Between 1950 and 1980, the United States witnessed a mobilization of radical social movements led by Black, Latinx, Asian American, and Native American communities. In addition to these racial movements, gender and sexuality were themselves having parallel and intersecting calls for equality. This course recounts the histories of these movements.

What makes the South “the South”? This course is designed to introduce you to the literature, culture, and history of the American South as a diverse and complex region. As suggested by the title of the course, we will examine narratives of the South, either of it as a region in decline or changing to fit a changing world, and how these narratives have played out both historically and today.

Food is a commonplace element in everyday life; however, being every day can make it unnoticed, discounted, and viewed as unimportant. Following suit, until recently, “food” was infrequently discussed in college courses. But today, “food studies” has a growing presence in the academic world. Its interdisciplinary footprint has given rise to a deepened understanding of food’s significant role in shaping our social, economic, and cultural environments.

Horror films are a wildly popular form of entertainment, however the representations of fear and terror that they traffic in can also teach us about the relations of power that structure our world. This course is designed to introduce you to critical bodies of thought by analyzing horror film as genre and medium. You will be exposed to feminist theory, psychoanalysis, black studies, semiotics, and film theory. The goal of this course is for you to emerge as more critical consumers.

Anthropologists study humans and why humans do what they do. In this course, you will investigate one specific branch of anthropology, Anthropology of Religion, which analyzes the social institution of religion and why humans engage in this practice. Whether religious, agnostic, or atheist, this course is for you.

Global Health: Inequality, Culture, and Human Well-being Around the World examines human health from a global perspective. Using ideas and methods from anthropology, you will explore how inequality and culture intersect to produce the world’s predominant health problems. Further, you will look critically at efforts to address the global burden of disease, using multiple case studies to help you develop more politically and culturally constructive solutions.

Formalized humanitarian institutions developed in response to mass movements of people following World War II. This course examines the history of global systems of humanitarianism and the growth of the field in response to humanitarian disasters including war, famine, disease epidemics, and climate change. We will interrogate motivations of humanitarian actors, with you conducting your own ethnographic projects, positioned with critiques of humanitarian agendas.

Do you have a story to tell but don’t know how? Do you want to learn how stories build the world around us? Ethnography is the scientific practice of describing human experiences that helps us understand people, societies, and cultures. Ethnographic writing is a method anthropologists use to generate and share knowledge. Together we will meditate on the relationship between research and writing practices to produce stories that speak to the topics that we deeply value.

Ancient DNA makes breathtaking headlines regularly. For decades DNA has added nuance to our world but now we can literally peer back into the genetic past, even to extinct species. In humans, we have way to understand our own genetic history – where did we come from? Which groups mixed? Who is pure bred? (answer: no-one). How did war/changing climate/disease affect people? Humans have been through multiple cultural/technological changes – can we see? (answer: yes). Let’s look!

Black and Brown people in the US have shorter life expectancies, live with more physical and mental illness, and have more disabilities than White people. This course will help you explore the connections between inherent health inequities with systematic racism in our society and its institutions.

Addictive substances have been part of the human experience since prehistory. But why do some people develop substance use disorders, while others never become addicted? How can we reduce the harms of substance abuse? In this course, you will understand how drugs affect the brain and behavior, learn the common risk and protective factors for developing addiction, compare and contrast different treatments for addiction, and critically analyze the historical context of drug use.

Medical science has brought enormous advantages to the 21st century: extending human life and reducing suffering. However, there are also major ethical and practical concerns arising with scientific progress. How do we frame, re-frame, and decide these controversial issues as ethicists, doctors, individuals, and as a society?

“Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” -Dobzhansky
Evolution is the force that illuminates the amazing diversity of life on the planet today. Evolution has been extensively documented and supported by an entire field of research dedicated to uncovering its complexities. However, discourse among politicians, school boards, and the media portrays evolution as controversial and contentious. Even well-meaning media outlets perpetuate misconceptions about evolution. Why is Darwin’s famous theory so misunderstood?

