(Offered as PSYC 367 and NEUR 367) This course will be an in-depth exploration of contemporary issues in the field of human neuroscience. Topics include a rigorous examination of the methods neuroscientists use to study the human brain, how the brain changes throughout the lifespan, the ways in which researchers have developed brain/machine interfaces, and the neural processes that support decision-making.

(Offered as PSYC 325 and NEUR 325) In this course we will examine the ways in which drugs act on the brain to alter behavior. We will review basic principles of brain function and mechanisms of drug action in the brain. We will discuss a variety of legal and illegal recreational drugs as well as the use of psychotherapeutic drugs to treat mental illness.

(Offered as PSYC 227 and EDST 227) A study of human development across the lifespan with an emphasis on the general characteristics of various stages of development from birth to adolescence and on the determinants of the developmental process. The class will explore: 1) prenatal development, 2) the development of motor skills, cognitive skills, language, emotional understanding, attachments, and morality, and 3) the role of family systems in development. Students will engage with this content using contemporary research and real-world applications.   

(Offered as PSYC 211 and NEUR 211) Historically, psychologists and neuroscientists have worked somewhat in parallel to one another. While psychologists have traditionally focused on how humans think, feel, and behave, neuroscientists have primarily focused exclusively on the workings of the brain. Cognitive neuroscience is a relatively new discipline that lies at the intersection of these fields and seeks to understand the neurobiological processes that underlie cognition.

(Offered as POSC 466 and SWAG 466) This course examines the relationship between movements for sexual liberation and theories of democracy. It is structured around two moments in history: (i) the emergence of early arguments for gay liberation in Britain between 1880 and 1930; and (ii) the renewed debates about the democratic possibilities and limitations of queer theory in the past three decades. The historical focus is on Britain because an intellectually rich gay liberation movement emerges there while Britain was at the forefront of debates about representative democracy.

(Offered as POSC 442 and BLST 442) In this course, which is Part II of a two-semester course, students engage the central political philosophical ideas of W.E.B. Du Bois's later two major works, Black Reconstruction in America (1935) and Dusk of Dawn (1940). In doing so, we also engage some of the major secondary interpretive sources assessing his ideas.

(Offered as POSC 437 and EDST 437) This course will consider how institutions, often contrary to their intended purposes, serve to disable individuals and limit their life potential. We will examine a variety of institutions, including state bureaucracies, facilities designed to house people with mental and physical conditions, schools, and prisons. We will also consider a range of disablements, resulting from visible and invisible disabilities as well as gender, sexuality, race and class-based discrimination.

(Offered as POSC 377 and ASLC 377) How do we make sense of phenomena that occur in an opaque political system? Where are our observations likely to be spurious? What are the implications of our (mis)understandings of politics? This course will examine the major questions and puzzles in the study of China’s domestic and international politics. The course will also examine how shifts in Chinese politics have shaped research on China as well as how observers understand and explain political phenomena in China.

By exposing structures of domination and coercion and undermining the beliefs and values which sustain them, Marxists seek to pave the way towards radical social transformation. Tensions arise between revolutionary politics and the “rule of law"; liberals revere and authoritarians impose. The Marxist critique of capitalism necessarily involves inquiry into law, since legal relations are mutually constitutive with other social relations and law is a crucial component in the totality of capitalist social relations.

(Offered as SWAG 346 and POSC 343)  In this course, we study the political visions of four major twentieth-century theorists: Simone de Beauvoir, Frantz Fanon, Herbert Marcuse, and Michel Foucault. What forms of power did each of these thinkers surface? What social transformations did they call for? How did they imagine that transformation could be achieved?