This course introduces students to key issues of political economy such as the provision of public goods, property rights, and the role of the state in economic interactions. Students will learn how economists have tackled these issues in the past, the advantages, and the limitations of their approach.

We will explore the cultural and political impact of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The media's role in constructing meanings will be a main organizing focus of the course. Using readings, discussions, assignments, and films, the course will allow students to form a picture of how 9/11 changed America and beyond.

This course is a critical exercise taught at the intersection of two seemingly incommensurable terms, imperialism and neoliberalism. Charting the genealogies of these terms, we will explore the lines of entanglements that hold these two concepts together as mutually reinforcing projects. In part the course will address how self-governance and self-determination under liberal democratic regimes work to accomplish the neoliberal objectives, hence curtailing the legitimacy of the sovereign will as an essential democratic value.

Today democracy is seen as the only legitimate regime type, but there is very little consensus about what democracy refers to. This course will explore competing understandings of democracy and its relationship to state institutions and laws. Students will be introduced to contemporary debates over the normative basis of democracy and difficulties of democratic practice and citizenship. Among the questions we will explore are: what is the relationship between liberalism and democracy? Do rights represent the beginning or the end of democratic citizenship?

Dragon ladies, lotus blossoms, geisha girls--the U.S. cultural imaginary is saturated with myths regarding Asian sexuality and gender.

Using case studies such as the Eugenics Movement, Jonestown, and the Kennedy Assassination, this course will examine how distrust of the government, originally motivated by logical concerns, has transformed the way people think about power in the postmodern era. The class will explore the difference between rational questioning of authority and blind distrust that leads to questionable claims. Through topics such as the War on Drugs, this class shows how the powerful are able to use biases and public fears to carry out their own, often counterproductive, measures.

This course looks at the vast and diverse cultural and aesthetic landscape of dance performance in the millennium and the new breed of choreographers making cutting-edge works that pursue radically different methods, materials and strategies for provoking new ideas about dance, the body and corporeal aesthetics. Taking in the vast spectrum of new-age performance, we will ask such questions as: How does non-narrative dance focus on the body as an instrument with unlimited possibilities? How do heterosexuality, homosexuality and androgyny constitute a gender spectrum in new works?

A stochastic process is a collection of random variables. For example, the daily prices of a particular stock are a stochastic process. Topics of this course will include Markov chains, queueing theory, the Poisson process, and Brownian motion. In addition to theory, the course will investigate applications of stochastic processes, including models of call centers and models of stock prices. Simulations of stochastic processes will also be used to compare with the theory.

Heretics, Martyrs, and Saints investigates how early Christians described holy people as well as their nemeses. It explores how descriptions of martyrs, saints, heretics, demons, and even Satan himself were used to shore up the ever-contested boundaries of Christian orthodoxy and how the depiction of such figures forever changed the trajectory of Christian beliefs and practices.

Our minds can direct and control our bodies. See for yourself: if you decide to lift your arm, and try to do it, your arm will probably go up! This course is about the relationship between our minds, bodies, and behavior. What is the mind? How did it make your arm go up? How is lifting your arm different from an involuntary muscle spasm? The answers are not as straightforward as you might think. We confront powerful arguments that the mind is not reducible to the brain or any part of the body.