This course serves as a comprehensive grammar review. In addition to a grammar textbook, we use several other sources, including film, music and short texts by writers from the Portuguese-speaking world, to stimulate class discussion and to improve reading comprehension, writing skills and vocabulary building in Portuguese. Enrollment limited to 18. Prerequisite: POR 100Y or POR 125 or the equivalent.

Over the last century, the reach of corporations has gradually extended into all facets of our lives, yet most of us rarely stop to think about the corporation as a social entity. This course focuses on the social, economic and legal foundations that both shape its power and provide a dominant logic for its actions. We examine the implications of corporate power and processes for communities, workers and the environment.

Topics Course. This seminar reconstructs and examines a slice of one of the most influential trajectories in the history of 19th- and 20th-century European philosophy. The focus is the work of the German philosopher Nietzsche. On what basis did he criticize the role played by reason, understanding, truth and morality in the work of respected philosophers such as Plato, Descartes and Kant in the history of philosophy? Who were his historical role models?

Save for the brief Y2K scare, we rarely think critically about technology, how it shapes and informs our lives. Furthermore, as students of the social world, sociologists are a little behind the times in thinking about how technology affects data collection, analysis, and representation. For this course we first develop a critical perspective on media and technology, but then take a unique next step: throughout the semester there are workshops on podcasting, PowerPoint, wikis, video and photography to put those lessons into practice. SOC 101 is required.

An exploration of key issues in the area of medical ethics. Following the consideration of relevant philosophical background, topics to be addressed include patient autonomy and medical paternalism; informed consent; resource allocation and social justice; reproductive technologies and genetic screening; euthanasia and the withdrawal of life-sustaining treatment; and the experimental use of human subjects. Prerequisite: one course in philosophy or health studies.

This course prepares students to understand and critically evaluate various ethical perspectives on human beings' interactions with nature and these perspectives' applications to environmental issues. The principal ethical perspectives studied are anthropocentrism, biocentric individualism, environmental holism and environmental pragmatism. We study representative descriptions and defenses of these perspectives and examine in particular whether they can validly and effectively help us resolve environmental problems.

This course focuses on a series of perspectives that examine the workings of power. These include Bourdieu, critical race, feminist, Foucault, Marxist, and post-structuralist and queer theories. The course spans the very micro-bases of social life, starting with the body, to the very macro-ending with the nation-state and the world system. On the macro side specific attention is given to the neoliberal state, including welfare and incarceration. In addition, the course focuses on several key institutions and spheres of social life, including education, media and culture, and work.

This course explores debates about race, racism, moral status and identity in recent and contemporary American philosophy. While examining the very concepts of race and racism, we also investigate philosophical responses to race issues in America. Enrollment limited to 20.

Topics course Speciesism is the view that human beings have an inherent right to dominate non-human species and use them for human ends. The course examines critics as well as proponents of the morality of speciesism. It involves synthesizing disparate areas in philosophy (ethics, philosophical psychology, philosophy of science) and applying them to the use of non-humans in areas such as agriculture, biology, psychology and medicine. Enrollment limited to 20.

A study of Western philosophy from the early Greeks to the end of the Middle Ages, with emphasis on the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Epicureans, and some of the scholastic philosophers.