The human brain is one of the most complicated and mysterious systems on the planet. In recent decades, a huge push has been made to understand the brain through computer modeling and causal manipulation of brain circuits. Scientists developed these models and tools not only to advance our understanding and treatments of neurological and psychiatric illnesses, but also to help us understand what underlies daily human experiences ranging from memory to perception to decision making.

What happens in your brain when you decide to buy a lottery ticket or go on a date with someone? What about when you spend hundreds of dollars on an expensive gadget that you stop using after a few months, or when you decide to say something that you should have known would be embarrassing? Are economic decisions and decisions in general the result of a messy fight between a 'rational' part of your brain and an 'irrational' one, or is decision-making all the result of one underlying and possibly unconscious mechanism?

Our brains are the driving force of our actions, but our environment and past decisions can greatly shape our brains. In this lecture and project-based course we will examine the bidirectional link between brain and behavior. We will take advantage of innate and learned behaviors to analyze and ultimately attempt to understand how our past experiences can change our brains, leading us to different actions in the future.

Have you ever wondered about the difference between recreational and medicinal usage of psychoactive drugs? How do psychoactive drugs operate in the brain? What makes some drugs legal and others illegal? In this course, you will learn about the societal implications of different legal and illicit drugs. You will also learn the basic biological mechanisms of psychoactive drugs such as cocaine, LSD, nicotine, caffeine, and more.

Ever wonder what drives animals to behave in interesting ways? Curious how we are connected to our furry friends? In this course you will learn the fundamentals of comparative cognition including an introductory look at shared mechanisms across human and non-human animals and the evolution underlying our behavior. You will investigate these questions from a scientific perspective and explore basics in experimental design, understanding literature, and demystifying animal intelligence.

Archaeology is exciting, full of adventure, and dangerous - in the movies. In real life, archaeology is exciting, but not Indiana Jones-style. In order to understand archaeology, you must understand the culture and history you are studying. This course will examine ancient Greek culture and the material remains of it archaeology has provided, and will read a text that uses some of these remains in a novel.

This course explores the fields of Game Design, Systems Thinking, and Human Cognition. You will engage in a series of three collaborative design projects through which you create, play and analyze games that function as models of real world phenomena. You will exit this course being able to 1) design playable tabletop games, 2) apply scholarly principles of Game Design and Systems Thinking across domains, and 3) identify, understand, and model complex, real world problems.

Game theory is the field of economics that studies strategic interaction. More concretely, it focuses on understanding how agents make decisions based on what they expect others to do. As such, game theory applies to a wide range of fields, from biology to political science. This course will teach you the fundamentals of game theory from a simple yet formal perspective and how to dissect real-world problems in light of strategic interactions.

This course introduces the tools economists use to study human interaction in the presence of strategic concerns. Traditional economic theory assumes that people always act rationally, carefully balancing costs and benefits in their decision-making process. On the other hand, behavioral economics seeks to explain why humans often act irrationally or contrary to their best interests. This thought-provoking course will provide real-world scenarios to illustrate how human behavior in all of its complexity is understood and predicted through applied economics theory.

She speaks in spells and incantations, cursing enemies and unlucky strangers alike. You might spot her stirring a cauldron in the shadows or riding a broomstick across the night sky. With pale white - or sometimes green - skin, she typically lives apart from society, either alone in the woods or among a coven of her own. Many know her by the name “witch.” Looking at popular media, this course will analyze how witches prompt a reevaluation of cultural norms through their very violation of them.

How will we know when the end of the world has arrived? How do we know it hasn't already happened? And how might our racial or gender identities shape our relationship to it? In this course, we will unpack movies, short stories, and current events in order to disrupt popular notions of what an “apocalypse” looks like. We’ll also use our readings to discuss why apocalyptic predictions are so popular across time and space and theorize about what, if anything, we should do about the next one.

In the midst of climate change and environmental destruction, rising totalitarianism and deadly racism, heightened economic precarity and increased wealth inequality, why might we choose to read poetry? Does poetry make any difference? Who is poetry for? This discussion-based course will think about the ways experimental language might invite us to read differently and think anew about ourselves, each other, and the world.

