This six-week course teaches students to extend and refine their academic capacities to become autonomous learners. Course content includes research on motivation, learning styles, memory and retrieval, as well as application of goal setting, time management and study skills. Students who take this course are better prepared to handle coursework, commit to a major, and take responsibility for their own learning. Priority is given to students referred by their dean or adviser. Enrollment limited to 15. Grading S/U.

This course focuses on the transition from high school to college-level learning by facilitating processes of exploration, awareness, empowerment, communication and community. These are strengthening qualities – necessary for academic success at Smith. The seminar offers opportunities to continue to develop these strengths. The work of cultivating these strengths within the seminar take place when given opportunities to explore and share thought processes, biases, and “real” and “false” beliefs, especially as they relate to ascribed social identities as well as chosen ones.

This course prepares students to understand and critically evaluate various ethical perspectives on human beings’ interactions with nature and these perspectives’ applications to environmental issues. The principal ethical perspectives studied are anthropocentrism, biocentric individualism, environmental holism and environmental pragmatism. We study representative descriptions and defenses of these perspectives and examine in particular whether they can validly and effectively help us resolve environmental problems.

What is thinking? What is the distinction between mind and body, and ought we to accept it? Can the mind survive the death of the body? Can you be thoughtful and passionate at the same time? What kind of access can we have to the worlds of human beings from other cultures and historical periods? Readings from ancient, modern and contemporary philosophers primarily in the Western tradition. Designed to introduce beginning students to problems and methods in philosophy and to the philosophy department at Smith. Enrollment limited to 30.

Analysis of the institutions and processes of public policy formation and implementation. Explores models designed to explain policy and also those whose purpose is to “improve” policy. Develops and uses analytical tools of formal policy analysis. Examines the debate over the possible and proper uses of these analytic tools.

The first half of a two-semester sequence introducing modern Hebrew language and culture, with a focus on equal development of the four language skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. Learning is amplified by use of online resources (YouTube, Facebook, newspapers) and examples from Hebrew song and television/film. No previous knowledge of modern Hebrew is necessary. This course is available to Mount Holyoke College students through a simultaneous video-conferencing option. Enrollment limited to 18.

Same as HST 208. This course examines the history of the modern Middle East from a global perspective. How have gender, economy, ecology, and religion shaped Middle Eastern empires and nation-states within a broader world? The course begins with transformations in Egypt, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and World War I. Next, it turns to experiences of colonialism, the rise of independent nation-states, and the birth of new political movements.

Same as MES 208. This course examines the history of the modern Middle East from a global perspective. How have gender, economy, ecology, and religion shaped Middle Eastern empires and nation-states within a broader world? The course begins with transformations in Egypt, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire between 1800 and World War I. Next, it turns to experiences of colonialism, the rise of independent nation-states, and the birth of new political movements.

This course invites students to explore how sexuality has been central to power and resistance in the Middle East. When and how have empires, colonial powers, and nation states tried to regulate intimacy, sex, love, and reproduction? How have sexual practices shaped social life, and how have perceptions of these practices changed over time? The course introduces theoretical tools for the history of sexuality and explores how contests over sexuality, reproduction, and the body shaped empires, colonial states, and nationalist projects.

This lecture class provides an introduction to the comparative politics of the Middle East. Readings, lectures, and discussions will examine political environments in the Middle East, with a focus on states as units of analysis, and on the general processes and conditions that have shaped state formation, the formation of national markets, and state-society relations in the region.