This course will explore a selection of the main theoretical ideas and methods of the scientific study of animal behavior. We will explore functional and evolutionary bases of animal behavior, including reproductive behavior, mating systems, parental care, altruism, social behavior, communication, and cognition. Readings will come from books and primary scientific literature. We will focus in detail on animal senses, which we will learn about through reading the book "An Immense World".

Everything has a history," the American Historical Association tells us. In order to understand why something is the way it is today, we need to understand how it began and how it got to be this way. This seems so obvious to historians that they are surprised to find not everyone thinks like this. Historical reasoning needs to be taught. We begin by looking at the ways that historians formulate questions, evaluate evidence, and draw conclusions. And the fact that something was not "always this way" means it can change. Understanding history is thus also essential to active citizenship.

This course invites students to explore dance as a vehicle for dialogue with the world around us including the land, environmental systems, architecture/ built environment, human and non-human communities, and the histories and politics that shape both where we dwell and how we dwell there. Desire lines are the pathways etched on a landscape by people following their preference rather than a proscribed route. Building from this term, we will acknowledge and investigate the physical and affective imprints that we make as we move.

Hyper-diverse, ecologically dominant, morphologically elaborate- no other animal on Earth rivals the significance of insects. Not only are insects an ideal lens for exploring principles of evolution, ecology, sustainability, and animal behavior, they also are a means through which we can critically examine conceptions of the human and the natural in the broadest sense. Through field collecting, short labs, and a variety of source material, this course offers an introduction to the planet's most diverse fauna and their integral and complex roles in ecologies as well as cultures the world over.

Students will be introduced to many aspects of dance production practices and techniques. This includes multiple areas of design (lighting, costumes, audio, video and scenery) and issues arising in production management; including budgeting, pre-production planning, scheduling, rehearsal and staff supervision as well as conflict resolution. Additionally, there will be some classes devoted to the larger field of arts management, specifically related to dance presentation and producing.

This course introduces students to fundamental calculus concepts via rich applied contexts. The course prioritizes mathematical thinking, experimentation, and clear communication while de-emphasizing symbolic manipulation and rote exercises. We will apply the mathematical ideas such as integration, Taylor series, dynamical systems, functions of several variables, and periodic functions in a variety of contexts including epidemiology, ecology, and numerical approximation.

This course introduces students to fundamental statistical methods and tools used in data science to produce, analyze, and communicate about data. Topics will include measures of center and spread, data visualizations, hypothesis testing, confidence intervals, linear regression, and others as time allows. The course emphasizes conceptual understanding and written, oral, and visual communication while de-emphasizing memorization, algebraic manipulation, and by-hand calculation. The course will employ Python code to implement methods and analyze data.

Wetland ecosystems are biologically important habitats and provide many ecosystem services including flood control, water filtration, and groundwater recharge. Constructed wetlands use these principles to treat waste generated by humans (e.g. stormwater, greywater, wastewater). In this course we will study the design, hydrology, and nutrient and pollutant cycling of natural and constructed wetlands.

In this course, students will have the opportunity to put into practice the skills and knowledge they gain from discussion and reading the scholarly literature about wetlands in NS232. We will use the Hampshire College campus as a living laboratory to explore both natural and constructed wetland ecosystems. We will sample soils, vegetation, and water and analyze and interpret our results.

This course critically engages a range of transnational feminist theories, movements, and praxis to analyze structures of power shaping people's lives in global and local contexts. By focusing on African, Asian, South American, Indigenous, and Middle Eastern feminisms, this course seeks to decenter a body of feminist scholarship that often assumes shared visions of gender equality. Such studies conceptualize gender issues and concerns through a Eurocentric/colonial viewpoint by overlooking differences among people with respect to race, class, sexuality/sexual orientation, and nationality.