America has been described as a melting pot and a nation of immigrants, but what does it mean to be an “American” and to claim an “American” identity? This course will introduce students to the study of personal and group identity in U.S. literature and culture. Crossing multiple genres, historical periods, and cultural forms (fiction, film, TV), we will examine a diverse range of texts by African American, Asian American, Chicano/Latino, Jewish American, and Native American writers. We will ask how these writers have come to understand the United States, and how they have used literary and cultural expression to represent their own experiences and the experiences of their communities in the U.S.

Climate change is shifting relationships between people, plants, animals and their shared environment causing diseases to spread where they have never been before. This course highlights how changing ecosystems influence infectious disease transmission and treatment, often with a disproportionate effect on the poor. By the final session, you will understand how climate change amplifies inequalities in infectious disease.

Adaptive, resilient, interdependent, fractal are all traits that describe elements and patterns found within nature, but what do these words and patterns have to teach us about shaping change within the environmental movement? Using wisdom from the book “Emergent Strategy” by scholar adrienne maree brown and the work of other visionaries, this course explores phenomena and patterns within our ecosystems to find inspiration and imagine a way forward in the face of intersectional global crises.

What is our relationship to the past, and why is it sometimes fraught with longing and with fear? "The past is never dead. It's not even past," William Faulkner wrote, and this class explores how longing for the past has occurred in Western literature and thought. From the classical era to the modern day, this course covers literature, movies, and psychology of how we think about nostalgia, and how the past continues to haunt the present.

What is the role of power in the production of history? In this course, we’ll focus on what is remembered and celebrated in historical narratives—and what is forgotten. We’ll explore these questions by looking at archives, public monuments, and museums in the United States. We’ll discuss how activist histories are recorded, who decides where monuments go, and whether or not museums are neutral. Finally, we will collectively curate our own small scale exhibition as a response to these questions.

War: What is it good for? As for us, the people of the ancient world would answer that question in a variety of ways which shed light upon their views on the role of violence in society. This course will study warfare in ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, using both archaeological and textual sources. By the end of our weeklong excursion through ancient battlefields, we will gain a better understanding of how ancient participants and observers calculated the gain and cost of warfare.

This course will introduce you to the art of Egypt, Greece, and Rome in the collections of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) Museum. We will also discuss the history of museums, their role in society and and how they emerged as Western institutions of knowledge. Students will learn about ancient art, how to apply this knowledge to museum collections, do presentations in the RISD galleries and devise their own fictitious museum exhibit.

Fashion is one unifying element in our world - everyone gets dressed - however, how we choose to get dressed is another story entirely. Modern fashion, and the unique periods that created them, exist within the intersection of modern artists, designers, and aesthetics, impacting culture forever. From the radical and the innovative to the comfortable and the convenient, this course explores the ways fashion has come together to create the modern aesthetic and shape the clothing industry.

We live in the age of data and thanks to the ubiquity of fast and low-cost computing, data on almost any topic are at your fingertips. This course aims to teach you the skills needed to turn data into intelligence. This course will explain how, where, and why statistics is used to solve real world issues in many fields of research. We'll examine methods of collecting, summarizing, and analyzing data, focusing on issues critical to public health, economics, human behavior, and other fields.

In this course, you will take the positions of tourist and researcher as you travel around the world to understand the social construction of tourist spaces. From Mount Everest to tropical islands, US National Parks, and Disney World, you will analyze how these spaces and others were produced, how they are culturally represented, and the social dynamics that uphold their continued existence.

Television’s modes of content creation, distribution, and consumption are changing rapidly. Some would argue that television has usurped film as the preeminent visual medium of our age, while others would suggest that television and film are converging to the point that these very labels are becoming meaningless. Regardless, alternative modes of production and distribution allow for a plethora of diverse shows that no longer have to “play in Peoria.” Concurrently, issues of race, gender, and class on television are more prominent and pervasive than ever. But is increased representation—of minority, female, and LGBTQ characters—enough? What is “good” or “bad” representation, or should we eliminate this binary altogether? How do we define quality and/or relevant television? The purpose of this course is to collect the tools that we need in order to think critically about what we watch.

