The course provides an historical and topical overview of Latina/o migration to the United States. We will examine the economic, political, and social antecedents to Latin American migration, and the historical impact of the migration process in the U.S. Considering migration from Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, we will discuss the social construction of race, the gendered nature of migration, migrant labor struggles, Latin American-U.S. Latino relations, immigration policy, and border life and enforcement.

The Death Penalty in America: Unjustly Convicted Death Row Inmates. This course will examine in detail the cases of all 130 death row inmates exonerated in the post-Furman era (1976-2009). It will focus on how the 130 men ended up on death row, as well as the process by which they gained their freedom.

Social networks are much more than the people you know on Facebook and Twitter. They affect everything from political beliefs to health outcomes to professional success. This course asks, What are social networks? and examines their impact on contemporary life. Students will develop the analytical skills to understand the formation, evolution, and significance of different relationship structures and the way they shape individuals' lives.

This course will use theories and research from sociological social psychology to examine status and power dynamics within social interaction as both symptoms and sources of social inequality. We will learn how status beliefs emerge from social differences in material resources and power, and how they serve to perpetuate social inequalities over time by shaping our interpretations of social events and our behavior and emotions when we interact with others. We will explore why broad social inequalities are often durable, and how the dynamics of social interaction serve to sustain them.

Mary Daly, Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Phyllis Trible, and Judith Plaskow, among others, have argued that traditional Jewish and Christian theological systems have overlooked the needs, concerns, histories, and contributions of women. Their challenges range from the historical modification of a presumably unbiased religious system to the outright rejection of a so-called patriarchal establishment.

Languages differ in the way they describe the world. For example, the noun for bridge is feminine in German, but masculine in French. Russian has two words for blue, while English has only one. The Piraha (an Amazonian hunter-gatherer tribe) arguably have no number words. In this course, we will be asking to what extent these cross-linguistic differences are reflected in thought. That is, do German speakers think bridges are more feminine than French speakers do? Can Russian speakers discriminate different shades of blue better than English speakers? Can the Piraha count?

Students will work in teams to code videotaped observations of romantic partners discussing their relationships. Students will learn to code emotion expressions and behavior, relationship idealization, and couple synchrony at the dyadic and individual levels. Students will address issues of coding bias, construct validity, and intercoder reliability. The final project will report original quantitative analyses based on data generated during the course.

What happens after a traumatic event? Why do some people develop psychological disorders and others do not? This course will explore the psychological theories and research on trauma and stress. Topics covered will include childhood abuse, domestic violence, combat violence, community violence, and interpersonal violence. The seminar will explore psychological dysfunction, disorders, as well as adaptation and coping following exposure to traumatic stress. In addition, the course will explore the concept of cultural trauma.

This seminar will examine how psychology is represented across a wide range of media, including newspapers, magazines, books, films, Web sites, and advertisements. We will analyze the continuing competition between pop psychology/self-help and professional representations of the field, in light of ongoing struggles for authority over mental life. Students will give frequent oral presentations and write a major research paper on a topic of their choosing.

The Caribbean has been formed through a complex interaction of the peoples of Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin American and the United States. In this introductory, interdisciplinary course we will examine the major issues that have shaped modern Caribbean society, including colonialism, revolution, nationalism, self-determination, transition from agricultural to tourism-based economies, migration, and globalization.