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.

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.

What would the perfect crime look like? What makes an expert witness an expert? These are but a couple of the many questions we will explore during this course. Forensic science is an exciting field that combines scientific principles from many different science disciplines with technology and math resulting in new, sometimes surprising outcomes!

Are you interested in medicine, research and biotech? This course will provide an example of how all these different interests can be combined into a compelling biomarker project. Biomarkers are a major foundation of modern, personalized medicine and the key for discovering new therapeutics. The course will provide an overview on how medicine, research and public health work together to positively impact human health.

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?

Are you fascinated by the terms artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science? Data Science and Machine Learning will introduce you to the world of analytics, business and programming. A practical, hands-on course that uses a live project to build concepts of machine learning. You will gain access to the latest tech development and dive deep into the data-driven approaches in the industry.

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.

Do good-looking people earn more? Are people with certain types of names more likely to get hired than others? Can cancer affect housing prices? Does living near a fast-food restaurant cause obesity? Is corruption a cultural trait? This one-week core economics course will examine select discoveries in applied microeconomics and explain them in easy-to-understand terms, introducing you to the techniques economists use to uncover causal relations from observational data.

Even though we may not realize it, we are exposed to economic data and statistical analysis wherever we go—in the supermarket through product prices, on the news when politicians present us with labor statistics, and in the mobile phone store when comparing phone plans. Econometrics uses math and statistics to measure economic data. Understanding how to use the models and tools of econometrics will empower you to accurately interpret the economic data that surrounds you daily and in all aspects of your life.

Is a college education a worthwhile investment? Should we tax junk food? Why do recessions occur? Where does money come from? Is social security running out? If you have ever wondered about these questions, this course will help you find answers to these and introduce you to the vast world of economics!

This course is an introduction to macroeconomics, the big picture economic questions. We will study the short-term price level and employment fluctuations of the business cycle and long-term growth. We will also spend a significant time studying depression economics and the linkages between financial crises and economic recessions. We will use some simple math to construct economic models that will give rigor to our more qualitative description of how the economy works.

This course is focused on giving you an introduction to the startup environment. We will look at the entrepreneurial process while continually developing the skills needed to succeed as a "thought leader" in a constantly evolving atmosphere. This class requires a large amount of self-direction and hands-on participation. We will explore different aspects of innovation, asking questions like, what makes good innovation? How do I turn an idea or innovation into a viable business or product? How can this be done in a lean, efficient way? Over the course, you will work individually on developing your own startup while simultaneously working together as a class to develop and launch a venture by the end of the session.

This fundamental course will introduce you to microeconomic theory. Microeconomics is a field within economics and studies how individuals and firms make consumption and production decisions, respectively, and how these decisions determine the allocation of scarce resources in a market. As such, it provides a formal framework to study policy-relevant questions like, Does a subsidy unambiguously increase the profit of a struggling firm? Or even questions like: Should a pizza restaurant start a price war with its competitor down the block? How does a price change in coffee alter the demand for breakfast muffins?

Have you thought about where you would like to be financially in 10, 20, and 30 years? Do you hope to retire at some point in your life? How will you get there? Does your home country have a robust financial plan for its future? Unfortunately, many people, governments, and organizations have not planned or adequately prepared to meet their economic goals. This course will explore the factors that will likely make it even more difficult for your generation to be as financially secure as that of your parents and grandparents. Factors such as Covid, deficit spending, lower government benefits, increased life expectancy, volatility in financial markets, changes in labor market demographics, and prolonged low-interest rates will present challenges. This course will help you understand global economic factors and lead to more informed financial decisions.

When your parents were young, their telephones were attached to walls, computers took up entire rooms, and they purchased consumer goods in a store. Today, with advances such as the "Internet of Things," we can forgo the store entirely and order all of our goods online using mobile apps. Technology "runs" our lives from online education to paying a friend through an app or signing up online for a vaccination appointment. We now experience services and products unimagined even a few years ago, such as mind-controlled computing or Robin the Robot. These innovations affect our everyday lives and shape our communities, businesses, and governments. This course explores innovation and incentives to create new products and services, the "winners" and "losers" of innovative activities, and the profound effects of technological advancements on businesses and economies worldwide.

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.

Do you want to learn about how financial decisions are made in the market? This course provides a clear mathematical lens to understand investment principals and risk management. Investment banks and hedge funds design and implement mathematical models that help them price financial assets and create portfolios of assets that balance between an investment’s risk and return characteristics. This course will provide you with an introduction to these mathematical methods.

How does Google Maps find routes to your destination? How likely is it that a new disease will become an epidemic, and what can be done to prevent this? How do memes spread? What about the spread of disinformation campaigns on social media? All these questions, at their core, involve networks. A network is a group of interconnected people or things. For example, a map can be understood as a collection of locations connected by roads. People spread diseases through interactions with each other. Memes travel from account to account as people share them with their friends and followers.

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.

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.

“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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

This course will provide you with an overview of the evolving field of social entrepreneurship and help students understand how social entrepreneurs drive innovation and transformation in fields such as health, education, and the environment. Social entrepreneurship/enterprise is a rapidly growing field which utilizes an entrepreneurial approach to address social needs and create positive change. Companies such as Patagonia, 4ocean and Warby Parker epitomize strong and sustainable organizations which are creating both social and financial value. 

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.

From TikTok to the New York City Ballet, anarchist art collectives to the sculptures on Brown’s campus, the American cultural sector encompasses a complex array of creative practices. How money, power, technology and the state are deployed through- or in the service of- culture is the subject of this class. With emphasis on emerging technologies and business practices, “Culture War Bootcamp” will arm you with the tools necessary to produce work in the contemporary cultural economy.

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.