Offers study and practice in the grammar and syntax of classical Latin.

Offers study and practice in the grammar and syntax of classical Latin.

This seminar explores the diverse experiences of Central American nations in the twentieth century. From a common basis in an export-oriented agriculture, social and political alternatives ranging from social democracy to recurrent military rule, neofascist regimes, and revolutionary socialism have emerged in the isthmus. The course uses materials ranging from autobiography and literature to historical and anthropological studies to understand how this came to be.

Examines the confrontation, assimilation, and transformation of Amerindian, African, and European cultures in Latin America from the sixteenth century to the present. Focuses on the processes in which distinctive self-images emerged in the region and how these images have been challenged and changed over time. Uses films, literature, and folk traditions to complement scholarly analysis of the emergence of a New World mentality.

When you act bravely, can you be scared? How do you know that you are not dreaming now? If everyone told you you weren't a person, would you believe them? These questions are raised by children's books, such as Frog and Toad Together and The Bear That Wasn't. In this course, you will learn how to conduct discussions of philosophical questions like these among elementary school children using picture books. The first half of the course will concentrate on developing the necessary skills; the second on teaching philosophy to the children.

This course cultivates sound reasoning. Students will learn to see the structure of claims and arguments and to use those structures in developing strong arguments and exposing shoddy ones. We will learn to evaluate arguments on the strength of the reasoning rather than on the force of their associations and buzzwords.

In this course we will look at theories of causation, probability, and their interaction. We will look first at Hume on causation, and then move on to some very basic probability theory. We will briefly explore the standard statistical approaches and go on to Bayesian reasoning and confirmation theory. Finally, we'll examine recent developments in the Bayesian Net theory of causation.

This course will focus on classic and contemporary work on central topics in ethics. The goal will be to see whether there is anything to be said in a principled way about what to do and how to live. The core of the course will be an examination of the central traditions in moral philosophy in the West, typified by Aristotle, Kant, and Mill. We will also examine vexing contemporary moral issues with an eye to whether moral theories can give us practical guidance.

This course will explore topics that philosophers have grappled with for thousands of years, and that still undergird (or sometimes threaten to undermine) our understanding of the world, our knowledge, ourselves, and each other. In historical and modern texts of the Western intellectual tradition, we will discuss questions such as: What exists? What knowledge can we claim? What are people like? What is, or should be, our role in the world? In considering these answers, we will learn to do philosophy ourselves, developing our own careful reflections on these issues.

This course is a critical survey of theoretical and empirical research on social inequality, stratification, and mobility. The central focus is class, race, and gender inequalities as they have changed during the post-World War II period in the United States (although we will look briefly at stratification regimes in other cultures and time periods). The concepts and methods of social stratification have wide application in sociology, economics, public policy, and administration contexts.