[IL] This course surveys some of the principal themes in the political economy of lower-income countries. Questions will cover a broad terrain. What are the key characteristics of poor economies? Why did these countries fail to catch up economically with the West in the 20th century? Who are the key political actors? What are their beliefs, ideologies and motivations? What are their political constraints, locally, nationally and globally?
[G] This course will attempt to analyze and illuminate the leading theories of international relations (IR) today, as well as the evolution of the international relations discipline as a whole. It is meant to encourage a critical attitude towards all theoretical perspectives discussed, not only to familiarize students with the major paradigms of IR, but also to appreciate what the “international” means and how, if at all, it can be demarcated from “domestic” politics.
[SC] This course will explore the role of work in the context of American politics and society. We will study how work has been understood in political and social theory by considering the scholarship of John Locke, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Judith Shklar, Pierre Bourdieu, Zygmunt Bauman, Luc Boltanski, and others. We will also consider ethnographic studies that explore how workers experience their lives inside organizations and how workplaces transform in response to changing legal regulations.
[SC, G] Can one country intervene militarily against another to prevent it from abusing its own citizens? And should countries always offer asylum to those that are persecuted in their own country? The recent migration flow to Europe from war-torn Syria has emphasized the timely nature of these complex questions that constitute the impetus for this class. The class is divided in two parts.
[IL, SC] We all know that the American media failed the American public during the 2016 election – or do we? Is it the job of the media to predict election outcomes accurately (or at all)? Is it up to journalists to alert the nation to the threat it faces? Are media professionals there to entertain, educate, or report impartially? And while we are at it, what is it to report impartially? This course will explore the assumptions that underlie journalism as it is practiced and consumed in the United States.
Independent Reading Course. A full course.
Fall and spring semester.
The course is an elementary introduction to Einstein's theory of gravity. After a brief review of the special theory of relativity, we will investigate vector and tensor fields in terms of their properties under changes of coordinates.
(Offered as PHYS 400, BIOL 400, BCBP 400, and CHEM 400) How do the physical laws that dominate our lives change at the small length and energy scales of individual molecules? What design principles break down at the sub-cellular level and what new chemistry and physics becomes important? We will answer these questions by looking at bio-molecules, cellular substructures, and control mechanisms that work effectively in the microscopic world. How can we understand both the static and dynamic shape of proteins using the laws of thermodynamics and kinetics?
Wave-particle duality and the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Basic postulates of Quantum Mechanics, wave functions, solutions of the Schroedinger equation for one-dimensional systems and for the hydrogen atom. Three class hours per week.
Requisite: PHYS 225 and 343 or consent of the instructor. Spring semester. Professor Hunter.
The basic laws of physics governing the behavior of microscopic particles are in certain respects simple. They give rise both to complex behavior of macroscopic aggregates of these particles, and more remarkably, to a new kind of simplicity. Thermodynamics focuses on the simplicity at the macroscopic level directly, and formulates its laws in terms of a few observable parameters like temperature and pressure.
