmental problems they cause and seek to rectify. Introduces pressing challenges of the global environment, particularly around energy use and climate change, and potential solutions. Discusses perspectives of nations, NGOs, and the international community involved in crafting policy solutions. This class does not have any prerequisites.

The course will familiarize students with the major public policies and movements affecting the American labor market. Students will learn how each of the following impacts the labor market: education, the minimum wage, Social Security, pensions, unions, unemployment insurance, welfare (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, TANF), income taxes (including the Earned Income Tax Credit, EITC), self-employment, immigration, automation, and the gig economy. The course uses news articles, policy summaries, podcasts, and academic journal articles to help students learn the many theoretical and political viewpoints associated with each topic.

Intended for first-year students of any major, this course explores the role of public policy in shaping the innovation ecosystem where new science and technology emerge and how governments, organizations, and communities influence their development. By looking at contemporary, domestic, and international case studies, we will examine key issues in the governance of emerging technologies, their ethical dimensions, and the intersection of science with issues like climate change, public health, and national security. Students will develop an understanding of policy-making processes, stakeholder engagement, and the role of public and private institutions in shaping science and technology landscapes. The course will also provide practical insights into regulatory frameworks, international collaboration, and the trade-offs involved in balancing innovation with safety, ethics, and the public interest.

Why do Americans love democracy, but hate politics? Why are there only two political parties? Why do voters hate, yet respond to negative campaigning? This course will introduce students to politics in the United States, addressing these and many more questions about how American democracy works.

This course examines the diversity of political arrangements in societies across the globe. Honors version available.

This course is designed to throw students into New York City in 1775 and Paris in 1791 by recreating and engaging with the ideas and arguments of these times. The course will rely on the Reacting to the Past pedagogy. “Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) consists of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas. Class sessions are run entirely by students; instructors advise and guide students and grade their oral and written work. It seeks to draw students into the past, promote engagement with big ideas, and improve intellectual and academic skills. The course will be extremely hard work, but should also be intellectually engaging and, to put it simply, a good deal of fun. Click the following link to see a video of students discussing their experiences in the class: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUq6IU6NGOs&t=1s

This course is concerned with politics and political conflict in the Europe and the United States. In Part one you will learn about political parties and electoral systems, and why they are so important. Part two moves to the European Union: why was it created; how has it developed, and how does it work? Part three investigates the revolt against globalization in Europe and the US. Who is involved and why?

This seminar will introduce students to the issues, arguments, history, impact, and reasoning arising from or in conflicts between presidents and Congress. The constitutional conflicts that are the focus of the course involve presidents and Congress fighting for primacy in areas in which they have shared constitutional powers.

Are you interested in being a lawyer or public official? Do you know what it means to “think like a lawyer?” Have you considered why people mostly honor the law? Where do you find “the law?” How do judges decide difficult cases? This seminar will explore the notion of a rule of law, formal and customary law, legal analysis, judicial interpretation and the realities of the adversarial system and law practice. We will consider what makes law seem legitimate and how to assess whether it promotes liberty and justice. This seminar will challenge students to be reflective and critical about their own perspectives and to explore personal responsibility for promoting a rule of law. Students will be engaged in analytical thinking and expression through required participation in teacher-led dialogues based on assigned readings and with research and writing assignments. Reading materials include selections from court cases and other sources that provide an introduction to the notion of a rule of law, the sources of law that govern us and protect our individual rights, the nature of legal analysis, the different methods of judicial interpretation, and the realities of law practice and the adversarial system.

The movement of people across international borders is one of the most politically controversial issues in the world today. This class focuses on two different types of global migrants, immigrants and refugees, and explores why these two groups move out of their countries and how they are treated by receiving countries. Immigrants and refugees have traditionally been thought of as politically, legally and ethically different from each other and this class explores these differences, but it also explores the many ways that they are similar. Finally, the class explores a third type of global migrant that politicians and policy makers frequently promote, guest workers, and considers to what extent guest worker policies can effectively address the challenges and opportunities posed by the two other migrant groups. This class encourages students from a wide range of backgrounds, experiences and perspectives to enroll because it benefits significantly from including such diversity.

What, if any, responsibilities accompany democratic citizenship? Voting? Active participation in political meetings? Obeying laws? Volunteering in one’s community? Preserving natural resources for future generations? Adhering to certain values? Protesting unjust laws? This course offers an overview of the different ways in which Americans have answered these questions.

We will also be developing our oral communication skills this semester through a variety of activities, including active-listening sessions, a structured debate, and a consensus-building workshop. We will also be learning how to run effective group meetings. I realize that public speaking is stressful for many people, and I promise to make this as painless as possible.

This seminar will introduce students to the issues, arguments, history, impact, and reasoning arising from or in conflicts between presidents and Congress. The constitutional conflicts that are the focus of the course involve presidents and Congress fighting for primacy in areas in which they have shared constitutional powers.

