This course explores the sometimes catastrophic intersection of geology with people's lives. Earthquakes, volcanoes, and floods are geologic events; they are also natural hazards that pose significant challenges to communities in high risk areas. Where are these risky areas? Why? Is it possible to predict when and where catastrophic geologic events will occur? How do we assess geological risks? Using case studies from around the world, we explore these three natural hazards in the context of evolving geologic research on plate tectonics and climate change.

Language is a living system. It grows and changes, despite efforts to preserve it. This course examines how slang participates in these changes. What separates slang from standard language, and who sets the standard? Through readings in linguistics and literature, this course examines how we use language to connect, create, and control.

This course looks at the central concerns of consumer culture through the lens of race and ethnicity. Through exploring issues such as multicultural marketing and advertising, discrimination in e-commerce, consumer boycotts, and urban food deserts, students will gain theoretical and empirical insight on the ways that racial and ethnic boundaries shape, and are shaped by, consumption.

This course examines African American, Asian American, Chicana/o-Latina/o, and Native American literature and cultural politics. Examining the historical intersection of race, gender, and sexuality, we will explore themes of cultural identity, segregation and community formation, citizenship, labor, class, and family. Authors may include Toni Morrison, Danzy Senna, Josefina López, Sherman Alexie, Junot Díaz, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Joy Kogawa.

Since 1980 more than 300 operas have been premiered in the United States. These works collectively represent a major change in creative direction, creating new opportunities for hitherto unrepresented and underrepresented voices. New development processes have allowed the art form to be newly responsive to the issues of our time.

How do we represent ourselves as we document our lives and communicate with others? In this seminar we will move beyond critiques of selfie culture, instead analyzing self-representation as an important avenue for forming identities. We will study forms of self-representation across history and will focus on visual and new media as platforms for performing selfhood. Students will discuss the politics and aesthetics of self-fashioning across these media forms, and will execute multiple forms of self-expression, including the argumentative essay, the op-ed, the blog post, and the tweet.

What is the role of governments in regulating human reproduction? How has this changed throughout the 20th and 21st century? Is reproduction an area of our private lives that should be left outside the realm of government? Or is the state actually needed to safeguard our reproductive rights? This course analyzes the history of reproductive policies in the US and compares it with cases from the global South.

How have animal bodies developed to meet the challenges of living on earth? We will study the common needs of animals -- such as eating, breathing, and moving -- and the design constraints these place on living bodies. We will also examine the manner in which cells come together to make biomaterials like bones, beaks, and beetle wings, and the way a squishy animal fashions a skeleton from water. Finally, we will trace these same principles of tissue design to better understand the potentials and pitfalls of lab-grown organs.

In the summer and fall of 1888, a series of gruesome murders captured the attention of Londoners and brought questions of class, gender, race and social-economic change to the forefront of public debate. Though the culprit was never identified, Jack the Ripper became synonymous with the perceived dangers of late-Victorian London.

How do we calculate the optimal viewing distance of a painting? If we are drawing a building, how do we decide which lines are parallel and which intersect? Renaissance artists answered both questions using the idea of linear perspective. We will use the mathematics of perspective drawing to solve visual puzzles, create drawings, and analyze works from the collection of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. Readings and writings will invite students to think about the nature of perception and how we describe the world around us.