From Serial to Hulu's Only Murders in the Building, true crime content is inescapable in our current moment. However, while the media through which we consume these stories may be new, our obsession with them is not. This class will explore how crime and the trial have remained foundational staples of our popular entertainment from colonial America to the present. This course asks how race and gender shape the very concepts of criminality and what it means to be an American in popular media.

From Beyoncé’s sold-out shows headlining festivals like Coachella to Lizzo’s promotion of body positivity, women are taking up greater space in the music industry now than ever before, using their music as a public testimony of their life experiences. In this course, you will trace the music of various artists as it relates to the evolution of women’s rights, gender politics, and empowerment through performances, social media, and video analyses.

One might believe in gender equality and participate in different gender equality movements yet still exhibit gender bias in one’s behaviors without being aware of it. Similarly, one might believe in racial equality yet still experience anxiety when walking past African American people. It is very likely that the manifested gender bias and anxious reaction are due to implicit bias. How should we understand implicit bias? What’s the mechanism of it? Are we morally blameworthy for it?

Physics is arguably the most fundamental of sciences. Understanding the Newtonian concept of Forces provides a foundational overview of Physics. In this Force-centric conceptual framework, we use modeling, progressing systematic from zero force, constant force, linear force and inverse square force to find patterns in kinematics, gravitation, springs, sound, electrostatics and atomic vibrations. The course focus is on conceptual understanding and modeling rather than mathematical calculations.

What is an animal? To begin, you may point to your dog or cat nearby, the bird outside the window, or perhaps a selfie — these are all particular animals. Yet humans take great effort in distinguishing themselves from other animals. And our society and politics are based on these distinctions— otherwise, we couldn’t use animals as food, scientific research, or even pets. In this course, we will explore the place of animals in western political theory: How do foundational texts establish the separation of humans from other animals? How are animals confined, included in, or excluded from our (human) political systems? Lastly, we will look at various historical, literary, philosophical, and ethnographic texts from different parts of the world that present diverse impressions of animals. This course offers a window to the complex ways that theories and practice intersect in the study of animals.

This course is an intensive introduction to contemporary feminist political theory for students of all backgrounds. This class is motivated by concern for inequality in everyday life. You will learn how feminist political theory provides a philosophical framework to address injustice while also interrogating the essential conditions of those who identify as women, trans, or genderqueer.

This course will introduce you to the basic concepts of liberal democratic theory. Through reading about principles of justice, the idea of fairness, and the meaning of equality, students in the course will consider the problem of race in America today. How should we speak of desert, merit, restorative or reparative justice, and democracy in the context of an ongoing problem of race in society? Students will discuss contemporary examples of racism and inequality, and develop an understanding of the importance of political theory to address the complexity of the possible solutions to racial justice.

Global environmental and political migrations are one of the most pressing Human Rights issues of our times. In this course, we will learn to think as human rights lawyers, as well as philosophers, to study specific cases of such migrations all around the world. We will think about the rights of refugees, the international responses to these crises, and develop arguments from the perspective of defendants of Human Rights organizations. We will do this through the study of real-world cases.

Comic books have always reflected the politics of the day. The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is currently one of the most popular iterations of comic book stories and includes many well-known movies and television shows. By examining the politics of these popular forms of media, we can better understand our own politics. The course will use a combination of MCU films and political science readings to explore topics including American exceptionalism, regulation, and representation, and will conclude with an independent research project.

This course reviews the U.S. Supreme Court’s most recent term (2021-2022) by analyzing significant decisions. Gun rights, health care, the role of God in the U.S. public sphere, and the constitutionality of abortion are all scheduled to be reconsidered in significant ways by a Court with three Trump-era appointees: how will this conservative majority influence outcomes? Has the newly configured bench held in place precedents or not? What is remarkable about the term as it relates to social justice?

