This intermediate language course will serve as a grammar review and will help students develop greater facility in oral expression, reading and writing, through work with a variety of digital, broadcast, and print media. Class discussions and assignments will consider key issues and trends in contemporary Brazilian society and culture as expressed through a selection of media forms and texts, such as newspaper and magazine articles, websites, television and radio programs, advertisements, graphic novels, and films. Conducted in Portuguese.

What was the Scientific Revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries? Did a revolution even occur? If it did, was it really revolutionary? If it occurred, what forces produced it? How did the boundaries of “science,” which was known as “natural philosophy,” change during this time period? Readings are drawn from primary and secondary sources.

In this intellectually rigorous writing class, students will learn how to craft compelling "true stories," using the journalist’s tools. They will research, report, write, revise, source, and share their work—and, through interviewing subjects firsthand, understand how other people see the world. We will consider multiple styles and mediums of journalism, including digital storytelling. Prerequisite: One WI course. Students should focus their attention and effort on academic exposition and argumentation before learning other forms of writing. Enrollment limited to 16.

This class explores our contemporary “remix culture” to ask pressing questions about creativity, originality, and identity. We explore the remix as a necessary tool for cultural transformation and look at our own experience of race, gender, sexual orientation, class, and ability as an opportunity to reimagine and transform old ideas. We will make a case for the remix as a place for critical updates to our culture, and discuss the possibilities of how remixing contributes to a richer production of cultural ideas.

How we speak – the words we choose, the way we structure our sentences, the pitch of our voices, even our gender while speaking – is constantly judged by those around us. Examining the interaction of gender and language leads to questions, such as how does gender shape the way we use language, how does our gender affect others’ perceptions of our speech (both written and verbal), what variation occurs across cultures with regards to gender and language? This course uses the topic of language and gender to expand upon and improve rhetorical and writing skills. Enrollment limit of 15.

How we speak – the words we choose, the way we structure our sentences, the pitch of our voices, even our gender while speaking – is constantly judged by those around us. Examining the interaction of gender and language leads to questions, such as how does gender shape the way we use language, how does our gender affect others’ perceptions of our speech (both written and verbal), what variation occurs across cultures with regards to gender and language? This course uses the topic of language and gender to expand upon and improve rhetorical and writing skills. Enrollment limit of 15.

In the era of rapid climate change, global migration, enormous income disparities driven by capitalism’s greed for profit, and a pandemic that disproportionately affects Black, Brown, and low-income people, the future has become an urgent concern. Although media reports can feel apocalyptic, this concern has also inspired visions of a world free from capitalism, police, and injustice. This course delves into innovative, liberating responses to this moment of crisis, including Black feminist lessons from marine mammals and Indigenous peoples’ restorative responses to climate change.

Nietzsche called maturity the rediscovered seriousness of a child at play. What is the meaning of comedy, in light of this “seriousness of the child at play?” Why do we laugh, at what and in what way? How do we distinguish silly comedy from serious comedy? This course examines such questions on comic platforms including film, music, videos, short stories and cartoons.

Disability is both a universal human reality and a profoundly embodied, contested, and situated experience. This course explores this tension from a range of methodological and theoretical perspectives, with an emphasis on innovative ethnographic work. Our approach will be insistently transnational and intersectional, taking into account how disabled selves and communities are shaped by geographical and historical context, racial and ethnic identity, class background, gender, and sexuality.