This course will look at globalization through the lens of border culture, a term that refers to the "deterritorialized" experience of people when they move or are displaced from their context or place of origin. How are people’s experience of belonging and understanding of identity affected by borders within the realms of language, gender, ideology, race, and genres of cultural production as well as geopolitical locations? What does it mean to live between two cultures—an experience that in 2019 might well represent the nature of contemporary life?

(Offered as POSC 229 and BLST 229 [US]) This course explores key questions in modern politics through the lens of the African American experience. What constitutes politics and the political? How should we understand modern political development in conceptual and historical terms? How does domination shape the political order and the boundaries of the political? What does a politics of freedom demand of the individual and community? Who and what constitutes the/a people? What sorts of ethical demands does the practice of democracy require? What forms does self-determination take?

(Offered as POSC 160 and SWAG 160) From abortion to gay rights, sexuality is deeply entangled in world politics. As LGBT rights become human rights principles, they not only enter the rights structure of the European Union and the United Nations but are also considered a barometer of political modernity. If some Latin American nations have depicted their recognition of gay rights as symbolic of their progressive character, certain North African nations have depicted their repression of homosexuality symbolic of their opposition to western imperialism.

(Offered as BCBP 232 and PHYS 232) Statistical mechanics describes how the movement of microscopic particles leads to their macroscopic properties. Thermodynamics is the study of how heat is transferred between systems and turned into other forms of energy. This course will cover the fundamentals of statistical mechanics and thermodynamics including states of a system, statistical distributions, the laws of thermodynamics, heat transfer, and how thermodynamic processes can be used in a cycle to make an engine.

(Offered as PHIL-222 & PHYS-222) Philosophy and Physics have been closely linked in our attempts to understand the fundamental nature of reality. The philosopher, Aristotle, articulated a detailed physics, and the physicist, Newton, considered himself a natural philosopher. In this course, we will explore how the combined resources of these two disciplines have been brought to bear on our understanding of space and time. We will consider the physical and the metaphysical views of such thinkers as Zeno, Aristotle, Augustine, Leibniz, Newton, Kant, McTaggart, and Einstein.

(Offered as PSYC 213 and NEUR 213) This course will examine how brain function regulates a broad range of mental processes and behaviors. We will discuss how neurons work and how the brain obtains information about the environment (sensory systems), regulates an organism’s response to the environment (motor systems), and  controls basic functions necessary for survival such as eating, drinking, sex, and sleep, and mediates higher cognitive function such as memory and language.

(Offered as MUSL 182H and THDA 182H) This course provides individual performance instruction in digital music production and recording including sound capture, mixing, mastering, and use of Digital Audio Workstations (DAW) to create music. Students have weekly lessons with the instructor with an expectation of five hours per week of practice. The course is open to students of any level, beginning to advanced, and it may be repeated.

Admission with consent of the instructor. Fall and spring semesters.

How to handle overenrollment: null

(Offered as MUSI 240 and BLST 242). This course examines the intersection of music and the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s and 1970s.  Using Archie Shepp's groundbreaking 1965 album Fire Music as an anchor, we will learn about the emergence of the jazz avant-garde and how music inspired writers seeking new forms of artistic expression rooted in Black identity. This search for a “Black Aesthetic” prompted varied responses from musicians, many of whom challenged simple understandings of the relationship between race and artistic expression.