Are you interested in learning about how mental health affects teens? Why is adolescence called the time of "storm and stress"? What does it really mean for an adolescent to have depression, anxiety, or a personality disorder? In this course, you will learn how psychiatric disorders manifest among adolescents, how conditions are treated, and current controversies in adolescent psychiatric diagnoses. This class will use lectures, discussions, and multimedia to present these topics in an engaging and interactive way.

Abnormal psychology involves understanding the nature, causes, and treatment of different mental disorders. We are exposed to issues related to the field of abnormal psychology every day, whether it’s hearing about a celebrity experiencing challenges with substance use or learning that your best friend is experiencing depression. Clinicians and researchers in this area seek to understand more about what causes these problems and how to treat them effectively so people can lead fulfilling lives.

This course integrates the study of management principles and practices with the study of human behavior within organizations. The focus will be upon translation of management and organizational behavior theory to practices that result in organizational effectiveness. The primary goal of this course is to prepare you for advanced leadership roles in organizations. Through experiential exercises, case studies, class debates, doing personnel application assignments, and interviewing local managers, you will learn how to become a successful and effective leader of an organization. The course will also teach you how to learn so that it helps you become a continuous learner, capable of responding to changing demands, and able to acquire new skills throughout your career.

What made you who you are? How do you see yourself changing in the future? Human development is brought to life in this course. You will raise a "virtual child" from birth to age 18 to see the effects of your parenting decisions over time. You will also create a lifespan portfolio project that ties the course material directly to your own experiences. For the final stages of life, we will read and discuss a short philosophical memoir. From infancy through elderhood, we will explore the many influences that shape who we become.

Cannabis is a widely used psychoactive substance, yet scientists are only beginning to understand its impact on human health and behavior. This course will expose you to cutting-edge biological and psychological research related to cannabis (i.e., marijuana). By completing this course, students will develop critical thinking skills and learn how cannabis use intersects with neuroscience, physical and mental health, and social policy.

This course will introduce students to methods used by psychological science to help answer common questions about the “unknown.” We will examine common ways in which human thinking leads people to believe strange things and to maintain these beliefs even in the face of contradictory information. Students will develop critical thinking skills for evaluating claims about human behavior, especially claims made in the popular media concerning “paranormal” or otherwise unusual phenomena.

Can bipolar disorder be reliably diagnosed in children? Do certain psychiatric medications increase risk of suicide? Can alternative remedies such as fish oil stabilize mood swings? These questions address only a few of the recent controversies surrounding the study of mood disorders, such as major depression and bipolar illness. Using these disorders to illustrate key concepts, this course is intended to provide you with an introduction to the study of abnormal psychology.

What is deja-vu, and how do psychologists explain it? How can understanding memory, attention, and perception help us make sense of deja-vu?

This course provides an overview of memory, how it works, and how it—along with attention and perception—plays “tricks.” What follows is an explanation of how the mind can confuse us through forgetting, misremembering, and experiences such as deja-vu. In doing so, techniques for enhancing memory, attention, and awareness are introduced.

What does it mean to know yourself? Why can love be so painful? What is the source of someone's belief in God? How does history repeat itself? Why do our dreams haunt us? What is an Oedipus complex, and do you have one? Sigmund Freud devoted his life to answering these questions. In this course, we will dive deep into the theories of psychoanalysis to explore how Freud’s work shapes our modern understanding in theory and practice.

The completion of the Human Genome Project may be the most important scientific achievement of our lifetime, but how much can genes tell us about complex human behavior? How much does the environment impact human behavior and might there be a biological signature of that influence? What research techniques can be used to identify specific genes and specific environments that influence behavior? This course addresses all these questions and more in a dynamic and interactive learning environment.

Do you want to be a psychotherapist? Have you ever wondered how we define “mental illness?” Or, perhaps you just want to know more about what it means to be a Clinical Psychologist. In this course, students will have an opportunity to learn more about the science and practice of Clinical Psychology as a career, the symptoms and clinical characteristics of many types of psychiatric disorders, as well as the scientifically validated treatments available for these conditions.

