This course will examine the economics of socially constructed groups and the inequalities in income, wealth, and power between them. The course will include, as a central feature, an examination of inequalities based on race and ethnicity. However, the course will also explore economic dynamics and disparities between a range of socially constructed groups, including those based on gender, caste, nationality/citizenship, different concepts of class, and sexuality.

Students will be asked to retrospectively analyze their experiences as workers and consumers, evaluating the impact of organizational forms and industry structure. How do cooperative enterprises (including those on campus such as the People's Market, Earthfoods, and Campus Design and Copy) differ from other enterprises? Students will also be asked to explicitly bring material they have learned in other classes to bear on these issues.

This course provides the tools for understanding the evolution of African economies after independence and their current situation in the global economy. The course emphasizes the importance of the interactions between political institutions and economic systems in determining economic and social outcomes. The course will begin with a quick overview of pre-colonial and colonial Africa followed by a selection of topics on independent Africa. Students will lead a series of presentations of country case studies.

Human civilizations have repeatedly weathered the onslaught of vicious and mystifying disease. This course will focus on a number of examples from the ancient and medieval western worlds, including the plagues that assailed fifth-century-BCE Athens, Late Antique Rome, and fourteenth-century Europe. We will consider how, in the absence of modern medical knowledge, individuals and societies struggled to understand the calamities, how they responded, and how they survived. We will look at how people coped with fear, loss, grief, and social upheaval.

We will examine the cultural, religious and political history of the High and Later Middle Ages, focusing on themes such as the relationship of sacred and secular power, the interaction of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, religious movements, heresies, and persecution. We will read a variety of primary sources including accounts of the crusades from eastern and western perspectives, and the letters of Abelard and Heloise. Assessment will include quizzes, a midterm and research papers.

Ever wonder what groups constitute the Asian American communities in the state of Massachusetts, especially in Western Massachusetts, and what they are doing to empower and help themselves? This course combines the methods of historical inquiry and civic engagement, and is designed for students who are willing to learn more about Asian Americans both inside and outside the classroom. In the first half of the course, students will learn about the general history of specific Asian subgroups (e.g. Chinese, Korean, Indian, Japanese, Cambodian, Vietnamese, etc).

The analysis of time to event data focusing on applications of regression models to right censored data. Particular emphasis on the use and interpretation of the pro-portional hazards model. Prerequisite: PUBHLTH 640.

Bayesian modelling approaches provide natural ways for researchers in many disciplines to structure their data and knowledge, and they yield direct and intuitive answers to scientific questions (see https://bayesian.org/Bayes-Explained). In this course, students will learn how to construct Bayesian models to relate (potentially complex) data to scientific questions, to fit such models fitting using statistical programs (R, JAGS and/or STAN), to interpret model results and lastly, to check model assumptions.

In this class we will discuss concepts and applications of modern DNA technology including an introduction to the basic concepts pertaining to the emerging field of genomics. We will begin by describing key molecular methods (cloning, sequencing, blotting, PCR) and how they are used in gene analysis. We will then move on to consider how entire genomes are analyzed, and will familiarize ourselves with some of the basic bioinformatics' tools that are commonly used by working biologists. Finally we will consider the methods used to manipulate genomes as a means to determining gene function.