A calculus-based introduction to the properties, structure, formation, and evolution of stars and galaxies. The laws of gravity, thermal physics, and atomic physics provide a basis for understanding observed properties of stars, interstellar gas, and dust. We apply these concepts to develop an understanding of stellar atmospheres, interiors, and evolution, the interstellar medium, and the Milky Way and other galaxies.

This course will use an intensive case-study approach mixed with lectures, readings, and discussions. The focus is investigating the economics of management and enterprise (firms, organizations) decision-making in local/regional, national, and global settings, the intersections of economic considerations with social and political considerations, and the frameworks and tools for analyzing the behaviors and decisions of various enterprises. Class participation in the discussions is essential. Students will also develop and provide presentations of case analyses.

Architecture may have originated as a response to basic human needs, but it very quickly took on complex meanings that transcend practicality. This course focuses on architecture from prehistory to the present, including buildings, cities, and urban planning; infrastructure and engineering; the unbuilt (and unbuildable) as well as the built world. Case studies cover design and theory as well as history.

Art has the power to drive as well as reflect history. This course explores artists, images, objects, and buildings that have defined identity, sparked revolution, and changed how people think and act over the last seven centuries. Case studies include works that define the western tradition and others that interrogate its complicated legacy. We will see the rise of the very concept of Art along with the heightened status of the artist in society, the origins of the art museum and of the commercial art market.

Some of the best feature-length films of the past century have commanded our attention and imagination because of their compelling artistry and the imaginative ways they tell stories visually and verbally. This course closely studies narrative films from around the world, from the silent era to the present, and in the process it introduces students to the basic elements of film form, style, and narration.

This course examines the great ruptures in late 19th and early 20th century art that today we call modernist. It relates aspects of that art to the equally great transformations outside the studio: political revolution, the rise and consolidation of industrial capitalism, colonization and its discontents, and world war. It compares different kinds of modernisms, including those in Austria, France, Germany, Mexico, Spain and Russia.

Indian popular cinema, known commonly as Bollywood, is usually understood to have weak storylines, interrupted by overblown spectacles and distracting dance numbers. The course explores the narrative structure of Bollywood as what scholar Lalitha Gopalan calls a "constellation of interruptions". We will learn to see Bollywood historically, as a cultural form that brings India's visual and performative traditions into a unique cinematic configuration.