Class Schedules

This Junior Seminar in civic engagement offers upper-level students an opportunity to study - through internships and reflection - and to actively engage with the problem of racialized mass-incarceration on a local, regional, and national scale. During any given semester, the seminar may focus on a specific aspect of the problem, such as: ex-felon disenfranchisement, families and juvenile justice, restorative justice, political prisoners, or prison art and literature. This course requires prior exposure to American Studies (preferably including a critical methods course). Note: The seminar will run concurrently with optional internships specifically created for this course, and a required reflection "lab" period. Placement in these internships is highly recommended. Students must obtain permission to enroll in these internships. Prerequisite(s): AMST 200 .

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course is an introduction to the diverse lifeways of Muslims around the world, looking at how understandings and practice of Islam are shaped by social, economic, and political factors. It examines the Qur'an and hadith, and other authoritative texts that ground Islamic jurisprudence, and explores the diverse ways in which Muslims have understood and interpreted these teachings in locations across the world-such as Indonesia, the Middle East, South Asia, Europe and the United States - and at various points in history. The specific focus may vary with each offering, responding to instructor expertise and focus, emerging and volatile situations worldwide, or new advances in the field.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course is an introduction to the diverse lifeways of Muslims around the world, looking at how understandings and practice of Islam are shaped by social, economic, and political factors. It examines the Qur'an and hadith, and other authoritative texts that ground Islamic jurisprudence, and explores the diverse ways in which Muslims have understood and interpreted these teachings in locations across the world-such as Indonesia, the Middle East, South Asia, Europe and the United States - and at various points in history. The specific focus may vary with each offering, responding to instructor expertise and focus, emerging and volatile situations worldwide, or new advances in the field.

General Education Requirements:
Internationalism OR U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

An introductory philosophy course that concentrates on concepts and issues, such as the nature of value, duty, right and wrong, the good life, human rights, social justice, and applications to selected problems of personal and social behavior. Topics may include liberty and its limitations, civil disobedience, abortion, affirmative action, capital punishment, terrorism and the morality of war, animal rights and environmental ethics.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Digital devices and the activities that they afford permeate many aspects of our everyday lives and social institutions. In this course, we will consider a wide array of ethical issues connected to these devices and activities, including algorithmic bias, robotic rights, privacy, dataveillance, and the ethical responsibilities of social media companies. The questions we will ask will be both small and big—including ones about the ethical impacts of “digital life” on our relations with others, the quality of our lives, and the very meaning of being human itself. In general, this course aspires to do three things. One is to provide you with an opportunity to build a critical awareness of key concerns and debates involved in the rapidly growing field of digital ethics. Another is to introduce you to the general dimensions of philosophy as an activity—what it is to “do” philosophy—beginning with forming a philosophical question and leading up to the structured presentation of philosophical ideas. The third is to give you an opportunity to do philosophy itself through bettering your skills at close reading, imaginative and critical thinking, and argumentative writing. You will have the chance to write both informally and formally, and to engage in different kinds of philosophical writing, including a “public” philosophy essay and a joint research paper.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course looks at ethical questions connected with the internet as we know it today: an online environment where content is generated and shared through user activities such as blogging, media sharing, social networking, tagging, tweeting, virtual world gaming, wiki developing, and the like. We will start by considering debates over freedom of speech, privacy, surveillance, and intellectual property: issues that pre-exist the development of the Internet, but which because of it have taken on new dimensions. From here we will go on to take up some ethical questions arising from four different domains of activity on the social web: gaming, social networking, blog/wiki developing, and "hacktivism." In the third part of the course, we will consider broad questions connected to the integration of the Internet with devices other than the personal computer and mobile phone and which open the prospect of a world of integrated networked systems. What are some of the impacts of such integration on our everyday ethical relations with others and on the overall quality of our lives? How does being networked affect the meaning of being human?