The goal of this first-year seminar course is to familiarize students with a range of topics associated with contemporary families, with a specific focus on familial influences on child and adolescent development. Also, given the increasing diversity among families in contemporary society, this course will increase knowledge of the various domains of diversity (i.e., developmental stage, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity) as well as help students be attuned to pertinent issues faced by these families. Select course topics include 1) demographic trends of families; 2) parenting and development; 3) sibling relationships; 4) cultural contexts of parenting and families; 5) media and technology; 6) neighborhood and community influences; and 7) youth civic engagement.

This interdisciplinary course explores various, often conflicting ways of conceiving and shaping reality in the ancient world – religious, scientific, and philosophical. The course is organized around a series of case studies: (1) the formation and makeup of the cosmos; (2) the origin of mankind and its sexual differentiation; (3) the invention of the ‘self’; (4) the origin and nature of dreams; (5) foundations of law, justice, and morality. Short writing assignments, in-class discussions, oral presentations, and a term-paper will be used to introduce students into a complex intellectual network of natural scientists, philosophers, and oral story-tellers throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Readings include Near Eastern mythical narratives and Homeric poems and hymns; selections from the earliest Greek philosophers through Plato’s dialogues to Hellenistic and Roman philosophical schools; works from the famous Hippocratic corpus and Galen’s medical treatises; and various religious texts from ancient Greece and Rome, early Christianity, and late antiquity.

This seminar will examine how historians have reconstructed the life, teachings and death of the historical Jesus. We will look at the Gospels of the New Testament, as well as references to Jesus in other writings (Roman and Jewish sources, as well as Gospels that did not make it into the New Testament). In addition, we will explore how Jesus has been portrayed in modern film, including such Biblical “epics” as The Greatest Story Ever Told, such “period pieces” as Jesus Christ Superstar, such brilliant retellings as Jesus of Montreal and such controversial films as The Last Temptation of Christ and The Passion of the Christ. The ultimate goals of the seminar are to see what we can say about the historical man Jesus himself and how Jesus came to be portrayed in both ancient sources and modern imagination.

This course explores the messianic idea in America as well as the messianic movements that have been active in the nation’s history and their interaction with American society and culture.

Few technological innovations have more profoundly shaped the course of human civilization than the invention of writing. This course explores the role of writing in the development of ancient religious traditions, covering the wide chronological period from the beginnings of writing in Mesopotamia and Egypt (approximately 3200 BCE) to the advent of Islam. We will begin by considering the nature of writing both as a technology and as a symbolic system, giving attention to insights coming out of modern linguistic research. Then we will examine a series of case studies of the relationship between religion and writing drawn from the ancient world (especially the ancient Near East), in order to illustrate the diversity and complexity of these interactions between technology and society. Specific topics to be addressed include: religion and the early alphabet, magical and mystical uses of writing, religion and literacy, scribal culture, and the development of “scriptural” texts such as the Bible and the Qur’an.

The course explores the various Indigenous knowledge production, the struggles, and the beliefs throughout Indigenous populations in Mexico. The course will begin with historical studies of Indigenous people populations, examining the history of the conquest to better understand the impact of the arrival of Europeans and colonization in Mexico. The course will then explore the diversity of Indigenous cultures in colonial Mexico and their production of Indigenous knowledge until today. Topics include the Mesoamerican writing system, language, religions, ritual practices, gender, human rights, and place and space of Indigenous people. Students will also learn about the cultural wealth preserved by the Indigenous culture and its contributions to the global world.

This course explores how nature, farming, and food are portrayed in literature, especially within the pastoral tradition, which depicts an idealized version of rural life, often emphasizing harmony with nature and the simplicity of country living. We will read a mix of classical and modern texts, and watch a selection of films, to analyze how this tradition shapes our understanding of culture and the environment. Focusing on the significance of four key ingredients—milk, root vegetables, meat, and honey—we will examine the connection between people and nature, the role of food in shaping identity, and how different landscapes are represented. Students will visit a local farm and historical sites to see how these idealized portrayals compare to the realities of rural life. Through class discussions, presentations, and writing assignments, students will understand how food, farming, and nature influence society, and how literature and films reflect and challenge these ideas within the context of pastoral settings.

This seminar considers the purpose and history of the university and different conceptions of liberal learning. Is the university primarily a place? An idea? A community of students and teachers? Focusing mainly on the development of higher education in the United States, we will debate the relationship between the university and democracy, the difference between academic study and professional training, and competing understandings of intellectual liberty and free expression.

C.S. Lewis is mostly remembered today as the creator of the fantastical land of Narnia, but he grew up in a modern world stripped of enchantment. It was only gradually that he learned to see magic everywhere. This course will follow Lewis through a string of awful boarding schools, the muddy trenches of France, and the Gothic streets of Oxford. Above all, it will seek Lewis in the books he wrote and the books that shaped him. In doing so, it will ask whether the world really is as disenchanted as it seems.

This is an interdisciplinary course that draws from fields like history, religious studies, and literature. Students in this first-year seminar will be expected to read a substantial portion of Lewis’ work, as well as some of the texts that made the greatest impact on him. We will explore topics that include the purpose of an education, mythology, science and religious belief, friendship, and Christianity.

