Phenomena that repeat over regular intervals of time and space play a fundamental role in physics and its applications. This course explores oscillations and waves in contexts from a simple mass on a spring to mechanical waves in solids, liquids, and gasses as well as electromagnetic waves. It emphasizes broadly applicable phenomena including superposition, boundary effects, interference, diffraction, coherence, normal modes, and the decomposition of arbitrary wave amplitudes into normal modes, as with Fourier analysis.

Incipit vita nova: The Implications of Origins.  Why do cultures seek to understand or to articulate beginnings?  What cultural significance is to be attached to a given representation of a beginning?  This course will study texts that purport to describe cosmic, natural, historical, political or personal origins.  In addition, the course will investigate the cultural implications of the desire to seek or to establish origins.  Readings will be drawn from Plato, the Bible, Bernardus Silvestris, Virgil, Dante, the anonymous Roman d’Eneas, Galileo, Rouss

Thinking in improvisational modes requires several special techniques, and yet is done by virtually all of us at times. Improvisation can be used to solve emergency problems, brainstorm, or create art at the highest levels. While successful improvisation requires considerable preparation and skill development beforehand, most improvisers vary and select from the choices available in their repertoire almost simultaneously with their execution, sometimes even surprising themselves.

Why are novels so interested in trials? What is the relationship between literary and legal interpretation, and between the role of a reader and that of a juror? How do we interpret “facts” in a literary text versus a legal context? In this course, we will read texts that feature trials in order to explore the relationship between the literary and the legal, two very different ways of making sense of the world that collide in works about trials.

This class offers students the opportunity to learn more about their past through archival research and DNA analysis. Knowledge about the lives of those who came before us and helped make us who we are can impact how we understand ourselves and our future. Such knowledge also impacts how we view the world, and our connections to other people. Students will practice various strategies for recovering and narrating their own stories of home and of family (with a broad understanding of what “home” and “family” mean).

Anthropology and Theater each explore human behavior through close observation. A primary meeting point for these two disciplines is ritual. Both disciplines distinguish daily behavior from extra-daily behavior and both are concerned with their relationship. Theater people must observe the world to produce a credible and compelling performance of a reality not their own. Anthropologists must observe the world to produce a credible and compelling description of a reality not their own.