What roles do ecology and evolution play in shaping where, when, and how plants are geographically distributed? In this course, we focus on this question by examining plant geographic patterns on both global and local scales. We explore how abiotic and biotic factors affect historical, present, and potential future plant distributions. Together we engage primary literature on topics such as island biogeography, climate change effects on species persistence, and contemporary influences of humans on the movement of plants.

We share planet Earth with an unimaginable number of "invisible" microbial life forms. In this course we will explore the structure, metabolism, genetics, and ecology of microbes, most prominently bacteria. Other microbes, including archaea, eukaryotic microbes, and viruses will also be considered. Whenever possible, the relationship between microbes and humans will be highlighted. Other goals will be for students to become comfortable with scientific primary literature and to hone their communication skills through discussions and written assignments.

From mutualism to parasitism, symbiotic interactions are a universal feature of life. In this seminar we will study the mechanisms underlying symbiotic interactions and consider their significance for the ecology and evolution of organisms.

Characterizing, categorizing, and counting text documents is at the heart of research and knowledge development in the social sciences and humanities. New digital technologies have introduced new methods for analyzing text documents on a massive scale. These computational approaches have also provoked important debates about the role of meaning, context, and reproducibility in social science research. This course considers the affordances of new digital methods for text analysis in relation to established practices of qualitative coding.

This course examines instances of organized collective action in social, historical, and empirical contexts, from the labor movement of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the new social movements of today. We also explore various forms of unstructured protest, such as riots and demonstrations.

In this critical survey of the main theoretical perspectives in contemporary sociology, we focus specifically on structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, critical theory, feminism, and postmodernism. Besides gaining familiarity with these alternative perspectives, we try to identify the main axes of theoretical dispute in sociology and discuss the problems of evaluating and resolving conflict between theories.

This course offers a historical foundation for themes in contemporary social theory and ethnography. We build this foundation through readings of twentieth-century anthropological and critical theories, including historicism, interpretive anthropology, structuralism, feminism, and postcolonialism. The course encourages critical and creative responses to anthropology's history through readings that challenge the canon and through active engagement with primary documents revealing the field's social, ethical, and political contexts.

The course will begin with an investigation of the proto-racial and religious categories through which Europeans in the early modern era understood human difference. From there, we will trace how these notions were re-conceptualized in the centuries following the encounter between Europeans, Africans, and the Indigenous Peoples of the Americas. As we examine this history -- including the emergence of slavery, eugenics, mestizaje, and Liberation Theology -- we will pay particular attention to how interwoven racial and religious hierarchies were both constructed and resisted.