This course is a first year seminar on the principles and practices of restorative justice. Restorative justice is a movement that seeks to reimagine justice by building on indigenous theories and practices of human community. Students examine principal restorative justice models and programs for how they understand and respond to harm, especially as they reflect the accountability of key stakeholders (victims, offenders, communities and justice systems).

What is the role of governments in regulating human reproduction? How has this changed throughout the 20th and 21st century? Is reproduction an area of our private lives that should be left outside the realm of government? Or is the state actually needed to safeguard our reproductive rights? This course analyzes the history of reproductive policies in the US and compares it with cases from the global South.

Fall 2021 Production: Fabulation
Spring 2022 Production: Red Rainbow

Cognitive psychology is the study of how we sense and interpret information from the world around us, incorporate this new information with our prior experiences, and determine how to respond to an ever-changing environment. Thus, cognition encompasses a range of phenomena that define our mental lives. This course considers empirical investigations and theoretical accounts of cognitive issues, including learning and memory, creativity and problem solving, decision making, attention, consciousness, and language.

Adolescence is often thought of as a time of great change and upheaval as children navigate the transition into adulthood. Raging hormones, changing social expectations and relationships, and developing autonomy all contribute to this tumultuous time. This course will examine the biological, cognitive, and social changes that occur during adolescence to develop a better understanding of this unique period of development.

Examines changes in cognitive, social, and emotional functioning, including theory and research that illuminate some central issues in characterizing these changes: the relative contributions of nature and nurture, the influence of the context on development, continuity versus discontinuity in development, and the concept of stage. Includes observations at the Gorse Children's Center.

This course surveys the psychological field of abnormal psychology. We will explore historical foundations, theories, research, assessment, and treatment as they relate to diagnoses included in the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition . Throughout the course, we will critically examine the concept of abnormality and its intersection with societal and cultural contexts.

How do we represent ourselves as we document our lives and communicate with others? In this seminar we will move beyond critiques of selfie culture, instead analyzing self-representation as an important avenue for forming identities. We will study forms of self-representation across history and will focus on visual and new media as platforms for performing selfhood. Students will discuss the politics and aesthetics of self-fashioning across these media forms, and will execute multiple forms of self-expression, including the argumentative essay, the op-ed, the blog post, and the tweet.

We begin this course by examining how the concept of race was developed to justify human rights atrocities and how it continues to be used to justify racial disparities today. We then examine theories of racism and its persistence at multiple ecological levels: intrapersonally, interpersonally, and institutionally. Although a theory driven course, students will be asked to apply theory to their own personal experiences, deepening an understanding of our own areas of oppression and privilege.