In this class, students will acquire hands-on experience in diverse aspects of the research process in any field of Biology, from familiarizing themselves with a research topic, generating interesting questions, designing experiments, acquiring technical skills, collecting and analyzing data, to writing and/or presenting their results. To inquire about enrollment, students should fill out the application survey available on the departmental website or on my.mtholyoke.

In this class, students will acquire hands-on experience in diverse aspects of the research process in any field of Biology, from familiarizing themselves with a research topic, generating interesting questions, designing experiments, acquiring technical skills, collecting and analyzing data, to writing and/or presenting their results. To inquire about enrollment, students should fill out the application survey available on the departmental website or on my.mtholyoke.

What is an identity? Who gets to declare its "truth?" What role do science and social movements play in categorizing human beings? How has the notion of difference structured our modern political world? In pursuit of answers to these questions, we will explore the twists and turns of history that led us from oppressive race-based scientific ideas of the past century to today's celebration of "born this way" queer identities. We will also consider the role that ideas about "doubt" and "scientific uncertainty" play in conflicts over identity today.

In this course students will explore the sculptural object as a self-contained form and as an element within a found or created environment. Traditional materials such as steel, wood, plaster and concrete will be taught concurrently with more ephemeral materials including paper, wire mesh and found materials. Ideas originating within the traditions of modernism, postmodernism, minimalism, post minimalism, installation art and public art will be introduced through slide lectures, readings and independent research. The course will culminate in an independent project.

This course is designed to give FMS majors and minors a solid grounding in the primary methods of the field. In other words, what are the broad approaches scholars have taken to the study of media, and what specific methodological strategies have proved most effective? The class begins with theory as one such method--one that zooms out to ask broad questions about the essential nature of a medium. The history unit shifts the focus to how media are impacted by and implicated in the progression of time and culture.

This course introduces students to FMS through units that pair four scholarly approaches with four influential media forms: the Aesthetics of Film, the History of Television, the Ideologies of Video Games, and the Technologies of Internet Media. Through these units, students will ask: what human desires animate our relationship with media? For what purposes have people invented and evolved these technologies? How do makers use them, and what are audiences seeking in them?