An introduction to painting, sculpture, and architecture in Europe and America from the Renaissance to the present. Classes are organized around five focused topics: Renaissance Florence; the artist in the seventeenth century; art and revolution; nineteenth-century realism and abstraction. Lectures will be complimented by class discussion.

This course surveys architecture from the ancient world to the present as both a functional response to human activity and as a medium that expresses cultural values. In the service of domestic life, religious ritual, political agendas, commerce, and leisure, architecture reflects and shapes the natural environment, technology, economics, and aesthetic taste. While the history of Western architecture constitutes the primary touchstone, we will pursue themes that include sites and buildings, cities, and sites from around the world.

The statistics sections of biology articles have become so technical and jargon-filled that many biologists feel intimidated into skipping them or blindly accepting the stated results. But how can we ask relevant questions or push the boundaries of knowledge if we skip these sections? Using lectures, data collection, and hands-on analysis in R, this course will connect statistics to biology to help students develop a gut instinct for experimental design and analysis.

This course covers the arts in Northern Europe during a time of upheaval. We will look at developments in panel painting, manuscript illumination, printmaking, and sculpture from the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries--examining shifting patterns of patronage and production along with shifting styles, techniques, and media. We will consider major artists like Jan van Eyck, Albrecht Durer, and Pieter Bruegel, as well as seismic cultural shifts such as the print revolution, the emergence of the woman artist, the Reformation, and the origins of the art market.

This course traces the different paths of painting, sculpture, and mixed media in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Western Europe between 1945 and 1989 -- that is, between the end of World War II and the fall of the Berlin Wall. We will begin with both the "climax" and "crisis" of modernism in midcentury and the movements and works that the crisis spawned. In the second half of the course, we will follow art's relationship to a variety of postmodern subjects and debates. Throughout, we will measure the effects of geopolitical tensions on the visual arts.

What is regenerative medicine? What is the science that drives new medical therapies using stem cells? We will study the biology of adult, embryonic, and induced pluripotent stem cells, as well as the legal, ethical, and moral implications of using these cells in medical therapies. Each member of the class will participate in a staged debate on these issues for an introductory biology class.