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.

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.

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.

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?

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?

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 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.

What is the purpose of life? Who can claim to be wise? How can one ensure that they are remembered once they are gone? While questions of mortality, memory and meaning have risen to the forefront over the past two years, they were also prevalent in the civilizations of the ancient world. In this course, we will examine classic works of humanity’s search for permanence in the face of an impermanent world and learn how the ancients sought wisdom, hopefully finding some ourselves along the way.

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.

Have you ever wondered about how the events of the previous century shaped the perceptions of the people existing in the contemporary world?The innumerable layers of the human mind can be explored through the study of the past, in the present age, to comprehend the perplex relationship between time and the human mind. Re-live and re-visit history of the 20th century by reading the theories and movements that were born out of the wars, economic recessions, psychological and technological shifts.

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.

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.

How did Native Americans adapt to the violence of colonization? What role have enslaved peoples, marginalized groups, and women played in the history of US wars? In this course, students will explore how US wars have shaped American society and how social forces have impacted the nation’s wars. Throughout, we will remain sensitive to how the disfranchised and marginalized survived the war—and sometimes, in these moments of existential crisis, pressed for greater freedom and equality.

"The people want the fall of the regime!" This cry has resonated across the Middle East and North Africa for over a decade, echoing from the mouths of the young and old, rich and poor, regardless of religion, gender, or ethnicity. Those in this course will interrogate the roots of these calls for change by exploring the history of popular politics across the region, discussing movements rooted in anti-colonialism, nationalism, anti-authoritarianism, and the politics of religion and class.

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.

Most of us today are landlubbers. Our modes of travel, sustenance, communication – all are essentially land based. But things were not always this way. For most of the colonial period, waterways, not land, were the center of life, travel, and the economy. This course explores the watery worlds of early America through a combination of in-class sessions and on-the-water experiences in a kayak, chartered sailboat, and motorboat.

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.

Logic is a system of rules upon which human reasoning is based. It is a tool that we deploy routinely in our everyday lives. It pervades every academic discipline, from mathematics to the sciences to the humanities. To philosophers, however, logic is a deep and complex subject of study in its own right. A paradox is a chain of reasoning that starts from seemingly obvious premises and arrives at a conclusion we find unacceptable. This course is devoted in part to exploring this system of rules, which we will build formally from the ground up. We will eventually use our formal system both to better understand the structure of language and to model and assess real-world arguments.

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.

With this class, an Emmy Award-winning journalist will provide you with the tools to ask and answer critical questions. Our objective is to provide a framework for defining accuracy in the media, for distinguishing between truthful and (ahem) less than truthful reporting. Democracy depends on both public trust and media truthfulness. With this class, you will be able to better assess the cultural and political impact we have seen when misinformation forges extremist views and actions.

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.

“Jesus was the son of God because He said He was, and the son of God would not lie.” “Hitler believed that seizing the property of enemies of the state would be a good policy, so it must be misguided.” What, if anything, is wrong with these arguments? This course will offer an interactive, hands-on approach to analyzing and evaluating arguments. What makes good arguments good and bad arguments bad? We will try to improve at thinking critically about the world and constructing our own arguments.

Is killing animals for food morally permissible? How about abortion? Are we morally required to help those in poverty? Or to act in environmentally responsible ways? What is the morally best way to regulate immigration? How ought we allocate scarce medical resources during a pandemic? In this course, we will be evaluating arguments for different answers to these questions. By the end, you will be able to rationally engage with both sides of these and other hot-button moral issues.

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?

Modern science seems to have implications for many of the perennial questions of philosophy. Are sensory qualities in external objects or only in the observer? Is the world bound by deterministic laws, and if so, is there any room for freedom of the will? Could space have unseen higher dimensions? Is time travel possible? Is reality to any extent dependent on observers? In this course, we will read accessible works by both philosophers and physicists that bear on these questions.

You've heard of Einstein, Marie Curie, and Newton, but who really were the men and women behind physics' most famous discoveries? What's their story? Why is their work so famous, anyway? How do we use the concepts they explored today? Together we will learn and discuss the work of some great physicists and many other famous scientists. Understanding the lives of these figures allows us to discover along with them how they were able to make the groundbreaking discoveries that led us to the current day.

