"Encountering Nature” examines how writers from the 16th-18th centuries experienced their natural settings. These settings varied widely, encompassing both Europe and the Americas during early phases of colonization. The great variety of flora and fauna in these different locales prompted questions about what nature signified and for whom. How did such factors as gender, religion, ethnicity, and social class combine with political influences in each century to cause shifting understandings and representations of the natural world?

A writer’s workshop that focuses on sharpening and expanding each student’s fiction writing skills, as well as broadening and deepening her understanding of the short and long-form work. Exercises will concentrate on generative writing using a range of techniques to feed one's fictional imagination. Students will analyze and discuss each other's stories, and examine thewritings of established authors. Writing sample and permission of the instructor are required. Enrollment limited to 12.

This course offers an introduction to computational finance and financial time-series econometrics, emphasizing empirical applications using the R programming language. Financial topics covered include optimal portfolio construction and performance evaluation; factor pricing models; equity and option valuation; and return predictability. Econometric topics covered include time-series regressions, forecasting, event study analysis, and GARCH models. No prior knowledge of R or financial economics is assumed. Prerequisites: MTH 111, (ECO 240 or SDS 291) and (ECO 250 or ECO 253).

Is all of psychology fake? A prestigious journal publishes evidence that people have psychic powers. A team of researchers show that listening to a Beatles song can make you almost a year and a half younger. Many labs try to replicate 100 psychology studies, and only 40 work. Something is very, very wrong. These events are part of a massive upheaval in the field that has come to be known as the replication crisis. In this advanced course, we will look at the replication crisis and the role of replication in psychological science.

While climate change affects all life on the planet, historically vulnerable and marginalized communities across the world are consistently at the greatest risk of devastation. As calls for climate justice multiply, the urgency of writing, speaking, and creating wisely about climate is clear. Grounded in ethnography about diverse communities' experiences and responses to climate change while drawing on film, literature, and the visual arts, this course asks: How do marginalized communities across the world respond to climate inequalities?

This course will explore the many psychological mechanisms that play a part in close personal relationships. Using psychological research as our foundation, students will be led in discussions and about attraction, love, lust, and other topics pertinent to close relationships. Students will be asked to think deeply about the social constructs that influence human preferences, and the bio-psychosocial processes at play. The course will begin by dissecting the concepts of attraction and love.

Not available at this time

Not available at this time

How does Google Maps find the best route between two locations? How do computers help to decode the human genome? At the heart of these and other complex computer applications are nontrivial algorithms. While algorithms must be specialized to an application, there are some standard ways of approaching algorithmic problems that tend to be useful in many applications. Among other topics, we explore graph algorithms, greedy algorithms, divide-and-conquer, dynamic programming, and network flow.