This course introduces the skills needed to navigate college, with a focus on philosophical writing, analysis and argument. Our topic is happiness and 'the good life.' Happiness is something we all want but often struggle to define. We will look at what philosophers have said about the nature and importance of happiness in our lives, as well as recent positive psychology literature on what makes us happy and why. While we draw from multiple disciplines the emphasis of the class is on philosophical analysis and argument.

In this first year seminar, we will learn how to use primary textual and visual sources to critically analyze everyday life of the nomadic communities living in Central Eurasian and Inner Asia steppes, such as the Mongols and the Scythians; and of the Lakota and the Comanche peoples in the Great Plains in North America. Their histories are often told against the rise of their rival powers, mostly sedentary ones. Students will listen to interviews, speak with leading historians on these subjects, study art, and read accounts by and about these nomads.

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.

"Our age is ... the age of great cities," wrote Robert Vaughan in 1843. Many Europeans questioned whether the greatness of cities was such a good thing, but most agreed that the history of nineteenth-century Europe could not be written without them. We will examine that history from the perspective of Europe's largest cities between the mid-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

This course examines the European Union's global influence from both an analytical and normative perspective. Students will be introduced to the formal institutions and processes by which EU foreign policy is made. They will also learn from a participant's perspective the less formal and more ad hoc ways in which EU diplomacy is conducted. Topics include EU policy toward Brexit, refugees, the Ukraine crisis, and relations with Russia, China, and the U.S.

This course explores the development of Italian identity through books and stories aimed at children in the 1800s, 1900s, and today. From Collodi's Pinocchio, to Rodari's theory of story-telling, we will examine gender roles and narratives, racism, colonialism, and the influence of television, cinema, and social media.

Petronius' Satyricon is one of the few surviving novels from the ancient world. Formed from a pastiche of other literary genres, including epic, comedy, and satire, it is a vivid account of the adventures of three men as they travel throughout Italy. Though fiction, and only partially extant, its realistic portrayal of Roman life offers a glimpse into the social mores in the early empire. Petronius himself was a member of Nero's court and the Satyricon a product of Nero's promotion of the arts.

This course is a study of 20th Century analytic philosophy using one philosopher to focus the course, Michael Dummett. Dummett was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. He gave a theory of meaning using work by Frege and Wittgenstein. He then used this to argue that if our knowledge of the Universe is to be objective, then we cannot conceive of that Universe as real. That is, it is not in existence independently of our ability to find out about it. He was the first to introduce non-classical logic as a means to address the nature of truth.

In this course we will take up the question of what it means to investigate a philosophical question in a way that is accessible to a broad audience. Students will develop their own philosophical project in an academically rigorous way and then find a way to present that project outside the classroom. Along the way we investigate the question of what counts as philosophy and why. Students should have extensive experience writing philosophy papers and be ready and willing to work independently on a philosophical topic of their choosing.

A wide variety of microscopes are employed in a multitude of scientific and industrial applications. This course covers important microscopy basics including scale, the relationship between reality and the image, and the kind of information that can be captured with different types of microscopes. In three hours of lecture/demonstration per week, students will explore the basic principles of different forms of microscopy including optical, electron, and atomic force.