Astronomy is the oldest science, with the first observations of the heavens conducted by our early human ancestors. Records of astronomical measurements date back as far as Mesopotamia nearly 5000 years ago, with later observations made by the ancient Chinese, Babylonians, and Greeks. This course is designed to give you a brief glimpse into what we've learned since then. From basic measurement skills to black holes and general relativity, all aspects of this magnificent art will be covered.

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.

Quantum mechanical formalism suggests that the underlying mechanics of our universe is far divorced from our perception of reality. In this course, we will examine the conceptual fundamentals of quantum mechanics and explore their metaphysical implications.

Our world is composed of seemingly invisible particles. We can examine ourselves and ask, “What are we made of?” We might answer that we’re made of “molecular cells” built out of things like carbon or nitrogen. If we dig deeper, we find those elements are made of protons, neutrons and electrons, which have even more fundamental constituent particles. In this course, we will explore the historical experiments that led to the discovery of these fundamental particles.

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.

In this course, you will become familiar with some of the most prominent political thinkers of the modern period, then directly apply what you've learned to assess pressing debates about democracy in the United States today. The course is highly interactive and includes frequent class debates. You will develop and pose questions for class discussion, deliver presentations, and compose a series of short essays, drawing out connections between the authors we are studying and current events.

This course examines the complex relationship between ethics and politics in international affairs. Starting with an overview of different perspectives on the role of ethics and morality in international relations, the course then explores the ethical dimensions of issues central to foreign policy and the study of world politics, including the use of force, human rights, and global distributive justice. This course aims to foster an analytical approach that encourages students to think about applied international ethics in a rigorous and systematic manner.

Because the law affects nearly all aspects of daily life, understanding our society’s legal framework empowers students to step into leadership roles, use the law to help others, change the law, and change the world around them. Students will learn how to think and analyze issues like a lawyer, lawmaker, and judge as we explore different types of law, such as criminal law, civil rights, litigation, business law, and more.

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 take a deep look at some of the issues facing modern democracies from the perspectives of the law, ethics, and political philosophy. Through the lens of classic and contemporary texts in moral and political philosophy, judicial opinion, and current events, we will examine pressing questions about justice, equity, and freedom in modern society and political life. You can expect to gain familiarity with key texts and ideas of political philosophy and ethics.

What can science fiction reveal about the enduring questions of political theory? This course will engage philosophical texts and sci-fi classics side by side to find out. Key figures and concepts in political theory will be introduced, and will inform our engagements with the works of fiction. Bridging these two realms also invites questions about the relationship between art and politics. How can narrative help us see the socio-political world more clearly, and what are its limitations here?

Where do you spend most of your waking hours nowadays? Online, of course! Glued to smartphone screens, staying safe in zoom classrooms, or relaxing in online gaming communities – a lot of our lives have become digital. Such a revolutionary change is not without consequences, least of all on how we get involved politically. From #BlackLivesMatter and #MeToo to the Alt-Right and QAnon: This course explores digital media's role in transforming politics.

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.

The goal of this course is to examine the presidency from an institutional lens to understand how the president has circumvented constitutional power to become more influential and powerful than the other two branches of government.

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.

More than half of the world's population now lives in urban areas, and this proportion is expected to increase. Why do cities grow, prosper, or decay? How are cities managed and organized? How can we make our cities better? This course is an introduction to the political economy of cities, and the challenges and opportunities that we face today to build safe, inclusive, and sustainable cities.

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?

This course provides an introduction to the study of U.S. foreign policy. It focuses on the United States’ emergence as a global economic power in the late nineteenth century, its rise to global superpower status after World War II, and its unique status today as the world’s sole superpower. Combining history, theory, and analysis, this course examines some of the key decisions, themes, and debates that have defined and shaped U.S. foreign policy throughout its history, in particular the long-standing debate between the “realist” and “idealist” traditions.

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.

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.

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.

Climate change causes and exacerbates floods, fires, and sea-level rise at an unprecedented rate that is straining our ability to adapt. This is the result of fossil-fuel driven growth, yet societal efforts towards a sustainable economy are halting at best. This course introduces the environmental sociological perspective on global warming and other environmental problems to help you better understand how they are a direct result of society's relationship with nature and what needs to change.

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).

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.

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!

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.