Although we talk readily of "postmodernism," do we really know what "modernism" was about? Never did change seem to be as dramatic and rapid as in the first half of the twentieth century. Leftists and rightists, avant-gardists and traditionalists alike, spoke of the age of the masses, characterized by conscript armies and political mass movements, mass production of commodities, and mass media.

The course offers a sustained engagement with words and images, understood as constructions of the unconscious. We will work with words as images, and words with images. The unconscious is constructed in both psychoanalysis and art-making through associative processes: the convergence and divergence of elements (through repetition, variation, gaps, erasures, and contradictions) create emergent meanings that dissolve into nonsense, paradox, and questions. Students will create a poetics grounded in these processes.

The mental health professions offer a range of methods for the treatment of mental illness and human suffering but there is often little explanation as to what the various treatments are and how it is they are thought to work. A central question this class will pursue is on what basis should one choose a psychotherapist and type of psychotherapy? We will examine what psychotherapy is from a range of perspectives with the intention of developing a moral and ethical framework through which psychotherapeutic practice can be critically understood.

What can the hopes and fears of a given society tell us about it and ourselves? Did the gravest "sins" in old Europe involve food, money, or sex? Among the hallmarks of modernity were the rise of new social formations (classes) and the commercialization of daily activities and relations. Did traditional institutions and belief systems hamper or facilitate the changes? What roles did religious and national contexts play? Did the increase in the sheer number of "things" change the way people thought? What changes did the family and private life undergo?

In this course students will engage analytically and creatively with the memories of refugees in India and Pakistan. These are Hindu and Muslim refugees who often witnessed, and fled from, genocidal ethnic violence that accompanied the partition of British India into India and Pakistan. Their reminiscences, preserved as audio and video files in several online archives and blogs, offer a unique perspective of history 'from below'.

This course explores the history and politics of gender and sexuality in relation to the racial politics of prisons and the police. By engaging recent work in queer studies, feminist studies, transgender studies, and critical prison studies, we will consider how prisons and police have shaped the making and remaking of race, gender, and sexuality from slavery and conquest to the contemporary period. We will examine how police and prisons have regulated the body, identity, and populations, and how larger social, political, and cultural changes connect to these processes.

The course will read Freud in reverse, underscoring his most radical and developed ideas late in his life. Freud explored trauma in new forms in his late work on the repetition-compulsion and the death drive, the theory of the uncanny, and his dream analysis revision. We will examine his late work on constructions in analysis and move back in time to his writing about screen memories and repeating as a form of memory, as well as his earlier work on dreams, resistance, sexuality and the Oedipus complex.

On December 21, 2012 the Zapatistas again surprised a world whose eyes were on Mexico anticipating a historical rupture from one time into another, the Mayan prophecy of the end of the world. Forty thousand Zapatistas marched in total silence on four of the seven towns they had taken on the first day of their uprising January 1, 1994, 18 years before. They issued a brief communique: ?Can you hear it? It is the sound of their world ending, and ours surging anew,? thereby interpreting the Mayan prophecy in an unexpected, political manner.

This course will look at the issues involved with design and fabrication in situations where there are limited resources. Students will engage in the hands-on study and design of technologies considered appropriate for less developed and small-scale local economies. Topics will include water quality, human powered cargo transportation, energy production, food storage and preparation, and wheelchair technologies. We will consider factors that make for successful adoption and widespread use of appropriate technologies.

Design Fundamentals: This is an introductory level design class that will begin with a series of guided activities and culminate in a final independent project. Students will become familiar with a range of basic design tools and skills, such as drawing, model making and prototyping in materials such as cardboard, metal and plastic. We will also consider aesthetics, manufacturability and usability of the objects we create. Throughout the course students will work towards improving visual communication skills and the ability to convey ideas.