Is life absurd? Do human beings really want to be free? Or do we prefer to sacrifice our freedom for comfort and amusement? Is God dead? Is it possible to live without religious belief? These are among the central questions about human life raised by existential thinkers. We will discuss these issues, and many others, through careful reading of philosophic and literary texts by such important existentialists as Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, and Franz Fanon.

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 examines the discursive relationship between race and law in contemporary U.S. society. Readings examine the ways in which racial bodies are constituted in the cultural and political economy of American society. The main objective is to explore the rules and social practices that govern the relationship of race to gender, nationality, sexuality, and class in U.S. courts and other cultural institutions. Thinkers covered include W.E.B. DuBois, Kimberle Crenshaw, Derrick Bell, and Richard Delgado, among others.

This course looks at the recent flowering of non-classical logics. The most prominent are modal logics concerning necessity and possibility, which have come to dominate work in metaphysics and epistemology. Conditional logics, intuitionist logics, and relevance logics have also become important. These logics are particularly useful in graduate-level classes in philosophy but also are interesting in their own right.

This course will be an examination of the ethical works of two philosophers working on different continents at approximately the same time, the 4th century BCE: Aristotle and Mengzi. We will mainly study two texts: Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, and the work eponymously called Mengzi. Each of these philosophers is attempting to set out and defend a particular view about virtue (for Aristotle, aret for Mengzi, d'). What makes for virtuous action, or character? How does one become (or fail to become) a virtuous person?

The course explores comparative racial and ethnic politics in the U.S. during the 20th 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.

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.

This course will examine the impulse in Latin American society, thinking, and cosmology from the pre-Columbian era to the present day. It will focus on historical episodes where cataclysmic visions and fears dominated the day. The course will finish by surveying the contemporary fascination with the end of the Mayan long count in 2012.

This course offers an introduction to the study of Latina/o communities in the United States. We will explore major concepts and debates in this growing field through the study of texts across disciplines including history, sociology, performance theory, personal narrative and ethnography. This interdisciplinary approach will provide us with rich frameworks to interrogate how Latinas/os negotiate complex identities across communities and specific geographic and political contexts.

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.