This course covers the mechanical responses and failure modes of load-bearing tissues and their replacements. Case studies, including clinical failures, designs, and material behavior of biomaterial, are presented. Also, the analysis of biomechanical tissues and constitutive relationships of materials is covered to design implants for structural function. Material selection for load-bearing applications, including reconstructive surgery, orthopedics, and dentistry, are addressed.

A graduate seminar examining East German, Czechoslovak and Polish cinema of the Cold War period (1940s-90s). Through films and readings covers contemporary theory and debates, including on: formalism and Socialist Realism; international influences, such as Italian Neo-Realism; the various national New Waves and political turmoil of the 1960s; and the impact on cinema of international peace movements in the 1970s and of perestroika and the Solidarity movement of the 1908s. Seminar held in English, all films with English subtitles.

Fiction by women exploring the social and sexual arrangements of American culture.

Visual Legacies of Colonialism

A lot of policy work is contingent on who gets to leverage, correct, or tell the story of the past. This course will push students to think about the historical context of policy work. We will learn a variety of ways of studying past policies using historical methods and discuss in detail the politics of how we remember (and forget) policies. This course will focus on both polices with obvious historical context (like confederate memorials or reparations), and examples where the past is less obvious (like privacy and social media).

Too often Western historical narratives consider Africans and African Diasporans as "People Without History." Such a notion also refers to people who possess few or no formally written histories. Employing historical archaeology, this class examines the material traces individuals and communities in the past left behind as important, alternative historical resources for interrogating the European colonial library, and re-writing the histories of slavery and the slave trade.

Sex and sexuality are not static entities; they vary and change across cultures and time. In this graduate seminar, we will engage the historicity of sexuality and analyze key works from this burgeoning subfield. We will reflect on how narratives about sexuality are constructed, what kind of sexualities are prioritized analytically, and how (and whether) sexualities of the past connect with sexualities of the present. Additionally, we will gain first hand experience writing histories of sexuality by visiting local archival repositories.

The course will consider two distinct genealogies of performativity - that of J. L. Austin and that of Judith Butler. This will be followed by an exploration of the importance of performance to an understanding of contemporary theories of blackness. Our enquires will proceed through a range of expressive sites, including sound, music video, film, TV, literature, photography, and everyday behavior. We will pay close attention to the distinction between the two ideas, and consider how each deals with common concerns such as gender formation, subjection, spectatorship, utterance and subversion.