This movement course, Contemporary Payatt Technique, draws from the ancient South Asian martial art Kalaripayattu. Using yoga terminology and animal studies, students explore how energy moves through the body and how to channel, conserve, or release it. Through eight animal forms and core engagement practices, the course develops inner awareness, breath coordination, and efficient strength. Historical context, including the practice's suppression, revival, and spread across Asia, is discussed alongside selected readings.

The course offers a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between politics and the global economy. Examining key political and economic theories and institutions that facilitated globalization's evolution, we delve into the reasons behind the rise of economic isolationism, placing a particular emphasis on contemporary geopolitical stress points.

In this workshop, we will read, discuss, and write and revise our own short fiction. Placing an emphasis on building literary community and practicing and decolonizing the "craft" of fiction, we will study the work of writers like Casey Plett, Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Carmen Maria Machado, Edward P. Jones, Jamil Jan Kochai, etc., to better understand how the short story works both as a standalone world and part of the universe of the collection.

This course examines environmental conservation beyond its techno-scientific foundations, situating biodiversity conservation and the establishment of protected spaces within historical, political, and economic contexts. Students will examine philosophies, power dynamics, and narratives that shape conservation practices and explore how humanistic methods of inquiry can inform responses to species extinction, habitat loss, and human-wildlife relations in a changing more-than-human world.

Sedimentary rocks provide us with repositories of fresh water, hydrocarbons, and other critical raw materials, and also provide evidence for the history of planet earth. This course will introduce you to the study of sedimentary rocks and their environments of deposition, with a focus on the various processes of sediment accumulation. We will employ the principles of stratigraphic analysis and correlation to interpret ancient environments, paleoclimate, and paleogeography, and use these tools to study sedimentary basins.

Elections are critical moments in the life of modern democracy. They answer three fundamental questions: Who governs? Who gets what? Who are we? As such, they are both vital and deeply contested events. This course offers students a deep dive into the mechanics of United States elections, engaging with the process as both activists and analysts. Outside the classroom, students will help local community organizations register voters ahead of the November elections. Inside the classroom, they will hone their data analysis skills by querying real-world election and polling datasets.

Students will explore statistical techniques for analyzing complex survey designs. Sample surveys are used to obtain data on demography, health, and development; to measure attitudes and beliefs; to estimate natural resources; to evaluate the impact of social programs; and other uses. The proper analysis of these surveys is crucial to their utility. We will cover topics including survey design, estimation, statistical properties of estimators, poststratification, imputation, and survey error.

Have you ever watched The Great British Bake Off and ordered a pastry? Or put on a mukbang video while eating lunch in the dining hall? Beginning with our everyday habits, this course explores how media shapes our relation to food. The course examines how media informs our knowledge of food production (of plantations and poultry farms), and consumption (through recipe books, delivery apps, or TV shows). The course will look at Indigenous, diasporic, and global cultures of food, while addressing histories of colonialism and food appropriation.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists as its primary definition for adaptation: "the bringing of two things together in order to effect a change in the nature of the objects." Rather than studying adaptation as a project that attempts to reproduce an original work in another medium, our course considers the complex relationship between a source and its retellings. Our focus will travel through the concept of "creation myths," which will lead us to consider how such retellings permanently alter the source material.