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An exploration of the structure of the American Political System as seen through the decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court. The central topics include the development of the federal-state relationship, the separation of powers in the national government, the limits of government power over the economy, and the role of the judiciary. This course takes in the sweep of American history from 1789 to the present. Prerequisite(s): POLI 100 recommended.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Over the past century the world has witnessed incredible changes in the ways that information is produced, distributed, and consumed. Through tutorials, seminar discussions, and individual projects, this course explores the policy problems and conflicts at the cutting edge of the global Information Society. Topics include secrecy, transparency, access to information, surveillance, privacy, intellectual property (such as copyrights and piracy), freedom of expression in a digital world, and the regulation of technology. Prerequisite(s): Sophomore-standing or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course explores how and why we make moral judgments about people and their behavior. How are our moral judgments shaped by intuition, emotion, and reasoning? What are the moral implications of climate change? Do we ever put the interests of our broader group or community above our own self-interest? How do we balance punishment motives of retribution and deterrence, and how do these relate to policy decisions about capital punishment? Could a robot have moral rights and responsibilities? We will examine these questions by considering theories and findings from social, developmental, evolutionary, and political psychology, as well as from related fields like philosophy and artificial intelligence. Prerequisite(s): PSYC 201 or permission of instructor.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Though sacrifice is often viewed as the exclusive property of religion, this course is organized around the claim that religion and statecraft (the art of governing a nation well) are connected through practices of human sacrifice. Thus, in this course, we use "human sacrifice" as a comparative category to understand aspects of religion and statecraft, especially in war, capital punishment, torture, terrorism, and genocide. Though torture, terrorism, and genocide are important, our special focus is warfare and capital punishment, which encompass the other sites of human sacrifice. The central questions are the following: Why do gods and states demand blood; whence the impulse to human sacrifice? What are the relations between divine sovereignty, political sovereignty, and sacrifice? What are the modalities of human sacrifice? Is human sacrifice inevitable?

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

The use of imprisonment as a form of criminal punishment is only about as old at the United States. Currently, 1 in 100 adults in the United States are in prison or jail. How should we understand the growth of this form of criminal punishment? How is it similar to other methods to react to and to attempt to control unwanted behavior? What are the social consequences of these formal institutions of social control? In this course, we examine these developments in the processes and organization of social control, paying particular attention to criminal behavior and formal, legal responses to crime. We study and evaluate sociological theories of criminal behavior to understand how social forces influence levels of crimes. We examine recent criminal justice policies in the United States and their connections to inequality, examining the processes that account for expanding criminalization. Finally, we compare the development of formal, bureaucratic systems of social control and informal methods of social control, paying attention to the social and political implications of these developments.

General Education Requirements:
Quantitative Thinking Q2
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

After a brief but essential global history of drugs, this course will focus primarily on the 20th century to the present. We will examine histories of substance use and abuse, temperance and prohibition, the "War on Drugs," the shifting concept of addiction as a moral failing to addiction as a treatable disease, as well as study the history of the recovery movement and harm reduction. This course is not intended to be an exhaustive, comprehensive history of the subject-but it will provide you with a solid base from which to explore other aspects of this fascinating and contentious aspect of human history.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

In this course we will look at the intersection between race and the law in an effort to facilitate discussion and understanding of the role law has played and/or continues to play both in the subordination and promotion of the rights of people of color in America.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

This course is an introduction to contemporary social justice organizing around water rights in the United States. This course explores how impacted communities currently navigate various systems of power to challenge and resist the violence enacted through and against water. We will map across varied geographies, emergent strategies and alternative futures where water is protected. No special background is needed. All students are welcome.

