This course will provide an introduction to UMass and two central theories of education through a critical media analysis of Harry Potter. The class will use the excerpts from the first book, and film clips, to explore education as meritocracy, and community based education. We will end with a look at how student activists have used the characters of Harry Potter in humor and resistance.

This course intended to provide students with practical knowledge to understand obesity epidemics in the U.S., and an overview of federal, state, and local policy approaches and national initiatives for preventing obesity, promoting healthy behaviors, and providing care to obese citizens. There will also be extensive discussion of evidence for the impact of policies on child and adolescent overweight, including ethnic/racial and socioeconomic disparities. Students will be provided with an opportunity to develop an intervention targeting any perspective of obesity.

This seminar uses comic book culture to introduce first-year students to key discussion and and analysis skills in the humanities. We will explore how, as dually visual and textual art forms, comics can be useful tools for thinking through social and political issues regarding crime, law, and (in)justice. In this course, we will ask: how have comics and their film adaptations represented war, vigilantism, policing, court systems, and/or legislation? How have writers and artists questioned the line between hero and villain? Morality and legality?

We all like to think of ourselves as rational: that while the other side has been duped by fake news and propaganda, we?ve come to our beliefs and political opinions by way of careful consideration of the evidence and sound reasoning. But is this really the case? Recent empirical research seems to indicate that we?re all much more systematically irrational than we would have thought ? that we?re all susceptible to the same kinds of cognitive biases and pitfalls in reasoning.

This class will study three topics relevant to Latin America through the lens of Latin American cinema: Gender, Latin America's History, and Race. Each one of these topics will be studied as a unit, with one mandatory film per session plus one optional per session. Students will be expected to watch the movies before coming to class, where we will discuss them. Each unit will close with a guest speaker from departments related to the topic. Students will do 3 Pechakuchas and a 500-word final paper. Works can be presented in either English, Spanish or Portuguese.

"New Media Storytelling" is devoted to visually mapping the campus. Incoming students will reflect on their first university experience combining portraiture and photographs/recordings of place into seamless visual stories. Participants will learn to use tools already at their disposal - photography, video and audio on smartphones, tablets, laptops, and Digital Media Lab equipment. Additionally, they will learn to use inexpensively built analog instruments such as pinhole cameras and contact microphones.

Banners hang from lamp posts displaying our student athletes in motion. TV screens across campus show March Madness commentary. Patriots games lead to riots in the Southwest Residential area. Our Minuteman Mascot runs, a rifle at the ready, across our hats, t-shirts, and backpacks. There is no question that UMass Amherst is infused by sports, both local and national. In this course, we will consider how sports influence our own identities and how we are (and are not) invited to identify with others.

How do comics shape our world? More importantly, how can you make comics that shape our world? Comics perform many essential functions in society: providing an outlet for creative expression, creating enduring cultural icons, and so much more. Designed to help you develop your visual storytelling skills and deepen your understanding of the comics medium, this course seeks to take you beyond simply how to make comics and get at the heart of WHY to make comics.

This seminar seeks to analyze images of queerness in films produced and distributed around the world since the 1900s until today. Introducing film studies vocabulary and frameworks we will discuss critically the multiple, and often, contradictory meanings of queerness. We will explore differences and similarities in queer experiences, investigating the relation between film and context of production: social, historical and political as well as artistic, literary, and musical movements.