The Bible is the most widely read book in history. It forms a central pillar of western – if not world – civilization. It is invoked constantly by political partisans of all stripes, and nearly everyone recognizes at least a few of its most famous quotations. But what does it really have to say to us today? This class does not expect that students read the Bible as believers in its divine authority, but rather in what Leon Kass calls a “wisdom-seeking” spirit, an attitude that treats the text as making serious claims to truth in the same way that philosophic dialogues and great works of literature do. We will be concerned less with the Bible’s otherworldly message than what it might teach us about the things of this world. We will explore the Bible’s account of human nature, the good life, family, friendship, justice, love, war, economics, and freedom.

This course aims to help students navigate the messy intersection of science, policy, and politics by teaching how the substance, history, presentation, and interpretation of science influences our understanding of the world. Further, students will gain an understanding of how science can influence policy within government at both a state and national level. Students will: 1) analyze public discourse and debate about science, 2) consider how philosophies, data, and interpretations are created, delivered, and received (e.g., traditional and digital media; social media; technical and academic journals; personal interactions; etc.), and 3) discuss how these factors – alongside partisan politics and bias from both sides of the aisle – influence science policy outcomes. This course is designed to expose students to the necessary critical thinking skills required to gain a basic understanding of the scientific research (who does it, how it is funded, how it is communicated, and how it can be incorporated into policy decisions). A wide variety of case studies will be presented and discussed, and students will actively work together to develop a science-related policy as a capstone project.

How shall we live together? Humans are unique among living creatures in that we cannot live solitary lives by ourselves, yet we also have no fixed method of organization. It thus remains an open question how we will organize our common life. To answer it, we need to ask whether there is any conflict between the life of a good person and a good citizen. We must weigh tradeoffs between liberty, justice, and stability. In this course, we enter into “the great conversation,” in which political thinkers for more than two millennia have debated these questions with each other.

This course explores the links between politics and literature in America, focusing on the way in which fiction is able to provide a unique view of politics. The course will look at American short stories, poems, films, and novels in roughly chronological order, examining how the political and social concerns of each era are expressed its literature. Throughout, we will address questions including: Is there a uniquely American mode of literary expression, and what does that say about the American character? How can literature serve as a commentary on or intervention into politics? Does doing so compromise its status as art? Can literature give us insight into politics that theoretical treatises, journalism, and other historical documents cannot? What are the limits of understanding politics through literature?

President Bill Clinton ended “welfare as we know it” in 1996 when he signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act into law. This significant and historical welfare reform fundamentally changed the federal safety net in the United States and abolished guaranteed aid for those in poverty. In this first-year seminar, we will use a sociological lens to investigate the causes and consequences of welfare reform, as well as the subsequent expansion of other antipoverty programs designed to help the working poor. We will consider a range of viewpoints that inform current policy debates. Topics will include the conceptualization and measurement of poverty, causes of poverty, public and political attitudes toward welfare and the role of the government, and the implementation and efficacy of antipoverty policies.

Black Feminism is a first-year seminar that introduces students to black feminist theory and praxis. In this course, we will explore central themes and conversations around intersecting systems of domination. We will critically interrogate power and how inequality shapes policies, institutions, and our day-to-day lives. Topics will include (1) black feminist theory: past and present; (2) carcerality and violence; (3) resistance and solidarity; and (4) abolition and belonging. Students will develop critical analytic, research, and writing skills while thoughtfully engaging with interdisciplinary theories of black feminism.

What does it mean to live in poverty in the “land of plenty” and experience inequality in the “land of opportunity?” Why is the “American Dream” more attainable for some people than it is others? This FY-S will use a sociological perspective to explore these questions and more. We will cover a wide range of topics as they relate to poverty and inequality, including perceptions, measurement, causes, and consequences as well as different domains (e.g., housing, education, the labor market, the criminal legal system, etc.) and how they serve as inequality mechanisms. We will also discuss the significance of history and place as well as highlight different axes of inequality (e.g., gender, race/ethnicity, age, disability). Ultimately, this course aims to advance understanding of poverty and inequality in America, and in doing so, highlight why the American Dream is difficult (and becoming increasingly so) for some individuals and families to attain.

Sharing food is central to social life as well as to the formation of cultural identities. We can see this in how people come together over food, structure their days around it, and perform national or ethnic identities through it. At the same time, food allergies are on the rise and introduce many challenges to individuals, families, and organizations. The situation is complicated by the fact that public awareness, responses from schools and other organizations, and regulatory safety measures tend to lag behind. This course explores the topic of food allergies through several important lenses: biomedical, political, cultural, and social. The course’s goals are to understand how living with and managing food allergies can be challenging to individuals and families, as well as to query how potential therapies for food allergies should be regulated and how schools and business should accommodate for food allergies. The course critically engages concepts such as risk/benefit, medicalization, disability, and quality of life to better understand the social and cultural values that shape perceptions of and responses to food allergies.

Course introduces students to literature by women from around the world, particularly stories of a girl’s transition to womanhood. Close reading strategies are used to examine films, novels, and poetry.