General Education Requirements:
U.S. Identities and Differences

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

After a brief but essential global history of drugs, this course will focus primarily on the 20th century to the present. We will examine histories of substance use and abuse, temperance and prohibition, the "War on Drugs," the shifting concept of addiction as a moral failing to addiction as a treatable disease, as well as study the history of the recovery movement and harm reduction. This course is not intended to be an exhaustive, comprehensive history of the subject-but it will provide you with a solid base from which to explore other aspects of this fascinating and contentious aspect of human history.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

Can we all live by one set of rules? This course investigates the broad field of global studies by addressing fresh and age-old issues in international law from the personal to the global, including borders, sources and enforcement of international law, law of the sea, immigration and asylum, post-national federation, colonization, world order, and global citizenship. Readings include case studies, memoirs, fiction, and other texts focusing on individuals, cultures, and states. Open to first- and second-year students, or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Can we all live by one set of rules? This course investigates the broad field of global studies by addressing fresh and age-old issues in international law from the personal to the global, including borders, sources and enforcement of international law, law of the sea, immigration and asylum, post-national federation, colonization, world order, and global citizenship. Readings include case studies, memoirs, fiction, and other texts focusing on individuals, cultures, and states. Open to first- and second-year students, or permission of the instructor.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA
Internationalism

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

What matters in life? Is pleasure the only thing that matters? If so, whose pleasure should I pursue—just my own, my family’s, or everyone’s? Does suffering matter, too? What about the suffering of non-human animals? Is it okay for me to make animals suffer in order for me to enjoy the pleasure of eating their flesh? Or how about the suffering of people who are really far away from me—say, on another continent? Is it okay for me to spend money on cool stuff for myself when instead I could donate it to help people who are suffering very badly far away? If things in life other than pleasure matter too, what are they? People who oppose torture think that it’s wrong to hurt one person really badly even in order to prevent a large number of people from being hurt. Are they right? Is it always wrong to treat someone as merely a means to an end? Is it in general wrong to do things to people without their consent? Why? When do people deserve to be praised or blamed for their actions? What kind of person should I be? Should I try to be happy? Or should I try to be virtuous? Is virtue its own reward? Or are we all inevitably faced with a choice between being virtuous and being happy? If we are faced with that choice, which one should we pick? In Ethics, we will talk about these questions, and others.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

What matters in life? Is pleasure the only thing that matters? If so, whose pleasure should I pursue—just my own, my family’s, or everyone’s? Does suffering matter, too? What about the suffering of non-human animals? Is it okay for me to make animals suffer in order for me to enjoy the pleasure of eating their flesh? Or how about the suffering of people who are really far away from me—say, on another continent? Is it okay for me to spend money on cool stuff for myself when instead I could donate it to help people who are suffering very badly far away? If things in life other than pleasure matter too, what are they? People who oppose torture think that it’s wrong to hurt one person really badly even in order to prevent a large number of people from being hurt. Are they right? Is it always wrong to treat someone as merely a means to an end? Is it in general wrong to do things to people without their consent? Why? When do people deserve to be praised or blamed for their actions? What kind of person should I be? Should I try to be happy? Or should I try to be virtuous? Is virtue its own reward? Or are we all inevitably faced with a choice between being virtuous and being happy? If we are faced with that choice, which one should we pick? In Ethics, we will talk about these questions, and others.

General Education Requirements:
Writing WA

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

This course explores a variety of issues in legal philosophy, including methods of legal reasoning, theories of constitutional and statutory interpretation, the relationship between law and morality, the ethical implications of lawyers’ roles in adversarial legal systems, and topics in feminist and critical legal theory. We will also consider ways legal analysis and arguments influence public policy, political controversies, and approaches to conflict resolution.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Humanities

Course Materials

An examination of civil liberties and rights in the U.S., focusing on the cases decided by the Supreme Court. Central topics include the First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, and religion; privacy and reproductive freedom; and the Fourteenth Amendment protection of equality as it affects discrimination, affirmative action, and voting rights.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials

Law is omnipresent in contemporary social life. How should we understand this development and its consequences? How does law operate to the advantage or disadvantage of various members of society? Can law be the source of significant social change? This course examines the development of a formal, legal system and the ways in which such a system connects to other parts of society. We begin by focusing on individual experiences and understandings of law and what these tell us about how law fits into the larger social order. We then evaluate explanations about the connections between social and legal development. We also consider how the "law in action" operates by examining empirical studies of legal institutions and the limits and potential of law as a source for social change.

General Education Requirements:

Distribution Requirements:
Social science

Course Materials