A hands-on introduction to observing and understanding the extraterrestrial sky. Daily and annual motions of the sun, moon, planets, and stars; celestial coordinate systems; apparent brightnesses and colors of the stars; time; calendars. Observations at the Williston Observatory with the unaided eye, visually with the eight-inch telescope, and by electronic camera with computer-controlled telescopes.

This is a project-based experiential learning course teaching entrepreneurial teams to rapidly build, test, and cycle through models on the way to discovering and implementing an organization, designing and providing a product or service, and offering a solution to a global-to-local problem. Students will learn about and engage in the creation and building process, while exploring and discovering key issues in social impact, organizations and groups, creative solutions, economics, and finance.

Learn to speak with confidence and clarity about your summer internship or research project. Connect it to you academic coursework. What have you learned? How is it useful? What are your next steps? Students will reflect on their experience and collaborate with others to generate useful knowledge. Required for the Nexus but open to all students. For more information, email nexus@mtholyoke.edu.

This course will explore questions and concerns regarding the "Islamic constant" of Spanish history. We will focus on four major political and cultural contexts: the coexistance and conflicts among Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Medieval Iberia; the "moriscos" (converted Muslims) of Imperial Spain (sixteenth-seventeenth centuries); Spanish orientalism and colonial enterprises in Africa between the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries; and the question of the Muslim emigrants in contemporary Spain.

The screenplay is a unique and ephemeral form that exists as a blueprint for something else: a finished film. How do you convey on the page a story that will take shape within an audio-visual medium? The screenwriter must have an understanding of both the language of narrative film as well as the general shape and mechanics of film stories. This advanced course will cover dialogue, characterization, plot, story arc, genre, and cinematic structure. We will analyze scenes from fictional narrative films -- both short and feature length -- and read the scripts that accompany these films.

This course introduces the anthropology of Mexico through ethnographies of power, knowledge, and indigeneity. Drawing on feminist and decolonial critical methods, we will trace constructions of Mexican indigeneity through two intersecting stories. The first centers the effects of neocolonial capitalism on indigenous lives, with attention to contemporary ethnographic themes including bioprospecting, narcoculture, social movements, and resistance/refusal.

One of the most intriguing features of animals is the range of ways in which they are able to move. From running and jumping to climbing, swimming and flying, different forms of locomotion have allowed animals to exploit most of earth's habitats. In this course we will study the anatomy, physiology, biomechanics and biochemistry underlying different types of animal movement.

An introduction to the history and legends of Alexander the Great and Cleopatra VII through an analysis of the surviving historical and literary evidence. By spreading Greek culture from northern Greece as far as modern Pakistan, Alexander transformed much of the known world, which witnessed changes in politics and imperialism, literature and science, as well as in the lives of women. This diverse and dynamic world produced Cleopatra VII who endeavored to preserve her dynasty amid the growing power of the Roman Empire.