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.

This course will explore the Sherlock Holmes stories and their various afterlives as a case study to explore the problematics of interpretation, especially literary interpretation. Some of the questions raised will concern evidence, inductive and deductive thought, applying theoretical paradigms, historical and material contexts, character and narrative, form and genre, popular culture, ideology, and the aesthetic.

This course surveys the history of Turtle Island, or Native North America, from origins to the present day. It provides an introduction to the many hundreds of diverse Nations across the continent through the use of specific case studies, as well as Indigenous methodologies and interdisciplinary methods such as oral history, art and material culture, literature, film, and more. This course covers themes such as land, sovereignty, survivance, gender, kinship, race, identity, diplomacy, and colonialism.

This course examines the experiences of Chinese diasporic communities in Southeast Asia, the United States, and the Caribbean within the historical context of empire building, colonization, war, transnationalism, and globalization. The period covered spans from the 1600s to the present, and focus will be given to how dominant groups attempt to localize and discipline Chinese diasporic subjects and how the latter negotiate, manipulate, and challenge such efforts. Themes include racism, transnationalism, ethnicity, gender, class, empire, and nationalism.

During the Cold War, as tensions raged between the U.S. and Soviet Union, policymakers of both ideological persuasions oversaw rural development projects across the Third World. Their actions were premised on knowledge that villages were underdeveloped places. Mainly a colonial idea, this thought also had curious antecedents such as the Indian anti-colonialist Gandhi who saw villages as reservoirs of tradition and bulwarks against modernity. This course questions the received wisdom of this dichotomy.

This course considers emerging strategies in anthropology and allied disciplines for researching, witnessing, and documenting the full web of life, broadly conceived, within which human and non-human beings are entangled. We explore debates over non-human personhood and the rights of natural ecosystems, such as rivers, mountains, and the earth itself. Close attention is given to varied indigenous perspectives on reciprocal (and non-extractive) relations among diverse living beings and to the possibilities of intersubjective awareness across human and animal domains.

A comprehensive study of the fundamental principles of classical and molecular genetics. Topics will include genetic inheritance, the central dogma, gene and protein expression and regulation, the genetic and molecular basis for disease, and modern techniques such as genomics, bioinformatics, and gene therapy. The laboratory component will illustrate and analyze these topics through selected experimental approaches.