Sociology is built on the premise that human beings are crucially shaped by the associations each person has with others. These associations range from small, intimate groups like the family to vast, impersonal groupings like a metropolis. In this course we will follow the major implications of this way of understanding humans and their behavior.

The concepts of thermodynamic equilibrium and kinetic stability are studied. Beginning with the laws of thermodynamics, we will develop a quantitative understanding of the factors which determine the extent to which chemical reactions can occur before reaching equilibrium. Chemical kinetics is the study of the factors, such as temperature, concentrations, and catalysts, which determine the speeds at which chemical reactions occur. Appropriate laboratory experiments supplement the lecture material.

This course looks at the meanings and purposes of various kinds of educational practices, policies, and discourses in schools, families, and social organizations, and how they affect and are affected by social processes and power relationships, in the U.S.

From Longfellow’s Hiawatha and D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature to Disney’s Pocahontas and James Cameron’s Avatar, representations of the indigenous as “Other” have greatly shaped cultural production in America as vehicles for defining the nation and the self. This interdisciplinary course introduces students to the broad field of Native American Studies, engaging a range of texts from law to policy to history and literature as well as music and aesthetics.

Using the process of writing to uncover the relationship between literary study and history, and as a means for self-discovery, students will read a variety of texts, such as: Meridian by Alice Walker, Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami, Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldua, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. They will then write and revise their responses to these readings through a series of weekly writing assignments, peer-workshops, and informal presentations.

In this course we will examine how to apply psychological theory to understand the lives of political leaders. We begin this course with a consideration the role of personality in political leadership. We then examine psychological theories that can be fruitfully applied to the study of individual lives, from traditional psychodynamic theories of the whole person (e.g., Freud) to models focusing on important organizing variables (e.g., scripts and interpersonal styles).

(Offered as ARHA 352, EUST 352 and WAGS 352.)  In this research seminar, we will explore how sickness and healing were understood, taking examples over centuries.  We will analyze attitudes toward bodies, sexuality, and deviance--toward physical and spiritual suffering--as we analyze dreams of cures and transcendence.  We will interrogate works by artists such as Grünewald, Goya, Géricault, Munch, Ensor, Van Gogh, Schiele, Cornell and Picasso, as well as images by artists in our own time: Kiki Smith, the AIDS quilt, Nicolas Nixon, Hannah Wilke, and others.

(Offered as BIOL 330 and CHEM 330) What are the molecular underpinnings of processes central to life?  We will explore the chemical and structural properties of biological molecules and learn the logic used by the cell to build complex structures from a few basic raw materials. Some of these complex structures have evolved to catalyze chemical reactions with enormous degree of selectivity and specificity, and we seek to discover these enzymatic strategies.

Whether by categorising and experimenting on bodies, criminalising and incarcerating them or exoticising and desiring them, European imperial power operated through the body.  This course looks at how Western European empires constructed and governed colonised bodies both "at home" and in the colonies.  The course charts the ways in which ideas of masculinity, femininity and able-bodiedness changed as a result of colonial encounter.  It looks at a number of case studies, including the history of an enslaved South African woman, Sarah Baartman, who in life and death w

This course will examine the influence of hormones on brain and behavior. We will introduce basic endocrine (hormone) system physiology and discuss the different approaches that researchers take to address questions of hormone-behavior relationships.  We will consider evidence from both the human and the animal literature for the role of hormones in sexual differentiation (the process by which we become male or female), sexual behavior, parental behavior, stress, aggression, cognitive function, and affective disorders.