This course will examine how the mind extracts information from the environment, stores it for later use, and then retrieves it when it becomes useful. Initially, we will discuss how our eyes, ears, and brain turn light and sound into colors, objects, speech, and music. Next, we will look at how memory is organized and how it is used to accomplish a variety of tasks. Several memory models will be proposed and evaluated: Is our brain a large filing cabinet? A sophisticated computer? We will then apply these principles to understand issues like intelligence, thinking, and problem-solving.

A review of various forms of psychopathology including addictive, adjustment, anxiety, childhood, dissociative, impulse control, mood, organic, personality, psychophysiological, schizophrenic, and sexual disorders. Based on a review of contemporary research findings, lectures and discussion will focus on the most relevant approaches for understanding, diagnosing, and treating psychological disorders.

Students in this course will design and execute an original research project related to creativity. Psychologists have defined creative ideas as those that are original, useful, and surprising. Creativity can be observed in many contexts (e.g., the arts, science, athletics, politics, and business), and can refer both to ideas as well as the people and social environments that foster such ideas. The semester will begin with a careful reading of the literature which will help students develop individual research proposals; group projects will be selected from amongst these proposals.

An introduction to and critical consideration of experimental methodology in psychology. Topics will include the formation of testable hypotheses, the selection and implementation of appropriate procedures, the statistical description and analysis of experimental data, and the interpretation of results. Articles from the experimental journals and popular literature will illustrate and interrelate these topics and provide a survey of experimental techniques and content areas. 

A double credit course with department approval. This course is only open to seniors majors who have been accepted in the Political Science Honors program and have departmental approval.

Spring semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment: null

This course is open only to seniors majors who have been accepted in the Political Science Honors program and have departmental approval.

Spring semester. The Department.

How to handle overenrollment: null

Students who enroll in this course will likely encounter and be expected to engage in the following intellectual skills, modes of learning, and assessment: Independent research, written work, and oral presentations.

A consideration of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Western political theory. Topics to be considered include the fate of modernity, identity and difference, power, representation, freedom, and the state. This year’s readings may include works by the following authors: Freud, Weber, Benjamin, Heidegger, Arendt, Derrida, Foucault, Berlin, Butler, Connolly, and Agamben.

Requisite: At least one POSC course (200 level or above).

Limited to 20 students. Spring semester. Professor Dumm.

What is unique about European democracy? In what ways has Europe shaped the meaning of democratic politics, and our expectations about the relationship between state, society, and the market in a democratic polity? Is there anything the United States can learn from European experiences with democratic politics? This seminar examines the dimensions of European democracy, at the national and at the supranational (European Union) level. It tracks the evolution of democracy from its beginnings until the present.

This course will examine the intersection of democratic performance and government institutional resiliency in fragile, weak, and failed nation-states, and international actor engagement in "fixing" failed states. This course tackles the question of how to design policies and programs to rebuild failed and weak states into functioning, if not vibrant, democracies.

What are the origins of human civilization? What causes political, economic or categorical inequality? What explains the rise of the West or the collapse of complex political orders? Where do states, empires, cultures, religions, organizations, and markets come from? How do technologies, catastrophes, geography, demography, and ideas shape social change? Taking its cues from the recent rebirth in scholarly interest in these issues, this research seminar will investigate the very biggest questions confronting empirical social science.