In this course, we will explore the rich natural history of our region, focusing on organisms in their natural habitat and contemplating questions and approaches we might employ to better understand them and the ways in which they live. We will place particular emphasis on developing the habits of close and curious observation and coupling those habits with the skills and methods of scientific hypothesis development, experimental design, and field ecology.

Human-Robot Interaction is an interdisciplinary field that examines a broad set of questions about robots that are designed to interact with humans (e.g., educational, assistive, and service robots). How does the behavior and appearance of a robot change how humans perceive and interact with it? How can we design and program robots that are natural, trustworthy, and effective? In this course, students learn the algorithmic foundations of interactive robots, gain experience building and evaluating interactive robots, and read and present scholarly research papers.

This course provides an introduction to image analysis and 3D interpretation from image data. It uncovers the mystery behind standard techniques in image processing like filtering, edge detection, stereo vision, flow, etc. Math lovers, this course is for you! Throughout the semester, each student will develop their own computer vision library through programming assignments. Furthermore, students will learn about newer, advanced machine-learning-based computer vision algorithms.

What makes change so difficult? Why do people always seem to be so apathetic to the most pressing political and social issues? In the face of climate change and racial injustice, why do so many people remain absolutely unmoved? Questions like these were central problems for the abolitionist movement in the nineteenth century, and they remain crucial issues for people today who similarly believe that another world is possible. This class will consider how the abolitionist movement was intertwined with the birth of environmentalism to understand the nature of struggle today.

This 300-level seminar will examine race and taste in the literatures of slavery and colonialism. We will analyze taste as a mode of racial perception and a practice of racial discrimination. To do this, taste will be interpreted as a metaphor for aesthetic discernment ('you have great taste!') and at the register of gustatory perception ('what does it taste like?') to reveal that taste does not name a neutral operation of judgment; rather it names a field of interaction with the world that produces and extends social values, cultural commonsense, and racial categories.

This creative writing course explores literary translation as a transformative and political practice. Throughout short writing experiments, collaborations, workshops, and a final project, we will work with a range of genres and forms in order to grasp the stakes and possibilities of translation across cultures, mediums, historical epochs, and literary styles. Reading texts by Katrina Dodson, John Keene, Don Mee Choi, and Alejandro Zambra, among others, we will build an expansive vocabulary for discussing our translation projects while keeping in mind questions of context and power.

Different types of stories or narratives -- whether myth, literature, maps, oral tradition, or scientific theory -- have been created about nearly every region or environment on Earth as attempts to describe and understand that place and human connections to it. In this seminar we'll explore how braided strands of human history and natural history contribute to stories we tell of the land, and to stories we tell of ourselves in the land. We'll consider examples of how lifeways, homeplace, and identity are linked with environment or landscape.

Data visualizations such as graphs, charts, and infographics are everywhere! But creating data visualizations which communicate effectively is not a simple task. In this introductory course, students will explore how design influences the ways that data are understood and how they can use this to craft effective visualizations for different types of data. Experience working with data, design, or data visualization are not expected; students will work on a series of projects which will build these skills over the semester.

Audio storytelling is an art form that enables you to communicate effectively with an audience. In this course, you will learn how to produce audio stories with a strong narrative and compelling characters. Students will practice pitching story ideas, scripting and reporting, develop interviewing skills, field recording techniques and learn the fundamentals of multi-track audio production software during in-class tech labs. In addition, students will perform listening exercises, readings, and have the opportunity to participate in seminar discussions and feedback sessions.