We are living in a time of multiple global crises: climate change, massive inequality, racial tension, and now pandemic. These are not one-time events in a specific location, after which normalcy can be restored. Rather these crises are in continuous development over extended periods of time, with no end in sight. Although we may respond with the feelings of rage, sadness or apathy, the dominant emotion is fear.

Video, still images and sound are used in this course to explore the fundamental character of storytelling, filmmaking and time-based art practices. Students perform all aspects of production with particular attention to developing ideas and building analytical, critical and production skills. We will read seminal written work and interviews with practicing artists in order to expand our knowledge, understanding and love for the medium. Through exercises that include weekly projects students will produce sketches aimed at exploring video as an experimentation tool.

This course examines social policies and attitudes toward crime and criminals in German culture in the 19th and 20th century through a variety of cultural and historical documents. Conducted in English.

This course focuses on selected fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm (Hansel & Gretel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Iron Hans) and Hans Christian Andersen (Little Sea Maid, The Red Shoes), locating them in the 19th-century German or Danish culture of their origins and then examining how they became transformed into perennial favorites of U.S. popular culture through their adaptations by Disney (feature animation films), Broadway (musicals), or bestselling self-help books (Iron John, Women Who Run With the Wolves).

This course will enable students to study the intricate and often intimate relationship between plants and people, taking an interdisciplinary approach. Students will learn fundamental concepts in plant biology including fundamental properties of life, food chains and food webs, plants as primary producers and humans as consumers One of the primary learning goals will be society's historical connection to plants and how plants have made an impact on civilizations.

This course will explore contemporary topics and methods in studying the link between the physical environment and population?s health, i.e. environmental epidemiology. Many chronic diseases are of unknown or multifactorial etiology but may likely be related to environmental exposures. Environmental epidemiology focuses on the ways environmental factors affect the health of populations. Topical areas include effects of air pollution, pesticides, metals, and endocrine disrupting chemicals on a wide range of health outcomes, including, neurodevelopment, reproductive, and metabolic functions.

This course explores various problems within political theory pertaining to the relationship between religion and democracy. Central topics include: the transformation of religious doctrines about politics and legitimacy in light of modern conditions of pluralism, competing theories of liberal versus agonistic pluralism, theories of the sociological role of religious life in supporting and/or stressing democratic life, and recent debates about secularism and secular power

This course explores various problems within political theory pertaining to the relationship between religion and democracy. Central topics include: the transformation of religious doctrines about politics and legitimacy in light of modern conditions of pluralism, competing theories of liberal versus agonistic pluralism, theories of the sociological role of religious life in supporting and/or stressing democratic life, and recent debates about secularism and secular power

This course will take seriously the claim that gender is anti-Black, that slavery marked an epochal rupture and that slavery is a technology for producing a kind of human. Following the work of Hortense Spillers' Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book, this course is interested in thinking through how the politics gender differentiation was and still is central to black subject making in the New World.

Students develop advanced language skills with focus on scientific and technical German language and culture.