This course will delve into personality disorders - what they are, how they differ from normal personality traits, how they impact sufferers' quality of life and possible functional impairment, how we study them, and current treatment approaches. We will also explore current controversies regarding personality disorders. Should they be diagnosed in children and adolescents? Should they be treated at all, or should we strive for greater acceptance?

The field of psychology has long focused on the harmful impact of stress, adversity, and trauma, with these effects felt more than ever in recent years. Yet many show resilience in the midst of difficult, even horrible, situations. How are some resilient in the face of abuse, war, natural disaster, terrorism? What about resilience to routine life stresses like exams or moving? What have we learned about resilience from the pandemic? Is resilience a trait or is it something that can be learned?

How do we cope with war, natural disasters, global pandemics, or terrorism? What about surviving experiences with abuse? How are these experiences different or similar to routine life stresses like exams, moving, or getting divorced? How can you prevent or treat psychological problems that might arise after trauma? These are some of the overarching issues we will address in this course.

How do social attitudes develop and change? Why do good people participate in evil acts? How does prejudice develop, and how can we change it? How do our self-perceptions impact our social interactions? What is the role of social influence on behavior? This course will address those questions and more. You will gain an understanding of how social interactions, perceptions, and attitudes shape individual and group behavior.

“We only use 10% of our brains.” “Virtually all people who confess to a crime are guilty.” “Always stick with your first instinct when answering multiple-choice questions.” Are these common beliefs actually true? This course will expose you to the hottest debates in psychology and shatter the biggest misconceptions in the field.

Psychology – the study of the mind, the brain, and behavior – is relevant to every aspect of your life! How does personality form? How are memories constructed and stored? How do society and culture impact an individual’s behavior? How are mental illnesses diagnosed and treated? These are just some of the questions we will attempt to answer in this course. This course will introduce a broad range of topics in psychology, including biological psychology, social psychology, personality, developmental psychology, health psychology, and psychological disorders.

Conspiracy beliefs are not new, yet in the last several years, they have turned from beliefs endorsed by the fringes of society to now widely accepted. What can we learn from psychology in order to understand conspiracy beliefs, science denial, and skepticism? You will examine the psychological dynamics behind conspiracy beliefs related to the pandemic, vaccines, climate change, Qanon, and more--dynamics that emphasize people's thoughts, emotions and behavior.

The aim of this course is to explore why individuals engage in behaviors such as alcohol and substance use. We will cover a range of topics relevant to psychology and public health including the determinants of health-related behaviors and contemporary theories of addiction that can be applied to education, research and practice. An emphasis will be placed on how individual, interpersonal, and community factors can be used to design and implement prevention and intervention strategies.

Racism can play a critical role in health outcomes for marginalized groups. Racism can not only be associated with physiological processes in the body, but can also impact health at the societal level. During this course, we will look at how racism has affected health in the past and how it continues to affect health from a multi-perspective approach.

Living now amid the Covid-19 pandemic, thoughts of whether humanity can defeat the virus and, if so, what will become of the world post-pandemic greatly trouble the mind. While our anxieties at present are very real and valid, concern over humanity’s end and the end of the world is not new. The theme of the apocalypse features prominently in some of the most lucrative Hollywood movies that dramatize global catastrophes—extreme global warming, astrological forces, pandemics—that threaten humanity’s end. That concern over the world ending is at the forefront of the present-day human mind is indicated by the sheer popularity and success of these films. Such anxieties have also been revealed by recent crazed responses over the uncertainty of what would happen after Dec 21, 2012, the last day of the Mayan calendar, and when the clock struck midnight to usher in the year 2000 (Y2K). However, this kind of apocalyptic thinking is not born out of modernity. It originated over 2,000 years ago in the religions of Judaism and Christianity and has shaped human thinking and catalyzed human action ever since. What can we learn from the history of the apocalyptic mindset, and how might it better help us understand ourselves and the world we live in today? How has belief in the apocalypse shaped human behavior for better or worse? If this topic and these questions are of interest, then this is the course for you.

