This course will provide a research site to investigate the functions of the hippocampal brain region to then embody that learning through choreographic structures. In particular, students will use dance expression to aid the understanding of complex neuroscience topics, and apply neuroscience knowledge to deepen creative expression. "Mobilizing the hippocampus" will help to bridge a gap between science and art, serving as a tool to stimulate a heightened understanding of both disciplines.

Explore the short fictions of Anton Chekhov as brilliantly crafted exemplars of the Philosophical Tale, stories that use the resources of short narrative fiction to probe life's deepest questions: "what is the meaning of our lives, how do we face our inevitable death, why is there evil and suffering, what does it mean to be human, how should we live?" How do these stories work? What can fictions do that discursive philosophical essays can't? How do they engage the complexity of the world and of life?

At once viewed as a dysfunction of normative ideas about sexuality, the family, and the nation, Black sexualities are intimately linked to and regulated by political and socioeconomic discourses. Slavery studies scholars remind us of how it has proven foundational for modern notions of race and sex by making explicit links between labor and exploitation.

At once viewed as a dysfunction of normative ideas about sexuality, the family, and the nation, Black sexualities are intimately linked to and regulated by political and socioeconomic discourses. Slavery studies scholars remind us of how it has proven foundational for modern notions of race and sex by making explicit links between labor and exploitation.

Environmental concerns are no longer a niche "special interest" in American politics. Today multiplying and intensifying ecological crises are getting harder to ignore, and the need for action is urgent. Deciding how to respond to and govern a climate-changed world is now one of the defining political challenges of our time.

This course examines the role of race in the construction of housing markets and policies in United States. It will consider housing markets and policies in the larger context of postwar American Political Development. We will also examine how African Americans, Latinx, Asian Americans, and whites embraced, accommodated, and protested segregated housing markets and discriminatory policies. Topics discuss include racial and class segregation, fair housing, public housing, urban redevelopment, and gentrification.

As numerous controversies have made clear -- from Galileo's heresy trial to contemporary disputes over vaccination -- the purportedly neutral and objective results of scientific inquiry are in practice hotly contested and profoundly political. Students in this course will critically examine science and technology as social practices, in the hope of becoming more responsible users of these powerful tools.

How do appeals to nature -- so called "natural" traits or "essences" -- undergird the way race adheres to specific bodies? How does race, in turn, go beyond bodies to mark particular "natural" landscapes and non-human entities as other? In short, how can we understand the historically powerful relationship between race and nature? Drawing on anthropology and critical race theory, this course examines how race and nature work to convey "timeless truths", inform notions of difference, and justify inequalities.

This course considers the historical evolution of women's private lives, public presence, and political engagement within and beyond the borders of the United States, from the 1890s to the present. How have U.S. racism, consumer capitalism, immigration, and changing forms of state power shaped women's experiences and possibilities? How have regimes of gender, sexuality, bodily comportment, and reproduction evolved in relation to national and global changes? Emphasis will be placed on the experiences and perspectives of working-class women, women of color, and colonized women.

Engineers change the world we live in every day by developing technologies that influence nearly every aspect of our lives. In this course, we will study how engineered things shape the world we live in. Students will engage in a team-based, hands-on engineering design project, from brainstorming solutions to a contemporary problem, to building, testing, and iterating design solutions. In the process, students will learn basic programming and fabrication skills.