In this course, we will become familiar with documentary, scholarly and popular representations of journalists at work. We will read literature on issues in present-day American journalism. And, learning some of the history and practice of writing the news story, we will carry out limited observations of actual journalists on the job. Students will write two essays and report on their fieldwork orally and in a final paper.

The freewill problem. Are human beings free? If not, why not? What happens if God, or anyone else, people in the NSA, for example, or even our friends, know the future? Does that make us unfree? If time travel is possible, does that tend to make us unfree? Is there any way of squaring freewill and what we know from science, especially neuroscience and psychology, and is so called hard determinism true, the proposition that no human action is free because all human actions are events caused as a part of nature?

The goal of experimental psychology is to try to understand why people think and act as they do. How do we interpret and use the information gathered by our senses? Why do we pay attention to some things and not others? How do we learn things? How do we remember things, and why are some things forgotten? What is the source of our beliefs? What is the process by which we make decisions? This course will focus on the ways in which psychologists have attempted to answer these questions over the past century and a half using scientific methods.

This course will introduce students to the production of animated short films with the tools and techniques of three-dimensional (3D) computer graphics. Readings and lectures will cover the theoretical foundations of the field, and the homework assignments will provide hands-on, project-based experience with production. The topics covered will include modeling (the building of 3D objects), shading (assignment of surface reflectance properties), animation (moving the objects over time), and lighting (placing and setting the properties of virtual light sources).

History of western science would be incomplete without the inclusion of Arab and Muslim contributions in the Middle Ages. In this course we will explore some of the reasons behind the outstanding growth of scientific reasoning in the Islamic world, including the motivation for translating Greek works and the role of religion in the early progress of science.

This course introduces students to contemporary syntactic theory in the generative tradition. Among the topics we will explore are phrase structure, anaphora, discontinuous dependencies (such as Wh-questions and relative clauses), quantification, and thematic role assignment. Although the course presumes no prior knowledge of syntax, it is recommended for students with prior experience or interest in linguistic theory. The course will develop precise, formal analyses and will emphasize the importance of linguistic augmentation.

While exploring the structure of the mind, we often think of visual perception as one of the most basic cognitive processes, and social cognition as among the more advanced forms of higher-level cognition. In this course, we will take an interdisciplinary approach to exploring how these two aspects of the mind connect. We will question how socio-cultural structures (such as norms, values, beliefs, and institutions) do, and do not, influence what we see, and how visual perception itself traffics (and may be specialized for) social information.

Mobile communication devices such as smart phones and tablets have become prevalent in the U.S. The Pew Internet Project reported in 2011 that 35% of adults have a smart phone. Other researchers project that by 2015 65% of the United States population will have a smart phone or tablet. These devices have the capacity to change the way in which people interact with each other and with information.

This course will survey the main theoretical ideas in animal behavior. We will cover physiological, developmental, functional, and evolutionary explanations of behavior. The reading will be John Alcock's "Animal Behavior: an Evolutionary Approach" text. This class will serve as a prerequisite for subsequent upper level animal behavior classes.

In this course we will discuss the processes by which children come to acquire, recall, and use knowledge. This course will focus on development from infancy to middle childhood. By reading primary literature, we will examine the emergence and refinement of children's ability to form concepts, recall the past, and extend knowledge to new situations. We will consider methodological challenges and approaches to studying children's abilities, including naturalistic observations, and controlled laboratory studies.