Beginning Mountain Biking

This class is designed for beginners. The curriculum will cover proper techniques of shifting, braking, hill climbing and descent, body and pedal position, and navigating obstacles on the trail. Students will also learn basic bicycle maintenance and tuning. We will spend part of the class time riding for fun and fitness, and the rest on improving riding skills. Completion of this course, will equip participants with the skills necessary to successfully ride many of the natural trails in the Holyoke Range (Hampshire's back yard). 5-College students will be graded pass/fail.

U.S. Immigration History

This seminar will explore different forms of narratives - scholarly historical work, memoirs, and fiction - interpreting American immigrant lives to examine critical historiographical issues in U.S. immigration history. Through reading seminal historical narratives along with award-winning novels/memoirs, we will investigate on-going construction of major issues in U.S.

Natural Prod of Farm & Forest

This course will explore the natural product chemistry of plants through a combination of classroom, field and optional lab experiences. We'll take advantage of both the Farm Center and the richly forested areas on and around Hampshire's campus to learn about the roles of molecules plants make, from lipids and carbohydrates to antioxidants to pigments to toxins, in both the human world and the lives of plants themselves. In class we will learn to analyze primary literature as well as critically examining articles from the popular press.

Sex and Behavior in Nature

Sex is ubiquitous in nature and getting male and female gametes together has resulted in incredibly diverse strategies in both sexes to insure successful reproduction. This class will primarily examine animal behavioral sexual strategies drawing from examples of recent scientific research, all placed in an evolutionary context. We will discuss how we classify the sexes, the role of hormones on sexual behavior, the field of sexual selection including some of the current debates, sperm biology, sexual conflict and a biological examination of human sexuality.

Music of India

This course explores the music of India from musical and cultural perspectives. We will consider Indian classical, dance, folk, tribal, and popular musics. Points of discussion will include music theory, learning, and performance practice; ideological and philosophical conceptions about the music; changing balance of cultural authorship; ways of recording, distributing, and listening to music; and the sociality of music. The course will include weekly reading and listening assignments, several short written assignments, a concert paper, and a final research paper.

American Sign Language I

This course introduces the third mostly widely used language in the United States and Canada. It is intended to give an overview of both the language and the culture of the deaf community. Emphasis will be focused on learning basic grammatical structure as well as developing receptive and expressive signing skills using in everyday conversation, also being able to give a skit in American Sign Language. Cultural aspects of the Deaf community will be shared through readings, videotapes/DVDs and class discussion.

Nazi Germany

(Offered as HIST 234 [EU] and EUST 234.)  This course will explore the history of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. It will examine the emergence of Hitler and Nazism in Germany, Nazi ideology and aesthetics, Nazi racial policies, daily life in the Third Reich, women under Nazism, resistance to the Nazis, Nazi foreign policy and World War II, the Holocaust, and the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. Class participants will also discuss themes that range beyond the Nazi case: How do dictatorships function? What constitutes resistance? How and why do regimes engage in mass murder?

Music & Culture II

(Offered as MUSI 222 and EUST 222.)  One of three courses in which the development of Western music is studied in its cultural-historical context. As practical, in-class performance and attendance at public concerts in Amherst and elsewhere will be crucial to our work. Composers to be studied include Beethoven, Rossini, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Berlioz, Wagner, Verdi, Musorgsky, and Brahms. Regular listening assignments will broaden the repertoire we encounter and include a wide sampling of Classical and Romantic music.

Napoleon's Legends

Napoleon Bonaparte’s legacy in French domestic and international politics and military strategy profoundly influenced nineteenth-century Europe. But so did the legends surrounding him, created before his great defeat and exile, and nurtured after his death in 1821. In painting, caricature, and sculpture, literature, music, and film, the legends--positive and negative--of Napoleon have served many ends. The cultural complexity of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe becomes clearer when one understands the motives behind and results of these representations of Napoleon.

European Tradition I

Topics in the past have included readings and discussion of a series of related texts from Homer and Genesis to Dante: Homer’s Iliad, selected Greek tragedies, Virgil’s Aeneid, selections from the Bible, and from medieval texts. The theme this year will be "The Journey." Three class hours per week.

Open not only to European Studies majors but also to any student interested in the intellectual and literary development of the West, from antiquity through the Middle Ages.  Required of European Studies majors.

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