In this highly interactive course, you will explore how historical, social, and cultural factors impact the development of children at home and within their learning environment. Through engaging discussions, debates, interactive readings, and illustrative case studies, you will explore how structural inequalities related to race/ethnicity, gender, social class, disability, learning styles, and sexual orientation influence individual growth and learning. You will also explore some of the best practices in supporting child development and be able to apply this knowledge to current or future work with children.

Microcredit burst onto the global stage in the 1980s and has ballooned into a $34 billion industry, becoming an important player in international development and poverty policy. However, many aspects of microcredit remain contested and controversial, in part because of the challenges of producing convincing evidence about its effects. In this course, students will gain substantive knowledge about microcredit and an understanding of the complexity of studying and solving social problems.

The course examines the complicated history of race in America through science. The course starts with an understanding of the establishment of racial groupings as a medical approach and later a social concept to classify people into social strata that facilitate differential outcomes and experiences. The basis of this educational journal is to understand how historical trespasses have helped to facilitate the current distrust of the medical industry by Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC).

The effect of globalization is uneven - while some countries benefit, others are marginalized. This course aims to understand the global political economy by using China's development over the past four decades as a case study for analysis. You will explore China's changing role in the global division of labor and how this shift is currently affecting the world, both economically and culturally.

What is a disaster, and how do the two broadest categories—natural and human-made disasters—differ from one another? This interdisciplinary course focuses on natural and human-initiated disasters and their impact on human life. We will explore how social dynamics such as culture, inequality, and social structure influence vulnerability and shape how people face, respond, recover, or fail to recover from disasters.

Emerging effects of the climate crisis make clear the need for the critical engagement of social scientists to understand and develop solutions for the myriad social, political, and economic impacts of the climate crisis. In this course, we will consider climate change from a sociological perspective. We will focus on the social and economic factors that have contributed to climate change and critically assess the wide range of responses that have been proposed to confront this global emergency.

Despite the best efforts of Instagram and TikTok’s finest body-positive influencers, the word “fat” has garnered almost as much power and weight (no pun intended) as the other F-word, but why? How do we interpret fatness? In this course, we will investigate the controversies and discourses surrounding larger bodies through a critical, sociocultural lens, focusing on the implications of fatness for people with varying ethnic, racial, and gender identities.

There is arguably no resource more important for social life than good health. The state of a person's health determines whether they can work, go to school, and participate in family and social life. However, the risk of developing and dying from particular diseases is not equally distributed within countries, or across countries, around the globe. This course introduces concepts, theories, and methods for understanding how social factors influence the distribution of health and illness. We will examine trends in global health inequality and investigate how factors such as race, gender, occupation, and migration affect health. We will think critically about social factors as risk factors for poor health and discuss the implications for health policy and practice in both high and low-and-middle-income countries.

Acting is about doing! Explore your unique potential. You will develop valuable acting, collaboration, and communication skills. This is a useful, challenging, and fun exploration of the art of acting. In class, students work on scenes, applying new techniques. There will be multiple presentations of scene work, the final one open to the public. Develop physical, vocal, emotional, and intellectual skills. CREATE a supportive collaborative space. Have fun exploring!

Successful communication asks us to actively listen and honestly share. But speaking in front of others - whether addressing a large audience or talking with one person across the table - can make us feel vulnerable. Fear of judgement, misconceptions, projections can close us off. Through a progression of exercises and presentations, you'll practice skills to overcome these barriers, to verbally communicate with openness and genuineness.

In the design world, women make up over half of the designers today, yet gender bias continues to alter the historical canon of female contribution within art and design. Just as Beyonce sang that a woman’s “persuasion can build a nation”, historically women have conceived and built more than they got credit for. This course expands the narrative of design history unearthing the widely influential histories of female designers pioneers not typically included in foundational art and design teachings.

Q: What did the fool say to the trickster? A: Have you seen the shapeshifter? Foolery, trickery, and shapeshifting are embedded in queer interactions with the world. In this class, we explore the subtle, intentional, and effective ways that queer & trans people use these as active strategies, both to resist dominant hegemonies, and to find and form community in the margins.