This course explores the overlapping dualities of the feminine and the masculine, the private and the public, the home and the world. We examine different forms of power over the body; the ways gender and sexual identities reinforce or challenge the established order; and the cultural determinants of 'women's emancipation.' We emphasize the politics of feminism, dealing with themes that include culture, democracy, and the particularly political role of theory and on theoretical attempts to grasp the complex ties and tensions between sex, gender, and power.

Engineers change the world we live in every day by developing and improving nearly every aspect of our lives. In this course, we will study the interaction of technology and society and how the engineering design process helps shape the world we live in. Engineering comprises many disciplines, but one common theme is the engineering design process: research, problem definition, feasibility, conceptualization, prototyping, and testing.

This course explores historical and contemporary connections between African American and Asian American communities -- the moments of solidarity as well as tension that have made their mark on literary and expressive culture. Looking to literary narratives, historical documents, film, and performance, we will consider how these groups have been defined in relation to one another, and explore how the categories of "Black" and "Asian" have come to be defined in the US context.

In the past few years, many contemporary painters have shown renewed interest in one of painting's oldest functions -- telling stories. Students in this course will first explore historical forms of narrative painting before considering its many uses today: to advance political agendas, to reimagine or recover histories, to memorialize, to cultivate attention, to entertain, and to impart values. They will create paintings in relationship to historical and contemporary events, found texts, myths, literature, and stories they write themselves.

In this course, we will investigate the destruction of artworks and monuments for religious or political reasons, called iconoclasm. The seminar addresses the current debates involving the removal and destruction of confederate monuments in the U.S. and responses from government, media, and social critics. Concurrently, we will study key historical moments of iconoclasm ranging from the Byzantine era to the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution. Studying iconoclasms in different historical periods raises the issue of the power of art in society.

This course will explore the Victorian novel within the larger context of nineteenth century Britain, paying particular attention to the ways in which it develops in relation to changing ideas about class, gender, sexuality, nation, and culture. Novelists will include Bronte, Dickens, Eliot, and Gaskell.

Taught in English, the course explores comparative racial and ethnic politics in the U.S. during the 20th century. We will analyze the creation and maintenance of structural inequalities through laws and policies targeted at persons of color in the areas of healthcare, transportation, immigration, labor, racial segregation, and education. Through readings, lectures and films, we will discuss critical histories of community struggle against social inequality, registering the central impact that race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship have had on efforts toward social justice.

Abstract algebra is the study of the common principles that govern computations with seemingly disparate objects. One way to begin is by studying groups, which are sets with a single operation under which each non-identity element is invertible. Examples include the integers with addition, invertible matrices of size n, permutations of a fixed set, and the symmetries of an object. Our goal is to study a definition of groups that unifies all of the important examples above and more.

The dramatic increase in transnational migrations has prompted new debates over globalization, diversity, and human rights. In these debates, the fate of migrants is defined by competing visions of them as pawns or pioneers, as passive victims or driven agents. This course explores the key role played by film in such representations, comparing and contrasting film to ethnography as a way to relate migrant experiences and understand migration.

During the 1960s and 1970s military coups brought authoritarian regimes to power in the Southern Cone (Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay). Human rights movements emerged demanding information about victims of torture, executions and disappearances which became the way military regimes attempted to eliminate dissent. What accounts for the different role these movements in the transition and consolidation of democracy and the rule of law? Did they take part to the same extent in the design and implementation of accountability mechanisms to prosecute those responsible for the abuses?