The vast amount of unstructured and structured data on the web and in organizational databases has increased the need for approaches to processing large volumes of text. Such analyses help researchers and businesses to gain insights -- that would otherwise be too resource- and time-consuming to do manually -- into issues such as how much a consumer can be expected to spend in a particular context, the rise of hate groups and their impact on social media, or to whom a newly discovered manuscript may be attributed.

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.

An introduction to the issues involved in orchestrating the use of computer resources. Topics include operating system evolution, memory management, virtual memory, resource scheduling, multiprogramming, deadlocks, concurrent processes, protection, and design principles. Course emphasis: understanding the implications of OS design on the programs you run and write (i.e., on their security, performance, etc.). This course is programming intensive.

How does Netflix learn what movies a person likes? How do computers read handwritten addresses on packages or detect faces in images? Machine learning is the practice of programming computers to learn and improve through experience, and it is becoming pervasive in technology and science. This course will cover the mathematical underpinnings, algorithms, and practices that enable a computer to learn. Topics will include supervised learning, unsupervised learning, evaluation methodology, and Bayesian probabilistic modeling.

This course provides an introduction to natural language processing, the discipline of enabling computers to process and understand human language. We will learn fundamental techniques for automated text and speech analysis and understanding, with insights from linguistics. Students will get hands-on practice implementing computational algorithms, reading scholarly research articles and will design and carry out an independent final project.

Robotics planning is a fundamental skill for developing autonomous robots. This course will introduce students to the fundamental concepts and algorithms of robotics planning. Students will learn how to apply the concepts they have learned in Data Structures to implement and analyze the performance of popular planning algorithms. Students will also learn about the advancements and gaps that exist today in robotics navigation, manipulation, and collaboration.

Can the history of nation-states and global capitalism also be understood as a history of migration? In what ways are the experiences of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants different from the legal categories assigned to them? Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben's conceptualizations of "state of exception" and "bare life" are frequently invoked in current scholarship on refugee and detention camps. What -- if any -- is the difference between life in concentration camps, refugee camps, and migrant detention centers?

This course offers a historical foundation for themes in contemporary social theory and ethnography. We build this foundation through readings of twentieth-century anthropological and critical theories, including historicism, interpretive anthropology, structuralism, feminism, and postcolonialism. The course encourages critical and creative responses to anthropology's history through readings that challenge the canon and through active engagement with primary documents revealing the field's social, ethical, and political contexts.

Students in this course will develop a collaborative history and ethnography of cultures of science at Mount Holyoke College. Through archival and ethnographic research carried out across the semester, we will examine scientific education and knowledge production at Mount Holyoke in cultural perspective. The collaborative project will introduce students to two broader stories: a history of feminist activist and scholarly challenges to the power of the life sciences; and a history of feminist scientists' work to reform their own institutional cultures.

This seminar will explore anthropological approaches to political economy and materiality within the context of medical anthropology. Medical anthropologists have long been focused on the ways health and illness are reconceptualized in relation to the production and circulation of various organic and inorganic materials -- for example, drugs, devices, vaccines, organs, and stem cells, to name a few.