Can serious artists play cruel jokes? Who laughs at Dante? This course explores the role of lies and practical jokes in Italian theater and the way the concept of humor has changed over time. We will investigate the intimate connection among power, religion, and laughter by reading some of the funniest (and politically charged) works of Italian theater. Our authors will take us through the streets of Renaissance Florence, eighteenth-century Venetian canals, as well as the improvised factory theaters of the 1970s. Readings include Dante, Machiavelli, Goldoni, Puccini, Fo, De Filippo.

Often described as spaces that offered a safe harbor for generations of poets, artists, and intellectuals, Italian Renaissance courts were also a space of uncertainty and dissimulation, a political environment dominated by rules, a reality in which instability and manipulation were commonplace.

Nervous systems are built from a diversity of neurons, which can be classified in a variety of ways, including location, neurotransmitters, structure, connectivity, or gene expression. In the extreme, each neuron in a brain has its own unique identity. In this discussion-based course, we will review fundamental neuron biology, then we will use classic and modern literature to consider current multidisciplinary questions such as: What makes a neuron a neuron? Where did neurons come from? How do we distinguish different types of neurons?

Pathogenic microbes, including viruses, bacteria, and fungi are expert cell biologists. During infection, they "hijack" host cell processes for their own benefit: rewiring signaling and metabolic pathways, inducing dramatic cytoskeletal rearrangements, and suppressing cell death pathways, to name just a few examples. Cellular microbiology is the study of how microbes interact with and manipulate host cell biology at the molecular level.

This course examines films and topics central to the study of global cinema since 1960. We will begin with the New Waves of France, Italy, England, and Japan, and Direct Cinema of the '60s and '70s in the U.S. We will explore films of Third Cinema in Latin America, Asia and Africa in the late '60s and '70s, and examine films of New Zealand and Australia from the '70s to the current moment, with an emphasis on stories that center indigenous peoples. We also will focus on significant film movements of the last three decades, such as New Queer Cinema in the U.S.

This course will trace the emergence and expansion of Greek civilization in the Mediterranean between the Bronze Age and Alexander the Great. Among themes to be explored are political structures, trade, slavery, gender relations, and religion, as well as the contributions of ancient Greeks to literary genres (drama, rhetoric, historiography, philosophy) and to the visual arts. Throughout we will consider how the history of the ancient Greeks can speak to modern concerns.

This course will trace the emergence and expansion of Greek civilization in the Mediterranean between the Bronze Age and Alexander the Great. Among themes to be explored are political structures, trade, slavery, gender relations, and religion, as well as the contributions of ancient Greeks to literary genres (drama, rhetoric, historiography, philosophy) and to the visual arts. Throughout we will consider how the history of the ancient Greeks can speak to modern concerns.

Mendel's principles of genetic inheritance underpin all the inheritance patterns that we observe and the traits they govern. However, in nature, not all is as it first appears. Many traits seem to diverge from Mendelian genetics until we understand those inheritance patterns more deeply. In this course, we will explore the depths of genetic inheritance by first understanding the mechanisms of these seeming "exceptions of Mendelian inheritance". We will then understand how the molecule of DNA behaves in the nucleus to allow for gene expression and how we study DNA in the lab.

This course will center on Solnit's 'Wanderlust: A History of Walking' to inform our own explorations of campus. By casting our attention to our immediate locality, we will learn the rhythms and material potentials as well as the traces of history that construct our present environment. We will talk about how scientists measure forest entities; how pilgrimage walks like Camino De Santiago frame spiritual growth; and how artists including Francis Alys, Mark Bradford, Abigail DeVille, Mel Chin and others, transform the material residue they find in particular locations into visual artworks.

The course explores comparative racial and ethnic politics in the U.S. during the twentieth century. We will analyze the creation and maintenance of structural inequalities through laws and policies targeted at persons of color in the areas of healthcare, transportation, immigration, labor, racial segregation, and education. Through readings, lectures and films, we will discuss critical histories of community struggle against social inequality, registering the central impact that race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship have had on efforts toward social justice.