This course offers a sweeping history of how the people in China have interacted with the natural world. Students will investigate historically specific social, economic, and political forces that have shaped environmental transformations in China. The course is organized thematically within a chronological framework. The course concludes with a closer look at the development of environmental practice in the modern era.

If news debates, Facebook posts, and WhatsApp forwards now form arenas for contesting historical claims -- once mainly a preserve of academic histories -- what might supposedly low-brow media such as comics or graphic novels tell us about how history is produced and consumed? This first-year-seminar shall introduce students to key topics in South Asian history through a selection of comics, graphic novels, and primary sources. We shall read comics and graphic novels as narrative histories and speculative accounts of the lives of ordinary people and their experience of world historical events.

In the summer and fall of 1888, a series of gruesome murders captured the attention of Londoners and brought questions of class, gender, race and social-economic change to the forefront of public debate. Though the culprit was never identified, Jack the Ripper became synonymous with the perceived dangers of late-Victorian London.

In this course we will examine the role of molecular genetic analysis in the study of phenomena such as human disease (e.g., cancer), animal development, and gene regulation. We will also discuss new techniques for genomic analysis, including the science as well as the health, legal, ethical and moral issues involved. There will be group discussions of original research articles and review articles.

In this class we will learn about the functions of human organ systems and their relationships with each other in health and disease, at both the cellular and tissue levels. We will study the mechanisms that regulate a variety of organ systems and learn how these mechanisms respond to the changing needs of the individual. Because a purely reductive approach often misses important determinants of body function, we will also consider how human health and disease unfold in a person's particular social and cultural context.

This course is a study of the higher plant, its structure, organization, and development. We will examine the endogenous and environmental factors influencing plant growth and reproduction. Topics include anatomy, hormones and their mode of action, tropisms, photomorphogenesis, and flowering.