We are constantly encountering stimuli from our environment. The astonishing amounts of visual, auditory, somatosensory, gustatory, and olfactory sensations from these stimuli need to be filtered and processed, under the general mechanism of perception. These perceptual processes allow us to make sense of the world, but there are instances of perception that may be counterintuitive.

Not available at this time

Not available at this time

In this course we will engage with documentary photography with an eye toward changes in its practice as effected by digital technologies and the growth of the web. We will consider the history of documentary photographic practice and reflect on the concerns that surround its relationship to storytelling, truth, and the ethics of representation.

Chinese food is more American than apple pie, writes Jennifer Lee in The Fortune Cookie Chronicles. In this course, we take Chinese food as a ubiquitous American foodway that is at once both "familiar" and "foreign" and thus offers a potent entry point into the study of cultural identity and citizenship in the U.S. as this intersects with the cultural politics of food justice. Students will carry out an ethnographic research project that begins with a question about Chinese food as it intersects with their own lives.

How and under what circumstances are non-human animals considered persons before the law? Using perspectives from anthropology, science studies, and legal studies, this course explores the shifting status of non-human animals in Anglo-American legal tradition. While our main focus will be the understanding and treatment of non-human animals in the contemporary United States, we will also examine these issues from historical and cross-cultural perspectives. Of particular interest is how scientific knowledge comes to bear on these kinds of legal questions.

This course offers an in-depth exploration of aesthetic and interpretive issues in dance performance. Through experiments with improvisation, musical phrasing, partnering, personal imagery and other modes of developing and embodying movement material, dancers explore ways in which a choreographer’s vision is formed, altered, adapted, and finally presented in performance. Audition required. May be taken twice for credit. Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

Prerequisite: 215. L.

A duet form of movement improvisation. The technique focuses on work with gravity, weight support, balance, inner sensation and touch, to develop spontaneous fluidity of movement in relation to a partner. Enrollment limited to 10. May be repeated once for credit.

This colloquium examines the life cycle of knowledge ­making: studying what it means to produce knowledge, how one decides how (and with whom) to share one’s knowledge, and the implications of having the privilege to engage in such projects. We study a range of questions: Who desires knowledge, and why? When do data and information become knowledge? How does knowledge become wisdom? Students work collaboratively and independently on public scholarship projects, develop expertise in digital critique and seminar­ style discussion, and present work to a range of different publics.